Tuesday, November 04, 2014


IPCC Links New Report to Sneering Stephen Schneider

An organization whose reputation is in tatters links its new document to a rude, intolerant, highly politicized climate crusader

Earlier today, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the final installment of its latest tome. The 40-page summary of what is, itself, a summary of already-public material can be seen here.

Page two contains the following statement: “This report is dedicated to the memory of Stephen H. Schneider 1945-2010.”

That’s right. This supposedly scientific body, composed of supposedly dispassionate scientific experts discussing what many believe to be the world’s most pressing problem, have deliberately undercut their own case. They’ve chosen to contaminate their conclusions by linking them to a specific individual.

The late Stephen Schneider was no pillar of scientific integrity. He was not a role model any of us would wish our children to emulate. Indeed, the portrait of him that emerged via the climategate files is cringe-worthy.

I’ve previously discussed an e-mail he wrote to a lawyer employed by the activist group known as the Environmental Defense Fund, but cc’d to 14 now prominent climate actors (backed up here). Schneider, being significantly older than many of these individuals, was in a leadership position. It was his job to set an example of how scientists in his camp should behave toward those of a more skeptical frame of mind.

Rather than demonstrating grace, tolerance, humility, or patience he acted like a demented sports fan – the sort who riot and beat-up people when their team doesn’t win. (The metaphor isn’t mine. Schneider titled his 2009 book Science as a Contact Sport.)

When these kinds of riots take place, honourable ideas such as fair play and good sportsmanship are pushed aside by something uglier. That e-mail exposes Schneider as a sneering, smearing individiual – as someone who responds to critics by hurling insults, by calling them “idiots,” “incompetents,” and “bozos.” The lesson he taught these younger scientists had two components:

    lawyers paid to advance activist agendas are part of the in-crowd

    people on the other team are unworthy of simple human courtesy, never mind serious consideration

A second climategate e-mail makes it clear that Schneider was a dangerous enemy of free speech. As I explain here, when Schneider turned down an invitation to participate in a 2003 conference, it wasn’t for scientific reasons – but political ones. In the universe Schneider inhabited, a company that had the temerity to publish a book with which he disagreed – Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist - deserved to be bad-mouthed and boycotted.

In that e-mail (backed up here), Schneider refuses to attend the conference because material presented there will, afterward, be published by Cambridge University Press. He says the only way he’d consider associating himself with that publishing house is if it

    withdrew Lomborg’s book

    apologized “to the scientific community” and

    admitted to “scientific fraud”

For good measure, Schneider’s e-mail accuses an editor of being “dishonest” and of “wrapping him self up in an authors right to speak” (sic). Heaven forfend that anyone employed in the publishing industry should defend free and open debate.

But let us bring this discussion back to the IPCC – those geniuses who thought it was a good idea to link their findings to a rude, intolerant, highly politicized climate crusader. On page 125 of his above-mentioned book, Schneider confirms that the IPCC is just another old boys’ club.

Like hundreds of other people, he received a draft of the IPCC’s first report and was invited to provide feedback. This means he served as an external expert reviewer. The IPCC then lied to the public about his role. Here are Schneider’s own words:

    "They used some of my suggestions, and when the Assessment Report was published a year later, I was listed as a contributing author. It was flattering they thought to acknowledge me, since I spent only a dozen or so hours on it."

At the IPCC, there is a huge difference between an expert reviewer and a contributing author. The two are not the same, and everyone knows it. Yet, from its earliest days the IPCC thought it was OK to indulge in this sort of sleight-of-hand.

Schneider, who later became an IPCC mover-and-shaker, saw nothing wrong with this. Rather than insisting that the record be corrected, his ego basked in the flattery. Rather than insisting on the unvarnished truth so that no one would have any reason to doubt the word of this UN-sponsored body, he went along with the lie.

Which is why the IPCC’s latest report belongs in the dustbin. After all the criticism that has been leveled against this organization in recent years, it still doesn’t get it. It doesn’t understand that its reputation is in tatters. It doesn’t recognize any need whatsoever for scrupulous, disinterested, and – above all – apolitical behaviour.

In that sense, the IPCC has done us all a favour by linking its latest document to a scientist whose legacy falls far short of admirable. Those two things do, indeed, belong together.

SOURCE





The Lies Phony Climate Experts Tell

By Alan Caruba



For decades now both the U.S. and Europe have suffered the arrogance and the lies of so-called “climate experts.” Mind you, there are some real ones and, when it comes to global warming and climate change, the interchangeable names for the lies, they are the ones labeled “deniers” and worse for telling the truth.

The fundamental lie is that humans, through their use of fossil fuels, coal, oil and natural gas, are creating huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) which in turn is warming the Earth. You will hear the lies again when the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases its latest report.

“The report should galvanize the world to take urgent and collective action to curb climate change,” says Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We’re almost out of time to avoid the worst…”

We have been told this since the 1980s. It is pure fear mongering.

The problem for the phony “climate experts” is that the Earth has not warmed in the last 19 years and CO2 plays a minimal role in the alleged warming. What you never hear the “climate experts” tell you is that CO2 is vital to all life on Earth because it is the “food” that all vegetation depends upon for growth. More CO2 is a very good thing and, in the past, its levels in the atmosphere have been much higher.

On October 24 my eye was caught by a news article that reported that “European Union leaders agreed on a set of long-term targets on energy and climate change, Friday, giving financial sweeteners and weakening some objectives along the way to secure a deal…European leaders committed to cutting carbon emissions by at least 40% by 2030 compared with 1990 levels, which will be legally binding on every member state.”

One of the real meteorologists, Anthony Watts, took notice of the EU. “…Anyone who is expecting a rational re-appraisal of European environment policy—don’t underestimate the blind determination of Europe’s green elite to fulfill their dream of an emission free Europe. They will, in my opinion, happily bomb the European economy back into the stone age to achieve their ridiculous goal.”

In November of last year, Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, took note of Germany’s “love affair with renewables (solar and wind energy) brings high prices, potential blackouts, and worries about ‘deindustrialization.’”

“Like Mao urging peasants to melt down their pots, pans and farm tools to turn China into a steel-producing superpower overnight, Germany dished out subsidies to encourage homeowners and farms to install solar panels and windmills and sell energy back to the power company at inflated prices. Success—Germany now gets 25% of its power from renewables—has turned out to be a disaster.”

Jenkins noted that not only had Germany’s output of carbon dioxide increased, but “money-strapped utilities have switched to burning cheap American coal to provide the necessary standby power when wind and sun fail.” The cost of electricity rates in Germany is triple those in the U.S.

Yes, solar and wind power everywhere require fossil fuel plants as a backup whenever the sun is obscured by clouds or the wind doesn’t blow. In the U.S., Obama’s “war on coal” has decreased the number of utilities that utilize it and, in turn, reduced the amount of electricity available. The prospect of blackouts here has increased. If we encounter a harsh winter, that would put people’s lives in danger.

One has to understand that the lies about global warming and/or climate change are in fact an environmental agenda designed to reduce industrialization and the use of energy everywhere.

Harold Schwager, a senior member of BASF’s executive board said in an interview, “Many European companies which are energy-intensive are finding out that the benefits of shifting investment to the U.S. are significant.” Germany and the EU are driving out industry and the jobs it represents because of their idiotic carbon dioxide emissions policies.

This is why we all need to understand the real “environmental” agenda. Writing in the Financial Times on October 27, Nick Butler said “Last week’s European summit on climate change failed to address the hard reality that current policies are not working.”

As in the U.S. the construction of wind turbine farms such as the one offshore of Borkum, Germany in the North Sea only exist by virtue of extensive subsidies that are wreaking havoc on European energy markets. That’s the reality!

Here in the U.S. in 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama gave a speech in Golden, Colorado, saying that his planned investments in “green energy” would create “five million new jobs that pay well and can’t ever been outsourced.”

How did that work out? Six years later we know those “green” jobs were not created and that his energy policies have actually reduced the production of vital electricity. Will new jobs in industries dependent on fossil-fuels be created? Yes and they will come from European industrial investment and increased oil and natural gas production here despite Obama’s agenda.

That is why the European Union’s idiotic commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions (CO2) is putting the entire continent in danger and that is why America has to stop providing subsidies and tax breaks to “renewable”, “green” energy here and mandating its use.

Whenever you hear some “climate expert” or politician refer to global warming or climate change, they are lying to you. We have more CO2 in the atmosphere and the Earth is still in a cooling cycle.

SOURCE





Polar bear biologists doing mark-recapture work in Hudson Bay may have misled the world

What exactly are Western Hudson Bay (WHB) polar bear researchers hiding? Since 2004, research on the body condition and cub production of Western Hudson Bay (WHB) polar bears has been carried out but none of the results of these mark-recapture studies have been made public.

The researchers all claim that WHB polar bears are struggling to survive because of recent sea ice changes but won’t release the 10 years worth of updated information they possess on the bears or the sea ice.

