Climate scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of Alabama, and the University of Virginia report that observed patterns of temperature changes (`fingerprints') over the last thirty years are not in accord with what greenhouse models predict and can better be explained by natural factors, such as solar variability. Therefore, climate change is `unstoppable' and cannot be affected or modified by controlling the emission of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, as is proposed in current legislation.
These results are in conflict with the conclusions of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and also with some recent research publications based on essentially the same data. However, they are supported by the results of the US-sponsored Climate Change Science Program (CCSP).
The report is published in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society [DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651]. The authors are Prof. David H. Douglass (Univ. of Rochester), Prof. John R. Christy (Univ. of Alabama), Benjamin D. Pearson (graduate student), and Prof. S. Fred Singer (Univ. of Virginia).
The fundamental question is whether the observed warming is natural or anthropogenic (human-caused). Lead author David Douglass said: "The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends, does not show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming. The inescapable conclusion is that the human contribution is not significant and that observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases make only a negligible contribution to climate warming."
Co-author John Christy said: "Satellite data and independent balloon data agree that atmospheric warming trends do not exceed those of the surface. Greenhouse models, on the other hand, demand that atmospheric trend values be 2-3 times greater. We have good reason, therefore, to believe that current climate models greatly overestimate the effects of greenhouse gases. Satellite observations suggest that GH models ignore negative feedbacks, produced by clouds and by water vapor, that diminish the warming effects of carbon dioxide."
Co-author S. Fred Singer said: "The current warming trend is simply part of a natural cycle of climate warming and cooling that has been seen in ice cores, deep-sea sediments, stalagmites, etc., and published in hundreds of papers in peer-reviewed journals. The mechanism for producing such cyclical climate changes is still under discussion; but they are most likely caused by variations in the solar wind and associated magnetic fields that affect the flux of cosmic rays incident on the earth's atmosphere. In turn, such cosmic rays are believed to influence cloudiness and thereby control the amount of sunlight reaching the earth's surface-and thus the climate." Our research demonstrates that the ongoing rise of atmospheric CO2 has only a minor influence on climate change. We must conclude, therefore, that attempts to control CO2 emissions are ineffective and pointless. - but very costly.
Source. Journal abstract follows:
A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions
By David H. Douglass et al.
We examine tropospheric temperature trends of 67 runs from 22 Climate of the 20th Century model simulations and try to reconcile them with the best available updated observations (in the tropics during the satellite era). Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs. These conclusions contrast strongly with those of recent publications based on essentially the same data
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Bali: no more jaw-jaw, this is climate war
Greens are demanding state-enforced austerity and authoritarianism to deal with 'climate catastrophe'. And they're using the Second World War as their model
The climate change circus has moved on once more. Last month, it was the presentation in Valencia, Spain of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) synthesis report. Now the show has moved to the Indonesian island of Bali for the first discussions on a post-Kyoto treaty. But with no concrete agreement on the horizon, green activists are calling for greater urgency - and what could be more urgent than a war?
Last month, the IPCC declared that the evidence for human responsibility for climate change was now `unequivocal'. As UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said in September, the scientists have spoken: `Their message is quite simple: we know enough to act; if we do not act now the impact of climate change will be devastating; and we have affordable measures and technologies to begin addressing the problem right now. What we do not have is time. The time for action is now.' (1)
Yet while the UN, IPCC and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) demand urgent action, there doesn't seem to be much agreement in Bali on what that action should consist of. Everyone agrees that carbon emissions must fall, but there is considerably less agreement on how to bring this fall about.
Many countries, led by the European Union, want to see a stronger Kyoto-style agreement with binding emissions reductions - but one that, unlike Kyoto, includes developing countries, too. In turn, these developing countries are loathe to be bound by emissions limits when they are finally benefiting from desperately needed, fossil-fuelled economic growth. And the US, the largest producer of greenhouse gases, is also keen to avoid mandatory limits, especially if they do not apply to countries like China and India, which are increasingly becoming economic rivals to the US.
