Global cooling in the Rockies

Snow is already piling up in the high country, but not all of the unusually deep snow from last winter has melted. As a result, some glaciers and snowfields are actually gaining volume this year.

Scientists have measured new ice in Montana's Glacier National Park and atop Colorado's Front Range mountains. In northwest Wyoming, there is photographic evidence of snowfield growth after Bob Comey, director of the Bridger-Teton National Forest Avalanche Center, compared photos of peaks from year to year.

His images taken before snow started falling again this autumn show what appears to be significantly more ice in the Teton Range compared with two years ago.

Last spring, record snow depths and avalanches around Jackson Hole gave way to concern about possible flooding, but fairly cool weather kept much of the snow right where it was. The flooding that did occur, at least in Wyoming, was less severe than feared.

"I've never seen a season with a gain like we've seen this summer," Comey said.

SOURCE.






IPCC Lying About Their Past

‘Snowtober’ fits U.N. climate change predictions

While the Northeast is still reeling from a surprise October snowstorm that has left more than a million people without power for days, the United Nations is about to release its latest document on adaptation to climate change.

The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is expected conclude that there is a high probability that man-made greenhouse gases already are causing extreme weather that has cost governments, insurers, businesses and individuals billions of dollars. And it is certain to predict that costs due to extreme weather will rise and some areas of the world will become more perilous places to live.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/

Complete bullshit. They predicted the exact opposite.

IPCC Draft 1995

A “striking” retreat of mountain glaciers around the world, accompanied in the Northern Hemisphere by a shrinking snow cover in winter.

http://www.nytimes.com/

And

IPCC 2001 15.2.4.1.2.4. Ice Storms

Milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms

http://observatory.ph/resources/IPCC/TAR/wg2/569.htm#1524123

The alarmist climate science community seems to be incapable of ever telling the truth about anything. I posted the IPCC links in the comment section of the LA Times article, and they were taken down within five minutes. The last thing these people want is an honest discussion.

SOURCE (See the original for full links). Roger Pielke Sr gives the LA Times article an even bigger blast.





A simple experiment exhibits some large truths



An eloquent experiment by geologist Tom Segalstad, dramatic proof of the rapid absorption of CO2 by water. The calcium carbonate touch confounds the Greenies even further. Segalstad explains:

This video shows that a candle floating on water, burning in the air inside a glass, converts the oxygen in the air to CO2. The water rises in the glass because the CO2, which replaced the oxygen, is quickly dissolved in the water. The water contains calcium ions Ca++, because we initially dissolved calcium hydroxide Ca(OH)2 in the water. The CO2 produced during oxygen burning reacts with the calcium ions to produce solid calcium carbonate CaCO3, which is easily visible as a whitening of the water when we switch on a flashlight. This little kitchen experiment demonstrates the inorganic carbon cycle in nature. The oceans take out our anthropogenic CO2 gas by quickly dissolving it as bicarbonate HCO3-, which in turn forms solid calcium carbonate either organically in calcareous organisms or precipitates inorganically. The CaCO3 is precipitating and not dissolving during this process, because buffering in the ocean maintains a stable pH around 8. We also see that CO2 reacts very fast with the water, contrary to the claim by the IPCC that it takes 50 - 200 years for this to happen. Try this for yourself in your kitchen!

SOURCE






Going back to wood-burning loses its charm

The following information was released by the Scottish Government:

Mr Ewing will meet the UK Government's Minister for Energy and Climate Change Charles Hendry tomorrow, and host a meeting with bioenergy stakeholders.

He will urge Mr Hendry to follow the Scottish Government's lead and abandon subsidy for large-scale woody biomass in plants which produce electricity only.

Earlier this month the Scottish Government published a consultation which proposed removing all subsidy from large-scale woody biomass electricity plants.

The Scottish Government supports the deployment of woody biomass in heat-only or combined heat and power plants, particularly off gas-grid, on a small scale which maximises the use of heat and local supply chains.

But large-scale electricity-only biomass is inefficient and requires more wood than the UK can produce. Although current plans are to import wood, there is no guarantee biomass plant operators will look exclusively abroad for their wood, and the overseas supply may not be stable or secure.

The current subsidy means biomass providers will be able to afford more than the current market rate for wood, and may push prices up, pricing out traditional wood industries such as sawmills, wood panel mills, furniture manufacturers and construction. This in turn puts hundreds of skilled rural jobs at risk.

Energy Minister Fergus Ewing said:

"I have grave concerns about the UK Government's ambition for biomass electricity. Large-scale woody biomass used for electricity generation is much less efficient than smaller scale neighbourhood plants.

"Huge electricity-only biomass plants require vast quantities of wood - far more than the UK can provide. Even if every stick of wood grown commercially in the UK went to biomass, it would supply less than a third of the fuel we will require by 2020 if the UK Government's plan for biomass goes ahead.

"Large scale electricity-only biomass will make us reliant on overseas timber markets for our energy. Both oil and gas prices have shown us the importance of a secure, local supply, and if we rely too heavily on imported timber there is a risk of energy security problems in the future.

"Extensive use of large scale biomass for electricity only is likely to push up timber prices and risk hundreds of jobs in traditional wood industries.

"That is why I am urging the UK Government to join the Scottish Government in removing subsidies from large-scale biomass electricity generation."

The UK Government's ambitions for large scale biomass electricity will require approximately 37-67 million green tonnes of biomass by 2020. The Forestry Commission's current Softwood Production Forecast for Great Britain estimates an annual average of almost 12 million green tonnes over the five year period 2017 to 2021.

