Photos taken by a French satellite show glaciers in a mountain range west of the Himalayas have grown during the last decade. The growing glaciers were found in the Karakoram range, which spans the borders between Pakistan, India and China and is home to the world's second highest peak, K2.
The startling find has baffled scientists and comes at a time when glaciers in other parts of the region, and across the world, are shrinking. [Says who?]
French scientists from the National Centre for Scientific Research and the University of Grenoble, were forced to rely on satellite images, to study the region - because much of the Karakoram range is inaccessible.
They compared observations made in 1999 and 2008 and found a marginal mass increase. They estimated the glaciers had gained between 0.11 and 0.22 metres of ice each year.
The researchers are unsure why the region bucks the global trend - but they know from other studies in other parts of the world that in very cold regions, like the Karakoram range, climate change can cause extra precipitation, which then freezes and adds to ice mass.
Lead reseacher Julie Gardelle told BBC News: 'We don't really know the reason. Right now we believe that it could be due to a very specific regional climate over Karakoram because there have been meteorological measurements showing increased winter precipitation; but that's just a guess at this stage.'
Stephan Harrison, associate professor in quaternary science at the UK's University of Exeter, said the new research had showed there is 'considerable variability' in the global climate and in how glaciers respond to it.
The Karakoram glaciers are also unusual because they are covered with thick layers of rock debris, which means their patterns of melting and mass gain are driven by changes in that debris as well as in the climate.
Harrison said much of their mass gain also comes from avalanches from the high mountains surrounding them.
'Overall, the impact of melting glaciers such as these on sea level rise is known to be negligible, but it does mean that there is much more to be learnt about exactly how the world's glaciers will respond to continued global warming.'
The findings provide welcome respite at a time when glaciers across the globe are shrinking at a rapid rate.
A study of the neighbouring Himalayas in 2011 found the rate of ice loss in glaciers - which provide fresh water for around 1.3 billion people - has doubled since the 1980s. [But a study published in February this year found that between 2003 and 2010 the effective change in the size of glaciers in the high mountains of Asia was not significantly different from zero]
SOURCE
Prosecute Al Gore?
So far this month, the public has learned that the Arctic is overrun with polar bears, according to a Canadian study. The poster child for fear-warmongering by junk-science global warmists not only survives but thrives.
Then an actual count of penguins found that there are twice as many Emperor Penguins in Antarctica than previously thought, a second study found.
Then, another study found that far from melting in 23 years as the Nobel Peace Prize-winning IPCC report predicted, the glaciers of the Himalaya mountains are doing just fine.
The time has come to investigate James Hansen, Michael Mann, Al Gore and other global warming stars for fraud. They lied. They manipulated data. They made false predictions of doom in their over-heated sales pitches. I know that Hansen and Gore made millions off these false alarms of ecological doom. We must now hold them accountable for false claims and the spreading of rumors.
Not once have these fakes ever said a darned word about the benefits of global warming. Instead, they spin hysteria about melting icebergs flooding the Earth from a vengeful Gaea, who hates the SUV, punishing us for our sins.
They laugh at these “journalists” who repeat their talking points. The carbon footprint of Al Gore is bigger than Sasquatch’s.
Actual scientists are beginning to speak out — albeit a decade late — about the nonsense about carbon dioxide killing us all.
From Oregon State University:
CORVALLIS, Ore. – An analysis of 35 headwater basins in the United States and Canada found that the impact of warmer air temperatures on streamflow rates was less than expected in many locations, suggesting that some ecosystems may be resilient to certain aspects of climate change.
The study was just published in a special issue of the journal BioScience, in which the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) network of 26 sites around the country funded by the National Science Foundation is featured.
Lead author Julia Jones, an Oregon State University geoscientist, said that air temperatures increased significantly at 17 of the 19 sites that had 20- to 60-year climate records, but streamflow changes correlated with temperature changes in only seven of those study sites. In fact, water flow decreased only at sites with winter snow and ice, and there was less impact in warmer, more arid ecosystems.
