The Dog Ate my Data

Old white anglo male, Professor Lowe, blames world’s problems on old white anglo males

2010-03-15T20:50:00.002+10:00

Ian Lowe emeritus professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University in Brisbane, is president of the far left Australian Conservation Foundation an extremist environmental lobby group. Ian Wishart on The Briefing Room exposes the latest ramblings of this confused old white guy during a crisis meeting with social scientists and others in New Zealand exploring ways to manipulate the public to get catastrophic man made climate fears back at the top of people’s worry list. I strongly recommend reading the original article which includes audio of Lowe and an old white female social scientist.

According to Lowe old white anglo males over 60 are the problem. These dangerous old guys need to be stopped! They are out of control. Only yesterday I saw gang of old white guys roaming the suburb smashing letterboxes and throwing half empty beer cans at passing motorists before jumping into a fossil fuel burning vehicle and doing a burn out all the way up the street. Irresponsible bastards. I spoke later to a group of middle aged brown women who agreed that old white guys were the problem. They then started screaming and wailing when I told them that it was announced yesterday by WEDO that women would be devastated by climate change.

Lowe wants the money spent on the Hadron Collider for his own purposes rubbishing the physicists in the process by claiming the collider is nothing more than a nuclear billiards machine. He is also the only scientist I have heard claim that Hurricane Katrina was caused by global warming. Of course there is no evidence to support this and that is why no one claims it to be so however Lowe doesn’t let nil evidence ruin a good story. See the links in this post to the actual evidence.

Lowe’s has made incorrect claims before of course. One example was when he appeared before the Queensland Land and Resources Tribunal as an expert witness to give evidence as to the level of greenhouse gases that would be emitted by a mining project. The Tribunal President said that Lowe had overstated the level given in his evidence by a factor of 218. Lowe later countered that he had only overstated the level by a factor of 15! Well close enough I guess for Lowe. Lowe also wants all coal, gas, and nuclear power stations closed in less than 40 years. He thinks we can change the world’s climate by wearing old clothes for another year.

Excerpts from Wishart’s article appear below but do yourself a favour and read the original here and download the audio.

BEAKING NEWS: Top Aussie climate scientist goes feral on skeptics and fellow scientists

One of Australia's most outspoken scientists has this week rubbished the team behind the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, describing the project as nothing more than a "nuclear billiards machine" and saying the money should be devoted to paying for more climate change research instead.
...

During the hour long media briefing, Lowe

•ridiculed the scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider, saying money would be better spent by climate scientists
•argued that for propaganda purposes the media should hype-up individual weather events - such as floods in Mozambique - as proof of climate change
•claimed Hurricane Katrina was clearly caused by climate change
•claimed a conspiracy of white, Anglo Celtic elderly males was behind the skeptic movement
•with NZ government social scientist Karen Cronin advocated researching how to foment enough anger in the public that governments who refused to take climate action could be "pushed out of the way" in a political upheaval

Climate Change devastating for women - Causes STD’s

2010-03-14T19:19:00.003+10:00

Climate change is devastating for women.

Climate change causes hundreds of things from women taking up prostitution to acne.

Now the UN and WEDO (Women’s Environment and Development Organisation) claim global warming is devastatingly gender sensitive. WEDO even claims global warming causes sexually transmitted diseases and its effects are gender differentiated against women. Women are being hit hardest by global warming and in greater danger of death by global warming.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 9 (IPS/TerraViva) – The negative fallout from climate change is having a devastatingly lopsided impact on women compared to men, from higher death rates during natural disasters to heavier household and care burdens.

...

These “famine marriages” – as they are called – not only lead to girls dropping out of school, but also make them vulnerable to sexually transmitted infections...

But WEDO claims success is being achieved with more blah blah blah.

According to WEDO, not only did gender texts increase (peaking at 40 plus) in negotiating documents, but so did women’s participation.

A stunning result no doubt. That’s one giant leap forward for gender textedness. Millions of impoverished women will be celebrating that result as they struggle to find enough cow pads to burn to make a little bread or boiled rice each day. Give yourself a big pat on your well fed backs and carry on.

*Yawn*

Before Gore or the IPCC, the end was nigh

2010-03-14T06:00:00.000+10:00

An interesting post on SPPI,

Source: AP Story in the Washington Post

The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulafft, at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the Gulf Stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared.

Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds. Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.
*******************
SPPI Note: This familiar sounding news report was published in November 1922 when the Arctic likely warmed as much or more that recently. Many reports referred to the warming as “climate improvement.” This early 20th century warming occurred long before humans could have much reputed influence on temperatures, which may be why some government paid scientists world-wide are busy “adjusting” historical temperature data suppressing these early high temperatures while exaggerating upwards recent ones.
see full 1922 Arctic report

Other posts on this blog on the same theme can be found here (Alert! Artic ice is melting in November 1922), here (Cooling World - Newsweek 1975) and here (Climate Change Fears - An Historical Context).

Stupid is as stupid does

2010-03-08T20:56:00.002+10:00

Climate Warriors Unite!

Rebel Climate Scientists Planning Major New Offensive

Let’s do a little role playing for a moment. Imagine you are a genius climate scientist at the top of your game who knows deep down inside your very soul that the world is in for disaster. By 2100 seas will rise by over 5 metres (Hansen), temperatures will rise 1.1-6.4C (IPCC) humans will become extinct this century (too many to mention but how about we start with Prof Peter Barrett), natural disasters are caused by the unnatural actions of humans (IPCC), Himalayan glaciers will vanish by 2035 (IPCC) and of course polar bears are goners. Unfortunately the forces of evil (the public) do not believe you and one anti-doomsdayist went so far as to leak emails from the Climate Research Unit (referred to as Climategate) showing how you and your fellow scientists colluded to misrepresent information, hide the decline, act against the law of FOI and subvert peer review processes amongst other not altogether upstanding actions. You have a problem – how to deal with the alarming growth of non-believers. So the issue is how do you organise round 2 to get the public back on your side? Well to a genius the answer is obvious! Organise politically via the very medium that brought you undone in the first place - more emails! DoH!

Rebel scientists are organising a political campaign via email after being caught out by their own climategate emails less than four months ago. Damn – sprung again! This is too funny. Those pesky little world dominating ~~activists~~ scientists sure are cute. Maybe instead of adopting a polar bear at the zoo we should all adopt a climate scientist. They sure could use the help. I have first dibs on Hansen though OK. He is my favourite science critter. Just so there is no doubt I include on this page a graphic of Hansen that I lifted from Australian Climate Madness. Apparently Hansen was out here in OZ last week but I must have missed it. Pity really. I would love to have seen my science critter on home turf peddling immanent world destruction.

Here is a link to a pdf file of the Climategate V2 emails for your reading pleasure. Get the popcorn and a nice strong coffee and enjoy. Some of the world’s leading doomsdayists are authors of the emails. Heck even Paul Ehrlich (remember him), a doomsdayist's doomsdayist most well known for not ever getting a prediction right in his entire career is there pontificating on the climate misfits next offensive. Naturally the proposed action doesn’t involve any actual science but rather an expensive full page add in the New York Times newspaper. Brilliant stuff. That’s the kind of thinking that could just win you a Nobel Peace Prize. Just add some Power Point slides and you’re a dead certainty for the now thoroughly debased Peace Prize.

The emails do not really show anything that is not already known. They merely confirm that scientists have become political activists with science a long placed second.

While you’re reading climategate2 load up the video below for a summary by a US Senator of the Senate Minority Report dealing with Climategate 1.

Get the actual report here.

For commentary on Climategate2 see here and here.

Top scientist says drought not caused by global warming

2010-03-03T22:48:00.003+10:00

Senator Penny Wong, Australia’s Minister for Climate Change and Water, has been claiming that the drought in the Murray Darling (something that has occurred throughout history) is due to global warming. It seems that Australia’s top scientist disagrees.

From today's Weekly Times,

AUSTRALIA'S top climate scientist has contradicted Federal Government claims the drought in the Murray Darling Basin is due to global warming.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead author, Prof Neville Nicholls, said the claim was not backed by science.

"The current dry period (in the Murray Darling Basin) might still be just a fluke, or natural variability," Prof Nicholls said.

"We cannot confidently attribute it to global warming."

Yet Federal Climate Change and Water Minister Penny Wong has repeatedly claimed the basin's drought is due to climate change.

Penny should have consulted one of those “boring men with no sense of humour that run around in white coats measuring things" (PM Kevin Rudd describing a scientist just in case the use of the word scientist would confuse us) before promulgating more unfounded nonsense. I suppose though that when your credibility is based on disastrous catastrophe caused by man made carbon dioxide one would tend to stretch the truth a little when it steadfastly refuses to play along. How inconvenient (TM).

Huge BoM rain and temperature prediction failures

2010-03-02T22:14:00.000+10:00

Warwick Hughes takes a look at BoM predictions and concludes:

I am at a loss to understand how a well funded org of professionals can repeatedly get these Outlooks so wrong. Obviously the models they use are not worth a cup full of warm spit.

Australia pays for better and deserves better.

Check out the article here on Warwicks excellent blog.

Bias from the BBC

2010-03-01T22:27:00.001+10:00

This post is from Counting Cats in Zanzibar. This blog covers a wide range of topics and is a very good read.

BBC Bias (Again)

I saw a small bit of a thing on BBC News this morning. OK, this is from memory and I didn’t watch the whole thing because I would have been sedated to prevent me from hurling the cat at the Samsung. And neither Timmy nor the telly deserve that…

I would though chuck an irate ocelot at Harriet Harman’s minge. That is another story though…

It was about “The Rise of Climate Scepticism in Australia”. It described climate sceptics (they’d burn ‘em if that weren’t “polluting”) meetings as being like an “American religious revivalist meetings” (that’s so BBC on so many levels, that’s the sort of thing to get the average Indy reader priapic) and it was just generally horrendous. Despite my inchoate rage I did though clock something which outraged me beyond feline-throwing comprehension.

