Global Warming Hysteria (cooled)

Dr. Madhav L. Khandekar retired Environment Canada scientist and an expert IPCC reviewer in 2007, writes:

Brant Boucher, in his letter "Scientific consensus" (The Hill Times, Aug. 6, 2007), seems to naively believe that the climate change science espoused in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC documents represents "scientific consensus." Nothing could be further than the truth!

As one of the invited expert reviewers for the 2007 IPCC documents, I have pointed out the flawed review process used by the IPCC scientists in one of my letters (The Hill Times, May 28, 2007). I have also pointed out in my letter that an increasing number of scientists are now questioning the hypothesis of GHG-induced warming of the earth's surface and suggesting a stronger impact of solar variability and large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns on the observed temperature increase than previously believed. I would further politely ask Mr. Boucher to do a simple reality check regarding the earth's temperature change. Since mid-1998, the earth's mean temperature as a whole has not increased at all, despite billions of tonnes of human-added CO2 in the earth's atmosphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, the land-area mean temperature has slowly but surely declined in the last few years. The city of Buenos Aires in Argentina received several centimetres of snowfall in early July, and the last time it snowed in Buenos Aires was in 1918! Most of Australia experienced one of its coldest months of June this year.

everal other locations in the Southern Hemisphere have experienced lower temperatures in the last few years. Further, the SSTs (sea surface temperatures) over world oceans are slowly declining since mid-1998, according to a recent world-wide analysis of ocean surface temperatures. It is important to first develop an improved understanding of the earth's temperature trends and changes before committing millions (billions!) of dollars to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs). Unfortunately, the IPCC climate change documents do not provide an objective assessment of the earth's temperature trends and associated climate change.

Excerpted from: The Hill Times,  August 13, 2007.

Making big cuts in emissions linked to global warming could come at considerable cost to the U.S. economy: between $400 billion and $1.8 trillion in reduced growth over the next four decades, a new study says.

The study published Monday by a nonprofit research group partially funded by the power industry concludes that reducing emissions of carbon dioxide -- the main greenhouse gas linked to global warming -- will require "fundamental" changes in energy production and consumption.

The Electric Power Research Institute said the most cost-effective way to reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is to make many changes at once, including expanding nuclear power, developing renewable technologies and building systems to capture and store carbon dioxide emitted from coal plants. Reducing demand for fossil-fuel power is also key, the institute said.

The EPRI cost estimate is based on a 50 percent economy-wide cut in carbon emissions from 2010 levels by 2050. Without such a cut and the shifts in technology it would bring, the Energy Department projects that U.S. carbon emissions will rise from about 6 billion metric tons a year in 2005 to 8 billion metric tons by 2030.

The report calls for more modest cuts in emissions than some proposals currently being considered in Congress. Bigger cuts could well be more expensive.

Excerpted from: 'Study Estimates Global Warming Costs' by Alan Zibel in Business Week. 

For a liberal-dominated country Canada has quite a few outspoken public officials and decent periodicals. Here's a Canadian mayor Andy Wells on enviro-trash: 

Andy Wells, the outspoken Mayor of St. John's, has outraged Canadian environmentalists and physicians with his comments that David Suzuki and Al Gore are "junk scientists," and that herbicides in small amounts are safe.

From St. John's, to Ottawa, Calgary and Burnaby, B.C., communities across the country continue to debate cosmetic pesticide and herbicide use and whether it should be allowed.

But while passions often come to the fore in the arguments over whether the chemical treatments for lawn care are safe, it's unlikely that many have stated the case as bluntly as does Mr. Wells.

"I think there's a lot of junk science out there that's masquerading as true science,'' the Mayor told CanWest News Service yesterday, "and I think as a consequence public agencies and organizations such as municipal councils are making stupid decisions."

During a council debate on the subject in St. John's Monday night, the feisty mayor tore into another councillor, calling him a junk scientist like "Al Gore and David Suzuki."

Mr. Wells repeated the assertion Tuesday. "I always thought David Suzuki was a charlatan,'' he said. Mr. Wells added: "I think this Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, from what I've read, contains a lot of very poor science.

"I'm not an expert, far from it, but I know how to read."

I have never met Mr Wells, but he can come for dinner at my house whenever he likes (he'd be welcome to see my enormous carbon dioxide emission footprint collection).  For the full article in the excellent National Post go here.  

