Australia: The crooked BOM again

Canberra Thermometer Is Carefully Sited Next To A Huge Parking Lot



They are frantic Warmists at the Bureau of Meteorology so will do anything to pump the official temperature up.  This is a classic example of an urban heat island effect

I have heard that the station has finally been moved to a more reasonable location so it would be interesting to see what "adjustments" accompany that.  Adding a constant to the new measurements would be my guess but they are unlikely to tell us.  Like all Warmists they are secretive

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Feminist/Warmist outs herself as an airhead



Author Naomi Wolf has been accused of being 'disrespectful' after suggesting footage of hostages being beheaded by ISIS militants isn't real.

The 51-year-old American writer made a series of controversial statements questioning the authenticity of the footage in a number of messages on her Facebook page.

The initial post in which the feminist activist questions where the terror group are 'getting all these folks from' was deleted.

In another post, she also said that the Obama administration was sending troops to West Africa to confront the Ebola outbreak so they could return with the deadly infection - justifying a military takeover of Africa.

Social media users quickly rounded on her with some suggesting her theories were 'crazy' while others said her views were 'harmful' and had disrespected the victims' families.

A video released on Friday appeared to show British hostage Alan Henning being beheaded by Jihadi John.

He is the fourth person to have been brutally murdered at the hands of the extremists, and a fifth, former Army ranger Peter Kaggis, has been threatened as the next victim.

After making the controversial statements over the weekend, Wolf defended her actions saying she was criticizing the reporting of the story - suggesting the video had not been properly confirmed by two sources.

The post, that was later taken down, said: 'OK two of the hostages just happened to go from long careers into the military to... sudden humanitarian work (same was true of the latest British hostage). Where are they getting all these folks from?

'If someone is abducted there is a record with Amnesty and with Reporters without Borders. Can someone please confirm that these organizations have any record of this person having been abducted?

'The NYT (New York Times) yesterday ran a depressingly sloppy editorial claiming that all the ISIS beheading videos must be real because 'there are so many of them on youtube'.

'THAT's journalism? They also called ISIS 'evil' many times - which is not langauge of a news analysis, it is a theological category for some faiths and a Global War on Terror talking point... this may all be true but it takes five people to stage an event like this - two to be 'parents' - two to pose for the cameras... one in a ninja outfit... and one to contact the media that does not bother checking who ANY of these four other people are...'

During the social media backlash, Mark Boothroyd said: 'Don't insult these people who have given their lives for humanitarian work.

'The activities of all these people have been well documented over the years. They are known people with families and friends who have supported them. Stop spreading conspiracy theories.'

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Climate change lies exposed -- in 2010 report (below)

A high-level inquiry into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found there was “little evidence” for its claims about global warming.

It also said the panel had emphasised the negative impacts of climate change and made “substantive findings” based on little proof.

The review by the InterAcademy Council (IAC) was launched after the IPCC’s hugely embarrassing 2007 benchmark climate change report, which contained exaggerated and false claims that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.

The panel was forced to admit its key claim in support of global warming was lifted from a 1999 magazine article. The report was based on an interview with a little-known Indian scientist who has since said his views were “speculation” and not backed by research.

Independent climate scientist Peter Taylor said last night: “The IPCC’s credibility has been deeply dented and something has to be done. It can’t just be a matter of adjusting the practices. They have got to look at what are the consequences of having got it wrong in terms of what the public think is going on. Admitting that it needs to reform means something has gone wrong and they really do need to look at the science.”

Climate change sceptic David Holland, who challenged leading climate change scientists at the University of East Anglia to disclose their research, said: “The panel is definitely not fit for purpose. What the IAC has said is substantial changes need to be made.”

The IAC, which comprises the world’s top science academies including the UK’s Royal Society, made recommendations to the IPCC to “enhance its credibility and independence” after the Himalayan glaciers report, which severely damaged the reputation of climate science.

It condemned the panel – set up by the UN to ensure world leaders had the best scientific advice on climate change – for its “slow and inadequate response” after the damaging errors emerged.