Kyoto has hardly been a rip-roaring success, however. The treaty demanded a cut in emissions of five per cent compared to 1990 levels by 2008-2012. As the graph below reveals, overall emissions for industrialised countries (the green line) are slightly down on 1990 levels despite economic growth. But this fall is largely due to the fact that emissions in emerging economies in Eastern Europe (the blue line) fell through the floor after 1990. Even in these countries, emissions have risen since the Kyoto treaty was signed in 1997. For the well-developed economies (the pink line), emissions have risen by 11 per cent since 1990.
Above: Percentage change in greenhouse gas emissions, 1990-2005 (source: UN Framework Convention on Climate Change)
Even some of the `success' stories are somewhat illusory. For example, Britain's emissions cuts have been largely down to a switch from burning coal to burning gas in electricity production - a change that started before the Kyoto deal was signed and would have happened regardless of any treaty. The actual effect of the treaty has been, at best, to apply pressure to reduce the rise in emissions. Only six of the 23 Kyoto industrialised countries outside Eastern Europe have actually cut their emissions since 1990 (2).
Worse, Kyoto represents the `easy bit'. After all, it may be easy enough to trim emissions through campaigns, price increases and other financial incentives without any noticeable impact on costs or methods of energy production and consumption. Really serious cuts would require a major shift in the way we currently travel, build and work, or savage cuts in consumption - or some combination of the two. That kind of shift doesn't seem to be on the table at Bali. State-sponsored impoverishment isn't very popular, after all.
There are those, however, who think a bit of impoverishment is absolutely necessary - and they justify their argument by invoking the spirit and images of war. Madeleine Bunting, writing in Monday's Guardian, declared that we need to move to `a low-consumption economy oriented towards facilitating the real sources of human fulfilment'. She continues: `Hearteningly, we know it can be done - our parents and grandparents managed it in the Second World War. This useful analogy, explored by Andrew Simms in his book Ecological Debt, demonstrates the critical role of government. In the early 1940s, a dramatic drop in household consumption was achieved. by the government orchestrating a massive propaganda exercise combined with a rationing system and a luxury tax. This will be the stuff of twenty-first century politics - something that, right now, all the main political parties are much too scared to admit.'
Just in case we didn't get the message, Bunting's Guardian colleague George Monbiot banged the drum for a Climate War Economy the following day: `We must confront a challenge that is as great and as pressing as the rise of the Axis powers. Had we thrown up our hands then, as many people are tempted to do today, you would be reading this paper in German. Though the war often seemed impossible to win, when the political will was mobilised strange and implausible things began to happen. The US economy was spun round on a dime in 1942 as civilian manufacturing was switched to military production. The state took on greater powers than it had exercised before. Impossible policies suddenly became achievable.'
If you thought it was just a few overwrought Guardian columnists calling for wartime-style rationing, think again: this outlook is catching on in the corridors of power, too, with the likes of Prince Charles and former UK environment secretary Margaret Beckett calling for a `war' on greenhouse gases. Only yesterday, the head of the UK Environment Agency, Lady Young, told the Daily Telegraph: `This is World War Three - this is the biggest challenge to face the globe for many, many years. We need the sorts of concerted, fast, integrated and above all huge efforts that went into many actions in times of war. We're dealing with this as if it is peacetime, but the time for peace on climate change is gone - we need to be seeing this as a crisis and emergency.'
Such shrill sabre-rattling isn't a new phenomenon. As we noted on spiked in February this year, talk of the Blitz spirit, rationing, avoiding waste and tightening our belts is becoming increasingly common in climate change circles (see `Your planet needs you!', by Rob Lyons). This may, in part, reflect the fact that the last time Britain did anything that we still feel positive about, it was defeating The Nazi Threat - even if our role in Hitler's downfall is more of a Great National Myth than a historical fact.