Anyone who thought that the genocide in Darfur was the result of the policies of the murderous band of Islamist thugs hanging out in Khartoum is, apparently,  quite wrong, according  to new UN Secretary  General, Ban Ki-Moon.  According to the UN Gen Secretary global warming is really to blame.

Some of us may have held out the fond hope that the replacement of the weak-need incompetent and fraud coverer-upper Kofi Annan might offer the hope of a useful and sensible UN. Alas, it is plainly not to be.  And here's the proof:

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that the slaughter in Darfur was triggered by global Climate change and that more such conflicts may be on the horizon, in an article published Saturday.

"The Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change," Ban said in a Washington Post opinion column.

UN statistics showed that rainfall declined some 40 percent over the past two decades, he said, as a rise in Indian Ocean temperatures disrupted monsoons.

"This suggests that the drying of sub-Saharan Africa derives, to some degree, from man-made global warming," the South Korean diplomat wrote.

"It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the drought," Ban said in the Washington daily.

When Darfur's land was rich, he said, black farmers welcomed Arab herders and shared their water, he said.

With the drought, however, farmers fenced in their land to prevent overgrazing.

"For the first time in memory, there was no longer enough food and water for all. Fighting broke out," he said.

A UN peacekeeping force may stop the fighting, he said, and more than two million people may return to rebuilt homes in safe villages.

"But what to do about the essential dilemma: the fact that there's no longer enough good land to go around?"

"Any real solution to Darfur's troubles involves sustained economic development," perhaps using new technologies, genetically modified grains or irrigation, while bettering health, education and sanitation, he said.

The UK government’s policy of promoting biofuels for transport will come under harsh attack this week from one of its senior science advisers.

Roland Clift will tell a seminar of the Royal Academy of Engineering that the plan to promote bioethanol and biodiesel produced from plants is a “scam”.  Clift, professor of environmental technology at Surrey University, sits on the scientific advisory council of Defra, David Miliband’s environment department. He will tell the seminar that promoting the use of biofuels is likely to increase greenhouse gas emissions.

Clift’s comments will amount to a direct challenge to Miliband, who has published a strategy promoting biofuels. It coincides with a surge of anger among environmentalists over the weak pledges on climate change that emerged from last week’s G8 summit. The audience on Thursday will also include Howard Dalton, Miliband’s chief scientist at Defra, who is expected to speak in defence of biofuels.

Clift said: “Biodiesel is a complete scam because in the tropics the growing demand is causing forests to be burnt to make way for palm oil and similar crops.  “We calculate that the land will need to grow biodiesel crops for 70-300 years to compensate for the CO2 emitted in forest destruction.”

Source: The Sunday Times, June 10 

Want the tawdry reality of carbon trading from an insider at a leading world conference?  Here is Alexander Zaitchik from 'The Bored Whore of Kyoto' giving an insight into one of the greatest 'get-rich-quick' (which conversely means: at the expense of many others) schemes devised for decades.

Nothing drove home Russia's place in the growing pollution-trading business better than what one carbon finance guy told me at a conference last month sponsored by Gazprom and the World Bank. We were on drink number three or four at the reception when he dropped the green pretense and came clean.

"I don't know if climate change is caused by burning coal or sun flares or what," said the Moscow-based carbon cowboy. "And I don't really give a shit. Russia is the most energy inefficient country around, and carbon is the most volatile market ever. There's a lot of opportunity to make money."

This is what all the PowerPoint arrows and boxes had been spelling out in bureaucratese during the conference entitled "Kyoto: Carbon Market Opportunities for Russian Enterprises," but it was nice to hear it in plain English. I toasted the fellow's honesty and promised not to use his name. Some of his colleagues, he explained, were "first generation" carbon finance types. More idealistic, they don't appreciate the crass cash take on the business.

For two days I listened to speakers probe the dry nexus between development finance, commodity trading, and environmental policy. It didn't keep me on the edge of my seat, but it did open a window into how the architects of Kyoto imagined Russia's role in the treaty. Boiled down to its essence, they scripted Russia as a poor dirty whore in need of a shower and some nice new clothes. These were treats European governments, financiers, and carbon traders could provide, in exchange for a little something.

The purpose of the Gazprom/World Bank event was to introduce Russia to these Kyoto-era carbon suitors, and to educate local industry about how best to profit from the growing trade in carbon credits. Because what's climate change about if not profit? The global market for carbon reduction credits is worth more than $20 billion and booming. The business bustles at the heart of "market-friendly" Kyoto.