Among the blunders in the 2007 report were claims that 55 per cent of the Netherlands was below sea level when the figure is 26 per cent.

It also claimed that water supplies for between 75 million and 250 million people in Africa will be at risk by 2020 due to climate change, but the real range is between 90 and 220 million.

The claim that glaciers would melt by 2035 was also rejected.

Professor Julian Dowdeswell of Cambridge University said: “The average glacier is 1,000ft thick so to melt one at 15ft a year would take 60 years. That is faster than anything we are seeing now so the idea of losing it all by 2035 is unrealistic.”

In yesterday’s report, the IAC said: “The IPCC needs to reform its management structure and strengthen its procedures to handle ever larger and increasingly complex climate assessments as well as the more intense public scrutiny coming from a world grappling with how to respond to climate change.”

The review also cast doubt on the future of IPCC chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri.

Earlier this year, the Daily Express reported how he had no climate science qualifications but held a PhD in economics and was a former railway engineer.

Dr Pachauri has been accused of a conflict of interest, which he denies, after it emerged that he has business interests attracting millions of pounds in funding. One, the Energy Research Institute, is set to receive up to £10million in grants from taxpayers over the next five years.

Speaking after the review was released yesterday, Dr Pachauri said: “We have the highest confidence in the science behind our assessments.

“The scientific community agrees that climate change is real. Greenhouse gases have increased as a result of human activities and now far exceed pre-industrial values.”

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The Case for Recycling Nuclear Waste

Climate activists love to champion solar and wind power, but few have kind words for the most potent source of renewable energy: nuclear power. Although today’s critics point to calamities such as Fukushima and Chernobyl, opposition to nuclear power goes back decades earlier, even before the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 helped popularize the anti-nuke sentiment. One common criticism involves the problem of radioactive waste. But that problem is not wholly intractable—it’s largely caused by reversible choices that our political leaders have made, according to economist and Independent Institute Research Director William F. Shughart II.

Indeed, France and Great Britain are two countries that deal with nuclear waste in a manner diametrically opposite the path chosen by American politicians. Whereas U.S. law prohibits the recycling of nuclear waste—and thereby makes the disposal problem exclusively one of long-term storage—France and England permit nuclear waste to be recycled. France, for example, allows its 58 nuclear power plants to send spent fuel rods to a recycling facility on the Normandy coast, where after a three-year cooling period the waste is turned into mixed-oxide fuel.

Strangely, the Savannah River nuclear site in western South Carolina will be allowed to make the same mixed-oxide fuel from surplus plutonium of U.S. weapons stockpiles, but not from nuclear waste. This double standard makes no sense. If the U.S. government were to let nuclear power-plant operators recycle their waste, climate activists would get two of their wishes: the country could obtain more energy using less fossil fuel, and the storage-space needed for nuclear waste would fall—by more than 50 percent, according to Shughart. Moreover, fewer local political battles over where to put long-term storage sites would break out. “Instead of requiring a political consensus on multiple repository sites to store nuclear plant waste,” Shughart writes, “one facility would be sufficient, reducing disposal costs by billions of dollars.”

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Fracking Could Save the Planet

President Barack Obama raised a lot of eyebrows last week when he declared in his United Nations climate change speech: “Over the past eight years, the United States has reduced our total carbon pollution by more than any other nation on Earth.”

That’s absolutely true. And it’s remarkable because we as a nation didn’t ratify the Kyoto Treaty, pass a carbon tax, or enact Mr. Obama’s cap and trade agenda.

It’s all the more remarkable because Americans have been scolded nearly every day for being a major source of all these satanic gases that are allegedly burning up the planet. Instead, since 2005, our emissions are down by roughly 10 percent and almost twice that amount on a per capita basis. Not bad.

How did that happen? If you think the answer is that we’ve transitioned to green energy, you are completely wrong.

The game-changer for the U.S. has been the shale oil and gas revolution over the past six years brought about through new smart drilling technologies. The U.S. is now the largest natural gas producer in the world. And as America has produced more natural gas, we have shifted away from coal.

