RUDD AWAKENING: NO POST-KYOTO DEAL WITHOUT BINDING TARGETS FOR CHINA, INDIA

Australia's Centre-Left is now sounding very much like George Bush -- much though they would loathe that comparison

Trade Minister Simon Crean says developing countries like China and India must set tough binding emissions targets before Australia agrees to a new Kyoto agreement beyond 2012. Last week the Australian delegation indicated it supported a 25 to 40 per cent cut in emissions for developed countries beyond 2012. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said it was not the Government's position.

Mr Crean, who is in Bali for trade talks today, says developing countries must agree to binding targets before Australia commits. "Australia's task is at the appropriate time to commit to targets but it's also to try and secure binding commitments from developing countries," he said. "We all know the environmental imperative of facing up to the challenge of climate change." Mr Crean said Australia was not going to sign up to any binding commitments on battling climate change until they had the results of a report commissioned by Mr Rudd's climate change economic specialist, expected next year.

The European Union, developing countries led by China, and environmental activists are urging the rich world to commit to reducing their polluting greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020.

But Mr Crean said that promises by rich countries alone to cut carbon dioxide emissions would not solve global warming. Environment ministers will arrive in Bali at the end of next week, while trade and finance ministers and representatives have begun gathering on the sidelines of the summit. "The meeting of trade ministers emphasises the point that it is not just an environmental imperative that we're dealing with, but the economic opportunities that come from solving climate change," Mr Crean said.

Mr Rudd will confirm Australia's position when he arrives in Bali next week.

Source




TROPIC FEVER OVER CARBON TARGETS

Kevin Rudd will need all his diplomatic skills in Bali, as the sides have already squared off fiercely at the climate change talks, writes Marian Wilkinson. There is a simple but powerful equation that was being thrown at officials and reporters from the developed nations in Bali this week. Almost 70 per cent of the greenhouse gas pollution already causing climate change was put into the atmosphere in the past by rich countries as they built prosperous economies for fewer than a fifth of the world's population.

Officials from China, India, Africa and the small island nations argued, at times acrimoniously, at the United Nations climate talks that this inescapable reality means rich countries must shoulder much of the burden in the fight to slow climate change and pay much of the bill to weather the damage that will continue for decades.

This is the harsh diplomatic reality facing the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and his Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, when they arrive in Bali early next week. While scientific necessity, and the developed world, demand that heavily polluting developing countries such as China and India must rein in their own soaring emissions, the fight over who pays most and who sacrifices most underscored every discussion in Bali this week.

The crucial talks that began on Monday have one main aim: to agree to begin formal negotiations that will produce a new global climate change agreement by 2009. The outcome in Bali is not supposed to determine targets for rich or developing countries. But as officials from more than 180 nations ground out proposals for the "road map" to this agreement, the debate over what targets the rich countries would meet was impossible to ignore.

Led by China's formidable delegation, the developing world asked explicitly whether developed countries were trying to walk away from a consensus reached in Vienna earlier this year that they should take the lead in making deep cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. This proposal emerged from the hard scientific facts put together by the UN's peak scientific body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. If the world is going to avoid dangerous climate change, it needs to halve the soaring level of emissions by mid-century. To do that it must start now. The UN recognised that industrialised countries have the technology and government institutions capable of taking the lead. Under the principles of the Kyoto Protocol, that is expected.

As a newly ratified member of the protocol, Australia is now aligned with that position. But this week, developed countries under the protocol, such as Japan and Canada, appeared to want to water down the Vienna consensus. After a week of basking in plaudits for Australia's ratification of Kyoto, Rudd suddenly found Australia's position on the Vienna proposals under scrutiny. Where did Australia stand on developed countries cutting their emissions between 25 and 40 per cent by 2020?

Critically, the so-called Vienna Declaration does not commit individual developed countries to these cuts now. And how they can be achieved is up for debate. But in Bali this week, the developing world demanded that the Vienna proposal be recognised.

Europe and New Zealand confirmed their support for the Vienna Declaration, and by Wednesday night the Australian delegation did as well. But immediately, Rudd at home had to confront accusations from the Opposition that he had committed Australia to reckless cuts in emissions that would damage the economy. He was quick to insist that the Vienna Declaration was not a commitment.

"The target that you referred to, 25-40, is in fact contained in what is described generally as the Vienna Declaration," he explained. "Many states have publicly recognised the work of the IPCC in putting together that report but, in so doing, states have also indicated that they do not necessarily accept those targets, nor do they accept those targets as binding targets for themselves. That has been a reality since the Vienna Declaration was issued in August of this year. That is also the position of the Australian Government."

He repeated, as he did before the election, that Australia will not set any 2020 target until the report by the economist Ross Garnaut is delivered next year. That, he said, "is to ensure that those targets are meaningful environmentally and responsible economically. And that's the way ahead".

But in Bali, Rudd will not so easily duck this issue. As he spoke in Brisbane, in Bali the head of the UN climate negotiating team, Yvo de Boer, told reporters he had just come from a meeting discussing the Vienna proposals. And he said: "I think it is clear to everyone that industrialised countries will have to continue to take the lead. All countries, all governments, realise that industrialised countries will have to reduce their emissions somewhere between 25 and 40 per cent by 2020. So that's an agreed range for industrialised countries."

Australian and UN officials are anxiously stressing that these targets do not have to be signed or sealed in Bali or, indeed, until some way down the track. The Kyoto Protocol's first targets do not expire until 2012. Under these, Australia has an easy ride. While many developed nations agreed to cut their emissions by up to 5 per cent on 1990s levels, Australia was allowed to increase its emissions by 8 per cent of 1990 levels. Unfortunately for Rudd, this deal, and a decade of inaction by the Howard government to slow Australia's soaring emissions, means that making deep cuts by 2020 will be difficult.

While Australia can correctly insist the 2020 targets are not up for discussion in Bali, they are now deeply colouring the debate as officials move behind closed doors to nut out a deal on the road map.

Put simply, the Bali talks have divided the developing world and the developed. And among some developing nations, especially India, there is a very hard line emerging that there should be no concessions until the developed world takes the lead on cutting emissions, agrees to technology transfers and puts up serious money to fund the world's adaption to climate change.

On the other side, Japan among others wants to see serious proposals from China and India on emissions reductions before it agrees to commitments after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol's first round expires. The new global agreement that follows this cannot give its two biggest competitors, the US and China, an unfair advantage.

The hope is that a consensus will prevail. It is possible there will be a commitment to begin negotiations on two tracks: one will continue down the Kyoto track to pursue commitments from nations which have ratified the protocol. The other will be under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, called the dialogue track. This would include the developing countries and the US, which remains outside Kyoto and opposed to binding targets. By 2009 these two tracks could come together in a final agreement.

By the time Rudd attends the Bali talks early next week it will be clear whether a consensus is emerging. Along with the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, and the Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, he will be performing on the main stage. This week, Rudd said he wanted to act as a "bridge" between the developed and developing world, especially between China and the US.

But when he stands to make his statement on the floor of the talks, many in the developing world will be listening to what the new Prime Minister will say about the burden Australia and the developed world are willing to take in the battle to save the planet.

Source





Gore Takes Train From Oslo Airport, Luggage Takes Mercedes

The Green/Left do seem to drink up hypocrisy and deception with their mothers' milk

Friday's adoring Associated Press piece concerning Nobel Laureate Al Gore's noble decision to take the train from the Oslo airport rather than the traditional motorcade to his hotel neglected something else besides the huge amount of carbon dioxide being emitted by the Global Warmingist-in-Chief: his luggage! After all, Gore and wife Tipper aren't going to wear the same clothes this entire trip they wore on the plane, right?

So, where was all their baggage as the couple took the train? Well, according to the Norwegian website VG Nett, Gore's luggage went by Mercedes van (h/t NB reader in Norway Trond Ruud who supplied the following translation):

Peace Prize laureate Al Gore and his wife Tipper are having a nice trip on the airport express train. On the motorway, their luggage is being whisked to Oslo in a Mercedes van. Together with the Leader of the Nobel Institute, Geir Lundestad and the Nobel Committee Leader, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, they took the Airport Express train from Gardermoen airport to the National Theatre station in Oslo.

Never before, has a Peace Prize laureate chosen this mode of travel. I was told that the Express Train, was both faster and more comfortable, so it was an easy choice. And trains are symbols of environmental consciousness, a vigourous Gore, told the press corps.

Leader of the Nobel Ceremony arrangements, Sigrid Langebrekke from the Norwegian Nobel Institute, said they had to use a Mercedes van to handle all the luggage. She says, that all cars being used during the Nobel Ceremony have high environmental standard.

Do you think his luggage bought carbon credits to offset the greenhouse gases emitted on the trip from the airport? Honestly, would it have been too much like journalism for the AP to inquire about where Gore's luggage was, or might that have interfered with the agenda?

Source





More of the usual media favouritism towards warmism

Warmists are a fountain of yummy sensationalism so the media must defend them from looking absurd. Post below lifted from Tom Nelson. See the original for links

Excerpt from this article:

Carrying banners with slogans like "cut carbon not forests" and "actions speak louder than words" protesters in London marched in torrential rain and biting cold past parliament and through Trafalgar Square to rally in front of the U.S. embassy.

Update: Check this out--Reuters has now removed "and biting cold" from the above sentence:

Carrying banners with slogans like "cut carbon not forests" and "actions speak louder than words" protesters in London marched in torrential rain past parliament and through Trafalgar Square to rally in front of the U.S. embassy.

Note also the paragraph about disappointing attendance:

British police said 2,000 people took part in the march. Organisers said they estimated the number at 7,000.

Note that organizers had hoped for a vastly greater turnout:

Organisers say they hope up to 40,000 people could attend the rally. "Last year we attracted 35,000 people and we hope this will be bigger," said Phil Thornhill of the Campaign Against Climate Change, which is organising the event.