The war talk over global warming also reflects an increasing desperation on the part of eco-activists, commentators and official environment departments. For them, governments and voters are simply not responding with sufficient panic to this apparent planetary emergency. So they are adopting an hysterical tone to try to get people's attention. But the bottom line is that most people - quite rightly - do not wish to live under austerity measures. We're actually rather keen on our material wealth, thank you very much, and we'd rather not live in a society where all sorts of punitive state action can be undertaken in the name of saving the planet.
If the world does get markedly warmer in the future, then we will need practical solutions to the problems that may arise, while doing our best to ensure that economic development can continue apace. We don't need poverty and authoritarianism.
Source
A convenient 50 million for green Gore
WHO would have thought that saving the planet could be such a lucrative business? Al Gore, the former US vice-president turned environmental campaigner, has made more than 50 million in British pounds in just seven years from his books, speeches and shrewd investments in technology and green ventures. Gore, 59, a failed presidential candidate, has already reinvented himself from the nearly man of American politics into the first global green celebrity. This week he will pick up the Nobel peace prize in Oslo before flying to Bali to take centre stage at the United Nations climate change conference.
Today Gore commands between 50,000 and 85,000 pounds a speech, holds stock options in Google worth 15m and has made as much as 4m from advances on his book deals. He is also advising a US venture capital company on how to invest a $600m green technology fund.
He has come a long way since losing the 2000 presidential election to George W Bush when, according to official documents, Gore was worth just 1 million. His biggest assets were his two homes in Nashville, Tennessee, and Arlington, Virginia, valued at 375,000, and 500,000 invested in oil company shares. But rather than dwell on his disappointment, Gore threw himself into the world of business.
Joel Hyatt, who chaired the democratic finance committee during the 2000 election and is now Gore's business partner, said: "Al's bouncing back from that experience has been quite extraordinary. It's hard to move on from something like that but the fact he did is an incredible testament to his character."
Gore began by joining Google as an adviser in 2001. At the time it was a relatively new and rising internet search engine. In March 2003 he joined the board of Apple, where he holds stock options that are now valued at about œ3m. According to Hyatt, his interest in technology is long-standing. "Al has always had a real mind for gadgets and technology. He is a real geek in that regard." Gore has also invested a significant proportion of his wealth in Current TV, a cable channel on which viewers can broadcast their own video clips. It has 38m subscribers in the US and is now being shown in 8m homes in Britain.
At the same time Gore's interest in green issues was coming to the fore, and his rise as a climate-change celebrity has proved highly lucrative. Since the release of his documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, Gore has given 150 speeches a year. His spokesman emphasised, however, that Gore waives his lecture fees for charities and schools and gives a proportion of his income to the Alliance for Climate Protection, of which he is chairman.
A contract for one of his speaking arrangements, released by the University of California under freedom of information requirements, reveals that Gore demands first class travel and accommodation and 500 a day for meals, phone calls and other expenses. The contract stipulates that Gore's car from the airport should be "a sedan, not a sports utility vehicle".
Gore has written nine books, with advances worth between 3m and 4.5m, and has another planned for next year. In 2003 he sold MetWest, an asset management firm he had started two years earlier, picking up a payout rumoured to be another 15m. In April 2004 he used the money to co-found Generation Investment Management, a London-based company that specialises in "sustainable" investments. Today it manages more than 500m of assets, ranging from Novo Nordisk, a Danish drug maker, to Whole Foods Market, an organic retailer. This month Gore joined the board of Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, venture capitalists whose investment helped fuel the dotcom boom and fund companies such as Amazon. Kleiner is now going green and has started a 300m fund for technologies that aim to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. It has already invested in 26 companies that make everything from electric cars to microbes that scrub oil wells.
Source
NEVER TRUST GREEN PROMISES: EUROPE MAY GO EASY ON BIG CARS
The European Commission may shift the burden of cutting average carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions more onto small cars than heavier and more powerful models, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported. The paper, which quoted an internal EU paper, said on Saturday the Commission was requiring manufacturers of the smaller models to cut CO2 emissions at a higher rate in order for the bloc to achieve its average target by 2012. The plan, if implemented, could benefit German car makers like BMW, Mercedes and Porsche known for their power and high speed.
