Warmism serves a lot of personal needs

"Man marries Earth in Rare Ceremony"

On December 4, 2010, [Danny Bloom] married his longtime companion and love of his life -- Earth!

The festive ceremony was an internet-enabled weddiing, online and in real time, in which the groom, 61, married his longtime companion and love of his life -- Earth!

The festive ceremony was an internet-enabled weddiing, online and in real time, in which Bloom, a Boston native, recited previously keyed-in vows declaring that he would "love and cherish his beloved, Earth, -- 4,000,000,010 years old but still beautiful and comely in her white aura of cloud cover -- for the rest of his life or "until death do him part."

Bloom, who was never married previously, told news reporters lurking online that he was "more than happy to have finally tied the knot with the one I love."

An online justice of the peace officiated at the one of a kind ceremony. Earth, for her part, said: "We're soulmates now. We always were, but now it's on paper. I've married the man I created! I've married the world I love."

Bloom asked that instead of gifts, guests and other interested parties donate funds to global warming awareness campaigns in their respective countries.

After the wedding was over, symbolized by a long green fern wrapped around his balding head, Bloom kissed his bride one more time, saying to everyone within earshot: "Fly me to the moon! To Jupiter and Mars!. This is the most wonderful day of my life!"

Earth, as beautiful as ever, added: "He always says things like that! For my part, today marks the beginning of a new conciousness among humans, and if our little private ceremony has been able to help raise awareness about the problems of global warming and climate change, then I am one happy planet!"

SOURCE




Japan bails out

Japan is the third largest economy in the world. In absolute, unequivocal terms it has just announced it will not be extending the Kyoto agreement.

It’s hard to see how a carbon trading scheme can continue to grow when major emitters are pulling out.

“The delicately balanced global climate talks in Cancún suffered a serious setback last night when Japan categorically stated its opposition to extending the Kyoto protocol – the binding international treaty that commits most of the world’s richest countries to making emission cuts.

The Kyoto protocol was adopted in Japan in 1997 by major emitting countries, who committed themselves to cut emissions by an average 5% on 1990 figures by 2012.

However the US congress refused to ratify it and remains outside the protocol.”

‘The forthrightness of the statement took people by surprise,’ said one British official.

If it proves to be a new, formal position rather than a negotiating tactic, it could provoke a walk-out by some developing countries and threaten a breakdown in the talks. Last night diplomats were urgently trying to clarify the position.

Japan — owes some $13 Billion thanks to Kyoto. They must be regretting ever signing it.

The stakes are changing in this poker game. Who knows — maybe the Japanese Translation of The Skeptics Handbook made a small contribution

More HERE (See the original for links)





The dying light at Cancun

Comment from Christopher Booker in England

If, last week, frozen behind a snowdrift, you heard a faint hysterical squeaking, it might well have been the sound of those 20,000 delegates holed up behind a wall of armed security guards in the sun-drenched Mexican holiday resort of Cancun, telling each other that the world is more threatened by runaway global warming than ever.

Between their tequilas and lavish meals paid for by the world’s taxpayers, they heard how, by 2060, global temperatures will have risen by 4 degrees Celsius; how the Maldives and Tuvalu are sinking below the waves faster than ever; how the survival of salmon is threatened by CO2-induced acidification of the oceans; how the UN must ban incandescent light bulbs throughout the world.

“Scientists”, we were told, are calling for everyone to be issued with a “carbon ration card”, to halt all Western economic growth for 20 years.

Meanwhile, Dr Rajendra Pachauri was telling us that we must spend hundreds of billions on covering the world’s oceans with iron filings, on building giant mirrors out in space and on painting all the world’s roofs white to keep out the heat from the sun.

The most obvious thing about all this ritualised scaremongering was how stale it all was. Not one of these points hasn’t been a cliche for years.The only scientist who believes we should all be issued with carbon ration cards is a Prof Kevin Anderson, who has been saying it since 2004. It is only those same old computer models that predict that Tuvalu and the Maldives are about to drown, when real measurements show the sea around them not to be rising at all. Far from the oceans acidifying, their pH currently ranges between 7.9 and 8.3, putting them very firmly on the alkaline side of the threshold, at 7.0.

The prediction that global temperatures will rise by four degrees in 50 years comes from that same UK Met Office computer which five weeks ago was telling us we were about to enjoy a “milder than average” winter, after three years when it has consistently got every one of its winter and summer forecasts hopelessly wrong. (And the reason why our local authorities are already fast running out of salt is that they were silly enough to believe them.)

