Warmists are the real deniers

“We are very energized and enthusiastic about millions of people coming together and making this the biggest day of climate action ever,” said a young German activist wearing a 350.org T-shirt at Berlin’s 10/10/10 demonstrations on Sunday. Campaigners around her, and indeed, “people at 7,347 events in 188 countries,” according to organizers, danced, sang, planted trees and picked up garbage as part of the massive worldwide 10/10/10 Global Work Party.

What’s that all about? And what is so special about 350?

Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, explained: “It’s the boundary condition for a habitable planet. We’re already past it. We’re at 390 parts per million [of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere]. That’s why the Arctic is melting. That’s why Australia is burning up … . If we put very much more carbon into the atmosphere, we’ll pass the kind of tipping points … that mean we’ll never be able to get back there, even if we stopped driving every car and powering every factory. …We’re fighting to keep real collapse at bay.”

Mr. McKibben asserts that only misguided “climate change deniers” disagree with the urgent need to reduce humanity’s CO2 emissions to avoid climate catastrophe.

But he is wrong.

First, no rational scientist denies that climate changes. As professor Tim Patterson of the Department of Earth Sciences at Carleton University in Ottawa testifiedbefore a parliamentary committee, “Based on the paleoclimatic data I and others have collected, it’s obvious that climate is and always has been variable. In fact, the only constant about climate is change; it changes continually.”

Scientists such as Mr. Patterson obviously would deny that they deny climate change - they are denial deniers.

If anyone could rationally be labeled a climate-change denier, it would be one of those who hold the absurd view that our climate was tranquil until we started to emit significant amounts of CO2.

The “denier” label is simply an attempt to equate those of us who question political correctness on climate change to Holocaust deniers. It is trying to discredit a message by discrediting the messenger, a logical fallacy referred to as ad hominem - against the man. It’s also irrational to put the questioning of forecasts of future events on a par with denying what has happened already.

Climate activists claim there is a consensus among experts that humanity’s CO2 emissions are causing a climate crisis. In reality, there has never been a reputable worldwide poll of the thousands of experts who study the causes of climate change. Assertions that the multitude of scientists who worked on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports agree that our CO2 emissions are taking us to a planetary crisis are unfounded. Climate data analyst John McLean of Melbourne, Australia, has demonstrated repeatedly that only a few dozen scientist participants in the IPCC process even commented on the issue.

Most climate statements by national science academies are quite meaningless, as well. They are simply proclamations from academy executives or select panels, not their scientist members, because no national science body that has spoken in support of schemes to “stop climate change” have demonstrated that a majority of their members agree with the academy statements.

We cannot forecast climate decades from now any better than we can predict the weather two weeks ahead. The system is simply too complex and our understanding of the science too primitive. Chris Essex, professor of applied mathematics at the University of Western Ontario, explains, “Climate is one of the most challenging open problems in modern science. Some knowledgeable scientists believe that the climate problem can never be solved.” Not only are today’s computerized climate models (the primary basis of the alarm) not known to properly represent the climate system, they cannot be programmed to do so, because we do not know the underlying science well enough to know what to program the computers to compute.

Many scientists who work with the IPCC know this. They even stated in their Third Assessment Report: “In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) chief science adviser Bob Carter of James Cook University in Australia writes in his new book, “Climate: The Counter Consensus” (Stacey International, 2010) that “science provides no unambiguous evidence that dangerous global warming or even measurable human-caused global warming is occurring … despite the expenditure since 1990 of many tens of billions of dollars searching for it.”

It is no secret that many experts in the field agree with Mr. Essex, Mr. Carter and Mr. Patterson. ICSC’s recently launched Climate Scientists’ Register already has attracted the endorsement of 139 leading climate experts from 21 countries. The register states, “We, the undersigned, having assessed the relevant scientific evidence, do not find convincing support for the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing, or will in the foreseeable future cause, dangerous global warming.”

More HERE





The New Green Economy Is Bleeding A Great Deal Of Greenbacks

The New Green Economy goes “thump.” That thumping noise is the sound of countless failed companies, temporarily and hopelessly propped up with mountains of other people’s money, hitting the ground and imploding as the foreseeable result of government claiming it is smarter than its citizens.