It opened with a shot of the cracked, dry Australian Desert. You know that thing that Australia has a lot of but also had a lot of when Captain Cook made landfall and even had a lot of during the Dreamtime of the Aboriginals with this soundtrack:

Yup, whilst the BBC now calls us “sceptics” and no longer “deniers” it plays music from a symphony written specifically about the Holocaust.

Where do you think that band is performing? Don’t look much like the Royal Albert Hall to me unless that gaff has really gone downhill very recently.

So the likes of me, PA and Cats wanna disagree with the “consensus” on a scientific issue and we’re ushered to the “naughty-corner” along with that cunt Nick Griffin. Well, some of us, Aunty Beeb actually not only can parse the science but will not fall for cheap tricks like that. Some of us know what an adiabatic lapse rate is and some of us have also been to Auschwitz. Some of us even listen to C20th orchestral music.

Some of us also know what pride comes before.

Bishop's Climate News Roundup for Sunday

2010-02-28T18:43:00.001+10:00

The Bishop rounds up the day’s climate madness in one easy to digest post. Do yourself a favour and read his post before you go chasing for your dose of climate insanity elsewhere.

UK to out do Pol Pot to respond to catastrophic global warming

2010-02-26T23:00:00.012+10:00

In today’s Telegraph (UK) I was somewhat stunned to read about a report modeling three global warming scenarios. Since I actually started paying attention to the global warming fiasco only a few short months ago I have read a lot of unbelievable nonsense masquerading as science, absurd predictions by scientists of the extinction of the human race within less than 90 years and much other utter rubbish. The Telegraph article presents a report that is right up there on the madness scale and this “research” was directed by none other than the UK’s top scientist, John Beddington.

“Mass migration northwards to new towns in Scotland, Wales and northeast England may be needed to cope with climate change and water shortages in the South East, according to an apocalyptic vision set out by the Government Office for Science.
...
The Government would ease pressure on the South East by planning to “disperse citizens to three new towns in Dumfries and Galloway, Northumberland and Powys”.

Three hundred Mad Scientists and lackeys in the UK have produced a report entitled Land Use Futures: Making the Most of Land in the 21st Century. John Beddington, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, directed the “research” (a term no doubt used loosely here). He apparently says that climate change and the growing population would present Britain with difficult choices about how it used its (or rather YOUR) land.

So now we have the “scientists” (note Beddington is a Professor of Population Biology and his tenure as Alarmist In Chief in Britain has been dominated by “green” issues) widening the CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) myth to include issues such as scientists deciding how to use your free hold property and when to take it from you. Make no mistake, this is the end of all traditional western rights and the economy as we you know it. Without a guarantee of freehold property rights the economy stops dead and the failed communist or facist system (there is little difference) where a small class of people determine who gets what is instituted always ending with starvation, poverty and ultimately the collapse of the nation. Even China doesn’t practice that the more pure form of this type of government anymore. So long UK, it was nice to have you aboard while it lasted.

The report entertains three scenarios to “stimulate thought”. If it doesn’t stimulate mass rage and the sacking of the leaches that produced such rubbish “it would be a travesty” that it didn’t.

In order to save you the government will, according to these scientists and their lackeys need to move millions of you Brits hundreds of miles north. I wonder how that is going to be achieved? Will you all voluntarily get in your (banned) motor vehicles and drive north with a tent and your plasma TV in the boot or will you be called onto the street by masked black clad troopers, told to bring only what you can carry, and force marched north at the point of an automatic weapon. I don’t know about you but a polite invitation just wouldn’t do it for me. Storm troopers with machine guns probably would, and certainly would if I was part of a disarmed population of sheep such as the once proud warrior race of Britons have become. Oh the shame of being a bleating lamb slaughtered rather than a British lion standing his or her ground in a fire fight.

Beddington says, “Business as usual is not an option over the longer term. The effects of climate change and new pressures on land could escalate, seriously eroding quality of life.” Apparently for the green equals red mob in order to save your quality of life you have to forfeit your property, liberty and life.

In the most extreme scenario, world leaders hold an emergency summit in less than 4 years time in 2014 when it becomes clear that the impacts of climate change are going to be far worse and happen much sooner than previously envisaged. Note of course that the world’s leading climate alarmist, at least until he was stood aside from his post at the Climate Research Unit, Dr Phil Jones, publically stated only a few days ago that there has been no statistically significant warming for the last 15 years. Beddington’s mob however, at taxpayers expense, role play a little scenario taking place in less than 4 years hence where climate change is “far worse” than now. This is laughable science fantasy. All pretence of scientific objectivity has been abandoned by promulgating such nonsense. The solution in their little pantomime? Well it involves confiscation of “vast tracts of land” and the end of the small hold private farmer:

The Telegraph article states,

The Government responds by taking control of vast tracts of land and using it to grow wood and crops for biomass power stations. An agricultural productivity Bill requires farmers to increase yields per hectare but most have to sell up because they lack the resources to comply. “The average farm size in the UK increases from 57 hectares to 500 hectares; farms in the East and South East of England increase to 5,000 hectares.”

In a less alarmist scenario merely removing the rights of private land and house ownership is fantasised:

In another scenario, the Government redefines land as a national resource and the rights of landowners are balanced with “society’s rights to public benefits from the services produced by it”. Home ownership falls as people begin to embrace the idea of “stewardship” of shared natural resources.

So the Government just redefines your property, paid for by a life time of work and sacrifice as a “national resource”. In other words the government thugs kick you into the gutter and take what was once yours, at gun point of course as no one would give up their house voluntarily. However not to worry! There is a solution! You will be embracing “stewardship” (or at least the government will on your behalf) and you can “share” resources. How cool would that be. No longer would you need to work. Want a house? Simple. Just find one you like and “share” it with the incumbent resident. I wonder how living at 10 Downing Street would suit. Need a car? Just take it. I wonder if this sharing would extend to your neighbour’s wife. Now there’s a thought. It’s all so simple I am amazed no one has tried this before. I would be so busy “sharing” resources I doubt I would have time to produce anything by actually working. I am sure the rest of you would keep slaving away however so I can enjoy the fruits of your labour. Or would the government have to force the people to work, once again at gun point? Obviously no one would want to work when any property you acquire is taken from you to be “shared”. The only answer would be forced labour. That would work a treat judging by past world experience.

The fact that anyone of any standing, let alone the UK’s chief scientist, would put his or her name to such a document is telling. Yes it is only three absurd scenarios. But that is the point. The scenarios and suggested outcomes and solutions are absurd and they show no shame in presenting this nonsense to you in a report. If it is a question of millions of people “sharing” the fruits of their labour then you may as well give up now as it will all end in tears; and the death of millions. Of course short of a world wide green marxist takeover this is never going to happen but that doesn’t stop the UK’s chief scientist having his dirty little dreams late at night hoping that it will come to pass so he can step in and mandate the Final Solution for you.

Genius and excellence appears to be finally extinct amongst self labelled "scientists" and instead has been replaced by profligate peddlers of nonsenese fantasy clutching their worthless phd's in soft "science" of marginal or negative utility to civilization.

Stay strong people of the UK. Get these fruitcakes and soft headed saps off the public payroll and the problem is solved. Oh and have a great 2014 – unlike Beddington, I am sure it WILL be business as usual.

UPDATE (28/02/10): John Beddington - Statement of Interest Declaration:

THE government’s chief scientist (John Beddington) and his wife have made £500,000 in the past year in a company overseeing commercial fishing that allegedly threatens one of the world’s most pristine marine environments.

Professor John Beddington and his wife, Caroline, are joint shareholders in Marine Resources Assessment Group (MRAG), a London-based consultancy that manages fisheries and provides specialist advice around the world.

Conservationists claim that a fishery managed by the company in British territorial waters in the Indian Ocean has been catching threatened species including blue sharks and manta rays. It is estimated that between 2003 and 2008 more than 120,000 were caught as “bycatch” from commercial tuna fishing.

See the full article here. Draw your own conclusions.

A Look At Gladstone Temperature Data

2010-02-23T20:53:00.002+10:00

Ken over at kenskingdom has just posted an analysis of GISS data compared to BOM data for Gladstone in Queensland, Australia. Ken’s blog is new but the way it is going it looks like developing into a must read for those interested in the Australian data.

Ken’s analysis of Gladstone shows an exaggerated warming trend for Gladstone. His conclusion:

Although GISS can truthfully say they have not adjusted the GHCN data, the splicing of the last 6 years of the Post Office dataset to the warmer Gladstone Radar leads to a trend of 1.7 degrees Celsius per Century.

I have shown three possible options for more appropriate adjustments to combine all temperatures at the one site. Of these, the highest trend is about 1.5 degrees, which is close to the trend (1.4 degrees) of the nearest rural sites. Examination of these sites shows that their data is of questionable quality. The second option produces a trend of 0.9 degrees, and the third and (in my opinion) best option, 0.7 degrees. The average trend of the 5 nearest long-record rural sites (0.8 degrees) is between these last two options and so matches well. Nearby cities of Rockhampton and Bundaberg show adjusted trends of about 0.7 and 0.5 degrees respectively, and Maryborough, ignored by GHCN, shows a trend of 0.4 degrees.

Ken is a retired school headmaster and his blog is concentrating on graphical analysis of temperature data relating to Australian towns and cities.

My conclusion:

Bookmark Ken’s blog – it gets more interesting with each post.