When Vicky Pope, the Met Office’s Head of Climate Change Advice, wanted to fly out from Gatwick to Cancun to tell them that 2010 is the hottest year on record, she was trapped by inches of the same global warming that her £33 million computer had failed to predict.

As for all that “geo-engineering” make-believe which has been peddled for years, about giant mirrors and covering the sea with iron filings, it comes straight from Swift’s Academy of Lagado – as fanciful as the idea that we can save the planet by forcing everyone to use those miserable mercury-vapour “low-energy” light bulbs, or that we can pipe away all the carbon dioxide from power stations to store it in holes under the North Sea.

What we are seeing here is one of the greatest collective flights from reality in the history of the human race. As western Europe shivers to a halt and our energy bills soar through the roof, the time has come when we should all start to get seriously angry with our politicians for being carried away by all this claptrap.

Why, for instance, when our public debt is still rising by £3 billion a week, do we allow our Government to ring-fence £2.9 billion of our money to help the developing world to build useless wind turbines and solar panels?

Why do we tolerate a Parliament which blithely commits us to spending £18.3 billion every year for 40 years under the Climate Change Act, without having the faintest idea how we are going to keep our lights on?

The global warming scare may have been fun for the children while it lasted. But the time has come for the joke to be declared well and truly over.

If you want a truly inspiring early Christmas card, which is the very opposite of all that is stood for by global warming, social workers, the European Union, the Coalition Government and the rest of this column’s usual fare, may I suggest you Google “Celestial Junk Food Choir”, for five minutes of pure, uplifting joy.

SOURCE





False prophecies beget faulty policies

By Willie Soon and Madhav Khandeka

The annual climate summit opened in Cancun, Mexico this week. A few days earlier, India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests released a new report, “Climate Change and India: A sectoral and regional analysis for the 2030s.”

“It is imperative,” E&F Minister Jairam Ramesh observed, that India has “sound, evidence-based assessments on the impacts of climate change.” Not surprisingly, the report claims India will soon be able to forecast the timing and intensity of future monsoons that are so critical to its agricultural base.

Could 250 of India’s top scientists be wrong when they say their computers will soon be able to predict summer monsoon rainfall during the 2030s, based on projected carbon dioxide trends?

Do “scenarios” generated by any climate models really constitute “sound, evidence-based assessments”? Are attempts to predict monsoons and other climate events any more valid for ten or twenty years in the future, than for a century away?

We do not believe it is yet possible to forecast future monsoons, despite more than two centuries of scientific research, or the claims and efforts of these excellent scientists. The Indian summer monsoonal rainfall remains notoriously unpredictable, because it is determined by the interaction of numerous changing and competing factors, including: ocean currents and temperatures, sea surface temperature and wind conditions in the vast Indian and Western Pacific Ocean, phases of the El Nino Southern Oscillation in the equatorial Pacific, the Eurasian and Himalayan winter snow covers, solar energy output, and even wind direction and speed in the equatorial stratosphere some 30-50 kilometers (19-31 miles) aloft.

Relying on computer climate models has one well-known side effect: Garbage in, gospel out. Current gospel certainly says CO2 rules the climate, but any role played by carbon dioxide in monsoon activity is almost certainly dwarfed by these other, major influences.

Computer climate models have simply failed to confirm current climate observations, or project future climatic changes and impacts.

Both Indian and global monsoons have declined in strength and intensity over the last 50 years – and this measurement-based reality largely contradicts climate model “forecasts” and “scenarios” that say monsoonal rainfalls will increase. It is equally well known that climate models have been unable to replicate the decadal to multi-decadal variations of monsoonal rainfalls.

Dr. Fred Kucharski and 21 other climate modelers challenge the alleged CO2-monsoon linkage. Using World Climate Research Programme climate model analyses, they conclude that “the increase of greenhouse gases concentrations has had little impact on the [observed] decadal Indian monsoonal rainfall variability in the twentieth century.” Perhaps the Indian scientists missed their report.

No climate models predicted the severe drought conditions for the 2009 Indian monsoon season – followed by the extended wetness of the 2010 season. The inability to foresee this 30-50% precipitation swing in most regions underscores how far we really are from being able to forecast monsoons, for next year, 2030 or the end of the century.

Another recent analysis, by scientists from National Technical University in Athens, found that computer model projections did not agree with actual observations at 55 locations around the world. Computer forecasts for large spatial areas, like the contiguous United States, were even more out of sync with actual observations than is the case with specific locations!