“It appears that ecosystems may have some capacity for resilience and adapt to changing conditions,” said Jones, a professor in OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. “Various ecosystem processes may contribute to that resilience. In Pacific Northwest forests, for example, one hypothesis is that trees control the stomatal openings on their leaves and adjust their water use in response to the amount of water in the soil.
Then there is the letter from 50 astronauts, engineers and scientists at NASA to the agency’s chief:
We, the undersigned, respectfully request that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled.
The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.
As former NASA employees, we feel that NASA’s advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study of the possible overwhelming impact of natural climate drivers is inappropriate. We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject. At risk is damage to the exemplary reputation of NASA, NASA’s current or former scientists and employees, and even the reputation of science itself.
The history of science is filled with hoaxes. Piltdown Man, for example. Phrenology for another. The time has come to investigate these phonies for possible prosecution.
SOURCE (See the original for links)
The Population Control Holocaust
Robert Zubrin
Around the world, the population control movement has resulted in billions of lost or ruined lives. We cannot stop at merely rebutting the pseudoscience and recounting the crimes of the population controllers. We must also expose and confront the underlying antihumanist ideology.
There is a single ideological current running through a seemingly disparate collection of noxious modern political and scientific movements, ranging from militarism, imperialism, racism, xenophobia, and radical environmentalism, to socialism, Nazism, and totalitarian communism. This is the ideology of antihumanism: the belief that the human race is a horde of vermin whose unconstrained aspirations and appetites endanger the natural order, and that tyrannical measures are necessary to constrain humanity. The founding prophet of modern antihumanism is Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), who offered a pseudoscientific basis for the idea that human reproduction always outruns available resources. Following this pessimistic and inaccurate assessment of the capacity of human ingenuity to develop new resources, Malthus advocated oppressive policies that led to the starvation of millions in India and Ireland.
While Malthus’s argument that human population growth invariably leads to famine and poverty is plainly at odds with the historical evidence, which shows global living standards rising with population growth, it nonetheless persisted and even gained strength among intellectuals and political leaders in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Its most pernicious manifestation in recent decades has been the doctrine of population control, famously advocated by ecologist Paul Ehrlich, whose bestselling 1968 antihumanist tract The Population Bomb has served as the bible of neo-Malthusianism. In this book, Ehrlich warned of overpopulation and advocated that the American government adopt stringent population control measures, both domestically and for the Third World countries that received American foreign aid. (Ehrlich, it should be noted, is the mentor of and frequent collaborator with John Holdren, President Obama’s science advisor.)
Until the mid-1960s, American population control programs, both at home and abroad, were largely funded and implemented by private organizations such as the Population Council and Planned Parenthood — groups with deep roots in the eugenics movement. While disposing of millions of dollars provided to them by the Rockefeller, Ford, and Milbank Foundations, among others, the resources available to support their work were meager in comparison with their vast ambitions. This situation changed radically in the mid-1960s, when the U.S. Congress, responding to the agitation of overpopulation ideologues, finally appropriated federal funds to underwrite first domestic and then foreign population control programs. Suddenly, instead of mere millions, there were hundreds of millions and eventually billions of dollars available to fund global campaigns of mass abortion and forced sterilization. The result would be human catastrophe on a worldwide scale.
Among the first to be targeted were America’s own Third World population at home — the native American Indians. Starting in 1966, Secretary of the Interior Stuart Udall began to make use of newly available Medicaid money to set up sterilization programs at federally funded Indian Health Services (IHS) hospitals. As reported by Angela Franks in her 2005 book Margaret Sanger’s Eugenic Legacy:
These sterilizations were frequently performed without adequate informed consent.... Native American physician Constance Redbird Uri estimated that up to one-quarter of Indian women of childbearing age had been sterilized by 1977; in one hospital in Oklahoma, one-fourth of the women admitted (for any reason) left sterilized.... She also gathered evidence that all the pureblood women of the Kaw tribe in Oklahoma were sterilized in the 1970s....
