The dreaming goes on, untroubled by reality

Computer-modeled tropical fish to boom in Canada, while actual tropical fish freeze to death in Florida

Playing with computer models is such fun:

A new UBC study suggests climate change could create a boom in tropical fish species in BC, but overall result in a drop of up to 35 per cent in catches in some places due to increasing acid and decreasing oxygen in the world's oceans.

Professor William Cheung with UBC’s Fisheries Centre presented his findings Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held at the Vancouver Convention Centre.

The predictions were generated by a computer simulator

2012: Florida Fish Farms Struggle With Recent Cold Snap

"The last three winters in a row it seems like we have been just clobbered," said David Boozer, executive director of the Florida Tropical Fish Farms Association, a group that counts 231 farmers as members.

SOURCE (See the original for links)




British Met Office: “The Case for Global Warming Stronger Than Ever”

But they do actually come out and admit that they may have overstated the role of CO2 in their precious "models"

Met Office study concludes that the fingerprint of human influence on climate is stronger than ever. So what convinced them? Was it declining temperatures, or declining sea level, which put the final nail in the coffin?

According to the models, none of those combinations can produce the climate patterns currently being observed in the real world. Add the greenhouse gases that we know humans are generating (and which we’ve known since the 1800s tend to warm the Earth, all other things being equal), and the simulations finally come close to matching the real world.

What a load of complete crap. Most climate scientists know very little about past climate, much less can explain it, much less can rule out common causes with the present.

Its possible, albeit far-fetched, that the simulations are defective. It is even less possible that all of them (and there are many) are defective in the direction of overstating humanity’s contribution to warming.

Far fetched that climate models are wrong? ROFLMAO …..


Graph of projections versus where we are now (red dot)

And the contraction for “it is” is spelled “it’s.”

SOURCE (See the original for links)




Behind the “Environmentalist” Curtain Lurks … nothing

Late last month Chesapeake Energy Corp. quietly tested a new method of horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” on two well sites in Ohio. The new process uses about 10 percent of the water of typical fracking, relying, instead, primarily on carbon-dioxide foam to crack natural-gas-rich shale rock deep below the earth’s surface.

Given that one of the usual environmentalist refrains on hydraulic fracturing is that the process uses too much water, one might imagine Chesapeake’s move would have garnered some praise from the “green” contingent. But if one thought as much, one doesn’t know environmentalist groups. The response from the Natural Resources Defense Council last week, for example, via Senior Policy Analyst Amy Mall, was to ignore the matter of water entirely. “It could be safer. It could be better. But it doesn’t reduce all the risk,” Mall said.

Environmentalists have long slammed domestic energy’s supposed wanton waste of natural resources, depicting oil and gas companies as insatiable behemoths spitting out the bones of the landscape once they ravage it. Though Chesapeake is remaining largely mum on the pilot testing of the new fracking method, a 90-percent reduction in water use is nothing to sneeze at - least of all from an environmentalist viewpoint. So why the silence from “greenies”?

Simply put, now that there may be a “fracking” method out there that uses so much less water, it is likely becoming clear to such organizations and their constituents that politically, the water issue may soon become a non-starter. So environmental groups are regrouping - and, to give credit where credit is due, the Natural Resources Defense Council regrouped fairly quickly, shifting the focus of their anti-fracking campaign entirely to human safety.

But there’s no denying these groups have essentially demanded a reduction in hydraulic-fracturing water, and noisily. Last November, in a statement about protecting “Colorado from [f]racking” by calling on the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to disclose the amount of water it used in natural-gas extraction, Clean Water Action Program Director Gary Wockner said, “Let’s go right to the source and have the drillers and frackers report their water use so that Colorado knows how much additional stress this will place on our rivers and farms which are already being drained and dried up.” An April 2011 Pennsylvania Green Party statement on hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale reads, in part, “[H]ydraulic fracturing squanders our precious water resource.” In November, former Sierra Club lobbyist John Smithson wrote in a Charleston Gazette op-ed: “[I]n West Virginia, we are letting gas drillers waste trillions of gallons of fresh water, to harvest what will be only a few decades worth of natural gas. Not only are we wasting trillions of gallons of potable water, we're also depositing millions of gallons of toxic chemicals in underground storage sites. This wastewater is lost forever. It can never again be used for anything.”

Conventional energy can make all the strides it dares undertake – at significant cost and allegedly at environmental groups’ behest - but it will never satisfy its environmentalist critics. The great irony of these mammoth organizations is they apparently exist only to oppose: When their demands are met, their focus shifts to the next perceived calamity. How many great ideas or groundbreaking plans of action has even one of the numerous international environmental organizations envisioned, much less put into action? None. The truth is these organizations lack any real message other than “No.” Ironically they depend for continued existence, media coverage and funding on the very people and industries they rail against. Behind the curtain lurks … nothing.

SOURCE





British foreign aid cash spent tackling climate change

Nearly £1.5 billion has been spent tackling man-made climate change by Government department responsible for fighting poverty abroad, it can be revealed.

The Department for International Development (Dfid) has spent the total on projects which they say will either reduce carbon emissions abroad or attempt to deal with the effects of predicted changes in the earth's climate.

