Tuesday, February 05, 2008

So it appears that Arctic ice isn't vanishing after all

See also here for a grudging Greenie admission of the same

There was some coverage of the chaos caused in central and southern China by their heaviest snowfalls for decades - but little attention was paid to the snow that last week carpeted Jerusalem, Damascus and Amman, none of them exactly used to Dickensian Christmas card weather. Similarly, Saudis last month expressed amazement at their heaviest snow for many years, in Afghanistan snow and freezing weather killed 120 people and large parts of the United States and Canada have been swept by unusually fierce blizzards.

Last autumn the BBC and others could scarcely contain their excitement in reporting that the Arctic ice was melting so fast there would soon be none left. Sea ice cover had shrunk to the lowest level ever recorded. But for some reason the warmists are less keen on the latest satellite findings, reported by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on the website Cryosphere Today by the University of Illinois.



This body is committed to warmist orthodoxy and contributes to the work of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Yet its graph of northern hemisphere sea ice area, which shows the ice shrinking from 13,000 million sq km to just 4 million from the start of 2007 to October, also shows it now almost back to 13 million sq km. A second graph, "Global Ice Area", shows a similar pattern repeated every year since satellite records began in 1979; while a third, "Southern Hemisphere Ice", shows that sea ice has actually expanded in recent years, well above its 30-year mean.



Still more inconvenient was the truth about an image that has been relentlessly exploited to promote this panic over the "vanishing" Arctic ice. It is the photograph of two polar bears standing forlornly on the fast-melting remains of an iceberg which has been reproduced thousands of times to show that there will soon be no bears left (ignoring evidence that their numbers have risen recently). Now, thanks to a Canadian journalist, Carole Williams (on NewsWithViews.com), we can read the story behind this picture, which was taken in 2004 just off Alaska by a marine biologist, Amanda Byrd. As Ms Byrd is happy to point out, the bears were in no danger so close to the coast (they can swim 100 miles). She wanted a photograph more of the "wind-sculpted ice" than of the bears.

The image was copied by another member of the crew and passed on to Environment Canada. Then it was eagerly adopted by the warmist propaganda machine - above all by Al Gore, who used it to powerful effect as an emotive backdrop to his highly lucrative lectures." Their habitat is melting," he likes to declaim, "beautiful animals, literally being forced off the planet."As the old joke has it, it seems those famous bears were not drowning after all, they were just waving. But the BBC is no more likely to tell us that than it was to lead the news with last week's snow in Jerusalem.

Source





Ooops! Has Global Warming Stopped?

Post below lifted from Prof. Stott. See the original for links and the graph he refers to

I think you may find the little graph I have just produced of interest. It illustrates an intriguing mini-phenomenon: since 1998, `global warming' appears to have - wait for it - stopped. The data is taken from the UK Met Office's `HadCRUT3' dataset, a globally-gridded product of near-surface temperatures, consisting of annual differences from 1961-90 normals. The full data set is available here, covering the period from 1850 to the present. The coloured ribbon shows the best estimate data from this set. But, what does it mean?

Of course, little can be gleaned from such a short data run of only 10-years ["`Global warmers' also please note, thank you"], but the temperature anomaly has clearly dipped, and then flat-lined below its 1998 anomaly peak - and for nine years now. In other words, since 1998 there has been no global warming [not even any `global warming']. Yet, atmospheric CO2 has continued to rise, from c. 368 ppmv in 1998 to c. 384 ppmv in November, 2007 [see: `CO2 Signals From The Past', February 1]. Moreover, politicians persist in claiming that temperature is rising faster than at any other time in the history of the whole Earth..... but then, we always believe our politicians, don't we?

So, does this mean to say that other factors may actually be driving climate and temperature? Oh me, Oh my! What a shock! Perhaps with all those shredders in our offices and homes, there are just too many tiny bits and bobs of credit cards floating up into the air and cooling the atmosphere? Or, weddings may have increased in number, and particulate confetti is having an unknown effect? Or, then again, the rise out of the `Little Ice Age', which ended c. 1880, might just be stuttering a tad? Who knows?

Time to get my skates on. But, whatever it is - for the moment, at least - Global Warming Has Stopped! Shout it from the rooftops, from your PCs, and from your Apple Macs.




Skeptics await Greenie outrage at this

The major objection that Greenies such as Dessler raised to the "400+ climate skeptics" report released by Inhofe was that some of the academic skeptics included were "not qualified" to comment on climate issues. So their outrage at DiCaprio's lack of climatological qualifications is to be expected -- or is it?
Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio has been invited to the Scottish Parliament to speak about climate change.The Oscar nominated actor - whose films include Titanic, Blood Diamond and The Departed - is also a passionate environmental campaigner. Green Party MSP Patrick Harvie has written to DiCaprio, inviting him to come to the Holyrood and speak to MSPs about the threat of global warming.