NOTED CLIMATE SCIENTIST ROGER PIELKE SR. REJECTS THE NOTION THAT ELEVATED CO2 LEVELS ARE THE SOLE CULPRITS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Roger Pielke Sr. is a retired professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, and a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. While Dr. Pielke rejects being characterized as a "global warming skeptic," his work is unwaveringly critical of the current conventional wisdom regarding climate change and what to do about it. EcoWorld Editor Ed Ring recently caught up with Dr. Pielke, who had the following to say:

EcoWorld: How would you say that current conventional wisdom regarding climate change has gotten it wrong?

Pielke: In terms of climate change and variability on the regional and local scale, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report on surface and tropospheric temperature trends, and the U.S. National Assessment [of Climate Change] have overstated the role of the radiative effect of the anthropogenic increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in relation to a diversity of other human climate-forcing mechanisms. Indeed, many research studies incorrectly oversimplify climate change by characterizing it as being dominated by the radiative effect of human-added CO2. But while prudence suggests that we work to minimize our disturbance of the climate system (since we don't fully understand it), by focusing on just one subset of forcing mechanisms, we end up seriously misleading policymakers as to the most effective way of dealing with our social and environmental vulnerability in the context of the entire spectrum of environmental risks and other threats we face today.

EcoWorld: What about experts' predictions of rising sea levels, extreme weather, melting polar ice caps, and so on?

Pielke: Global and regional climate models have not demonstrated themselves to be skillful predictors of regional and local climate change and variability over multidecadal time scales. For example, in the case of sea ice, the models are consistent with the decrease in Arctic sea ice in recent years, but they cannot explain the multiyear increase in Antarctic sea ice (including a record level this year). With respect to extreme weather, a much more important issue than how greenhouse gases are altering our climate is society's greatly increased vulnerability to extreme weather events - a direct result not of changes in weather but of increased settlement by expanding human populations into low-lying coastal regions, floodplains, and marginal arid land.

EcoWorld: But what about the northern icecap shrinking this September to possibly possibly its smallest size in history (exposing more than 1 million square miles of open water) or the comments of Robert Correll, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, regarding recent observations in Greenland ("We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea")? Is something new and alarming happening?

Pielke: These examples represent selected observations that promote the view that human-input carbon dioxide is dominating climate change. However, the climate is - and always will be - changing. Thus, although human activity certainly affects the way in which climate varies and changes, actual global observations present a much more complex picture than that represented by the two examples listed above. For example, Antarctic sea ice reached a record maximum coverage in 2007, and the globally averaged lower atmosphere has not warmed in the last nine years (and, in fact, is cooler than it was in 1998). In addition, there are regions of the world where glaciers are advancing (such as New Zealand, parts of the Himalayas, and Norway). However, this information - which conflicts with the projections of the multi-decadal global climate models and the 2007 IPCC report - has been almost completely ignored by policymakers and the media.

EcoWorld: What role have alterations in land use played in climate change?

Pielke: Changes in land use by humans and the resulting alterations in weather and hydrology are major drivers of long-term regional and global climate patterns - yet the 2007 IPCC Statement for Policymakers largely ignores their importance (despite extensive documentation in research literature). Along with the diverse influences of aerosols on climate, land use effects (caused, for example, by deforestation, desertification, and conversion of land to farming) may be at least as important in altering the weather as the changes in climate patterns associated with the radiative effect of carbon dioxide and other well-mixed greenhouse gases. Moreover, land use and land cover changes will continue to exert an important influence on the Earth's climate for the next century. The reason for this is that even if the globally averaged surface temperature change over time ends up being close to zero in response to land use and land cover change and variability, the regional changes in surface temperature, precipitation, and other climate metrics could be as large as or larger than those that result from the anthropogenic increase of greenhouse gases. Moreover, people and ecosystems experience the effects of environmental change regionally, not as global averaged values. Thus, the issue of a "discernable human influence on global climate" misses the obvious, in that we have been altering climate by land use and land cover change ever since humans began large-scale alterations of the land surface. ...

EcoWorld: What is your criticism of the IPCC?

Pielke: Mainly the fact that the same individuals who are doing primary research into humans' impact on the climate system are being permitted to lead the assessment of that research. Suppose a group of scientists introduced a drug they claimed could save many lives: There were side effects, of course, but the scientists claimed the drug's benefits far outweighed its risks. If the government then asked these same scientists to form an assessment committee to evaluate their claim (and the committee consisted of colleagues of the scientists who made the original claim as well as the drug's developers), an uproar would occur, and there would be protests. It would represent a clear conflict of interest. Yet this is what has happened with the IPCC process. To date, either few people recognize this conflict, or those that do choose to ignore it because the recommendations of the IPCC fit their policy and political agenda. In either case, scientific rigor has been sacrificed, and poor policy and political decisions will inevitably follow.

EcoWorld: How effective are current climate computer models in helping us understand global climate trends?

Pielke: Using global climate models to improve our understanding of how the system works represents a valuable application of such tools, but the term sensitivity study should be used to characterize these assessments. In sensitivity studies, a subset of the forcings and/or feedback of the climate system are perturbed to examine their response. Since the computer model of the climate system is incomplete (meaning it doesn't include all of the important feedbacks and forcings), what the IPCC is really doing is conducting a sensitivity study. The IPCC reports, however, inaccurately present their assessment as a "projection" - one that's widely interpreted by policymakers and others as being able to skillfully forecast the future state of the climate system. But even one of the IPCC's leading authors, Kevin Trenberth, has gone on record reminding people of the limitations of the models used in its projections. Says Trenberth, "There are no predictions by IPCC & and there never have been." He further states, "None of the models used by IPCC are initialized to the observed state, and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate." Indeed, says Trenberth, "The current projection method works to the extent it does because it utilizes differences from one time to another, and the main model bias and systematic errors are thereby subtracted out. This assumes linearity. It works for global forced variations, but it cannot work for many aspects of climate, especially those related to the water cycle."

Thus, as clarified even by one of the key IPCC contributors (who has a vested interest in the acceptance of the 2007 IPCC report), current climate models clearly cannot accurately model observed real-world changes in climate. Global model results projected out decades into the future should never be interpreted as skillful forecasts. Instead, they should be interpreted as sensitivity studies on limited variables. When authors of research papers use definitive words (such as "will occur") and display model output with specific time periods in the future, they are misleading policymakers and other people who use this information.

More 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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2007: WARMEST YEAR PREDICTIONS AND DATA THAT HASN'T YET BEEN MEASURED

An email below to Benny Peiser from David Whitehouse [david@davidwhitehouse.com]

With just a few weeks to go it's looking like 2007 will be the coolest year this century and possibly the coolest since 1995. If so then one more year like this and we will begin to have enough statistical information to speculate about a downward trend, though a few more years will be better. With this in mind may I remind readers what the UK Met Office predicted on 4th January 2007:

"2007 is likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating the current record set in 1998, say climate-change experts at the Met Office. Global temperature for 2007 is expected to be 0.54 øC above the long-term (1961-1990) average of 14.0 øC; There is a 60% probability that 2007 will be as warm or warmer than the current warmest year (1998 was +0.52 øC above the long-term 1961-1990 average)."

But the most amazing sentence in their prediction is this:

Katie Hopkins from Met Office Consulting said: "This new information represents another warning that climate change is happening around the world. Our work in the climate change consultancy team applies Met Office research to help businesses mitigate against risk and adapt at a strategic level for success in the new environment."

I wasn't aware that a "prediction" represents "new information." Well, perhaps it does to a certain breed of consultant. I wonder if the Met Office's clients will ask for their money back if the Met Office's prediction proved way off the mark?

My article in the independent about the forthcoming solar cycle 24 has attracted much comment and I'm glad it's a talking point. However, I am rather disappointed by the quality of the letter complaining about it in today's Independent:

Sir: Contrary to the claim by David Whitehouse (Extra, 5 December) that the sun could save us from global warming, the sun would have to go through an unprecedented decline in activity to significantly mitigate the warming that is projected from the continuing emissions of greenhouse gases.

While the sun has likely played a role, together with other natural influences, the recent assessment by the IPCC concluded that the increase in global surface temperatures over the past 50 years has been predominantly associated with increases in greenhouse gases, partially offset by other pollutants from human activities.

Solar activity, as measured by sunspots, peaked in the late 1950s, and has been fairly stable over the past 30 years. In addition, recent research suggests that volcanic eruptions may have as big or bigger influence on cooler periods, such as the so called "Little Ice Age", than solar activity.

Over the next century, warming from human-induced greenhouse gases is likely to dwarf any cooling from changes in the sun, even assuming that solar activity reduces to levels not seen for 400 years.

Dr Gareth S Jones
Dr Peter A Stott
Met Office Hadley Centre Exeter

They quote the IPPC's view although one of the points of my article was that the IPCC has ignored the sun in this regard. They are wrong about the sun's activity peaking in the 1950's and has been fairly static over the past 30 years. They are predictably picky about the research they quote. But note that they also talk of the warming that is "projected" - again, being the Met Office, their argument is based on future data not actual data. One can't argue against "data" that hasn't yet been measured!





CONTAMINATED DATA: HOT CITIES, NOT CO2, CAUSE URBAN THERMOMETERS TO RISE

Below is the famous graph of "global average surface temperature," or "global temperature" for short.



The data come from thermometers around the world, but between the thermometer readings and the final, famous, warming ramp, a lot of statistical modelling aims at removing known sources of exaggeration in the warming trend. In a new article just published in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres, a co-author and I have concluded that the manipulations for the steep post-1980 period are inadequate, and the above graph is an exaggeration. Along the way, I have also found that the United Nations agency promoting the global temperature graph has made false claims about the quality of its data.

The graph at right comes from data collected in weather stations around the world. Other graphs come from weather satellites and from networks of weather balloons that monitor layers of the atmosphere. These other graphs don't show as much warming as the weatherstation data, even though they measure at heights where there is supposed to be even more greenhouse-gas-induced warming than at the surface. The discrepancy is especially clear in the tropics.

The surface-measured data has many well-known problems. Over the post-war era, equipment has changed, station sites have been moved, and the time of day at which the data is collected has changed.

