Monday, November 30, 2015



A moderate Warmist?

They are rather thin on the ground but Times/Guardian journalist Tom Whipple seems to be one.  The original title of his article below was rather immodestly titled "The fact and fiction of climate change" but he does in fact look at both sides of the question to some extent.  He IS a Warmist, however, so he has to do big stretches to make his points.  

His assertions about the recent Philippines cyclone are a bit amusing for instance. Warmists normally date the start of all the badness to the second half of the 20th century.  Not so, our Tom.  He takes us back to "before the industrial revolution" -- i.e 1750 or thereabouts. That's called "shifting the goalposts" -- and on a  spectacular scale.

He also has a coat-trailing reference to the laws of thermodyamics -- an unexplained reference and a most dubious one

As usual, he explains the "pause" as heat hiding in the oceans.  But how come the heat started hiding there only 18 years ago?  Why was it not hiding in the oceans during the glory-days of global warming in the "80s and '90s?

And he speaks of sea-level rise as if that proved something. Tiny rises in average sea level are however very hard to measure and are very much open to dispute.  And on some accounts sea level rise has slowed down rather than speeded up. And sea level expert Nils-Axel Mörner points out that the raw satellite data shows barely any rise.  So Tom asserts as known that which is in fact contentious.

And he refers to the recent claims that 2015 will show a non-negligible global temperature rise.  Even Warmists at NOAA and such places, however, admit that the higher readings are at least in part el Nino at work, a cyclic influence of ocean currents.

And Tom is quite simply wrong when he said that "human civilisation developed in a period with a temperature range that we have just breached".  The truth is the opposite.  At least two of the great flowerings of ancient civilization took place during periods warmer than ours:  The Minoan warm period and the Roman warm period.  And our own medieval warm period saw great advances too.

And in his final paragraph he gives the goalposts a hell of a kick back in time. He makes comparisons with the geological past.  And the past he talks about was in fact a time of cooling!  He tells us what cooling does, not what warming does. Poor Tom.  He knows that Warmism is all bollocks but cannot allow himself to see it


Last year, amid the ordinarily genteel corridors of the Royal Society, a meeting of ice scientists became unexpectedly heated. At issue was a talk by a respected professor who expected the summer collapse of Arctic ice before 2020. The problem, for those listening, was that this same professor had previously given different dates — 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2016.

Like a millenarian expecting the apocalypse he kept shifting the criteria and, they argued, made them all look stupid in the process. The arctic is warming fast, and sea ice is declining fast, but the September minimum still covers an area bigger than India. This does not mean we should not worry. The people predicting its eventual disappearance are not just left wing environmentalists, they are oil companies and shipping companies, looking to exploit an ice-free arctic. The best-accepted models predict that time will come at some point before 2050.

Extreme weather is going to get worse

In one sense, the science could not be simpler. Really big storms are caused by hot seas, so if you make the sea hotter you will get more big storms. Even so, climate scientists are wary of making bold predictions about something as uncertain as weather systems.

The problem is the complexities of atmospheric science. Tropical storms may be caused by warmer seas, but they are also disrupted by windier conditions higher in the atmosphere, caused by climate change. Equally, heavier bursts of rain due to hotter air holding more moisture may cause some flooding in some places, but less snow on mountains may also make flooding less likely in spring in others. Some risk factors are undeniable though: among these, sea level rise.

In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan devastated the Philippines — less because of the strength of its winds, than its storm surge. Before the industrial revolution a storm of precisely the same scale as Haiyan would have hit with the same speed, but that surge would have been 20cm lower.

There is a “pause” in climate change

The masthead on the web page of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the climate sceptic think tank, shows one simple graphic: a graph of the global surface temperature since 2000.

Their point is that it appears to have slowed dramatically. For those who argue that climate change is not happening, or is not worth worrying about, the apparent slowdown in temperature rises this century — as the actual data has slowly crept off the bottom of the computer models’ predictions — has become an increasingly powerful weapon. Among climate scientists — who point out that if temperature rises had actually stopped there might well be problems with the laws of thermodynamics — it has been puzzling.

One possible explanation is that reliable temperature records only exist for the planet’s surface, which compared with the sea stores a tiny proportion of the sun’s energy. And there has indeed been some evidence of the oceans warming, not least their continual rise. In any case though, it may well be moot: 2015 is set, by some distance, to be the hottest year on record. More than one environmentalist is waiting to see what the Global Warming Policy Foundation will do with its masthead.

Climate change will be good for us

CO2, so the argument (or, at least, the more extreme end of it) goes, has been unfairly demonised as a pollutant. So much so that we have forgotten the essential truth about it: it is plant food. With climate change will come better growing conditions, useful land opened up in the Arctic, and — at least at moderate levels — a more productive world.

On the one hand, there are plenty of arguments against this, such as, to give just one example, those who point to the possible effects of extreme weather. On the other hand it is hard to argue against, precisely because of all the uncertainties that remain. What we do know, is that human civilisation developed in a period with a temperature range that we have just breached. What we also know is that ostensibly small changes, of just a few degrees, can have huge long-term effects.

The difference between us today and a Britain that in the geological past had London underwater is a rise of less than two degrees. The difference between Britain today and a Britain beneath a kilometre of ice, meanwhile, is a fall of four degrees. In that context, betting on a positive outcome is quite a high-stakes gamble.

SOURCE






Good riddance to bad rubbish

International communist, Canadian Liberal, resident of China for decades. Rest in the ground Maurice Strong, in whose name the "world community" is trying to drive us into the ditch this week in Paris

Maurice Strong, whose work helped lead to the landmark climate summit that begins in Paris on Monday, has died at 86, the head of the UN's environmental agency said Saturday.

"Strong will forever be remembered for placing the environment on the international agenda and at the heart of development," Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Program, said in a statement Saturday.

The statement did not provide details of Strong's death.

Manitoba-born Strong, the first UNEP chief, organized the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, which led to the launch of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Christiana Figueres, the current head of the UN climate agency, tweeted Saturday that "we thank Maurice Strong for his visionary impetus to our understanding of sustainability. We will miss you."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is in Paris for the climate talks, said Strong will be remembered as a pioneer of sustainable development.

"Mr. Strong was an internationally recognized environmentalist and philanthropist who used his remarkable business acumen, organizational skills and humanity to make the world a better place," said Trudeau in a statement.

In 1976 Mr. Trudeau's father, then prime minister Pierre Trudeau, made Strong the first head of the national oil company Petro-Canada.

Steiner said Strong's work helped usher in a new era of international environmental diplomacy at the 1972 Stockholm Conference, which saw the birth of UNEP, the first UN agency to be headquartered in a developing country.

SOURCE





Turkeys we’re not thankful for

The tasty birds are affordable. Government turkeys enrich crony corporatists, but cost us dearly

Paul Driessen

To commemorate Thanksgiving – and garner First Family photo ops – presidents often host Rose Garden ceremonies, where they “pardon” a turkey, before sitting down to dine on one of its cousins. In fact, Americans ate close to 50 million of these tasty birds this year. We roasted our family bird in a Big Green Egg, with bourbon and barbecue sauce on and under the skin. Lip-smacking!

Unlike their wild cousins, today’s domesticated turkeys are bred for hefty portions of white and dark meat, atop legs that barely support their bodyweight. You might say they are big, bloated and unsustainable – like too many government programs that should have gotten the axe long ago.

Washington turkeys are fed by crony capitalism, far-left economic and social engineering, smarter-than-thou top-down initiatives, and a belief that Washington should determine winners and losers. They attack unsuspecting taxpayers, consumers and businesses, pilfering billions of dollars that could be spent on things that really matter – including job creation and preservation, terrorism and national security. Only the few are thankful for them.

The Obama Administration has unleashed some hugely destructive turkeys. Some, like ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank, required mostly Democrat congressional connivance. But one of the most foul of fowls, the Clean Power Plan, was devised by the White House and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in league with radical environmental groups, to eradicate coal mining and burning, and ensure that electricity rates would “necessarily skyrocket,” just as President Obama promised in 2009.

The CPP is justified by the absurd claim that eliminating U.S. coal will save the Earth from “runaway” global warming and climate change. But there has been no measurable warming for 19 years – the opposite of what computer models and White House press releases have claimed – and NOAA appears to have been cooking the books on its temperature data, to find manmade warming where there isn’t any.

Moreover, far from being a “pollutant,” carbon dioxide is vital plant food – essential for all life on Earth – and developing countries continue to increase coal-burning to power their growing economies, bring electricity to 1.3 billion people who still don’t have it, and lift billions out of abject poverty. In fact, China alone has been burning 17% more coal per year than previously reported; just that unreported wedge is 70% of what the United States uses in a year, and more than Germany’s annual coal consumption!