Penny Wong signals doom for iconic beaches

2010-02-19T00:04:00.001+10:00

It’s always doom, doom and more doom. For alarmists and their brethren, the statists, nothing short of the general population in a constant state of alarm is acceptable. An alarmed population is easily hoodwinked into voting for self imposed taxation, unemployment and massive reductions in living standards in order to be saved from the next imagined threat. From today’s Australian newspaper,

AUSTRALIA'S most iconic beaches, including Bondi, Bells and those on the Sunshine Coast, could erode away or recede by hundreds of metres over the coming century, according to Climate Change Minister Penny Wong.

But locals aren't so sure.

Bondi veteran Lee Boman has swum at the beach for more than 30 years and was adamant he had seen "no change" to the coastline over that period. "Nothing too drastic that indicates it is going to be changed in the future," said Mr Boman, 53.

Bob Carter, a geologist and environmental scientist with James Cook University in Queensland, said Senator Wong's comments appeared to be an attempt to panic the public.

Pointing to historical rates of sea level rise of an average 1.6mm per year globally over the past 100 years, Mr Carter said it was reasonable to expect a total rise of 16cm in a century.

In her opening address to the National Climate Change Forum in Adelaide yesterday, Senator Wong made some alarming predictions for Australia's coast. "Not only are our assets and environments at risk, many of our sandy beaches could erode away or recede up to hundreds of metres over the coming century," she said. "It is possible that with climate change and without large and expensive nourishment programs, Bondi Beach, (Queensland's) Sunshine Coast and (Victoria's) Bells Beach may no longer be the beaches we know today."

....

For Penny and her Labor mismanagers it always seems the answer is “large and expensive (nourishment) programs” with the emphasis on expensive. The only problem is they never work. How’s that "pink batt" roof insulation scheme of PM Rudd’s going Penny? Another large and expensive failure. I fail to see how setting alight the roofs of over 80 people’s houses through shoddily installed, paid for by government “pink batts” helps with global warming Penny. Then again perhaps I am just being too picky.

The only thing that needs nourishment is Penny Wong’s cluemeter. Get lost Penny, no one is listening anymore.

UPDATE: Not even the UN's top climate offical, Yvo de Boer is listening anymore. He has just announced his resignation. Read about it here on BBC News.

Today's Disgrace: Reviewgate

2010-02-17T22:41:00.005+10:00

Oh no, here we go yet again. A panel has been set up by the University of East Anglia (UEA), called the Independent Climate Change Review, to investigate certain matters arising as a result of the leaked climategate emails involving Professor Phil Jones of the UEA. Already one of the panel, Dr Phillip Campbell has resigned due to allegations bringing into question his impartiality. Now the impartiality of another panel member, Professor Geoffrey Boulton has been called into question. Professor Boulton refutes the allegations and has refused to resign. For a synopsis of what’s going on over pop on over to Climate Audit.

The Review’s web site states:

The Review team

The Independent Climate Change Email Review is being conducted by an expert team, led by Sir Muir Russell KCB DL FRSE. The Review team has more than 100 years’ collective expertise of scientific research methodology and a wide range of scientific backgrounds.

None have any links to the Climatic Research Unit, or the United Nations’ Independent Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). More information about each of the review team members can be found in the Biographies section.

But look at Boulton’s CV available here. He worked for UEA where the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) is located for 18 years.

In addition, in direct violation of the Review’s own independence statement that none of the reviewers have any links to the IPCC, Boulton’s CV states that he was a contributor to G8 Preparatory Groups and Intergovernmental Panels on climate change. This alone warrants his resignation from the Review panel. Perhaps Boulton has just "padded" his CV or perhaps his CV refers to some other intergovernmental panels - either way it does not look good for Boulton or the "independent" review.

Why does this theme of trickery, underhandedness, ethical shortcomings and outright untruthfulness seem to follow AGW peddlers like a bad smell. This Review panel so far gives me that bad feeling you get when you have just stepped in something nasty on the pavement. Is there nothing about AGW that is open, verifiable, testable, ethical and honest. I am getting totally fed up with the underhanded methods employed, the failure to fully and openly declare associations and funding, the breach of ethics and the breach of common decency that seems to pervade these people. They disgust me.

Surely it cannot be that hard to organise a review panel that is beyond repute, that is unless of course the outcome has already been decided. With one member already forced to resign and a second under a cloud perhaps the best course of action is to scrap this panel, replace Sir John Muir who does not seem to have much luck at organising impartial panels, and set up a new panel that will hold an open enquiry. That is the only way this investigation is going to have any credibility. A closed investigation stacked with AGW proponents into something as important as this is not just a total waste of time, it is a joke. I would like to see a panel with a range of skills including a reputable legal professional with a proven record of impartial moderation, an ethicist, a science historian as well as a couple of hard core scientists. I won’t hold my breath on that one.

If the science community keep this up they only way they are going to get public funding soon will be to run lemonade stands in their spare time.

BBC: Greenpeace Leader Gerd Leipold Admits Arctic Ice "Mistake"

2010-02-15T19:48:00.004+10:00

We have seen recently that one of the errors made by the IPCC was that the Himalayian glaciers would melt by 2035. They based this on heresay and have now admitted their error. I stumbled across the then outgoing Greenpeace leader, Gerd Leipold, trying to spin a similar story about the artic ice melting by 2030. When pressed he eventually admits it is BS and that he was spinning the story as an activist. Gerd also clames in the video to be a climate scientist. These are the "scientists" we are to trust? Not bloody likely. I recommend this video if you want to see a lie exposed on camera. It is most entertaining.

Greenpeace had said in a July 15 2009 press release that there will be an ice-free Arctic by 2030 because of global warming. BBC reporter Stephen Sackur on “Hardtalk” pressed Leipold until he admitted the claim was wrong.

H/t to Frugal Cafe

IPCC ex-chairman Robert Watson calls for review of climate change mistakes

2010-02-15T19:30:00.001+10:00

Following on from the Revelations of Phil Jones yesterday we now have the last chairman of the IPCC, Australian Prof Robert Jones, saying that if all the errors by the IPCC report were innocent they wouldn’t all be in favour of warming, according to the Australian newspaper. Have I just woken up in some kind of alternate universe? Quoting from the Australian:

“Robert Watson said that all the errors exposed so far in the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) resulted in overstatements of the severity of the problem.

Professor Watson, currently chief scientific adviser to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said that if the errors had just been innocent mistakes, as has been claimed by current chairman Rajendra Pachauri, some would probably have understated the impact of climate change.
The errors have emerged in the past month after simple checking of the sources cited by the 2500 scientists who produced the report.”

The rub is that Watson wants to get together with Gore to form a new group to restore the credibility of climate science. I would humbly suggest that if restoring credibility is your goal then Al Gore is not your man. But what would I know.

“Professor Watson has held discussions with Al Gore, the former US Vice-President, about creating a new climate research group to supplement the work of the IPCC and to help restore the credibility of climate science.”

After what Prof Phil Jones had to say to the BBC yesterday (see yesterday's post) why are we even considering throwing good money after bad? The game is up fella’s. Now can we get back to building space stations and such and forget about messing with graphs based on “adjusted” data. What a shameful waste of time and money. The only evidence Phil had for man made warming is that he doesn’t know what’s causing (which isn't suprising for such a complex dynamic system) it so it must be man. That is not evidence. That is a rort.

Top Climategate Scientist Admits No Statistically Significant Warming Since 1995

2010-02-14T22:32:00.010+10:00

Phil Jones Answers Questions From BBC

Prof Phil Jones of “Hide the Decline” fame, formerly of the CRU (Cimatic Research Unit) at the University of East Anglia was one of the world’s leading climate scientists until stood down after the release of the Climategate emails containing evidence of scientific misconduct, subversion of the peer review process and manipulation of evidence.

This is the first of a series of posts I will make concerning Prof Jones’ responses to the questions put to him by Roger Harrabin of the BBC. Key points from this interview which are referenced to the responses by Jones from the BBC site follow:

1. Jones states there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995 (see response B in the BBC link above). This is an astounding admission. This is a key point raised in debate with alarmists that has up until now been answered with outright denial and derision. Now that this has finally been admitted by the key alarmist, Phil Jones, the lies promulgated up to this point by alarmist scientists who have denied this fact will not hold up.

2. Jones states that recent warming (1975 – 2009) is not unprecedented. Skeptics agree that the globe is warming slightly. The Earth is coming out of a period of cooling (the Little Ice Age). The debate is whether the warming is “man made” not whether there was warming during the 20th century. One key point therefore is whether warming has occurred in the past i.e. is current warming unprecedented. Jones now states that current warming is not unprecedented and is less than some warming events (see response A). He includes the following table in his respnse showing warming since 1975 is not unprecedented even in recent history.

Period: Length: Trend (Deg C per decade): Significance

1860-1880      21      0.163      Yes
1910-1940      31      0.15        Yes
1975-1998      24      0.166      Yes
1975-2009      35      0.161      Yes

3. Jones is asked how confident he is that humans are responsible for recent warming. He responds (response E): “I'm 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.” With billions spent on AGW research he is unable to state a case for man made warming (anthropogenic warming) other than referencing back to the UN IPCC report which is now being attacked daily by the main stream media (which is reporting on earlier research conducted by skeptics) for shoddy referencing to non peer reviewed literature, errors and denial of errors. One could be forgiven for expecting a stronger response in support of man mad global warming under the circumstances. See 5 below for clarification by Jones.

4. Jones is now equivocal on whether the Medieval Warming Period was global in extent or limited to the northern hemisphere.

5. Jones is asked what factors convince him that recent warming is man made and answers by stating that it must be man made because otherwise he can’t explain it (see response H). After decades of research this is the evidence we are asked to believe? If it wasn't so pathetic it would be laughable.