Many long-term weather records come from in or near cities, which have gotten warmer as they grow. Many poor countries have sparse weather-station records and few resources to ensure data quality. Fewer than one-third of the weather stations operating in the 1970s remain in operation.

Scientists readily acknowledged that temperature measurements are contaminated for the purpose of measuring climate change. But they argue that adjustments fix the problem. To deal with a false warming generated by urbanization, they have the "Urbanization Adjustment." To deal with biases due to changing the time of day when temperatures are observed, they have the "Time of Observation Bias Adjustment." And so forth.

How do we know these adjustments are correct? In most studies, the question is simply not asked. A few studies argue that the adjustments must be adequate since adjacent rural and urban samples give similar results. But closer inspection shows some of these papers don't actually give similar results at all, or when they do they define "rural" so broadly that it includes partly urbanized places. Other studies say the adjustments must be adequate because trends on windy nights look the same as trends on calm nights. But the long list of data problems includes issues just as serious under both windy and calm conditions.

The papers describing the adjustments aim to construct data showing what the temperature would be in a region if nobody had ever lived there. If the adjustments are right, the final output should not be correlated with the extent of industrial development and variations in socioeconomic conditions. But in a 2004 study with climatologist Patrick Michaels, we found that the adjustment models were not removing the contamination patterns as claimed. If the contamination were removed, we estimated the average measured warming rate over land would decline by about half. Dutch meteorologists using different data and a different testing methodology had come to the same conclusions.

In response to criticisms of our paper, I began assembling a more complete database, covering all available land areas and a more extensive set of climatological and economic indicators. Meantime, in 2005, I was asked to serve as an external reviewer for the IPCC report, which was released earlier this year. I accepted, in part to address the data-contamination problem.

Scientists who attribute warming to greenhouse gases argue that their climate models cannot reproduce the surface trends from natural variability alone. They then attribute it to greenhouse gases, since (they assume) all other human influences have been removed from the data by the adjustment models. If that has not happened, however, they cannot claim to be able to identify the role of greenhouse gases. Despite the vast number of studies involved, and the large number of contributors to the IPCC reports, the core message of the IPCC hinges on the assumption that their main surface climate data set is uncontaminated. And by the time they began writing the recent Fourth Assessment Report, they had before them a set of papers proving the data are contaminated.

How did they handle this issue? In the first draft of the IPCC report, they simply claimed that, while city data are distorted by urban warming, this does not affect the global averages. They cited two familiar studies to support their position and ignored the new counter-evidence. I submitted lengthy comments criticizing this section. In the second draft there was still no discussion, so again I put in lengthy comments. This time the IPCC authors wrote a response. They conceded the evidence of contamination, but in a stunning admission, said:

"The locations of socioeconomic development happen to have coincided with maximum warming, not for the reason given by McKitrick and Mihaels [sic] (2004), but because of the strengthening of the Arctic Oscillation and the greater sensitivity of land than ocean to greenhouse forcing, owing to the smaller thermal capacity of land."

Note the irony: Confronted with published evidence of an anthropogenic (but non-greenhouse) explanation for warming, they dismissed it with an unproven conjecture of natural causes. Who's the "denialist" now? Furthermore, the claim is preposterous. The comparison of land and ocean is irrelevant since we were only talking about land areas. The Arctic Oscillation is a wind-circulation pattern that affects long-term weather trends in the Arctic. It certainly plays a role in explaining Arctic warming over the past few decades. But for IPCC lead authors to invoke it to explain a worldwide correlation between industrialization and warming patterns is nonsense.

FULL STORY here




GREEN PANIC: DEVELOPING COUNTRIES TO CAUSE 'CLIMATE CRISIS'

Given the usual Warmist assumptions, what these guys say below is logical. That most governments act differently shows how much those governments believe the Warmist theories



Carbon emissions from developing countries will result in a climate crisis within a generation, according to new research. Within 20 years they will be producing more CO2 than the rich industrialised countries based mainly in the northern hemisphere. And even if the 'North' - Europe, North America, the former Soviet Union (FSU) Japan, Australia and New Zealand - eliminated all its emissions immediately it wouldn't be enough to stop severe climate change. The 'South' - Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific islands - faced an environmental disaster.

The shock claims are made by the Centre for Global Development (CGD), an American independent, think tank that works to reduce global poverty and inequality. It says its research has been empirically reviewed. The CGD said it was a dangerous fallacy to believe that the North was responsible for climate change and should dramatically cut its emissions while the South should be given the time to catch up with more prosperous countries through economic expansion powered by fossil fuels.

By 2025 atmospheric CO2 from the South, combined with widespread deforestation, would match global amounts that triggered the first climate crisis conference in Rio in 1992. Things would get steadily worse for the South if carbon-intensive growth was allowed to continue in a last-minute fossil-fuelled development push before the onset of catastrophic climate change. "We conclude that the conventional wisdom is dangerously misguided," the report states.

"The South cannot relegate mitigation to the North until it achieves prosperity. In fact, cumulative emissions from a carbon-intensive South have already reached levels that are dangerous for the South itself. They are more than sufficient to create a global climate crisis, even if the North eliminates all of its emissions immediately. "So we face another inconvenient truth: a carbon-intensive South faces environmental disaster, no matter what the North does. For its own sake, the South must recognise this hard truth, accept the necessity of serious, costly mitigation, and immediately embark on a low-carbon development path. "The North must clearly do the same, while recognising that its own survival requires an immediate, large-scale commitment to assisting emissions reductions in the South."

The report claims that by 2030, if the South's industrial expansion is unchecked, scientists in an isolated South would observe unequivocal global warming, widespread glacial and polar melting, and a rising sea level. The South's governments would then have to introduce plans for a carbon-free future. If global emissions continued unabated, the resulting increases in temperatures and sea level, greater storm intensity, reduced agricultural productivity, and dwindling freshwater supplies would be likely to undermine the South's development long before it arrived at northern income levels.

Focusing on the North's obligations to cut emissions would be a dangerous distraction because the South's own emissions had already moved it close to the brink of rapid global warming. Cumulative emissions from the North would force the South to take fundamental and unavoidable decisions about cutting its emissions much earlier than previously thought.

David Wheeler, the lead author of the study, said: "The South's population is over four times greater than the North's, so it has been trapped by the sheer scale of its emissions at a much earlier stage of development. "The South finds itself weighed down by a mass of humanity, as well as the energy technologies and fuels of an earlier age. The question is not if the South will commit to emissions reductions - under any scenario it eventually must for its own sake - but whether it will do so in time, and how the costs of the transition are to be shared."

Wheeler and his co-author, Kevin Ummel, compiled CGD's recently released Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA) online database, which discloses for the first time the CO2 pollution of all power plants and companies in the world.

Source




Deliberate Greenie lies again

A press release issued this week said the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a high-profile collection of 33 corporations and environmental nonprofits, pledged to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent by 2050, and demanded that no new coal power plants be built. The only problem with that announcement was that it was a lie, CNET News.com reports.

The story, picked up by the Dallas Morning News and other media outlets, originated from a phony press release issued by environmental activists Rising Tide North America. The trick was timed to coincide with the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Bali, Indonesia. The exploit aimed to throw egg on the face of USCAP for attempting to seem green without making radical changes. Members of the coalition include BP America, General Electric and Xerox, as well as the National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council and Nature Conservancy, reports CNET writer Elsa Wenzel on the site's Green Tech blog.

The responsible Rising Tide activists, calling themselves Greenwash Guerillas, built a fake website for a public relations company and another site impersonating that of USCAP to complete the illusion. In October they infiltrated the Point Carbon conference to oppose carbon-trading schemes.

These are the latest in a series of digital disinformation pranks that could be a nightmare for reporters on a tight deadline. Not many writers were fooled in this case, however, maybe because media releases about corporate-greening efforts are piling so high in editorial inboxes lately. In January, for example, Greenpeace concocted a video of its own fake Steve Jobs pledging to make Apple products more eco-friendly. That tongue-in-cheek campaign was meant to embarrass Apple without fooling reporters. By May, the real Jobs announced that his company would phase out the use of some toxic chemicals.

Source






SWITCH OFF YOUR COMPUTER NOW! OR YOU'LL HELP DESTROY THE PLANET

Computer servers are at least as great a threat to the climate as SUVs or the global aviation industry, warns a new report. Global Action Plan, a UK-based environmental organisation, publishes a report today drawing attention to the carbon footprint of the IT industry in the UK. "Computers are seen as quite benign things sitting on your desk," says Trewin Restorick, director of the group. "But, for instance, in our charity we have one server. That server has same carbon footprint as your average SUV doing 15 miles to the gallon. Yet, whereas the SUV is seen as a villain from the environmental perspective, the server is not."

The report, An Inefficient Truth states that with more than 1 billion computers on the planet, the global IT sector is responsible for about 2% of human carbon dioxide emissions each year - a similar figure to the global airline industry.

The energy consumption is driven largely by vast amounts of customer and user data that are stored on the computer servers in most businesses. The rate at which data storage is growing surpasses the growth in the airline industry: in 2006, 48% more data storage capacity was sold in the UK than in 2005, while the number of plane passengers grew by 3%.

FULL SCARE 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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Memories of panics past

By Andrew Bolt

NUCLEAR winter, mega-famines, global cooling, acid rain, bird flu, death by fluoride, Chernobyl. I've seen it all and nothing scares me now. I can't remember exactly what I wrote that was so evil. So much to choose from. Was it that I refused to be freaked by this latest panic attack that global warming was blasting in and . . . Oh, God, WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE! Or was it that I wouldn't listen to that frenzy of activists insisting the genetically modified canola oil I use to fry my chops would nuke us all into an explosion of pustulating tumours?

Anyway, one young reader was furious that I'd yet again stood snobbily apart, while his mob ululated warnings of some fresh horror. "You'd be on your own," he sneered in an angry email. True enough, my young critic, I do often feel lonely in this astonishing age when to panic is a sign of virtue and to reason a sign of a cold heart.