Add what India, Africa, Poland, Southeast Asia, Indonesia and other countries plan to use in the next 30 years, and U.S. coal consumption and CO2 emissions are almost undetectable globally. In Asia alone this year, power companies are building more than 500 coal-fired plants, with 1,000 more on planning boards.

Of course, none of that is relevant to climate ideologues in and out of the Obama Administration. Nor are the CPP’s adverse impacts on jobs, families, businesses, communities, or people’s health and welfare.

But when the states drag the CPP turkey into court, the EPA might stop its strutting. Obama mentor and legal scholar Lawrence Tribe says the CPP likely violates the Constitution, by illegally commandeering state government functions and “treating states more like marionettes, dancing to the tune of the federal puppeteer,” in violation of the Tenth Amendment, which reserves important powers to the states.

Thus far, the rule of law has been merely a minor burr under the Administration’s saddle, as it rides roughshod over Congress, the will of the people, and the overall public interest. Executive orders, influence-peddling, and campaign contributions for subsidies and preferential treatment are standard operating procedure for a president determined to build a legacy – not on Benghazi, ObamaCare and terrorism failures, but on climate change, which he insists is the “greatest threat to future generations.”

Many world leaders have embraced Obama’s vision of looming climatic cataclysms, but are fast regretting their decisions. European Union air quality measures are forcing the closure of numerous older coal-fired power plants. But the supposed replacements, mostly wind and solar, are heavily subsidized, intermittent producers of electricity that is so unreliable and expensive that it kills industries, jobs and people. They are already hastening the demise of Britain’s entire steel industry and 6,000 more UK jobs.

Early this November, well before winter cold set in, the United Kingdom’s National Grid already had to use an emergency order to prevent widespread blackouts. Unexpected power plant shutdowns and a near absence of bird-butchering wind power forced the government to offer up to 40 times normal electricity rates (up to $3765 per kilowatt-hour!) to get factories and other major power consumers to switch off their electricity. The UK is now rolling back many of its “green” energy programs.

In Germany, power companies have been ordered to buy wind, solar and other “green” energy, regardless of the price. Its biggest electric power provider lost €7.8 billion ($8.3 billion) just in the third quarter of 2015. Even worse, Ms. Merkel’s market meddling has created an oversupply of expensive green electricity, when it’s least needed, and German electricity rates are expected to hit record highs next year. By the end of 2016, average European households will have to pay some €540 ($575) more per year for electricity.

By forcing power companies to buy green energy, EU countries also encourage fraud. Companies actually made money by connecting diesel-powered generators to their solar arrays or shining coal- or nuclear-powered arc lights on their solar panels, to generate electricity on cloudy days or in the dead of night.

All this is where the U.S. is heading under Obama dictates, which distort the marketplace to benefit favored industries or groups. The Renewable Fuel Standard requires blending ethanol into motor fuels, which among many other failings creates an ethanol credit trading system that crooks use to steal millions of dollars. No wonder even ultra-green California voters increasingly oppose costly ethanol mandates.

Unfortunately, the RFS, CPP and other Washington turkeys are as hard to kill as Freddy Krueger. Congress lacks the will to chase them down with a hatchet, and the administration feeds them for its own political reasons. Having corn farmer and ethanol producer support during the Iowa caucuses is also a winning political strategy – unprincipled but effective, costly to the majority but beneficial to the few.

Indeed, every taxpayer and consumer pays for these turkeys, not just those in Iowa or California. A new study shows that the RFS will cost the New England economy some $20 billion between 2005 and 2024, reduce labor income by $7.3 billion, and destroy 7,050 jobs per year.

The CPP and broader War on Coal are hammering Midwest red states far harder than New England and West Coast blue states. By the end of 2023, 600,000 jobs will be lost and average American households will lose $1,200 in income per year, as electricity rates and the cost of goods and services continue to rise.

Obama’s War on Coal is most devastating to families in coal-producing states, where nearly 50,000 coal miners have lost their jobs and incomes – as have tens of thousands in power plants, restaurants, shops and other businesses. Hillary Clinton’s “solution” (and strategy to increase her odds of winning the Democrat presidential nomination) is spending $30 billion in OPM (other people’s money) to “retrain” coal miners and other workers for life in her new utopian-energy economy. Now President Obama is leading an ideological entourage to Paris, to rope the United States into a draconian climate treaty.

Once again, government will get to decide which industries, companies, workers and families win – and which one lose. We just get to pay. Wasting good money on bad projects – and on unaccountable, unelected, overpaid ruling elite bureaucrats – is enough to ruin a Thanksgiving tryptophan-induced nap.

Benjamin Franklin may have preferred the turkey over the eagle as America’s national symbol, because it is “more respectable.” Brave and wily wild turkeys truly are a challenge for experienced hunters.

But wily government turkeys, which preen in public and exist only to feather the nests of bureaucrats and campaign donors, have no redeeming qualities. It’s time to put them on the chopping block.

Via email





Why Scientists Disagree about Global Warming

The most important fact about climate science, often overlooked, is that scientists disagree about the environmental impacts of the combustion of fossil fuels on the global climate. There is no survey or study showing “consensus” on the most important scientific issues, despite frequent claims by advocates to the contrary.

Scientists disagree about the causes and consequences of climate for several reasons. Climate is an interdisciplinary subject requiring insights from many fields. Very few scholars have mastery of more than one or two of these disciplines. Fundamental uncertainties arise from insufficient observational evidence, disagreements over how to interpret data, and how to set the parameters of models. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), created to find and disseminate research finding a human impact on global climate, is not a credible source. It is agenda-driven, a political rather than scientific body, and some allege it is corrupt. Finally, climate scientists, like all humans, can be biased. Origins of bias include careerism, grant-seeking, political views, and confirmation bias.

Probably the only “consensus” among climate scientists is that human activities can have an effect on local climate and that the sum of such local effects could hypothetically rise to the level of an observable global signal. The key questions to be answered, however, are whether the human global signal is large enough to be measured and if it is, does it represent, or is it likely to become, a dangerous change outside the range of natural variability? On these questions, an energetic scientific debate is taking place on the pages of peer-reviewed science journals.

In contradiction of the scientific method, IPCC assumes its implicit hypothesis – that dangerous global warming is resulting, or will result, from human-related greenhouse gas emissions -- is correct and that its only duty is to collect evidence and make plausible arguments in the hypothesis’s favor. It simply ignores the alternative and null hypothesis, amply supported by empirical research, that currently observed changes in global climate indices and the physical environment are the result of natural variability.

The results of the global climate models (GCMs) relied on by IPCC are only as reliable as the data and theories “fed” into them. Most climate scientists agree those data are seriously deficient and IPCC’s estimate for climate sensitivity to CO2 is too high. We estimate a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels (from 280 to 560 ppm) would likely produce a temperature forcing of 3.7 Wm-2 in the lower atmosphere, for about ~1°C of prima facie warming. The recently quiet Sun and extrapolation of solar cycle patterns into the future suggest a planetary cooling may occur over the next few decades.

In a similar fashion, all five of IPCC’s postulates, or assumptions, are readily refuted by real-world observations, and all five of IPCC’s claims relying on circumstantial evidence are refutable. For example, in contrast to IPCC’s alarmism, we find neither the rate nor the magnitude of the reported late twentieth century surface warming (1979–2000) lay outside normal natural variability, nor was it in any way unusual compared to earlier episodes in Earth’s climatic history. In any case, such evidence cannot be invoked to “prove” a hypothesis, but only to disprove one. IPCC has failed to refute the null hypothesis that currently observed changes in global climate indices and the physical environment are the result of natural variability.

Rather than rely exclusively on IPCC for scientific advice, policymakers should seek out advice from independent, nongovernment organizations and scientists who are free of financial and political conflicts of interest. NIPCC’s conclusion, drawn from its extensive review of the scientific evidence, is that any human global climate impact is within the background variability of the natural climate system and is not dangerous.

In the face of such facts, the most prudent climate policy is to prepare for and adapt to extreme climate events and changes regardless of their origin. Adaptive planning for future hazardous climate events and change should be tailored to provide responses to the known rates, magnitudes, and risks of natural change. Once in place, these same plans will provide an adequate response to any human-caused change that may or may not emerge.

