REQUEST TO THE IPCC

Below is a letter to the IPCC from Syun Akasofu [sakasofu@iarc.uaf.edu], International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks

We encounter scientific terms, such as climate change, global warming, the greenhouse effect, and carbon dioxide a few times every day in newspapers, radio broadcasts, TV news, as well as in conversations among people. It must be the first time in the history of science that a specific scientific field has gotten so much attention from the public. As a scientist, I am pleased about the public's interest in science. Unfortunately, however, I am afraid that this great interest by the public in climatology is largely the result of a proliferating number of confusing stories in the media that are based on misinterpreted information about the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide.

If the IPCC wants to represent this particular scientific field to the world, they are responsible for rectifying the great confusion and misinterpretation of scientific facts in the mind of the public. Some of the items that need clarification and action are:

1. Define climate change, global warming, manmade greenhouse effect, and ask the public to stop the synonymous use of these terms. (Those who use these terms synonymously do not know what they are talking about.)

2. Ask the mass media to stop using scenes of large blocks of ice falling off the terminus of a glacier and of the spring break-up in the Arctic as supposedly due to the manmade greenhouse effect. (Glaciers are 'rivers of ice', so that calving is natural, and spring break-up is a normal, annual event; both have been going on from the geological time.)

3. Ask the mass medial to stop using collapsing houses built on permafrost (frozen ground) as a result of the manmade greenhouse effect. (Their collapse is due to improper construction that allows the house heat to melt the permafrost underneath the structure.)

4. Tell that sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is not a single plate of ice. (The area covered by sea ice changes considerably because of winds and ocean currents, not just by melting.)

5. Call attention to the fact that anomalous, extreme, and unusual weather phenomena are not directly related to the manmade greenhouse effect. (The manmade greenhouse effect is represented by a slow increase of temperature at the rate of 0.6oC/per 100 years.)

6. Acknowledge that the use of the so-called "hockey stick" figure in the 2001 Summary Report for Policy Makers was not appropriate. (It shows a sudden increase of temperature around 1900 after a slow decrease for 900 years, giving the impression of 'abrupt climate change'.)

7. Acknowledge that the present warming trend is not unusual or abnormal in the light of past temperature changes. (There were many warmer periods than the present one, which lasted hundreds of years during the present interglacial period that began 10,000 years ago.)

8. Distinguish between the manmade greenhouse effect and a great variety of manmade environmental destructions, which are often mentioned by greenhouse advocates in the same breath. (The latter includes results from the over-harvesting of forests and fish, pollution, extinction of some species.)

9. Stop media reports telling that the sea level has already increased several meters during the last 50 years. (According to the 2007 IPCC Report, the rising rate is 1.8mm/yer, so that the sea level increased 9 cm during the last 50 years.)

10. Scientists who study satellite data should not use the term "unprecedented changes". (They do not have satellite data before the 1970s and cannot tell if any of the changes are "unprecedented", even those that occurred in the 1930s or 1940s, not having comparable data.)

11. Encourage the mass media not to report only on sensational scientific findings that may represent the opinion of only one scientist or a few. (Reporters who are not familiar with arctic phenomena tend to report normal features as anomalous.)

12. Remind scientists to be careful about hinting at possible disaster scenarios resulting from the greenhouse effect of CO2 without solid scientific bases.

I believe these are reasonable requests, over which no debate is needed. The public is alarmed and thus concerned about climate change largely because they are confused by the above and other misinformation and misunderstanding, not because they are particularly interested in climatology. People bring up these and many other misunderstood issues when I discuss the present warming trend with the public. I am concerned about the inevitable backlash against science and scientists, when the public learns the correct information about climate change. Even if the IPCC is not directly responsible for the present confusion, they should take the necessary responsible action to help rectify the situation.





MY TAKE ON BALI: CLIMATE ALARMISM HITS A BRICK WALL

By Benny Peiser

The success of the major Anglosphere nations at last week's United Nations climate conference in Bali marks the beginning of the end of the age of climate hysteria. It also symbolizes a significant shift of political leadership in international climate diplomacy from the once-dominating European continent to North America and its Western allies.

This power shift has perhaps never been more transparent and dramatic than in Bali, when Australia's Labour government, under the newly elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, announced a complete U-turn on the thorny issue of mandatory carbon dioxide emissions targets. Only days after Australia's delegation had backed Europe's demand for a 25% to 40% cut in emission by 2020, Mr. Rudd declared (his signature under the Kyoto Protocol wasn't even dry) that his government would not support such targets after all.