SOURCE





Seven billion people

Sometime today, the UN estimates that world population will hit 7 billion people. Some people are worried about how those 7 billion mouths will be fed. Here’s Paul Ehrlich in 1968′s The Population Bomb, when world population was not yet 4 billion:

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines – hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash program embarked upon now.

Not so much, thankfully. Ehrlich and other people who live in bed-wetting fear of their fellow man forget that people are more than stomachs; they are also brains. And brains have an increasing return to scale. The more of them there are, and the more they can interact and exchange with one another, the faster they can outpace the rumbling stomachs.

That’s why real world per capita GDP is 16 times higher than it was before the Industrial Revolution — even without correcting for the increased quality of goods. Including that omission would bring the increase to something like 100-fold, according to the economist Deirdre McCloskey. And this is per capita; remember, world population has increased about 7-fold since 1800.

The data are simply astonishing. Seven times as many of us are each at least 16 times and as much as 100 times better off than our great-great-great-great grandparents. This is the single most important event in human since the Agricultural Revolution. It is so important that McCloskey calls it the Great Fact.

And the data show no signs of the Great Fact reversing itself, or even slowing down. if anything, China and India’s recent partial embrace of liberalism has quickened the brain’s still-incomplete conquest over the stomach.

Former CEI Warren Brookes Fellow Ron Bailey has more at Reason. Elsewhere, Steven Landsburg thinks that current human population might be too small.

SOURCE





Green capitalists hijack carbon agenda

By Gary Johns, writing from Australia on the perfidy of big business

THERE was a time when capitalists were capitalists. Now, half the bastards parade as greens making money from green ideology. The other half have given up in the face of environmentalism.

The combination of corporate rent-seeking and capitulation makes the world more vulnerable to mishap. No wonder the gormless ferals "Occupying" city squares across the Western world are confused.

Green capitalism wants public corporations to behave not as shareholders and taxpayers wish but as green activists wish. Green activists and corporate people cosy up to regulators and governments, but especially the UN.

Corporations accept the activity as strategic, coping with political pressure for the nebulous desire for sustainability. Some corporations acquiesce, some make money.

There are crooks such as Enron and jokers such as BP (remember Beyond Petroleum?) who play the game. Others just attend conferences. But attending lends weight to stupidity and rent-seeking on a global scale.

These conferences become places where politicians grandstand. Remember Kevin at Copenhagen? A few days ago in Washington, DC, a group of chief executives, "major investors and bankers", together with former British prime minister Gordon Brown and former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, called for a "far-reaching reform of the global financial system". The price of applause is taxpayer subsidies and preferential regulation.

These people helped the US and Europe live beyond their means. Now, under the banner of the UN Environment Program Finance Initiative Global Roundtable they want to direct good money into bad investments under the guise of sustainability.

This is the crowd that brought the massive waste of debt forgiveness, Make Poverty History and the Clean Development Mechanism. Brown has suggested a global tax to raise even more money for aid and the environment. Tell that to the Greeks and the Irish.

This is the crowd plotting the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (or Rio+20) in Rio de Janeiro where even more promises will be made with money that does not exist. They want to "mobilise investment at scale by the banking and investment sectors into the clean energy sector, renewable energy, green buildings and retrofitting, clean vehicles and fuels". You will pay for this.

The farce is that even on its own terms, the combination of green activists, corporate capitulation and UN mischief-making moves the world further from the possibility of coping with issues such as climate change and poverty.

Take the example of nuclear power. Siemens built all of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors. In 2006 Siemens' president and chief executive Peter Loescher said: "In view of global climate change and the increasing power demand worldwide, for us nuclear energy remains an essential part of a sustainable energy mix. Nuclear energy, which is practically CO2-free, will gain in importance above all with a view to climate protection."

In September this year Loescher announced Siemens' withdrawal from the nuclear industry. The firm will no longer build nuclear power stations.

Although the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March pushed it across the line, it was the constant drip of ideology that broke the company's resolve. As Loescher said, it was the firm's answer to "the clear positioning of German society and politics for a pullout from nuclear energy".

Siemens' 17 nuclear reactors accounted for 23 per cent of German electricity production. A lot of solar panels and windmills are going to be built with taxpayers' subsidy to fill that gaping hole. Should the windmills come at the expense of the Greece bailout?

And our little green capitalists' tentacles reach from global to local. A recent press release screamed: "World's largest investors, worth $20 trillion, step up call for urgent policy action on climate change".' It was our friends at the UNEP Finance Initiative, in tandem with the likes of the local Investor Group on Climate Change.

IGCC is a green-capitalist crowd. It represents finance, including church and industry super funds. Being from finance, they seek rent rather than capitulate a la Siemens. IGCC wants to "encourage government policies and investment practices that address the risks and opportunities of climate change, for the ultimate benefit of superannuants and unit holders". You bet they do.

The Australian chief executive is Nathan Fabian, former adviser to Penny Wong in the opposition portfolio of corporate governance and responsibility. Fabian by name, Fabian by nature.

Are the Fabians telling investors that the Senate estimates statement by Treasury's Martin Parkinson on October 20, that "the cost impact of the carbon tax is very, very small", was based on an assumption there would be a global agreement on reductions of CO2 emissions?

Julia Gillard cannot achieve what the great Kevin Rudd could not. An agreement by developing countries attending the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Durban next month to curb emissions will not be forthcoming.

Make sure you tell your members, Fabian.

SOURCE

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