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Australian Climate Madness

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Climate nonsense from Munich Re

Blaming everything on "climate change" is the usual response of green hysterics, and shouldn't be that of the world's second largest reinsurer. Unbelievably, however, it is (maybe they are trying to reduce their exposure to claims...), and they still wrongly think that warming, even if it is occurring, will cause more severe weather, a scare story that has been debunked thoroughly many times.

The Herald Sun, under the breathless and misleading headling "Record deaths from natural disasters" reports:

Most devastating was Cyclone Nargis, which battered Burma in May to kill more than 135,000 people, and the earthquake that shook China's Sichuan province the same month which left 70,000 dead, 18,000 missing and almost five million homeless, Munich Re said.

"This continues the long-term trend we have been observing," Munich Re board member Torsten Jeworrek said.

"Climate change has already started and is very probably contributing to increasingly frequent weather extremes and ensuing natural catastrophes.

The world needed "effective and binding rules on CO2 emissions, so that climate change is curbed and future generations do not have to live with weather scenarios that are difficult to control."

Let's look at the world's worst natural disasters. Of the top 10, five are unrelated to climate change (4 earthquakes, one dam failure) and the remaining five all occurred before 1970, i.e. before the global warming hysteria was even thought of - in 1970 we were all getting ready for the next Ice Age, remember?

As for Cyclone Nargis, true, it is the 7th largest death toll from cyclones and hurricanes, however the top 6 all occurred before 1975 (and four before 1881), again, before "global warming" could have had any possible effect. The reality is that the death toll from a cyclone or hurricane has far more to do with its location, and the population density under it, than its intensity...

But hey, who cares about the facts when it makes a good story?

Read it here.

Monday, December 29, 2008

Canberra Times journo can't think of a decent argument . . .

... so resorts to petulant ad hominems instead. Always the last chance saloon for someone unable to counter the substantive arguments of "skeptics", Rosslyn Beeby attempts the impossible: portraying alarmists as reasonable chaps, always open for debate and discussion (like Al Gore, I suppose, who refuses to debate AGW with anyone who might ask a half-intelligent question, which of course rules out most journalists), and skeptics as the hysterics of the piece.

She spends the first few paragraphs cherry picking a few examples of realists' frustration boiling over with all the endless nonsense they have to deal with from the alarmists on a daily basis, branding the "name calling" of the skeptics as "grotesque", and praising Barack Obama's new science adviser, John Holdren, whose opinions are clear on:
...the climate-change skeptics who infest talk shows, Internet blogs, letters to the editor, op-ed pieces, and cocktail-party conversations.’’ Climate change scepticism is not just “regrettable’’ but dangerous.

“It has delayed - and continues to delay - the development of the political consensus that will be needed if society is to embrace remedies commensurate with the challenge,’’ he writes on Climate Shift blog.

Spot the hypocrisy there? It's OK for an arch-alarmist to write on a blog, but a skeptic? Dear me no. Shut them up. Stifle debate. Science is settled, right? By the way, I don't seen any arguments against the skeptics' substantive points relating to issues of climate change, however... maybe they come later in the article? (No, they don't - Ed)

Holdren is a warming fruitcake à la Hansen who, along with doom-monger Paul Ehrlich, spectacularly and embarrassingly lost a very public bet back in the 80s about the prices of metals ten years later (they were wrong on all counts), and whose critique of Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist was described as:
"strong on contempt and sneering, but weak on substance." (source)

See a pattern emerging here? Let's just remind ourselves of Michael T Eckhart's email to Dr Marlo Lewis, so that we can fully appreciate what reasonable, good natured and balanced chaps these alarmists are:
Marlo –
You are so full of cr*p.

You have been proven wrong. The entire world has proven you wrong. You are the last guy on Earth to get it. Take this warning from me, Marlo. It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on.

Mike

Michael T. Eckhart

President
American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE)

How's that for articulate and well-mannered, Rosslyn? Truly, this is the silly season.

Read it here (stiff drink advisory)

Sunday, December 28, 2008

2008 - man-made global warming disproved

Thanks to Skeptics Global Warming: An article to "warm" the soul, from Christopher Booker in the UK's Daily Telegraph:
Looking back over my columns of the past 12 months, one of their major themes was neatly encapsulated by two recent items from The Daily Telegraph. The first, on May 21, headed "Climate change threat to Alpine ski resorts" , reported that the entire Alpine "winter sports industry" could soon "grind to a halt for lack of snow". The second, on December 19, headed "The Alps have best snow conditions in a generation" , reported that this winter's Alpine snowfalls "look set to beat all records by New Year's Day".

Read it all.

The Age celebrates civil disobedience

Well, anything goes when we're talking about "saving the planet". In a barking mad opinion piece, Melissa Fyfe sucks up to the new "people power" (i.e. breaking the law) in order to achieve aims that cannot be achieved through the proper democratic process. As we have seen already, the courts in the UK are quite prepared to turn a blind eye to criminal offences where "climate change" is concerned - coal-fired power stations are fair game.
In the wake of Rudd's decision, some in the environment movement are talking about a return to people power. They are talking not just about individual action but national campaigns of "direct action": protests, civil disobedience, making life hard for coal-fired power stations. They are talking about moving out of the boardroom and back to front-line action. They know that they will be risking jail.

I wouldn't bet on it.
A similar shift is happening globally. As the Crikey website mentioned recently, a man managed to walk into a British coal and oil-fired power station and shut down a whole turbine. "No new coal" was on the note he left.

This glorifying of criminal action is incredible for a supposedly serious newspaper. All I hope is that the courts, at least in Australia, treat such "civil disobedience" as what it is: criminal action that requires suitable punishment. That everyone should be equal before the law is a fundamental tenet of Western democracy, and to lose it for the sake of nebulous "climate change" claims would be a disaster.

But in the end, however, we discover the whole rant is built on thin air, as the sources of her climate (mis-)information are revealed: James "Let's massage our data retrospectively" Hansen and Al "High Priest of Global Warming, who, by the way, won't debate the issues with anyone" Gore. She has swallowed the alarmist agenda whole - well, this is The Age after all.

Read it here if you can bear it.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

No matter how cool, the alarmists will always find an angle . . .

