Greenhouse Effect Disproved in 1909

I was re-reading the essay by Dr Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner and found this account of an experiment R.W. Wood conducted in 1909 that disproved the claim about greenhouses being hotter because they trapped radiation.

There appears to be a widespread belief that the comparatively high temperature produced within a closed space covered with glass, exposed to solar radiation, results from a transformation of wave-length, that is, that the heat waves from the Sun, which are able to penetrate the glass, fall upon the walls of the enclosure and raise its temperature: the heat energy is re-emitted by the walls in the form of much longer waves, which are unable to penetrate the glass, the greenhouse acting as a radiation trap.

I have always felt some doubt as to whether this action played any very large part in the elevation of temperature. It appeared much more probable that the part played by the glass was the prevention of the escape of the warm air heated by the ground within the enclosure. If we open the doors of a greenhouse on a cold windy day, the trapping of radiation appears to lose much of its efficacy.

As a matter of fact I am of the opinon that a greenhouse made of a glass transparent to waves of every possible length would show a temperature nearly, if not quite, as high as that observed in a glass house. The transparent screen allows the solar radiation to warm the ground, and the ground in turn warms the air, but only the limited amount within the enclosure. In the "open", the ground is continually brought into contact with cold air by convection currents.

To test the matter I constructed two enclosures of dead black cardboard, one covered with a glass plate, the other with a plate of rock-salt of equal thickness. The bulb of a thermometer was inserted in each enclosure and the whole packed in cotton, with the exception of the transparent plates which were exposed. When exposed to sunlight the temperature rose gradually to 65 C, the enclosure covered with the salt plate keeping a little ahead of the other, owing to the fact that transmitted the longer waves from the Sun, which were stopped by the glass.

In order to eliminate this action the sunlight was first passed through a glass plate. There was now scarcely a difference of one degree between the temperatures of the two enclosures. The maximum temperature reached was about 55 C. From what we know about the distribution of energy in the spectrum of the radiation emitted by a body at 55 C, it is clear that the rock-salt plate is capable of transmitting practically all of it,while the glass plate stops it entirely. This shows us that the loss of temperature of the ground by radiation is very small in comparison to the loss by convection, in other words that we gain very little from the circumstance that the radiation is trapped.

Is it therefore necessary to pay attention to trapped radiation in deducing the temperature of a planet as affected by its atmosphere? The solar rays penetrate the atmosphere. warm the ground which in turn warms the atmosphere by contact and by convection currents. The heat received is thus stored up in the atmosphere, remaining there on account of the very low radiating power of a gas. It seems to me very doubtful if the atmosphere is warmed to any great extent by absorbing the radiation from the ground even under the most favorable conditions.

Originally published in the Philosophical magazine , 1909, vol 17, p319-320.

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UN CLIMATE CONFERENCES AND MANIC DEPRESSION: CLINICAL SYMPTOMS

Will the U.N. Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) [COP 13/MOP 3, Bali, Indonesia, December 3-14] follow the now well-established pattern of manic-depression that has characterised nearly all such previous mass meetings, including those in The Hague (2000), in Marrakesh, Morocco (2001), in Edinburgh around the G8 Summit (2005), in Montreal (2005), and in Nairobi, Kenya (2006)?

First, key figures will work hard, through the media, to try to lower public expectations - e.g., "This is only about producing a `road map', or timetable, for future negotiations"; "It is just about putting a process in motion rather than taking any substantive decisions."

Then, for the first few days of the Conference nothing much obvious will happen, and there is little for the hordes of environmental reporters to report. Things only start to get `hot' when governments finally let loose their senior figures to `finalise' the key issues during the last three days [for example, the UK will be sending three gunboats to Bali, namely HMS Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, his junior minister, HMS Phil Woolas, and jolly old HMS Sir Nicholas Stern ("For it is he!")].

Then, if things go to plan, the 'meeting' will be reported as "slow and difficult", or even "failing" (as, classically, at Montreal in 2005), with participants walking out, or raising "impossible" issues. "Why do the developing countries keep on insisting that we should carry all the burden and pay for everything?" Ultimately, the `meeting' then extends into the early hours of the morning after the day on which it is meant to have closed, the chair and host nation using every trick in the moral-blackmail book to achieve something for the record and for home consumption.

Finally, a relatively bland agreement is cobbled together at the very last minute. Thousands of participants and journalists emerge from their fierce-small-world euphoric, tears are shed, and the "success" of the meeting is over-hyped and over-spun - "The world can breathe again!"; "We are saved!"; "Real progress has been made!"

Eventually, in the cold light of day, euphoria turns quite quickly to angst and to bitterness as it becomes increasingly obvious that little-to-nothing has really been achieved and that nobody will act on what has been agreed in any case.

The euphoric high is inexorably followed by a long depression - until, that is, the next migration and Conference of 15,000 souls [COP 14, by the way, will be in Pozna?, Poland, from 1-12 December, 2008. Just thought you would like to know].

Medical Symptoms?

If you examine carefully the symptoms exhibited during and after these repeated 'meeting patterns', while analysing in detail the changing media language involved, it becomes obvious that `global warming' hype is leading to clinically-identifiable symptoms closely associated with those presented in `mass psychogenic illness', or `mass sociogenic illness'.

The following two medical papers explain these syndromes, with detailed examples: (a) `Mass psychogenic illness: role of the individual physician' [American Family Physician (2000) 62: 2649-53,2655-6], and (b) `Mass psychogenic illness: a case report and overview' [Psychiatric Times, April 2000, XVII, 4]. Here is a key passage from (a):

"Mass psychogenic illness is characterized by symptoms, occurring among a group of persons with shared beliefs regarding those symptoms, that suggest organic illness but have no identifiable environmental cause and little clinical or laboratory evidence of disease. Mass psychogenic illness typically affects adolescents or children, groups under stress and females disproportionately more than males. Symptoms often follow an environmental trigger or illness in an index case. They can spread rapidly by apparent visual transmission, may be aggravated by a prominent emergency or media response, and frequently resolve after patients are separated from each other and removed from the environment in which the outbreak began. Physicians should consider this diagnosis when faced with a cluster of unexplained acute illness."

Fascinatingly, such mass hysteria can spread rapidly to those who are distant from any original `event'; in such cases, the response is known as `mass hysteria by proxy'. One outbreak of `mass hysteria by proxy', for example, has been documented, in which anxiety transmitted among parents led to reports of serious symptoms in students.

`Global warming' hysteria appears to be a classic example of `mass psychogenic illness', which is triggered and fed by the regular world meetings mentioned above, but which is then transmitted globally through a 24-hour media and Green pressure groups as `mass hysteria by proxy'.

This is hardly surprising, as taking the temperature of the Earth every second of every day, and then reporting it uncritically and apocalyptically via 24-hour-rolling news, constitutes a perfect trigger for folk with a predisposition to hypochondria, or, in this case, to ecochondria. Manic-depression, or bipolar-disorder, then begins to exhibit itself, both in the individual and in the media.

The truth is, therefore, a serious one: 'global warming' hype is bad for your health. Yes, Green hype can be clinically damaging.

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A BLAST OF HOT AIR AT BALI'S CLIMATE CONFERENCE

It's not the waste that rankles so much as the hypocrisy. Some 15,000 politicians, officials, quangocrats and assorted busybodies are descending on Bali for a jamboree that will produce more than 100,000 tons of CO2 emissions. The purpose of their trip? To discuss how to reduce CO2 emissions.

We wonder whether there would be so many observers and hangers-on if the venue were, say, Duesseldorf. For many of those attending have no direct involvement in the talks. For example, 19 MEPs, accompanied by advisers and staff, are in Bali, staying at a luxurious spa hotel. Not only will their fares, meals and accommodation be paid for by the rest of us, but they will also claim a further 95 pounds per day.

Our purpose is not just to mock the attendees. No, we have a deeper objection. The Bali summit represents much of what is wrong with the green movement, in that it elevates intentions over results. The supposedly ethical aims of the conference are presumed to render irrelevant the pollution engendered by its delegates. Euro-MPs, and politicians generally, often behave this way. When Indonesia was devastated by the 2004 tsunami, MEPs cheerfully voted millions of their constituents' euros in aid. But when it was suggested that they might contribute a single day's attendance allowance - around 190 pounds - to the relief effort, they were horrified. They demand green taxation, yet many of them fly to Strasbourg by the most environmentally unfriendly routes, thereby pocketing higher mileage allowances.