Unfortunately, and amazingly, problems with the Indian Health Service seem to persist ... recently [in the early 1990s], in South Dakota, IHS was again accused of not following informed-consent procedures, this time for Norplant, and apparently promoted the long-acting contraceptive to Native American women who should not use it due to contraindicating, preexisting medical conditions. The Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center reports that one woman was recently told by her doctors that they would remove the implant only if she would agree to a tubal ligation. The genocidal dreams of bureaucrats still cast their shadow on American soil.
Programs of a comparable character were also set up in clinics funded by the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity in low-income (predominantly black) neighborhoods in the United States. Meanwhile, on the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, a mass sterilization program was instigated by the Draper Fund/Population Crisis Committee and implemented with federal funds from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare through the island’s major hospitals as well as a host of smaller clinics. According to the report of a medical fact-finding mission conducted in 1975, the effort was successful in sterilizing close to one-third of Puerto Rican women of child-bearing age. [...]
Around the world, the population control movement has resulted in billions of lost or ruined lives. We cannot stop at merely rebutting the pseudoscience and recounting the crimes of the population controllers. We must also expose and confront the underlying antihumanist ideology. If the idea is accepted that the world’s resources are fixed with only so much to go around, then each new life is unwelcome, each unregulated act or thought is a menace, every person is fundamentally the enemy of every other person, and each race or nation is the enemy of every other race or nation. The ultimate outcome of such a worldview can only be enforced stagnation, tyranny, war, and genocide. The horrific crimes advocated or perpetrated by antihumanism’s devotees over the past two centuries prove this conclusively. Only in a world of unlimited resources can all men be brothers.
That is why we must reject antihumanism and embrace instead an ethic based on faith in the human capacity for creativity and invention. For in doing so, we make a statement that we are living not at the end of history, but at the beginning of history; that we believe in freedom and not regimentation; in progress and not stasis; in love rather than hate; in life rather than death; in hope rather than despair.
More HERE
Overthrowing Environmentalism
By Alan Caruba
In 1517 Martin Luther set off the Protestant revolution against the Catholic Church that led to the spread of the then-new movement as a response to the corruption of the Church. It took time for it to establish itself as an alternative and was greatly aided by the invention of printing and spread of literacy, but mostly because ordinary people had grown weary of the Church’s extravagance, poor governance, and resistance to change.
The selling of worthless “indulgences” as a means to wipe one’s sins clean was the final straw.
Environmentalism has become a modern religion and its “cap and trade” scheme to sell worthless permission slips for the emission of so-called “greenhouse gases”—based on United Nations Kyoto Protocol calling for a reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere—is being rejected by many nations .
As it has become common knowledge that CO2 is vital to all life on Earth and plays no role in affecting the climate, ordinary people have concluded that global warming in particular and environmentalism in general is a giant fraud.
No one argues that nations should not attend to the basic maintenance of clean air and water. That view predates the environmental movement, but the stranglehold on nation’s economies and the ability to engage in any form of commerce has reached a breaking point. The fact is, the U.S. has made great strides over the years and there are limits to how “clean” the air and water can or even should be. The EPA wanted to regulate “dust” at one point until Congress put an end to that insanity.
The lies required to maintain environmentalism and its vast matrix of laws and regulations are being publicly rejected and a recent example is a letter sent to NASA administrator by fifty present and former astronauts, scientists, and engineers who work for NASA is a seminal moment, not unlike Martin Luther’s 95 theses nailed to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg.
The NASA employee’s letter demanded that its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) “refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe that the claims of NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data.”
It should be noted that the global warming hoax can be dated to testimony by James Hansen before Congress in 1988 and he is still the GISS administrator! His apocalyptic predictions helped launch a U.S. response currently seen in the Environmental Protection Agency power-grab, based on the false CO2 claims, that will eliminate one fifth of the coal-fired plants providing electricity to a large swath of the nation and likely end the building of new comparable facilities.
