Global Warming Hysteria (cooled)

"One has only to cut away the alarmist rhetoric and the media distractions, one has only to focus on the central question in the climate-change debate, and at once the fact that there is no scientific consensus about climate change is laid bare. 

The central question is this: By how much will global temperature increase in response to any foreseeable increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide?  On that question, the 'climate-sensitivity question', there is no consensus whatsoever within the scientific community.  There is no scientific basis for the current panic." 

Lord Christopher Monckton, international authority on climate-change policy.

"Right now, we are at a peak of the current sunspot cycle, and so there is more risk of cooling of the earth's atmosphere than there is of any warming, let alone catastrophic warming. There is absolutely no justification for burdening people with the huge financial costs of seal level rises that cannot happen, carbon taxes or emission charges, or for placing unwarranted restrictions on the way we live our lives. "Instead, people in positions of political authority should be paying greater and more urgent attention to clear and present problems such as earthquakes, tsunamis, clean air, clean water and the elimination of diseases such as malaria and AIDs".

Professor Nils-Axel Mörner former head of the Department of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics at Stockholm University. From 1999 to 2003, he was president of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution. INQUA, the International Union for Quaternary Research)

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC0708/S00012.htm

Michael R. Fox Phd. on 'warming' realities:  

The climate forces which have led to the estimated 0.6C degree temperature increase over the past 100 years or more (according to the International Panel on Climate Change) have been assumed to be man-made CO2 emissions from advanced nations including the U.S. We know this can’t be true for several reasons.

The first is that water vapor provides 95 percent of the total of the greenhouse gases, not CO2. The total of the CO2 represents less than 3 percent of the total. The second is that of the total atmospheric CO2 inventory, the manmade fraction is less than 3 percent of the CO2 total and therefore far less than 1 percent of the total greenhouse gas inventories. Third, studies of the recent climate variations are finding, for example, (See article by J. Oestermans, Science, p. 375, April 29, 2005) that glaciers have been receding since 1750 or so, well before any significant man-made CO2 emissions occurred.

The mid 1700s were at the very depths of the Little Ice Age, which we have learned was the coldest climate over the last 5000 years. Obviously, other warming forces were at work before humans had anything to do with it.

Source: Grassroot Institute of Hawaii 

Chief Meteorologist at News 9 Gary England Excerpt:

"An examination of ice core data is frequently used as proof that CO2 heats the atmosphere. A close examination of that data shows that the air temperature went up first and then the CO2 went up. Mars is loosing pole ice faster that earth is loosing the same. As someone said recently, "It's the Sun stupid!" Recent research suggests that the activity of our Sun combined with cosmic radiation from far outside our galaxy interact with our atmosphere to produce effects never dreamed of a few years ago. Is anything or everything in this paragraph correct? No body really knows."

Source & full (worth reading) article: Associated Content 

Britain’s electricity generators could make windfall profits of about £1.5bn a year from the European Union’s emissions trading scheme, industry estimates suggest, raising further questions about the operation of the programme intended to combat global warming. Across Europe, the profits could add up to about €20bn (£13.6bn) a year.... For some companies, these profits are significant. Peter Atherton, an analyst at Citigroup, estimates that for Drax, which owns Britain’s biggest coal-fired power station in Yorkshire, the value of emissions permits could represent about half of next year’s profits.
--Ed Crooks, Financial Times, 17 June 2007

Increased demand for [emissions] permits may help increase earnings at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and other financial firms, analysts said. Banks and brokerages generated as much as $12 billion in revenue from trading energy and commodities in 2006, said Ethan Ravage, a San Francisco-based consultant for the financial services industry. Banks don't disclose profits from emissions trading specifically. "The gold rush is not over" for emissions traders, he said by telephone.
--Mathew Carr, Bloomberg, 18 June 2007
 
German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel has called for punitive duties on imports from polluters if India and China do not move to slow the growth in greenhouse gas emissions. He was asked what would happen if the European steel or aluminium industry collapsed and production moved to China because of laxer carbon-dioxide emissions rules. ‘We’ll tell them, you have to pay up on your products at the border to the European Union, to the United States and to Japan,’ he replied. 
     --Deutsche Presse Agentur, 16 June 2007
 
Europe is failing to keep its promise to cut carbon emissions, new figures reveal. The European Commission disclosed that since the Kyoto treaty targets for cutting emissions were set in 1997, the EU has achieved a 2 per cent reduction. This means that at its average rate of reduction it would be impossible to achieve its Kyoto obligations to reduce emissions by 8 per cent by 2012. 
--The Age, 16 June 2007