2008 is shaping up to be the coolest year since 2001, and yet the media can always dig up an alarmist who can spin it into bad news, to keep the AGW bandwagon of doom rolling (and of course, the cash flooding in). The alarmist in question is Prof Barry Brook, whose amusing title is "Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change" at Adelaide University, which the Adelaide Advertiser (probably the worst newspaper in Australia) reports without question, under the doom-laden headline:
"Year of extremes sparks climate woes"

The article uses the phrase "on record" no less than seven times, without bothering to point out that "on record" means as a maximum in the last 150 years (many stations being far more recent), which, in geological terms is a gnat's whisker, and almost totally irrelevant. Self-Interest Alert:
University of Adelaide climate change professor Barry Brook labelled 2008 as "more climatically damaging" in SA, causing incredible stress to plant and animal life.

Professor Brook said 2008 was a year of extremes. "We had that heatwave, of course, in March and yet we had a cool winter," he said.

"The fact that we had that heatwave makes 2008 more climatically damaging than the past 50 years or more."

Professor Brook said temperature extremes were going to become more common but annual average temperature records would not clearly portray these extremes and the severe effects of climate change.

So no matter what the temperature records show, the effects of "climate change" would always be hidden, right? And if that's not enough, don't forget that even though it's cooler now, warming is still going on...
National Climate Centre senior climatologist Dr Andrew Watkins said 2008 was still warmer than previous La Nina years, in a sign climate change had caused warmer-than-normal temperatures.

A La Nina event relates to cooler-than-normal sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.

"Even though this year should have been a relatively cool year, it was warmer than all but two years since the beginning of this century," Dr Watkins said.

Which is exactly what you would expect, since temperatures have been climbing gently since the Little Ice Age (which no-one ever mentions, of course).

Read it here.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Happy Christmas from ACM

Thank you to all of you who have visited this blog over the past few months - I hope you have enjoyed your visits. I'm taking a short break now and will be back posting in the New Year.

Have an enjoyable and peaceful Christmas and best wishes for 2009.

P.S. I couldn't let the year end without a great alarmist/Scrooge story from the ABC:

Festive feasts 'contributing to climate change'

Read it and weep.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

It's freezing - it must be global warming

Can't keep up with the number of stories about records for extreme cold currently being set all over the globe. And yes, I know that weather isn't climate, but there is a hell of a lot of anectdotal evidence showing that temperatures are heading down. Here's an example, from ABC radio this morning:
While most Australians can only dream of a white Christmas this week, Canadians are set to experience their whitest in almost 40 years.

The entire country is covered in snow for the first time since 1971.

Alberta is the only province that has no weather warning current and as many as 100,000 people in Atlantic Canada are without power as snow and freezing temperatures wreak havoc.

The prairie provinces are in a deep freeze, with temperatures dipping to under minus 30 degrees Celsius, and even British Columbia is suffering with unusually cold weather.

Eastern Canada is still digging out from back-to-back weekend snowstorms that dumped 50 centimetres of snow and disrupted air travel during the busiest time of the year.

Forecasters say there is more snow coming on Christmas Eve.

Source.

Canberra Times - the debate's over

No longer is there any doubt in the minds of the Canberra Times (=Fairfax =SMH =The Age =enviro-hippies) journos who write environmental stories. In a typically batty piece about ensuring your Christmas lights are powered by green electricity (seriously), it throws in the following:
The average household emits around 14 tonnes of greenhouse gases every year, half of which is from electricity generation. This contributes to climate change and global warming.

No "possibly" or "may" or "some believe that", you notice. It does, period. Debate's over, science is settled. Nothing to see here.

Source.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Bob Carter: ETS a big pain for little gain

More climate sense from Prof. Carter in The Australian who exposes the ETS for what it is, a pointless, but harmful, political gesture:
The Rudd Government is poised to introduce a CO2 taxation bill on doubly spurious grounds. It presumes, first, that dangerous warming caused by human emissions is occurring, or will shortly occur. And, second, that cuts to emissions will prevent significant amounts of future warming.

There is, therefore, now a dramatic disjunction between scientific reality and the stranglehold that global warming alarmism has on planned Australian climate policy.

Today's public views about climate change are based upon 20 years of promulgation of dangerous global warming by what has become a hugely powerful coalition of self-interested groups and agencies.

Read it here.

David Evans - The ETS: Completely Unnecessary

(Thanks to Andrew Bolt). Clearly the ABC would never allow this kind of thing on their "proper" site (as it doesn't fit with their alarmist editorial agenda), so it's relegated to the Unleashed section, where they stick all the rantings of freaks and weirdos (like climate realists):
After several prominent public claims by skeptics in 2008 that there is no evidence left for AGW, alarmist scientists offered only two points.

First, laboratory tests prove that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. But that observation tells us nothing about how much the global temperature changes if extra carbon enters the real, complicated atmosphere. Every emitted carbon atom raises the global temperature, but the missing hotspot shows that the effect is negligible.

Second, computer models. Computer models are just huge concatenations of calculations that, individually, could have been performed on a handheld calculator. They are theory, not evidence.

Governments have spent over $50 billion on climate research since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence for AGW.

The most amusing part of this article, however, since it is on the ABC website, is the comments section, chock-a-block full of ad hominem attacks from the Loony Lefties who cannot believe that anyone could possibly question the consensus on AGW. Here's an example:
This bilge is lies, distortions and misrepresentations from beginning to end. Evans peddled this rubbish at 'The Fundament', the Die Sturmer of local denialism recently. He is an associate of the loony, far, far Right Lavoisier Group, well established as established up by Rightwing ideologues. All Evans' points have been rebutted over and over again, and his trump-card, the alleged 'absence' of a tropical tropospheric 'hot-spot' has been rebutted by a paper published recently in the International Journal of Climatology (I know. It's not as distinguished a source as 'The Fundament' or the 'Proceedings of The Lavoisier Society') by Ben Santer and 17 other real scientists.
...
Both anthropogenic climate change and Peak Oil are being caused by runaway, cancerous, economic growth, which our market fundamentalist capitalist state religion demands must continue forever, and hang the consequences for the billions who will suffer as a consequence.

And by the way, Santer refused to release the data for the "rebuttal" he claims to Steve McIntyre - I wonder why? Maybe Santer thought it would get the same treatment from McIntyre as Mann's hockey stick!

Read it here.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Brisbane Times - hysterical alarmist opinion piece

This is what we can expect as global temperatures level off and fall, ever increasing hysteria from the warmists desperately trying to stop the wheels falling off their cash-cow bandwagon. The Brisbane Times (from the Fairfax - Age, SMH - stable) excels itself in scaremongering claptrap in an editorial piece entitled "Economy won't matter if earth dies":
The science of climate change now tells us that if global temperatures are allowed to rise by 3 degrees — which is compatible with widespread adoption by developed countries of the Rudd Government 2020 emission targets — irreversible changes will be set in place that will drive the global temperature increase to 6 degrees above the pre-industrial level.