On April 9th, Rasmussen Reports, a polling organization, release the results of a poll that found that 52% of likely voters “think there’s a conflict between economic growth and environmental protection, thoough 31% disagreed." Rasmussen stated that “support for investing in fossil fuels like oil and gas is also at a new high amidst near-record gas prices and the on-going development of the Keystone XL pipeline which President Obama blocked for environmental reasons.”
The following day, April 10th, Rasmussen released results of another poll that found that 44% of likely voters “believe, generally speaking, that the EPA’s regulations and actions hurt the economy. Just 17% disagree.”
On February 21st, Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com, was published in The Washington Times in an opinion about EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s testimony before Congress writing that “Over the past three years, the Obama EPA has conducted a scorched earth campaign against fossil fuel producers and users, especially the coal-fired power industry, with multibillion-dollar rules that provide no meaningful environmental or public health benefits.”
The environmental revolution—a Communist agenda—is being resisted piece by piece by scientists and others who no longer will submit to its utterly false “science” and its UN-inspired Agenda 21 plans to impose control over all aspects of life on planet Earth. A June Rio conference will largely abandon the fear-mongering of global warming in favor of “sustainability”, a matrix of controls that will enslave the world’s population with the worst totalitarian precepts since the rise of Communism and Nazism in the last century.
Agenda 21 has been at work in America for decades at this point and few have any idea what it represents. It is destroying property rights in America and that’s just for starters.
On Earth Day—April 22nd—the birthday of Vladimir Lenin, the dictator who imposed Communism on Russia in 1917, the various elements of the environmental movement will flood the world with propaganda. The connection between these two events should not be ignored.
Environmentalism should be soundly rejected and the emerging movement to overthrow it should redouble its efforts.
SOURCE
British Conservatives plot re-think on countryside wind turbines
Ministers are preparing to veto major new wind farms in the British countryside and cut back their subsidies, according to senior Government sources.
The decision to pull back from onshore wind farms comes after more than 100 backbench Conservative MPs mounted a rebellion against turbines blighting rural areas earlier this year.
Greg Barker, the Climate Change Minister, also said this weekend Britain has “the wind we need” either being built, developed or in planning.
“It’s about being balanced and sensible,” he said. “We inherited a policy from the last government which was unbalanced in favour of onshore wind.
“There have been some installations in insensitive or unsuitable locations - too close to houses, or in an area of outstanding natural beauty.”
Britain already has around 350 wind farms across the country, with around 500 already under construction or awaiting planning permission
This means the number of wind farms built in the British countryside could still double from the current level.
However, it is understood senior Conservatives in the Coalition are behind a determination to scale back support for onshore wind power, amid fears the turbines are deeply unpopular in rural areas. There is also concern that subsidising so many different types of “green” energy is adding too much to energy bills.
They have seen an opportunity to re-think policy since Chris Huhne, the former Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary, resigned to fight charges of perverting the course of justice in a speeding case.
“Chris Huhne’s zealous ambition is being reined back,” one top Whitehall source said. “There’s already enough being built and developed."
It is understood the Department for Energy and Climate Change is currently considering how it can keep a lid on more wind farms being developed.
Sources said ministers are prepared to block major developments of onshore wind turbines under the new Localism Act that came into force last month.
They are also ready to reduce the £400 million per year in funding that goes to wind farms under the Renewable Obligation Certificate subsidy.
The moves would be popular with the dozens Conservative MPs fighting against new wind developments in their constituencies.
In the letter sent to Downing Street in February, more than 101 MPs sais they have become “more and more concerned” about government “support for onshore wind energy production”.
“In these financially straitened times, we think it is unwise to make consumers pay, through taxpayer subsidy, for inefficient and intermittent energy production that typifies onshore wind turbines,” they say.