Mark-recapture work entails chasing the bears down with helicopters (including females with newborn cubs), drugging them with a cocktail of sedatives that taint the meat (and perhaps the milk of nursing mothers) for months afterward, installing radio collars or ear tags, extracting a tooth for aging, drawing blood and fat samples, and before it’s all over, posing for a few up-close-and-personal photos with the tiny cubs of drugged females

That’s a lot of stress to the bears and to what end? Detailed biological information about the bears that’s necessary for sound management, we are told.

In order to assess the true status of a population, biologists tell us they need to compare the size of litters, the proportion of yearlings (1-2 yrs old), the rate of cub survival, and the weight of adult bears (altogether, these are the so-called “vital rates” of the population).

However, I just updated a list I made in this previous post (which has the references) and you should know that by 2014, there has now been:

— No published data available for size of WHB litters or proportion of independent yearlings since 1998 (16 yrs ago).

— No data on cub survival in WHB since 1992 (22 yrs ago).

— No data published on weight of lone WHB females since 2004 (10 yrs ago)

— No data published on weight of adult WHB males and females with cubs since 1998 (16 years ago)

There has also been no sea ice data published for Hudson Bay since 2004 (10 yrs ago) using the old method of determining breakup/freeze-up (50% ice coverage); using the new method of determining breakup and freeze-up (30% coverage/10% coverage over WHB, respectively), the last year of data is 2009 (5 yrs ago).

The Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) promised in February 2014 that this year, polar bear data collected since 2004 in WHB would be released:

“A new population estimate based on extensive continued Physical Capture-Recapture will be available in 2014 and, will provide an updated assessment of the long-term trend in population size and vital rates, that is not possible from a single aerial survey.“

[Note that the upgrade to the trend status for the WHB subpopulation recently made by Environment Canada (discussed here) — from “declining” (according the PBSG in February 2014) to “likely stable” (June 2014) — appears to have been based on the publication of a peer-reviewed paper on aerial survey population size estimate (Stapleton et al. 2014, discussed here), not mark-recapture results]

And with little more than two months remaining in the year, there has been nary a whisper of what those mark-recapture studies showed. What we have heard is an ever-increasing litany of polar bear woos:

“Melting ice is cutting polar bears off from their food source in Hudson Bay, and death rates have soared.”

Polar bear biologist Andrew Derocher, in a recent CBC documentary (links to the videos here), said this:

“Our estimation is that we probably won’t have polar bears in Churchill once we get out to mid-century … They could be gone in a couple of years.”

And Steve Amstrup, spokesperson for Polar Bears International, claimed in an interview a few weeks ago that in WHB:

“Only about 3 percent of the western Hudson Bay population, for example, is now composed of yearlings.“

Compared to what? Apparently, Amstrup knows but we aren’t allowed to see the details of the studies that generated that information.

Andrew Derocher (University of Alberta) and several of his students (including Patrick Mislan shown above), Nick Lunn (Environment Canada), and conservation activist organization Polar Bears International (led by former USGS biologist Steve Amstrup) have all been doing invasive research on WHB polar bears using mark-recapture methods over the last 10 years but none of the data on body condition, cub survival and litter sizes have been published.

Remember this when you hear and read statements from these biologists and other conservation activists over the next few weeks and months. You might even ask yourself:

Are polar bear biologists withholding data on Western Hudson Bay mark-recapture work and breakup/freeze-up dates because the results don’t support their claims? Should the recent upgrade to “likely stable“ have happened five years ago — or even earlier?

We wait, with bated breath, for evidence that the biologists entrusted with collecting and publishing unbiased scientific data have not been deliberately misleading us about the current status of Western Hudson Bay polar bears.

SOURCE





The Obama war on pipelines

Expedite wind and solar – but block coal, oil, gas, pipelines, jobs and economic recovery

Paul Driessen

“This is not the same industry we had 15 years ago,” Natural Gas Supply Association VP Jennifer Fordham said recently. That’s an understatement. The oil, petrochemical and manufacturing industries are also far different from those of 15 years ago. Together, they’ve created hundreds of thousands of new jobs and generated countless billions of dollars in economic activity. No thanks to the Obama Administration.

From EPA to Interior and even the Energy Department, the Administration continues to display a strong animosity toward fossil fuels. Its war on coal has hounded mines, power plants, jobs and communities. Its opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline has thwarted the creation of tens of thousands of construction jobs. Its bans on leasing, drilling and hydraulic fracturing on federal onshore and offshore lands have caused a 6% drop in oil production from those lands and a 28% plunge in natural gas output – costing thousands of jobs and tens of billions in bonus, rent, royalty and tax revenues to the U.S. Treasury.

Nevertheless, you’d think Obama regulators and policy makers would support natural gas pipelines. Even the Sierra Club promoted this fuel as a “clean alternative to coal” just a couple years ago. But no.

The fracking revolution on America’s state and private lands has unleashed a gusher of mammoth proportions. In just six years, 2008-2014, it has generated a 58% increase in oil production (from 5 million to 8 million barrels per day) – and a 21% rise in natural gas production. By the end of this year, U.S. crude oil production is projected to reach 9 million bpd. In the Marcellus Shale region, gas production is expected to reach 16 billion cubic feet a day, twice the volume of only two years ago.

However, this miraculous cornucopia is overwhelming the nation’s existing delivery systems and, far from striving to eliminate the bottleneck, the Obama Administration is creating new ones.

Not having the Keystone pipeline to transport Upper Midwest crude to refineries has forced oil companies to move that oil by train. Rail accidents have caused spills and deaths, but the regulatory focus has been on stronger tanker cars, with insufficient attention paid to track maintenance and safety – or pipelines.

Insufficient natural gas pipelines mean producers cannot deliver this vital fuel to homes, hospitals, factories and electricity generating plants, or to petrochemical plants that use it as a feed stock for literally thousands of products. Pipeline companies are clamoring for construction permits.

With supplies rising, prices for oil and natural gas are declining. Global crude oil prices have fallen more than $20 a barrel and are cheaper in the United States than in Europe.  Natural gas prices in the Marcellus area have been about half the U.S. benchmark price, which is below $4 per thousand cubic feet (mcf), compared to prices as high as $9 or even $20 per mcf (or Btu) in Europe and Asia. As a result, despite a clear need for gas, some drillers are re-examining their Marcellus plans, and an estimated 1,750 Pennsylvania natural gas wells are not currently producing because pipeline connections are not available.

Natural gas pipelines also ensure energy conservation and reduce air pollution. A North Dakota pipeline would collect gas produced with crude oil, eliminating the need to “flare” the gas. But permit delays, largely by federal agencies, mean enough gas to heat 160,000 homes goes up in smoke every month.

Why are pipelines lagging behind production? First, pipeline companies build new capacity only when there is a demonstrated need. Second, and most important, pipeline permit approvals are being delayed.

A 2013 INGAA Foundation study found that the number of interstate natural gas pipeline authorizations issued more than 90 days after federal environmental assessments were completed climbed from 8% to 28% since Congress passed the 2005 Energy Policy Act. Rather than streamlining permits, as Congress had intended, the law had the opposite effect. It removed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s ability to keep project reviews on a strict schedule, allowed both state and federal agencies to drag their heels on pipeline permitting, and opened the door to more objections by environmental pressure groups.

Authorization delays were caused by conflicts among federal agencies, as well as inadequate or under-trained agency staff, applicant changes to projects requiring additional or revised environmental review (often in response to environmentalist or other third-party protests and demands), site-access problems, and FERC and other agency reviews of requirements for mitigating asserted environmental impacts, INGAA concluded. Increased partisanship at FERC has also increased delays.

The Obama Army Corps of Engineers slowed pipeline permits by citing the Clean Water Act. Its Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) cited the Migratory Bird Treaty Act to justify slow-walking permits. Its Environmental Protection Agency wants to control all “waters of the United States” (WOTUS), so as to exert regulatory authority over activities on federal, state and private lands – including drilling, fracking and pipelines – in the name of sustainability, climate change prevention and other eco-mantras.

The MBTA bans the “taking” (harassing, harming, killing, capturing or wounding) of migratory birds, their nests and eggs related to natural gas pipelines and other projects. Because building a pipeline requires clearing a right-of-way, excavating and other activities that could affect wildlife for a short time, a permit is required. But native grasses soon cover the route, and state-of-the-art steel, valves and safety features greatly reduce the likelihood of ruptures and spills, compared to earlier generation pipelines.

And yet the Obama FWS drags its feet on pipeline permits – while approving numerous renewable energy projects beloved by the President and his “green” base, including massive wind turbines that slaughter millions of eagles, hawks, bats and other threatened, endangered and migratory species every year.