If this is allowed to happen, it will have catastrophic consequences for the environment and human civilisation.

Even managing to contain global warming to 2 degrees would involve risks for the planet that would be unacceptable to most individuals if the same odds of death applied to air travel or engineering projects.

Already the consequences of global warming are apparent. Extreme weather events are becoming commonplace. The lower Murray and the Great Barrier Reef are crippled almost beyond repair.

If the Rudd formula is applied generally, science tells us the consequences of global warming above 3 degrees include in Australia the deaths of the Great Barrier Reef, the Murray-Darling-Goulburn Basin and Kakadu National Park.

Internationally, the costs include loss of Arctic summer sea ice. Without ice to reflect the sun, the temperature rise will cause the irreversible loss of the Greenland and Himalayan ice sheets, which would translate into an eventual seven-metre rise in sea levels. Under threat are the 200 million people living on flood plains; 22 of the 50 largest cities, which are at risk from tidal surges; and the billion people in an ark from Pakistan to China whose lives depend on the six great rivers of Asia to keep flowing during the dry season.

Just count up how many misrepresentation and outright falsehoods there are in those few paragraphs. The trouble is that most people reading it will treat it as gospel. Disgraceful journalism, Kenneth Davidson.

Read it here.

This is what most 17-year-olds probably think about "global warming" ...

... thanks to the indoctrination of their eco-fundamentalist science teachers, the ABC, and newspapers like The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. From a letter to The Age:
MR RUDD, I am 17. Although my opinion will be politically insignificant for another year, it is my generation who will suffer the consequences of inadequate climate change action. After your election, I was one of many excited at the prospect of change. Now I feel extreme disappointment. What happened to taking climate change seriously; to listening to science; to climate change being the greatest challenge of the generation?

I understand how such a politically cunning response would blunt Opposition attacks. But we don't need clever political manoeuvres or more excuses, summits or reports. We know the facts. A carbon reduction of 25-40 per cent by 2020 is necessary to keep global temperatures within 2 to 2.4 degrees of pre-industrial levels. A mere 5 to 15 per cent means destroying the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu and catastrophe for the Murray-Darling Basin, thus threatening 700,000 jobs.

Global warming may be the greatest challenge of your generation but it is the greatest threat to mine. Don't go down with John Howard as one of the men who stood by and watched it happen.

Robert Moseley, Upper Ferntree Gully

Read it here.

Andrew Bolt - The 10 worst warming predictions

A great piece from Andrew, who exposes the hysterical predictions made by alarmists for what they are - nonsensical hype.
GLOBAL warming preachers have had a shocking 2008. So many of their predictions this year went splat.

Here’s their problem: they’ve been scaring us for so long that it’s now possible to check if things are turning out as hot as they warned.

And good news! I bring you Christmas cheer - the top 10 warming predictions to hit the wall this year.

Read, so you can end 2008 with optimism, knowing this Christmas won’t be the last for you, the planet or even the polar bears.

Read it here.

The Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

As always, a great read.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Miranda Devine - climate sense

Miranda Devine in the Sydney Morning Herald does a first class demolition job on Krudd & Co's pointless and wrongly named "Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme".

Read it here.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

2008: "10th hottest year on record"

All the headlines are screaming this fact today, published in the World Meteorological Organisation's annual climate report. But before we all go and sacrifice a methane-belching ruminant at the altar of Al Gore and the Holy Church of AGW, let's put a bit of sanity round it:
  • "On record" means since about 1850, a blink of an eye in geological terms which doesn't include the higher temperatures experienced on earth during the Medieval Warm Period
  • Since temperatures have been climbing steadily since the Little Ice Age, you would expect each year to be the warmest (and this trend started way before evil capitalist CO2 emitting industries and economies were on the scene)
  • If 11 out of the last 12 years are supposedly the warmest on record, then the fact that 2008 is the 10th warmest actually demonstrates a significant cooling... and in fact in Australia, 2008 is the coolest year since 2001...
Next story please.

Read it here (and a thousand other places).

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

A bit of light relief...

Have a read of this article from the Green Left Weekly (its title tells you all you need to know). A few highlights to whet the appetite:
The targets are not simply disappointing. They are disastrous and appalling.

Worst of all, 450ppm is itself an alarmingly dangerous target that would almost certainly lead to runaway climate change.

As little as 2° warming will still push the planet far past crucial climate tipping points where the planet will begin to warm itself — leading to catastrophic and unpredictable consequences.

It is for this reason that climate scientist James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has argued we face a “planetary emergency” and called for reducing atmospheric carbon at 300-325ppm as rapidly as possible.

The climate change movement also has a very special role and responsibility to tell the truth about the threat climate change poses to people and planet — the truth that the mainstream politicians and media consistently work to conceal.

Read it here.

Handful of greenies protest at emissions targets

About half a dozen "students, environmental organisations and green groups" caused a minor inconvenience at a few government offices, bleating about the 5 per cent target for 2020. But there is a sinister veiled threat of "direct action", which will, no doubt, be treated very leniently by the courts:
[Nature Conservation Council of NSW chief executive officer Cate] Faehrmann said the Government would now see a spike in more drastic measures to get the message across.

"When it comes to the planet and a safe climate we need to step it up. They haven't listened to us when we've politely asked, so I think there will be a rise in non-violent, direct action [such as] occupying Parliament and sit-ins in offices," Faehrmann said.

That means non-violent until it turns violent, which these protests have a funny habit of doing...

Read it here.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Rudd & Co make tiny commitment to emissions reduction

Reality bites, as Rudd and Wong announce only a 5% cut in emissions by 2020, which could increase to 15% if there is a global agreement to reduce emissions further. And that's a big "if", judging by the results at Poznan. The Greens are livid, of course, which kind of indicates that Rudd is on the right track...
"Australia's commitment of a 5 -15 per cent reduction by 2020 is a serious and credible commitment to the global action required and is realistically attainable in the current circumstances," the white paper says.

It's not a serious and credible commitment at all - it's a pointless gesture, when what was needed was no gesture at all. In truth, a 5% cut in Australian emissions will do nothing (since a 100% cut in emissions would do nothing as well), and may still cause some unnecessary damage to our already weakened economy, but at least they haven't swallowed the Green agenda whole.