The Kyoto agenda is not principally about affecting climate change. Even if we accept all its proponents' figures, we would succeed in reducing the projected temperature rise by just 0.3F over the next century (at a cost of an almost unbelievable 3 trillion pounds). No, the Bali meeting is not really about doing anything. It is about feeling smug; and getting paid for it.

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U.N. scam shows Marxism at heart of warming movement

By PHIL VALENTINE

Apparently, I hit a nerve with a column I wrote a couple of weeks ago on global warming. Many of you took umbrage with my daring to connect the global warming movement to Marxism. Don't get me wrong. I do not believe everyone involved in the global warming movement subscribes to Karl Marx's philosophy. However, make no mistake about it. Those at the epicenter of this movement have ulterior motives, many of them socialist or even Marxist. What I wrote that caused such a fuss was that global warming is being used as a template to rob from the rich nations and give to the poor ones.

Right on cue, the United Nations issued a report last week that made my point. The headline from The Associated Press: "Poor will need $86b from rich to cope, UN says." Ah, here we go. The report says the rich nations will need to cough up $86 billion per year by 2015 to "strengthen the capacity of vulnerable people." Half the money, ostensibly, would go toward "climate-proofing" developing nations' infrastructure, whatever that means, while the other half would help the poor cope with related risks. Of course, the ambiguity is on purpose. You and I know that the bulk of this money will be skimmed off by tinhorn dictators, the same rabble that runs the U.N.

The report was conveniently released just a week before the world's nations gather in Bali to hammer out yet another Kyoto-style climate treaty. This will be another attempt to shame the developed world into turning over their hard-earned gold and silver to the rest of the world. "In Bali, we are going to very seriously discuss the price rich countries have to pay so that poorer countries can preserve their forests," said Brazil's leftist president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Ironically, Brazil is one of the world's biggest emitters of so-called greenhouse gases. They're mowing down the rain forest to beat the band, and now they and the United Nations want us to pay them to stop destroying it. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

The Bali bailout comes at a time when the Energy Information Administration reports that U.S. carbon dioxide emissions are actually down 1.5 percent. Don't count on that getting much press at the conference. We're also coming off a tame hurricane season, despite the loud rantings from the global-warming crowd that this would be one of the worst seasons on record. Al Gore said in September 2005, "Now, the scientific community is warning us that the average hurricane will continue to get stronger because of global warming." We're coming off two relatively tame hurricane seasons in a row. Where are all these stronger hurricanes Gore was warning about? Does that mean he's now willing to admit he was wrong? Probably not.

Actually, the only hurricane-force winds clocked in these parts came from the wake of Al Gore's automobile. According to a report by NewsChannel5, ole Spotted Al was clocked doing a not-so-fuel-efficient 95 mph last year. At least, he'll be able to speed in style. The Tennessean's own Beverly Keel reported that Mr. Gore was spotted purchasing a Lexus LS 600h, their new hybrid model. According to a New York Times review, Al's new ride gets a whopping 21 mpg - 1 mpg less than the non-hybrid version. Atta way to save the planet, Al. Maybe there's an opening for you at the U.N.

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Another "consensus" scientist

If Georgia writer Richard Noone knew what he was talking about, he'd be dead, and you'd be dead, and the Earth would be one large ice ball hurtling through space. Sometimes failure is the greatest revenge. Today, Noone is living in Bayonet Point, Fla., having survived - along with the rest of us - his forecast in the book, "5/5/2000 Ice: The Ultimate Disaster" that, on Friday, May 5, 2000, the earth's poles would shift and millions would die as the planet was plunged into another ice age.

His theory - the result of years of research, and more than a few giant intuitive leaps - made Noone semi-famous at the turn of the millennium when prognosticators of what will happen next were darlings of a mass media always looking for a fresh hook. He appeared on "Oprah" and CNN and explained how the catastrophe was predicted in encoded inscriptions in the Great Pyramid of Giza and would be set in motion on May 5 by an extraordinary alignment of the planets. That alignment would exert such a gravitational pull the ice caps would be torn loose and continents would shift so that people standing in Georgia would find themselves suddenly whipped at 200 miles an hour to another part of the planet such as Nicaragua.

As far-fetched as that sounded then - and now - Noone still sticks by the research that went into his book, first published in 1982. "The overwhelming majority of articles in my bibliography were from the world's prestigious science journals, such as Scientific American, Smithsonian and Science," he says. "It's not like I quoted some mythical evangelist like Jimbo Billy Euripides."

He might as well have. Back then, by the time his forecast doomsday was about to roll around, Noone conceded his prediction was probably wrong and joked to a reporter that, for all he knew, when May 5 hit "I'll celebrate Cinco de Mayo." He says now, 7 1/2 later, he feels a bit redeemed because of the growing acceptance of the theory of global warming, which he also talked about in his book. At age 63 - 30 years after he went from an Atlanta wig and jewelry importer, to futurist author who wrote the first draft of his book in longhand - he's suddenly in the company of another global weather doom prognosticator: former Vice President and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore. If Gore hasn't read "Ice," he ought to, says Noone. "The articles in my book are a handy reference for anybody writing on global warming and what we may soon experience," he says.

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For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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Lack of development: that's the real disaster

An Oxfam report suggests climate change has led to a quadrupling of weather-related disasters. It pays to interrogate such heated claims

Are we seeing the disastrous consequences of global warming already? That's the conclusion of a new report, Climate Alarm, by the British aid charity, Oxfam: `Climatic disasters are on the increase as the Earth warms up - in line with scientific observations and computer simulations that model future climate. 2007 has been a year of climatic crises, especially floods, often of an unprecedented nature. The total number of natural disasters has quadrupled in the last two decades - most of them floods, cyclones and storms.' (1)

It certainly sounds like it's been a bad year for bad weather. While much of the UK was under water during a particularly wet summer, the Oxfam report notes that Africa has suffered its worst floods for three decades, affecting 23 countries and nearly two million people. As of August, 248million people in Asia had been affected by flooding, followed by cyclone Sidr hitting Bangladesh in November, killing an estimated 3,000 people. Two category-five hurricanes hit Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean, with four-fifths of the Mexican state of Tabasco under water at one point. Meanwhile, heatwaves and forest fires affected more than a million people in Greece and Eastern Europe, and severe drought also contributed to fires in Australia and California.

But it is the suggestion that there are now four times as many disasters per year as there were in the early 1980s that has grabbed the media's attention. Between 1980 and 2006, according to the Oxfam report, the number of floods and cyclones quadrupled from 60 to 240 a year, while the number of earthquakes remained approximately the same, at 20 per year. The report suggests that over the past two decades, the number of people annually affected by disasters has increased from an average of 174million to 254million. It notes that `small- and medium-scale disasters are occurring more frequently than the kind of large-scale disasters that hit the headlines', but, if these disasters occur close together in time or location, they can merge to produce a `mega disaster'.

Much of this seems to be down to definition. For example, the Oxfam figures are based on statistics from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) which seems to take a fairly promiscuous approach to `disasters'. An event qualifies as a `disaster' for the CRED statistics if one of the following applies: 10 or more people are killed; 100 or more are affected; there is a state of emergency declared; a call for international assistance is made. A `small- to medium- disaster' involves up to 50 deaths, affects up to 150,000 people, or causes $200million in economic losses.

What the Oxfam report fails to mention is the caution that the CRED itself places on historical trends in disaster statistics (2). There are good reasons to suggest that the statistics may largely reflect increased reporting of disasters rather than an increase in the occurrence of disasters. Firstly, improvements in telecommunications and the media mean we are more likely to hear about disasters. Secondly, there are more agencies dedicated to working in disaster zones. Thirdly, as insurance claims become more common, so insurance companies have become more and more likely to report and document disasters.....

There is another series of statistics on disasters, issued by the insurance company Swiss Re. Its annual reports on disasters have been available online for the past decade (3). From these, it is possible to get an alternative take on the number of flood, storm, fire, drought and extreme cold events, and the number of deaths-by-disaster over the past 10 years. If there was a strong upward trend, we would expect to see it here, too:

While over the course of the decade, the average number of disastrous events does appear to have gone up, it is nothing like the dramatic increase the Oxfam figures describe. Moreover, given increasing wealth and population, the chances of an event hitting an area with sufficient population, or causing enough economic damage, to qualify as a disaster may well have increased even if the weather itself hasn't changed much.