Minister Ramesh says India hopes to offer a “middle ground” and present a less “petulant and obstructionist” perception during climate negotiations in Cancun. But if he believes the new report and claims of imminent forecasting ability will make this happen, we fear he is mistaken. “What-if” scenarios, based on CO2-driven computer models, are hardly a sound basis for negotiations, energy policies, agricultural planning or changed perceptions.

The impotence of current climate models is not surprising. Climate models have not yet gotten even the most basic aspects of annual, decadal or multi-decadal monsoon events correctly.

A 2009 paper demonstrates that not one of the 24 climate models used by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change generated accurate predictions forannual cycles of land surface temperatures or the arrival of seasons outside the tropics for 1954-2000. Accurate predictions of decadal cycles are out of the question.

A 2008 study found that almost all current climate models overestimated the amount of solar radiation absorbed at Earth’s surface – leading them to forecast more severe regional dryness than will likely be the case. Even more appalling, this computer model error has been documented since 1996, and yet there are still no improvements.

Drs. Scott Armstrong and Kesten Green found that IPCC forecasting procedures violated 81% of the 89 forecasting and scientific principles they were able to evaluate. These serious errors prove that IPCC climate projections and scenarios are useless for public policy decisions.

As climate scientists, we know computer climate models are very useful for analyzing how Earth’s complex climate system works. However, models available today are simply not ready for prime time, when it comes to predicting future climate, monsoons or droughts. Persistent attempts to use computer climate models to generate “what-if” scenarios are unrealistic, counterproductive and even anti-scientific.

Our understanding of how weather and climate vary from year to year is still very immature, and it will be years (if not decades) before we resolve fundamental questions of how various forces interact to cause those changes.

Computer models still cannot accurately simulate or predict regional phenomena like the Indian summer monsoon rainfall. Even when model outputs agree with certain observations, we cannot be certain that the models did so for the right reasons. Considering the myriad factors that influence and alter weather and climate regimes, it is clear that climate models cannot make meaningful projections about future events, especially if they focus on the single factor of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

Science and society will pay a very dear price, if political agendas continue to generate and legitimize false and pretentious computer outputs that have no basis in reality.

How much better it would be if researchers focused on improving our ability to accurately forecast monsoons, droughts and other events just a few weeks or months in advance. That would really give farmers and others a chance to adapt, minimize damages and actually benefit from being better prepared.

SOURCE





WikiLeaks cables reveal how US manipulated climate accord

Rather surprising to see this in "The Guardian". I guess they are more anti-American than they are pro-Green -- JR

Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.

The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial "Copenhagen accord", the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.

Negotiating a climate treaty is a high-stakes game, not just because of the danger warming poses to civilisation but also because re-engineering the global economy to a low-carbon model will see the flow of billions of dollars redirected.

Seeking negotiating chips, the US state department sent a secret cable on 31 July 2009 seeking human intelligence from UN diplomats across a range of issues, including climate change. The request originated with the CIA. As well as countries' negotiating positions for Copenhagen, diplomats were asked to provide evidence of UN environmental "treaty circumvention" and deals between nations.

But intelligence gathering was not just one way. On 19 June 2009, the state department sent a cable detailing a "spear phishing" attack on the office of the US climate change envoy, Todd Stern, while talks with China on emissions took place in Beijing. Five people received emails, personalised to look as though they came from the National Journal. An attached file contained malicious code that would give complete control of the recipient's computer to a hacker. While the attack was unsuccessful, the department's cyber threat analysis division noted: "It is probable intrusion attempts such as this will persist."

The Beijing talks failed to lead to a global deal at Copenhagen. But the US, the world's biggest historical polluter and long isolated as a climate pariah, had something to cling to. The Copenhagen accord, hammered out in the dying hours but not adopted into the UN process, offered to solve many of the US's problems.

The accord turns the UN's top-down, unanimous approach upside down, with each nation choosing palatable targets for greenhouse gas cuts. It presents a far easier way to bind in China and other rapidly growing countries than the UN process. But the accord cannot guarantee the global greenhouse gas cuts needed to avoid dangerous warming. Furthermore, it threatens to circumvent the UN's negotiations on extending the Kyoto protocol, in which rich nations have binding obligations. Those objections have led many countries – particularly the poorest and most vulnerable – to vehemently oppose the accord.