Policymakers should resist pressure from lobby groups to silence scientists who question the authority of IPCC to claim to speak for “climate science.” The distinguished British biologist Conrad Waddington wrote in 1941 (Waddington, C.H. 1941. The Scientific Attitude. London, UK: Penguin Books),

It is … important that scientists must be ready for their pet theories to turn out to be wrong. Science as a whole certainly cannot allow its judgment about facts to be distorted by ideas of what ought to be true, or what one may hope to be true (Waddington, 1941).

This prescient statement merits careful examination by those who continue to assert the fashionable belief, in the face of strong empirical evidence to the contrary, that human CO2 emissions are going to cause dangerous global warming.

SOURCE





So much for global warming! As winter weather sweeps in, 'snow lover' reveals there's MORE of the white stuff left on Scottish mountains than there has been in 21 years

There were bumper levels of snow on Scottish mountains over the last 12 months, according to one enthusiast.

Amateur snow researcher Iain Cameron, 42, uses his free time to count the number of snow patches left on mountaintops from the previous winter.

His data is compiled and published in the prestigious Royal Meteorological Journal.

Mr Cameron, an environmental manager for an aerospace company, said he has recorded an average of between six to 12 patches of snow since his records started in 1994.

But this year Mr Cameron, who works with a team of volunteers, noted 73 spots had survived from winter 2014.

The team tallied 33 individual patches across the Ben Nevis range, 17 across the Cairngorms, 12 in the north-west Highlands, three on Ben Alder, and eight near Loch Laggan.

And in the Grey Corries range in the far north, a sole surviving patch was recorded on Stob Coire an Laoigh.

Mr Cameron said: 'This year we counted 73 remaining patches across the whole of Scotland. It's the most we've seen since 1994, 21 years ago, which was quite an exceptional year.

'The only year which came near this year's figure was in 2000 where we totalled 41 surviving patches, but that's still far, far fewer than we recorded this year.

'Normally we're looking at between six to 12 patches - last year was a good year with 21, but this has exceeded that.

'There was also a good covering of snow last year, but the average temperature in May was two degrees lower than we would normally expect and the summer was cool, which is why there are so many left.'

Mr Cameron, a self-proclaimed 'chinophile' - the Greek term for 'snow lover' - said he believed an overcast spring and cool summer combined with heavy snowfall has led to the above-average findings.

SOURCE




Italian restaurant falls foul of global warming

Even in far Shetland, which could do with a bit more warmth

Plans for an Italian restaurant between Voe and Brae have failed to impress the council’s planners, but local businessman Henry MacColl is still hoping his dream venture will come off.

Mr MacColl, whose mother is Italian, wanted to build a 24-seat restaurant opposite his home at Parkgate, overlooking Olnafirth.

The restaurant was to be called Enrico’s Cucina di Napoli, after his mother’s hometown, and he planned to have a special clay pizza oven installed and import ingredients direct from Italy. His plan also included ancillary buildings and a car park.

But planning officials were not in favour, saying the location, midway between Brae and Voe, was not part of an existing settlement. In addition, it was not accessible except by car and would therefore contribute to climate change.

Planners said these factors made it contrary to the local development plan for the area, which became council policy after public consultation.

According to local policies, any new development should be “sustainable and accessible” and encouraged “within existing settlements” that have “basic services and infrastructure”. This would “maintain the vitality and vibrancy of that settlement… and the development [would be] more sustainably located to existing services, bus routes, etc.”

As the location is one and a half miles from Voe, and access would be by vehicle, planners said the proposal was “not sustainably located”, and against council policy of “sustainable development”.

Eateries should ideally be accessible by walking or cycling, as well as by car, making for “good placemaking”.

Additionally, planners said the development would not maintain or enhance the character of the area.

However, Mr MacColl, who runs Isometric Engineering at Sella Ness, refuted all these points. He said that many other eateries, including the Braewick Cafe in Eshaness, Busta House and the burger van by the Voe toilets, were also only accessible by car and were not part of existing settlements.

He said: “This policy is contrary to many restaurants. Who walks to any restaurant, or gets dressed up and goes on a bike?”

He also objected to the planners’ statement that the development would “neither maintain nor respect the existing character of the area”. The local plan states that “any new development should make a positive contribution to maintaining the identity and character of an area and ensure ease of movement and access for all.”

Mr MacColl said: “There is plenty of access and parking and excellent views.” His plan would incorporate parking for the proposed eatery, situated on a loop road, formerly the main road, in a raised hillside location commanding wide views.

Planning official John Holden said the application was still in the process of consideration. He said: “The applicant has been made aware of the concerns and we are in the process of receiving comments.

“It is against the local development plan which is council policy, and we have to act in accordance with the plan. It’s now open to the applicant to say why the policy should be departed from.”

Mr MacColl, whose middle name is Francesco, loves cooking and the idea of catering for the public came from his twin daughters, Francesca and Chiara. He said: “I’ve been making pizza for years and the restaurant would be all-Italian, we would make our own pasta and my daughters would cook pastries, it would all be handmade.

“It would be romantic dining, something we don’t have here.”

His plan would incorporate a specialist igloo-shaped pizza oven to cook 12 pizzas in a minute and a half at high temperatures, the heat coming from above and below to ensure a crispy base. Certain ingredients such as cheese, prosciutto and spiced sausage would be imported, but other food would be local.

If his vision of a terracotta-tiled restaurant took off, he said, he would start a delivery service in the local area, and eventually employ six or more people.

He added: “Why is everything in Lerwick, why shouldn’t there be something in the country?”

The restaurant venture has had 660 likes on Facebook in three days, and Mr MacColl is going to press on with his application, hoping for a much support as possible. He has spoken to MSP Tavish Scott and local councillor Alastair Cooper, who he said were in “full support”, and has a lot of local backing.

Brae resident Aimee Manson said: “I think it’s a wonderful idea. It’s just amazing and morale-boosting for the community. It’s encouraging that we wouldn’t have to go to Lerwick. We don’t live in an inner city and we have to rely on our own transport, like we do when Chinese nights are held at local halls.

“It [the proposed restaurant] would be different and authentic, not the British version of what Italian food should be like, and it wouldn’t be encroaching on any other business.”

Voe resident John Taylor said: “I’m all for it. It’s a good idea and another variety of food, and if it’s authentic, brilliant. If I want to go for a meal anywhere I have to go by car.”

Council officials expect to make a decision on the planning application after Friday 4th December

SOURCE

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

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Sunday, November 29, 2015



Yet another claim that somebody is "behind" climate skeptics or has "bought" them

Like all the skeptics I know, I am still waiting for my cheque!

Warmists very commonly ascribe disagreement with their ideas to their opponent being "in the pay" of someone else, usually "Big Oil", without troubling themselves to provide any proof of that assertion. They are so certain that they are right that that seems to be the only reasonable explanation for opposition to them. They thus reveal themselves as classic bigots -- people with fixed and rigid ideas.

The guy below however was apparently aware of how unsubstantiated are the usual assertions about skeptics being "bought" so has tried to provide evidence of it.  He claims to have data on ALL the skeptics in the USA.  But he says that only some of them have corporate funding.  But those who DO have corportate funding are more likely to have issued anti-warming statements. And he has done no similar study of climate alarmists.

One wonders where he got his information about funding.  It would be pretty normal for ANY organization to be cagey about that.  Let me assume that his data on that are right, however.  So what do we have from his study:

1).  Some skeptics and skeptical organizations receive NO corporate funding.  That is a rather damaging admission.  Warmists normally talk as if ALL skepticism was "paid for".

2).  The skeptics who received funding write more.

Such trivial findings!  OF COURSE people who received funding wrote more.  Time is money and money is time.  If you are funded to write on some topic you will be able to divert some of your  time onto writing about that topic.  And you will write more on that topic if you have more time.  Money can buy time.  That money can buy time is in fact the only real conclusion of the study.  But who did not know that already?

A very uninformative study

What Warmists MUST close their eyes to is that any intelligent person can see huge holes in the Warmist story if he cares to  think about it.  You don't need funding to be skeptical.  You just need to know some very basic stuff.

For instance, the scare started with Al Gore and others warning us of a huge rise in the oceans as the polar ice melted. And if all the polar ice melted, that would indeed cause a large sea-level rise.  But will it?  91% of the earth's glacial ice is in Antarctica so Antarctica is where the game will play out.