6. Jones states that he does not believe the vast majority of climate scientists believe that the debate (on AGW) is over. This would be news to all skeptics and most other people on the planet who have heard of Anthropogenic Global Warming. Consistently we are told that the “debate is over”, the “science is settled” and that anyone who does not believe is a “flat earther” or a “denier”. Now that the world’s former top alarmist has cleared this up no doubt we can be spared such lies in the future from alarmist scientists and politicians with an agenda or a tax to push.

Concluding this first part of my series thus far, Climategate conspirator Phil Jones offers some very interesting insights into his true position on man made global warming and it can fairly be described as weak support for his hypothesis in stark contrast to the unequivocal statements from other so called climate scientists that we have previously touched upon on this blog.

The most surprising admission in the responses examined thus far is that recent global warming is not unprecedented and Jones illustrates other relatively recent periods where warming has equalled or exceeded the rate of 20 century warming. As man cannot have influenced earlier warming prior to the mid 20th century this destroys a central pillar of the man made global warming argument. It acknowledges, finally, that other influences in recent history have affected climate more than man has since the mid 20th century.

Next, Jones accepts that there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995 and in addition he notes that there has been a negative trend in global temperatures since 2002 of -0.12C per decade although he believes this not to be statistically significant. This seems reasonable given the short time period for the later although I note that alarmists have refused to concede even this much previously. The important point is that Jones is accepting that there has been no warming for over 15 years (since 1995). There goes another argument until now never conceded by alarmist scientists.

Another huge admission is that Jones believes the Medieval Warm Period is open to debate. Anything being open to debate by IPCC scientists is remarkable but this is truly astounding. It goes right to the heart of the entire alarmist camp. I will post separately on this matter as its significance cannot be overstated.

Jones brings nothing to the table to support the theory that man has caused warming since the mid 20th century other than to reference the IPCC. Neither one statement nor one fact does he allude to in support of man made global warming other than to state (response H ) that his support for man made global warming is based on the fact that he cannot explain it.

If that isn’t enough for you to immediately be banging on the front door of your local politician demanding answers as to why they are attempting to spend billions and in some cases trillions of your taxes on this scam then come back soon for my next instalment and we will look at further responses by Phil Jones as he deconstructs the entire man made global warming myth that dishonest scientists and politicians have been gleefully shoving down our collective throats.

Let the sackings begin, the SS Anthropogenic Global Warming, previously flooding now has foredecks awash. The rats are in a panic. It will be interesting to watch these crooks and liars now change tack and reconstruct. They will deny they said many things but fortunately with several millions of pairs of eyes now firmly fixing upon them there will be nowhere for them to run. Indeed I have seen statements by catastrophic alarmists recently who now state that we should not overstate the alarm. I’ll post on those highly placed liars as well.

UPDATE: Comic graphic is by Borepatch. Thank you Borepatch! Borepatch is listed in my links section and is a blog I read daily.

Phil Jones Has Contemplated Suicide

2010-02-14T15:47:00.006+10:00

Phil Jones of "hide the decline fame" and perhaps, until recently, the world's top alarmist scientist and key part of the "team" along with Penn States' Michael "Hocley Stick" Mann was recently quoted by the BBC as contemplating suicide.

Let's just step back a moment and see what Phil had to say onhearing of the death of Australian skeptic John Daley in 2004 as revealed in the leaked Climategate emails available here with analysis by Dr John P Costello.

Phil Jones on death (and publishing data):

January 29, 2004: email 1075403821

Phil Jones forwards to Mike Mann an email advising the sudden death of Australian climate skeptic John Daly:

It is with deep sadness that the Daly Family have to announce the sudden death of John Daly. Condolences may be sent to John’s email account (daly@john-daly.com).
Reported with great sadness
Timo Hameranta, LL.M.
Moderator, Climatesceptics

Jones’s comments:

In an odd way this is cheering news! One other thing about the Climatic Change paper—just found another email—is that McKittrick says it is standard practice in Econometrics journals to provide all the data and computer programs!! According to legal advice, Intellectual Property Rights overrides this.

Yesterday another interview appears on the BBC website in the form of a question and answer series which can be found here. I will be following with a series of posts on Phile Jones' responses to the BBC questions.

UHA Complete 25 Satellite Series Jan 2010

2010-02-11T22:20:00.002+10:00

Here is the complete UAH satellite temperature anomaly series for various regions of the globe ranging from Global to North Polar to South Polar that I have prepared. They are the current latest available spanning Dec 1978 through Jan 2010. Note that I have retained the same scale on all plots so a viewer can get a reasonable comparison of all regions although in order to retain detail of much of the data it results in plots of some regions being off scale.

The previous months graphs can be found here.

EU ETS Failing Says The Guardian – Carbon Tax Touted

2010-02-08T12:38:00.000+10:00

In another blow to Prime Minister Rudd’s emissions trading scheme (ETS) the UK’s Guardian announces the failure of the EU’s struggling ETS to control carbon dioxide emissions.

The European Union's Emissions Trading System (ETS) is failing to deliver vital green investment after a collapse in carbon prices, MPs warn in a report out today.

The environmental audit committee is calling on the government to introduce measures such as a new carbon tax to push the price of carbon from its level of €15 (£13) a tonne to what the MPs see as a more credible price of €100.
Tim Yeo, chairman of the committee, said: "Emissions trading should be helping us to combat climate change, but at the moment the price of carbon simply isn't high enough to make it work. The recession has left many big firms with more carbon allowances than they need and carbon prices have collapsed.

"If the government wants to kick-start serious green investment, it must step in to stop the price of carbon flatlining," the MP added.

Even Friends of the Earth argues the ETS should be dumped in favour of energy efficiency measures and regulation.

Friends of the Earth said the environmental audit committee report was "another nail in the coffin" of the ETS and argued the government should drop its reliance on the scheme in favour of energy efficiency measures and stronger regulation.

Sarah-Jayne Clifton, a climate ¬campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: "Not only is trading failing to drive down emissions, banks are growing fat developing ever more complex trading systems and this risks another financial crash."

Hmmmm ... that sounds a lot like the approach proposed by the Liberal Leader, Tony Abbot. No doubt this is not good news for Kevin Rudd.

BBC on Australia's shifting Climate Politics

2010-02-07T12:38:00.003+10:00

Simon over on Australian Climate Madness describes this BBC video as a must see. He is correct. It provides an excellent snapshot of the change in public opinion that has occurred in Australia with support for taxing the climate falling fast.

I see this amongst my own "associates". Twelve months ago non belief in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) resulted in barely concealed sneers. Such strong opinions on science from people who couldn't plot a simple regression line if their lives depended upon it I must admit surprised me at first. Now a skeptical position receives either open support in the majority of cases or at least a considered hearing. Interestingly the most vocal supporter of climate change that I personally know (who has gone strangely quiet in recent months) also strongly believes the moon landings were faked by NASA and yet has no difficulty in basing their own belief in CAGW on "the science" - none of which they have actually read.

I still find it amazing just how quickly public opinion is shifting. What was only a few months ago political suicide now stands a chance of bringing a government undone. This of course is not certain and anything can happen, but the question is now a political one and that is where the battle is being fought. Actually thinking about it the issue has always been political right back to the original formation of the now discredited political activist body, the UN IPCC.

Any that actually know me who are reading this will recall me saying over the last year or two that as soon as the Australian CAGW believers are asked to put the first $20 of their own money on the table to pay for global warming you will see them turn and run. In Australia you see there is this belief, and it is a strongly held one, that when governments talk of "taxing polluters" that somehow that doesn't mean us i.e. the average taxpayer or citizen. Of course all costs will be passed on to the consumer. We are the polluters. We demand and buy the goods produced. This is being played upon now by PM Kevin Rudd who talks about making “polluters pay”. Kevin defines CO2 as pollution. Naturally if a power station pays for producing CO2 it will raise its electricity prices. It is so simple and yet it seems to have come as a "great big suprise" to many Australians. Perhaps it is the same everywhere.

It seems however that Australians are quickly now realising that it is us who will have to pay for climate beliefs in cold hard cash and many former CAGW believers are turning tail and running fast in the opposite direction. There is a saying here, "money talks, bullshit walks" that is particularly apt in the current political situation.

Kevin Rudd says he will "compensate" low to middle income earners for the extra cost of his great big tax on climate. Two problems:

1. that is where much of the tax dollars come from so it will be a deficit breaking expense - of course he won't do this. The promise will be quickly be broken. In fact it seems from TV interviews it has been broken before it even starts.

2. why would you compensate people when the whole point is to change behaviour by placing a price signal on carbon for heaven’s sake. Compensating consumers distorts the very signal one is trying to produce!

I commend this video to Australian readers or to anyone who wants to get a feel for the political position here as it stands today.

Australia Out of Step on Emissions Trading Scheme

2010-02-06T01:28:00.004+10:00

As the time for another vote on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Emmissions Trading Scheme approaches debate is "warming up".

From today's Australian:

AUSTRALIA is looking increasingly isolated in the global community as Kevin Rudd presses on with his government's emissions trading scheme.

US President Barack Obama admitted just two days ago he might have to abandon his proposal for emissions trading in favour of direct action in order to steer his carbon-cutting plans through the US Senate.

None of the world's top five polluters -- the US, China, Russia, India and Japan -- has an ETS

In perhaps the worst performace of any minister I have witnessed, Penny Wong managed to avoid answering ANY questions on the ETS. She was being pushed by ABC Lateline interviewer Tony Jones for the cost to consumers of increased electricity prices under scenarios ranging from a 5% cap to a 60% cap on emmissions but unfortunately for we Australians it is information that Penny Wong will not tell us. She just wants us to take the tax hikes on faith - much like her climate "science".