The FWS also blessed the huge Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System on the Nevada/California border. It uses 300,000 mirrors to reflect the sun’s rays onto three 40-story water-filled towers to produce steam and generate electricity. Eagles, owls, falcons and other birds that fly between the solar panels and towers become “streamers,” because the 500-degree heat turns them into smoking, disintegrating corpses as they plummet to earth. There’s little left to find or bury – making it easy for Big Solar regulators, operators and promoters to claim “minimal” wildlife impacts. In fact, during the Ivanpah project’s environmental review, the FWS focused on desert tortoises and missed the bird crematorium issue.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management unveiled a sweeping plan that would revise longstanding resource management plans, to install buffer zones around “sensitive” Gunnison sage grouse habitats, impose seasonal restrictions on oil and gas drilling and livestock grazing, and close roads and trails wherever grouse are present. But in the midst of this effort, BLM and various state governments are also working to streamline “eco-friendly” solar, wind, geothermal and transmission line projects that they claim will reduce “dangerous” carbon dioxide emissions. Natural gas would do that, too, of course.

Natural gas is clean, affordable and reliable – if it can reach consumers through pipelines, which are the safest form of energy transportation. Unfortunately, the Obama principle seems to be: If it requires subsidies, raises energy prices, costs jobs, impacts thousands of acres, and butchers birds and bats – expedite approval. If it generates royalty and tax revenues, produces reliable, affordable energy, creates jobs, and has minimal impacts on endangered and migratory species – delay or ban it. Talk about crazy.

The administration’s fixation on ideological environmentalism is not helping the environment, the economy, or consumers. It is a political ploy designed to garner liberal votes and rake in more money from campaign donors like Tom Steyer, the billionaire hedge fund manager who got his money from coal.

America needs more pipelines. The Obama Administration needs to let industry build them. Perhaps a reconstituted Senate (with Harry Reid as Minority Leader) can lead the way. America will prosper!

Via email




RI flooding not WV’s fault

Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is misguided on sea level rise: seacoasts won’t be flooded due to coal burning

Tom Harris & Bob Carter

It must have taken the patience of Job for West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin to participate in Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s climate change tour of the Ocean State on October 10. Whitehouse promised Manchin that he would go to West Virginia to learn about the coal industry if Manchin would come to Rhode Island to view the supposed effects of global warming on sea-level.

It is important to put the concerns of the two senators in perspective.

On the one hand, Manchin is fighting for the survival of West Virginia’s coal sector, his state’s most important industry, the source of 95% of its electricity, and the foundation for thousands of jobs in dozens of communities. The state’s use of abundant, domestically mined coal gives West Virginia the 7th lowest electricity costs in America – at about one-half the price in California, New York, Rhode Island and several other states.

But West Virginia’s coal sector is under siege from increasingly damaging Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules. Those rules have meant total coal production in West Virginia declined 9% between 2012 and 2013, a period during which 17% of the Mountain State’s coal mines closed, and coal employment decreased 6.4% for a loss of 3,457 jobs already. Even before the EPA’s new Clean Power Plan regulations, which Whitehouse promotes, come into force, the EPA and Obama Administration’s “war on coal” has already cost West Virginia billions of dollars.

Senator Manchin, in other words, is concerned about the immediate, real-world impacts of climate change regulations on real people, families and businesses in his state.

Senator Whitehouse has a different perspective and is apparently not concerned about the cost of EPA emission regulations. Rhode Island gets none of its electricity from coal, having chosen less-carbon-intensive natural gas as its preferred source of power.

As a result, the state has the 7th highest electricity prices in the continental United States. The impact of these high prices on hospitals, schools, churches, businesses and families is significant.

The White House, of course, shares Senator Whitehouse’s perspective. Neither seems worried that, under the EPA rules, electricity prices will “necessarily skyrocket,” as Obama put it when describing his energy plans as Democratic candidate for president in 2008.

Mr. Whitehouse is, however, worried about the hypothetical future impact of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from coal-fired power stations on “global temperatures.” He believes this will cause “dangerous” sea-level rise along Rhode Island’s coast. Mr. Whitehouse does not hide the fact that, because of these beliefs, he sees his mission as “more or less” to put the coal industry out of business.

If it were known with a high degree of probability that dangerous human-caused sea-level rise was right around the corner, then Mr. Manchin might have reason to sacrifice his constituents’ livelihoods to help save Rhode Islanders from being submerged. But this is not the case.

The September 2013 report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change states: “Sea-level rise is not accelerating. The global average sea-level continues to increase at its long-term rate of 1–2 mm/year [0.04-0.08 inches/year] globally” – or four to eight inches over the next century.

As it happens, sea-level rise on the coast of Rhode Island is slightly faster than the global rate – about a tenth of an inch per year in Newport, for example – or ten inches over the next 100 years. Nonetheless, such a slow rate of rise is relatively easy to adapt to, and certainly not worth ruining West Virginia’s economy on the off-chance that it would make any difference to coastal conditions in Rhode Island.

Bear in mind that sea levels have already risen nearly 400 feet since the end of the last Pleistocene Era ice age some 12,000 years ago.

The conflict between the two senators arises because of Mr. Whitehouse’s outmoded belief that rapid CO2-driven global warming is occurring. This, he believes, will cause accelerated glacial melting, the ocean volume to expand, and global sea-level to rise quickly. That in turn would subject low-lying coastal areas of Rhode Island to increasingly intense peak-tide or storm-surge flooding.

Drastically reducing our CO2 emissions is necessary to avoid this looming crisis, he asserts.

However, every step in Whitehouse’s chain of reasoning is either wrong or misleading and based on computer models that falsely assume rising atmospheric CO2 levels will cause rapid global warming. In reality, no global (atmospheric) warming has occurred for the last 18 years, even though CO2 levels have risen 9% during this time.

Neither has there been significant ocean warming since at least 2003. As a consequence, the ocean is not expanding and cannot be causing extra sea-level rise. In fact, the global rate of sea-level rise has actually decreased over the last decade.

The only way the sort of sea-level rise feared by Mr. Whitehouse is possible is if massive quantities of the Antarctic and Greenland ice-caps melted. Not only did that not happen even during the two-degree warmer Holocene Optimum, five to nine thousands years ago, but both the Greenland and Antarctic ice fields have been expanding in recent years.

Moreover, rates of modern sea-level change are controlled by the volume of water in the ocean (which is dependant on worldwide volumes of land ice at any given time), by dynamic oceanographic features such as movements in major ocean currents, and by the uplift or subsidence of the solid earth beneath any measuring station. Humans control none of these factors.

Senator Whitehouse should recognize that Rhode Island’s coastal management problems are his own state’s responsibility, not those of West Virginians.  As sea-level continues its natural slow rise along Rhode Island’s coast, flooding due to peak tides and storm surges will continue much as it has for the past century. The way to cope with any small increase in the magnitude of these events is to apply and strengthen current strategies that increase coastal resilience.

In his June 4, 2008 speech on winning the Democratic primaries, President Obama said, “If we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment ...when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

Senator Whitehouse may still believe this pious dream. However, Senator Manchin must resist the nonsensical demand that West Virginians sacrifice their livelihoods and living standards in a vain and King Canute-like attempt to stop the seas from rising.

Via email




YES, THE SCIENCE IS NOW SETTLED ...  it’s total bunkum!

Comment by conservative Australian cartoonist, Larry Pickering.  He left school at 14 so is much more interested in reality than in theory

What will it take to convince the true believers of global warming that they have been led up a garden path? A garden path paved in gold for the scammers of the UN, the IPCC and all those set for a windfall in carbon credit trading.

Ban Ki-moon is throwing everything he has at the failing global warming hoax in one last ditch stand to justify his tenure as Secretary General which ends next year.

Let’s get this matter cleared up once and for all. The IPCC is not in any way a scientific body (it forecast the Himalayas would be devoid of snow for Christ’s sake) it is no more than a publicity arm of outrageous warming lobbyists and is stacked with well-paid misfits who are also set for a windfall if they can pull this one off.

The IPCC’s job is to collate, and present as fact, papers of the pro-warming nutters holed up in universities and the far Left and Greens who dream of a UN dominated world financed by a carbon scam worth an anticipated trillions a year.

The UN receives 10 per cent of all receipts from countries running global warming carbon schemes. It has already pocketed a packet of Aussies’ hard-earned via Julia Gillard.

What more does the Left need than to view a hideous Australian landscape visually polluted with ineffective, unprofitable, inefficient and costly wind farms that are killing birdlife and causing migraines.

How painful is it to see desalination plants littering our coast lines, de-commissioned, in disrepair, rusting and never to be used?

Why did we suffer fools like Garnaut and Flannery (neither of whom are climatologists) who advised gullible Labor leaders like Queensland’s Bligh to waste billions on a pipeline between Brisbane and the Gold Coast’s Hinze Dam?  A pipeline that was completed just in time for torrential rains to fill every dam to capacity and flood homes.

The alarmist wastrels already have rap sheets as long as their arms with their Y2K bug, Crown of Thorns Star fish, a disappearing ozone layer, a disappearing Great Barrier Reef, soil erosion and forest degradation, etc, etc... all of which were furphies designed to keep grants flowing from taxpayers.

