A new shriek from an old shrieker

Prof. Lowe has long been a critic of Australia and a proclaimer of climate doom but has shown no prophetic skill.  An amusing thing about him is that he was taken in by the Chief Seattle hoax, a speech really written by Ted Perry for a film script.  That shows you how careful he is with checking the facts. He is a pseudo-scientist.  His statement that opening one more coal mine will “effectively guarantee the frying of the planet” shows you how loony he is


UNLESS the Australian government fully embraces renewable energy and moves to decarbonise our energy supply in line with the Paris Climate Agreement, parts of Australia like Bourke and Alice Springs will become unlivable in our lifetime.

That’s the warning from the highly decorated Professor Emeritus of the School of Science at Griffith University, and former president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Professor Ian Lowe.

As public debate rages over the potential opening of the Adani coal mine in Carmichael, Queensland, Prof Lowe believes the government’s dedication to fossil fuels is taking the country in a troubling direction.

Speaking to news.com.au he worried that the government’s intention to not only open up the controversial Carmichael coal mine but also open up the Galilee basin will “effectively guarantee the frying of the planet”.

“If we continue to expand fossil fuels — which is what things like opening up the Galilee Basin means — by 2050 the average global temperature will be at least two degrees more,” he said.

Under such a scenario, he expects parts of inland Australia to see average temperature rises that would make them virtually unlivable by the second half of the century.

“It’s difficult to imagine how life will continue in places like Alice Springs and Bourke under that sort of regime.”

In the coming decades, he believes countries including Australia who are not doing enough to combat global warming will receive backlash from the international community. “I think there’ll be increasing international pressure for Australia to get into line,” he said.

“I think there will be political and trade sanctions on countries that are not seen to be pulling their weight.”

Malcolm Turnbull’s Coalition government is backing the Adani coal mine, claiming it will provide 10,000 jobs for the state of Queensland. However other reports put that number as low as 1,464.

Union leaders and regional mayors in Queensland as well as the Labor state government have also thrown their support behind the project, despite federal opposition leader Bill Shorten’s opposition to it.

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Climate alarmist agency says common myth about global warming is not true

During an October 2016 campaign stop, Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore repeated a common claim made by climate alarmists about the alleged link between increased global temperatures and hurricanes—one that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is now saying has yet to be proven.

“Hurricane Matthew was likely more destructive because of climate change,” Clinton said, according to a report by the Washington Post. “Right now, the ocean is at or near record high temperatures, and that contributed to the torrential rainfall and the flash flooding that we saw in the Carolinas. Sea levels have already risen about a foot, one foot, in much of the southeast, which means that Matthew’s storm surge was higher, and the flooding was more severe.”

Gore expanded on Clinton’s argument. “It spun up from a tropical storm into a category 5 hurricane in just 36 hours,” Gore said. “That’s extremely unusual.”

Although these and similar claims suggesting hurricanes have worsened or increased in frequency as a result of global warming have been used often and with certainty by climate alarmists, the NOAA is now saying there is no definitive evidence that proves the alleged link. The NOAA is a federal government agency in the Department of Commerce that argued in favor of the theory man is primarily responsible for rising global temperatures under President Barack Obama.

According to a new report by the NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory reviewing existing evidence, “It is premature to conclude that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming–have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity.”

NOAA said despite the fact that there currently is no evidence to support the claim, it believes there will be at some point in the future (sort of).

According to the alarmist NOAA, “Anthropogenic warming by the end of the 21st century will likely cause tropical cyclones globally to be more intense on average (by 2 to 11% according to model projections for an IPCC A1B scenario). This change would imply an even larger percentage increase in the destructive potential per storm, assuming no reduction in storm size.”

They also said the odds are “better than even” (how scientific of them!) “anthropogenic warming over the next century will lead to an increase in the occurrence of very intense tropical cyclone in some basins–an increase that would be substantially larger in percentage terms than the 2-11% increase in the average storm intensity.”

However, NOAA’s report also says, “This increase in intense storm occurrence is projected despite a likely decrease (or little change) in the global numbers of all tropical cyclones.”

Put simply, NOAA says there is no evidence hurricanes are more intense or have increased in frequency because of global warming, but it believes hurricanes could become more intense (by 2-11 percent) by 2100, even though there will likely be less total tropical cyclones.

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New global warming study is terrible news for alarmists, good news for plants, animals and people

A new study published in the highly influential journal Nature suggests rising global temperatures during the 19th and 20th centuries may be linked to greater plant photosynthesis.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of California at Merced, estimated based on its models “the sum of all plant photosynthesis on Earth grew by 30 percent over the 200-year record captured,” according to an article published on the UC Merced website.

Photosynthesis is the process of converting carbon dioxide into carbohydrates, which power plants, using sunlight.

According to the UC Merced article, “The research did not identify the cause of the increased photosynthesis, but computer models have shown several processes that could, together, create such a large change in global plant growth.”