The BBC has failed to promote proper debate on major political issues because of the inherent liberal culture of its staff, a report commissioned by the corporation has concluded. The report claims that coverage of single-issue political causes, such as climate change and poverty, can be biased [...] The report concludes BBC staff must be more willing to challenge their own beliefs.
--Gary Cleland, The Daily Telegraph, 18 June 2007

Source: Benny Peiser's CCNET Newsletter 

“CO2 is not currently a major climate driver.  Even if CO2 concentration doubles or triples, the effect on temperature would be minimal. The relationship between temperature and CO2 is like painting a window black to block sunlight. The first coat blocks most of the light. Second and third coats reduce very little more.

Current CO2 levels are like the first coat of black paint. Computer climate models get around this by assuming that a highly questionable hypothesis is correct, namely that small increases in temperature due to large CO2 rises cause more evaporation and the subsequently higher concentration of water vapor (the major greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere will cause further temperature rise. More likely, the resultant increased cloud cover will drive temperatures down.”

--Climatologist Dr Tim Ball, Canada's National Post 

"There's a different side to what is causing climate change. I think too much emphasis has been put on CO2. I do not believe CO2 is a pollutant. I'm made of CO2, you're made of CO2 ... the ocean is a reservoir of CO2."

It emerged that it was not only the United States that was posting strong objections to the wording of the communique, but Russia as well, while India and China had also expressed their own reservations.
       --The Observer, 27 May 2007

There are growing signs that it is not the United States that is isolated on international climate politics, but the Europeans. Apparently, neither the Americans, nor China, nor India, and possibly not even Russia, are swinging in behind Europe's position.
      --Winand von Petersdorff, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 27 May 2007

Earlier Monday, Merkel's efforts to rally the developing world on climate change received a serious blow when India, which has been invited to the Heiligendamm summit, said it would reject proposals to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The Indian environment ministry said restrictions would slow the country's boooming economy and set back efforts to fight poverty.
--EU Business, 28 May 2007

 India says it will reject proposals to limit greenhouse gas emissions at a summit meeting of the world's leading economies next month because stricter limits would slow its booming economy.
     --Agence France-Presse, 29 May 2007 

Beijing voiced reluctance Monday to accept far-reaching cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions. In the German city of Hamburg, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said China was a developing nation and suggested it was up to rich nations to shoulder the cuts. In talks with three leading EU officials before the meeting started, diplomats said Yang insisted there were three sorts of emissions: luxury emissions, normal emissions and survival emissions. 'Ours are necessary for our survival,' he said, according to diplomats who asked not to be quoted by name.
     --Deutsche Presse Agentur, 28 May 2007

It was a failure from the start. Russia's biggest conference on the Kyoto Protocol, which aims to fight global warming, began with a speech from a top official who denied that global warming even exists. Most troubling for some of the delegates was the news that the event's chief organizer was not allowed into the country Wednesday.
--Simon Shuster, St Petersburg Times, 29 May 2007

In the run-up to Germany's G8 Presidency, the German Foreign Office had analyzed the differences and the issues in common with the US on climate politic and had advised to concentrate on co-operation on technological progress, emission reduction and the diversification of energy sources. The Environmental Department and parts of the Chancellor's Office, however, wanted obligatory climate goals wrested from Bush. That failed. Washington is adamant: It did not change its position. The cause for the disappointment in Berlin are rather expectations that were too high.
    --Berlin Tagesspiegel, 29 May 2007

US House of Representatives leader Nancy Pelosi refused here Monday to be drawn on whether the United States would back Germany's strong position on climate change at next week's G8 summit.
     --Agence France-Presse, 28 May 2007  

Source:  Benny Peiser's CCNet newsletter. 

"Science does not support claims of drastic increases in global temperatures over the 21st century, nor does it support claims of human influence on weather events and other secondary effects of climate change."

Conclusion from: 'Climate Science: Climate Change and its Impacts' a report by National Center for Policy Studies, USA.   For the full report go here. For an insightful WSJ op-ed article about the report go here.

"The United Nations Environment Programme is outstanding, and I want to pay tribute to it. But it does not have adequate powers or institutional clout. We must aim to transform it into a fully-fledged United Nations agency."

Jacques Chirac, February 2007 - currently unemployed.

 UN World/Planet Gore....

 We have to pursue aspects that will help poor countries avoid the kinds of problems you are describing. However, many developing countries are moving up to the middle-income type, with strong economic growth, and of course we cannot afford in planetary terms to sit back and watch emissions increasing year by year and do noting about it because these countries are poor.
Gro Harlem Brundtland, UN spokeswoman, 10 May 2007

The Real World/Planet Earth.... 