Read the transcript of Penny's disgraceful performance here. I urge you to read it. You will not have seen anything like it before.

Penny must think that details of her climate tax scheme are only to be available on a need to know basis. I will be one of the unfortunates paying for Penny's radical activism and I NEED TO KNOW. If the government doesn't trust us with their costings and modelling are we going to trust them to put their hand in our back pocket? Australian's are not that stupid Penny.

The only reason Penny would keep the details of costs from us is that it is going to cost AN ARM AND A LEG. Time to email, phone, write your sitting members and senators now and make sure Sneaky Penny and her delusional boss Kevin Rudd don't get their way on this one.

Could the pair of you PLEASE stop saying "Let me just say this/can I just say this" etc etc etc ad infinitum in interviews. It is nauseatting, pompous and entirely unnecessary.

ALERT: NIWA Did Not Keep Records of Adjustments to Temperatures

2010-02-03T00:41:00.003+10:00

A press release by the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) reveals that New Zealand’s weather bureau (NIWA: The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research) no longer holds any records supporting its “adjustments” and manipulation of its official raw temperature observations. From Scoop,

"In December, NZCSC issued a formal request for the schedule of adjustments under the Official Information Act 1982, specifically seeking copies of “the original worksheets and/or computer records used for the calculations”. On 29 January, NIWA responded that they no longer held any internal records, and merely referred to the scientific literature."

Well isn’t that a surprise. NIWA “adjusts” the official temperature record of New Zealand which shows no measureable change in average temperature for the last 150 years and ends up with a graph of “adjusted” temperatures showing a sharp warming trend. In other words the entire warming trend in the NZ record was in the NIWA “adjustments” but they do not have any record of the adjustments (the dog ate my data). NIWA cannot justify the warming trend it built into its published data.

For a scientific organisation this is a "travesty".

“The only inference that can be drawn from this is that NIWA has casually altered its temperature series from time to time, without ever taking the trouble to maintain a continuous record. The result is that the official temperature record has been adjusted on unknown dates for unknown reasons, so that its probative value is little above that of guesswork. In such a case, the only appropriate action would be reversion to the raw data record, perhaps accompanied by a statement of any known issues,” said Terry Dunleavy, secretary of NZCSC.

“NIWA’s website carries the raw data collected from representative temperature stations, which disclose no measurable change in average temperature over a period of 150 years. But elsewhere on the same website, NIWA displays a graph of the same 150-year period showing a sharp warming trend. The difference between these two official records is a series of undisclosed NIWA-created ‘adjustments’.

...

“Well qualified climate scientist members of our coalition believe that NIWA has forfeited confidence in the credibility of its temperature recording procedures, and that it cannot be trusted to try to cover up its own ineptitude by in-house adjustments. What is needed is open access in the public domain to all of the known reasons for post-reading adjustments to enable independent climate analysts to make their own comparative assessments of temperature variations throughout New Zealand since the middle of the 19th century,” said Mr Dunleavy.

New Zealand’s adjusted temperature data is now faith based. It is mere guesswork. I support Terry Dunleavy, secretary of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition in calling for NIWA to dump its unverifiable adjusted temperate data.

Just what kind of credibility can NIWA expect to have when it does not bother to maintain detailed documentation of the critical adjustments to its own data? The answer is none.

IPCC Chief Pachauri Writes Smut Novel of Sexual Adventures of a Climatologist

2010-01-31T15:03:00.003+10:00

You can’t make this stuff up.

Rajendra Pachauri was apparently too busy to check into glaciergate problems in December. We now know why. Instead of proofreading climate articles, Pachauri has been busy launching a softcore novel about the sexual adventures of a climate expert in his late 60s.

He must be following in our beloved Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd's footsteps. Kevin recently found time to write a children's book.

Pachauri's novel is called Return to Almora. Here are a few extracts:

By page 16, climatologist Sanjay is ready for his first liaison with May in a hotel room in Nainital. “She then led him into the bedroom,” writes Dr Pachauri.

“She removed her gown, slipped off her nightie and slid under the quilt on his bed… Sanjay put his arms around her and kissed her, first with quick caresses and then the kisses becoming longer and more passionate.

“May slipped his clothes off one by one, removing her lips from his for no more than a second or two.

“Afterwards she held him close. ‘Sandy, I’ve learned something for the first time today. You are absolutely superb after meditation. Why don’t we make love every time immediately after you have meditated?’.”

More follows, including Sanjay and friends queuing to have sexual encounters with Sajni, an impoverished but willing local: “Sanjay saw a shapely dark-skinned girl lying on Vinay’s bed. He was overcome by a lust that he had never known before … He removed his clothes and began to feel Sajni’s body, caressing her voluptuous breasts.”

Now go take a cold shower.

No doubt there will be many budding climatologists enrolling in Obfuscation 101 to get in on the hot action before it is too late.

Have they all gone barking mad?

Puchauri: "Let Them Eat Cake"

2010-01-31T14:00:00.005+10:00

How does global warming luminary and Chairman of the UN’s IPCC travel from his home to the office 1 mile away? Does he:

A Walk

B Ride a bicycle

C Take public transport

D Drive his eco-electric car

E Drive one of his traditional cars

F Have a chauffeur drive him in an eco-electric car

G Have a chauffeur drive him in a traditional car

Suprise! It is G, have a chauffeur drive him in a traditional petrol consuming car the grand distance of 1 mile to the office.

It is always amusing to see how, without fail, those that tell we peasants to catch the bus or cycle to work always have a reason to use private cars and private jets to get around. The IPCC provides us with tips on how to cut our carbon footprint and one would think it’s Chairman would be leading the charge in his own backyard. There is always a good reason why those peddling the lie of immenant global catastrophy do not use the bus, walk or cycle.

"I'm very busy"
"It is not convenient"
"It is too wet/hot/cold/windy"
"I need to carry papers"
"I have a lot of meetings"
"I don't have time"
"I am too old"
"I am too important"

Meaning YOU are none of those, peasant. Laughable if it wasn't so pathetic and potentially costly to taxpayers.

“Let Them Eat Cake”

Pachauri jokes about his carbon footprint.

He spends much of his time travelling and speaking on climate change at international fora and jokes he "lives at 30,000 feet".

Jokes?!! His emissions (I mean emissions due to him) are destroying the world -doesn't he take his own IPCC's reports seriously?

Even as he constantly roams the world putting tons and tons of planet-killing CO2 in the atmosphere, while joking about it, he wants you to "give up cars or all of the other good things in life that represent achievement for human civilization".

For Pachauri this whole carbon catastrophy is a joke.

The joke is on us.

I Don't Give A Damn About My Reputation! - Joan Jett

UN Based Claims on Student Dissertation and Magazine Article

2010-01-31T12:44:00.002+10:00

And from the UK press:

UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and magazine article.

The United Nations' expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world's mountain tops on a student's dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

The revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to issue a humiliating apology earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global warming.
The IPCC's remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of scientific evidence on climate change.

In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.

However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.

The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master's degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.

Let’s refresh our memories of a few lies that the Chairman of the IPCC Dr Pachauri has told which relates directly to the above embarrassing findings. This is from a meeting of the Commenwealth Club in June 2008,

PACHAURI: “The point is you have a transparent, comprehensive, extremely widespread process involving the best scientists and experts from all over the world telling you that climate change is for real.

“And this is not something that the authors working on IPCC reports have invented. This is based on peer-reviewed literature. That’s the manner in which the IPCC functions.

“We don’t pick up a newspaper article and based on that come up with our findings. This is on the basis of very rigorous research which has stood the test of scrutiny through peer reviews.

Well in fact your IPCC does pic up magazine articles and come up with findings Dr Pachauri. You are a liar.

For the missing in action global alarmist, Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, this will be more devastating news that he has yet to address with the Australian people. Recall that in November 2009 Kevin Rudd met with Pachauri in India at Pachauri’s TERI headquarters and committed tens of millions of Australian taxpayer dollars in funding. Refer to this article in The Australian,

During his lightning 36-hour visit to India last month Kevin Rudd met with Dr Pachauri at the TERI headquarters in New Delhi where he announced $71 million in funding for joint Indian-Australian scientific research and fellowship programs.

While the aged in Australia wait for life saving operations and decent aged care, while taxpayers wait for hospital services and Australia’s massive debt remains unpaid, PM Kevin Rudd continues to emit Australian taxpayer dollars to deeply suspect overseas organisations for no benefit to Australians faster than the CO2 emissions are emitted from the exhaust of his jet while he trots around the gloabe embaressing the people of Australia with his sycophantic ways.

Where are you Kevin? You relied on the IPCC assessments for Australia’s climate policy and the expenditure of vast sums of money. What have YOU to say, as Prime Minister, on the continuing revelations re the IPCC? Millions of Australians await your answer with interest – however none of us are holding our breath.

Here’s a screen capture of Kevin meeting with his mate Pachauri in India taken from a video (left of shot) before handing over $71M dollars on behalf of Australian taxpayers.

BOM: Heat NOT Blamed on Global Warming

2010-01-31T11:31:00.001+10:00

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) blames Melbourne’s equal warmest overnight temperature of 30.6 degrees, on January 12 on the heat island effect. The previous time the city was that hot overnight was February 1, 1902.

The Age newspaper cites a meteorologist at the bureau, Harvey Stern,

Melbourne recorded its equal warmest overnight temperature, 30.6 degrees, on January 12. The previous time the city was that hot overnight was February 1, 1902.

A meteorologist at the bureau, Harvey Stern, said that Melbourne suffered from a heat island effect, in which a city is warmer than the surrounding countryside.

This was the case especially at night, because of heat stored in bricks and concrete and trapped between close-packed buildings.