In his letter the Glasgow MSP told the actor that the Scottish Government had recently began discussions on a proposed Climate Change Bill. Mr Harvie explained that while these included "ambitious long-term targets" for reductions in carbon dioxide emissions the Greens wanted further action.And he said: "It would be a great help were you able to speak to other members of the Parliament about the urgency of the threat we face."

A Green Party spokesman said they were currently waiting on a response from DiCaprio.The actor produced, co-wrote and narrated the documentary film The 11th Hour, which looks at how human actions have affected the environment.

Source

Today people worship actors, but former times saw them as lowlifes, as unstable people driven to pretense and false dealings. In other words, as hypocrites. It's heresy to say so but former times might have had a point.




Said one polar bear to another ...

By Bill Steigerwald

Who's our congressman?" asked mama polar bear during a light lunch on an ice floe somewhere off Alaska. "Beats me," said papa polar bear. "Pass the walrus calf."

"I want to send a letter complaining about Joey being attacked again by those government wildlife scientists," said mama polar bear.

"Let it go," said papa polar bear. "Your brother still stinks of humans. But at least the sedation's taking longer to wear off this time, so he hasn't been his usual testy, cranky self."

"You'd be stressed too if you were chased by a helicopter, shot with a tranquilizer dart and had 'X19788' tattooed on the inside of your mouth when you were only 5 years old," said mama polar bear. "At least now he can no longer claim that first encounter was an alien abduction," said papa polar bear. "Cool it, kids," said grandpa polar bear. "Those scientists are just doing their job -- like the ones we saw on '60 Minutes' two weeks ago. "If it weren't for their longitudinal studies, we wouldn't know how many of us live up here or that anthropomorphic global warming is a threat to our iconic existence."

"Well, I'm sick of being harassed," said mama polar bear. "For my entire life they've been drugging us, weighing us, checking our fat content -- poking into our sex lives. Now they've got Scott Pelley of CBS flying around with them." "At least they're not putting radio collars on us or painting numbers on our backs," said papa polar bear. "Or shooting us anymore," reminded grandpa polar bear. "In my day, we had a lot more than mad scientists, biased TV reporters and melting pack ice to worry about. We were daily target practice for sports hunters or bored sailors.

"I bet there weren't 8,000 of us left in the whole Arctic in 1970. Now that we're protected, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates we're up to 25,000 -- though 60 percent of us live in Canada, those hosers."

"I'd rather take my chances with hunters than put up with this darn population explosion," said papa polar bear. "You can't go 20 miles without bumping into a mother and her spoiled cubs. Go into town for a little Dumpster diving, and it's so crowded you gotta take a number."

"Quit griping, son," said grandpa polar bear. "Our species has finally hit the jackpot. Humans were our only enemy. Now we're the official mascots of the climate-change industrial complex. We're as charismatic as whales. We've got lobbyists all over Washington."

"It won't last," said papa polar bear. "Wait till everyone finds out the ice cap naturally gets thinner or thicker all the time. Wait till they all realize we can swim 30 miles before breakfast. Wait till they see two-thirds of us haven't died by 2050 because of a little global warming.

"But what if '60 Minutes' turns on us and catches us eating baby seals?" asked mama polar bear. "Don't be such alarmists," said grandpa polar bear. "Al Gore will never let it happen. "The mainstream media, politicians and school kids have been completely suckered. We're apex victims of modern mankind. Senators from New Jersey are working to put us on the Endangered Species list. Congress is talking about doing a study to make sure we won't be hurt before they allow those new oil and gas leases to be auctioned in the Chuckchi Sea. It's only a matter of time before we get Pell Grants for polar bears.

"So stop worrying, kids," said grandpa polar bear, slipping off the ice floe for a little five mile swim. "We've never had it so good."

Source





College green propaganda

Yesterday's green propaganda teach in demonstrated campuses are as much about indoctrination as discovering truth from the interplay of diverse viewpoints. Global warming issues took over lecture halls in colleges across the country Thursday, with more than 1,500 universities participating in what was billed as the nation's largest-ever "teach-in."
Organizers said the goal of the event, dubbed "Focus the Nation," was to move past preaching to the green choir, to reach a captive audience of students in many fields who might not otherwise tune in to climate change issues

The reporter got it right when she mentioned that students are a captive audience, forced to listen to and accept the perceived wisdom, similar to but without the harshest consequences of any Communist re education campaign. According to a student organizer
"It's about infusing sustainability into the curriculum of higher education, so students can graduate prepared to deal with the world they have been handed,"

By infusing the one thought propaganda within the curriculum captive students not only have no opportunity to learn other points of view they won't even realize there are other opinions. Perfect mind control.

Therefore, the 23 year old student organizer is totally wrong--once the students graduate and are out in the real world they will be very unprepared to deal with the world the university has handed them. For this they and their parents sacrificed?

Source

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