But you know my problem? It's not just that I hate mobs, knowing there's no wisdom in them. It's not even that I'm stubborn by nature, and like the answer Albert Einstein gave to One Hundred Authors Against Einstein - that all it took to defeat his Theory of Relativity was not 100 scientists but just one fact. My real problem is simply that in my 48 years I've lived through so many pack-panic attacks over nothing that I won't fall so easily for the next.

Your parents or grandparents may know what I mean. Go ask if they remember all those plagues we were told would surely smite us if we didn't sign some cheque, praise some god, or vote for some politician. Ask if they remember scares like the nuclear winter, DDT, mega-famines, global cooling, acid rain, Repetitive Strain Injury, bird flu, the millennium bug, SARS, toxic PVC, poisonous breast implants, the end of oil, death by fluoride, the Chernobyl doom, the BSE beef that would eat your brains, and other oldies and mouldies. It's amazing we're still alive after all that, let alone richer and healthier.

So, my furious friend, don't try to panic me now about global warming, GM food, peak oil or ADHD. I've seen too many. You want to know how they're tricked up? First, you get a possible problem - preferably with some skerrick of truth. You then get some expert, or maybe an Al Gore, to make wild assumptions or faulty extrapolations. You know the kind: that if a dodgy levee breaks in New Orleans, the whole world is gonna drown. And then you whistle for the carpetbaggers - journalists keen to sell a sensation, business keen to sell a cure, and politicians keen to sell themselves as the solution. And bang, you have a mass panic, with more people gaining from the scare than are game to expose it.

I guess you're shocked by my cynicism. Would it help if I gave some examples of the panics I was once fed? Here's the very first I remember. When I was a student, too, my earnest teachers used to tell me the world was running out of food, and show pictures of starving Indians, which made me worry a lot. They were repeating the hot theories of people like green guru Prof Paul Ehrlich, whose 1968 book The Population Explosion sold in the millions. "The battle to feed humanity is over," Ehrlich preached. "In the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death."

He was wrong, of course. Better crops, better communications, better transport, better education - and see now. Famines are now virtually unknown outside of war zones. But such apocalyptic talk was everywhere then. Take the Club of Rome, a top think tank, which in 1972 warned the world's economy was about to hit a wall. We were running out of oil, gas, silver, tin, uranium, aluminium, copper, lead and zinc, it warned in Limits to Growth, which sold 30 million copies, becoming the best-selling environmental book in history. Panic spread. "We could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade," warned US president Jimmy Carter.

Except we didn't. Instead, we've now got bigger reserves of all the things the Club of Rome said would soon be used up, except for tin. But those panics about resources were nothing compared with the full-blown hysteria that was now being whipped up over the environment. These eco-scares really took off in 1962 after Rachel Carson published her Silent Spring, using now disputed or discredited evidence to claim DDT was such a menace in the food chain we had to ban it to save whole species. So DDT spraying was largely halted to save birds and fish, even though that meant killing tens of millions of Third World children, who were left with no good protection from the malarial mosquitoes against which the DDT had been used.

Never mind! We were too busy then panicking over a fall (sic) in global temperatures. In April 1975, for instance, Newsweek ran an article, The Cooling World, warning of "ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change", exposing us to floods, "catastrophic" famines, "the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded" and "drought and desolation".

The panic attacks were now coming in waves. There was "acid rain", which the United Nations in 1986 blamed for damaging a quarter of Europe's trees. Now, of course, we know "acid rain" is hardly harmful, and Europe's trees are blooming. There was then the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, also in 1986, that was said to threaten millions of people with death and so terrified women that the International Atomic Energy Agency said as many as 200,000 had abortions. Now we know that the true death toll so far is fewer than 60.

There was the warning by British officials in 1996 that more than 500,000 people faced death by BSE, a brain disease they could catch from infected beef. Now we know - after eight million cattle were slaughtered - that the threat was wildly exaggerated, and the 100 or so victims might not have even got the disease from eating beef. But don't stop panicking! So we panicked instead about bird flu, with newspapers running screaming headlines such as: "Pandemic Could Kill 150 Million, UN Warns". But now we know the UN was just plucking figures from the air, and there's still no proof this disease, caught from heavy exposure to sick birds, can leap from human to human.

How many more scares should I describe, each quickly buried in embarrassment, rather than held up as a warning to be slow to panic? Remember the fear that the world's computers would crash the second the clocks ticked over to the year 2000? Planes would fall from the sky thanks to this Y2K bug, which the world spent an estimated $300 billion "fixing". But what happened at midnight? Tick, tick, tick . . . er, tick.

It was in the 1980s that I first declared my personal war against panic, after thousands of Australians suddenly started to complain of what they called Repetitive Strain Injury. The theory was that typing for hours gave them a crippling wrist pain that would never go away. So firmly was this believed here that by 1985, RSI was blamed for a third of all claims for compensation for disease, and every federal public servant who put out a sore hand was simply paid off.

What struck me, though, was that all the sufferers I knew seemed to be moaners by nature, or already unhappy. Even odder was that this disease seemed to hit only Australians and only in some workplaces, such as Telecom and the Commonwealth Bank - often heavily unionised or soggy with complaint.

You see, as psychologist Prof Robert Spillane says now, RSI was actually not a medical problem but a social one, suffered largely by unhappy people "who chose to become patients" and who had there-theres murmured to them by compensation lawyers and the new breed of occupational health therapists. But who gets RSI now? It's like a magic wind blew it away, overnight.

So that, my young friend, is why I refuse to join your latest panic party. Sneer at my loneliness all you like, as your howling, screaming, gasping mob gibbers in unison with a fear you seem to catch from each other. I've learned that if I wait long enough, you'll come to your senses. Until you panic all over again, that is.

Source






So, next Catholics should stop lighting candles?

Post below lifted from The anchoress. See the original for links

I hope none of my Hannukah-observing friends will diminish their religious practices in order to augment, satisfy and give primacy to the religious philosophies of others. If the followers of the Church of Global Warming wish to observe all sorts of penances and deprivations in order to practice their religion, I have no problem with that. As long as someone's religious dogmas, dictates and traditions don't involve mass slaughter, the imprisonment of others or you know, the really fringy things, I'm a tolerant sort and believe all believers should be free to practice their faith and observe their traditions without being hasselled, bullied, coerced or made to feel bad for doing so.

And as I've said before, I expect the followers of the Church of Global Warming to be just as tolerant to those of other faiths, and their practices. We Catholics won't force you to go to mass, fast, do penance or fly commercial, and you don't force us to put out our candles, unlight our Christmas trees or worship Al Gore.

And in that hope, I'm going to go light a few candles at a local church that still uses real candles - although I guess pushing a few "electric candle" buttons will meet the case, as well - and I'm going to offer up an Advent prayer for religious tolerance and human forbearance throughout this vast, mysterious planet, which is greater than all the fuss, fury and conceits of humankind.

UPDATE: Gaius at Blue Crab Boulevard does some calculating:

Here's a clue and an educational moment, Mr Wegner. Each of the completely burned candles emits 15 grams of carbon according to your own figures. One million such completely burned candles would produce 15 metric tons of carbon. If every one of those one million homes stopped burning that one candle completely - right now - and continued to do so for the next 6,666 years they would offset the carbon emitted by the [important environmentalists] going to Bali.

Emphasis mine. In case you don't understand the Bali reference, go here. Gaius adds:

So, while these functionaries plot out how to limit your lives, how to immensely increase the cost of your energy, how to redistribute your wealth on a global scale, they will not be doing so in anything less than plutocratic splendor that emperors of even a century ago could not have dreamed of.

But don't worry. They are doing it for all the best reasons. Trust them. They'll wave from the limousines.




The Science of Gore's Nobel

What if everyone believes in global warmism only because everyone believes in global warmism?

The Nobel Committee might as well have called it Al Gore's Inner Peace Prize, given the way it seems designed to help him disown his lifelong ambition to become president in favor of a higher calling, as savior of a planet. The media will be tempted to blur the fact that his medal, which Mr. Gore will collect on Monday in Oslo, isn't for "science." In fact, a Nobel has never been awarded for the science of global warming. Even Svante Arrhenius, who first described the "greenhouse" effect, won his for something else in 1903. Yet now one has been awarded for promoting belief in manmade global warming as a crisis.

How this honor has befallen the former Veep could perhaps be explained by another Nobel, awarded in 2002 to Daniel Kahneman for work he and the late Amos Tversky did on "availability bias," roughly the human propensity to judge the validity of a proposition by how easily it comes to mind. Their insight has been fruitful and multiplied: "Availability cascade" has been coined for the way a proposition can become irresistible simply by the media repeating it; "informational cascade" for the tendency to replace our beliefs with the crowd's beliefs; and "reputational cascade" for the rational incentive to do so.

Mr. Gore clearly understands the game he's playing, judging by his resort to such nondispositive arguments as: "The people who dispute the international consensus on global warming are in the same category now with the people who think the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona."

Here's exactly the problem that availability cascades pose: What if the heads being counted to certify an alleged "consensus" arrived at their positions by counting heads? It may seem strange that scientists would participate in such a phenomenon. It shouldn't. Scientists are human; they do not wait for proof; many devote their professional lives to seeking evidence for hypotheses (especially well-funded hypotheses) they've chosen to believe.

Less surprising is the readiness of many prominent journalists to embrace the role of enforcer of an orthodoxy simply because it is the orthodoxy. For them, a consensus apparently suffices as proof of itself.

With politicians and lobbyists, of course, you are dealing with sophisticated people versed in the ways of public opinion whose very prosperity depends on positioning themselves via such cascades. Their reactions tend to be, for that reason, on a higher intellectual level. Take John Dingell. He told an environmental publication last year that the "world . . . is great at having consensuses that are in great error." Yet he turned around a few months later and introduced a sweeping carbon tax bill, which would confront Congress more frontally than Congress cares to be confronted with a rational approach to climate change if Congress really believes human activity is responsible. Mr. Dingell is no fool. Is he merely trying to embarrass those who offer fake cures for climate change at the expense of out-of-favor industries such as Mr. Dingell's beloved Detroit?