There's little chance of a global agreement in Copenhagen, especially with China building two new coal-fired power stations each week, and by that time it is at least possible that the AGW bandwagon will be seriously derailed by continuing global cooling. Here's hoping.

Read it here.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Climate madness from Bob Brown

And this is real madness, not just the "madness-lite" you get from Rudd & Wong. But we expect little else from the Greens of course, who live in an environmentally friendly little bubble, insulated from the genuine realities of the world. Check out these targets that Bob Brown, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, has come up with in his fairytale world:
  • 40% reduction by 2020 (below 1990 levels, not 2000 levels);
  • (wait for it...) 100% reduction by 2050
So that would mean no fossil fuel use at all - no petrol or diesel cars, trucks or buses, no planes, no coal use, no natural gas, no nothing, and all by 2050 (and of course, no nuclear - perish the thought). And just for luck, he throws in the usual alarmist BS:
A level of 550 parts per million is a recipe for environmental and humanitarian catastrophe on a scale that is scarcely imaginable.

Australia will lose the Great Barrier Reef (and the 63,000 jobs that it sustains), Kakadu and our alpine snowfields. The Murray-Darling food basket will dry up much faster. There is a real prospect of two billion people in Asia going without clean water if, as projected, the Tibetan glaciers, which feed many of Asia's major rivers, disappear in the next few decades.

The really alarming thing is that (a) Bob Brown is a Senator of the Australian Parliament (we know the Tassies are a breed apart, but why on earth did they vote this guy in?), and (b) the Moonbat Herald gives him a platform.

Read it here.

SMH: "Poznan fizzles" - didn't I just say that yesterday?

The Sydney Morning Herald is mourning a predictably disappointing end to Poznan, with only a few technical projects agreed:
A CALL-TO-ARMS by former US vice-president Al Gore and a contentious European deal to cut its greenhouse emissions have overshadowed an anti-climactic finale to UN climate talks in Poland.

Critics said the talks made only tentative steps to a new global treaty.

Promised as a stepping stone towards a post-Kyoto climate deal to be signed in Copenhagen next year, the Poznan talks edged towards conclusion yesterday amid accusations that developed nations, including Australia, had blocked progress on greenhouse targets.

As expected, there was no deal on how to share the responsibility of cutting emissions even though developed countries acknowledged that scientists recommended cuts of between 25 and 40 per cent.

Al Gore's appearance was described by AFP as "breathing fire into the talks". The journos clearly haven't seen this picture doing the rounds on the 'net:



Read it here.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

News.com.au trumpets "Poznan agreement" ...

... when in fact it's anything but. It's basically a wish-list of issues to be negotiated during 2009, and an unwritten edict to everyone involved to keep their fingers, legs, toes and anything else handy firmly crossed for Copenhagen next year.
The agreement overnight sets the stage for a year-long process revolving around two big issues: who should make the biggest sacrifices on curbing greenhouse gases, and how to beef up support for poor countries exposed to climate change.

The talks in Poznan, Poland ended with a two-day ministerial-level gathering that failed to make any big advance on these core issues.

And why should those "big advances" suddenly be made next year, when the issues involved are exactly the same as in Poznan? Wishful thinking.

Read it here.

Hysteria from Gore as Poznan fizzles

Al Gore has added his ever-increasing weight to the hysteria at Poznan claiming that tinkering with a harmless trace gas is the "greatest challenge humankind has ever faced" (ignoring, of course, poverty, clean drinking water, cures for cancer and other terminal diseases), and The Age goes into full arse-lick mode over this peddler of misinformation:
Mr Gore, a Nobel laureate for his crusading work to combat climate change, highlighted steps already being taken to make a case that a new deal was possible by next year's deadline meeting in Copenhagen.

And, true to form, Gore throws in yet more alarmism:
But he also warned that the predictions of the UN's climate scientists had now been surpassed, and that deeper cuts in emissions than were currently being considered would be needed. Stabilising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at 450 parts per million - factoring in a temperature rise of about two degrees - would be an incredibly difficult first step but ultimately not enough, he said.

"We will have to toughen that goal to 350 parts per million - we understand that," he said. Carbon dioxide concentrations are already more than 380 parts per million.

"Very simply put, it is wrong for this generation to destroy the habitability of our planet and ruin the prospects of every future generation," Mr Gore said.

The predictions of the IPCC didn't see the current cooling, did they, so how can they possibly be being surpassed? More lies and deception. And no-one is actually sure what the carbon-fuelled gab-fest in Poznan has actually achieved, if anything. The papers are full of stories about the EU deal on emissions, but are strangely silent on Poznan. However, the WWF was a little less than complementary about the EU deal, which was only reached by including rafts of exemptions rendering the deal almost meaningless:
"This is a flagship EU policy with no captain, a mutinous crew and several gaping holes in it," said Sanjeev Kumar of environment pressure group WWF.

I never thought I'd find myself agreeing with the WWF!

Read it here.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Krudd - Carry on regardless

Kevin Rudd is sounding more like a cracked record every day. The same old nonsense, spouted day after day:
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says he will not bow to pressure from business groups to delay the start of an emissions trading scheme.

On Monday the Federal Government will unveil the design of the scheme and reveal its mid-term targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The head of the Australian Industry Group, Heather Ridout, says the impact of the global financial crisis will make it difficult for many businesses to cope when the scheme is due to start in 2010.

Mr Rudd has told the ABC's 7.30 Report he is still determined to stick to the original deadline.

"We have not changed our ambition in terms of that 2010 introduction... our ambition remains and we have no cause to change it," he said.

No cause to change it, except for the worst financial crisis since the 1920's, that is. Idiotic.

Link.

Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Round-up

As usual, a great read.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

"Rudd's ETS faces double blow"

A great article in The Australian:
KEVIN Rudd's ambition of an emissions trading scheme in Australia by 2010 has suffered two setbacks, with both the Coalition and independent senator Nick Xenophon warning they may push for a delay.

Read it all here.

The Brisbane Times - cognitive dissonance

Headline:
Countries agree on goals for new UN climate treaty

First paragraph of article:
A UN climate conference attended by 190 countries has failed to make a real commitment to reduce the amount of carbon emissions.

Read it here.

Victoria moonbats base planning decisions on "80 cm" sea level rise

Even the IPCC, in its worst case scenario, only forecasts a 59 cm rise, and given there has been no change in the rate of sea level rise from its long term value of about 2 mm per year, even that looks wildly alarmist. But that's not enough for the Victorian government, apparently:
Heeding warnings from climate change experts, the Government has ruled that new developments must assume sea-level rises of 80 centimetres by 2100. The rule will take effect on Monday, but not apply retrospectively.