The MPs want the savings spread between other “reliable” forms of renewable energy production.
The news comes as leading Conservatives launched a behind-the-scenes attempt to kill the Coalition's so-called "conservatory tax".
Tory ministers are furious that people who want to extend their homes or build conservatories will be forced to pay for extra insulation themselves or sign up to the government's "Green Deal", which provides loans to install energy saving insulation that must be paid back with interest.
A senior government source said "aspirational" home-owners who wanted to improve their properties should not be penalised.
"We don't think this should extend to a 'conservatory tax' situation. The compulsion elements are over-the-top," the source said.
SOURCE
British "Conservatory tax" to be axed for being 'an attack on aspiration'
Ministers are to scrap plans for a ‘conservatory tax’ following a massive Tory backlash. A senior Government source told the Mail that the proposals are ‘dead in the water’.
This latest abrupt U-turn comes only a week after we revealed the move which would force homeowners to fork out hundreds of pounds extra on measures to improve energy efficiency when they build an extension or fit a boiler.
Although the Liberal Democrat-inspired plans are still out for consultation, the source said: ‘We are absolutely not going to have a conservatory tax. It is an attack on aspiration and we want nothing to do with it. It will be blocked.’
The rethink came as ministers struggled to regain control of the political agenda after an Easter break dominated by Budget rows over tax raids on charities, churches and the elderly.
The Mail’s revelation last week that ministers planned to force millions of homeowners to install costly energy efficiency measures when making home improvements infuriated Tory MPs.
Under the ‘mandatory’ scheme anyone wanting to build a conservatory, replace a broken boiler or install new windows would have to seek permission from the council. It could then require them to improve the energy efficiency of their homes by investing in measures such as loft and wall insulation and draught-proofing.
Loans would be available under the Government’s £14billion Green Deal scheme to help pay for the measures, the cost of which could run into hundreds of pounds.
But the scheme alarmed many Conservatives, who feared it would deter families wanting to improve their homes.
MP Stewart Jackson said: ‘We should be supporting aspirational families who want to better themselves and improve their homes, not clobbering them. It is a crackpot scheme and I hope it is strangled at birth.’ Fellow Tory Mark Pritchard said: ‘The tax on conservatories should be renamed a tax on Conservatives. It is another anti-aspiration tax, and a tax on one of the UK’s favourite hobbies – DIY.’
Rag outs
A powerful group of Tory ministers, including the Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, Employment Minister Chris Grayling and Housing Minister Grant Shapps, mobilised quickly to block the move. Mr Cameron is also said to have been alarmed by the proposal.
The controversial measure is included in a consultation issued by Mr Pickles’s Department for Communities and Local Government.
Sources said it had been included at the behest of former Lib Dem Energy Secretary Chris Huhne as a result of Coalition ‘horse-trading’.
Mr Huhne has since been forced to step down to fight criminal charges over allegations that he asked his former wife Vicky Pryce to take speeding points on his behalf.
A source said: ‘It is a shame that the idea ever made it into the consultation at all, but the Lib Dems got their way.’
A senior Government figure said the mandatory element of the scheme would be dropped when the final proposals are published.
‘We are not against people insulating their homes and we are not against the Green Deal, but it should not be mandatory,’ he said.
The decision to scrap the ‘conservatory tax’ before it has even got off the ground is likely to anger some Lib Dems.
A source close to the new Lib Dem Energy Secretary Ed Davey defended the proposal, saying it would save homeowners money in the long term.
‘We are just asking people to make improvements to make their homes more energy efficient – it seems to me that actually helps the homeowner,’ said the source.
‘Of all the building regulations there are, this is one of the few where the entire financial benefit accrues to the homeowner. It will save them money on their fuel bills over the medium to long term.’
However, a raft of recent research has cast doubt on the level of savings claimed by the Government.
Some pilot studies have found that the cost of energy efficiency measures is far higher than the savings on bills.
SOURCE
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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