Indeed, Australia's position hardened further when Trade Minister Simon Crean announced that developing countries like China and India would have to accept tough binding emissions targets before Australia would ever agree to any post-Kyoto agreement beyond 2012. Similar stipulations were made by Canada and Japan. Surprisingly, even the British government appeared to deviate from the European Union position when Britain's Trade and Development Minister, Gareth Thomas, told the BBC that developing countries would also be required to accept targets for CO2 emissions. Rather than being isolated, the decision by the United States and Canada to take the lead in international energy and climate diplomacy appears to have galvanized key allies, who are gradually rallying around a much tougher stance vis-a-vis China and India.

In Bali, the Anglosphere nations have in effect drawn a red line in the sand: Unless developing countries agree to mandatory emissions cuts themselves, much of the Western world will henceforth reject any unilateral burden imposed by future climate deals. As a consequence, the so-called Bali road map adopted last Saturday has shifted the pressure further on to developing nations to share responsibility for CO2 emissions, a move that is widely regarded as a significant departure from the Kyoto Protocol.

For the first time, there are now firm demands for developing nations to tackle CO2 emissions by taking "actions in a measurable, reportable, and verifiable" way. There can be little doubt that the words adopted in Bali herald increasing pressure on China and India to accept mandatory emissions targets.

Australia's public endorsement of this line of attack attests to the fact that the West's climate strategy no longer depends on party politics. Nobody has made this new reality more obvious in recent days than Democratic U.S. Senator John Kerry. Speaking to reporters at the Bali meeting, he notified the international community that a rejection by China and other emerging economies to cut their own greenhouse gases would make it almost impossible for any U.S. administration to get a new global climate treaty through the U.S. Senate -- "even under a Democratic president."

Yet, neither China nor India will be able to agree to any emissions cuts in the foreseeable future. While their CO2 emissions are expected to rise rapidly over the next 20 to 30 years, there is simply nothing in the world of alternative energy or clean technology existing today that has the capacity to arrest this upwards trend. Any forceful attempts, on the other hand, to rein in the dramatically rising energy consumption in almost all of Asia would, inescapably, trigger economic turmoil, social disorder and political chaos.

In Bali, more than perhaps ever before, climate alarmism has finally hit the solid brick wall of political reality. It's a reality that won't go away or be changed any time soon. After more than 20 years of green ascendancy on the world stage, green politicians and climate campaigners are for the first time faced with a conundrum that looks as impenetrable as squaring the circle.

Reflecting on this predicament and the results of the Bali conference, Germany's former foreign secretary, my old friend Joschka Fischer, declared that nothing short of divine intervention would be required to reach a post-Kyoto agreement by 2009, in face of insurmountable obstacles. "Perhaps something will happen in the meantime, something that does not normally happen in politics, namely a small miracle. After all, given past experiences, one must fear that international climate policy won't probably advance without the direct intervention of higher powers."

That Europe's most famous and most eminent green politician is prepared and desperate enough to publicly call for heavenly support is a strong indication that the age of climate alarmism is now being gradually replaced by fatalism. That's what the encounter with a brick wall tends to do to hot-heads. One can only hope that a period of sobering up from green dreams and delusions will provide political leaders with the prerequisite for a realistic, pragmatic and most of all a manageable approach to climate change.

Source






GAME OVER: JAPAN SCRAPS CARBON TAX, EMISSIONS TRADING SYSTEM

Japan's government omitted a proposed carbon tax from its latest list of measures to curb pollution and will instead intensify appeals for voluntary reductions from homes, utilities and factories. Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's Cabinet today reviewed alternative strategies to meet the nation's Kyoto Protocol target on carbon emissions, Hiroshi Kamagata, a counsellor in the Cabinet Secretariat, told reporters in Tokyo. Media handouts omitted earlier proposals for a carbon tax on fossil fuel use and the creation of an emissions trading system.

Fukuda wants to implement climate-change policies before hosting a meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized nations in July next year focusing on efforts to cope with global warming. The U.S., Japan and Canada last week succeeded in diluting a call for mandatory cuts in emissions at a meeting of 187 nations in Indonesia to negotiate a new global-warming treaty by 2009. Global efforts to tackle climate change will be the focus of the G-8 summit from July 7 to July 9 at the Lake Toya hot spring resort on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido.