Now, totally discredited, they have turned to a “you beaut” global warming hoax... and it’s a bloody pearler!

Overnight they declared the plant nutrient CO2 a pollutant, organised America’s greatest fraudster, Al Gore to convince everyone our polar caps are disappearing and that New York would be under water in weeks and that Greenland would soon be growing grapes, while a fool named Flannery was suggesting it would never rain again, and that island nations urgently needed face masks and snorkels.

Dramatic footage of the extremities of glaciers breaking off and crashing into the ocean makes for good TV. But the simple truth has nothing to do with warming. The ice at the glacier’s source is actually increasing and has nowhere else to go.

It’s amazing the propaganda creative warmists can cook up when given free air time from willing media!

Universities are churning out thousands of illiterate kids on marine biology grants to float aimlessly among coral reefs trying to find something wrong to enable their grants to continue and hopefully increase. What a life! Beats the hell out of getting a proper job.

To Tony Abbott’s dismay, his warmist Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt has just pulled an unexpected swifty with renewable energy targets that are about to cost taxpayers another $2.5 billion to reduce emissions that were reducing way beyond expectations anyway.

Renewable energy is a misnomer! Everything is renewable, even water, oil and coal, it’s just a matter of how long you want to hang around!

The Greens refuse to selectively log old growth trees to allow new growth, refuse to allow the damming of rivers to give us clean hydro electricity and reject nuclear energy, the only practical, economic and freely-available source of clean energy we have, and the rest of the world has embraced.

Green councils impose fines for clearing the combustible undergrowth that burns your house down and they don’t want money spent on roads because it only encourages the use of petrol. WTF?

The earth lovers killed the introduced Asian buffalo to protect barramundi breeding sites thereby denying crocodiles of their buffalo food source, leaving the crocs with nothing else to eat except the barramundi.

The Fisheries Department sets minimum sizes for fish caught, so only the larger breeding fish are taken. Madness! And the loony environmentalists insist crocodiles and sharks be permitted to eat people

Media’s Left misrepresents steam from nuclear generators as scary smoke, tells us Julia Gillard has been cleared of all charges, promotes Islam as the religion of peace and suggests Islamic State Jihadists returning home be offered free counselling.

So why the hell would anyone believe anything the mad Left media says anyway?

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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Monday, November 03, 2014



2014 Won’t Be Warmest Year

And what do a few hundredths of a degree matter anyway?  That's the quantum of the differences between years this century.  And across the entire thermometer record the differences are only in tenths of a degree Celsius

Contrary to projections made by environmental journalist Seth Borenstein in a widely reprinted article, 2014 will not be the hottest year on record.

Based on average surface temperature data for January–September 2014, Borenstein said the year is on pace to be the warmest in the modern instrumental record. He’ll be proven wrong.

Dr. Roy Spencer points out thermometers can’t measure global averages – only satellites can. Satellites measure nearly every square mile of Earth’s lower atmosphere daily. By contrast, there are many areas where one could travel hundreds of miles without finding a thermometer nearby.

According to the two main research groups tracking global lower-tropospheric temperatures – Spencer’s group at the University of Alabama - Huntsville and the Remote Sensing Systems group – the 2014 average temperature is significantly lower than those in 2010 and especially 1998. There’s no way the global average will increase enough in the remaining three months of the year to catch up.

Sparse coverage by land-based thermometers is one problem. A bigger problem is the “homogenization” or adjustments to the land-based data. When researchers actually throw out the real measured temperatures and replace them with guesstimates, the surface temperature record amounts to nothing more than garbage in, garbage out.

In addition, Spencer points out land-based measurements are biased as a result of location. “[L]land-based thermometers are placed where people live, and people build stuff, often replacing cooling vegetation with manmade structures that cause an artificial warming (urban heat island, UHI) effect right around the thermometer. The data adjustment processes in place cannot reliably remove the UHI effect because it can’t be distinguished from real global warming.”

Climate alarmists, who claim to be the champions of science, still “use the outdated, spotty, and heavily-massaged thermometer data to support their case,” wrote Spencer. They also continue to tout flawed climate models that have missed both the pause in warming and the slowing of the rise in sea levels. Spencer adds, “they sure do cling bitterly to whatever will support their case,” and he quotes British economist Ronald Coase: “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.”

SOURCE





Same old, same old prophecies -- but this time nobody thinks governments will do anything about it

The world is on course to experience “severe and pervasive” negative impacts from climate change unless it takes rapid action to slash its greenhouse gas emissions, a major UN report is expected to warn on Sunday.

Flooding, dangerous heatwaves, ill health and violent conflicts are among the likely risks if temperatures exceed 2C above pre-industrial levels, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will say.

Yet on current trends, continued burning of fossil fuels could see temperature increases of between 3.7C and 4.8C by the end of the century, the report warns, according to a draft seen by the Telegraph.

Warming beyond 4C would likely result in “substantial species extinction, large risks to global and regional food security, impacts on normal human activities”.

The final document, which has been agreed line-by-line by international government officials at a summit in Copenhagen over the past week, is intended to provide the clearest and most concise summary yet of the widely-agreed scientific evidence on climate change.

It is a "synthesis" document bringing together the conclusions of three major IPCC studies issued over the past year into the science, impacts and ways of tackling climate change.

It is designed to act as a guide for policymakers ahead of a year of intense political negotiations on how to tackle climate change, culminating in a crunch summit in Paris next year where an international deal on curbing emissions is due to be signed.

Yet despite the IPCC’s stark warnings, there is widespread agreement from climate change activists, sceptics and, privately, UK Government officials, that the summit in Paris is unlikely to achieve a legally-binding deal that will curb warming to the 2C level.

Doing so would require a drastic overhaul of global energy systems in order to cut emissions by between 40pc and 70pc from 2010 levels by 2050.

The proportion of energy sourced from low-carbon sources such as wind farms, solar power and nuclear reactors would have to triple or nearly quadruple, the draft says.

The expansion of such technologies has already proved controversial in the UK.

Owen Paterson, the former environment secretary, has called for the UK’s Climate Change Act, which imposes tough unilateral emissions-reductions goals, to be suspended until other countries agree to similar measures.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN IPCC, opened the Copenhagen summit by acknowledging the “seeming hopelessness of addressing climate change” but imploring policymakers to “avoid being overcome” by it.

"It is not hopeless," he said, calling on governments to make decisions “informed by the science".

Richard Black, director of the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, said the key question for those finalising the IPCC report was “what to say about the elephant in the room… that if the computer model projections are right, keeping global warming below 2C basically means ending fossil fuel use well before today’s children start drawing their pensions”.

The UK Government has pushed for the wording of the report to be strengthened to make crystal clear the emissions cuts that would be needed to hit the 2C target, the risks of delaying action and also the “co-benefits”, such as improved air quality.

These facts must not be “hidden in supporting text”, according to a UK submission seen by website Responding To Climate Change.

But countries including Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, have demanded the text should also acknowledge the negative economic effects of abandoning fossil fuels.

Benny Peiser, of the climate-sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the IPCC report contents would not translate to agreement on a deal in Paris.

“On the science there is no real discrepancy: the governments agree we should make sure warming isn’t more than 2C. But when it really comes to caps on their CO2 emissions there is simply no chance of an agreement whatsoever,” he said.

“There are a number of countries that simply can’t afford to forgo the cheap energy they are sitting on, countries like India and China. They will make sure they can use the cheap fossil fuels they have under their feet.”

Bob Ward, policy director at the LSE’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, said the report made clear it was “still technically possible to avoid dangerous climate change”, but that required emissions reductions would “only be possible if action starts immediately”.

“If strong action is not well underway by 2020, the chance of avoiding dangerous climate change will be very small, if indeed possible at all,” he said.

“I think there will be an international agreement in Paris next year, but the commitments by individual countries to cut emissions will not be consistent with the goal of avoiding global warming of more than 2C.

“World leaders may wait until there is even more evidence of the damaging impacts of climate change before they accelerate action to cut emissions, but any further delay will increase the magnitude of the risks the world faces.”

SOURCE





EU climate compromise: I will if you will

After the 2009 Copenhagen global climate conference failed to produce a legally-binding global treaty to replace the lapsing Kyoto Protocol, climate campaigners are eager to put some kind of win on the board. Therefore, despite threats to veto the deal and discussions that ran into the wee hours, the European Union’s agreement on a new set of climate and energy goals is being heralded as “a new global standard”—though it is really more “I will, if you will.”

On Thursday October 23, 28 European leaders met at a summit in Brussels to reach a climate deal that would build on previous targets of a 20 percent cut in greenhouse gases, a 20 percent boost in the use of renewable sources, and a 20 percent increase in energy efficiency, from the benchmark year of 1990, by 2020.

Prior to the meeting, countries such as Poland (which wanted to protect its coal industry) and Portugal (which has excess renewable energy that it cannot, currently, export to the rest of Europe) threatened to block the deal. Poorer states in Eastern Europe feared new cuts in carbon output would hurt them economically by slowing business growth. Industrialists complained that the new regulations would discourage business and investment in the bloc, at a time when its faltering economy can ill afford to lose it.