“The leading candidates are rising atmospheric CO2 levels, a result of emissions from human activities; longer growing seasons, a result of climate change caused by CO2 emissions; and nitrogen pollution, another result of fossil fuel combustion and agriculture,” the article also claims.

In other words, more carbon dioxide, which is being produced by humans at record levels, has improved plant growth, which in turn improves food production for humans and animals.

“The rising CO2 level stimulates crops yields,” said lead researcher Elliott Campbell, a professor at UC Merced.

Campbell said the evidence shows “a fundamental shift in the Earth’s plants” and that “global plant growth should be a central goal for the human race.”

However, don’t too excited, Campbell warns. He says despite the researchers’ findings, which clearly show global warming helps plants—and thus also helping humans and animals—global warming has many negative effects, too, such as causing “climate change, which will increase flooding of coastal cities, extreme weather and ocean acidification.”

The researchers’ study in Nature provided no proof of the claim global warming is caused by humans or that global warming will cause the severe problems Campbell said it will in the quotes provided by the UC Merced article. The study also offered no solutions for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions without causing severe economic and social problems for billions of people.

The study did, however, show increased carbon-dioxide levels have, generally, helped plants and crops.

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Liberals bamboozle public into believing global warming

The public is being bamboozled into thinking that some liberal eggheads, like Al Gore, are the smartest people in the world, and we willingly give them ever more control over our lives. It seems we have forgotten how to use our own God-given commonsense. We’re like Chicken Little and her barnyard friends, so sure that the sky is falling that we end up being eaten by the fox, aka the federal government.

A 2012 op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal and signed by 16 scientists debunked the connection between global warming and carbon dioxide. The article states that CO2 is not a pollutant, but a “key component of the biosphere’s life cycle.” The column also notes that the alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many “providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow.” It’s the old “follow the money” theme.

To quote Lord Christopher Monckton of the Science and Public Policy Institute when referring to the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “In the 19th century, British prime ministers used to say there were ‘lies, damned lies, and statistics.’ In the 21st century, we may say there are frauds, serious frauds, and IPCC Assessment Reports.”

The Earth is an amazing organism. It is not as fragile as the radical environmentalists claim. It has amazing powers to clean and heal itself. I do not mean to imply that we should squander natural resources or fail to protect our water or air. We all want clean water to drink and clean air to breathe, but this has nothing to do with man-made global warming or climate change. When I was growing up, it was simply called conservation. It has now morphed into radical environmentalism.

It just seems to me to be the height of narcissism to believe that we, as mere human beings, in the short time we have been on this Earth, could have the power to melt polar ice caps, cause the oceans to rise or fall, and cause extreme weather. I remember the warnings of “the coming ice age” back in the 1970s. That has not yet happened and, if it does, it will not have anything to do with humans.

It has been estimated that the Earth has been around for about 4.6 billion years, the modern form of human beings have been around for about 200,000 years, civilization is about 6,000 years old, and industrialization started only about 200 years ago. In that time, the Earth has gone through warming, cooling, rising oceans, earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions and other forms of climate disruptions. Species have come and gone. It is estimated that over 90 percent of species that once walked the earth are now extinct. And more are becoming extinct every day. By the same token new ones are being discovered all the time. And human beings, as much as we may like to believe we are that powerful, have nothing to do with any of it.

You can call me a “denier,” if you wish. But I prefer to think of myself as an “affirmer.” I affirm our God-given gifts of natural resources, such as oil, gas, and coal, contained in the Earth, were put there for our use — responsibly of course. But just leaving them where they are is to squander that gift.

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Shedding new light on global warming

We are still warming slightly­­ from a minor Ice Age called the “Little Ice Age”. This was the coldest sustained period over the past 10,000 years and glaciers and sea ice advanced to record levels up to about 1700.

There has been some warming since that time and there is nothing unusual or unprecedented about the Earth’s recovery since then.

The warming since 1850 is about 0.8C, according to HAD 4 surface data, and that’s about 0.5C per century.

The latest data shows less sensitivity to CO2 and this shows up in PR studies. For example, there are a number of recent sea level rise and glacier studies that show a deceleration or little change since 1950.

And all models for Antarctica and Greenland show little sea level­ rise problems for the next 300 years.

But fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) have certainly changed our health and well-being over 200 years.

From the time of the first humans­­­ until 1810 the average life expectancy was less than 40 years.

As the industrial revolution progressed this life expectancy also rapidly increased and today the first world has an average life expectancy of about 80 years and developing countries are catching up fast.

And a baby born today in Aust­ralia has an average life expectancy of 90 years.

CO2 has also caused greening of the Earth over the past 35 years and this shows up in satellite data.  It is the best plant fertiliser and also helps with drought tolerance as well.

I’m not interested in silly religious dogma and I only refer to evidence, data and the scientific method, but please look up Dr Hans Rosling’s efforts to try to educate people right around the world. See YouTube for Rosling’s “200 countries since 1810” and his TED talk trying to dispel our ignorance.

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