Japan pledged under the 1997 Kyoto agreement to cut annual average greenhouse gas emissions by 6 percent from the level in 1990. The cuts must be made over the five years starting April 2008.

Japan's greenhouse gas emissions rose 6.4 percent from the 1990 level in the fiscal year that ended last March, reaching 1.341 billion metric tons, according to a Nov. 5 report by the environment ministry. Per-capita emissions of carbon dioxide declined to 9.98 tons, the first time below 10 tons in five years.

Environment Minister Ichiro Kamoshita, Trade Minister Akira Amari and Finance Minister Fukushiro Nakaga joined the meeting today at the Prime Minister's office to discuss climate change policies, Kamagata said.

Documents by government ministries distributed to reporters today set out the country's main policies to achieve the Kyoto target, including a plan to promote energy-conservation among households and industries and increased use of biomass fuel and solar power. Japanese policymakers had debated a proposal to introduce a carbon tax and the formation of a domestic emissions trading system among measures to achieve their current target. Nippon Oil Corp. and other Japanese refiners are against an environment ministry proposal for a petroleum product tax.

Source





BRITAIN IS TAKING CO2 EMISSIONS VERY, VERY SERIOUSLY INDEED



Fresh environmental plans have been submitted for an opencast coal mine originally approved in 1956. Outline permission for the scheme at Auchencorth near West Linton in the Borders was granted more than 50 years ago but is now officially dormant. However, Scottish Coal now hopes to extract some 450,000 tonnes of coal from the Peeblesshire site.

FULL STORY here




MORE EVIDENCE THAT GERMANY IS REALLY, REALLY SERIOUS ABOUT CO2 EMISSIONS

Passenger numbers at Frankfurt airport, Germany's main civil aviation hub, could increase 60 percent by 2020 thanks to a new runway, the chief executive of airport operator Fraport was quoted as saying. "We expect that we will be able to raise the (annual) passenger count in Frankfurt to more than 88 million in 2020," CEO Wilhelm Bender told the Euro am Sonntag weekly in a preview received on Saturday of an article due out in print on Sunday.....

More here





Congrats to the Associated Press

Post below lifted from Climate Skeptic. See the original for links

I want to congratulate the Associated Press and the Arizona Republic for running this story:

Scientists fear Arctic thaw has reached 'tipping point'

On the exact same day that this was published:

Arctic Sea Ice Re-Freezing at Record Pace

The record melting of Arctic sea ice observed this summer and fall led to record-low levels of ice in both September and October, but a record-setting pace of re-freezing in November, according to the NASA Earth Observatory. Some 58,000 square miles of ice formed per day for 10 days in late October and early November, a new record.

Still, the extent of sea ice recorded in November was well shy of the median extent observed over the past quarter century, as the image from Nov. 14 (above, right) shows. The dramatic increase in ice is evident, when compared to the record-low amount observed Sept. 16 (below, right). In both images, 100% sea ice is shown in white, and the yellow line encompasses the area ion which there was at least 15% ice cover in at least half of the 25-year record for the given month.

The re-freeze continues in December, such that the ice coverage is pretty much at the median level today. The AP/Republic article is admirably free of any new facts except the oft-repeated "Arctic ice at all-time low," all-time of course meaning not all-time but in the last 30 years that we have been able to observe by sattellite. And neither article bothers to mention the high coverage record that was set in the South Pole this very same year.

The AZ Republic article is mostly made up of dueling catastrophists competing to see who can have the most dire forecast:

Just last year, two top scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040. This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions."

Anytime you see someone use the word "tipping" point in relation to climate, you should immediately be skeptical. Tipping points imply runaway positive feedback, something that is a feature of nuclear fission but is generally not a feature of stable natural processes. TJIC said it well the other day:

Wow, it's almost as if there are negative feedback loops that keep the system centered, despite occasional perturbations. Which is odd, because to listen to the global warming alarmists, one concludes that:

(a) the environment is a delicately balanced system that can be pushed, by the least little perturbation, into a runaway positive feedback loop, turning the Earth into another Venus.

(b) over the last 200 million years there have been asteroid impacts, brightenings and darkenings of the sun, and massive volcano eruptions, but the Earth's environment has always returned to a slow oscillation around a moderate middle point.

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