DETENTE: EUROPE WARMS TO BUSH'S CLIMATE STRATEGY

The latest US-led climate talks in Honolulu, Hawaii, have been described by delegates as the most frank and engaging climate negotiations so far. It was the second in a series of Major Economies Meetings called by US President George W Bush. He called the first in Washington last year after expressing a desire to find a solution to the climate issue. That first meeting was described by angry EU delegates as a waste of time, a PR stunt for the American elections. But this time the tone was very different.

One EU delegate said: "I came expecting nothing and was very pleasantly surprised. Normally, we get sterile pre-prepared statements of policy, but this time there was a very frank discussion exploring the very difficult and different conditions facing each of the countries. It was very constructive." Brice Lalonde, the French climate ambassador, added: "It was very low-key but people just got on with it. The talks were very positive... until the final statement was discussed."

At that point, he said, Russia and India refused to include a statement that they had been discussing mandatory, internationally binding commitments, even though that is exactly what had been discussed. A number of delegates offered a degree of optimism that the big economies might this year agree a global target for cutting emissions by 2050.

The US is said to be moving slowly towards a figure, but India is holding out because a long-term global target implies emissions cuts for them. They feel that with per capita emissions a twentieth of the Americans, it is unfair to expect them to reduce emissions overall. Part of the idea of the meetings is to air issues like this.

EU delegates said that for the world to achieve any serious long-term target on CO2, new technologies would be needed that would benefit India as much as America. The US offered at the talks to commit its national energy policies to a UN-shared agreement if all major economies agreed to do the same.

The Europeans said any American commitment that did not include a firm pledge to actually cut greenhouse gases (rather than increase energy efficiency) was inadequate.

Boyden Gray, the US envoy to the EU who was present in Honolulu, said he believed that the progress made in the recent UN climate talks in Bali and now in Honolulu, meant the world looked to be on track for a comprehensive global agreement on climate by the end of 2009.

Source





ANOTHER FINE MESS IN BRITAIN: WIND FARMS 'A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY'

Ambitious plans to meet up to a third of Britain's energy needs from offshore wind farms are in jeopardy because the Ministry of Defence objects that the turbines interfere with its radar.

The MoD has lodged last-minute objections to at least four onshore wind farms in the line of sight of its stations on the east coast because they make it impossible to spot aircraft, The Times has learnt. The same objections are likely to apply to wind turbines in the North Sea, part of the massive renewable energy project announced by John Hutton, the Energy Secretary, barely two months ago. They would be directly in line with the three principal radar defence stations, Brizlee Wood, Saxton Wold and Trimingham on the Northumberland, Yorkshire and Norfolk coasts.

Giving evidence to a planning inquiry last October, a senior MoD expert said that the turbines create a hole in radar coverage so that aircraft flying overhead are not detectable. In written evidence, Squadron Leader Chris Breedon said: "This obscuration occurs regardless of the height of the aircraft, of the radar and of the turbine." He described the discovery as alarming.

The findings were the result of trials carried out in 2004 and 2005 but the MoD appears to have toughened its stance more recently. It now objects to almost all wind farms in the line of sight of its radar stations.

The change of policy has prompted fury among developers, who had previously been told that there were no defence implications. They have now written a letter of protest to Mr Hutton and Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, pointing out that millions of pounds of investment are at risk.

FULL STORY here




THE NATURE OF THE SUN'S INFLUENCE ON CLIMATE CHANGE

An email from James Marusek [tunga@custom.net]:

I have recently posted the following article "The Nature of the Sun's Influence on Climate Change" here

Summary - The sun is a major influence on climate change on Earth in that it provides solar irradiance that warms the planet and a far reaching magnetic field that shields Earth from the effects of galactic cosmic rays, which cools the planet. The magnetic field wrapped in the solar winds modulates the flux rate of cosmic rays which affects cloud formation and thereby the planet's global albedo. Past studies have shown a relationship between the flux rate of galactic cosmic rays and low-level ocean cloud formation. Recent experimental studies have confirmed the causal mechanism behind this process. This paper looks at the relationship between the solar magnetic field (as expressed in "AA Index") and ocean surface temperature over the period from 1880 A.D. to present and finds this relationship is best expressed by a natural logarithmic function.




Abolish Texas? More global frauding

Lord Christopher Monckton has the most trenchant short critique of the global warming fraud I've ever read. Monckton is a former Margaret Thatcher advisor, and is fighting the good fight as vigorously and honestly as anyone in the world. Lord Monckton writes that the whole global warming campaign is "a foofaraw of pseudo-science, exaggerations, and errors." A "foofaraw" indeed.

Here's the newest fraud: A Science magazine article claims that IF you believe the grossly alarmist assumptions of the UN "consensus" panel on human-caused global warming, all of the American Southwest has to come to a screeching halt! America is running dry! Stop all human development in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. You're burning up the planet!

But of course the premise itself is dubious and completely politicized, a gross abuse of climate modeling driven by socialist ideology. From false premises you can arrive at any false conclusion you want.

It'll be interesting to see whether Senator McCain will now demand that we halt all new building and agriculture in Arizona. Phoenix has to freeze in place. Next door, Las Vegas has to shrink. No more folks must be allowed to come to Arizona from Mexico --- or New York. What about it, Senator? It's global warming!

But will Texas go along? Will Dallas become a ghost town? How about northern Mexico, right next door? No more building, no additional farming, let the people starve? Stop having children?

This is shameful. Pathological pseudo-science is now metastasizing. The editor of Science is himself a climate modeler, who seems to have no conscience about abusing climate models without a shred of real-world evidence. This cancerous abuse of science will continue to discredit the science establishment in the United States and around the world. And it should. It is utterly mendacious and abusive of real science.

The political motivations behind the global warming fraud have never been more obvious. Abolish Texas! This is very nasty anti-Americanism with a pseudo-scientific gloss. For shame.

Source





GLOBAL COOLING IDENTIFIED AS PART OF GLOBAL WARMING

Dr. E. L. Charmagny of the Indiana Institute for Science positively identified cooler temperatures as part of global warming. "The recent cold snap in America's midwest area proves that global warming is real," said Dr. Charmagny while enjoying a hamburger sandwich at a local McDonald's restaurant. He explained, "People don't understand that global warming takes many forms, including global cooling, an important part of global warming."

He cited as an example that when he was young winters were "a lot harsher", remarking, "It was very cold for days on end, and there was lots of snow. That's a scientific fact, I remember it! Now it's clearly warmer."

"Young punks nowadays take time off from school if there's two inches of snow on the ground. They need to have those iPods taken away from them, that'll teach them something."

Dr. Charmagny went on to explain that the cool weather in the Midwest is the Earth's 'sympathetic' reaction to global warming. "It gets so warm, that when it gets cold, it gets really cold. It's like when it's quiet after a lot of noise, it seems especially quiet. Again, that's a scientific phenomenon you can read about in any school kid's science book. If these little brats even read their schoolbooks. Brats."

Source. The above is a spoof but sometimes it is hard to tell.

***************************************

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.

*****************************************