Carbon trading is basically a loophole -- a "flexible mechanism" in Kyoto-speak -- that allows developed nations continue with business as usual while claiming to address the climate crisis.

It is not often that leftwing magazines have much to contribute to the serious business of the science of climatology, so I am only too pleased to commend Alexander Cockburn's (of Counterpunch) "The Greenhousers Strike Back and Out" - part 2 of an invaluable assessment of the current debate. 

It is a piece which focueses on the scandal of the UN's IPCC lead author changing the findings of the report to one which points the finger at man as the chief cause (when the science plainly did not).  This deception has in turn fostered all manner of wrong-headed, expensive an, ultimately, fairly meaningless national and international policies. Here is the opener - but it is well worth reading the whole (and passing it on to as many people as possible).

I began this series of critiques of the greenhouse fearmongers with an evocation of the papal indulgences of the Middle Ages as precursors of the "carbon credits"-ready relief for carbon sinners, burdened, because all humans exhale carbon, with original sin. In the Middle Ages they burned heretics, and after reading through the hefty pile of abusive comments and supposed refutations of my initial article on global warming I'm fairly sure that the critics would be only to happy to cash in whatever carbon credits they have and torch me without further ado.

The greenhouse fearmongers explode at the first critical word, and have contrived a series of primitive rhetorical pandybats which they flourish in retaliation. Those who disagree with their claim that anthropogenic CO2 is the cause of the small, measured increase in the average earth's surface temperature, are stigmatized as "denialists," a charge which scurrilously combines an acoustic intimation of nihilism with a suggested affinity to those who insist the Holocaust never took place.

The greenhousers endlessly propose that the consensus of "scientists" on anthropogenic climate change is overwhelming. By scientists they actually mean computer modelers. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and their computer-modeling coterie include very few real climatologists or atmospheric physicists. Among qualified climatologists, meteorologists and atmospheric physicists, there are plenty who do not accept the greenhousers' propositions. Many others have been intimidated into silence by the pressures of grants, tenure and kindred academic garottes.

Peer review, heavily overworked in the rebuttals I have been reading, is actually a topic on which the greenhousers would do well to keep their mouths shut, since, as the University of Virginia's Pat Michaels has shown, the most notorious sentence in the IPCC's 1996 report ("The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate") was inserted at the last minute by a small faction on the IPCC panel after the scientific peer-review process was complete. Here's how Dr Fred Goldberg describes the probable culprit, Professor Bert Bolin, a politically driven Swede who was the first chairman of the IPCC, from 1988 to 1998. Goldberg's very interesting paper is entitled, "Has Bert Bolin fooled us all concerned climate change caused by humans?":

"In 1995 IPCC presented its second report: The Science of Climate Change". In this report a large number of researchers work through hundreds of scientific reports and delivers a comprehensive report where they conclude that there is no evidence that human beings have had an influence on the climate. This conclusion is of course very important for politicians and policymakers around the world. But what happened? The editor of the IPCC report then deleted or changed the text in 15 different sections of chapter 8 (The key chapter concerning whether human influence exists or not) which had been agreed upon by the panel of contributors involved in compiling the document. In practice politicians and policymakers only read the so-called Executive Summary for Policy Makers. In this document consisting of a few pages it is clearly stated that humans have influenced the climate, contrary to the conclusions of the scientific report.

"Professor Fredrik Seitz, former chairman of the American Science Academy, wrote in the Wall Street Journal already the 12th of June 1996 about a major deception on global warming: "I have never before witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report." He gave many examples of changes and redefinitions and finished by demanding that the IPCC process should be abandoned.

Here's a little insight into how the "global consensus" on climate change is formed. The Times of London reports that "tackling global warming need not cost the Earth, a panel of UN scientists said today. In the third in a series of reports, the IPCC said that keeping the rise in temperatures to within 2 degrees C would cost only 0.12 per cent of annual gross domestic product if governments exploited new technologies to cut greenhouse gas emissions."

So who authored this rosy, "scientific" scenario?

"It's a low premium to pay to reduce the risk of major climate damage," Bill Hare, a Greenpeace adviser who co-authored the report, told Reuters news agency after the culmination of marathon negotiations.

That's right - Greenpeace. One of the world's leading proponents of climate change. Would the MSM declare a report written by Exxon-Mobil to be the definitive report on global warming?