Trust does not exist. Because we are aspiring to get to where you are. Because we have many competing needs in our own countries. I feel that the first world, developed countries, want to first use us as guinea pigs. I'm sorry I put it that way. I'm not from the diplomatic school. You have a greater expectation of us while ignoring our competing needs to provide health, water, infrastructure, electricity for our own people.
Onkokame Kitso Mokaila, Botswana's Environment Minister, 10 May 2007

Ringo Starr says the environment "turning into a toilet”.  He claims: “All you've got to do is choose love. That's how I live it now … I can feed the birds in my garden. I can't feed them all."

Ed.  Starr seems to be a classic case of  NDCF (no discernible cerebral functioning). It comes from the media hype drumming all that propaganda into him, I think.

But there's nothing wrong with Bob Dylan's chops these days. Asked if he worries about global warming, Dylan's common sense kicked straight in: 

"Where's the global warming? It’s freezing in here."

For more three chord quotes go to Jewish World Review.  

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible," -- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

With thanks to S. Fred Singer's 'The Week That Was' newsletter for the quote, 5 May, 2007.

“I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause. I am now skeptical. As Lord Keynes famously said, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’”  Evans also wrote: “But after 2000 the evidence for carbon emissions gradually got weaker -- better temperature data for the last century, more detailed ice core data, then laboratory evidence that cosmic rays precipitate low clouds.”

Freeman Dyson is professor emeritus of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the Royal Society of London. In 2000 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for progress in Religion. He is the author of a new book, "The Scientist as Rebel." This is his view of the current in a recent interview with Benny Peiser.

Benny Peiser: "In a Winter Commencement Address at the University of Michigan two years ago you called yourself a heretic on global warming, the most notorious dogma of modern science. You have described global warming anxiety as grossly exaggerated and have openly voiced your doubts about the reliability of climate models. These models, you argue, "do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields, farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in." There seems to be an almost complete endorsement of the world's scientific organisations and elites of these models together with claims that they reliably epitomize reality and can consistently predict future climate change. How do you feel belonging to a tiny minority of scientists who dare to voice their doubts openly?"

Freeman Dyson: "I am always happy to be in the minority. Concerning the climate models, I know enough of the details to be sure that they are unreliable. They are full of fudge factors that are fitted to the existing climate, so the models more or less agree with the observed data. But there is no reason to believe that the same fudge factors would give the right behavior in a world with different chemistry, for example in a world with increased CO2 in the atmosphere."

Benny Peiser's full interview with Freeman Dyson can be read here at TCS Daily.

My thanks to Jay Rogers for this information.  

Planting trees to offset carbon emissions could contribute to global warming if they are planted outside the tropics, scientists believe. They argue that most forests do not have any overall effect on global temperature but, by the end of the century, forests in the mid and high latitudes could make their parts of the world more than 3C warmer than would have occurred if the trees did not exist.

-- a quote from The Guardian, April 10, 2007 under "Global Warming: It's the trees, stupid" at  The Brussels Journal blog. 

"The alleged solutions have more potential for catastrophe than the putative problem. The conclusion of the late climate scientist Roger Revelle—Al Gore's supposed mentor—is worth pondering: the evidence for global warming thus far doesn't warrant any action unless it is justifiable on grounds that have nothing to do with climate."

--Professor Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. Excerpted from 'Why So Gloomy?' published by Newsweek, April 16, 2007.

Several scientists objected to the editing of the final draft by government negotiators but in the end agreed to compromises. However, some scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change vowed never to take part in the process again. "The authors lost," said one participant. "A lot of authors are not going to engage in the IPCC process anymore. I have had it with them," he said on condition of anonymity because the proceedings were supposed to remain confidential.
--Associated Press, 6 April 2007

The warnings issued by the Intergov-ernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Brussels yesterday are a collection of worst-case scenarios. The report, approved by 130 governments and endorsed by 2,500 scientists (few of whom probably had any hand in writing it), makes scary reading. It predicts a catastrophic future for millions of humans and other species. Some of these dangers may well be real. But many are deliberate exaggerations.
--The editors of The Times, 7 April 2007

Michael Müller, an official in the German Environment Ministry, described the difficult negotiations leading up to the [IPCC] report as "a mixture of top-level diplomacy and kindergarten."
--Deutsche Welle, 6 April 2007

Ed. I bet I know which won out in the end...