Getting as many countries as possible to associate themselves with the accord strongly served US interests, by boosting the likelihood it would be officially adopted. A diplomatic offensive was launched. Diplomatic cables flew thick and fast between the end of Copenhagen in December 2009 and late February 2010, when the leaked cables end.

Some countries needed little persuading. The accord promised $30bn (£19bn) in aid for the poorest nations hit by global warming they had not caused. Within two weeks of Copenhagen, the Maldives foreign minister, Ahmed Shaheed, wrote to the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, expressing eagerness to back it.

By 23 February 2010, the Maldives' ambassador-designate to the US, Abdul Ghafoor Mohamed, told the US deputy climate change envoy, Jonathan Pershing, his country wanted "tangible assistance", saying other nations would then realise "the advantages to be gained by compliance" with the accord.

A diplomatic dance ensued. "Ghafoor referred to several projects costing approximately $50m (£30m). Pershing encouraged him to provide concrete examples and costs in order to increase the likelihood of bilateral assistance."

The Maldives were unusual among developing countries in embracing the accord so wholeheartedly, but other small island nations were secretly seen as vulnerable to financial pressure. Any linking of the billions of dollars of aid to political support is extremely controversial – nations most threatened by climate change see the aid as a right, not a reward, and such a link as heretical. But on 11 February, Pershing met the EU climate action commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, in Brussels, where she told him, according to a cable, "the Aosis [Alliance of Small Island States] countries 'could be our best allies' given their need for financing".

The pair were concerned at how the $30bn was to be raised and Hedegaard raised another toxic subject – whether the US aid would be all cash. She asked if the US would need to do any "creative accounting", noting some countries such as Japan and the UK wanted loan guarantees, not grants alone, included, a tactic she opposed. Pershing said "donors have to balance the political need to provide real financing with the practical constraints of tight budgets", reported the cable.

Along with finance, another treacherous issue in the global climate negotiations, currently continuing in Cancún, Mexico, is trust that countries will keep their word. Hedegaard asks why the US did not agree with China and India on what she saw as acceptable measures to police future emissions cuts. "The question is whether they will honour that language," the cable quotes Pershing as saying.

Trust is in short supply on both sides of the developed-developing nation divide. On 2 February 2009, a cable from Addis Ababa reports a meeting between the US undersecretary of state Maria Otero and the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, who leads the African Union's climate change negotiations.

The confidential cable records a blunt US threat to Zenawi: sign the accord or discussion ends now. Zenawi responds that Ethiopia will support the accord, but has a concern of his own: that a personal assurance from Barack Obama on delivering the promised aid finance is not being honoured.

US determination to seek allies against its most powerful adversaries – the rising economic giants of Brazil, South Africa, India, China (Basic) – is set out in another cable from Brussels on 17 February reporting a meeting between the deputy national security adviser, Michael Froman, Hedegaard and other EU officials.

Froman said the EU needed to learn from Basic's skill at impeding US and EU initiatives and playing them off against each in order "to better handle third country obstructionism and avoid future train wrecks on climate".

Hedegaard is keen to reassure Froman of EU support, revealing a difference between public and private statements. "She hoped the US noted the EU was muting its criticism of the US, to be constructive," the cable said. Hedegaard and Froman discuss the need to "neutralise, co-opt or marginalise unhelpful countries including Venezuela and Bolivia", before Hedegaard again links financial aid to support for the accord, noting "the irony that the EU is a big donor to these countries". Later, in April, the US cut aid to Bolivia and Ecuador, citing opposition to the accord.

Any irony is clearly lost on the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, according to a 9 February cable from La Paz. The Danish ambassador to Bolivia, Morten Elkjaer, tells a US diplomat that, at the Copenhagen summit, "Danish prime minister Rasmussen spent an unpleasant 30 minutes with Morales, during which Morales thanked him for [$30m a year in] bilateral aid, but refused to engage on climate change issues."

After the Copenhagen summit, further linking of finance and aid with political support appears. Dutch officials, initially rejecting US overtures to back the accord, make a startling statement on 25 January. According to a cable, the Dutch climate negotiator Sanne Kaasjager "has drafted messages for embassies in capitals receiving Dutch development assistance to solicit support [for the accord]. This is an unprecedented move for the Dutch government, which traditionally recoils at any suggestion to use aid money as political leverage." Later, however, Kaasjager rows back a little, saying: "The Netherlands would find it difficult to make association with the accord a condition to receive climate financing."