Perhaps more important than the issue of whether and why these events are occurring is the question: what impact are they having? One way their impact can be measured is through looking at death tolls. (This is not to suggest, however, that life is dandy for those left behind: disasters leave a legacy of economic disruption, which is often a severe blow, particularly in poor countries where survival is difficult at the best of times.) Death tolls seem to be extremely variable, but in the current century they don't seem to have changed greatly:

Deaths from earthquakes, on average, seem to outweigh deaths from weather-related events - even when the massive death toll from 2004, which includes the earthquake and tsunami in South Asia, is ignored. (Earthquake deaths averaged about 46,000 per year including 2004 and about 20,000 per year excluding 2004; deaths from weather-related disasters average at about 18,000 a year.) And the average annual death toll from all the natural disasters listed by Swiss Re over a 10-year period - even including the 2004 tsunami - is around 65,000 people. That is a terribly tragic loss of life. It would seem that the risk of dying in a noteworthy natural disaster is about 100,000-to-one for the world's six billion-plus people; more prosaic causes of death, including from easily curable diseases and a lack of clean water, have a far more devastating impact around the world.

What the Oxfam report really reveals is how climate change has become the only debate in town. The demand for development has been placed on the back burner, replaced by an overarching concern about carbon emissions. In fairness to Oxfam, the report makes quite clear that natural disasters have a disproportionate impact on the developing world, while emergency aid is extremely variable and tends to focus on high-profile disasters. The report makes some sensible proposals on improving the aid system and increasing the resilience of societies to sudden shocks.

Nonetheless, it seems the Oxfam report hit the headlines because it chimes with our doom-mongering times: that is, it seems to have dramatically overstated the number and impact of serious disasters in recent years. For example, there is a sharp contrast between the worst floods in living memory in the UK this year - which caused a handful of deaths and led to a depressing clearing-up operation - and floods that occur in the developing world, which cause many more deaths and societal dislocation that can last for months and even years. This disaster disparity demonstrates the need for rapid development in the infrastructure and wealth of developing nations.

Even relatively simple measures can make a huge difference, as the Oxfam report notes: `Bangladesh has made great strides in reducing the impact of the hazards that constantly assail it. In 1991 over 138,000 people perished in a cyclone. Subsequent cyclones - even the devastating cyclone that hit on 15 November [this year], the biggest since 1991 - have killed far fewer people, due to the existence of cyclone shelters and greater community-based preparedness including evacuation plans, early warnings and the mobilisation of volunteers. In the Bangladesh countryside, "raised villages" and flood shelters - artificial mounds the size of soccer pitches to which whole communities can retreat from floods - are fairly common sights. Mozambique too has got steadily better at implementing flood contingency plans, including providing essential services for displaced people (reducing recourse to international assistance).'

In Cuba, the report tells us, things have gone even further: `At the national level, Cuba's disaster legislation, public education on disasters, meteorological research, early warning system, effective communication system for emergencies, comprehensive emergency plan, and Civil Defence structure are important resources in avoiding disaster. At the local level, high levels of literacy, developed infrastructure in rural areas, and access to reliable healthcare are crucial for national efforts in disaster mitigation, preparation, and response.'

Instead of pandering to current obsessions about climate change, then, perhaps Oxfam and other aid agencies should make the argument that development, not carbon counting, is key to freeing people from the occasional tyranny of natural disasters. It is only through development that socities can make themselves resilient to extreme weather, and also raise their horizons to more than surviving the next flood or storm. Today, the exaggerated notion that disasters are the fault of man, with his continual carbon-emitting, suggests that meaningful development and industrialisation will only make matters worse. By focusing heavily on climate change, charities like Oxfam ensure that their reports make the front pages - but at the same time they implicitly undermine the case for sweeping development around the globe. That the goal of development is now deemed to be unrealistic - or worse, undesirable - is the real disaster of modern times.

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Our Greenie masters might allow us to keep our existing light-fittings yet

Al Gore says switching from incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescents can help save the planet from global warming. California, Canada and the European Union are so persuaded he's right, the three governments are in the process of banning the sale of incandescent light bulbs, following the trailblazing paths of Fidel Castro in Cuba and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is on board, urging American citizens to do their part for the environment and switch to the twisty little CFL bulbs that last longer and use less electricity.

But opposition is building among other environmentalists who say the threat of mercury contamination as a result of hundreds of millions of broken CFLS, each containing about 5 milligrams of the highly toxic substance, outweighs any benefits from a switch from Thomas Edison's trusty old invention. One new voice weighing in against the tide is Andrew Michrowski of the Canadian-based Planetary Association for Clean Energy: "I feel it's very important to warn people these 'green' bulbs contain mercury, which will end up in landfills throughout the country if we make the switch to them. In addition to filling our landfills with mercury, if the bulbs break you will be exposed to the mercury they contain." He says consumers shouldn't buy them - even though they are now showing up in stores all over America.

Even the EPA, which is cheerleading the mania for the switch to CFLs, offers bone-chilling warnings about the dangers of mercury - if you search for them. "Exposure to mercury, a toxic metal, can affect our brain, spinal cord, kidneys and liver," says the agency.

When a CFL breaks, the EPA cautions consumers to open a window and leave the room immediately for at least 15 minutes because of the mercury threat. The agency suggests removing all materials by scooping fragments and powder using cardboard or stiff paper. Sticky tape is suggested as a way to get smaller particles. The EPA says vacuum cleaners and bare hands should never be used in such cleanups. After final cleanup with a damp paper towel, the agency warns consumers to place all materials in a plastic bag. "Seal and dispose of properly," says the EPA. "Wash hands."

But disposing of properly might be a tough thing to do, because CFLs never should be thrown in the trash like their old-fashioned incandescent predecessors. They need to be turned into recycling centers, which are few and far between. When laws banning incandescent bulbs take effect, so do the mandatory fines on consumers and businesses that dispose of the new CFLs improperly.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health also offers cautions about mercury. "Exposures to very small amounts of these compounds [mercury] can result in devastating neurological damage and death," says NIH. "For fetuses, infants and children, the primary health effects of mercury are on neurological development. Even low levels of mercury exposure, such as result from a mother's consumption of methyl mercury in dietary sources, can adversely affect the brain and nervous system. Impacts on memory, attention, language and other skills have been found in children exposed to moderate levels in the womb."

However, critics are concerned that the EPA and environmentalists are minimizing the dangers of mercury contamination from CFLs. Mercury, an essential component of CFLs, is a neurotoxin that the EPA classifies as a hazardous household material. The craze to get consumers to buy CFLs, instead of the old incandescents, precedes any serious plans for disposal or recycling of the broken or unbroken fluorescents.

A major debate has erupted among architects about the pros and cons of CFLs, with many "now calling for lower mercury in lighting systems," says Michael Driedger, a Vancouver-based architect specializing in green technologies. "Many people, especially in the lighting industry, are waiting for the lighting industry to develop mercury-free light emitting diode (LED) lighting as a safe substitute for CFLs," he says.

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FALL IN WEATHER DEATHS DENTS CLIMATE WARNINGS

GREEN scientists have been accused of overstating the dangers of climate change by researchers who found that the number of people killed each year by weather-related disasters is falling. Their report suggests that a central plank in the global warming argument - that it will result in a big increase in deaths from weather-related disasters - is undermined by the facts. It shows deaths in such disasters peaked in the 1920s and have been declining ever since. Average annual deaths from weather-related events in the period 1990-2006 - considered by scientists to be when global warming has been most intense - were down by 87% on the 1900-89 average. The mortality rate from catastrophes, measured in deaths per million people, dropped by 93%.

The report by the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change, a grouping of 41 mainly free-market bodies, comes on the eve of an international meeting on climate change in Bali. Indur Goklany, a US-based expert on weather-related catastrophes, charted global deaths through the 20th century from "extreme" weather events. Compared with the peak rate of deaths from weather-related events in the 1920s of nearly 500,000 a year, the death toll during the period 2000-06 averaged 19,900. "The United Nations has got the issues and their relative importance backward," Goklany said. The number of deaths had fallen sharply because of better warning systems, improved flood defences and other measures. Poor countries remained most vulnerable.

Greenpeace attacked the International Policy Network, one of the Civil Society organisations, which is publishing the report in Britain. “The International Policy Network is known for being in the pay of the world’s biggest oil company,” a spokesman said. The network said: “Funding for this project has come entirely from private individuals and foundations.”