In an interview with Reuters before the summit, Connie Hedegaard, European Climate Commissioner, declared: “There should not be problems that could not be overcome.” As predicated, a deal was struck—though the current team of commissioners steps aside in days and the new commission will have to finesse the implementation.

“It was not easy, not at all, but we managed to reach a fair decision,” European Council President Herman Van Rompuy stated.

The “problems” mentioned by Hedegaard were “overcome”—by cash. To get opposing countries, like Poland, to come onboard, Van Rompuy pledged “extra support for lower-income countries, both through adequate targets and through additional funds to help them catch up in their clean-energy transition.” Reports indicate that Poland “secured a complex set of financial incentives …to soften the impact of the target on Polish coal miners and the coal-fired power stations on which its 38 million people depend.”

The “decision” calls for a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of at least 40 percent and a 27 percent increase in renewables and energy efficiency, from 1990 levels, by 2030—though the original plan called for a 30-percent increase in renewables and efficiency.

Already complaining, environmentalists are accusing Europe of abdicating its “climate policy leadership.” The EU accounts for about a tenth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, but has generally done more than other major industrial powers to curb them.

Greenpeace claimed the compromise “pulled the handbrake on clean energy” and Oxfam called for targets of 55 percent in emissions cuts, and increases of 40 percent in energy savings (efficiency) and 45 percent for use of renewable energy.

While Environmentalists are not happy, the BBC reports: “Europe’s leaders have been under heavy pressure not to impose much higher costs, especially when the economy is struggling.”

“Poland has long argued,” according to Reuters, “there is no reason for Europe …to commit to deeper emissions cuts before the rest of the world does”—and this is where “I will, if you will” comes in.

EU leaders claim to be “setting an example for the rest of the world,” yet the final text includes a “flexibility clause,” also called the “Paris review clause.” According to the EU Observer, “The EU agreement—the so-called climate and energy framework—is to be reviewed after an international summit on climate change in Paris in 2015. This means that, in theory, the European Council can change the targets if they are not matched by non-European countries.” The report continued: “Several eastern and central European countries feared that if the EU set too ambitious targets, while other nations like China or the US, slack, it could harm their competitiveness.”

The Daily Caller’s Michael Bastasch explains it this way: “the EU goals are not legally binding until a new United Nations climate treaty is approved.” He adds: “the EU’s climate targets are only proposals laid out as a bargaining chip before next year’s UN summit in Paris. A clause in the EU agreement would trigger a ‘review’ of key climate targets if the UN summit is a dud.”

Dr. Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation agrees: “The EU announcement was reported in the media as if the EU has already adopted these aggressive new CO2 targets. This is however not the case. In reality the EU Commission only proposed a conditional offer as a negotiation card to be played during the 2015 negotiations at the UN climate conference in Paris. In the absence of an international agreement it is very unlikely that the EU will adopt any new unilateral targets. The EU has made it perfectly clear that it is no longer willing to go it alone.”

The chances of a new global treaty in Paris are slim.

190 countries, that, in 2009, pledged $190 billion in aid for climate-related projects for developing countries, can’t agree on a formula for their aid commitments. Without the aid, island nations won’t agree to emissions reductions.

President Obama, according to the New York Times (NYT), looks toward an “agreement,” a “politically binding” deal, not a “legally binding treaty”—as the Senate will not ratify a new climate treaty (especially if the Republicans take control). The NYT quotes Paul Bledsoe, a top climate-change official in the Clinton administration who works closely with the Obama White House in international climate policy: “If you want a deal that includes all the major emitters, including the U.S., you cannot realistically pursue a legally binding treaty at this time.” The “agreement” would include “voluntary pledges.”

Addressing the potential success of a 2015 global climate agreement, Roman Kilisek, in Breaking Energy, posits that “it will be illusive and will at best consist of a plethora of watered down, voluntary, and above all, flexible carbon emission reduction targets and strategies.”

The NYT’s reporting concurs with the “I will, if you will” approach: “unilateral action by the world’s largest economy will not be enough to curb the rise of carbon pollution across the globe. That will be possible only if the world’s largest economies, including India and China, agree to enact similar cuts.”

For more than twenty years, international discussions designed to address climate change have taken place. Parties have signed treaties, pledges, agreements, and accords. Yet, carbon dioxide emissions are higher than ever, predictions haven’t come true, and the planet hasn’t warmed. Polls continue to show that climate change is a low priority for Americans. Even NPR has cut its climate reporting staff by 75 percent.

Engaging in the symbolism over substance that is typical of the climate change campaign, the EU agreed to emissions cuts—but only if everyone else does (the U.S. won’t).

SOURCE





Silly young Warmist acolyte has at least learnt the system:  You talk a lot about science but don't actually mention any

Miroslava Korenha

Science has touched every facet of my life and on a broader scale has touched every facet of our existence as human beings.

It's the reason we can have clean water to drink, the reason we can enjoy a life expectancy over 40 and the reason why we are no longer left to wonder about the particles that comprise our cells and make life possible.

Science is enlightenment and science is power yet science must also be valued and respected.  Science is neither partisan nor political and it never should be.

Unfortunately denying science has become a prevalent position in this country and more critically one amongst our political leaders.

Denial that our global climate patterns are changing as direct result of human activity has become an acceptable viewpoint and even more dishearteningly a counter-view to belief in facts.

If the polls and pundits are right, next week, Democrats will likely lose control of the Senate and Senator James Inhofe (R-OK)--a man who denies climate change--will gain the chairmanship of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

This is the same man who calls the consensus of 97% of climate scientists that our planet is warming due to human activity a hoax--he's even written a book about it.

Fortunately for him, at 80 years old, Senator Inhofe will never have to live with the consequences of his actions denying science.

He will likely never see how shifting weather patterns will alter where we live, what we eat and how we adapt to water scarcity. He will likely never see the wheat crops of his native state of Oklahoma suffer as result of unpredictable rain patterns.

Senator Inhofe will be allowed to enjoy spreading incredibly dangerous rhetoric for a few more years for his political gain and will then pass leaving a struggling planet in the hands of younger generations.  This sounds awfully convenient.

I am a millennial, a staunch believer in science and I think it is a shame that this man will be given an opportunity to chair a committee whose central jurisdiction is that of science.

SOURCE






‘I am sceptical humans are causing global warming’: Buzz Aldrin says more research - and less politics - is needed

The second man on the moon has revealed his thoughts on climate change, one-way missions to Mars and the state of space exploration.

On 11 November 1966 he set a record for the longest spacewalk at the time, five and a half hours, during the Gemini 12 mission. He solved many of the problems that had plagued previous spacewalks, notably using handrails and footrests to prevent over-exertion.

On 20 July 1969, he became the second man to walk on the moon after Neil Armstrong. The first words from the lunar surface were actually spoken by Dr Aldrin when their spacecraft touched down, when he said: ‘Contact light’.

He resigned from Nasa in July 1971 and later the Air Force. Since then he has remained an advocate of space exploration, penning papers and books including ‘Return to Earth’ and the recent ‘Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration’.

This inevitably leads to questions about our own planet - for example, are humans causing global warming that will render our world uninhabitable?

‘In the news today I hear about the large solar flares, which is an indication of the power of the sun to influence Earth and our climate,’ Dr Aldrin said.

‘My first inclination is to be a bit sceptical about the claims that human-produced carbon dioxide is the direct contributor to global warming.

‘And if there is that doubt, then I think an unbiased non-politically motivated group of people worldwide, representing us instead of creating taxes like the carbon tax, should examine the output of different nations that might contribute to the very large cycles of warming and cooling that have taken place long before we started to have humans producing emissions.

‘In a short period of time it appears to some people [that humans are] the cause of global warming - which is now called climate change - [but] climate change has certainly existed over time.’

It's a position that will no doubt strike a chord with Nasa, who have been performing extensive climate missions in recent years to find out the impact humans are having on the climate.

‘You can tell I’m not too bashful about some of my feelings,’ he says,’But I try and limit them to areas that I feel my development of innovations and thinking can be brought to bear on challenges that are facing civilisation here on Earth.’

He also bemoans some of the excessive funding that is allocated to climate change research, saying: ‘Space is not as enthusiastically supported by the world and by the American people anywhere near as much as it was during the pioneering years of the 60s and 70s.

Dr Aldrin now runs a charity for veterans of previous conflicts and war-like activities to help them deal with post-traumatic stress disorder.

SOURCE



GREENIE ROUNDUP FROM AUSTRALIA

Three current articles below

Voluntary carbon scheme now law

With the backing of Mr Palmer's senators and crossbenchers Nick Xenophon and John Madigan, the policy passed the Senate after a marathon sitting that went into Friday morning.

At the heart of Direct Action is a $2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund. While the carbon tax encouraged reductions in emissions by penalising polluters, Direct Action works on the reverse principle.