Which "experts" are they, exactly?

Read it here.

Poznan talks going nowhere fast

It now looks even less likely that a global deal on emissions will be reached in Copenhagen in 2009, as more and more countries get cold feet about the harsh realities of emissions reductions, and talks in Poznan get bogged down:
The executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Yvo de Boer, said it was possible only ''the key political issues'' would be nailed down by this deadline [2009] and further talks needed to complete the details of the accord.

''We won't see a fully elaborated, long-term agreement in Copenhagen in 2009. It won't be feasible,'' Mr de Boer said.

Australia will reveal its 2020 target under the government's wrongly-named "Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme" on Monday, widely expected to be between 5 and 15%. This is much less than the enviro-loonies are demanding, and shows that even Krudd & Co are secretly aware of the damage a higher target would inflict on Australia's economy. Watch this space!

Read it here.

Idiotic Comments of the day - Emma Tom

The Australian wins ACM Idiotic Comment of the Day two days running. Yesterday it was Leigh Dayton, and today Emma Tom, writing in "The Wry Side", under the headline "Apply anti-sceptic" - v. witty:
The thing that's so irksome about hardline climate change sceptics is that the planet will need to be twitching and coughing up blood before they'll agree to do anything. And while it's always enormously gratifying to be proved right, even the narkiest greenie is unlikely to gain much pleasure from screeching "I told you so" as the last of the polar ice caps fizzes sadly into the sea like a stale Berocca.
...
Once you look at environmental issues through this lens, setting a 2020 greenhouse emissions target of a paltry 5 to 15 per cent becomes the equivalent of only conducting airport security checks on Mondays and Wednesdays.

And there's a "D" Word alert into the bargain:
Contrary to the smug rhetoric of the deniers, taking out expensive or inconvenient insurance policies against tiny risks is not irrational or even that uncommon.
...
We take out insurance to protect our cars, our mobile phones and (if we live in the US of A) our celebrity boobs. Let's not leave ourselves hideously underinsured when it comes to our primary residence.

Res ipsa loquitur.

Read it here.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Obama - clueless on climate

As you would be, if your source of information was Al Gore. Unfortunately, Obama's source of information is Al Gore.
US president-elect Barack Obama said delaying action on climate change was no longer an option, after a meeting Tuesday with former vice president and Democratic Party bigwig Al Gore.

Obama welcomed Gore for a private meeting in his hometown of Chicago, Obama's base of operations as he prepares to take office on January 20. His transition team rejected speculation that Gore could be offered a position in the new administration.

"D" Word Alert:
"The time for delay is over. The time for denial is over," Obama said, flanked by Gore and vice-president elect Joe Biden after the meeting.

There's no hope.

Read it here.

Idiotic Comments of the day - Leigh Dayton

The Australian's science writer wins today's ACM Idiotic Comment gong for an article about Marvin Geller and Richard Lindzen. Leigh Dayton was the author of a recent fawning article about Geller that was deeply patronising to anyone who dared dispute "the consensus" (see here).

In this article, however, Dayton goes further, portraying Geller as a gallant crusader, desperate to avoid the charge of alarmism, and defending the IPCC as more likely to downplay results than exaggerate:
As Geller says, that makes Lindzen different to other climate-change sceptics. Many vehement critics are retired from the field, never worked in it or seem indifferent to recent peer-reviewed research impinging on their area. This is a shame. If the planet is heating up rapidly and dangerously due to humanity's penchant for burning fossil fuels, policymakers and politicians need solid scientific information. Distraction by misinformed sceptics does not good public policy make.

That's a big "IF", Leigh, and to call sceptics an annoying distraction is offensive and misguided. Yeah, shut 'em up - close 'em down. Hey, the debate's over! The article is also just plain wrong in places:
Climate sceptics also commonly recycle inaccurate "facts". The myth that global warming peaked in 1998 is a case in point. Yes, 1998 was a global scorcher, thanks to a heat-inducing El Nino. But after a dip in 1999, data collected by NASA and Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research show an upward trend, despite year-to-year variations. To claim otherwise is incorrect.

NASA = GISS = James Hansen = fudged figures. Just look at the satellite record. Surface stations measure urbanisation, satellites don't - there has been no warming since 2001, and notable cooling in the last couple of years.

And finally, to suggest that scientists are going to cut their own funding by questioning the consensus is just idiotic. Follow the money. Many serious scientific journals have already made up their mind on climate change.

All in all, a well deserved winner.

Read it here.

Poznan talks get bogged down

And in rare moment of sanity, it appears that Australia is being blamed for taking a sensible approach, at least in comparison to other countries. The Age can hardly conceal its disappointment:
AUSTRALIAN diplomats have been accused of helping turn UN climate talks in Poland into "groundhog day" by failing to support a proposal that rich countries look to the advice of climate scientists when setting greenhouse targets.

It is believed that Australia has joined Japan, Canada and Russia in wanting changes to a proposed agreement that says greenhouse cuts should be "informed" by advice that the developed world needs to cut emissions by 25-40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.

In other words, Australia does not want to acknowledge the role of "the published science" (which in effect means the IPCC) in setting targets, which is exactly right. The IPCC isn't science, it's political propaganda.

Read it here.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Climate change "infringes human rights"

What, I ask, will the AGW brigade think of next? Former President of Ireland and honorary president of Oxfam, Mary Robinson, considers climate change to be an infringement of human rights. And no prizes for guessing which moonbat newspaper prints this nonsense... yep, The Age:
From increasing droughts to increasing floods, from lower agricultural productivity to more frequent and severe storms, many rightly fear that things will only get worse. Their human rights - to security, health, and sustainable livelihoods - are increasingly being threatened by changes to the earth's climate.
...
Carbon emissions from industrialised countries have human and environmental consequences. As a result, global warming has already begun to affect the fulfilment of human rights, and to the extent that polluting greenhouse gases continue to be released by large industrial countries, the basic human rights of millions of the world's poorest people to life, security, food, health and shelter will continue to be violated.

What about natural disasters? Earthquakes? Volcanic eruptions? Tsunami? They violate human rights far more than "climate change", but we don't pointlessly try to control them, because controlling such things is like herding cats - impossible. And, of course, the punchline is therefore we should "do something":
Urgently cutting emissions must be done in order to respect and protect human rights from being violated by the future impacts of climate change, while supporting the poorest communities to adapt to already occurring climate impacts is the only remedy for those whose human rights have already been violated.