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For US, Carbon Dioxide Ranks Last Among Climate Factors and is Decreasing

The now familiar plot of the US climate network since 1895 shows a cyclical pattern with a rise from 1895 to a peak near 1930 and decline into the 1970s and then another rise with an apparent peak around 2000. Note the minor warming from the peak in 1930 to the peak in 2000.



The short term fluctuations are driven by factors such as ENSO and volcanic eruptions. The longer term cycles are mainly driven by cycles in the sun and oceans although changes in the last half century have been increasingly blamed on anthropogenic factors. Let's look at the three longer term factors mentioned and how well they actually correlated with the observed temperatures



Clearly the US annul temperatures over the last century have correlated far better with cycles in the sun and oceans than carbon dioxide. Whatsmore, this correlation with carbon dioxide seems to be weakening further in the last decade. Read full details about how this analysis was done here.

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Polar Bear Population Forecasts: A Public-Policy Forecasting Audit

This paper is authored by Ivy League award winning forecaster J. Scott Armstrong and Monash U. Kesten Green and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Willie Soon

Excerpt from Abstract: Our audit of the second most relevant paper, H6, found that it was also based on faulty forecasting methodology. For example, it extrapolated nearly 100 years into the future on the basis of only five years data - and data for these years were of doubtful validity. In summary, experts' predictions, unaided by evidence-based forecasting procedures, should play no role in this decision. Without scientific forecasts of a substantial decline of the polar bear population and of net benefits from feasible policies arising from listing polar bears, a decision to list polar bears as threatened or endangered would be irresponsible.

Excerpt from Conclusion: The issue of listing a species under the Endangered Species Act should be based on credible scientific forecasts. Based on our Internet search of the published scholarly research and on appeals to other researchers we have been unable to locate any papers that referred to scientific procedures for making forecasts of polar bear populations. Furthermore, a review of the references in the nine government reports written to support the listing of polar bears under the Endangered Species Act failed to find any papers relevant to scientific forecasting procedures. We take no issue with the scientific work of the researchers whose work we have reviewed as it relates to the past. Our concern is that there are currently no scientific forecasts of the polar bear population; nor of direction or magnitude of changes. Without scientific forecasts of a substantial decline of the polar bear population and of net benefits from feasible policies arising from listing polar bears, a decision to list polar bears as threatened or endangered would be irresponsible.

Full Paper Here

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For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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GREENIES WANT TO TURN IPCC INTO GREEN CAMPAIGN ORGANISATION

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has produced four massive assessments of climate-change science since 1990. Its efforts culminated this year in a summary report that many argue delivers solid answers to the biggest questions - whether and to what extent humans are contributing to global warming - while laying a strong foundation for dealing with the possible dangers and finding potential solutions. Now, some are beginning to argue, it's time for the IPCC to change gear and alter the way it works.

In a policy forum piece published today in Science (1), two scientists argue that the IPCC must become a nimbler body if it is to remain relevant in the coming years.

Until now, the IPCC has produced a set of reports over the course of a year once every five or six years. But waiting until 2012 for another summary report isn't an option, argues Frank Raes, a climate scientist with the European Commission's Institute for Environment and Sustainability in Ispra, Italy, and one of two authors on the Science commentary. "We cannot wait another five, seven years for an assessment," he says. "We have to act." Action, he argues, will require swifter input from the IPCC.

"It's an open debate, and this is the right time to have it really," says Peter Cox, a climate modeller with the Met Office at the University of Exeter, UK. "In some sense, we've taken step one of the IPCC path, which is to demonstrate that climate change is an issue and that it's due to human activities." Step two, Cox says, is to reorganize the process "from end to end" around adaptation and mitigation. "Rather than just elucidating the climate problem, it's got to be more focused on solutions."

IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri is currently circulating a paper discussing the panel's future and raising questions about structural reforms - including whether there should be more targeted assessments or fewer comprehensive assessments. He says he personally sees no need for major changes. Major assessments on the order of five or six years will remain useful, he says, while IPCC can respond to demand from policy makers with targeted assessments as needed.

"We definitely need a larger social science dimension," he says, as well as more analysis of economic impacts of adaptation and mitigation. "That's my personal view, but I will be guided by what governments want."

Quick answers

Raes and colleague Rob Swart, who manages the European Topic Centre on Air and Climate Change in Bilthoven, the Netherlands, suggest that the IPCC consider the United Nations' acid-rain programme as a model. The Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution, which covers Europe and North America, went through an initial period of broad assessments on the science itself, Raes says, and then entered a second stage that has brought together industry, environmentalists and policy-makers to address specific policy questions.

Raes and Swart suggest that the IPCC do something similar. Although it would remain a purely scientific body that doesn't give policy advice, it could shift to providing specific information driven by policy questions.

This might involve a reorganization of the panel. The IPCC currently has one working group that assesses the basic science of global warming, a second working on risks and adaptation, and a third analysing mitigation options. That system could continue to provide broad assessments on a longer timeline, Raes says, but policy questions about how to treat biofuels and deforestation require a more integrated approach.

Martin Parry, who co-chairs the IPCC's second working group, says there is broad acknowledgement that faster, targeted assessments will be needed. But he adds that there is still a role for a body that produces broad scientific assessments independent of the policy process. "I'm somewhat skeptical of integrated assessments," Parry says. "There's something to be said for keeping the science assessment clean and at a distance [from policy]."

Special reports

Few people question the idea that the IPCC will need to adjust its sights, but some say a drastic overhaul of the organization might not be necessary. Leonard Bernstein, an author of the fourth synthesis report issued in Valencia, Spain, earlier this month, said the IPCC already has a model for this in the way it handles "special reports" on specific topics such as carbon sequestration and renewable energies.

"If you use the special report model, it's not even a matter of adapting the IPCC," Bernstein says, adding that special reports are interdisciplinary and can be issued within a couple of years. "That would make the process quicker, more flexible and more integrated because these reports do cover policy, economics and technology."

The IPCC could also shift its timing, such that one of the working groups releases a report every two years, as opposed to all three releasing simultaneous reports, says Cox. He says such a system would allow each group to build on the latest work done by the other groups, and would naturally encourage scientists in each group to help those currently working on a report.

Pachauri says he hopes the IPCC's future can be discussed and ultimately settled when the panel meets in April 2008, so the new leadership has a "clear mandate" when it takes office in September 2008.

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Warmist polar expedition cancelled due to extreme cold

You can't make stuff like this up. The snicker factor just keeps mounting over the antics of global warming alarmists. Patrick Condon of the Associated Press reported last March:

A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite. The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment. "Ann said losing toes and going forward at all costs was never part of the journey," said Ann Atwood, who helped organize the expedition. On Monday, the pair was at Canada's Ward Hunt Island, awaiting a plane to take them to Resolute, Canada, where they were to return to Minneapolis later this week.

While losing toes to frostbite is no joke, one has to wonder if these two publicity-seekers were undone by believing their own propaganda. Did visions of an ice-free North Pole lure them into pressing onward after some equipment was damaged? Extreme cold is to be expected if one is visiting polar regions, and presumably, as experienced polar trekkers, they brought along adequate gear. So why did they not abort the mission when they suffered gear problems? And how many purportedly harmful carbon dioxide molecules were generated by the rescue airplane to be sent to save them from their folly? I hope the two recover fully and come to realize that it can still be really, really cold in the arctic, no matter what Al Gore tells them.

The explorers had planned to call in regular updates to school groups by satellite phone, and had planned online posts with photographic evidence of global warming. In contrast to Bancroft's 1986 trek across the Arctic with fellow Minnesota explorer Will Steger, this time she and Arnesen were prepared to don body suits and swim through areas where polar ice has melted.

I hope they are now letting those school groups know that it is foolish to plan to swim in the Arctric beacuse it gets really, really cold there.

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A SOCIALIST DREAM COME TRUE: "NOW THE RICH MUST PAY"

Says the Warmist Nicholas Stern below:

The Bali summit on climate change, which starts next week, will seek to lay the foundations for a new global agreement on reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that cause rising temperatures and climate change. Ambitious targets for emission reduction must be at the heart of that agreement, together with effective market mechanisms that encourage emission trading between countries, rich and poor. The problem of climate change involves a fundamental failure of markets: those who damage others by emitting greenhouse gases generally do not pay. Climate change is a result of the greatest market failure the world has seen.