Temperatures of the Antarctic vary with time and place but they are all WAY below zero -- averaging around -49 degrees at the pole in winter -- so you would have to bring those temperatures up by a LOT to melt any ice.  You would have to bring them up to above zero. Yet even in their wildest dreams, Warmists predict a temperature rise of only 6 degrees.  And what would that do?  Nothing.  It might change the temperature of some Antarctic ice from -30 degrees to -24 degrees but -24 degrees is still way too cold for anything to melt.  The surrounding sea ice (floating ice) might melt a bit but, as Archimedes discovered about 3,000 years ago, that doesn't raise the water level anyhow.

I have of course not gone into detail but that is the ballpark story.

So Warmism is patent nonsense and nobody needs to pay you to see that.  You do however have to have a vested interest to believe in it -- and the scientists who promote it do.  The scare gets them a golden shower of research grant money.  They live high on the hog as long as the scare lasts


Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate change

Justin Farrell

Abstract

Drawing on large-scale computational data and methods, this research demonstrates how polarization efforts are influenced by a patterned network of political and financial actors. These dynamics, which have been notoriously difficult to quantify, are illustrated here with a computational analysis of climate change politics in the United States. The comprehensive data include all individual and organizational actors in the climate change countermovement (164 organizations), as well as all written and verbal texts produced by this network between 1993–2013 (40,785 texts, more than 39 million words).

Two main findings emerge. First, that organizations with corporate funding were more likely to have written and disseminated texts meant to polarize the climate change issue. Second, and more importantly, that corporate funding influences the actual thematic content of these polarization efforts, and the discursive prevalence of that thematic content over time.

These findings provide new, and comprehensive, confirmation of dynamics long thought to be at the root of climate change politics and discourse. Beyond the specifics of climate change, this paper has important implications for understanding ideological polarization more generally, and the increasing role of private funding in determining why certain polarizing themes are created and amplified. Lastly, the paper suggests that future studies build on the novel approach taken here that integrates large-scale textual analysis with social networks.

PNAS November 23, 2015, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1509433112

A popularized version of the paper here.

Friday, November 27, 2015




No more fish dinners for YOU!

This is all theory, not new research and I think we need only one sentence from the academic journal article to sum it all up:  "Yet the influence of predators on carbon accumulation and preservation in vegetated coastal habitats (that is, salt marshes, seagrass meadows and mangroves) is poorly understood".  We would be unwise to base any action on something that is poorly understood

The oceans cover 71 per cent of our planet’s surface. They are home to complex ecosystems that are being disturbed by industrial and recreational fishing, and other human activities, in ways that may profoundly affect our climate system.

A recent paper in Nature Climate Change has helped highlight some of the impact. The problem arises largely from the fact fishing disturbs food webs, changing the way ecosystems function and altering the ecological balance of the oceans in dangerous ways. The paper focused on the phenomenon of “trophic downgrading”, the disproportionate loss of species high in the food web.

It reported on the loss of ocean predators such as large carnivorous fish, sharks, crabs, lobsters, seals, and sea lions, and the resultant impact on carbon rich vegetation and sediment on the ocean floor. It cited earlier research indicating the overall predator population had reduced by up to 90 per cent from natural levels.

Based on the research findings, that reduction is likely to have adversely affected the ability of vegetated coastal habitats (consisting of seagrass meadows, mangroves and salt marshes) to absorb or sequester atmospheric carbon. It would also have released massive amounts of carbon (unaccounted for in any official emissions figures) in the form of CO2 remineralised from carbon that had been stored in the vegetation and underlying sediment.

The problem arises when the loss of high-level predators causes an unnatural increase in the population levels of their prey, who may be herbivores (such as dugongs and sea turtles) or bioturbators (creatures who disturb ocean sediment including certain crabs). With reduced predator numbers, the former prey has a far greater impact than previously on their own food sources in vegetated coastal habitats.

Those habitats are the most carbon-rich ecosystems in the world, capturing carbon forty times faster than tropical rainforests. Most of the carbon  stored in them is in the form of organic matter trapped in the underlying sediment. The sediment contains little or no oxygen, allowing the organic material to last for millennia.

Despite their relatively small overall area they represent fifty per cent of the carbon buried in ocean sediments.

Release Of Carbon Stores

Vegetated coastal habitats are estimated to store up to 25 billion tonnes of carbon. If it was released in the form of CO2, it would equate to more than twice the emissions from fossil fuels globally in 2013 (92 vs 40 billion tonnes).

Estimates of the areas affected are unavailable, but if only 1 per cent of vegetated coastal habitats were affected to a depth of 1 metre in a year, around 460 million tonnes of CO2 could be released. That is around the same level of emissions from all motor vehicles in Britain, France, and Spain combined in 2010, and not far below Australia’s most recently reported annual emissions of around 540 million tonnes.

We can extend the comparison by saying that if 10 per cent of such habitats were affected to the same depth, it would be equivalent to emissions from all motor vehicles in the top nine vehicle-owning nations (USA, China, India, Japan, Indonesia, Brazil, Italy, Germany, and Russia), whose share of global vehicle numbers is 61 per cent. It would also equate to around eight times Australia’s emissions.

Loss of Ongoing Carbon Sequestration

The other key problem is a reduction in the ocean’s ability to sequester (or absorb) carbon from the atmosphere.

If sequestration capability was reduced by 20 per cent in only 10 per cent of vegetated coastal habitats, it would equate to a loss of forested area the size of Belgium.

SOURCE





Evidence that CO2 has a negligible effect on climate

1. Lindzen & Choi papers based on ERBE satellite observations showed sensitivity (to doubled CO2 levels) of only ~0.18C

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/01/new-paper-confirms-findings-of-lindzen.html

2. Dr. David Evans has shown, using the same flawed radiative model of the IPCC as the basis, that  "The ECS might be almost zero, is likely less than 0.25 °C"

http://joannenova.com.au/2015/11/new-science-18-finally-climate-sensitivity-calculated-at-just-one-tenth-of-official-estimates/

3. Kimoto has shown climate sensitivity is ~.15-.2C due to the IPCC false assumptions of a fixed lapse rate and a mathematical error in calculating the Planck feedback parameter:

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/search?q=kimoto

4 Volokin et al have shown that planetary surface temperatures are a function of solar insolation and surface pressure only, not greenhouse gas concentrations, on all 8 planets for which we have adequate data, including Earth & Venus.

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/search?q=volokin

5. The surface temperature and tropospheric temperature profile can easily be derived from physical first principles including the 1st LoT, Ideal Gas Law, Poisson Equation, Newton's 2nd Law, and Stefan-Boltzmann Law for solar forcing only, and without greenhouse gas "radiative forcing," and perfectly replicates the verified 1976 US Standard Atmosphere. Thus, once again, sensitivity to CO2 is mathematically proven to be essentially zero.

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/search?q=greenhouse+equation

6. Convection dominates radiative-convective equilibrium in the troposphere by a factor of ~8X, and increased greenhouse gases accelerate convection, thereby erasing any alleged cold-heats-hot greenhouse gas radiative effects on the surface.

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2015/08/why-greenhouse-gases-accelerate.html

7. Many other climate sensitivity estimates have concluded climate sensitivity is effectively zero, or so close to zero as to be unmeasurable and negligible.

http://www.principia-scientific.org/even-lukewarmer-position-on-global-warming-has-become-untenable.html

SOURCE





The world needs more energy, not green BS

Western governments and agencies are now standing in the way of development

Ben Pile piles it on

Earlier this month, a report from the United Nations University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health announced that ‘fecal sludge’ might be one answer to several of the world’s problems. According to the authors of Valuing Human Waste as an Energy Resource, if the excrement produced by those who lack access to sanitation – a billion people – was collected and processed, 10million homes could be provided with electricity. And this would amount to $200million-a-year worth of biogas. After all, where there’s muck there’s brass. For that reason, the report might be interesting to planners and civil engineers, but it was still given far more importance than it deserved. As the Daily Mail excitedly put it: ‘Human excrement can fuel developing world.’

The message from global institutions to the world’s poor is: ‘you may have your own shit, but you may not have coal’. In 2013, the World Bank, despite acknowledging many people’s lack of access to electricity, said that, because of climate change, it would no longer be supporting the development of coal-fired power stations. The announcement was made in accordance with the principles of the Sustainable Energy for All initiative, an alliance of global institutions, civil society and businesses that wants to ‘achieve a broad-based transformation of the world’s energy systems’. But note the caveat: ‘sustainable energy for all’ is not a commitment to ‘energy for all’.