I am stunned if that is correct firstly because BOM isn't blaming Global Warming and secondly that the urban heat island effect directly receives the blame. With faults in the 2007 IPCC's AR4 now pouring out I guess it is not suprising that attributions of weather events are now, shall we say, possibly becoming more circumspect.

A shot in the dark by BOM? We shall see.

WSJ: U.K. Says University Broke Law on Turning Over Data

2010-01-30T01:37:00.001+10:00

Today's Wall Street Journal:

U.K. authorities said the British university at the center of a controversy over hacked emails on climate-change research broke the law by failing to comply with requests for raw data about global warming, but that too much time has elapsed for the institution to be prosecuted.

The U.K.'s Information Commissioner's Office said breaches of the Freedom of Information Act require action by the authorities within six months of an offense taking place.

The requests for information by climate researchers were submitted in 2007 and 2008, and the alleged efforts to thwart them came to light only recently.

The university, not individuals who may have held back information, would have been subject to prosecution.

The university, which hasn't admitted wrongdoing, said the ICO's opinion that it had breached the law was a "source of grave concern to the University." The university's vice chancellor, Edward Acton, said it was scrutinizing its handling of Freedom of Information Act requests as part of the independent review.

There is No Frakking "Scientific Consensus" on Global Warming: Greenpeace and the Nobel-Winning Climate Report

2010-01-29T23:22:00.002+10:00

There is No Frakking "Scientific Consensus" on Global Warming: Greenpeace and the Nobel-Winning Climate Report

Considered the climate Bible by governments around the world, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is meant to be a scientific analysis of the most authoritative research.

Instead, it references literature generated by Greenpeace - an organization known more for headline-grabbing publicity stunts than sober-minded analysis. (Eight IPCC-cited Greenpeace publications are listed at the bottom of this post.)

In one section of this Nobel-winning report, climate change is linked to coral reef degradation. The sole source for this claim? A Greenpeace report titled "Pacific in Peril" (see Hoegh-Guldberg below). Here the report relies on a Greenpeace document to establish the lower-end of an estimate involving solar power plants (Aringhoff).

When discussing solar energy elsewhere, the report references two Greenpeace documents in one sentence. Here it uses a Greenpeace paper as its sole means of documenting where the "main wind-energy investments" are located globally (Wind).

...

Thus, we read on page 14 that, "According to a WHO study, as many as 160,000 people are dying each year as a result of climate change." Should we care to double-check this claim, we're on our own.

As incredible as it sounds, this publication/brochure is itself cited in the Nobel-winning IPCC report as evidence that a particular statement is true. Appearing in the list below as Greenpeace 2006, it is one of two references mentioned in a single sentence, as discussed above.

Which begs an important question: how did it get into the same room with serious scholars? Why would it even be under consideration by a scientific body tasked with producing an assessment of the latest scientific research?

There appears to be an interesting chronology here. First Teske is granted "scientific expert reviewer" status by the IPCC. Second, a non-academic, non-peer-reviewed document in which he was closely involved gets added to the climate change research canon by virtue of it being cited by the Nobel-winning report.

Third, Teske co-authors a new Greenpeace report that receives an extra measure of prestige when it features a forward authored by the high-profile IPCC chairman. Fourth, in a final flourish, Teske - like his Greenpeace colleauge von Goerne - gets elevated to lead author status of yet another IPCC special report (on renewable energy) due to be published this year.

Where does Greenpeace stop and the IPCC begin? Sometimes it's difficult to tell.

Read the link and see the list of Greenpeace citations used in IPCC AR4.

Once We Were Climate Alarmists

2010-01-28T22:41:00.008+10:00

And so it came to pass , the great exodus had begun, and all manner of scoundrel hid among the crowd hoping to go unnoticed, hoping to change their colours over time so as to escape recognition when the judgment came upon them.

Two days ago I posted that two high profile scientists were changing their rhetoric. First was UK Chief Scientist Prof John Beddington who no longer thought it was healthy to dismiss skeptics, called for a new paradigm of “openness” and stated that climate science was fundamentally uncertain. Then there was Canada’s most well known alarmist climate scientist Andrew Weaver turning on the IPCC chairman Pachauria and calling for his resignation declaring the IPCC tainted by political advocacy and calling for its approach to science to be overhauled.

There has also been an editorial in a recent leading alarmist journal, Nature, calling for more engagement with skeptics.

Obviously the IPCC has been severely damaged and its credibility is in tatters. The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, despite stating that man made global warming was the greatest moral issue of our time late last year, has failed to make any speech since Copenhagen on this great issue. His silence is deafening.

As the rats push and shove to desert the sinking ship, the SS IPCC, we can return to the subject of my first post on this blog, Australia’s Chief Scientist, Penny Sackett. Penny Sackett is also singing to a different tune from that of only 2 months ago.

This is what she says now in the Australian (28 Jan 2010):

Professor Sackett said there was no real dispute within the scientific community about the reality of climate change but she wanted non-scientists to have greater access to the evidence to help inform the necessary public debate about crafting policy responses to the problem.

"The public must be provided with the best possible advice," Professor Sackett said.

"It must have available to it some understanding or the ability to develop an understanding about which issues the science is quite clear on and where there is less precision in our understanding."

For example, Professor Sackett said, while the reality of climate change was clearly understood, there was less certainty about its effects on rainfall patterns in Australia. More research was required before conclusions could be drawn with any scientific confidence.

But as recently as 25 November 2009 she was saying something totally different:

“For example, regional climate change projections indicate that we are likely to see an increase in the frequency and intensity of wildfires (predominately in south-eastern Australia), an increase in the severity of cyclones, decreased rainfall (except in the far north), increased incidence of drought, and an increase in extreme temperatures.”

Note that well. Two months ago Sackett was saying that global warming would cause, amongst other things, decreased rainfall and increased drought in Australia and two months later she says more research was required before conclusions could be drawn with any scientific confidence.

Of course Penny is known for her hysterical alarmism. On 4 December 2009 she predicted that in 5 years (by December 2014) the planet would face disastrous global warming. I was so impressed with this prediction I even placed a countdown clock on my original post about this when I started my blog so I can schedule my immanent destruction. I’ve blocked out 4 December 2014 in my Outlook calendar as “unavailable due to disastrous global warming for remainder of century”.

One observer has analysed her position,

Sackett has placed herself in a difficult position. She has realised she in a hole and has sensibly stopped digging, but still clings to the “science is settled” mantra. At the same time, she has put herself at odds with Rudd’s outlandish claims.

Even Penny Sackett’s rainfall prediction of November 2009 seems at odds with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) which is also known for its alarmist announcements. If we look at the graph from its Annual Australian Climate Statement for 2009 reproduced below we see that in fact the BOM graphs shows the last decade to be the second wettest decade on record and 2000 the wettest year on record in a decade which, according to BOM’s pasteurised and homogenised data is the warmest decade on record. This is completely at odds with Penny’s statement. Her prior statements on expected sea level rises are also overstated and alarmist in nature.

Why is it these three very prominent scientists in their respective countries are now singing a different tune? Have they detected a groundswell of opinion placing them in danger of being marginalised? Why would that concern them if their motives were objective science? Perhaps they are merely heeding Nature magazine's call for engagement of contrary points of view. Whatever their motives it is certain that they won’t be the last to deny their alarmist beliefs so strongly held until a matter of days ago.

Although not a religious person, I am reminded of the story in Mathew of Peter denying Christ.

Then he began to curse and to swear, "I don't know the man!"
Immediately the cock crowed. (26:75)Peter remembered the word which Jesus had said to him, "Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times." He went out and wept bitterly.

Bill Gates on the Human Cost of Climate Funding

2010-01-28T06:46:00.000+10:00

In his Second Annual Letter, Bill Gates who know conducts innovative aid related programs through his private foundation full time has some very interesting things to say. Amongst them are some thoughts relating to the possible financial and human affects of diverting funds from aid to climate change. He calculates that if only 1% of the proposed $100 billion funding goal of Copenhagen comes from vaccine funding then 700,000 children could die.

Read what Bill Gates has to say.

“Deficits are not the only reason that aid budgets might change. Governments will also be increasing the money they spend to help reduce global warming. The final communiqué of the Copenhagen Summit, held last December, talks about mobilizing $10 billion per year in the next three years and $100 billion per year by 2020 for developing countries, which is over three quarters of all foreign aid now given by the richest countries.

I am concerned that some of this money will come from reducing other categories of foreign aid, especially health. If just 1 percent of the $100 billion goal came from vaccine funding, then 700,000 more children could die from preventable diseases.”

I have seen people scoff at the idea that ill considered funding for climate change could cause millions to die. Many seem to think that resources are endless and that incorrect allocation of those resources will have no consequences. I urge that Bill’s words be given proper consideration.

We have in fact already seen aid funds diverted to climate in the way bill suggests. In the Guardian on 25 Jan 2010,

“A £1.5bn pledge by Gordon Brown to help poor countries cope with the ravages of climate change will drain funds from existing overseas aid programmes to improve health, education and water supplies, the government admitted today.

The move, revealed in an email exchange between campaigners and an official at the Department for International Development (DfiD), appears to undermine repeated government pledges that such climate aid should be additional to existing overseas development aid (ODA).”

On his personal web site in an article referred to on this blog recently Bill proposes that if global warming is a problem (and he does not state that it is) the appropriate course of action is innovation. Governments roll would be to fund basic R & D. Bill is convinced that within 20 years we could find a replacement technology for electricity and power production that would be less costly than coal. He predicts that it would only take another 20 years to bring that to market and replace older technologies. The focus on ineffective strategies (see prior post on this blog) should be replaced by focusing and harnessing the massive parallelism of our industrial, technological and economic base to bring about the future technologies we need.