Perhaps the most audacious appeal for funds revealed in the cables is from Saudi Arabia, the world's second biggest oil producer and one of the 25 richest countries in the world. A secret cable sent on 12 February records a meeting between US embassy officials and lead climate change negotiator Mohammad al-Sabban. "The kingdom will need time to diversify its economy away from petroleum, [Sabban] said, noting a US commitment to help Saudi Arabia with its economic diversification efforts would 'take the pressure off climate change negotiations'."

The Saudis did not like the accord, but were worried they had missed a trick. The assistant petroleum minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told US officials that he had told his minister Ali al-Naimi that Saudi Arabia had "missed a real opportunity to submit 'something clever', like India or China, that was not legally binding but indicated some goodwill towards the process without compromising key economic interests".

The cables obtained by WikiLeaks finish at the end of February 2010. Today, 116 countries have associated themselves with the accord. Another 26 say they intend to associate. That total, of 140, is at the upper end of a 100-150 country target revealed by Pershing in his meeting with Hedegaard on 11 February.

The 140 nations represent almost 75% of the 193 countries that are parties to the UN climate change convention and, accord supporters like to point out, are responsible for well over 80% of current global greenhouse gas emissions.

At the mid-point of the major UN climate change negotiations in Cancún, Mexico, there have already been flare-ups over how funding for climate adaptation is delivered. The biggest shock has been Japan's announcement that it will not support an extension of the existing Kyoto climate treaty. That gives a huge boost to the accord. US diplomatic wheeling and dealing may, it seems, be bearing fruit.

SOURCE




Focus Magazine: “Global Warming Is Good For Us”

News from Germany

Another huge slab of the Climate-Berlin-Wall has fallen. It’s a climate skeptic jail-break! I imagine the Climate-Politburo members must be quivering and trembling in their bunkers in Potsdam by now.

A leading German news magazine has decided to depart from the dogma of angst and catastrophe and bring up climate science issues that, up to now, have been strictly taboo here in the Vaterland. Tomorrow FOCUS magazine will come out with its newest issue titled: "Prima Klima! Umdenken:Wieso die globale Erwärmung gut für uns ist". (Best Climate! Change of Thinking: Why global warming is good for us.)

Change of Thinking – yes! And the timing couldn’t be better.

Folks, this is the first time in a long time that a major German news magazine has decided to do a little investigative reporting, instead of relying on the press releases from the Palaces Of Panic like the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research, NOAA, Alfred Wegener Institute, etc., and seriously look into this controversial global issue. Game over comrades!

When the global warming hoax collapses in Germany, then Europe follows right behind it – and then, of course, the rest of the world. Germany is that one domino. This represents a major setback for the warministas. Indeed it would be interesting to know what went on in the FOCUS editorial offices.

Perhaps the normally über-alarmist FOCUS has already gotten tired of the winter and longs for the warmer days. I can’t explain why they are coming out with such an issue – especially during Cancun.

The video begins with:

"This week in the coming FOCUS: Best Climate. Change in thinking – global warming is good for us. FOCUS editor Dr. Christian Pandler (sp?) researched the current topic and reports on it in the new issue".

Editor Dr. Pandler (a bit paraphrased):

"In the new FOCUS issue, we take a look at the question of climate change. This week the world climate conference is taking place in Cancun, where world leaders are going to debate over how to combat warming. Our question: Is global warming actually bad? Does it entail only disadvantages and only catastrophic consequences? Up to now, people have only focused on what will be bad. The question is what could be good? No one has really looked at this. It’s taboo in Germany.

We know from history that warm periods were good periods for us. Cold periods were bad periods. We know that 20,000 years ago Europe was a frozen wasteland where nobody lived. That was a real climate catastrophe. For example we had a warming 10,000 years ago, which led to a greening of the Sahara. Then there was cooling which led it to be parched again. Now it’s warming, and there are lots of signs that show it is greening up again. For the people in Africa, it is absolutely a positive development. If it continues that way, it could once again become green with a variety of wildlife, rivers and lakes and so on. This is a consequence that hardly has been discussed.

We’ve spoken to scientists who are there on site. One researcher in particular has gone there every year for 30 years and photographed how the Sahara is gradually getting greener."

In the meantime, my advice to that brave editor at FOCUS: Put on your bullet-proof political vest and find the deepest possible bunker. The greenshirts are sending over the B-52s! Achtung!

This is going to be something to relish.

Ironically this comes out precisely when the science is showing signs that cooling is coming instead, and so FOCUS may be only getting false hopes up. Lol! You just can’t make this stuff up. It makes my day.

SOURCE (See the original for links and graphics)

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