Coal is the cheapest source of energy, but it is denied to all those who can least afford the alternatives. According to data compiled by the Sierra Club, a green, anti-coal NGO, there are 51 coal-fired power plants scheduled for construction in Europe, with a total capacity of 36 gigawatts (GW). Yet in Africa and the Middle East – where there are far fewer champions of climate change – there are just 29 coal-fired power-plant projects in the pipeline, with a total capacity of 20 GW. Meanwhile, a whopping 219 GW of capacity has been announced in China, and India has plans to increase its capacity by 75 GW. The toxic excreta of UN bodies and green NGOs can be seen in these massively uneven patterns of development.

A 2008 paper from Oxfam revealed much about what underpins such backward thinking. Rather than emphasising development as the way forward at all, Oxfam argued, in Survival of the fittest Pastoralism and climate change in East Africa, that ‘pastoralist communities’ (that is, communities primarily based around the raising of livestock) are the best way to tackle climate change. Therefore, Oxfam claimed, pastoralist forms of social organisation should be promoted and protected. In this highly deterministic and patronising tome, Oxfam claimed that pastoralist communities were perfectly adapted to the geography of East Africa, and that the Western model of development and governance is inappropriate. Oxfam’s anti coal campaign, Let them Eat Coal, even claims that not burning coal would ‘fight hunger’.

No less absurd or patronising, but more cautious about revealing its hostility to development, is the New Climate Economy, aka The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate – yet another attempt, or ‘initiative’, from unaccountable, undemocratic global bodies, including the World Bank, to foist ‘sustainable development’ on the world. A working paper, jointly published by the Global Commission and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) last month was superficially concerned with ‘building electricity supplies in Africa for growth and universal access’. But ‘universal access’ only meant connection to an electricity grid for 40 per cent of Africans. ‘For about 60 per cent of the population, mini-grids and stand-alone systems would be the best means to provide access’, said the paper. Reiterating the point, the ODI’s director of strategic development, Dinah McLeod tweeted, ‘Yes: more to the Africa energy puzzle than off-grid, but grid won’t ever come for many. Let’s be optimistic realists.’

Low aspirations for African countries are not set by Africans. They are set by the likes of the UK Department for International Development (DfID), which recently set out its Energy Africa campaign – a manifesto for off-grid solar power. ‘Why is [the Department for International Development] pushing solar-only when Africans say they want on-grid electricity?’, asked Benjamin Leo of the US-based Centre for Global Development (CGD). The CGD conducted a survey of Tanzanians who already had connection to off-grid electricity. Ninety per cent of respondents still wanted a grid connection.

One reason for the UK’s loss of faith in grid electricity, of course, might be the looming failure of the past three governments’ domestic energy policies. The most recent Labour government promised a ‘green industrial revolution’. But all that happened during this ‘revolution’ was a doubling of electricity prices, followed by widespread closures of coal-fired plants, which now threaten the stability of the grid. In Germany, the indubitable pioneers of green energy, domestic energy prices are even higher and yet, in the past four years alone, 10 GW of coal-fired generating capacity has been added – more than half the amount planned across all of Africa.

In the past, organisations and individuals concerned with development believed that industrialisation was a good thing – a necessary condition for raising living standards, realising wider social change and expanding the possibilities of human life. Hubris, and naïve optimism, perhaps, allowed people to imagine that development was a simple, technological process. But the predominant ideas today are far more dangerous. Many in the so-called ‘development community’ have sacrificed any sensible notion of development to ‘sustainability’. They are not only free to influence, perhaps even dominate, the so-called ‘development agenda’; they also decide the terms of progress on behalf of people in developing nations, to whom they remain unaccountable. At talks leading up to the United Nations Framework – Convention on Climate Change‎ (UNFCCC) meeting in Paris later this month, countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have agreed to limit further any assistance to developing economies with ambitions to exploit coal resources.

But there is plenty to be cheerful about. Within the past 20 years, extreme poverty has halved, and almost every indicator of human welfare shows unprecedented progress. Perhaps that is what most terrifies an engorged, top-heavy class of environmental and ‘development’ technocrats: the possibility that the World’s problems are being solved not just without them, but in spite of them. It is worth considering the possibility that their plans may soon make ‘development agencies’ the main obstacle to development.

SOURCE





Warmists notice the poor at last

See below

Congressional Republicans make an easy target for their denial of climate change: “I’m not a scientist” is the new “Drill, baby, drill.” But denial also infects large swaths of the environmental movement. Environmentalists deserve enormous credit for calling the world’s attention to the threat to humanity posed by climate change. But precisely because this challenge is so stupendous, we need an uncompromisingly focused plan to solve it. Instead of offering such a solution, traditional greens have been distracted by their signature causes, and in doing so have themselves denied some inconvenient truths.

The first is that, until now, fossil fuels have been good for humanity. The industrial revolution doubled life expectancy in developed countries while multiplying prosperity twentyfold. As industrialization spreads to the developing world, billions of people are rising out of poverty in their turn — affording more food, living longer and healthier lives, becoming better educated, and having fewer babies — thanks to cheap fossil fuels. In poor countries like India, citizens want reliable electricity to power these improvements, and stand ready to vote out any government that fails to deliver it. When American environmentalists tell the world to stop burning fossil fuels, they need to give Indians an alternative that delivers the prosperity they demand and deserve.

That brings us to the second inconvenient truth: Nuclear power is the world’s most abundant and scalable carbon-free energy source. In today’s world, every nuclear plant that is not built is a fossil-fuel plant that does get built, which in most of the world means coal. Yet the use of nuclear power has been stagnant or even contracting.

Nuclear power presses a number of psychological buttons — fear of poisoning, ease of imagining catastrophes, distrust of the unfamiliar and the man-made — and so is held to an irrationally higher standard than fossils. When a coal mine disaster kills dozens, or a deep-water oil leak despoils vast seas, nobody shuts down the coal or oil industries. Yet the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant accident in Japan, which killed nobody, led Germany to shut down its nuclear plants and quietly replace them with dirty coal. Even France — which gets three quarters of its electricity from nuclear power and has never had an accident — now plans to shut down many plants under pressure from environmentalists.

Nuclear today is relatively expensive, but that is largely because it must clear massive regulatory hurdles while its fossil competitors have been given relatively easy passage. New fourth-generation nuclear designs, a decade away from deployment, will burn waste from today’s plants and run more cheaply and safely.

We need to stop subsidizing inefficient technologies and trying to make fossil fuels too expensive to use.

Without nuclear power, the numbers needed to solve the climate crisis simply do not add up. Solar and wind are growing quickly, but still provide about 1 percent of electricity production, and cannot scale up fast enough to supply what the world needs. Moreover, these intermittent energy sources could power the grid only with big advances in battery technology that are still in the basic-science stage. Even with them, we must not triple-count the energy promised by renewables: they cannot supplant existing fossil fuel use and replace decommissioned nuclear plants and meet the skyrocketing needs of the developing world.

These arguments have been forcefully made by pragmatic environmentalists such as James Hansen and Stewart Brand. But the largest groups with the loudest voices, such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, remain implacably antinuclear.

A third truth is that climate change must transcend ideology. A particularly pernicious form of denialism is the conceit within the political left that we must cure longstanding social ills such as inequality, corporate greed, racism, and political corruption along the way to dealing with climate change. Naomi Klein’s campaign to “change everything” casts global warming as an opportunity for the left to step up its various crusades. Whatever you think of such goals, and we agree with many of them, they must not distract us from the priority of preventing catastrophic climate change.

The left also seeks to mobilize support with a narrative that blames the problem on a hateful enemy. The Koch brothers, ExxonMobil, and the Republican Party seem all too eager to step into this role. But even if all these devils magically vanished, we’d still be burning fossil fuels until we found something better.

So what should environmentalists be demanding? Foremost, governments need to fund research and development for low-carbon energy technologies at Apollo-program levels of commitment. Breakthrough innovations are needed in batteries, nuclear energy, liquid biofuels, and carbon capture. The required funding of this ultimate public good is too great a risk with too little a reward for private companies. But it is easily fundable by governments.

The second priority is carbon pricing: charging people and companies to dump their carbon into the atmosphere. Economists across the political spectrum agree that such a price would incentivize conservation, decarbonization, and R&D far more effectively than regulating specific industries and products (to say nothing of sermonizing for a return to an abstemious preindustrial lifestyle). Without carbon pricing, fossil fuels — which are uniquely abundant, portable, and energy-dense — simply have too great an advantage. Yet despite a strong campaign by Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a policy that ought to be a no-brainer has yet to catch on with politicians or the public.

Today, climate activism shoots off in too many directions: divesting from portfolios, urging asceticism, ending capitalism, demonizing ogres, prophesying doom, changing everything. This scattershot campaign is morally invigorating but distracts people from acknowledging the most inconvenient truth of all: None of this will stop catastrophic climate change. The movement should hit “Pause,” do the math, and work for the combination of policies that can actually solve the problem.