The European Union executive is due to adopt regulations on Dec. 19 on how to enforce an average limit of 120 grams per km on carbon dioxide emissions by 2012 -- part of the bloc's ambitious strategy to combat climate change. The EU industry and environment commissioners have disagreed over fining carmakers who fail to meet EU pollution limits. The leaders of the main west European countries with big auto companies -- Germany, France and Italy -- have each written to the Commission's head calling for leniency in sharing out the burden of CO2 emissions curbs on their manufacturers.
Data published by an environmental pressure group last month showed average emissions of CO2, the greenhouse gas most blamed for global warming, from new cars made by German firms actually rose by 0.6 percent in 2006. French and Italian producers cut pollution from their vehicles by 1.6 percent, but Germany produces heavier cars.
The Commission decided in January that carmakers would be required to achieve 130 g/km through engine technology, while use of biofuels and other measures to improve vehicle energy efficiency would help achieve the overall 120 g/km goal. (Reporting by Mantik Kusjanto, editing by Anthony Barker)
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Biofoolishness
Post below lifted from Blue Crab. See the original for links
Many thanks to Quilly Mammoth over at Just Barking Mad for pointing out this article from Smithsonian Magazine. (Heck, I get that and had not read the piece.) Titled Who's Fueling Whom? it is written by Richard Coniff and it positively destroys the myths of biofuel. It is a devastating article. This one is a must read. He hits many of the same things I have pointed out over and over: food prices are skyrocketing, the economics simply do not work and wildlife is already suffering - and will suffer even more. But he also points out the simple fact that there is not enough land to produce enough fuel. Period.
But don't biofuel subsidies buy us energy independence? President Bush, a former oil executive, declared last year that we are "addicted to oil." In this year's State of the Union speech, he set a national goal of producing 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels by 2017. The next morning, C. Ford Runge, who studies food and agriculture policy at the University of Minnesota, calculated that this would require 108 percent of the current crop if it all came from corn. Switching to corn ethanol also risks making us dependent on a crop that's vulnerable to drought and disease. When the weather turned dry in the Southeast this summer, for instance, some farmers lost up to 80 percent of their corn.
In a recent Foreign Affairs article, "How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor," Runge and co-author Benjamin Senauer noted that growing corn requires large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer, pesticides and fuel. It contributes to massive soil erosion, and it is the main source, via runoff in the Mississippi River, of a vast "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico. (This year the dead zone, expanding with the corn crop, was the third-largest on record.) The article made the switch to corn ethanol sound about as smart as switching from heroin to cystal meth..
...So let's flash forward five years. Twice a month you swing by the biofuels station to fill the 25-gallon tank in your sporty flex-fuel econo-car. (Pretend you've kissed the SUV goodbye.) Even this modest level of energy consumption will require a ten-acre farm to keep you on the highway for a year.
That might not sound too bad. But there are more than 200 million cars and light trucks on American roads, meaning they would require two billion acres' worth of corn a year (if they actually used only 50 gallons a month). The country has only about 800 million acres of potential farmland.
There is much more. This really is a must read. I have been gathering stories like this for some time trying to point out how crazy the logic of the wishful thinkers is. If you can call it logic. Frankly, there is big money in play here as well, as Coniff points out. Agricultural conglomerates are raking in windfalls of government subsidies and they know - full well - that the biofuel craze is a dead end. They are just getting all they can before the house of cards collapses.
There may be a role for biofuels, but it is not this mad rush to turn all of our food into fuel. The ecological damage of all this is unprecedented. Rainforests incinerated, wildlife slaughtered, biodiversity eliminated. It has never been easier to rape the planet. Say you are producing biofuel to fight global warming and you have a license to kill. Quite literally. Please read the whole thing. You'll be glad you did.
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For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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