Instead, the government will pay emitters to reduce their carbon footprint.

Firms will bid for taxpayers' money at a so-called "reverse auction". Those that propose to get most carbon reduction for the dollar win the government funding

With the fund are a series of programs, some carried on from Labor, which earmark how the reductions must be made. Reforestation of degraded land, carbon capture by farmers, improved indigenous land clearing techniques and energy efficiency initiatives on a "grand scale" are all eligible.

There is very little encouragement for wind, hydro and solar energy, but plenty of support for the Coalition's traditional constituents in big business and regional Australia.

And the scheme, unlike the carbon tax or other types of emissions trading scheme, is voluntary.

The fund is the carrot, the stick is less well-defined. Penalties for those who opt out, continue polluting and jeopardise Australia's international obligation of a 5 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020 are yet to be defined and won't kick in for almost two years.

Mr Hunt said this week he didn't expect any businesses to be penalised.

For the government, Direct Action is a win for the environment and the hip pocket;  direct action will achieve "real and significant" emissions reductions even as the repeal of the carbon tax eases pressure on household power bills.

Will direct action work?

There is evidence to back the government's claim that power bills are being cut due to the carbon tax, or at least are lower than they would be. The latest Australian Consumer and Competition Commission assessment reports that savings on electricity bills will vary between 5 and 12 per cent, for a maximum annual saving to household of $263.

But whether Mr Hunt's confident assurance that the outlay of $2.5 billion in taxpayer funds will be enough to meet Australia's modest target of reducing carbon emission in 2020 by 5 per cent compared to levels in 2000 remains highly contested.

Almost all the modelling conducted by private firms, some of them linked to clean energy industry, find that it will fall well short.

Market analysis firm Reputex says it will achieve just 20 to 30 per cent of the greenhouse gas reductions needed to satisfy the 5 per cent goal.

Research commissioned by the Climate Institute says a shortfall would mean the government will have to spend an extra $4 billion to meet the obligation, which is a binding commitment.

"I wouldn't be quite so categorical that we won't reach the target," said Frank Jotzo, director of the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy at the Australian National University.

Trends towards greater energy efficiency, the decline of the manufacturing sector, a drop in demand for residential electricity due to high prices and investing in solar could all mean the 5 per cent goal is met, even if the contribution from Direct Action is minimal.

Even so, it's an extremely costly way of delivering lower carbon emissions, argues Mr Jotzo, and completely inadequate when it comes to reducing emissions beyond the currently mandated 5 per cent decline.

By the end of next year at a UN-sponsored summit in Paris, Australia will be required to join other nations in committing to further reductions in greenhouse gases well beyond 2020.

"There's an expectation that something quite significant will happen in Paris. There will be significant reductions in emissions. You just can't scale up Direct Action to deal with that without costing huge amounts of money."

Subsidising industry rather than using market forces to achieve a policy outcome is at odds with the philosophy of the government, not to mention its core policy objective of repairing the budget deficit.

The approach has always puzzled analysts, although Greens leader Christine Milne believes it is explained by the government's desire to look after its mates.

Such exhortations against big capital by the Greens might be considered pro forma.

But the Abbott government's ties to big business, and the mining and energy sector in particular, have no precedent in modern political history.

The Business Council of Australia chairman and chief economist helmed the government's commission of audit into the state of the budget.

The BCA, which represents the chief executives of Australia's biggest companies, was also instrumental in developing the government's industry policy released last month, where two of the five sectors earmarked for special assistance were in the mining sector.

The mining industry spent an extraordinary $22 million in six weeks during 2010 to discredit the mining tax, and has also provided political and financial support to Abbott's anti-carbon tax campaign.

An analysis of political donations by the Greens, sourced from Australian Electoral Commission data, show the fossil fuel sector donated $11.8 million to the major parties over the past 15 years, of which $8 million went to the Coalition.

Mr Palmer, too, benefits financially from the government's climate change approach. His Queensland nickel refinery is an emitter that paid almost $10 million in carbon taxes. It could now apply for a Direct Action subsidy to reduce emissions.

His extensive coalmining tenements in Queensland's Galilee Basin means he has an interest in the ongoing success of coal-fired power generators, big winners with the end of the carbon tax.

After announcing the policy backflip, Mr Palmer spruiked the merits of "clean" Australian coal as a solution to global warming.

Questions of whether Mr Palmer always intended to put his business interests first will linger. Certainly, the mining magnate began his journey into politics after Campbell Newman's Liberal National government in Queensland refused to support a proposed rail line that would serve his as yet undeveloped coalmines.

Until then, the former press secretary to Queensland premier Joh Bjelke Petersen was the party's major donor and a Coalition grandee.

Those who advised Mr Palmer insist the assessment is too harsh.

Don Henry, the former boss of the Australian Conservation Foundation, led the negotiations with Mr Palmer on behalf of Mr Gore.

He says Mr Palmer is a "complex character" who is "genuinely interested in a clean economy".

"He's genuinely wants to champion an ETS," says Mr Henry, adding "there was never any expectation that the government would immediately embrace it".

"It's good that the Climate Change Authority has been saved and given an additional and important role to look at an ETS and to look at the international targeting. I think it's an important step forward."

The stay of execution for the CCA, which is independent and advises government on what a future emissions reduction target should be and how to achieve it,  was the government's "gesture" to compensate Mr Palmer for rejecting his demand for an ETS with a price on carbon of zero that would rise as other countries embraced emissions reduction.

Despite a draft being circulated among press gallery staff in Canberra, the terms of reference for the review, let alone a plan to replace about 20 CCA staff who have resigned since the Coalition took office, are not yet forthcoming. At any rate, Mr Hunt, almost gleefully, said he will ignore any recommendation in favour of an ETS, as the body has done before.

"Our position is absolutely clear. We've just abolished the carbon tax and we're not about to reinstitute it whether you call it a carbon tax or an ETS," Mr Hunt told Fairfax Radio.

SOURCE

The crooked BOM again

Heat is on the Weather Bureau after MP accuses it of wiping 118-year-old temperature records to justify claims of climate change

An MP will launch an inquiry which accuses the Bureau of Meteorology of manipulating figures on the impact of climate change.

George Christensen, member off the Nationals party, claimed the Bureau had 'fudged' records of rising temperatures as well as tampering with older data in order to justify claims of climate change.

The member for the seat of Dawson in Queensland used records from a drought in 1896, when temperatures reached 50C in Camden, south-west of Sydney, as well as 43C in Geelong, south-west of Melbourne.

Speaking in parliament on Wednesday, Mr Christensen said: 'I rise to paint a picture of Camden. A picture where Camden, just to the south-west of Sydney, is sweltering in 50C heat.'

He cited that in the summer of 1896 alone, there were 435 instances of heat related deaths.

'The Bureau of Meteorology claims it's getting hotter and hotter. How can last year be the hottest on record if it was hotter back in 1896, 118 years ago?' 'It's relatively simple: the early years are simply wiped from the official record.'

Mr Christensen claimed you can find the values he is referring to on the Bureau website, but they are not part of the official temperature record the bureau uses to report on climate change issues.

He said the Bureau was also involved in a process of tampering with the raw data so the past appeared cooler than the present.

'Obviously if you drop down temperatures from the past, all the later temperatures will appear warmer even if they are not,' he said.

'We cannot use fudged figures skewed to support a global warming hypothesis. We have a scientific process being tainted at the source.'

Mr Christensen said he would use evidence of the Bureau's misconduct to launch an inquiry this week.

Senator Simon Birmingham, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment, told Daily Mail Australia 'the country's climate record and the methods used for analysis by the Bureau were independently reviewed by international experts in 2012 to ensure quality assurance, transparency and communication''

'The review concluded that the Bureau's data and methods for climate analysis were among the best in the world,' Mr Birmingham said.

'The review also recommended that a regular and independent technical forum occur to ensure continuous confidence in and improvement of this dataset.

'These measures should give all Australians confidence that the Bureau is continually striving to deliver the most accurate climate records, based on the best available scientific methodologies.'

SOURCE

Road to hellish environmental concern

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Unfortunately the Anglican Church of Australia seems to have set out on its own journey to that fiery destination.

Campaigners in the Anglican Diocese of Perth, led by convicted Hilton bomber Evan Pederick, have followed national church policy and forced the Perth synod to dump all its fossil fuel investments.

Other dioceses, as well as Anglican National Super which provides superannuation for the wider church, have now followed Perth’s lead.

According to Pederick, the decision to sell off coal, gas and oil holdings was an entirely moral one taken to protect God’s creation and the livelihoods of human beings.

But as The Australian’s columnist Gary Johns has pointed out, “an effective divestment campaign would increase the cost of power and harm the poor.”

Just who is the church trying to help? Fuel costs are already on the rise hitting poorer people hard in the hip pocket. The church doesn’t seem to care much about them.

Nor is it concerned to protect the jobs of those who live in communities like the NSW coalmining town of Denman.