SOURCE




Bill Gates, Climate Activism, and Wishful Thinking

Bill Gates may know a lot about running a software company, but when it comes to understanding how governments operate, well, let’s just say that not all the glitches have been worked out. Case in point: In a recent interview with The Atlantic, Gates extols the virtues of carbon taxes and other “sticks” of climate activism. Gates also extols “carrots” such as subsidies for low-carbon energy research and development—because, he claims, government sets the gold standard for R&D. But this claim can be quickly cast aside, according to Independent Institute Research Director William F. Shughart II.

“Even a blind squirrel eventually finds an acorn, so it is not surprising that throwing tons of money at government-sponsored research projects sometimes pays off,” Shughart writes.

Moreover, “most of the major inventions of the past 150 years have originated not from scientific advances or from taxpayer-financed R&D, but from the private sector’s engineering departments and shop floors as people on the ground encountered and solved practical production problems.” The software titan’s nonsense about technology history, according to Shughart, reflects a bigger problem: “Although Mr. Gates deserves applause for putting his own money where his mouth is, he is mendacious in maligning the economic system that made him the richest man on the planet.”

SOURCE





Greens ‘smuggle’ climate policy into the church to tip climate politics

Without the evangelical community’s involvement, efforts to build a “broad coalition to pass major climate policies” are “doomed,” according to a just-released report from New America — a nonprofit group that claims to be “dedicated to the renewal of American politics, prosperity, and purpose in the Digital Age.”

“Spreading the Gospel of climate change: an evangelical battleground,” according to E & E News, offers: “An autopsy of evangelicals’ influence on U.S. Climate law.” While the efforts “failed,” the report concludes it is “not a lost cause,” as the authors posit: “there is an untapped potential for environmental activism in the world of evangelical Christianity.” The closing words are “it is a battle worth fighting.”

So, while the initial effort may have failed, its supporters haven’t given up. They hope to learn from their mistakes and continue the crusade to “get evangelicals to tip the politics of the climate” — which consists of big-government solutions like a carbon tax and higher energy prices.

The report offers several reasons for failure, including: “donors who pushed for this ‘deliverable’ did not really understand the internal dynamic of the evangelical world,” and suggests future tactics such as: “better messaging” and more “person-to-person connections.”

Its authors lament that the evangelical community is “a decentralized religious tradition that lacks a clear hierarchy like the Catholic Church” (which helps explain the recent alarmist views adopted by the Pope and many Catholic Bishops). They claim that since most evangelicals are Republicans, asking them to embrace climate change “challenged the belief in the primacy of unregulated markets that is the ideological glue that holds the Republican coalition together.” Both statements, I believe, show how little those attempting to engage “evangelicals on climate change” really understand the Christian faith — despite one of the report’s authors being “an expert on evangelicals.”

We are not “decentralized” nor is our resistance to “engaging” in climate change based in betraying Republican values. Our faith is centered on the Bible — which we look to for inspiration, guidance, and teaching. The messaging of climate change includes an entire world-view that challenges the primacy of biblical teaching.

We believe that God created the Earth and that no part of His creation was by mistake or without intent. He created the earth to benefit humans, not the other way around. And, He is bigger than we are and has a plan. With that foundation, we see that God put coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium under our feet for a reason: because we would need it. In biblical times it wasn’t needed, but in His plan, he knew that we’d need it today. The carbon that was stored within the earth is released today providing power and food for a world that has greater population than the apostles could have ever imagined — but God knew what it would be. We appreciate nature; value the earth and the bounty it provides. We’ve learned from the past mistakes and are pleased that America has greatly cleaned up the pollution of the 70s, but we don’t worship the earth.

While I hope all readers find the report’s inside strategic analysis interesting, evangelicals should be particularly alarmed with the realization that we have been, and will continue to be, the target of an organized and well-funded effort, from outsiders who “lacked deep knowledge about evangelicalism,” to “recruit evangelicals into policy solutions to climate change.”

While admitting failure, there was some early success. Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in California and author of the best-selling book The Purpose Driven Life, was, in 2006, a signatory to the Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI). In 2008, the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Pat Robertson appeared in an ad for climate action. Some Southern Baptist leaders drafted their own ECI — which was never launched. The report states: “Movement leaders, funders, and the environmental movement were optimistic that this small victory could be the foundation for even more ambitious legislative goals.”

The report is a fascinating case study of the outside effort to “smuggle” the climate policy campaign into churches.

When I read the full 27-page document, the influence of “environmental funders” became obvious: “Since the mid-1990s, environmental funders recognized the need for a broader field of faith-based movements who could expand the influence of environmentalism to unlikely allies. They also realized that evangelicals had a special role to play in this religious portfolio because their religious community was closely associated with the Republican Party.” Evangelical Christians became the target of “constituency engagement development.” Financial grants were made to increase the role of climate change in churches. Environmentalists worked to reframe climate change as “Creation Care” and “hoped that evangelical Christians might publically embrace climate change as a moral issue and an authentically ‘conservative’ concern.”

To do this, funders looked to the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN) “to reach out to evangelicals and leverage the moral authority of faith.” The report states: “With funding from the Hewlett and Energy Foundations, the EEN launched the Evangelical Climate Initiative, the culmination of its four-year effort to encourage major evangelical institutions to develop a public witness on climate change.” Notable Christian organizations, such as World Vision, Habitat for Humanity, and Intervarsity Christian Fellowship were given thousands of dollars to name a “Creation Care Chair” in their senior staff. The report concludes: “From 1996 to 2006, EEN leaders and environmental funders believed that the Creation Care movement was on a trajectory of growing legitimacy and power.”

The efforts at infiltration included “building faith-based environmental clubs in Christian colleges” and offering to help churches “reduce their energy bills.”

The report chronicles the work of Georgia Interfaith Power and Light — led by an Episcopal priest: Rev. Alexis Chase. She persuaded Southern Baptist churches to host HEAT classes to train lay leaders to save energy and money in their own homes. And then, “smuggled” the climate policy campaign “into the class as an extension of personal discipleship.”

According to the report, EEN hoped to persuade Barrett Duke, Vice President for Public Policy and Research and Director of the Research Institute of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission—the policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention — to become an ally. Apparently, Duke “was open to the EEN’s message about climate change.” He explored the issue and listened to differing views — including the Cornwall Alliance’s Calvin Beisner (who the report paints as the key voice in exposing the Creation Care movement). Duke realized none of the climate change people gave “any consideration to the role of the Sun in affecting the climate.” Instead, climate action was about large-scale government solutions. He “settled on a belief that climate change was not human-caused and that large-scale government solutions being proposed would impose unacceptable human costs.”

“They weren’t really solving the problem…They’re talking trillions of dollars of investment, a complete restructuring of the economy in order to simply slow down the rate of warming…I said, okay, millions of people will lose their jobs. The entire energy industry will be basically recalibrated. Plus, energy will be more expensive, and the undeveloped world will be plunged into poverty for another generation,” Duke added.

Eventually the funders became frustrated. Quoting an anonymous source addressing the lack of enthusiasm of the evangelicals they were able to bring on board, the report states: “They certainly didn’t turn out to be everything that our funders hoped they would be. Our funders and, I think, some of our inside team to a lesser extent, hoped that this group would become zealots, would kind of be a new army for the community, and would really marshal the troops to this new height. The number of them that have done that is really small. It’s a handful actually.”

In short, the evangelical Christian community has been used. National funders and environmental allies targeted us, thinking that we’d be ready to “influence legislation in Washington.” The strategy was to get “evangelical elites” to embrace “Creation Care” and “frame environmental concerns as moral issues” — thus “creating their own set of biblical and theological themes.” Then, the funders believed, they could “borrow their relationship with their constituencies and have them engage their members on the issue and have it be in a way that would appeal to their constituency.”

While environmental funders who invested in building the Creation Care movement have admittedly failed, the report states: “Movement leaders have also deepened their commitment to more long-term, values-based organizing in local evangelical spaces.” Now, instead of targeting “evangelical elites,” they realize they need “rank-and-file evangelicals.”

I encourage my fellow evangelicals to put on the full armor of God. As Duke did, use your intellect and prayer to discern the truth. Much like the serpent’s efforts with Eve, many Christians have come to realize that Creation Care has nothing to do with The Creator; instead it is attractive messaging for a political agenda.

Be alert. You are the prize to those who lack knowledge about who you are and what you believe in. Without you, their efforts are “doomed.”