Salinas, Calif.-based Green Vehicles is the latest proud symbol of the New Green Economy to financially implode, leaving taxpayers high and dry after eagerly soaking up taxpayer money before failing to produce any marketable product. The City of Salinas had invested over $500,000 dollars in the company, which intended to manufacture electric plug-in vehicles, claiming Green Vehicles would simultaneously save the environment and bring economic prosperity to the city. Not to be outdone, the cash-strapped state government had given the company nearly $3 million.

Green Vehicles promised to create 70 jobs and pay $700,000 in taxes each year to the City of Salinas. City officials rushed to take credit for having the vision to invest taxpayer dollars in a company that curiously couldn’t attract private investors. Green Vehicles, city and state officials claimed, was the face of America’s new economic and environmental future.

Sadly, they may be right.

Three hundred million people live in the United States of America. Each of us is free to pursue whatever career we like. We are also free to spend our money as we like, with millions of Americans spending their money on investments such as stocks and seed money for new companies. Make a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door.

The beauty of a free market is products succeed or fail based on merit rather than government whim, and no third party is forced to invest his or her hard-earned money in inferior companies or products. People like to make money, and investors therefore are always on the lookout for good companies and products in which to invest.

There is no more noble or economically productive system than the free market. Nations with free market economies generate more wealth and a higher standard of living for their citizens than nations that suppress the free market. The free market not only facilitates societal wealth, it also encourages the development – through economic reward – of new goods and services that meet societal needs or desires. These new goods and services improve people’s lives.

Yet in the name of environmental activism, and most particularly global warming, government is squandering billions of dollars each year giving taxpayer money to companies that have no hope of producing a marketable product. Companies like Green Vehicles pocket the money and then go bankrupt. Other companies, like wind and solar power companies, perpetually maintain their station at the government pork trough, yet never produce products at a remotely competitive price. As a result, money that could have and would have been invested in goods and services that actually improve people’s lives is instead flushed down the big green toilet.

You would think that, in America of all places, we would have learned our lesson. But this is unfortunately not so.

How did the Salinas Californian write up the collapse of Green Vehicles and government’s colossal waste of taxpayer dollars? According to the lead sentence in the newspaper’s write-up of the story, the city’s failed investment was “a noble experiment by Salinas municipal leaders.”

So when private citizens wisely decide not to invest their own hard-earned money in a poorly formulated plan to sell an unmarketable product, it is a “noble experiment” for government to tax them heavily and force them to invest in the doomed product anyway?

Worse, politicians appear to have learned nothing from the debacle.

“New jobs don’t happen by themselves. You got to participate, you have to help make it happen,” said City of Salinas Community and Economic Development Director Jeff Weir in the wake of the Green Vehicles failure.

Actually, Jeff, people can and do create jobs by themselves, without the intervention of government. They in fact do so much more efficiently and productively than when government forces them to waste money on the Green Vehicles of the world.

America became the great and prosperous nation it is by not infringing upon people’s rights to decide for themselves how and where to invest their money. There is nothing “noble” about turning us into a Green version of Venezuela.

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Challenges of Corals Living in the World's Warmest Reefs

Discussing: Bauman, A.G., Baird, A.H. and Cavalcante, G.H. 2011. Coral reproduction in the world's warmest reefs: southern Persian Gulf (Dubai, United Arab Emirates). Coral Reefs 30: 405-413.

Background

The authors write that "coral assemblages in the Persian Gulf (24-30°N) experience the highest annual variability in water temperatures of any coral reefs (Kinsman, 1964; Sheppard, 1988; Sheppard et al., 2000)," noting that sea surface temperatures there "can fluctuate annually from winter lows <12°C to summer highs >36°C (Sheppard et al., 1992; Sheppard, 1993)." And they thus suggest that "understanding coral reproductive biology in the Gulf may provide clues as to how corals may cope with global warming."

What was done

Bauman et al. examined six locally common coral species on two shallow reef sites in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in 2008 and 2009, in order to investigate their patterns of reproduction, focusing primarily on the timing and synchrony of spawning.

What was learned

The three researchers report that the reproductive biology of the six coral species in the southern Persian Gulf "appears to be well adapted to extreme annual environmental fluctuations" and is "remarkably similar to conspecifics elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific (Baird et al., 2009a,b)," adding that "the adaptive capacity of corals in the Persian Gulf is likely facilitated by a combination of short-term acclimation in individuals during acute environmental conditions (e.g., recurrent bleaching events) and long-term adaptation among coral populations to chronic environmental conditions (e.g., extreme temperatures)."