The evidence on the seriousness of the risks from inaction is now overwhelming. We risk damage on a scale larger than the two world wars of the past century. The problem is global and the response must be collaboration on a global scale. The rich countries must lead the way in taking action. And in thinking about global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we must invoke three basic criteria.

The first is effectiveness: the scale of the response must be commensurate with the challenge. This means setting a target for emission reduction that can keep the risks at acceptable levels.

The overall targets of 50% reductions in emissions by 2050 (relative to 1990) agreed at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm last June are essential if we are to have a reasonable chance of keeping temperature increases below 2C or 3C. While these targets involve strong action, they are not overambitious relative to the risk of failing to achieve them.

The second criterion is efficiency: we must keep down the costs of emission reduction, using prices or taxes wherever possible. Emission trading between countries must be a central part of the story. And helping poor countries cover their costs of emission reduction gives them an incentive to join a global deal.

Third, we should be concerned about equity. Our starting point is deeply inequitable with poor countries certain to be hit earliest and hardest by climate change. But rich countries are responsible for the bulk of past emissions: US emissions are currently more than 20 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per annum, Europe's are 10-15 tonnes, China's five or more tonnes, India's around one tonne, and most of Africa much less than one.

For a 50% reduction in global emissions by 2050, the world average per capita must drop from seven tonnes to two or three. Within these global targets, even a minimal view of equity demands that the rich countries' reductions should be at least 80% - either made directly or purchased. An 80% target for rich countries would bring equality of only the flow of current emissions - around the two to three tonnes per capita level. In fact, they will have consumed the big majority of the available space in the atmosphere.

Rich countries also need to provide funding for three more key elements of a global deal. First, there should be an international programme to combat deforestation, which contributes 15-20% of emissions. For $10bn-$15bn per year, half the deforestation could be stopped.

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Countries Missing Kyoto Targets, Taxpayers to Foot the Bill

As climate alarmists around the world head to a tropical paradise on Bali next week to discuss how developed nations should pay to solve global warming, an inconvenient truth has emerged: many countries that are part of the Kyoto Protocol are going to dramatically overshoot their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions limits.

While it seems a metaphysical certitude that America's green media will largely boycott such revelations so as not to put a damper on the hysterical proceedings, the fact that taxpayers in countries missing these targets will end up footing the bill also appears likely to be ignored. As reported by Bloomberg Friday:

Japan, Italy and Spain face fines of as much as $33 billion combined for failing to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions as promised under the Kyoto treaty. The three countries are the worst performers among 36 nations that agreed to curb carbon dioxide gases that cause climate change. The 1997 Kyoto accord designed to slow global warming demands that polluting nations buy credits for their excess emissions from other industrial polluters or investors. ``They're looking at a huge bill now,'' said Mike Rosenberg, management professor at the University of Navarra's IESE Business School in Barcelona. ``That is because none would pay to reconvert factories, power plants and paper mills'' to trim gases blamed for the planet-warming ``greenhouse effect.''

Why will they miss these targets? Hold on to your seats:

Spain, Italy and Japan are likely to miss their Kyoto commitments because they underestimated economic growth and future emissions from factories and utilities.

Hmmm. So, Spain, Italy, and Japan emitted more GHGs than they thought because their economies were stronger than expected. Think Spanish, Italian, and Japanese citizens benefited from this added growth? Yet, because this expansion was better than forecast, businesses and citizens in these countries will be penalized:

Spain will pass 40 percent of the cost for the extra emissions on to businesses, Secretary of State for Energy Ignasi Nieto told journalists in Madrid July 31. The rest will come from taxes.

Do the math: that means in Spain, 60 percent of the penalties will be paid by the citizens. Interesting form of capitalism, dontcha think: grow your economy too much, pay a fine! But there's more:

In Italy, taxpayers will foot 75 percent of the bill for extra permits. ``Italy's behind, and we need to keep cutting emissions,'' said Environment Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio on Sept. 13 in Rome. Japanese taxpayers will pay for two-thirds of that nation's excess, New Carbon Finance estimated, based on the current sharing between state funding and industry.

And, as reported by the Irish Independent Wednesday, Ireland faces similar difficulties:

TAXPAYERS face having to fork out more than _270m so that Ireland can "buy its way" into meeting the Kyoto agreement on greenhouse gas emissions. Ireland is set to overshoot its Kyoto targets by almost 100pc as things stand, according to the latest figures from the European Commission.

Welcome to green capitalism, coming to a country near you without any warning from your media.

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CBS Seeking 'Irreverent,' 'Hip' Journalist for Eco-Beat (No Knowledge Required)

CBS is getting desperate. The network has posted an ad seeking a reporter to cover the "eco beat" - with some interesting requirements. "CBS is expanding its coverage of the environment," the ad reads. "We seek a talented reporter/host for Internet video broadcast. We are looking for smart, creative, hard working up and comers, who can bring great energy, creativity and a dash of humor to our coverage. A deep interest in the environment and sustainability issues will serve you well."

So you would think such a job would require a science background or years of covering environmental news? Not exactly. "You are wicked smart, funny, irreverent and hip, oozing enthusiasm and creative energy," the ad reads. "This position requires strong people, reporting, story telling and writing skills. Managing tight deadlines should be second nature. Knowledge of the enviro beat is a big plus, but not a requirement."

Ironically, the ad shows irreverence to what kind of carbon footprint the job duties might require. The ad includes: "Be prepared to see America. Heavy domestic travel." That would continue CBS's efforts across the country. In September, CBS's "The Early Show" showed viewers how one Florida family went to extraordinary lengths with high costs to lower their carbon footprint.

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For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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Global Temperatures are Uncorrelated with Carbon Dioxide Trends This Last Decade

Temperatures peaked in 1998 and have shown no warming for a decade now. Many scientists have been remarking about this trend for several years but no one takes heed, preferring to believe models than actual data. Here is the satellite derived global temperature trend since 1979. Note the cooling globally near the volcanically active periods of the early 1980s and 1990s. Note also the warm spike associated with the super El Nino that seemingly marked the beginning of the end of the warm Pacific trend that began in 1978.



Note the subsequent cooling as a series of 3 La Ninas in 4 years helped cool the earth in the late 1990s. Temperatures rebounded a bit in the early 2000s with a slight rebound in the Pacific warmth, three El Ninos and a volcanic aerosol-free stratosphere, but the trend since 2001 has been flat and at a level considerably below the peak of 1998. This lack of warming has occurred despite the increases in carbon dioxide.

Indeed, when comparing this satellite derived temperature trend the last decade with the carbon dioxide increases as seasonally adjusted from Scripps, we find NO CORRELATION (just 0.07 r squared!!!)



Global warming is over. Man was never responsible.

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America the virtuous: U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Declined 1.5 Percent in 2006

This all happened without benefit of the U.S. ratifying Kyoto. Odd that America does what Europe just blathers about. Will Europe decide on the basis of this that the American way is the right way? No way! European self-esteem depends on America being wrong so they will just ignore this

Total U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were 7,075.6 million metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) in 2006, a decrease of 1.5 percent from the 2005 level according to Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2006, a report released today by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Since 1990, U.S. GHG emissions have grown at an average annual rate of 0.9 percent. The 2006 emissions decrease is only the third decline in annual emissions since 1990.

U.S. GHG emissions per unit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), or "U.S. GHG-intensity," fell from 653 metric tons per million 2000 constant dollars of GDP (MTCO2e/$Million GDP) in 2005 to 625 MTCO2e /$Million GDP in 2006, a decline of 4.2 percent. Since 1990, the annual average decline in GHG-intensity has been 2.0 percent.

Total estimated U.S. GHG emissions in 2006 consisted of 5,934.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (83.8 percent of total emissions), 605.1 MMTCO2e of methane (8.6 percent of total emissions), 378.6 MMTCO2e of nitrous oxide (5.4 percent of total emissions), and 157.6 MMTCO2e of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) (2.2 percent of total emissions).

Emissions of carbon dioxide from energy consumption and industrial processes, which had risen at an average annual rate of 1.2 percent per year from 1990 to 2005, declined by 1.8 percent in 2006. The decline in carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 to 2006 can be attributed to a one-half percent decline in overall energy demand and a decrease in the carbon intensity of electricity generation. Favorable weather patterns, where both heating and cooling degree-days were lower in 2006 than 2005, and higher energy prices, were the primary causes of lower total energy consumption. The decline in carbon intensity of electricity generation was driven by increased use of natural gas, the least carbon-intensive fossil fuel, and greater reliance on non-fossil fuel energy sources. Methane emissions, meanwhile, decreased by 0.4 percent, while nitrous oxide emissions rose by 2.9 percent. Emissions of HFCs, PFCs, and SF6, a group labeled collectively as "high-GWP gases" because their high heat trapping capabilities, fell by 2.2 percent.