“One area that I have been spending a lot of personal time on is energy and its effect on climate. The most important innovation required to avoid climate change will be a way of producing electricity that is cheaper than coal and that emits no greenhouse gases. There will be a huge market for this, and governments should supply large amounts of funding for basic R&D. Because the foundation invests in areas where there is not a big market, I have not yet seen a way that we can play a unique role here, but I am investing in several ideas outside the foundation. I am surprised that the climate debate hasn’t focused more on encouraging R&D since it is critical to getting to zero emissions. Still, I think it is likely that out of the many possible approaches, at least one scalable innovation will emerge in the next 20 years and be installed widely in the 20 years after that.”

At this time there is no hard evidence to prove that CO2 is causing global warming so I think that should be the first priority. There is no point fixing a problem that does not exist. If that is established in the future then I think Bill Gates has broadly mapped out the best approach we have seen to date.

As Dr Roger Pielke Jr says on his blog,

“Obviously, 700,000 dead kids per $1 billion is a big, big number. What is climate policy worth to you in such terms?”

UK Chief Scientist: Climate Change “Fundamentally Uncertain”

2010-01-27T22:40:00.005+10:00

Not one but two leading alarmist climate scientists desert ship

The credibility of the IPCC has reached a new all time low. Another leading warmist scientist, this time the UK’s Chief Scientist Prof John Beddington is deserting ship.

The impact of global warming has been exaggerated by some scientists and there is an urgent need for more honest disclosure of the uncertainty of predictions about the rate of climate change, according to the Government’s chief scientific adviser.

Beddington states in the Times Online:

“I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper skepticism. Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can’t be changed.”

...

“I think, wherever possible, we should try to ensure there is openness and that source material is available for the whole scientific community.”

Climate science fundamentally uncertain!? That is the first time we have heard anything but the mantra, the science is settled from an alarmist scientist. Utterly astonishing. Just as astonishing:

Mike Hulme, Professor of Climate Change at the University of East Anglia, said: “Climate scientists get kudos from working on an issue in the public eye but with that kudos comes responsibility. Being open with data is part of that responsibility.”

It is astonishing because from the Climategate emails leaked in December 2009 the now stood down Prof Phil "Hide the Decline" Jones former head of the CRU at the University of East Anglia we have this email response from him after repeated request for data:

“We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"

This talk of openess is totally new for the alarmist scientists. Obviously seeing the way the wind is blowing the more astute are now urging a total change of approach. The IPCC has obviously taken some heavy damage in the last couple of weeks with revelation of known errors being published for political reasons.

See the Times for the full article .

Canada’s leading climate scientist is also deserting ship! When not one but two leading Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming admirals desert the IPCC you can be sure it is damaged. These two scientists, as well as some others are pulling back now while the going is good.

Read about Canada’s Andrew Weaver in the National Post :

A catastrophic heat wave appears to be closing in on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. How hot is it getting in the scientific kitchen where they’ve been cooking the books and spicing up the stew pots? So hot, apparently, that Andrew Weaver, probably Canada’s leading climate scientist, is calling for replacement of IPCC leadership and institutional reform.

If Andrew Weaver is heading for the exits, it’s a pretty sure sign that the United Nations agency is under monumental stress. Mr. Weaver, after all, has been a major IPCC science insider for years. He is Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis at the University of Victoria, mastermind of one of the most sophisticated climate modelling systems on the planet, and lead author on two recent landmark IPCC reports. For him to say, as he told Canwest News yesterday, that there has been some “dangereous crossing” of the line between climate advocacy and science at the IPCC is stunning in itself.

Not only is Mr. Weaver an IPCC insider. He has also, over the years, generated his own volume of climate advocacy that often seemed to have crossed that dangereous line between hype and science. It is Mr. Weaver, for example, who said the IPCC’s 2007 science report — the one now subject to some scrutiny —“isn’t a smoking gun; climate is a battalion of intergalactic smoking missiles.”

He has also made numerous television appearances linking current weather and temperature events with global warming, painting sensational pictures and dramatic links. “When you see these [temperature] numbers, it’s screaming out at you: ‘This is global warming!

Abandon Ship, it is every man for himself.

There is No Frakking "Scientific Consensus" on Global Warming: More Dodgy Citations in the Nobel-Winning IPCC Report

2010-01-27T21:42:00.000+10:00

There is No Frakking "Scientific Consensus" on Global Warming: More Dodgy Citations in the Nobel-Winning IPCC Report

See this article for a large list of non peer reviewed citations in the 2007 IPCC AR4 report. It is astonising.

Bill Gates Calls for Innovation not Insulation

2010-01-27T21:30:00.000+10:00

Bill Gates has published a thoughtful article on global warming on his personal website.

Why We Need Innovation, Not Just Insulation

People often present two timeframes that we should have as goals for CO2 reduction – 30% (off of some baseline) by 2025 and 80% by 2050.

I believe the key one to achieve is 80% by 2050.

But we tend to focus on the first one since it is much more concrete.

We don’t distinguish properly between things that put you on a path to making the 80% goal by 2050 and things that don’t really help.

To make the 80% goal by 2050 we are going to have to reduce emissions from transportation and electrical production in participating countries down to zero.

You will still have emissions from other activities including domestic animals, making fertilizer, and decay processes.

There will still be countries that are too poor to participate.

If the goal is to get the transportation and electrical sectors down to zero emissions you clearly need innovation that leads to entirely new approaches to generating power.

Should society spend a lot of time trying to insulate houses and telling people to turn off lights or should it spend time on accelerating innovation?

If addressing climate change only requires us to get to the 2025 goal, then efficiency would be the key thing.

But you can never insulate your way to anything close to zero no matter what advocates of resource efficiency say. You can never reduce consumerism to anything close to zero.

Because 2025 is too soon for innovation to be completed and widely deployed, behavior change still matters.

Still, the amount of CO2 avoided by these kinds of modest reduction efforts will not be the key to what happens with climate change in the long run.

In fact it is doubtful that any such efforts in the rich countries will even offset the increase coming from richer lifestyles in places like China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, etc.

Innovation in transportation and electricity will be the key factor.

One of the reasons I bring this up is that I hear a lot of climate change experts focus totally on 2025 or talk about how great it is that there is so much low hanging fruit that will make a difference.

This mostly focuses on saving a little bit of energy, which by itself is simply not enough. The need to get to zero emissions in key sectors almost never gets mentioned. The danger is people will think they just need to do a little bit and things will be fine.

If CO2 reduction is important, we need to make it clear to people what really matters – getting to zero.

With that kind of clarity, people will understand the need to get to zero and begin to grasp the scope and scale of innovation that is needed.

However all the talk about renewable portfolios, efficiency, and cap and trade tends to obscure the specific things that need to be done.

To achieve the kinds of innovations that will be required I think a distributed system of R&D with economic rewards for innovators and strong government encouragement is the key. There just isn’t enough work going on today to get us to where we need to go.

The world is distracted from what counts on this issue in a big way.

POST OF THE DAY: More on IPCC Glacier Fiasco

2010-01-27T18:00:00.003+10:00

Bill Newstead on WUWT (11:38:24) :

I don’t believe anybody has commented on this particularly shocking aspect of the IPCC glacier debacle as reported in the Times:

Times Online

“But Syed Hasnain, the Indian glaciologist erroneously quoted as making the 2035 prediction, said that responsibility had to lie with them. “It is the lead authors — blame goes to them,” he told The Times. “There are many mistakes in it. It is a very poorly made report.”

Professor Hasnain, who was not involved in drafting the IPCC report, said that he noticed some of the mistakes when he first read the relevant section in 2008.

That was also the year he joined The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in Delhi, which is headed by Dr Pachauri.

He said he realised that the 2035 prediction was based on an interview he gave to the New Scientist magazine in 1999, although he blamed the journalist for assigning the actual date.

He said that he did not tell Dr Pachauri because he was not working for the IPCC and was busy with his own programmes at the time.

“I was keeping quiet as I was working here,” he said. “My job is not to point out mistakes. And you know the might of the IPCC. What about all the other glaciologists around the world who did not speak out?” ”

So, it appears that a scientist who knew the report was rubbish kept quiet because he worked for Pachauri and because you do not point out mistakes if you know the might of the IPCC. This chimes perfectly with the atmosphere of bullying, intimidation and jobs for the boys revealed in the CRU emails.

I am amazed that the grown-ups of the scientific community (mathematicians, physicists, chemists, astronomers etc) seem content to stand back and allow the reputation of science and the scientific method to be trashed in the minds of the general public. It is high time they stepped in and provided some adult supervision.

Excellent points Bill.

Australian IPCC Author Prof Andy “Hide the Funding” Pitman cries “No Fair”

2010-01-27T00:15:00.007+10:00

So we now have Andy “Hide the Funding” Pitman failing to be able to discuss facts and instead resorting to describing his own absurd version of reality in an ABC interview. He claims scientists for the IPCC receive no funding. Did $63,400 in funding somehow slip your mind Andy during the publicly broadcast interview with the ABC?

Read Andrew Bolt’s article and see Andy fail to mention his funding whilst accusing skeptics of being unemployed and "so well funded". Excuse me Andy, I think your slip is showing.

SOURCE: ANDREW BOLT

PITMAN CRIES POOR

Professor Andy Pitman, an Australian IPCC author, says his side is losing the global warming debate simply because they’re all selfless angels, while the other side are corrupt, deceitful and unemployed conspiracists:

ELEANOR HALL: How much damage then do you think this sort of sloppiness on the part of the IPCC has done?

ANDY PITMAN: Oh, my personal view is that climate scientists are losing the fight with the sceptics. That the sceptics are so well funded, so well organised, have nothing else to do. They kind of don’t have day jobs. They can put all of their efforts into misinforming and miscommunicating climate science to the general public whereas the climate scientists have day jobs and this actually isn’t one of them.