Are there no limits to the depths...?

Read it here.

Celebs urge rich nations to "tackle climate change"

As always, celebs are falling over themselves to appear hip and PC, and like nothing more than publicly exposing their green credentials (although most of us would wish they'd cover them up again):
In a letter to The Times, 19 signatories including broadcaster David Attenborough, actress Scarlett Johansson and singers Missy Higgins and Annie Lennox said developed nations must "show leadership" at UN climate talks in Poznan, Poland this week.

Don't know about you, but I'm convinced.

Read it here.

If you thought kangaroo was bad...

... it ain't as bad as camel, which we are told will be the next delicacy on the "Climate Change Menu". Not only are camel numbers in Australia out of control, but they are huge greenhouse gas emitters. Really, this isn't a joke:
Report co-author Murray McGregor, an agribusiness lecturer, said a good way to bring down the number of camels was to eat them.

"Eat a camel today, I've done it," Professor McGregor said.

"It's beautiful meat.

"It's a bit like beef. It's as lean as lean, it's an excellent health food."

I think we need a new motto: "A camel a day keeps Al Gore at bay."

Read it here.

More flannel from Flannery

Australia's own AGW-gasbag, Tim Flannery, is urging the federal government to "show leadership" on climate change, and has claimed that the world will "suicide" if it cannot agree a strong climate agreement soon:
Professor Flannery, who is attending a UN climate summit in Poland, expressed dismay at the slow progress.

He has called for Australia to take the lead on climate - or watch the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef through global warming.

"Resistance is a suicidal tactic," the former Australian of the year, scientist and author told reporters from Poland.

Sounds like Star Trek: "Resistance is futile!" The GBR has been in existence for hundreds of thousands of years, and has survived numbers of climate minima and maxima far worse than the conditions we are experiencing now, so why does everyone think that it's suddenly going to disappear? It's pure hysteria. How on earth Flannely could have been voted Australian of the Year is beyond me. And then, without a hint of irony:
"This round of negotiations is likely to be our last chance as a species to deal with the problem."

No alarmism there, clearly.

Read it here.

ABC peddles yet more alarmist BS

Here's a discipline I have never encountered before: "climate law". However, it's not surprising that such a discipline is emerging since most Western governments are hell bent on imposing legislation to try to control a harmless trace gas, and such legislation will need lawyers to interpret it. Anyway, the ABC gives Amanda McKenzie, who has just completed her honours thesis in "climate law", free reign to spout the usual alarmist BS that we've come to expect from our national broadcaster. In an article entitled "It's the Climate, stupid", she opines:
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a grouping of over 2,000 of the world's best climate scientists, 550 ppm gives us an almost certain chance of warming the planet by 2 degrees. While 2 degrees doesn't sound like much, it is widely agreed to be a dangerous threshold that should not be crossed. Two degrees may trigger "runaway climate change", that is, where natural systems start releasing greenhouse gases in such quantities that temperatures rise 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 degrees, leaving much of the planet uninhabitable.

Actually, it's nowhere near 2000 - less than a hundred reviewed the key chapter of the IPCC's 2007 report, and most of them regularly peer-review each others' papers. And far from approaching a "tipping point", the planet has actually cooled since 2001... She then quotes AGW arch-crackpot James Hansen, whose GISS surface temperature records demonstrate little about global climate, but show urbanisation very well:
He states that this target [400 ppm] is required if "humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed". For Australia this means implementing targets of at least 40 per cent by 2020. While it will be substantially more costly now to set scientifically based targets, in the long term it is highly benefical as it gives us the best chance of sustaining Australia's key natural, irreplaceable assets on which we depend.

She, like most writers on this subject, completely ignores the fact that Australia reducing its CO2 by 40% by 2020 will do nothing for global CO2 levels (actually a 0.6% reduction), and, even if CO2 does affect climate (which is far from certain, despite what those two thousand of the world's best scientists at the IPCC say), will make not an iota of difference to global climate. What it will do, however, with absolute certainty, is destroy our economy and the standards of living that Australia has spent decades raising. All of which is irrelevant of course when it comes to "saving the planet".

Read it here.

The Australian - Climate extremists on different planet

An editorial in The Australian today, with the sub-heading "Australia has no moral obligation to go it alone" puts the Sydney Moonbat Herald squarely in its place:
Naive media commentators advocating that Australia go it alone need to grow up before they can contribute something constructive to the debate. Yesterday's editorial in The Sydney Morning Herald, for instance, would have been more at home in Green Left Weekly than a mainstream paper.

Brushing aside concerns over unemployment and the global slowdown, the editorial slammed the Rudd Government for "compromise, back-pedalling and political expediency" over climate change. Anything less than a commitment to a 20 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, it ranted, would be "squibbing". Australia, it advocated, should be out at the "forefront" cutting emissions, and not sitting around blaming China.

When Kevin Rudd appointed Professor Garnaut as his handpicked climate change adviser before last year's election, the Herald, along with other green-leaning newspapers, applauded. But now that he has arrived at his meticulously researched conclusions, the Herald wants the Government to ignore his report and go ahead with deep but futile cuts, regardless of what the rest of world decides to do.

Read it here.

Monday, December 8, 2008

Enviro-crackpots disrupt UK's Stansted Airport

And presumably they will get off with a telling off and a slap on the wrist because, as we all know, if "preventing climate change" is involved, the UK courts will let you get away with virtually anything.
Dozens of flights were cancelled at Stansted Airport near London on Monday after activists demonstrating against global warming cut through a fence near the runway.

The airport reopened around 0800 GMT (1900 AEDT) after police arrested 57 people who had breached the perimeter fence using bolt-cutters under cover of darkness five hours earlier.

Cutting through fences with bolt cutters is what us old fogeys used to call "criminal damage", not to mention the hundreds of other aviation and security offences that would have been committed at the same time. But that all goes out of the window when it's justified by "saving the planet"... Airheaded Thinking Alert:
One of the activists, Lily Kember, 21, said the protesters were able to sit on a site near where aeroplanes taxi before taking off and landing.

"Being arrested is a terrifying prospect, but not nearly as terrifying as the threat of climate change," she said.

The best thing about this story, however, is that the group involved has branded itself "Plane Stupid", which just about sums up these protesters pretty well, wouldn't you agree?

Read it here.