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Canadians should brace for coldest winter in almost 15 years: forecast

How can this happen in the midst of record CO2 levels? They don't tell us

After years of warmer-than-normal winters that spurred constant talk of global warming, winter this year is expected to be the coldest in almost 15 years and should remind everyone of what real Canadian cold feels like, Environment Canada said Friday. With the exception of only small pockets of northern Canada and southwestern Ontario, this December through February is forecast to be one of the harshest winters in recent memory across the country, said senior climatologist David Phillips.

"It is somewhat remarkable that we're seeing the same situation from coast to coast to almost coast - from Vancouver Island to Bonavista, Nfld., we're showing the country as being colder than normal," Phillips said. "The last time Canada had a significantly cold winter was back in 1994, more than a decade ago, and this may very well rival that one in terms of coldness." 1994 started with a bang of winter weather and Canadians across the country shivered through temperatures as cold as -42C - and that was before factoring in the wind chill.

Environment Canada's forecast for precipitation suggests much of the country is due for normal amounts of snow, although some cities could get more than usual, including Calgary, Regina and Toronto, which infamously called in the army in January 1999 to deal with a heavy snowfall. The precipitation forecasts are less reliable, but Phillips said a colder winter would likely result in a lot of white Christmases across the country - defined as two centimetres of snow on the ground at 7 a.m. on Christmas Day.

Even if the forecasts don't hold true, Phillips said the weather will almost certainly be worse than the last couple years for much of the country. Last year, a number of traditionally cold and snow-covered cities like Quebec City, Ottawa and Timmins, Ont., had a green Christmas for the first time in decades. And places like Moncton, all of Prince Edward Island and Toronto had only two-thirds of their normal snowfall.

If there is a bright side to the gloomy forecast that most Canadians will probably curse, it's that snow and cold in the winter is good for the economy, Phillips said. When Canadians see snow outside their windows they'll likely get into the Christmas spirit and start shopping, he said. And others will see the snow and make immediate plans to head south. "I always think it's good for the economy when weather is behaving like it should, when winters are cold and summers are hot," Phillips said. "With the Canadian dollar the way it is and with this colder than normal weather, it very well may be that the busiest people in the country are travel agents."

Phillips said the forecast for cold weather is being triggered in part by La Nina, a period of lower than normal temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.

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Official American weather body inflating storm numbers and aiding Political Campaign for Carbon Restrictions

End of 2007 Hurricane Season Shows NOAA Forecasts Wrong for Second Year in a Row

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is inflating the count of tropical storms and aiding a political campaign to regulate energy use in the process, according to The National Center for Public Policy Research. Today marks the official end of the 2007 hurricane season, and for the second year in a row the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's forecast for the season was wrong. NOAA had predicted there would be seven to nine hurricanes, three to five major hurricanes and 13-17 "named storms." The season ended with just five hurricanes, two of which were major (category three or above) and 14 named storms.

"NOAA correctly predicted the number of named storms, but it's not clear this statistic has any meaning, as the agency is inflating today's storm numbers relative to storms in the past," said David A. Ridenour, vice president of The National Center for Public Policy Research and author of a forthcoming new report on this year's hurricane season. "NOAA is doing so both by changing the criteria for naming storms and by failing to account for changes in technology that make detection of storms much easier." In its annual hurricane season forecast and subsequent tropical cyclone reports, for example, NOAA makes no mention that it started naming subtropical storms for the first time in 2002. This year, one storm - equal to 7% of named storms - was a subtropical storm.

State-of-the art equipment is also enabling observers to detect cyclones they would have missed in the past. The QuikScat, an orbiting satellite that measures the ocean's surface winds, produces more than 200 times the amount of ocean wind information that had been available from ships. "Unfortunately, NOAA's forecasts and cyclone reports suggesting increased activity are being seized upon by activists to support their campaign government take-over of energy," said Ridenour. "There's not truth to the claim that global warming is putting cyclones on steroids, unless we're talking about one of the side-effect of long-term steroid use - impotency."

The National Center's observations mirror the findings of Neil Frank, former director of NOAA's National Hurricane Center, who says that as many as six of this year's named storms wouldn't have been named in past decades. Bill Read, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center, disputed this in published reports saying, "For at least the last two decades, I am certain most, if not all, the storms named this year would have also been named."

"The National Hurricane Center started naming subtropical storms for the first time just five years ago," said Ridenour. "To suggest that the criteria for naming storms hasn't changed is simply dishonest."

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COOLER ASSESSMENT OF CLIMATE OBSESSION

OVER the past half-century we have become used to planetary scares of one kind or another. But the latest such scare - global warming - has engaged the political and opinion-forming classes to a greater extent than anything since, a little over 200 years ago, Malthus warned that, unless radical measures were taken to limit population growth, the world would run up against the limits of subsistence, leading inevitably to war, pestilence and famine.

This is partly perhaps because, at least in the richer countries of the world, we have rightly become more concerned with environmental issues. But that is no excuse for abandoning reason. It is time to take a cool look at global warming.

It is frequently claimed, by those who wish to stifle discussion, that the science of global warming is "settled". Even if it were, that would not be the end of the matter. But in fact, while some of the science is settled, there is much that is not. So let's start with the facts. It is customary to focus on three of them.

The first is that, over the past hundred years, the earth has become slightly warmer. To be precise, there has been a rise in global mean annual temperature of about 0.7C. The second is that, over the past hundred years, the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere has risen sharply, by well over 30 per cent, largely as a result of carbon-based industrialisation, in particular, electricity generated in coal and oil-fired power stations and motorised transport.

And the third fact (and this is the settled science) is that carbon dioxide is one of a number of so-called greenhouse gases - of which far and away the most important is water vapour, including water suspended in clouds - that in effect trap some of the heat we receive from the sun and thus keep the planet warmer than it would otherwise be.

So is it not clear that the warming we have seen over the past hundred years must be due to the massive rise in man-made carbon dioxide emissions, and that unless we substantially decarbonise the world economy the warming will continue, bringing doom and disaster in its wake? No: it is not at all clear.

In the first place, while atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have grown steadily over the past hundred years, and indeed continue to grow briskly, the warming has occurred in fits and starts. To be precise, it has been confined entirely to two periods: from 1920 to 1940, and from 1975 to 1998. Between 1940 and 1975 there was a slight cooling, and so far this century (and contrary to all predictions) there has been no trend one way or the other.

So clearly carbon dioxide is only part of the global temperature story: it is very far from being the whole story. This is borne out by the longer term historical record. It is well established, for example, that a thousand years ago, well before the onset of industrialisation, there was what has become known as the medieval warm period, when temperatures were probably at least as high as, if not higher, than they are today. Going back even further, during the Roman Empire, agricultural records suggest that it was probably even warmer.

So we are left with a double uncertainty. First, while we know that, other things being equal, rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide will warm the planet, we have no true understanding of how much they will do so. And second, we know that in fact other things are very far from equal. So even if we did know the answer to the first question, we would still be unable to predict what the world's temperature will be a hundred years from now. These uncertainties clearly have a profound bearing on the economics of global warming, and thus on the policies it is sensible to pursue.

For while we can do our best to make an estimate of the cost of substantially decarbonising the world economy, we have no idea of what benefit that will bring in terms of a lower mean global temperature than would otherwise be the case. Not that it is clear, even if we could predict the temperature of the planet a hundred years from now (which we can't), how much economic damage a given rise in temperature would do.

It was to advise governments on these issues that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was set up in 1988, under the auspices of the UN. The IPCC concludes, on the basis of to say the least very slender evidence, that "most" - note, not all - of the warming that occurred during the last quarter of the 20th century was very likely to be due to the growth of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. But even if - and there is clearly a case for erring on the side of caution - this is so, and even if, as the IPCC blithely assumes, the natural forces that affect the world's temperature in often unpredictable ways can be safely ignored, the policy conclusions which are widely believed to follow from this are very suspect indeed.