“At the heart of this issue is people with mortgages, people with families,” says Jody Zammit, a priest in the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle where coal has been the lifeblood of the region for years.

There is little sign the church is being mindful of any issue concerning the well-being of families, communities and people. Nor is it thinking seriously about energy policy.

Nuclear power would be a good alternative to power derived from coal, but the Anglican Church is dead set against that option. And it’s not much keener on cheap, affordable hydro-electric power.

In fact, the Anglican Church is probably not so much concerned with developing an effective national energy policy as it is with struggling to secure its own survival as church attendance drops.

Ageing church members are dying off leaving empty pews that are not being filled by new parishioners. As a result, the size of the Sunday collection put in the plate each week is dropping too.

The church is desperate to connect with a younger generation of people and to stem the drift away from church life.

Many Anglican church leaders think that greater advocacy on fashionable issues such as safeguarding the environment will help them connect with that missing generation.

But while the church is pursuing the idealistic environmentalists it will actually be harming working parents with families to raise, bills to pay, and homes to heat.

G.K. Chesterton once said, “Those who marry the spirit of the age will find themselves widows in the next.”  The Anglican Church of Australia is making the very mistake which Chesterton warned about.

No doubt church leaders are well-intentioned. But sometimes good intentions are not enough. Especially when the consequences of actions have a whiff of sulphur about them.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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Sunday, November 02, 2014


A disagreement over climate-conflict link heats up

I agree with one of the critics below about meta-analyses.  They are very susceptible to bias.  See, for instance here. One good solid gold study beats any meta-analysis.  My own research into various effects of a warmer climate ended up with findings of no effect

A debate among scientists over climate change and conflict has turned ugly. At issue is the question of whether the hotter temperatures and chaotic weather produced by climate change are causing higher rates of violence. A new analysis refutes earlier research that found a link, and the two lead researchers are exchanging some pointed remarks.

Last year, a team of U.S. researchers reported a robust connection between climate and violence in Science. But in a critique published online yesterday in Climatic Change, a team of mostly European researchers dismissed the connection as "inconclusive." The Science authors are hitting back, claiming that the critics are fudging the statistics and even manipulating their figures.

The new analysis "is entirely based on surprisingly bold misrepresentations of our article, the literature, basic statistics, and their own findings," says Solomon Hsiang, the lead author of the Science paper and an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.

Numerous past studies have found a correlation between heat waves and violence, manifesting as conflicts between individuals and between groups. Demonstrating a direct connection between climate change and violence on a global scale, however, is tricky. It requires a meta-analysis of hundreds of already published studies that have slightly different techniques and measurement scales. Hsiang's team performed just such a meta-analysis and grabbed headlines with their findings that a changing climate appeared to be amping up conflict.

The Science paper was met with some skepticism, however, and some of those skeptics have been building their case. The Climatic Change critique is authored by Halvard Buhaug, an economist at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, and co-signed by 25 of his colleagues. The problem, Buhaug wrote in an e-mail to ScienceInsider, is that the meta-analysis "blends all sorts of actors at all sorts of spatial and temporal scales. … [They] draw sweeping conclusions that, supposedly, are robust and apply across scales and types of violent conflict. Of course that doesn’t make sense. But it works if you seek attention." He also accuses Hsiang's team of "severe bias in sample selection” and says that his analysis of the same data did not support the climate-conflict link.

Why critique the research now? The study "appears to have had some influence on policy thinking," Buhaug wrote, citing a recent U.S. Department of Defense road map on addressing climate change in military planning and another report by the CNA Corporation on climate change and security. Such official statements "reinforce the impression that the climate-conflict link is considered uncontroversial in policy circles,” Buhaug wrote. “As scientists and experts on this issue, we see it as our duty to provide a more balanced message."

Hsiang in standing by his analysis. In a detailed, blow-by-blow blog post responding to the new paper, Hsiang charges Buhaug with basic mathematical errors that undermine his conclusion. In an e-mail to ScienceInsider, Hsiang also accuses Buhaug’s group of "doctoring the display of their figures." (The evidence of that alleged doctoring is laid out in Hsiang’s blog post.)

The spat has other researchers exasperated. "What is frustrating is that they can't work together," says Andrew Solow, a statistician at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, who is associated with neither side. "Why can't they get together and thrash these issues out? Even if they don't come to an agreement, they could explore alternative modeling choices and their implications."

Solow adds that he is "not a big fan" of meta-analysis, in part because the technique sparks disputes like these. Rather than directly addressing the scientific question of whether climate change is causing an increase in conflict, he says, "this disagreement is over the degree to which studies of the climate-conflict link agree [with each other]."

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UK: Offshore wind farms may be scrapped due to budget cap, ScottishPower warns

Several proposed offshore wind farms may be scrapped in coming months because the Government is not awarding enough subsidies, the head of energy giant ScottishPower has said.

Keith Anderson, chief corporate officer, said it was cutting the size of its planned 240-turbine East Anglia offshore wind farm because the budget for subsidies to be awarded this year was “not big enough”. The project could be scrapped altogether if it did not secure a subsidy contract this year.

Those offshore wind farms that do get built in coming years will be unnecessarily expensive because ministers are effectively forcing companies to build smaller projects, preventing them from developing economies of scale, he claimed. As a result the Government would miss its own target for cutting offshore wind’s costs by 2020, Mr Anderson, the former head of the Offshore Wind Industry Council, forecast.

Offshore wind farms are heavily subsidised through levies on consumer energy bills. Ministers are preparing to award subsidy contracts for new projects in a "reverse auction" over coming months, but the maximum available budget is barely half the size the wind industry had expected, Mr Anderson said.

About five projects are expected to compete for the subsidies, which can realistically fund just one 700MW-800MW offshore wind farm, according to industry body Renewable UK.

Mr Anderson told the Telegraph that ScottishPower was being forced to scale back its proposed 1.2 gigawatt (GW) wind farm off the coast of East Anglia in order that its total annual subsidy requirement would be less than £235m – the maximum budget being awarded this year.

Even then, it risked losing out to rival projects.

“There will be more applications than there is budget,” Mr Anderson confirmed. “I think on the back of the auction there will be a lot of companies re-examining what they do with their projects and whether they are viable any more.

“We are hopeful we can submit a competitive bid and win, but if we are sitting here in January and have not got a contract we would have to totally reschedule the project timeline. Until we had analysed all of that we wouldn’t have a clue as to whether the project would still be economically viable. We would have to totally reassess and re-examine the whole project.”

No subsidy allocation has been confirmed to be awarded next year, although ministers have indicated there is roughly £1bn to be allocated over the rest of the decade.

Mr Anderson said that by awarding such limited budgets at a time, the Government was stymieing its own aim of cutting the technology’s costs.

Offshore wind farms currently receive about £150 - roughly triple the market price of power – for every megawatt-hour of power they generate. Ministers have said that cost should be cut to £100 for projects being awarded contracts in 2020.

“You cannot build a huge big project, so you will not get the big economies of scale,” Mr Anderson said. He said the kind of projects being proposed now had originally been expected to be at least 1GW each in order to drive cost efficiencies.

“Our belief is if you drove the process to do projects of that size and scale you would drive the costs down harder and faster. If you push the projects down to smaller size and scale, we don’t think you will get the cost reduction coming through the industry as quickly as you could.

“If you wanted to hit magical £100 target by 2020, I think doing it this way pushes it out by a few years,” he said. “It’s been made more difficult and it will take longer.”

Energy Secretary, Ed Davey, said the government had no plans to increase its subsidy cap so as to ensure customers get best value for money.

“It’s very important that government has a budget and doesn’t have unconstrained spending which won’t provide the best value for consumers” said the Liberal Democrat minister.

“Having a disciplined budget will help drive competition and if it means we only get the most efficient projects coming forward ahead of others, then I celebrate that.”

Mr Davey added that he believes the government is still on target to bring down the costs of wind power by 2020.

“Green energy is part of the government’s long term economic plan and we are seeing wind generation increase in very big increases. We are ahead of our targets.”

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GM food: saving lives, or lining corporate pockets?

The problems of GM are more  political than scientific

Frankenfood or saviour of the starving? In the latest blow to the anti-GM movement, a consortium of European scientists has urged government to embrace GM food as the only way to feed the planet. They're not the only ones: last year, the then Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson, made a major speech calling on the European Union to drop its barriers preventing genetically modified organisms being grown and sold in Europe. It could, he said, be the difference between survival and starvation for millions of people around the world.

So what's the truth? (And if what follows is familiar, it's because it's based on a piece I wrote at the time of Paterson's speech - but then, the facts about GM haven't changed in that time.)

Everyone agrees that we need to get better at feeding people. Our population reached seven billion two years ago; it is predicted to level off at nine billion in the middle of this century. GM proponents suggest that it can be an important tool in our battle to feed that ever-growing number of mouths; opponents suggest that it is a distraction, and a dangerous one.