This, according to the Energy Information Administration, accounts for more than 60 percent of the carbon emission reductions in the United States. Mr. Obama never mentioned that.

Here’s the real stunner: if we want to reduce carbon emissions further, investing in natural gas is a far more efficient strategy than going all in for so-called “green renewable energy” sources.

Over the last seven years, the U.S. government has spent almost $70 billion in tax, regulatory, and spending subsidies to the renewable energy sector. But wind and solar energy after this avalanche of government support account for only about three percent of electricity production.

By contrast, the shale gas explosion has been almost entirely devoid of subsidies – yet its output has exploded.

That’s great news for the environment because natural gas emits only about half the carbon as coal, even though coal is much cleaner than it once was.

So one would think the climate change marchers who descended on Washington last week and all their green allies would be beating the drum for shale gas and hydraulic fracturing as an environmental godsend. No.

The one common theme of the green marchers these days is they hate fracking, even though it has done more to reduce greenhouse gases than all the government subsidies to wind and solar power combined.

The Sierra Club and other environmental groups which once saw natural gas as a valuable “bridge” fuel to the future, now denounce this wonder fuel. A new study making the rounds on the Internet says natural gas “won’t do much to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and might even raise them slightly.”

This is bad economic and environmental advice. Shale gas is a wonder fuel because it is clean-burning, abundant, domestically produced, and cheap. The price of natural gas has fallen by more than half over the last six years and we have at least 150 years of supply in the Marcellus Shale and elsewhere.

The Left’s unhinged objections to natural gas exposes their real aspirations. They aren’t fighting to stop global warming or the rise of the oceans; they’re fighting to stop growth itself.

Americans better wake up to that reality, before the greens actually succeed.

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Kill Australia's Kyoto Liabilities

The Kyoto Protocol was dreamed up by the Climate Jet-set in Kyoto, Japan in 1997.

One of the first decisions of born-again-green PM, Kevin Rudd, was to commit Australia to Kyoto Phase 1 in 2007.  This treaty required signatories to reduce production of carbon dioxide to 5% below 1990 levels by 2012.

As a late joiner, Australia got a lower target, involving no actual cuts.  And they achieved that easy target by robbing Australian landowners - they stole carbon credits from landowners by imposing tree clearing bans. That larcenous trick can’t be pulled twice.

Ironically, the death notice for the Kyoto misadventure was posted by Japan, the birthplace of Kyoto, when they announced at Cancun in 2010 that Japan would not agree to any further targets. Japan was shocked at the billions in liabilities they had accumulated by not meeting Kyoto 1 target cuts.

Undeterred by this warning, another ALP/Green government agreed to Kyoto 2 in 2012 – 5% below 2000 levels by 2020.

This target, agreed to without due diligence, is dreamland stuff for Australia. Once the growing population is taken into account, this target would require Australians in 2020 to maintain industries and create new jobs using 30% less hydro-carbon energy per capita than was used in 2000.

Mining and mineral processing, agriculture, manufacturing, transport, tourism, electricity generation, cement, forestry and fishing are the backbone industries of Australia.
Not one of these industries could maintain production while also significantly reducing their production of carbon dioxide, unless Australia embarks on a crash program of building new hydro and/or nuclear power stations. The chance that green regulators or politicians will allow either of these options any time soon is zero.

The use of carbon fuels, more than any other indicator, measures the growth and health of modern economies. The only way to kill carbon is to kill the economy – close industries or send them overseas. The Global Financial Crisis probably did more to reduce the use of hydro-carbon fuels than Kyoto will ever do.

Japan’s exit from Kyoto obligations was soon followed by Canada and Russia. USA never signed, nor did China, India, South Africa or Brazil.

Thus the four biggest economies in our region (USA, China, Japan and India) are not burdened by Kyoto. Nor are our big competitors - Brazil (iron and beef), Indonesia (coal), Chile (copper) and Canada (wheat). We only have the Kiwis and the faraway Europeans sharing the sinking Kyoto ship.

The Kyoto Agreement is a failure. Australia repealed the costly carbon dioxide tax. Next we should get rid of Kyoto liabilities.

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