Is it really plausible that there is an ideal average world temperature, which by some happy chance has recently been visited on us, from which small departures in either direction would spell disaster? Moreover, while a sudden change would indeed be disruptive, what is at issue here is the prospect of a very gradual change over a hundred years and more. In any case, average world temperature is simply a statistical artefact. The actual experienced temperature varies enormously in different parts of the globe and man, whose greatest quality is his adaptability, has successfully colonised most of it. Two countries that are generally considered to be economic success stories, are Finland and Singapore.

The average annual temperature in Helsinki is less than 5C. That in Singapore is in excess of 27C, a difference of more than 22C. If man can successfully cope with that, it is not immediately apparent why he should not be able to adapt to a change of 3C, when he is given a hundred years in which to do so.

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For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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Carbon Emissions Don't Cause Global Warming

By David Evans. David is a mathematician, a computer and electrical engineer and is head of Science Speak. David is also a former believer in man-made warming who converted to skeptic. The summary below is an introduction to a larger paper that can be read here (PDF)

Our scientific understanding of global warming has gone through three stages:

1. 1985 - 2003. Old ice core data led us strongly suspect that CO2 causes global warming.

2. 2003 - 2007. New ice core data eliminated previous reason for suspecting CO2. No evidence to suspect or exonerate CO2.

3. From Aug 2007: Know for sure that greenhouse is not causing global warming. CO2 no longer a suspect.

The paper discusses how the ice core changes, missing greenhouse signature in the real data and the recent waning of the warming all suggest that carbon emissions are not behind the changes we have experienced in recent decades.

The IPCC 2007 report (the latest and greatest from the IPCC) is based on all scientific literature up to mid 2006. The Bali Conference is the bureaucratic response to that report. Too bad that the data has changed since then!

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It's the Sun, Stupid

When the international global warming alarm-ocracy gathers for its annual convention on the balmy island of Bali next week, is there any chance that the delegates will look up at the big yellow ball in the sky and ask, "Could it be the Sun, stupid?" New research suggests that would be a great question for them to consider. A recent study from the Journal of Geophysical Research (November 2007) reports that the sun may have contributed 50 percent or more of the global warming thought to have occurred since 1900.

Researchers from Duke University and the U.S. Army Research Office report that climate appears to be insensitive to solar variation if you accept the global temperature trend for the past 1,000 years as represented by the so-called "hockey stick" graph - which claims to show essentially unchanging temperatures between from 1000 to 1900 and then a sharp uptick from 1900 to the present.

But the hockey stick-graph has been relegated to the ash heap of global warming history. Even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) no longer mentions the graph in its reports. The researchers instead used a temperature reconstruction developed by Stockholm University researcher Ander Moberg and others that shows more variation in pre-industrial temperatures. Using Moberg's reconstruction, the researchers found that "the climate is very sensitive to solar changes and a significant fraction of the global warming that occurred during the last century should be solar induced." The researchers conclude that the current large-scale computer models - which, by the way, don't work as they don't even accurately reproduce historical temperature trends - could be significantly improved by adding sun-climate coupling mechanisms. Unfortunately, the reconsideration of the climate models isn't on the agenda at Bali.

Another interesting bit of data comes by way of the Solar Science blog, which on Nov. 15 spotlighted a letter in the Green County Daily World (Indiana) that starts out, "Each morning I turn on my computer and check to see how the sun is doing. Lately I am greeted with the message `The sun is blank - no sunspots.'" The letter goes on to state that, "We are at the verge of the next sunspot cycle, solar cycle 24. How intense will this cycle be? Why is this question important? Because the sun is a major force controlling natural climate change on Earth." "For the past few months, the actual sunspot numbers have been below [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's] lower predicted threshold, approaching zero," according to the letter, leading some to conclude that we may be headed into another "solar minimum" period. The solar minimum, known as the Maunder Minimum, corresponds to the temperature depths of the Little Ice Age, a period of global cooling lasting from the 14th century to the 19th century.

As you can see from this graph of solar activity since the mid-18th century, low sunspot activity matches up nicely with well-known Little Ice Age climatic events like George Washington's Christmas-night 1776 crossing of the ice-strewn Delaware River and Napoleon Bonaparte's retreat from Moscow in the horrifically-cold winter of 1812-1813. The letter writer goes on to mention that not too long ago the Mississippi River froze solid above St. Louis, permitting westward wagon trains to cross in the winter and that you can still see old two-story houses in Wisconsin with second floor doors that allowed inhabitants to exit their homes in the middle of winter when snow depths reached 8-feet and more. If sunspot activity continues to be so markedly low, then we should prepare for the possibility of a significant global cooling trend that could reduce agricultural yields and bring on the sort of food shortages that occurred during the Little Ice Age.

There's also a new study out this week claiming that the expansion of above-ground tree vegetation in Europe has absorbed 126 million tons of carbon, equivalent to 11 percent of the region's carbon emissions. While this seems like a positive development - at least for those bent on removing carbon from the atmosphere in order to reduce global temperature - it may actually backfire in terms of preventing global warming.

As reported in this column last April, forests in northern regions actually contribute to global warming through the albedo effect. Researchers estimated that this effect may contribute as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit to regional temperatures. So while expanding European forests may take more carbon out of the atmosphere - a dubious proposition for reducing global warming - the forests will also be absorbing more sunlight producing a net effect of warmer temperatures.

Finally, let's not forget about last year's experimental validation of the sun's impact on cloud cover. That research indicated that climatic impact of sun-influenced cloud cover during the 20th century could be as much as seven times greater than the alleged effect of 200 years worth of manmade carbon dioxide. So while the global warming crowd parties in Bali amid its plotting and planning to subjugate western economies to global government based on a dubious hypothesis about trace levels of invisible manmade gases acting as some sort of atmospheric thermostat, the sun will be there shining down on their folly. Would it be too much to ask for someone to look upwards and see the light?

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Terminating Warming? A Look at California

Many manly men around our country were undoubtedly thrilled to see super-hero Arnold Schwarzenegger become the leader of one of the largest and most powerful states in the nation, and we all knew that the Terminator would tackle problems in new and authoritative ways. However, the manly men have been a bit surprised that Governor Schwarzenegger has become such an outspoken leader in the fight against emission of carbon dioxide. Taking on a naturally-occurring molecule exhaled every minute by 150 pound weaklings seems a bit too soft for one of the physically strongest men to ever live.

The manly man governor recently attended, for the second year in a row, the Los Angeles Auto Show showcasing 1,000 of the newest vehicles from 47 of the world's automobile manufacturers. Governor Schwarzenegger spent his time praising the hybrids and other fuel efficient vehicles, and seemed in love with environmentally-friendly cars and trucks. Among the quotes from the event, he boldly stated "It is fantastic to see that the world's automakers are developing the technology to help us meet our goals in California. These cars come in every size and shape and they prove that we can give consumers the choices they want and still protect the environment."

Superhero Arnold also said "Imagine what we can accomplish if we improve efficiency and put more alternatives on the road, whether it is biofuels, electric cars, hydrogen or hybrids. This will also help our families with fuel prices because it's all about supply and demand. By providing more alternatives, we can drive down oil prices from the $100 a barrel everyone is expecting."

This is another in a long line of his "accomplishments"; in April 2004, the Governor signed an executive order creating a public and private partnership to build the Hydrogen Highway in California by 2010. Last year, the Governor signed the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 that according to his official website is "California's landmark bill that established a first-in-the-world comprehensive program of regulatory and market mechanisms to achieve real, quantifiable, cost-effective reductions of greenhouse gases. The law will reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020 and to 80 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050."

Good luck, because of California's massive and growing economy, the state is the 12th largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world despite arguably leading the nation in energy efficiency standards and taking a lead role in protecting its environment. Targeting an 80% reduction below 1990 levels should be as easy as reducing California's fiscal budget by 80% by 2050; nothing personal to the manly man, but we are a bit skeptical on this one.

If you want more information on global warming and California, literally 1,000s of websites are now devoted to the topic. You will find no end of claims that ongoing warming is reducing the snow pack of the Sierra, and producing ominous increasing trends in sea level, heat wave days, dry years, heat-related deaths, electrical demand, ozone formation, wildfires (popular this year), species extinctions, and on and on.

With so much focus on California's fight against global warming, we were drawn to a very interesting article in a recent issue of Climate Research. Scientists from California State University, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratories, and the University of Utah examined temperature trends from 1950 to 2000 for hundreds of stations in Governor Schwarzenegger's California. They calculated the trend in the mean, maximum, and minimum temperatures, and their results are really not all that surprising.