Needless to say, Greenpeace's - er, the IPCC's - conclusion is nonsense. As a Wharton Business School of Economic study found, implementing Kyoto would cost the US about 2.3% of its GDP - or about 20 times 0.12%. And that's just to comply with Kyoto, which doesn't come close to lowering emissions by the 85% that the IPCC claims is required to keep temperature increases below 2C.

Author & Source: Henry Paine at Politics Weblog.com 

The idiot British Government 'Department For Environment Food and Rural Affairs' (Defra) has sent out a 'Climate Change Study Pack' to every secondary School across the UK. It includes: 

A resource pack to help teachers and pupils explore and understand the issues surrounding climate change was sent to every secondary school in England today.

The pack, which includes the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth and a number of other resources, was developed by Defra and the Department for Education and Skills. It is accompanied by online teaching guidance showing how to use the resources in the pack in science, geography and citizenship lessons.

Schools Minister Jim Knight said:

"Climate change is one of the most important challenges facing our planet today. This pack will help to give young people information and inspiration to understand and debate the issues around climate change, and how they as individuals and members of a community should respond to it."

Climate Change and Environment Minister Ian Pearson said:

"There is a clear scientific consensus on the causes and impacts of climate change. Climate change is not solely an environmental issue - it is a challenge for the economy, for health, and for our way of life now, and in the decades ahead.

"The commitment and enthusiasm of young people will be essential to meeting this challenge. We must ensure that they have the tools and the information they need to make informed decisions about their lives and their communities, which this pack for secondary schools will help to provide."

Defra clearly believes that media hype plus science-predictions or science-faith equals science-fact. It doesn't, of course, it equals science-fiction.  Hence Gore's film. But clearly Defra's ministers are absolutely determined that every secondary school pupil in Britain has, on the is issue, the right to remain as clueless as they are.   Fair enough?

With thanks to Paul Flett for the tip. 

No matter where one encounters officials from the IPCC -- at the organization's headquarters in Geneva, in Brussels during the negotiations over the SPM or in Potsdam, where the German authors, together with the Federal Ministry of the Environment, are staging a workshop on the world climate report -- everyone seems to be talking more like environmental activists than scientists these days.

The problem is that the IPCC is not a political group whose goal is to exert pressure, but a scientific institution and panel of experts. Its members ought to present their results and analyses dispassionately, the way pathologists or psychiatrists do when serving as expert witnesses in court, no matter how horrible the victim's injuries and how deviant the perpetrator's psyche are.

Peter Weingart, a sociologist of science from Bielefeld believes that the climate experts' lack of distance has something to do with their training. Scientists usually learn only to reflect on the results of their work, not on their role within the social decision-making process. As a result, they join forces with politicians who share their views. And in this way they do harm to science.

Source:  Uwe Buse, Spiegel Online, 3 May 2007

Divisions over climate change threaten to derail a set piece EU-US summit and overshadow moves to strengthen transatlantic economic ties. With time running out before Monday's meeting in Washington, some EU diplomats suggested that a weak declaration on global warming would be worse than no statement at all. The German EU presidency said it was confident that the communiqué language will be agreed.

However, European diplomats cast doubt over the likelihood of a significant breakthrough. The US has dug in over its insistence that there should be no commitment to binding targets unless developing countries such as China and India follow suit. The hard line from the White House prompted internal divisions on the European side and tension among different parts of the government of Germany.
Source: The Independent, 27 April 2007

BARMY Euro MPs are demanding new laws to stop cows and sheep PARPING. Their call came after the UN said livestock emissions were a bigger threat to the planet than transport.

The MEPs have asked the European Commission to “look again at the livestock question in direct connection with global warming”. The official EU declaration demands changes to animals’ diets, to capture gas emissions and recycle manure.

European union green fuel targets will accelerate the destruction of rainforests in South-East Asia and threaten the habitat of endangered species, such as the orang-utan.

	Seeds of palm oil are harvested at a plantation inRokan Hilir

In March EU leaders agreed to set a binding climate change target to make biofuel - energy sources made from plant material - account for 10 per cent of all Europe's transport fuels by 2020.

But the European Commission has admitted that the objective, which aims to cut carbon dioxide emissions, may have the unintended consequence of speeding up the destruction of tropical rainforests and peatlands in South-East Asia - actually increasing, not reducing, global warming.

Source: Daily Telegraph, 27 April, 2007.  