SOURCE

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

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Thursday, November 26, 2015



What fun!  New nonsense from Lewandowsky!

The king of dodgy climate research strikes again!  He claims to be researching global warming but once again he is looking at what people are doing rather than what the climate is doing. Instead of looking at the evidence for the global warming "pause", he looks at what people say about it. His findings?  Warmist writers disagree about the details of it!  We should worry!  

The only thing that matters is temperature, measured as accurately as possible, not people's comments on it.  So let me yet again bore everybody by pointing to the evidence about global temperatures:

The satellites are the only way of obtaining a truly global temperature reading and for the last 18 years they just show random fluctuations around a constant mean. Here's the graph:

 

And even the annual terrestrial datasets show no statistically significant global temperature change over the last 18 years.

So there's the evidence that Lewandowsky closed his eyes to!  No "agreed definition" there.  Just the facts

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Now hear the oracle:

The study analysed scientific articles spanning the last 15 years which addressed this widely discussed 'pause' in global warming.

Though the term has been used in scientific circles for years, it has no agreed upon definition. 

A new study from the University of Bristol, UK analyzed 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles between 2009 and 2014.

The study found that there was no conclusive definition to address a 'pause' in global warming, and there was no agreement on when it began or ends.

While scientists may refer to this pause in global warming, the researchers say that this comes with the greater understanding that climate change will not stop, and does not imply otherwise.

Professor Lewandowsky warns that continued use of this term is hazardous to public knowledge.

Now, the researchers are saying this is because it doesn't exist. 

With no substantial evidence to support the idea of a pause in global warming, the study concluded that continued use of the term could be hazardous to public understanding of climate change issues.

The team from the University of Bristol was led by Professor Stephan Lewandowsky of Bristol's School of Experimental Psychology and the Cabot Institute, and analysed 40 peer-reviewed articles published between 2009 and 2014.
 





NASA Exposed in ‘Massive’ New Climate Data Fraud

Written by P Gosselin

Veteran award-winning journalist Günter Ederer reports  a shocking new global warming data fraud in NASA’s global temperature data series, as relied on by the UN and government climate scientists. 

The data has been carefully analysed by a respected data computation expert Professor Dr. Friedrich Karl Ewert and is being made publicly available for independent verification.

Professor Ewert’s findings seem to show NASA has intentionally and systematically rigged the official government record of global temperatures to show recent global warming where none would exist without the upwards ‘revisions.’

The astonishing results are now available online to the public.

Ederer reports not long ago retired geologist and data computation expert Professor Dr. Friedrich Karl Ewert began looking at the data behind the global warming claims, and especially the datasets of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS).

Ewert painstakingly examined and tabulated the reams of archived data from 1153 stations that go back to 1881 – which NASA has publicly available – data that the UN IPCC uses to base its conclusion that man is heating the Earth’s atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels. According to Ederer, what Professor Ewert found is “unbelievable”:

From the publicly available data, Ewert made an unbelievable discovery: Between the years 2010 and 2012 the data measured since 1881 were altered so that they showed a significant warming, especially after 1950. […] A comparison of the data from 2010 with the data of 2012 shows that NASA-GISS had altered its own datasets so that especially after WWII a clear warming appears – although it never existed.”

Ederer writes that Ewert particularly found alterations at stations in the Arctic. Professor Ewert randomly selected 120 stations from all over the world and compared the 2010 archived data to the 2012 data and found that they had been tampered to produce warming.

The old data showed regular cycles of warming and cooling over the period, even as atmospheric CO2 concentration rose from 0.03% to 0.04%. According to the original NASA datasets, Ederer writes, the mean global temperature cooled from 13.8°C in 1881 to 12.9°C in 1895. Then it rose to 14.3°C by 1905 and fell back under 12.9°C by 1920, rose to 13.9°C by 1930, fell to 13° by 1975 before rising to 14°C by 2000. By 2010 the temperature fell back to 13.2°C.

But then came the “massive” altering of data, which also altered the entire overall trend for the period. According to journalist Ederer, Ewert uncovered 10 different methods NASA used to alter the data. The 6 most often used methods were:

* Reducing the annual mean in the early phase.
* Reducing the high values in the first warming phase.
* Increasing individual values during the second warming phase.
* Suppression of the second cooling phase starting in 1995.
* Shortening the early decades of the datasets.
* With the long-term datasets, even the first century was shortened.

The methods were employed for stations such as Darwin, Australia and Palma de Mallorca, for example, where cooling trends were suddenly transformed into warming.

Ewert then discovered that NASA having altered the datasets once in March 2012 was not enough.  Alterations were made again in August 2012, and yet again in December 2012. For Palma de Majorca: “Now because of the new datasets it has gotten even warmer. Now they show a warming of +0.01202°C per year.”

Using earlier NASA data, globe is in fact cooling

The veteran German journalist Ederer writes that the media reports of ongoing global warming are in fact not based on reality at all, but rather on “the constantly altered temperatures of the earlier decades.” Ederer adds:

"Thus the issue of man-made global warming has taken on a whole new meaning: Yes, it is always man-made if the data are adjusted to fit the theory. The meticulous work by Ewert has predecessors, and fits a series of scandals and contradictions that are simply being ignored by the political supporters of man-made climate change.”

Ederer also brings up the analysis by American meteorologists Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts who examined 6000 NASA measurement stations and found an abundance of measurement irregularities stemming in large part from serious siting issues. According to Ederer the findings by Professor Ewert are in close agreement with those of Watts and D’Aleo.

Ederer writes of the overall findings by Professor Ewert:

"Using the NASA data from 2010 the surface temperature globally from 1940 until today has fallen by 1.110°C, and since 2000 it has fallen 0.4223°C […]. The cooling has hit every continent except for Australia, which warmed by 0.6339°C since 2000. The figures for Europe: From 1940 to 2010, using the data from 2010, there was a cooling of 0.5465°C and a cooling of 0.3739°C since 2000.”

Ederer summarizes that in view of the magnitude of the scandal, one would think that there would be in investigation. Yet he does not believe this will be the case because the global warming has turned into a trillion-dollar industry and that that too much is tied to it.






Recent period of extreme weather events unusual?

So they say below.  But it just the usual Warmist cherry-picking.  If you look at the weather record from earlier times, you will see that we live in relatively stable times today.  See the article immediately following the one below

It was a time of yuppies, flash cars, shoulder pads and big hair, but it appears the 1980s was also a key turning point for the world's climate, research has suggested.

Scientists have discovered there was a huge shift in the environment that swept across the globe affecting ecosystems from the depths of the oceans to the upper atmosphere.

They said an abrupt spurt of global warming, fuelled by human activity and a volcanic eruption in Mexico, is believed to have triggered these changes between 1984 and 1988.

The findings indicate that rather than being a gradual process that can occur over decades and centuries, climate change can occur suddenly.

The researchers said the global warming that occurred in the 1980s was the largest shift in the climate to have occurred in around 1,000 years.

They warn the findings demonstrate how unavoidable natural events, such as major volcanic eruptions, can multiply the impacts of human activity in short timescales.

Professor Philip Reid, an oceanographer at Plymouth University who led the research, said: 'Our work contradicts the perceived view that major volcanic eruptions just lead to a cooling of the world.

'In the case of the regime shift, it looks as if global warming has reached a tipping point where the cooling that follows such eruptions rebounds with a rapid rise in temperature in a very short time.

'The speed of this change has had a pronounced effect on many biological, physical and chemical systems throughout the world, but is especially evident in the Northern temperate zone and Arctic.'

In the study published in the journal Global Change Biology, the researchers used data from 6,500 meteorological stations from around the world.

They also used a range of climate models and other measurements such as the temperature and salinity of the oceans, pH levels of rivers and the timing of cherry blossom blooms.

This revealed that a series of dramatic changes began to occur in 1982, around the time when the El Chichón volcano in north-western Chiapas, Mexico, erupted violently.

The explosive eruption killed around 2,000 people and threw an estimated 20 million tonnes of material into the atmosphere.

The new study, however, found there was a steep increase in global temperatures around the world in the wake of this eruption which triggered considerable environmental changes.

These included a 60 per cent increase in winter river flow into the Baltic Sea, and a 400 per cent increase in the duration of wildfires in the western United States.

They also noted there were shifts in the winds high in the atmosphere and an increase in the number of days of topical storms.

And Costa Rica suffered dramatic declines in amphibian and reptile populations during the 1980s.

Elsewhere, the researchers saw a distinct annual spread of the environmental changes as the 'regime shift' in the climate moved regionally around the world from west to east.

