A naive do-gooder describes how political expediency drove British climate legislation

She is living proof that a wrong initial premise (the effect of CO2 in this case) can led to wrong conclusions. She is clearly not a critical thinker -- just a useful tool for others



Transcript here




"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

And the Warmists are repeating it right now, Santayana might be pleased to note. But, unfortunately, most people remember very little of the past and are therefore unaware that the Warmists of today are part of a long line of false prophets.

I therefore greatly applaud Steve Goddard's excavations into the history of climate and climate commentary and reprint them frequently. I reprint three of his recent history lessons below

1957 Shock News : CO2 To Drown Manhattan By 2008

This guy’s grandkids should sue Hansen for plagiarism.




SOURCE (See the original for links)




Shock News : German Sea Level Just As High As It Was 60 Years Ago



The graph comes from The Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level. And the comparison is beween two high points at the beginning of the graph and 2010.

There is probably a slight rising trend in the data but the fact that levels can completely revert in the course of the series makes any prediction from that trend worthless.

Established in 1933, the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) has been responsible for the collection, publication, analysis and interpretation of sea level data from the global network of tide gauges. It is based in Liverpool at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), which is a component of the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

SOURCE





Unanswerable questions?

Steve Goddard sent The Climate Science Rapid Response Team this question over ten months ago"

Global temperature records from HadCRUT and GISS show that the period from 1910 to 1940 warmed nearly as quickly as the period from 1970 to 2000. 1913 set the all time temperature record in North America, and during the 1930s, as much as 80% of the US simultaneously suffered from drought.

1935 saw the most powerful hurricane to ever hit the US, and the 1940s saw the most US hurricane strikes of any decade.

What caused these severe climatic patterns during the first half of the century?

No doubt the "team" would say if pushed that Steve is not "media" so is beneath their notice but that would be a weak cop-out. Clearly, nobody in the team CAN answer Steve's questions.

SOURCE





Dotty British conservatives declare war on plastic bags

So cut down more trees to make paper bags? And Rwanda is the example to follow?

Britain’s biggest supermarkets are today given an ultimatum by the Prime Minister: Radically reduce the number of plastic bags you hand out by choice, or I will force you to by law.

David Cameron warns that unless stores deliver ‘significant falls’ over the next 12 months, they could either be banned outright from giving out single-use bags or be legally required to charge customers for them.

The Prime Minister says it is ‘unacceptable’ that the number of single-use carrier bags rose last year by 333million – a 5 per cent increase from the previous year. Environmental campaigners say the bags, used for only 20 minutes on average, take up to 1,000 years to degrade.

As well as causing serious harm to marine animals and birds, they blight the coastline, with 70 bags littering every mile.

Mr Cameron paid tribute to the Daily Mail’s ‘Banish the Bags’ campaign, which encouraged the previous government to force retailers to pledge to reduce the amount they hand out to customers.

The campaign helped achieve a drop of nearly 14 per cent, but the issue was kicked into the long grass by the Coalition, and last month official figures showed the trend had gone into reverse and numbers of bags had risen for the first time in five years.

Government sources say that major retailers will be expected to cut the number by at least the 333million required to reverse the latest increase, although it is hoped they will go much further.

The Prime Minister told the Mail: ‘I am very concerned about the use of single-use carrier bags and the effect that they have on the environment. ‘The number of bags being used had fallen considerably, partly thanks to public pressure, including in particular the Daily Mail campaign, and due to the efforts of many major retailers.

‘Companies like M&S have considerably reduced the use of bags by charging and then donating the money raised to charity – £4million has already gone to good causes since they started charging in 2008 and they are doing more to clean up beaches over the next few years. ‘But progress overall went backwards last year, and that is unacceptable.

‘Retailers need to do better. I want to see significant falls again. I know that retailers want to do better too but if they don’t I will be asking them to explain why not.

‘Retailers also need to know that the Government has options at its disposal – including regulating as other countries have done. We will continue to look carefully at all options in order to make sure that we further reduce the use of single-use plastic bags.’

Last year, 6.4billion single-use carriers were handed out in the UK. A UK-wide bags charge could raise tens of millions of pounds a year – as much as £50million – for good causes and charities.

Recycling minister Lord Henley has pointed to a ban implemented in Rwanda that has led to the country, one of the world’s poorest, being hailed as the cleanest in Africa.

The European Commission is also investigating controls on plastic bags, including charges or a ban.

Jill Bell, of the Marine Conservation Society, said the Coalition should be ‘ashamed’ that it has not already required stores to charge for bags, as the authorities in Wales have opted to do.

SOURCE




Global warming: New study challenges carbon benchmark

The ability of forests, plants and soil to suck carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air has been under-estimated, according to a study on Wednesday that challenges a benchmark for calculating the greenhouse-gas problem.

Like the sea, the land is a carbon "sink", or sponge, helping to absorb heat-trapping CO2 disgorged by the burning of fossil fuels.

A conventional estimate is that soil and vegetation take in roughly 120 billion tonnes, or gigatonnes, of carbon each year through the natural process of photosynthesis. The new study, published in the science journal Nature, says the uptake could be 25-45 percent higher, to 150-175 gigatonnes per year.

But relatively little of this extra carbon is likely to be stored permanently in the plant, say the researchers. Instead, it is likely to re-enter the atmosphere through plant respiration.

This will be a disappointment for those looking for some good news in the fight against climate change.

The more carbon is sequestered in the land, the less carbon enters the atmosphere, where it helps to trap heat from the Sun.

Lead researcher Lisa Welp, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the University of California at San Diego, said figuring out the annual carbon uptake from the terrestrial biosphere had been one of the biggest problems in the emissions equation.

Scientists, though, were confident about current estimates for carbon sequestration in land and this was unlikely to change much in the light of the new findings, she said.

"More CO2 is passing through plants (than thought), not that it actually stays there very long," she said in email exchange with AFP. "The extra CO2 taken up as photosynthesis is most likely returned right back to the atmosphere via respiration." [Guesswork? How predictable from a Warmist]

The research looked at isotopes, or variations, in the oxygen component of CO2, using a databank of atmospheric sampling going back three decades. These isotopes are a chemical tag, indicating the kind of water the molecule has come into contact with. The researchers looked at isotopes whose concentrations are linked to rainfall.

They were struck by a clear association between these isotopes and El Nino, the weather cycle which occurs in pendulum swings every few years or so.

The implication from this is that CO2 is swiftly cycled through land ecosystems, the researchers suggest. From that assumption comes the far higher estimate of annual carbon uptake.

SOURCE





CO2 study reinforces our policy, say Australian conservatives

THE Coalition has seized on a new report showing forests, plants and soil may take more carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere than previously thought.

The new study, published in the science journal Nature overnight, shows that soil and vegetation may absorb 25 to 45 per cent more carbon each year, or between 150 and 175 billion tonnes, compared to previous estimates of 120 billion tonnes.

The study cautions, however, that the extra carbon may not be retained in the soil permanently, limiting the potential for atmospheric carbon reduction.

Opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt said the study showed there was “stronger and stronger evidence that the right green carbon measures can reduce the volume of CO2 in the atmosphere”.

“This is another important step in confirming that land-based carbon capture and storage is both measurable and essential as a low-cost, long-term way of reducing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere,” he said.

“From our perspective it reinforces our views, 18 months after we released our policy, the scientific evidence has moved more strongly in favour of the enormous potential of land and agriculture-based emissions reductions.”

The report's lead researcher Lisa Welp, from the University of California's Scripps Institute of Oceanography, said figuring out the annual carbon uptake from the terrestrial biosphere had been one of the biggest problems in the emissions equation....

SOURCE

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