In the past four years Dfid has spent £900 million on climate change projects with nearly two thirds of that being spent in the past financial year under the Coalition. A further £533 million has already been committed up to 2013.

The biggest recipients of the climate change aid are India and Indonesia, two countries considered to be rapidly emerging economies.

The disclosures – made under the Freedom of Information Act – will raise fresh questions over how foreign aid is spent, and comes after an Indian minister described British aid to the country as "peanuts", which ministers in London had begged Delhi to continue accepting. Dfid is one of only two departments not affected by the Government's austerity drive, with a budget last year of £8.4 billion.

The figures released by the government reveal that total spending on tackling climate change overseas has increased from £61 million in 2007-08 to more than £883 million in 2010-11. During that time, Dfid saw the biggest increase in spending on climate change with funding available for projects now 45 times higher than four years ago. The department now also employs 66 specialist climate and environmental advisers.

Among the aid provided by Dfid was a £4.7 million project in Indonesia aimed at helping the government there provide "more effective leadership and management of climate change programming".

Another project aimed at encouraging Indian farmers to use manual foot pumps to draw water from underground for their fields rather than using diesel powered pumps – a technology that could be considered a step backwards in terms of the labour required.

In Africa, six businessmen were given financial support to help them produce and sell solar powered lights.

A project in western Kenya to help indigenous Nganyi rainmakers, who were being undermined by extreme weather conditions caused by changes in the climate, was launched in 2008 as part of a £25 million climate change adaptation programme funded by Dfid. The project aimed to bring the rainmakers together with Government meteorologists to produce a "consensus forecast" before relaying it back to village farmers, who were said to be losing trust in traditional methods which could not cope with the apparent changes in climate.

It allowed forecasts to be made using a combination of satellite data and computer models and traditional techniques such as observing insects, flowers and pot blowing, where herbs are placed into a pot buried in the ground which the rainmaker blows into through a pipe, listening for coming winds.

In total £3.5 billion of public money has been paid out or allocated to projects addressing climate change abroad since 2007-08.

Although Dfid accounts for the bulk of the spending, other departments have also spent significant amounts abroad. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has also spent more than £71 million on tackling climate change and energy programmes overseas in the past two years.

This included a "Low Carbon High Growth Strategic Fund" operating in developed and developing countries including Poland, China, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Indonesia and Mexico to promote low carbon technologies and "creating the political conditions to avoid dangerous climate change".

The Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs has spent more than £233,000 attending climate change negotiations and has also allocated £10 million for a project to tackle deforestation in the Brazilian Cerrado.

As revealed by The Sunday Telegraph last year, the Department for Energy and Climate Change also spent £537 million on "developing an international agreement on climate change" and promoting low carbon technologies in developing countries since 2007/08. The department also plans to spend a further £1 billion between 2012 and 2015.

Conservative MPs said the expenditure had be closely examined. Philip Davies, a Conservative MP who has been an outspoken critic of attempts by the Coalition to increase foreign aid spending at a time when there are deep financial cuts happening in Britain, said: "Much of this will be about alleviating problems in many, many years to come. "A lot of people consider international aid to be about addressing more pressing needs around the world that are more deserving of immediate investment.

"It has to be asked if spend fortunes on trying to tackle something which may or may not be a problem in a 100 years time or more is the best use of the international development budget."

Douglas Carswell, Tory MP for Clacton, said: "It is not a priority for us to be spending these large amounts of public money on climate change when there is hardship at home. "We are having to borrow billions of pounds every month to keep Government spending where it is and we are having to make cut backs to public services in the UK.

"People who live in developing countries have an absolute right to get wealthier but there are some serious questions about the extent to which the changes in the climate that are going on now are man-made. "This seems like permanent public officials are inflating their budgets to justify their existence."

Dr Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which is sceptical about man-made global warming, also questioned the effectiveness of the money going abroad to tackle climate change. He said: "A lot of money is wasted on schemes that don't actually help country's develop more resilience that would be good regardless of climate change. "These handouts often come with conditions that appear to be pressure foreign governments into sighing up to global emissions policies."

Andrew Mitchell, Secretary of State for International Development, said it was in Britain's best interests to help other countries tackle climate change because it is a global problem.

He said: "The Coalition Government is committed to being the greenest government ever. "Climate change will hit the poorest hardest and leave many more people susceptible to flooding, failing crops and food shortages. We can only help these people if all countries – rich and poor – work together.

"This is why Britain works with emerging economies whose carbon emissions are predicted to grow fastest – to pool our knowledge and tackle global problems like deforestation and carbon emissions."

SOURCE





Uncertain future for electric cars in Britain

Where next for the all-electric family car? The honest answer is that nobody – not even the companies which make them – knows for sure.

Our ruling politicians don’t have a clue either. This despite the fact that they’re endorsing the idea of battery-powered vehicles for the general public by giving £5,000 taxpayer-funded handouts to buyers. But it appears a classic case of do as we say, not do as we do. I say this because I’m not aware of any of our “leaders” using all-electrics as their personal or ministerial cars. I’ll admit I’m wrong if there is a leading politician who has done so, but I’m not expecting to hear from anyone.