They said the changes first appeared in South America in 1984, moving to North America in 1985, the North Atlantic in 1986, Europe in 1987 and Asia in 1988.

These dates coincide with significant shifts to an earlier flowering date for cherry trees around the Earth in Washington DC, Switzerland, and Japan.

They also coincided with the first evidence of the extinction of amphibians linked to global warming, such as the harlequin frog and golden toad in Central and South America.

However, the researchers say another regime shift in the 1990s may have helped to offset some of the rapid changes that occurred in the 1980s.

They also detected a marked decline in the growth rate of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere after the regime shift, coinciding with a sudden increase in vegetation in polar regions using the gas.

Dr Renata Hari, a climatologist at Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology in Dübendorf, Switzerland who also took part in the study, said: 'The 1980s regime shift may be the beginning of the acceleration of the warming shown by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

'It is an example of the unforeseen compounding effects that may occur if unavoidable natural events like major volcanic eruptions interact with anthropogenic warming.'

 




Study: More Extreme Climate Existed Prior to Pre-industrial Era

A University of Vermont climate study of sedimentary cores shows periods of extreme storminess occurred thousands of years before any human influence. 

Previous periods of extreme storminess: A 13,000 year scientific study of lake sediments by the reliable method of drilling and retrieving cores reveals that the climate of the United States has been through numerous periods of more extreme climate. The research explains:

   “ Storm magnitude, as estimated by average terrigenous layer thickness, was greatest at 11,800, 10,800, and 1,200 years before present, when New England climate was cool and moist.”

   “Storminess reached variable maxima lasting ~1,500 years, centered at approximately 2,600, 5,800, 9,100, and 11,900 years ago, and appears to be presently increasing toward another peak.”

Here we see the periods of greatest climate variation from the established normal happen when conditions are “cool and moist,” which runs contrary to current climate alarmism theory which states that a warmer, drier climate will result in more extreme events.

The research points out that the USA is “increasing towards another peak” in storminess therefore the peaks of extreme climate were larger before the industrial revolution that started in 1851.

This would indicate that variations from the stated “normal” for earth’s climate, as set by the 1961-1990 average relied on by climate science, is not anomalous. We can also clearly see that periods of more extreme climate have happened many times before and that carbon dioxide (CO2) did not drive these extrem events.

A more extreme climate before the industrial revolution

The Industrial Revolution is set by climate alarmists as the bench mark for the start of the rise in atmospheric CO2 caused by humans. Therefore events before this are obviously not caused by human emissions of CO2. According to the so-called greenhouse gas theory, more CO2 in the atmosphere causes more warming.

Using 18 lake sediment cores, the study establishes a 13,000-year storm chronology for the northeastern United States. This is the longest storm record yet established for this region, and reveals regional storm patterns not identifiable from single lake records.

The study took 18 long (3.5 to 6 m) sediment cores from 11 small (0.03 to 4 km2), deep (13 to 32 m) lakes with inflowing streams and surrounded by steep hillslopes across a ~20,000 km2 region in Vermont and eastern New York.

Twelve of the 18 cores were dated and thoroughly analyzed (the remaining 6 cores were either duplicates or contained deeper sediment from the same location as another core from the same lake).

It is shown that during the Medieval Warm Period there were extensive droughts in the USA. These were far larger and longer than anything recorded since the industrial revolution and spanned “multi decadal” time periods.

There were serious drought periods of great severity between 1021-1051 AD then 1130 – 1170, 1240 – 1265 and 1360 – 1382 AD as is recorded in tree ring data in the research titled “The characteristics and likely causes of the Medieval megadroughts in North America.” Richard Seager, Celine Herweijer and Ed Cook. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.

These Medieval Mega Droughts are shown in the reliable research to be of a more extreme nature than anything at present. The authors conclude that:  “The similarity of the spatial patterns suggests that the physical processes that caused the modern droughts also caused the medieval megadroughts.”  

It is possible to extrapolate from this that as there is no direct link with CO2 levels here either.

The extreme Little Ice Age

And then there is of course the far colder than “normal” climate of the Little Ice Age that followed the medieval Warm Period and its extreme droughts. The beginning of this was marked by an extreme climate event called “The great famine”. “The Great Famine started with bad weather in spring 1315. Universal crop failures lasted through 1316 until the summer harvest in 1317, and Europe did not fully recover until 1322. The period was marked by extreme levels of crime, disease, mass death, and even cannibalism and infanticide.”

“In the spring of 1315, unusually heavy rain began in much of Europe. It continued to rain throughout the spring and summer, and the temperature remained cool. These conditions caused widespread crop failures. The straw and hay for the animals could not be properly dried, so there was no fodder or bedding for the livestock. The price of food began to rise, doubling in England between spring and midsummer.”

Here again we can see what is now termed extreme climate events caused millions of deaths. Far worse than anything experienced since the industrial revolution.

Modern extremes?

If we can rely on this research then we may say that the modern period of allegedly extreme climate is an extreme from what they term normal but in no way comes up to the standards of extreme climate from a long term point of view.  





NOAA: Record Major Hurricane Drought Extends to 121 Months

The United States blew past its decade-long hurricane drought record on Tuesday, reaching an historic 121 months without a major hurricane making landfall on the U.S. mainland, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) statistics.

And with hurricane season officially ending on November 30, President Obama is likely to remain the longest-serving president in 122 years - since Millard Fillmore was in office - to have no major hurricanes defined as Category 3 or above strike the continental U.S. during his term of office.

Since 1851, only four other chief executives had no major hurricanes strike the U.S. during their presidencies: Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865); Andrew Johnson (1865-1869); James Garfield (who served only six months prior to his assassination in 1881); and Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893).

According to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, major hurricanes classified as Category 3 or above have sustained wind speeds of more than 111 miles per hour and are capable of causing “devastating” or “catastrophic” damage.

The last major hurricane to make landfall on the continental United States was Hurricane Wilma, which slammed into Florida on October 24, 2005, according to data going back to 1851 kept by NOAA's  Hurricane Research Division.

That year, three major hurricanes – Katrina, Rita, and Wilma – killed nearly 4,000 people and caused nearly $160 billion in damages, according to NOAA.

But it’s been quiet on the hurricane front since Obama took office in January 2009.

Just four hurricanes made landfall on his watch, and none of them were classified as major storms by NOAA: Irene (2011), Isaac and Sandy (2012) were all Category 1, and Arthur (2014) was a Category 2.

SOURCE  





Australia has met its 2020 greenhouse emissions target five years early, Environment Minister Greg Hunt says

This will burn Greenies up.  It is of course a fudge but the whole Kyoto process was designed for fudges. Everybody else is fudging too. The big fudge is what date you take for your starting point

The Federal Government says it has met its 2020 greenhouse emissions target, ahead of this week's climate change talks in Paris.  It has released figures from the Department of Environment showing Australia had already achieved a 5 per cent reduction based on 2000 levels.

By 2020, the department predicted Australia would have met its target by 28 million tonnes.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt told the National Press Club it would make it easier to make additional cuts in the future.  "We have closed the gap and go to Paris officially subzero and on track to beat our 2020 target," Mr Hunt said.  "This still remains a conservative forecast, and I am hopeful that future updates will show an even greater surplus."

Mr Hunt will be joined in Paris by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop later this month.

The Federal Government has committed to a 26 per cent to 28 per cent reduction by 2030.

Labor has questioned the figures, claiming much of the gains were because of accounting measures. The department figures showed emission reductions from previous years had been carried over, with a reduction in economic growth also factored in.

Opposition environment spokesman Mark Butler said figures from market analyst Reputex showed carbon pollution between now and 2020 would see a 6 per cent rise.

"Malcolm Turnbull will get on the plane to Paris and presumably trumpet the fact that Australia has been able to technically achieve its Kyoto commitment," he said.

"But what will be clear is that Malcolm Turnbull is getting on that plane, laden down by Tony Abbott's policies that were deliberately designed to do nothing to reduce carbon pollution levels."

Mr Hunt rejected the claims and stood by his figures. "We can achieve and will achieve our 2030 target, although it will be a challenge, precisely as it should be," he said. "And we will achieve our targets without a carbon tax and without its pressure on electricity and gas prices."

Under the Kyoto Protocol, Australia promised to look at cuts of between 15 per cent and 25 per cent by 2020, if the rest of the world made similar cuts.

Mr Hunt stopped short of meeting that promise, but stressed that under current projections, Australia "in all likelihood" would go further than the current 5 per cent target.


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