Climate Scientist Patrick J. Michaels has alerted us to the  UN's appalling view of Africa and its development  in coming years in the light of  its alarm over climate change. Here's a taster:

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) clearly believes that Africa is incapable of developing a 19th-century market economy in the 21st century. Where's the outrage?

In particular, I am referring to the just-released "Policymakers Summary" of an upcoming UN report on "Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability." It predicts that "agricultural production, including access to food, in many African countries and regions is projected to be severely compromised by climate variability and change....This would further affect food security and exacerbate malnutrition on the continent."

With a diversified economy Africa and the world can easily deal with declines in local food production brought upon by bad weather. Nations of the world do it all the time, every year. The mechanism is the global market.

For the full article in The American Spectator go here. 

Did you know low-energy bulbs are currently made using a toxic substance?Did you know that low-energy lightbulbs are made with mercury - a toxic substance the EU banned from its landfill sites last year? Scientists are rightly worried about the potentially enormous impact a large-scale switch to them will mean for disposal - not to mention the added recycling problems and cost.

It doesn't mean we should not use low-energy bulbs but consider the very real hidden costs associated with an early switch over which an early ban of incandescent bulbs will inevitably mean. 

For other hidden problems associated with this prospective ban see my article of the above name has just been published by WorldPress.org. Go here for more.

Parents who claim that an award-winning film on climate change is inaccurate and politically motivated are threatening a legal challenge over the (UK) Government's decision to send it to every secondary school.

The film by Al Gore, the former US vice-president, won an Oscar for the best documentary this year and Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, says he wants teachers to use it to stimulate children into discussing climate change and global warming.

But a group of parents in the New Forest say the circulation of the film by the Government amounts to political indoctrination and is in breach of the Education Act 2002. Derek Tipp, their spokesman, has urged Mr Johnson to stop the film being sent out.

He said: "The film goes well beyond the consensus view and is not therefore suitable material to present to children who need to be given clear and balanced, factually accurate information."

Source: The Daily Telegraph - with thanks to Paul Flett for the story tip.  

A new Gallup Poll suggests most Americans, including most Democrats, don't want al-Gore to run for the White House. 

Even though Al Gore has not yet announced any plans to run for president in 2008, there are numerous grassroots campaigns, including the "Draft Gore" Web site, seeking to encourage the former vice president and 2000 presidential candidate to make another run for the White House next year. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll finds slightly fewer than 4 in 10 Americans saying they would like to see Gore run for president in 2008; the majority of Americans do not want to see him run.

It's the Achilles Heel of all  Global Warming Alarmism (have you been GWA'd lately?): the wholesale reliance on "coulds", "mights" and "ifs" - a point made here by NZ meteorologist Augie Auer:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says drought is expected to hit the northern and eastern parts of New Zealand within 20-years. Eastern areas will face increased fire risk and an eventual decline in agriculture and forestry. The west can expect more floods and landslides.

But meteorologist Augie Auer says the 550 research studies behind the report were all funded by like interests, and there is a lot of duplication. He says New Zealand has been warmer, wetter and drier than it is now.

Mr Auer says there is no evidence that anything is going on, or is expected - other than in the IPCC report - that has not happened before. He says the report is full of "coulds", "mights" and "ifs".

“Dangerous unscientific nonsense” and “lacking in scientific rigour” are descriptions by two scientist members of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition of the latest report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just released. No climate-sensitive environmental parameter been shown to be changing at a rate that exceeds its historic natural rate of change, let alone in a way that can be unequivocally associated with human causation.

Dr Vincent Gray, of Wellington, is the only person in New Zealand who has been an expert reviewer on every draft of the many IPCC Reports. He recalls” “My greatest achievement was the second report where the draft had a chapter ‘Validation of Climate Models’. I commented that since no climate model has ever been ‘validated’ that the word was inappropriate. They changed the word to ‘evaluate’ 50 times, and since then they have never ‘predicted’ anything. All they do is make ‘projections’ and ‘estimates’.

“No climate model has ever been properly tested, which is what ‘validation’ means, and their ‘projections’ are nothing more than the opinions of ‘experts’ with a conflict of interest, because they are paid to produce the models. There is no actual scientific evidence for all these ‘projections’ and ‘estimates'. It should be obvious that they are ridiculous. Try and tell the people of Northland that they are about to run out of water.

Source: excerpt from the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition press release, Tuesday 10 April, 2007.