What it means

In concluding their analysis of their data, Bauman et al. say their work "confirms that corals are capable of reproductive activities under extreme environmental conditions," as has also been found to be the case by Coles and Fadlallah (1991) and Coles and Brown (2003). Hence, they state that "coral populations can survive and proliferate in extreme conditions that are projected to occur in many other regions of the world by the end of this century," buttressing their claim with the statement that "the recovery of these coral assemblages following mortality induced by a number of recent temperature-related bleaching events (1996, 1998 and 2002) suggests these assemblages are also resilient to extreme fluctuations in water temperature," additionally citing in this regard the work of Riegl (1999, 2003) and Burt et al. (2008).

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Prof Condemned for Not Teaching IPCC Reports

I hear that New Zealand is a stunningly beautiful country, full of fascinating people. But since I began researching the global warming debate I admit my view of it has become more nuanced.

You see, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) devotes a chapter in its large assessment reports to the effects global warming might have on human health. The current head of that chapter is a medical doctor and public health professor from New Zealand named Alistair Woodward.

In 2009 Woodward authored three overtly political diatribes on the topic of climate change that were published, rather unbelievably, in the New Zealand Medical Journal. You may read them here, here, and here. (Backup links are here, here, and here.)

The first of these papers declares that climate change must be controlled by “timely central government means” (the italics are mine). The second urges doctors to educate their patients “in climate change action.” The last one speaks darkly of climate deniers and asserts, rather hilariously, that:

Change is not necessarily normal…

Another New Zealand contributor to the IPCC is atmospheric scientist Martin Manning. As head of the Working Group 1 Technical Support Unit for the 2007 edition of the Climate Bible, he was a powerful insider. But I lost a great deal of respect for him after reading an article he authored in Scientific American that rather unscientifically refers to climate models as crystal balls.

If the above weren’t enough to convince me that New Zealand is hardly a bastion of critical thinking a recent article in the New Zealand Herald cinched it (backup link here).

It’s a long piece by investigative reporter Chris Barton. But rather than asking what in God’s name political treatises are doing in the New Zealand Medical Journal, it instead criticizes climatologist Chris de Freitas because he doesn’t include 3,000-page IPCC reports on his university course reading lists.

Really. Here are some quotes from the article:

The Geography 101 lecture workbook confirms the lack of such information. There seems little, if any, reference to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its landmark 2007 reports were not listed in the course reading material.

…Asked about the lack of information in Geography 101 regarding IPCC reports and anthropogenic climate change [de Freitas] said: “In several of my courses I focus on these.”

…”If Chris has not mentioned the IPCC, that is regrettable because the IPCC process is very important,” says [Professor Glenn] McGregor.

There’s a name for an article like this one. It’s called a hatchet job. Nowhere does it mention that de Freitas has been Deputy Dean of Science at Aukland University, that he has served as Vice President of the Meteorological Society of New Zealand, or that he is the author of dozens of peer-reviewed scientific papers. In other words, it leaves the impression that de Freitas is a marginal scholar when this isn’t the case at all.

While this article gives Manning lots of room to criticize de Freitas, it conveniently neglects to mention Manning’s senior role with the IPCC.

Rather than alerting readers to the fact that people who specialize in examining natural disasters and human-caused climate change say that, currently, no link can be found between the two (see here), the journalist seems to think this link is beyond dispute.

In fact, he devotes the first three paragraphs of his article to this faulty premise. Later, he backs up this position by reporting the views of insurance companies – without pointing out that that industry gains financially if people believe such a link exists since premium hikes then seem justified. (In May, American journalist Paige St. John won a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for a series of articles that explored those sorts of issues – more here.)

On the one hand the article slams de Freitas for presenting his students with “a minority view” on climate-related issues. On the other it ends with quotes from Kevin Trenberth.

Remember him? He’s the gent who participated in a press conference that implied a link between global warming and more intense hurricanes – even though he has no hurricane expertise and even though his view was not shared by a single hurricane expert (see here). In other words, Trenberth is notorious for expressing a minority view of his own.