Global companies sign own death warrant

There is really no end to climate madness - in fact, in the face of falling global temperatures, it is getting worse. The Australian government, which is going blindly down ETS Alley towards economic ruin, is being accused of not going far enough, not only by the usual Greens, but now also by 140 global companies (including National Australia Bank and Westpac), who have signed a communiqué calling for "deep and rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions" and calling for 50 - 85% cuts by 2050.
The call comes as the government is facing criticism from green groups after reports suggested federal cabinet would soften its position on a 2020 reduction target and its plans for an emissions trading scheme.

The companies say delaying action will increase the costs of stabilising the climate, and reduction targets should be guided by science.

Clearly they mean the "science" of the IPCC, which as we all know, isn't science at all but political propaganda. And then there's another poll from the Australian Conservation Foundation (which, as I have posted before, is the organisation in Australia which promotes Al Gore's despicable Climate Project, whose sole purpose is to disseminate to the unsuspecting public the lies and propaganda contained in An Inconvenient Truth) which claims that two-thirds of its respondents thought that:
Australia should set an example for other countries by committing to strong targets.

As if China and India give a flying fig about what Australia does. I'm still trying to find the wording of the question asked, but I can guarantee that it will be so biased that the only possible response would have been that sought by the ACF.

When not only governments but big businesses start demanding massive cuts in emissions, based on no credible evidence other than that of the corrupt IPCC, one has to wonder whether this bandwagon can ever be stopped.

Read it here.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Climate change is bad for your health

It's certainly bad for my health - reading endless scaremongering stories about how climate change causes everything from hurricanes to ingrowing toenails (actually, I think ingrowing toenails are one of the few things left on earth not attributed to climate change). The Australian runs an article by David Shearman and Michael Kidd, both from "Doctors for the Environment Australia", who inform us that "wherever you live, climate change threatens your health":
Climate change will bring to Australia an increased burden of heat stress, injury from fire and storm, social disruption and mental illness; in the developing world it will bring famine, water shortage and dislocation of populations with calls to Australia to assist resettlement. The coming disruption of ecological services that provide humanity's life-support system is likely to have far-reaching health impacts on food and water resources and on the spread of infective disease.

And then they praise the "health benefits" of renewable energy:
It is non-polluting and reduces reliance on fossil fuels, which emit carbon dioxide and many other pollutants responsible for much cardio-respiratory disease. Renewable energy is decreasing in cost and creates many more jobs per equivalent amount of power than does fossil fuel. It can be used as a distributed energy source, a positive for social welfare and health as it distributes employment opportunities to regional and rural centres where the burden of stress, depression and suicide is increasingly prevalent.

Carbon Dioxide is not a pollutant, and I have never heard any evidence that it causes cardio-respiratory disease. And stating that renewable energy "creates many more jobs" is the same as saying that it is hopelessly expensive and inefficient. And the article concludes with the usual cri de coeur:
We must act now, for in the words of the French philosopher, Paul Valery, "the future, like everything else, is not what it used to be".

Read it here.

Friday, December 5, 2008

The Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

As always, a great read.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

UPDATED: The impartial ABC - Robyn Williams spouts usual BS

Thanks to Tom Nelson. You may recall that Robyn Williams is the ABC journo who has stated on previous occasions that "the debate is over" (and on whom I have previously commented - see here) and is frothing at the mouth because all us deluded sceptics are not swayed by the power of his arguments. Ad hominem Alert:
I draw two conclusions. The first is that the handful of 'climate sceptics' are politically driven and exploit the same trademark clutch of factoids and phrases. They ignore published, peer-reviewed scientific papers containing evidence that shatters their case, vanishingly small as it is.

The noise they make is out of all proportion to their puny numbers, and they protest furiously that all they are doing is trying to save us from unnecessary paralysing angst – rather than inconvenient truth.

The other characteristic of these people is that they lack nuance. After all, everything in science is debatable.

"These people"?! Everything in science is debatable? Except climate change, clearly! What a joke. I lost count of how many ad hominem attacks the article contains. This guy should be sacked from the ABC.

Read it here.

UPDATE: Once again, Andrew Bolt does a great demolition job on Williams here.

US looks to Australia for how best to ruin its economy

Australia is steaming ahead with an economy-crippling ETS, so other countries are now looking to us for tips as to the best way to cripple theirs too, including the US:
Edgard Kagan, the economic counsellor at the US Embassy in Canberra, says US officials are awaiting with interest the Federal Government's carbon reduction scheme white paper, which is due in just under a fortnight.

"There's a great deal of interest within the parts of the US Government that deal with climate change issues in what Australia's doing, because there are tremendous similarities between the US and Australian economies, both in geographic scale and structure of the economy," he said.

Both countries also have moonbatty watermelon leaders (green on outside, red on inside). And more "tremendous similarities" will follow, as the economies of both countries disappear down the gurgler.

Read it here.

I'm convinced - the science is settled - I was wrong

Only kidding of course. But the Australian attempts to put all sceptics in their place by reporting a lecture given by Marvin Geller of Stony Brook University in New York State. Under the patronising headline:
Professor sheds light for climate change sceptics

(as if we sceptics are Neanderthals grovelling around in the fog of ignorance), Geller spouts the usual alarmist stuff. But the good professor's logic is full of holes, as whilst he states that a very small change in solar radiation cannot possibly affect climate, he then goes on to state that a very small change in CO2 obviously does. He then compares the effect of this harmless trace gas to cyanide... oh dear.

And it's really all downhill from there: 11 of last 12 years warmest on record (only since 1850 of course), insulting our intelligence by explaining the difference between "weather" and "climate" in terms that would patronise a 12-year-old.
"Many components of the climate system ... are now changing at rates and in patterns that are not natural and are best explained by the increased atmospheric abundance of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century."

Read it here.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

UPDATED: "Pick a loved icon, and put a gun to its head"

Quoth Andrew Bolt. But this time it's not the koala, but the white possum, which the Courier Mail thunders has been made extinct by "global warming" (shurely "climate change" - Ed):
"If it has died out it will be devastating," Ms [Sheridan] Morris said.

"It is a big one, and a big one to bang the drum over.

"It is equally as shocking as losing an iconic marine species like a whale or the dugong."

It's a big IF of course, and doesn't tie in with the fact that global temperatures are much the same as they were 30 years ago...

Read it here.

UPDATE: Andrew Bolt skewers the whole thing very nicely here.