Are the young Cameron and Miliband families, for example, running electric vehicles (EVs) as family wheels, or even buying them as second cars for shopping trips and school runs? What happened to leading by example?

What’s beyond doubt is that for the private motorist who has to meet his own running costs, the EV, with a rechargeable battery pack as its sole source of power, has severe limitations. First, price: the all-electric family-sized car has typically a list price two or three times higher than that of a petrol model of similar size. Second, range: most electric cars can travel about 100 miles (without “refuelling”), while petrol-engined models do several hundred, with some diesels achieving closer to 1,000.

Figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) show that about 99 per cent of all cars sold/registered in Britain in 2011 were conventional petrol or diesel models and just over one per cent could be classed as an alternate fuel vehicle (AFV). This year, the story’s much the same – only about one car in every 100 is an AFV. I wonder if any real-world private motorists have bought one last year or this. It may well be that manufacturers and their dealers have registered or “sold” most of the EVs on Britain’s roads to themselves, to serve as company cars, press vehicles or demonstrators. Look out for them as very low-mileage used (and therefore considerably less expensive) cars.

Admittedly, firms such as the big energy suppliers have a few, too. But that’s not because they particularly like them. They love EVs because they see the potential for huge profit in selling the increasingly expensive electricity needed to power them. Drivers doing a maximum of 50-60 miles a day in mild weather and undemanding traffic conditions should be able to get away with recharging from the mains once a day. But for others, plugging in several times per day at home or the workplace is essential.

In a new report, the London Assembly has more bad news for the EV industry. Its Environment Committee claims: “With 2,313 electric vehicles [including cars, vans and trucks] currently in London, the Mayor is only two per cent towards his goal of 100,000 on the streets.”

In 2009, Mayor Boris Johnson announced that he intended to make London the electric car capital of Europe. But the committee doesn’t seem convinced. “There are fewer than 50 electric vehicles in the Greater London Authority (GLA) fleet compared with the Mayor’s aim of 1,000 by 2015,” it says.

“Also, there are about 400 charge points across London compared with the Mayor’s recent target of 1,300 by next year and original target of 25,000 by 2015,” the healthily sceptical committee adds, before concluding that the Mayor should “commission research on the full carbon footprint of electric vehicles”.

Petrol-electric cars such as the Vauxhall Ampera/Chevrolet Volt plus diesel-electrics like the Peugeot 3008 Hybrid4 and Citroën DS5 make far greater environmental and economic sense because they can run on pump fuels if there’s no convenient electricity supply.

If, however, you can live with the limitations of an EV, Renault will revolutionise the UK marketplace this spring when it puts a full line-up of competitively priced, 100 per cent electric cars on sale. Worth considering, but think very carefully before committing yourself.

SOURCE





Reformed Warmist gets good coverage in major Austrian newspaper

The truth will out even in the "Ostmark des Deutschen Reichs"

Fritz Vahrenholt gives a comprehensive interview with leading Austrian daily KURIER here.

The interview covers a number of areas. But a few points I found particularly interesting. On the lack of warming since 2000, the KURIER asks if it’s too short of a time period: "Of course it is. But we still need an explanation on why CO2 emissions, which the IPCC says is responsible for global warming, and which rose continuously since 2000, has not caused any warming. There has to be natural causes: the sun and the 60-year ocean cycles – they were the reasons why we wrote the book.”

Vahrenholt also has words on Germany’s current attempt to move to renewable energy: "We’ve gone into a hectic rush and today in Germany we are converting wheat into bioethanol, and installing 50% of all the world’s photovoltaic systems in a country that gets as much sunshine as Alaska – namely Germany. This uncoordinated mad rush is rooted in fear: It’s our fault, we could trigger a climate catastrophe.”

On the IPCC filtering out the sun and other factors: "It is indeed interesting that of the 34 members of the IPCC editorial team that wrote the summary report, one third are connected to the WWF and Greenpeace. That is legitimate, but that has to be made transparent. Imagine just the opposite and the editorial team were one third Exxon supporters. Wouldn’t people say: ’Hello! Is that really necessary?’”

Vahrenholt on why the climate debate has inquisitorial undercurrents: "Because it has long since not been about a purely scientific issue, rather it is about how to run society. Some are saying that we are entering an uncontrollable situation, and so claim any means against it is justified.”

Like throwing democracy overboard, as some are advocating. Here Vahrenholt specifically singles out Schellnhuber’s WBGU and his Great Transformation of society masterplan, which calls for: "…changes in consumption behavior, changed trade behavior and that non-sustainable living styles be stigmatized by society.”

On the success of the book? "It’s no. 14 on the Spiegel bestseller list. Of course I hope the book will be read. The worst thing that could happen would be a spiral of silence, a discussion that never gets held. In five or ten years, we’ll know who is right.”

Overall, a solid and convincing interview by the KURIER. This will push book sales in Austria, Switzerland and Bavaria. Readers can visit the “http://kaltesonne.de/” site, which has an English translation button.

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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