Whether or not the IPCC perspective on the world will turn out to be correct remains to be seen. My own research tells me its processes are so flawed that would be truly remarkable.

But Barton, the journalist, has appointed himself judge and jury. He has written an entire piece that implies that the IPCC view of the world is accurate and that de Freitas is shortchanging his students by not toeing the IPCC line.

This is ugly stuff – and it is an example of why many scientists choose to keep their heads down rather than publicly voicing their skeptical views.

I think de Freitas is a brave man who has been savaged by a journalist who brings shame on his profession. If you’d like to send this professor a kind word, he can be reached at c.defreitas AT auckland.ac.nz

SOURCE






Junk Greenhouse Gas Theory Numbers Turned Earth into a Star

by John O'Sullivan

Astrophysicist, Joe Postma's new paper, 'The Model Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect' (July 22, 2011) is touted by skeptics as the definitive debunk of the faux science that props up the man-made global warming scare industry.

The paper highlights and then dissects the “night & day flaw” in standard greenhouse gas effect (GHE) equations plus the spurious concept of “back radiation heating” that is increasingly dismissed by experts as unphysical.

Night and Day Differences Ignored by Doom-Saying Theorists

Postma proposes a more realistic atmospheric model based on the fact that our earth is made up of two thermodynamically opposite hemispheres: one hemisphere continuously being heated by all of the solar energy, the other hemisphere receiving no solar energy at all and continuously cooling, yet both hemispheres together, the sphere that is our earth, radiate energy to the vacuum of space.

Although it has commonly been assumed that 12 hours of intense solar heating, followed by 12 hours of cooling down, can be mathematically represented as 24 hours of frigid solar heating, Postma shows that this assumption is fallacious and that it leads people to imagine that a 33°C disparity must owe to an atmospheric “greenhouse effect” caused by radiating trace gases. Fitting the earth-atmosphere system to an actual 12-hour insolation period, however, obviates such an explanatory mechanism, likewise removing any rationale for alarm about additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Computer Models Illogically Fudged

In clearly written language, Postma shows how a basic equation of radiative physics, and the modelling techniques used for stellar atmospheres, have been applied incorrectly to our earth, and how in actuality, the bottom of the atmosphere is supposed to be warmer than the radiative average of the entire ensemble.

To compensate for these inherent flaws, rather than correcting them, most climatologists have argued for the existence of a radiation-enhancing “greenhouse effect”, a postulate that Postma demonstrates to be devoid of logic and coherent meaning since it contradicts (and even reverses) the laws of physics.

Skeptics hope that Postma’s alternative thermal model will lead to the birth of a new climatology, one that actually follows the laws of physics and properly physical modeling techniques.

This is Postma's follow-up paper to his earlier 'Understanding the Atmosphere Effect' (March 2011) and becomes the latest and most compelling of a series of science papers undermining the credibility of a clique of UN government-funded climatologists.

More HERE





Australia: Cuddle your dog to beat global warming?

Primitive tribes do this -- and have very short lifespans. But that suits the Greenies, obviously

WANT to save money on power bills this winter? Despite a 2009 study finding the average dog has an environmental footprint twice that of a large 4WD, the government's Living Greener website claims you will save money and feel "chuffed" by following its pet-friendly advice.

With power bills expected to jump by 10 per cent when the carbon tax begins next July, other tips include using leftovers in soups and casseroles, ditching the second family car, playing board games or going to the library to get warm.

Even having a hot shower is a no-no, with the government urging you to get out sooner and stand under a heat lamp or warm a bathrobe.

But if you do use electricity and watch TV, hugging a pet or family member to keep warm is recommended. "To reduce the energy you use watching TV, take another tip from grandma and share the warmth," the site says. "Snuggle up under a rug, snuggle with your family or cuddle your favourite pet. You could avoid the TV and snuggle up in bed with a good book or with someone who's read one lately."

A photograph of children cuddling a dog and cat accompanies the advice on the site.

The recommendations come after New Zealand architects Robert and Brenda Vale calculated a medium-sized dog had twice the emissions of a 4WD once the amount of land required to feed the pet was taken into account.

"Families are already doing all they can to save electricity but these suggestions are making a joke of a very serious issue for families and pensioners," opposition climate spokesman Greg Hunt said.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here

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