Take Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist working with Kleiner Perkins, a firm Mr. Gore joined last month to promote alternative energy investments. Mr. Khosla told a recent Senate hearing: "One does not need to believe in climate change to support climate change legislation. . . . Many executives would prefer to deal with known legislation even if unwarranted." Mr. Khosla is no fool either. His argument is that the cascade itself is a reason that politicians can gain comfort by getting aboard his agenda.

Now let's suppose a most improbable, rhapsodic lobbying success for Mr. Gore, Mr. Khosla and folks on their side of the table--say, a government mandate to replace half the gasoline consumed in the U.S. with a carbon-neutral alternative. This would represent a monumental, $400 billion-a-year business opportunity for the green energy lobby. The impact on global carbon emissions? Four percent--less than China's predicted emissions growth over the next three or four years.

Don't doubt that this is precisely the chasm that keeps Mr. Gore from running for president. He could neither win the office nor govern on the basis of imposing the kinds of costs supposedly necessary to deal with an impending "climate crisis." Yet his credibility would become laughable if he failed to insist on such costs. How much more practical, then, to cash in on the crowd-pleasing role of angry prophet, without having to take responsibility for policies that the public will eventually discover to be fraudulent.

Public opinion cascades are powerful but also fragile--liable to be overturned in an instant when new information comes along. The current age of global warming politics will certainly end with a whimper once a few consecutive years of cooling are recorded. Why should we expect such cooling? Because the forces that caused warming and cooling in the past, before the advent of industrial civilization, are still at work.

No, this wouldn't prove or disprove a human role in warming, only that climate is variable and subject to complicated influences. But it would also eliminate the large incentive for politicians to traffic in doom-laden predictions--because such predictions would no longer command media assent and would cease to function as levers to redistribute resources. Mr. Gore would have to find a new job.

Source




Why "peak oil" is an empty scare, and why the price of oil will collapse

Post below lifted from Ace. See the original for links

A commenter at Tigerhawk put me onto this DOE document that is a Rand Corp report from the 2005 timeframe (its a PDF so you'll need Acrobat reader). Here's the beef:

The largest known oil shale deposits in the world are in the Green River Formation, which covers portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Estimates of the oil resource in place within the Green River Formation range from 1.5 to 1.8 trillion barrels. Not all resources in place are recoverable. For potentially recoverable oil shale resources, we roughly derive an upper bound of 1.1 trillion barrels of oil and a lower bound of about 500 billion barrels. For policy planning purposes, it is enough to know that any amount in this range is very high. For example, the midpoint in our estimate range, 800 billion barrels, is more than triple the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. Present U.S. demand for petroleum products is about 20 million barrels per day. If oil shale could be used to meet a quarter of that demand, 800 billion barrels of recoverable resources would last for more than 400 years.

...Shell anticipates that, in contrast to the cost estimates for mining and surface retorting, the petroleum products produced by their thermally conductive in-situ method will be competitive at crude oil prices in the mid-$20s per barrel. The company is still developing the process, however, and cost estimates could easily increase as more information is obtained and more detailed designs become available. [PA note: even if costs turned out to be 3X, its still economically viable at today's prices]

Development Timeline. Currently, no organization with the management, technical, and financial wherewithal to develop oil shale resources has announced its intent to build commercial-scale production facilities... [PA note: by 2007 Shell had already started ramping this in Canada]

If you take 1/4 of the US demand out of the world market, world oil prices would have to collapse to whatever OUR baseline production costs+profit are -- which would be fixed by petro engineering economics rather than the whim of dictators, Arabs, and various loons. Prices today are arbitrary and build in worry factors about supply. If we know we can produce and sell a barrel for say $50, and then do it, it compels the arbitrary pricers to meet our price or lose business. Worry factors for American/Canadian oil would be near zero - foreign wars, loony dictators, etc would have little effect on production and delivery capability from CONUS and Canadian facilities.

I'm sure this will generate all sorts of screeching from the Oil Drum crowd and the peak oil loons. The bottom line here is - the US and Canada have within our grasp the power to blow the crap out of the world oil prices, maintain fat profits for our oil companies for hundreds of years to come, and make our economies freaking juggernaughts all at the same time.

Do we have to stones to do it? Gotta tell the enviros to STFU first. Then make a righteous looking effort - which in itself might be enough to collapse world oil prices considerably. Another commenter at Tigerhawk suggested a clever method of long term recovery of development costs -- long term oil price option puts. If you know you're going to hammer the market, might as well pick the pockets of the "chicken little" crowd's in the process right? Hell yea.





RUDD U-TURN ON GLOBAL WARMING

Reality hits Australia's Leftists

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd last night did an about-face on deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, days after Australia's delegation backed the plan at the climate talks in Bali. A government representative at the talks this week said Australia backed a 25-40 per cent cut on 1990 emission levels by 2020. But after warnings it would lead to huge rises in electricity prices, Mr Rudd said the Government would not support the target.

The repudiation of the delegate's position represents the first stumble by the new Government's in its approach to climate change. Mr Rudd said he supported a longer-term greenhouse emissions cut of 60 per cent of 2000 levels by 2050. But the Government would not set medium-term targets until a report by economist Ross Garnaut was completed next year. "I think speculation on individual numbers prior to that is not productive and I would suggest it would be better for all concerned if we waited for the outcome of that properly-deliberated document," Mr Rudd said.

The electricity industry yesterday warned it may not be able to meet growing consumer demand and comply with the 2020 target. Energy Supply Association of Australia chief executive Brad Page said a 17 per cent power price rise in Victoria would seem "pretty modest" compared with the cost of complying with the target. An ESAA report released this year found cutting carbon emissions by 30 per cent of 2000 levels by 2030 wold push up power costs by 30 per cent. Mr Page said the cost of meeting the higher target by 2020 would be much more as low-cost, green-generation technology would not be available for more than 10 years. "You are dependent on yet-to-be delivered technology," he said. "The community needs to be aware cuts of this magnitude will come at considerable cost and it's difficult to know how exactly it will be delivered."

Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson said the suggested cuts would have "devastating impact" on Australia's economic development. "It will have serious consequences for electricity bills and many other burdens borne by working families in day-to-day life, and pensioners," Dr Nelson said.

Source

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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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THE CHICKEN BUSINESS

John the farmer was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers (hens), called "pullets", and ten roosters, whose job it was to fertilize the eggs.

The farmer kept records and any rooster that didn't perform went into the soup pot and was replaced. That took an awful lot of his time, so he bought a set of tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone so John could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing. Now he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report simply by listening to the bells.

The farmer's favorite rooster was old Butch, a very fine specimen he was, too. But on this particular morning John noticed old Butch's bell hadn't rung at all! John went to investigate. The other roosters were chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing. The pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover.

But to Farmer John's amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring. He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one. John was so proud of old Butch, he entered him in the Renfrew County Fair and he became an overnight sensation among the judges.

The result...The judges not only awarded old Butch the No Bell Piece Prize but they also awarded him the Pulletsurprise as well.

Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making: who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren't paying attention.

Just remember November next year that the bells are not always audible




WILL SUN'S LOW ACTIVITY ARREST GLOBAL WARMING?

Could the Sun's inactivity save us from global warming? David Whitehouse explains why solar disempower may be the key to combating climate change

Something is happening to our Sun. It has to do with sunspots, or rather the activity cycle their coming and going signifies. After a period of exceptionally high activity in the 20th century, our Sun has suddenly gone exceptionally quiet. Months have passed with no spots visible on its disc. We are at the end of one cycle of activity and astronomers are waiting for the sunspots to return and mark the start of the next, the so-called cycle 24. They have been waiting for a while now with no sign it's on its way any time soon.

Sunspots - dark magnetic blotches on the Sun's surface - come and go in a roughly 11-year cycle of activity first noticed in 1843. It's related to the motion of super-hot, electrically charged gas inside the Sun - a kind of internal conveyor belt where vast sub-surface rivers of gas take 40 years to circulate from the equator to the poles and back. Somehow, in a way not very well understood, this circulation produces the sunspot cycle in which every 11 years there is a sunspot maximum followed by a minimum. But recently the Sun's internal circulation has been failing. In May 2006 this conveyor belt had slowed to a crawl - a record low. Nasa scientist David Hathaway said: "It's off the bottom of the charts... this has important repercussions for future solar activity." What's more, it's not the only indicator that the Sun is up to something.

Sunspots can be long or short, weak or strong and sometimes they can go away altogether. Following the discovery of the cycle, astronomers looked back through previous observations and were able to see it clearly until they reached the 17th century, when it seemed to disappear. It turned out to be a real absence, not one caused by a lack of observations. Astronomers called it the "Maunder Minimum." It was an astonishing discovery: our Sun can change. Between 1645 and 1715 sunspots were rare. About 50 were observed; there should have been 50,000.

Ever since the sunspot cycle was discovered, researchers have looked for its rhythm superimposed on the Earth's climate. In some cases it's there but usually at low levels. But there was something strange about the time when the sunspots disappeared that left scientists to ponder if the sun's unusual behaviour could have something to do with the fact that the 17th century was also a time when the Earth's northern hemisphere chilled with devastating consequences.

Scientists call that event the "Little Ice Age" and it affected Europe at just the wrong time. In response to the more benign climate of the earlier Medieval Warm Period, Europe's population may have doubled. But in the mid-17th century demographic growth stopped and in some areas fell, in part due to the reduced crop yields caused by climate change. Bread prices doubled and then quintupled and hunger weakened the population. The Italian historian Majolino Bisaccioni suggested that the wave of bad weather and revolutions might be due to the influence of the stars. But the Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli speculated that fluctuations in the number of sunspots might be to blame, for he had noticed they were absent.

Looking back through sunspot records reveals many periods when the Sun's activity was high and low and in general they are related to warm and cool climatic periods. As well as the Little Ice Age, there was the weak Sun and the cold Iron Age, the active sun and the warm Bronze Age. Scientists cannot readily explain how the Sun's activity affects the Earth but it is an observational correlation that the Sun's moods have a climatic effect on the Earth.