Enviro-loons badger Krudd & Co to slash emissions

Just as Rudd and Wong are starting to realise that drastic cuts in emissions might (surprise, surprise) harm an already weakened economy, the greenie hoards write a bleating letter to the Prime Minister urging him to cut emissions by 40% by 2020 "for the planet's sake", reports The Age. As if the planet would even notice a 0.6% reduction in global CO2 emissions ...
"We urge you to stand up to the pressure from the big polluters and adopt a strong emissions reduction target that will keep alive the possibility of a strong international agreement," the letter says.

"A five to 15 per cent target would represent a profound failure."

The letter warned the latest science showed climate change was happening faster than previously thought, and deep emission cuts were needed to ward off a greenhouse catastrophe.

Wrong on all counts (but especially wrong on the last).

Read it here.

Poznan scare-fest ramps up

I think Poznan may well turn into a bit of a competition to see who can come up with the most outrageous scare story. IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri is the reigning champion, and you'll have to be pretty good to oust him from the top spot.
HALF of humanity could face water shortages by 2050 if the world lets the financial crisis distract it from fighting global warming, a key UN climate change summit of more than 185 countries has been told.
...
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chairman Rajendra Pachauri told an opening meeting that many people had still not woken up to the risks of climate change if the world failed to act.

He cited projections that the number of people living in river valleys and facing water stress could quadruple from more than 1.1 billion in 1995 to more than 4.3 billion by 2050, that a third of species could face extinction, that the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets could melt, triggering massive sea-level rises.

It's all so last year. But what's happened to Donald Tusk, Polish Prime Minister? In October, he was standing firm against the EU emissions nonsense (see here), but now appears to be a card-carrying IPCC disciple:
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told summit delegates the economic downturn was no excuse not to tackle climate change.

Is this the same Donald Tusk who said the following, in respect of Poland's dependence on coal?
“We don’t say to the French that they have to close down their nuclear power industry and build windmills, and nobody can tell us the equivalent.”

Who knows. I think they must put something in the water. More of the same tomorrow, no doubt.

Read it here.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Alarmist overdrive from The Age

I don't know if I can face another 12 days of scaremongering from Poznan. The Age lives up to its alarmist reputation with a cool-headed and dispassionate account of the first day's proceedings:
War, hunger, poverty and sickness will stalk humanity if the world fails to tackle climate change, a 12-day UN conference on global warming heard.

A volley of grim warnings sounded out at the start of the marathon talks, a step to a new worldwide treaty to reduce greenhouse gases and help countries exposed to the wrath of an altered climate.
...
"Further expansion in the same style will generate global threats of really great intensity - huge droughts and floods, cyclones with increasingly more destructive power, pandemics of tropical disease, dramatic decline of biodiversity, increasing ocean levels," said [Polish environment minister Maciej] Nowicki.

All of which overblown claims have little basis in reality, but which are good at grabbing headlines in moonbat papers all over the world, like The Age. And then this absolute gem:
Nowicki's warning was underscored by Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which provides neutral scientific opinion on global warming and its impacts.

"Neutral scientific opinion" my foot. Propagating religious dogma with a ferocity approximating the Medieval Catholic Church, perhaps...

Read it here.

Monday, December 1, 2008

More alarmism from James Hansen

The alarmist in chief is back on form in an interview for AFP, reported in the Brisbane Times, which clearly has no idea about Hansen's well-known record for being a global warming fruitcake and massaging the GISS temperature record to fit his own agenda:
A half-dozen climate experts told AFP, ahead of international climate talks starting on Monday, that current rates of greenhouse gas emissions, if unchecked, would unleash devastating droughts, floods and huge increases in human misery by century's end.

But the new studies, they say, indicate that human activity may be triggering powerful natural forces that would be nearly impossible to reverse and that could push temperatures up even further.
...
"The most recent IPCC report was prior to ... the measurements of increasing mass loss from Greenland and Antarctica, which are disintegrating much faster than IPCC estimates," said climatologist James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

Unlike the Arctic ice cap, which floats on water, the world's two major ice sheets - up to 3km thick - sit on land.

Runaway sea level rises, Hansen said, would put huge coastal cities and agricultural deltas in Bangladesh, Egypt and southern China under water, and create hundreds of millions of refugees.

Were Greenland's entire ice block to melt, it would lift the world's sea levels by almost seven metres, while western Antarctica's ice sheet holds enough water to add six metres.

Yawn. Next.

Read it here.

A Tale of Two Headlines

... published within 5 minutes of each other.

From the Melbourne Herald Sun at 5.08 am:
Climate change fight could create jobs

From the Newcastle Herald at 5.13 am:
Emission scheme casts shadow on jobs

It's all so confusing...

Read it here and here.

Global warming is "for ever"

"For ever" is a very long time in geological terms, yet the climate pseudo-scientists bandy it about as if it meant nothing. The moonbattish Canberra Times quotes Professor David Archer of Chicago University, who goes into full scaremonger mode:
''The climatic impacts of releasing fossil-fuel carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will last longer than Stonehenge, longer than time capsules, far longer than the age of human civilisation so far''.
...
In a paper to be published in the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, he says, ''The ocean is getting fed up with absorbing our CO2.'' Surface waters which used to sop up the gas quite fast, are getting saturated with it turning acid in the process and, so, decreasing their uptake. They need to be replaced with fresh water from deep down, but this circulation ''takes centuries or a millennium''.

Global warming is expected to slow this down: the hotter the surface layer becomes, the longer the replenishment takes.

The paper says research shows this renewing process will not be enough to remove the vast amounts of carbon dioxide. Much will have to wait hundreds of thousands of years before being removed by another, much slower, process: the natural weathering of rocks, which incorporates the gas into other substances.

Two points:
  • That would be the global warming that hasn't happened since 2001, right?
  • If the science is so settled, why is this all such a surprise?

Read it here.

Krudd & Co get cold feet on emissions targets

The Government has backed down on setting a target for 2020 emissions reductions prior to the UN climate talks in Poznan.
The Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, yesterday defended the decision not to announce the target before she left for the talks in the Polish city of Poznan. She refused to comment on whether cabinet was divided over the target, which is expected to fall significantly below the level called for by European ministers, climate scientists and environmentalists who will attend the talks.
...
Under intense lobbying from business and on the advice of senior officials, the Government is discussing setting a range of targets to cut greenhouse emissions by 2020. The target is now expected to be cuts between 5 per cent and 15 per cent of emissions, based on 2000 levels. This is significantly below the cuts of 25 to 40 per cent being called for by the European Union and climate scientists.

The reality of the effect of an ETS on the economy appears to be permeating even into the thick skulls of our blinkered government.

Read it here.