There’s no denying that it has the power to do good, says Mark Lynas, an environmental writer and author of The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans. “For example, in Missouri, they’re growing GM cassava, which is an important food crop for 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa. The cassava that’s being grown in Africa is being hit by a viral infection that’s sweeping across the continent, so a major threat to food security. There’s no way a resistant strain can be made by conventional breeding – it’s a bit like vaccination, in that a tiny bit of viral DNA is put into the plant genome, and you can’t do that with selective breeding.” It could undoubtedly save lives, he says.

There is a precedent here. In the 1960s, much of the developing world faced starvation. But using agricultural technology – not GM, but older methods such as backcrossing – a man called Norman Borlaug created dwarf grains which grew faster and were more resilient, and staved off disaster. Borlaug’s inventions are credited with saving as many as a billion lives.

The GM revolution may have similarly dramatic effects: scientists have high hopes for salt-resistant crops which could grow in previously unusable coastal land; the agricultural research group Rothamsted Research has developed an aphid-resistant wheat. But activists are concerned that the companies which develop these strains will have unprecedented power over the food chain. “My main concern is the empowerment of the food corporations,” says George Monbiot, the environmentalist and author of Feral: Searching for enchantment on the frontiers of rewilding. “An executive of the biotech company Monsanto said in 1996 that their aim was the ‘consolidation of the entire food chain’,” he says. “Monsanto quite overtly positioned GM as their means of achieving that goal, and it was quite a clear battle-plan that they had: an aggressive patenting regime, patenting technologies and genetic material.”

The GM organisms themselves, he says, are far less of a concern. “Primarily, it’s about power,” he says. “A huge volume of academic work has shown that how well people are fed is less to do with the actual quantity of food available in the world, and more to do with who controls the food chain, how well the food is distributed, and the degree of democracy – people don’t starve in democracies, because they are able to lobby to get access to food.” GM, and the ability to patent genomes, place far more power in the hands of major companies. He also points out that despite the grand claims that GM could feed the poor, the majority of GM crops in Europe have been used as animal feed.

Lynas agrees that aggressive patenting is a concern. “Ownership of this technology could be concentrated in too few hands; I would like to see a much more open-source approach. A lot of biotech scientists are very critical of the overuse of the patenting system.” But it’s a wider problem than GM alone. “It’s about how technology is controlled in a society. It’s not an argument against the use of that technology.”

We have to strike a balance, he says, between allowing firms to make a profit – which, after all, is how much innovation happens – and allowing the spread of these technologies in a way that allows them to get to where they are needed. There are positive steps being taken: some publicly funded researchers like Rothamsted patent their work but then make it available on public licences; the “golden rice” project, a GM crop which is designed to combat vitamin A deficiency, is being made available for free to poor subsistence farmers in Asia on similar free licences, by (among others) Monsanto. But there are still problems, analogous to those of making antiretroviral drugs affordable to poor African HIV sufferers.

The problem is that the GM debate is framed too much as a Manichaean good-and-evil thing, says Lynas (and Monbiot, who also acknowledges that new technology is vital in the fight to feed the world), who blames a lot of the opposition to it on “the naturalistic fallacy”. “Like splitting the atom, it doesn’t happen in nature, so it’s bad,” he says. “It’s a deep cultural response, almost a lizard-brain thing.” But to be for or against “GM” as a monolithic entity is irrational. “It’s just a technique. It’s like saying I’m against tractors,” he says.

SOURCE





Have Warmists lost the NYT?

Not entirely but the NYT no longer preaches "consensus", it appears

Few topics fuel as much reader attention as climate change. Adam Bryant recently became editor of The Times’s expanded team covering the environment. We asked him how he is approaching the position.

Q.
How did this job come about for you?

A.
When I met with Dean Baquet, our executive editor, in August, he said he wanted to beef up The Times’s coverage of climate change and the environment, and asked me if I would be interested in overseeing an expanded team of reporters. I had just come off a long project – I was part of the team that worked on the Innovation Report – and I jumped at the opportunity.

It’s a fascinating and important topic, full of nuance and complexity (example here), and I get to work with an amazing group of reporters. It’s also a subject that touches on so many different aspects – science, politics, policy, population growth, agriculture, history. The list goes on and on.

Q.
It is a sprawling topic. What is your strategy for covering it?

A.
There’s no simple playbook, but here are a few thoughts. Part of The Times’s role is to separate the signal from the noise. There are a lot of reports and papers and studies published every day, and Times readers rely on us to choose carefully which ones we’re going to cover.

We also want to cover this story on all fronts – including threats, causes and potential solutions. We want to focus on what’s happening now (examples here and here), as well as what may happen in the future (examples here and here). I also want to make sure we give readers guidance about the relative importance and impact of different causes and potential solutions – for example, how do emissions from coal plants compare to tailpipe emissions from cars?

One challenge about the coverage is that many people may have a sense that the story line is somewhat fixed – they believe climate change is a problem, or perhaps they don’t. So we’ll look for opportunities to connect dots in new ways, or frame stories based on “good dumb questions,” as journalists like to call them.

Q.
Is the equivalency issue dead? To what extent should we feel obligated to include the views of climate change skeptics?

A.
Claims that the entire field of climate science is some kind of giant hoax do not hold water, and we have made a conscious decision that we are not going to take that point of view seriously. At the same time, there is a huge amount of legitimate debate and uncertainty within mainstream science. Scientists are pretty open about not being sure how bad things will get, or how quickly. These are the valid scientific issues and uncertainties that we want to cover.

A recent front-page piece by Justin Gillis — Scientists Trace Extreme Heat in Australia to Climate Change – provides a good example of providing informed second opinions on a topic. In his piece, Justin quoted an expert who has often been skeptical of claimed links between weather events and global warming in the past. But in this new study we were reporting on, he said the evidence was strong. That insight is more useful to readers than quoting someone who believes the entire field of study is built on a pillar of sand.

Q.
There’s so much bad news and warnings that have been reported in recent years. How do you keep a certain numbness from setting in on the part of readers?

A.
The grim news can be overwhelming – droughts, fires, flooding, deforestation, etc. But there is a lot happening around the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. Germany is on track to get close to 30 percent of its energy from renewables this year, for example, as we reported in a recent front-page article. The cost of wind and solar energy is dropping fast around the world.

Q.
You’ve worked as an editor on the national desk and in features, but you’ve spent most of your career as a reporter and editor covering business. Do you have a background in science?

A.
I don’t have a background in science, though I’ve always been curious about how our world is changing, the forces at work, how big decisions are made, and the people who make them (in that regard, I’ll be continuing with my Corner Office interviews in the Sunday Business section, though I’ve dropped the Friday installment to concentrate on my new job). I’m going to have a steep learning curve, but many of the reporters on my team have breathtakingly deep knowledge on a range of subjects. My job as editor will be to help choose the topics that are most important, then to make sure the stories are told in a clear, understandable, watertight and compelling way.

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The Greenies want it both ways about acidic oceans

Radio 4's Today swallows the bunkum spouted by 'warmists' such as Lord May


Profitable prophet Walport

 The main qualifications for being paid £165,000-a-year to act as the government’s “chief scientific adviser” these days, it seems, are that (a) one should know nothing about climate science, and (b) that one should then appear regularly on the Today programme to terrify listeners that the threat posed by man-made global warming is “much worse than was previously thought”.

Following those “population biologists” Lord May and Sir John Beddington, and the “surface chemist” Sir David King, the latest to play this game is the immunologist Sir Mark Walport. On Friday he was invited by Jim Naughtie to pronounce gravely about yet another new study claiming that the oceans are “acidifying”, to a level not known for “65 million years”.

For every scientific paper that pushes this particular long-familiar scare story, another points out that to talk about the oceans turning to acid when their average pH level is still way above 7.0 is just scientific bunkum.

But what the warmists also overlook is the science that tells us that when the oceans grow warmer they give off more CO2 rather than the other way round. So, if the oceans are warming, as the warmists like to claim, they should contain less CO2, not more. They cannot have it both ways. But we can no more expect our immunologist to know this than we can expect Mr Naughtie to do anything but eagerly murmur assent to the great man’s every nonsensical word.

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EPA Director on Environmental Laws: ‘Enforcement Really is Democracy in Action’

EPA Director Gina McCarthy has praised environmental lawyers for their work, telling them “enforcement really is democracy in action.”

“When I think about how effective we’ve been I keep coming back to the same reason for that effectiveness, it’s because our laws have teeth, it’s because EPA is empowered to enforce them,” McCarthy told attendees at the American Bar Association Fall Conference.

“And its because of your work, your hard work to uphold the integrity of those environmental statutes. Enforcement really is democracy in action.”

McCarthy was a keynote speaker for the Oct. 9th event in Miami.

“You know that America’s rule of law is only as good as the credible system that implements and enforces it. Laws talk the talk but implementation and strong enforcement is what walks the walk. It separates us from other nations,” McCarthy said.


SOURCE

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