Today's climate change consensus is that man-made greenhouse gases are warming the world and that we must act to curb them to reduce the projected temperature increase estimated at probably between 1.8C and 4.0C by the century's end. But throughout the 20th century, solar cycles had been increasing in strength. Almost everyone agrees that throughout most of the last century the solar influence was significant. Studies show that by the end of the 20th century the Sun's activity may have been at its highest for more than 8,000 years. Other solar parameters have been changing as well, such as the magnetic field the Sun sheds, which has almost doubled in the past century. But then things turned. In only the past decade or so the Sun has started a decline in activity, and the lateness of cycle 24 is an indicator.

Astronomers are watching the Sun, hoping to see the first stirrings of cycle 24. It should have arrived last December. The United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted it would start in March 2007. Now they estimate March 2008, but they will soon have to make that even later. The first indications that the Sun is emerging from its current sunspot minimum will be the appearance of small spots at high latitude. They usually occur some 12-20 months before the start of a new cycle. These spots haven't appeared yet so cycle 24 will probably not begin to take place until 2009 at the earliest. The longer we have to wait for cycle 24, the weaker it is likely to be. Such behaviour is usually followed by cooler temperatures on Earth.

The past decade has been warmer than previous ones. It is the result of a rapid increase in global temperature between 1978 and 1998. Since then average temperatures have held at a high, though steady, level. Many computer climate projections suggest that the global temperatures will start to rise again in a few years. But those projections do not take into account the change in the Sun's behaviour. The tardiness of cycle 24 indicates that we might be entering a period of low solar activity that may counteract man-made greenhouse temperature increases. Some members of the Russian Academy of Sciences say we may be at the start of a period like that seen between 1790 and 1820, a minor decline in solar activity called the Dalton Minimum. They estimate that the Sun's reduced activity may cause a global temperature drop of 1.5C by 2020. This is larger than most sensible predictions of man-made global warming over this period.

It's something we must take seriously because what happened in the 17th century is bound to happen again some time. Recent work studying the periods when our Sun loses its sunspots, along with data on other Sun-like stars that may be behaving in the same way, suggests that our Sun may spend between 10 and 25 per cent of the time in this state. Perhaps the lateness of cycle 24 might even be the start of another Little Ice Age. If so, then our Sun might come to our rescue over climate change, mitigating mankind's influence and allowing us more time to act. It might even be the case that the Earth's response to low solar activity will overturn many of our assumptions about man's influence on climate change. We don't know. We must keep watching the sun.

Source




EXPECTED HALT IN THE CURRENT GLOBAL WARMING TREND?

By Ernest C. Njau

Abstract

The variation patterns of global temperature were considerably turbulent from about 1870 up to 1940. Then just after 1940 these patterns underwent a sunspot-related change and adopted to relatively less turbulent variability. It is established here that these global temperature patterns are currently in the process of undergoing a sunspot-related change from the post-1940 relatively less turbulent variability back into relatively more turbulent variability. This apparently imminent state of more turbulent variability is expected to stop and at least slightly reverse the global warming trend, which has been going on since about 1965. Besides, it is shown separately that the mean of `global mean temperature variations' reaches the next peak at about the year 2005 after which it will expectedly be on a decreasing trend. Finally, it is shown that, contrary to projections made in the Third IPCC Assessment Report, Greenland is currently in an ongoing cooling trend which is expected to last up to at least the year 2035.

1. Introduction

Variability of rainfall in a region affects corresponding variability of available hydropower potential in that region. Also variability of cloudiness and hence also of temperature in a country affect corresponding availability of harvestable solar energy. Therefore, variability of rainfall and temperature as well as predictability of such variability are useful inputs into long-term energy policies.

In a recent publication [1], it was established that solar activity is related to a number of large and rapid changes in temperature and rainfall variation patterns at global, regional and station levels. In this case and in accordance with standard procedure, sunspot number (i.e. number of dark spots on the sun's disc) was used as a measure of solar activity. The results on sun-weather relationships contained in Ref. [1] created temptations that resulted into making investigations into whether solar activity is related in any way to the variability (or turbulence) levels of global climate variations as well as persistence of the current global warming trend. Following conclusive undertakings of the investigations just mentioned above, it is hereby reported in this article the results of the investigations. [...]

3. Prolonged cooling over Greenland

The expected halt in the current global warming trend which has been established in Section 2 is not reported in the Third Assessment Report [16] of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). As detailed in Ref. [15], the climate model projections and simulations contained in the latest IPCC report [16] completely miss out influences due to solar (or sunspot) associated climate variations. These climate model projections indicate that globally averaged surface temperature is projected to increase by 1.4-5.8 øC over the period 1990-2100. Also the local warming over Greenland is projected to be 1-3 times the global average. But as detailed below, temperature projections based on long Greenland records somehow contradict the projection just stated above on Greenland warming.

Data for Greenland temperature variations from 300 AD (see solid-line variations in Fig. 5) was taken and then spectrally analysed using the Maximum Entropy Method. This spectral analysis yielded one significant peak at a period of 410 years. The data just mentioned above was also low-pass filtered in order to remove all variations at periods less than 180 years. Then what remained after this filtering process was plotted in Fig. 5 using a discontinuous line. It can be obviously noted (even by mere visual inspection) that the discontinuous line in Fig. 5 oscillates, having minima at the years 440, 820, 1280 and 1690 as well as maxima at the years 620, 1080 and 1420. All this implies presence of an oscillation at a mean period of 410 years. The latter temperature oscillation is related to a solar (or sunspot) cycle of similar periodicity as explained in Refs. [9] and [15]. It is therefore primarily of solar origin.

Since the current anthropogenic activities are unable to permanently cancel out natural temperature oscillations such as seasonal cycles and sunspot-related oscillations [9], [13] and [15], the account given above shows that the Greenland temperature variations since 300 AD are dominated by a sunspot-related oscillation whose (mean) period is 410 years. This oscillation reaches a maximum between 1830 and 1895 and expectedly slides down to a minimum from 1830 to 1895 to the next minimum between 2035 and 2100. Expectedly Greenland is currently in a cooling process, and this cooling process is expected to persist up to at least 2035. Indeed, this explains why the Greenland ice sheet has not significantly started melting although all the climate models predict greatest greenhouse warming in the Arctic [16].

This section is ended by looking at another interesting feature in Fig. 5. From about the year 900 AD onwards, the solid-line in this figure consistently oscillates at periods between 60 and 160 years. As detailed in Ref. [15], the primary cause of this 60-160 years oscillation is a change in the main periodicity of solar or sunspot activity. This change in solar activity introduced a 60-160 years oscillation in the variations of the amplitude of the 11-years sunspot cycle. And the 60-160 years oscillation in the 11-years sunspot cycles is basically the cause of the 60-160 years oscillation in the Greenland temperature (see Ref. [15] for the mechanisms involved). The latest peak of this 60-160 years temperature oscillation in Fig. 5 occurred in 1925. Now simple extrapolation of this oscillation shows that the next peak is expected in about the year 2050. This implies that on the basis of the 60-160 years temperature oscillation alone, some significant cooling is expected to start at about 2050 and proceed to beyond 2100. It is now obvious that on the basis of both the 60-160 years temperature oscillation and the 410 years temperature oscillation discussed earlier in this section, Greenland is expected to undergo some significant cooling between 1990 and 2100.

4. Variations in the mean of global mean temperature

Section 2 uses the alternating states or modes of amplitude-modulation patterns in global mean temperature to show and hence conclude that some global cooling trend is expected during the early years of this century. Here the same conclusion is established using a different and simpler method.

The mean variation in Fig. 3 (shown by a smooth solid curve) clearly oscillates from 1856 onwards. This oscillation displays maxima in the years 1878 and 1942 as well as minima in the years 1909 and 1971. This series of maxima and minima indicate presence of a dominant oscillation with a mean period of 63 years. Simple forward extrapolation of this dominant oscillation shows that the next maximum will expectedly be in the year 2005. On this basis, some global cooling trend is expected to start in about 2005 and last up to about 2036. By coincidence, the latter year is approximately equal to the earliest year (arrived at in Section 3) at which some cooling trend over Greenland is expected to stop. Finally, it should be noted that the period of the 63 years oscillation mentioned above (in connection with global mean temperature) is equal to the period of the second harmonic of the sunspot oscillation shown in Fig. 4 using a series of x's. The theory and mechanisms through which the latter sunspot oscillation so significantly relates to global mean temperature variations are given in Refs. [9], [14] and [15].

5. Conclusion

The analysis given in the text establishes and predicts that the current global warming trend is expected to halt and at least slightly reverse during the early years of this century. This conclusion has been arrived at using three different methods. There is full confidence in the techniques used in arriving at this conclusion for the following reasons. First, long-standing techniques as well as modern techniques have been used to arrive at the above-mentioned conclusion. Second, the same techniques were employed as far back as 1999 in establishing and predicting that: (i) There would be an El Nino episode in 2002 (see Ref. [17]), and (ii) The El Nino episode mentioned in (i) above would be weak-to-moderate compared to the 1997/98 El Nino (see Ref. [18]). Expectedly both of predictions (i) and (ii) above have actually taken place as reported in Ref. [19]. On this basis, it is certain that the conclusions of this article are scientifically correct, and that these predictions are expected to take place as stated. These predictions are useful guides in the current efforts (notably in developing countries) aimed at formulating future policies and visions on renewable energy needs, technology and utilisation which are consistent with expected temperature and general climate patterns.

FULL PAPER here




TEMPERATURE VARIATIONS IN CHINA AND POSSIBLE RELATION TO SOLAR ACTIVITY

(Original title: "Temperature variations at Lake Qinghai on decadal scales and the possible relation to solar activities")

By Hai Xu et al.