As seen in Figure 1 below, California seems to have warmed at a rate of 0.13 of a degree C per decade over the past half century. But no Ph.D. in urban climate is required to immediately see that many rural locations are barely warming, not warming, or even cooling, while the heavily urbanized stations in the Bay Area and Southern California are warming at a significant rate. LaDochy et al. showed that the "urban" stations warmed at a rate of 0.20 of a degree C per decade while the "non-urban" stations warmed only 0.08 of a degree C per decade. Furthermore, they state that "Large urban sites showed rates over twice those for the state, for the mean maximum temperatures, and over 5 times the state's mean rate for the minimum temperatures." The research team concludes that "Some of the largest temperature increases occur in the vicinity of urban centers, particularly for minimum temperatures. Few rural stations show significant increases in minimum or maximum temperatures."

We have covered this topic time and time again, and many of the greenhouse advocates absolutely dismiss the obvious implications of this research. Many websites claim that California is warming at an alarming rate, and depending on how one defines "alarming," there could be validity to the claim. However, LaDochy et al. show that the warming is strangely confined to the growing urban areas, and they find little to no warming in the rural stations.

Heaven forbid, but 41% of the stations had no significant warming and 6% actually had cooling. Despite the undisputed buildup of greenhouse gases from 1950 to 2000, almost half of the stations in California showed no significant warming!

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A Catholic view of climate alarmism

End-of-the-world alarmism has been a perpetual feature of human existence for as long as we have recorded history. Generally, it occurs within a religious framework: Whether it is Apocalypse mania, or a fear that any moment now Ragnarok is going to erupt in earnest, lavish claims of total world destruction have always furnished the necessary motivation for extremist agendas.

The new craze about global warming ought not to surprise us. Christ warned us, in Matthew 24 and Mark 13, that we would hear rumors of war, that there will be famines and earthquakes, that false prophets would arise and lead people astray, and so forth. And what does he say that we are to do?

First, "see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet." Scripture's repeated admonition to "be not afraid" - the very admonition with which Pope John Paul II ushered in his papacy - is reiterated. Christ belabors this point several times over the course of the Gospels, encouraging us not to worry, reminding us that there are innumerable things in heaven and earth that we do not have it in our power to affect, and reassuring us that God has it all in hand.

This does not mean that we should never take action to prevent evil, or should sit back and wait for God to do something. It does mean that we should not panic, or become needlessly anxious, or jump to rash conclusions, which may cause more harm than good.

At the moment, scientific consensus suggests that the climate of the world is changing, and that human activities are having an impact on the amount and kind of change that we are seeing. This means that, as Benedict XVI said in a letter to the patriarch of Constantinople, "Preservation of the environment, promotion of sustainable development and particular attention to climate change are matters of grave concern for the entire human family."

It is immoral to overlook these issues because they happen to be inconvenient. On the other hand, it is foolish and imprudent to dedicate ourselves to quixotic schemes that do more to salve our consciences than to change the impact of our lifestyle on the world, and it is gravely immoral to overlook the needs and rights of human beings in favor of "saving the planet."

Consider, for example, the environmental alarmism in the 1960s that said that DDT was poisoning bird populations - a supposition about which the scientific community had yet to come to a genuine consensus. Exaggerated propaganda about a "Silent Spring" devoid of birds led to an ill-considered ban on DDT as a means of controlling malarial mosquito populations in tropical countries.

Over the ensuing years, cases of malaria in Africa and the Indian subcontinent rose substantially, causing millions of preventable deaths before finally, almost 40 years later, the scientific community decided that DDT wasn't as pernicious as originally feared.

Fear and uncertainty are a recipe for bad decisions. Good solutions require accurate, relatively complete data, and they require thoughtful, long-term, holistic planning. Alarmists claim that we don't have time - that we have to do something drastic, and we have to do it now or the planet is going to die. The result is that both time and money get wasted on projects that have little impact or even that have a negative impact overall.

The practice of pushing ethanol-based fuels is a good example: These fuels must be moved by trucks because they corrode pipelines. The cars that burn the fuel may have a moderately reduced "carbon footprint," but the cost, in carbon dioxide exhaled by transport trucks, more than offsets the gain.

Problems like this are foolish, but they are not cause for moral concern. If ill-conceived environmentalism was the only risk, we could let the alarmists go on tilting at windmills and wait for the responsible scientists and statesmen to come up with better solutions. After all, ad hoc environmentalism is unlikely to do any serious damage to the planet or to society.

Unfortunately, the climate change alarmists are, predictably, allied with the population control advocates. The sloppy thinking on this matter is absolutely typical: If human beings are radically increasing their carbon emissions with every passing year, and the human population is growing to levels never before seen in history, then the easiest way to reduce carbon output is to eliminate large numbers of human beings. "Population limitation should," according to the British-based Optimum Population Trust, "be seen as the most cost-effective carbon offsetting strategy available to individuals and nations."

In other words, once we have realized that a human being is not an exciting new creation, a person who will share in the trials and joys of earthly life, and enjoy the chance to join the heavenly hosts in the life of the world to come; that, on the contrary, a human being is nothing more than a pesky producer of unwanted carbon dioxide, we can get down to the real business of cleaning up this planet.

Most environmentalists (though, distressingly, not all) don't think that this should actually lead to the direct extermination of human populations, but they do think that it should lead to an increase in pressures on Third World governments to impose contraception, sterilization and abortion on their citizens.

A familiar story. In many ways, it is the story of the 20th century. The excuses have varied: neo-Malthusian prophecies of massive global food shortages, claims that population growth is bad for developing economies, predictions of rampant disease spread in concentrated populations, or even utter absurdities like "population growth leads to the spread of communism" or "Muslim terrorism is caused by overpopulation."

Serious global and local problems have been consistently met with the asinine reasoning that since people cause problems, more people will cause more problems, and the best broad-band solution to the ills of humanity is to stop having humans.

One hardly needs to belabor the consequences. Population controllers have arranged forced sterilizations in Third World countries, the strings tied to U.N. aid packages often have IUDs at the other end, influential population control advocates have been consistent in their support for China's one-child policy, and in the first world, children are routinely taught that it is morally responsible to kill their unborn children in order to avoid burdening an "already overburdened" planet.

The result is not responsible environmentalism, nor is it the salvation of earth's ecology. Rather, the modern population control alarmists, like the prophets of Moloch or the Aztec priests of Tlaloc, demand that human children be sacrificed in order to prevent storms, floods and disease.

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Let the Bali Eurospin Begin

EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas gave a press conference to claim victory where there is none, which message was picked up by the home-grown press and doubtless to be recycled at the upcoming talks in Bali, and reminding us more than any other issue "climate change" statements out of Europe require parsing. To wit, pulled from the EUObserver (ellipses in original):

"`Our emissions are currently 2 percent below [1990] levels (.) while our economy has grown by more than 35 percent over the same period."

The commissioner also said that `it is almost certain' that Europe will meet its goal of cutting its carbon dioxide emissions by 8 percent by 2012 - a target agreed and shared under the Kyoto protocol by 15 EU member states in the late 1990s."

Reader, beware. Europe has quietly swapped out one "we" for another, such that the "we" Dimas refers to now is the EU-27, a whole `nother kettle of fish. This does not reflect the performance of "Europe" according to Kyoto, which is the EU-15, or "Old Europe".* The remaining States only afford such rhetoric by bringing to the table an emissions inventory well below their 1990 baseline, due to economic collapse, an artifact of political history unrelated to the Kyoto agenda.

This is not pedantic picking of nits, but revelation of a rhetorical ploy meant to assist political pressure against, well, us. Instead, it is significant because Europe as Kyoto recognizes it cannot ride the post-1990 economic collapse to a claim of "emission reductions, while growing the economy!" Even in the EU-27, emissions are actually well above where they were when the economic growth to which he refers began, in the late 1990s.

It is also a breathtaking statement to claim not that Europe will meet its Kyoto promise - which allows for the purchase of offsets for their emissions overage - but to assert that it will cut emissions by the promised amount. In truth, the most optimistic (that is, Brussels') projection of EU performance has them leveling emissions off at 1990 levels, which means they would buy the entirety of their "reduction". Others aren't quite so rosy. Still, that's fine if that's the game we agree to play. But drop the breast-beating about having "reduced emissions" by 8% through the courageous act of paying the Chinese to ramp down their HFC production.

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