Abstract

Temperature variations at Lake Qinghai, northeastern Qinghai-Tibet plateau, were reconstructed based on four high-resolution temperature indicators of the ?18O and the ?13C of the bulk carbonate, total carbonate content, and the detrended ?15N of the organic matter. There are four obvious cold intervals during the past 600 years at Lake Qinghai, namely 1430-1470, 1650-1715, 1770-1820, and 1920-1940, synchronous with those recorded in tree rings at the northeast Qinghai-Tibet plateau. The intervals of 1430-1470, 1650-1715, and 1770-1820 are consistent with the three coldest intervals of the Little Ice Age. These obvious cold intervals are also synchronous with the minimums of the sunspot numbers during the past 600 years, suggesting that solar activities may dominate temperature variations on decadal scales at the northeastern Qinghai-Tibet plateau.

1. Introduction

It is well known that the Earth's temperature is influenced by variable factors, such as solar activity, atmospheric circulation, the complex topography, different land cover, and the greenhouse gases. The dominating factor that controls local temperature variation is different between different regions. Therefore, although the general trend of temperature variations over wide geographic areas has been figured out by numerous works, it is still urgent to make clear the details of regional temperature variations and the causes behind them.

The northeastern (NE) Qinghai-Tibet plateau is very sensitive to global climatic changes, with four planetary scale atmospheric circulations prevailing over there, namely the East Asian summer monsoon, the Indian summer monsoon, the Westerly, and the Asian winter monsoon. Temperature variations at this region have aroused wide attention. Yao et al. (2006) studied the temperatures during the last millennium based on ?18O in ice cores. Kang et al. (2000) reconstructed the temperature variations from tree ring width. Liu et al. (2004) carried out a study of dendrochronology and discussed temperature variations at this region. Although similarities exist between those various proxy indices, there are also some differences both in timing and in magnitudes, which seriously limits the understanding of the temperature mechanisms. Much more evidence is necessary to shed light on the details of temperature variations at the NE Qinghai-Tibet plateau.

On the other hand, previous work has suggested that climates on different timescales at the Qinghai-Tibet plateau may be driven by different forces. For example, based on the comparisons between climates recorded in ice cores in the Tibet plateau and those in Greenland, Yao et al. (2001a) pointed out that the climatic variations at the Tibet plateau on orbital timescales are dominantly controlled by solar irradiance. According to a temperature indicator of ?18O in peat cellulose, Xu et al. (2006a) suggested that the quasi-100-year solar activity may be responsible for temperature variations on centennial timescales at Hongyuan, NE Qinghai-Tibet plateau. However, as revealed from ice cores ([Wang et al., 2003] and [Wang et al., 2003]) and tree rings (Xu et al., unpublished data), temperature variations on annual scales are primarily influenced by atmospheric circulations, like the "El Ni¤o-South Oscillation" (ENSO). Our question is: what is the controlling factor of temperature variations on decadal scales at the NE Qinghai-Tibet plateau?

In this study, we studied temperature variations on decadal scales during the past 600 years based on temperature indicators extracted from Lake Qinghai, NE Qinghai-Tibet plateau. We compared the temperature indicators at Lake Qinghai with the proxy indices from tree rings nearby, and with the reconstructed solar activities. The results show that temperature variations at Lake Qinghai are synchronous with those at the NE Qinghai-Tibet plateau, and the main temperature events are generally in-phase with solar activities during the last 600 years. [...]

4. Solar activity and temperature variations on decadal scales at NE Qinghai-Tibet plateau

As pointed out by Eddy (1977), the Maunder minimum, during which nearly no sunspots were detected, corresponded to the coldest period of the LIA. After that, a large amount of evidence has been supplied for the solar-Earth climate relationship. For example, the sea surface temperatures (SSTs) of the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and that of the global average correlate well with the sunspot numbers (see Fig. 1 in Reid, 2000). The concentration of 10Be in Dye3 correlated well with temperature variations of the north hemisphere. Solar irradiance reconstructed from the observed solar cycle length and the observed sunspot numbers correlated well with temperature variations of the north hemisphere (see Fig. 8 in Beer et al., 2000). Solar activity can explain 75% of the total variance of temperature variations on decadal scales at the Arctic area during the last 130 years (Soon, 2005). Solar activity inferred from the concentration of 10Be also synchronized with the D-O events inferred from the variations of ?18O in GISP2 (van Geel, et al., 1999). The temperature variations inferred from ?18O in peat cellulose at Jinchuan, NE China, show nearly a "one to one" relationship with the variation of solar activity (Hong et al., 2000).

We compared the temperature variations at Lake Qinghai and the variation of solar activity during the last 600 years. As shown in Fig. 3, temperature variation at Lake Qinghai is obviously consistent with the solar activity on decadal scales. The cold period inferred from tree ring width during 1400-1500 correlated with the Sp”rer minimum (1402-1516) (Hsu, 1998). The cold period of 1650-1715 corresponded with the Maunder minimum (1645-1715). Hsu (1998) pointed out that the advance of the glacier during the LIA was most significant around 1700. Climate during 1770-1820 was cold, corresponding to the Dalton minimum (Fig. 3). Another cold interval occurred at 1920-1940, which can also be supported by the decrease of solar irradiance at this period of time (Fig. 3).

However, the physics behind the solar-earth climate relationship is not fully understood. The observations during the last two decades indicate a perturbation of 0.1% of the total solar irradiance. Based on the solar cycle length, Zhang et al. (1994) supposed a perturbation of 0.2-0.6% of solar irradiance since the Maunder minimum. Some other studies also showed a perturbation of about 0.2-0.6% based on proxy indices (see Reid, 2000, and references therein). How should such small perturbations of the solar irradiance lead to the observed global warming, what is the mechanism behind it, etc., are still open questions. Much more evidence and discussions are necessary for future studies.

5. Summary

Temperature variations are similar in trends at the NE Qinghai-Tibet plateau. The three strong decreases in temperature corresponded with the three coldest intervals of the LIA during the past 600 years. These three coldest intervals also correspond with the three solar minimum during the past 600 years, namely the Sp”rer, the Maunder, and the Dalton minimums. Such a relationship suggests that solar activities are possibly the controlling factor of temperature variations at the NE Qinghai-Tibet plateau on decadal scales.

FULL PAPER here




SOLAR CYCLE VARIATIONS AND COSMIC RAYS

By M.S. Potgieter

Abstract

Cosmic rays are excellent indicators of the various solar cycle variations. Galactic and anomalous cosmic rays encounter an outward moving solar wind with cyclic magnetic-field fluctuations and turbulence, which constitute the convection and diffusion processes in the heliosphere. They also lose energy as they propagate inwards to Earth, and experience current sheet, global curvature and gradient drifts in the heliospheric magnetic field. As a result, the intensity of cosmic rays directly reflects the various solar cycle variations, from the well-known 11- and 22-year cycles, with the reversal of the solar magnetic field at extreme solar maximum, to highly temporal variations like proton flares, Forbush decreases, corotating interaction regions and a variety of propagating diffusion barriers. All these features contribute and influence space climate and weather at Earth. Recently, the time-dependent extent and the dynamics of the heliosphere, in particular the role of the heliosheath and the location of the heliopause, have been emphasized as important to very long-term space climate. Long-term modulation over 11-22 years is breifly reviewed with emphasis on the compound time-dependent approach in modeling the solar cycle variations of cosmic rays in the heliosphere.

FULL PAPER here




SHORTWAVE FORCING OF THE EARTH'S CLIMATE

("Shortwave forcing of the Earth's climate: Modern and historical variations in the Sun's irradiance and the Earth's reflectance")

By P.R. Goode et al.

Abstract

Changes in the Earth's radiation budget are driven by changes in the balance between the thermal emission from the top of the atmosphere and the net sunlight absorbed. The shortwave radiation entering the climate system depends on the Sun's irradiance and the Earth's reflectance. Often, studies replace the net sunlight by proxy measures of solar irradiance, which is an oversimplification used in efforts to probe the Sun's role in past climate change. With new helioseismic data and new measures of the Earth's reflectance, we can usefully separate and constrain the relative roles of the net sunlight's two components, while probing the degree of their linkage. First, this is possible because helioseismic data provide the most precise measure ever of the solar cycle, which ultimately yields more profound physical limits on past irradiance variations. Since irradiance variations are apparently minimal, changes in the Earth's climate that seem to be associated with changes in the level of solar activity-the Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice age for example-would then seem to be due to terrestrial responses to more subtle changes in the Sun's spectrum of radiative output. This leads naturally to a linkage with terrestrial reflectance, the second component of the net sunlight, as the carrier of the terrestrial amplification of the Sun's varying output. Much progress has also been made in determining this difficult to measure, and not-so-well-known quantity. We review our understanding of these two closely linked, fundamental drivers of climate. [...]

6. Conclusions

In this paper we have reviewed the physical mechanisms behind solar irradiance variation, and we have reviewed how on the timescale of solar evolution, the Sun cannot have been any dimmer than it is at the most recent activity minima. We have also shown how concurrent changes in the Earth's reflectance can produce a much larger climate impact over relatively short time scales. Thus, a possible Sun-albedo link, would have the potential to produce large climate effects without the need for significant excursions in solar irradiance. These could provide an explanation for the apparently large climate response to apparently small solar changes, as well as how the year solar cycle is imprinted on Earth.

Regardless of its possible solar ties, we have seen how the Earth's large scale reflectance-and the short wavelength part of the Earth's radiation budget-is a much more variable climate parameter than previously thought and, thus, deserves to be studied in as much detail as changes in the Sun's output or changes in the Earth's atmospheric infrared emission produced by anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Long-term records of the Earth's reflectance will provide crucial input for general circulation climate models, and will significantly increase our ability to assess and predict climate change.

FULL PAPER here

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Atmosphere of Uncertainty?

By S. Fred Singer

To support the conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that current warming is anthropogenic, William Collins, Robert Colman, James Haywood, Martin R. Manning and Philip Mote assert in "The Physical Science behind Climate Change" that the mismatch between surface and tropospheric warming rates has now been resolved.

This claim is not supported by actual observations. According to the April 2006 Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report, considerable disparity exists between the observed warming-rate patterns and those calculated by greenhouse models. Although the models predict that temperature trends will increase with altitude by 200 to 300 percent, the data from both weather balloons and satellites show the opposite. This result does not deny the existence of a greenhouse effect from the considerable increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gases. But it does suggest that present models greatly overestimate the effect's magnitude and significance.

Source

Collins et al. have replied to Singer with the claim that the discrepancies observed are just random errors (or "significant nonclimatic influences", as they put it). Anything that does not fit the theory is just a random error, apparently. The old "Deus ex machina" of Elizabethan theatre has now moved on -- to be found these days in climate science -- where it is called a "significant nonclimatic influence". Forgive me while I laugh!





Congress decides to kill a lot more Americans

Bigger, heavier vehicles are generally safer but they use more fuel. The fuel economy mandates will tend to make all vehicles light and flimsy

The groundbreaking deal in Congress to raise miles-per-gallon standards will compel the auto industry to churn out more fuel-efficient vehicles on a faster timeline than the companies wanted, though with flexibility to get the job done. The auto industry's fleet of new cars, SUVs, pickups and vans will have to average 35 mpg by 2020, according to the agreement that congressional negotiators announced late Friday. That compares with the 2008 requirement of 27.5 mpg average for cars and 22.5 mpg for light trucks. It would be first increase ordered by Congress in three decades.

Majority Democrats plan to include the requirement in broader energy legislation to be debated in the context of $90-per-barrel oil, $3-plus gas pump prices and growing concerns about climate change. The House plans to begin debate this week.

The energy bill will help accelerate plans by automakers to bring more fuel-efficient technologies to conventional engines and alternatives such as gas-electric hybrids and vehicles running on ethanol blends. For the first time, for example, manufacturers will receive credits for building vehicles that run on biodiesel fuel.

Domestic automakers and Toyota opposed a Senate bill approved in June that contained the same mileage requirements and timeline. They warned the measure would limit the choice of vehicles, threaten jobs and drive up costs. The compromise worked out by Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate leaders maintains a significant boost in mileage standards while giving the industry more flexibility and certainty as they plan new vehicles.

The proposal would continue separate standards for cars and trucks, extend credits for producing vehicles that run on ethanol blends, and allow automakers to receive separate credits for exceeding the standards and then apply those credits to other model years.

Michigan lawmakers secured an extension of the current 1.2 mpg credit for the production of each "flexible fuel" vehicle, capable of running on ethanol blends of 15% gasoline and 85% ethanol. Without the extension, the credits might have run out by 2010, but under the deal, they will be phased out by 2020. The United Auto Workers union also won a provision intended to prevent companies from shifting production of less-profitable small cars to foreign plants. At stake are an estimated 17,000 jobs.

General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner said the new rules would "pose a significant technical and economic challenge to the industry." He said GM would tackle the changes "with an array of engineering, research and development resources." Environmental groups estimate the deal could save the country 1.2 million barrels of oil per day by 2020 while helping motorists save at the pump. "Cars are going to be more attractive to consumers because they won't cost as much to own and operate," said David Doniger, director of the climate center for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Source




BALI, DAY 1: CHINA, INDIA GO ON THE OFFENSIVE: WEST DIVIDED AND FEEBLE

At Bali, where 190 countries are debating on how to safeguard the future of the Earth, India finds itself under siege. But battling for its right to development, India has found its best friends across the borders - China and Pakistan. On the first day of the Bali meet, it was clear that officials of the developed world were working on a script - piling on the pressure on India and China to bring them into the tent of emission cuts. But, in a rare demonstration of solidarity, India and China have teamed up and officials of both countries are working together on every issue - from emission reductions to setting targets for energy intensity.

At the ad-hoc working group meeting on Monday, India was told, "You have the largest number of billionaires. Why can't you accept cuts and targets." The riposte from Indian and Chinese officials was almost instantaneous. "We are large countries. Our poverty is just as large," they said.

The border dispute and other troubles seem far away for officials at the climate change frontlines - their only brief is to ensure that India and China have the space and opportunity to grow unhindered by cuts and targets. So, anybody expecting India and China to play differently were disappointed - through the day there was a frantic to-ing and fro-ing between the officials to make sure the two countries were on the same page. And they have help - from Pakistan. Pakistan is now the chairman of the G-77 and in that role, has been providing valuable back-up support to the two Asian biggies.

Climate change has now become a huge security issue for the developed and developing worlds, but in vastly different ways. The threat to western lifestyles as a result of emission cuts is becoming difficult politically. So while Australia, under new PM Kevin Rudd, took a U-turn by ratifying Kyoto, Canada, under conservative Stephen Harper, took a different turn.

For the developing world, India's battle is to push the idea of per capita emissions as a unit of measurement. That's not yet acceptable across the pond. The battle is now fairly joined. It continues...

Source





WAS "ENSO" THE CULPRIT?

Did a normal climate cycle account for the short period of warming up to 1998?

ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) is the technical name given to the most prominent source of inter-annual variability in weather and climate around the world. Its ocean temperature signatures, the more widely-known La Nina and El Nino, corresponding to different phases of the oscillation, are officially defined as sustained sea surface temperature anomalies of magnitude greater than 0.5øC across the central tropical Pacific Ocean.

When ENSO is in the phase known as La Nina, the Pacific trade winds blow true and strong causing sun warmed surface water to pile up against Australia and Indonesia. Cool subsurface water rises in the east. In an El Nino, the trade winds falter and warm water spreads out eastwards across the Pacific Ocean. La Nina and El Nino are the poles of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

ENSO has a influence on global surface temperatures, Australian, American, Indian and African rainfall and Atlantic cyclones. ENSO varies between La Nina and El Nino states over 3 to 7 years but also over periods of decades to centuries. One mode of ENSO variation involves changes in both the frequency and intensity of La Nina and El Nino over at least a few decades.

The Pacific Ocean trade winds set up cloud and rainfall patterns globally with enormous energies transferred between ocean and atmosphere. La Nina conditions see colder water rising in the eastern Pacific and warm, moist air rising over Australia and Indonesia. El Nino conditions see warm water spread across the Pacific. See here

A simple process of heat transfer from the ocean to the atmosphere occurs. The heat transfer is enhanced in the El Nino state by the enormous area of warm water. Conversely, heat is gained by the Pacific Ocean during cooler La Nina conditions and global surface temperatures dip. This is reflected in the CRU surface temperature anomalies shown below for the period 1990 to 2006. 1997 and 1998 are hot. By contrast, 2000 was relatively cool.

The recent surface temperature record shows rising temperatures in the 1990's -- a period of sustained and intense El Nino peaking in 1997. The temperature period since certainly reflects less intense El Nino and cooling sea surface temperatures. The planet will remain cooler, certainly through 2007 and into 2008, as cooler La Nina influences prevail.

Superimposed on the alternation of La Nina and El Nino are longer term variations in the frequency and intensity of El Nino and La Nina. A period of more frequent and intense La Nina between the mid forties and 1975 followed by more frequent and intense El Nino between 1976 and 1998. The pattern appears in centuries of proxy data - that is in tree and coral rings, sedimentation and rainfall and flood records. Global surface temperatures have a similar trajectory. Falling from 1946 to 1975, rising between 1976 and 1998 and declining since.

ENSO determines rainfall in Australia, Asia and America, and influences rainfall in Africa and the Indian monsoon. The beginning of the hydrological cycle here appears to be the vast heat sink over the Pacific during an El Nino and warm, moist air rising in the western Pacific in a La Nina.

The longer term variation of ENSO in frequency and intensity has not been explained either as a result of internal feedback or external forcing. Even so, it is difficult to explain how ENSO variations have been neglected by so many for so long. ENSO involves 97% of greenhouse gases. The surface temperature impacts are significant. Note the 0.25 0C difference between 1998 and 2000.

ENSO variation goes in both directions. The indications are that ENSO variation added to global surface temperatures between 1976 and 1998. It has been almost 10 years since temperatures peaked in1998. The planet may continue to be cooler over the next few decades as a cool La Nina phase of ENSO emerges.

Source




Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett gagged on climate change

Former Greenie gets no respect from his colleagues. The signal clearly is that the new government will be only light green, with tokenism being its main Green feature

First Peter Garrett had the crucial issue of climate change yanked from his new environment portfolio, now the new minister has been sidelined from answering questions on the matter in parliament. In a further embarrassment for Mr Garrett, it was yesterday revealed he will not represent Climate Change Minister Senator Penny Wong during Question Time in the Lower House. Questions in the House of Representatives about Senator Wong's role will instead be fielded by Treasurer Wayne Swan.

Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson said the extraordinary move showed Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had no confidence in the gaffe-prone Mr Garrett's ability as a minister. "I fail to understand why in fact Prime Minister Rudd does not have the confidence in Mr Garrett to be taking questions on climate change," Mr Nelson said. "It was always very interesting to see Mr Garrett attempt to answer questions."

Ms Wong leapt to Mr Garrett's defence, saying he had not been gagged: "Peter has a very clear voice in government, he is a Cabinet minister." She argued that climate change was as much an economic issue as an environmental one. "I think it's quite a good thing, if we reflect that in our representing arrangements - but I wouldn't read too much into it."

The Government yesterday defended sending a quarter of its Cabinet to the climate conference in Bali. Mr Rudd and a record four frontbenchers will attend the UN conference, which will attract delegates from around 190 nations and is designed to establish a road map for international climate change action. Ms Wong said the large Australian delegation highlighted the nation's moment in the sun on global climate politics following the Government's historic decision to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. "That gives us a leadership position and we intend to use that," she said. "There are meetings specifically for the trade and finance ministers of the world."

Mr Rudd will lead Australia's delegation. He will be joined by Ms Wong as well as Mr Garrett, Mr Swan and Trade Minister Simon Crean, who will attend separate trade and finance meetings over the next fortnight. "We recognise this as an extremely important conference - Australia has signalled its intention to play a leadership role," Ms Wong said. "That really reflects the fact the world is coming to the view that this is an issue of international economic significance." The new Government has also committed to introducing a green car fleet.

Source

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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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