All of the efforts you do in an IPCC report is done out of hours, voluntarily for no funding and no pay whereas the sceptics are being funded to put out full-scale misinformation campaigns and are doing a damn good job I think. They are doing a superb job at misinforming and miscommunicating the general public, state and federal governments.
That explains everything to Pitman’s satisfaction. The absence of any proof for his absurd claims explains everything to the rest of us.

Oh, and here’s a list of Pitman’s grants. My word, but he seems well funded by the warmist lobby. Oddly enough for a man who claims he does his IPCC work “out of hours, voluntarily for no funding”, his long list of grants include these:

1999-01
Australian Greenhouse Office (for costs incurred as lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change $15,000

2004-7
Australian Greenhouse Office (for costs incurred as lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change $48,400

Look, it’s just a wild hunch, but might it be that Pitman’s side is losing because the evidence is growing that its arguments are exaggerated or even false?

One would assume that a core ability of a scientist would be to address the facts but instead Andy Pitman falls immediately into schoolboy name calling and bullying and fails totally to address facts. Is this the kind of "scientist" we want representing Australia at taxpayer's expense at the UN? Perhaps indeed he is, afterall, a perfect fit for the IPCC based on the many revealed errors in the 2007 IPCC's AR4 report.

Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming scientists seem to do an extremely poor job of communicating their arguments to the public. Surely one can be found that doesn't decend into gratuitious name calling in a public broadcast. Perhaps not.

Why are so many of the IPCC “scientists” so misleading and even dishonest? Are there any amongst them that can open their mouths and speak, well, the actual truth for a change?

The evidence is starting to show that the answer to that is no.

IPCC: Oops!... I Did It Again. Yeeeahh, yeaah, yeah yeah.

2010-01-26T14:50:00.004+10:00

Now let’s see where were we? Oh yes, the science is settled and we rely on the 2007 IPCC AR4 “peer reviewed” by “thousands” of scientists report.

Well not peer reviewed in the traditional hard core sense of E = MC^2 but peer reviewed in the IPCC touchy feely sense of “we quote from non-reviewed activist advertisements from the WWF”.

A few highlights of The Story so Far:

Prof Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann – under investigation by Penn State University.

Climategate – the “leak” is strongly suspected of coming from within the CRU and is not a hack.

Prof Phil “Hide the Decline” Jones – under investigation and stood down as head of the CRU.

Chairman of IPCC Raj Pachauri – denies Glaciergate after scientists debunk widely circulated lie in UN report that glaciers would melt by 2035 calling it “Voodoo science” and following further pressure later relents admitting “mistake” but everything else is “robust”.

Pachauri blames lead IPCC author for Claciergate “mistake”, lead author blames reviewing scientists, reviewing scientists blame 500 external reviewers. Scientist advises he had advised the panel in writing of the error prior to publication. IPCC scientist says he never got the letter. Conclusion, the Easter Bunny is to blame.

Pachauri states he will not step down as financial gains are linked to carbon fiasco through his TERI group.

IPCC report – hundreds of non-peer reviewed WWF “sources” are disclosed by skeptics as fraudulently cited prime sources.

The Times – UN wrongly links global warming to natural disasters.

For today's instalment we have:

IPCC: Oops!.... I Did It Again (sorry Britney)

SOURCE: EUREFERENDUM

. It is a classic.

And Now For Amazongate

The IPCC also made false predictions on the Amazon rain forests, referenced to a non peer-reviewed paper produced by an advocacy group working with the WWF. This time though, the claim made is not even supported by the report and seems to be a complete fabrication

Thus, following on from "Glaciergate", where the IPCC grossly exaggerated the effects of global warming on Himalayan glaciers – backed by a reference to a WWF report - we now have "Amazongate", where the IPCC has grossly exaggerated the effects of global warming on the Amazon rain forest.

The author Richard North follows the IPCC citations to the original source and what does he find? The “peer reviewed scientific literature” was authored by a journalist and a policy hack. No more comment is necessary.

Just keep repeating this, “but the science is robust”. Ummm... yeah whatever.

I suspect that there are many “scientists” currently scratching out references in their CV’s to being an IPCC “reviewer”. Good job boys and girls. It’s back to Science 101 for the lot of you.

Check out the cartoon on Richard North’s EUREFERENDUM page linked here

UPDATE: NB: See WUWT

Monckton on Australia’s Sunrise Show

2010-01-26T14:49:00.002+10:00

It is a brave or stupid person that attempts to debate Christopher Monckton publicly on global warming and climate change. Monckton has an encyclopaedic knowledge of his subject and routinely trashes “qualified scientists” who usually fail to be able to cite and discuss the facts from memory.

Check out this brief “debate” on Australia’s Sunrise show. The interviewer is Koch, a warmist presenter. Even so we see Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) scientists offer himself up to the sacrificial alter that is Monckton and shown to be sadly lacking.

See at around the 2:30 mark on the video where climatologist Ben McNeil after stating that the “science is over; it’s not debateable” becomes speechless opening and closing his mouth repeatedly like a stranded goldfish, but nothing comes out. Perhaps there is nothing inside to come out? After Ben fails to present ANY actual facts conclusively linking greenhouse gas to global warming and even shooting himself in the foot by quoting a 150 year temperature rise that could have nothing to do with industrial activity going back that far (and don’t forget he is a “professional” scientist, Monckton is not, although he is published), Monckton rattles off detailed and fairly complex maths on climatology. Ben, had he been at all prepared and widely read would have known about these facts as I do, and been in a position to discuss them rationally. At near collapse with his self inflicted virtual reality imploding about him, and failing to put forward any actual arguments, Ben childishly reverts to squealing,

“to somehow discredit what we ahh do in our lives, in our professional lives is outrageous!”

Now that’s a withering argument supporting catestrohphic anthropogenic global warming if I ever heard one. Basically Ben is saying, I can’t be wrong and I can’t be questioned! The fact is thousands of scientists, including some of the greatest scientific experts currently living like physicist Professor Emeritus Freeman Dyson do question your “evidence” Ben. Are you saying that Dyson, who is acknowledged as possibly the greatest currently living scientist on the planet, is outrageous because he doesn’t agree with you Ben? That is not an argument Ben. Enough said.

Monckton remains cool and collected throughout whilst calmly demolishing the weak Ben McNeil, professional climatologist, for the audience in the limited time available.

Just after half way through the debate, Ben throws in the towel and turns back to Koch who tries to come to his rescue. Monckton once again scores with telling points.

Just a tip for CAGW scientists who want to step into the ring with Monckton; although you are paid to know your facts by us, the taxpayers of Australia, when you go toe to toe with Lord Monckton you are going to have to stop writing those fanciful papers about global extinction and other global catastrophies and actually know your facts or you are not going to last through the first round.

Ding Ding, Next!

On Monckton's last point where he states of the millions of lives that could be lost through diverting funds from relif and medical aide to a non existant CAGW issue, I iwll be posting two articles by Bill Gates this week, the second of which deals with this very issue. A lot of people in government jobs like scientists seem to have no idea that resources are limited and that diverting even more resources to CAGW will indeed have effects elsewhere. To simplify for CAGW scientists, imagine resources are cookies in a cookie jar. The more you take out the less you have left. Get it?

Glaciers that haven’t Heard the News about Global Warming

2010-01-26T11:15:00.002+10:00

The glaciers are melting! The glaciers are melting! The glaciers are…uhhhhh…never mind.

Turns out the IPCC’s chicken little story that all the Himalayan glaciers are melting is just another exaggeration. Or fraud. Take your choice. You know, like the stats coming out of East Anglia CRU. And its claim that Antarctica is melting. And that Greenland’s ice cap is melting. And that sea levels are rising. And that the polar bears are dying. Fact is, some glaciers are retreating, but many others around the world are growing.

“But how is that possible? How can glaciers be growing when the world is warming up like a package of Jiffy-Pop in a microwave?”

Here are a dozen glaciers (or groups of glaciers) around the world that are growing almost as quickly as global warming skepticism.
...

Go here to get the full story about 12 glacial groups here to get the full story about 12 glacial groups comprising hundreds of glaciers that you will rarely hear about.

The first group of glaciers that aren’t melting are 230 (two hundred and thirty) Himalayan glaciers.

From Discovery:

Himalayan Glaciers Seem to Be Growing

In the Western Himalayas, a group of some 230 glaciers are bucking the global warming trend.

Perched on the soaring Karakoram mountains in the Western Himalayas, a group of some 230 glaciers are bucking the global warming trend. They're growing.

Throughout much of the Tibetan Plateau, high-altitude glaciers are dwindling in the face of rising temperatures. The situation is potentially dire for the hundreds of millions of people living in China, India and throughout southeast Asia who depend on the glaciers for their water supply.

But in the rugged western corner of the plateau, the story is different, according to a new study. Among legendary peaks of Mt. Everest like K2 and Nanga Parbat, glaciers with a penthouse view of the world are growing, and have been for almost three decades.

"These are the biggest mid-latitude glaciers in the world," John Shroder of the University of Nebraska-Omaha said. "And all of them are either holding still, or advancing."

When Shroder and a team of researchers examined satellite imagery of the region's glaciers dating back to 1960, they found that 87 glaciers had surged forward during that time, sliding down into lower elevations. An analysis of gravity signatures in the region also suggests the glaciers are growing in mass, and have been since at least 1980.

The team's work will be published in a forthcoming issue of Annals of Glaciology.

We can only assume that the media here in Australia have been too busy with breathless shots of Tiger Wood’s 12 on the side fiasco to inform the public here about this little inconvenient fact.

Let the Blackouts Begin

2010-01-26T05:00:00.002+10:00

Looks like self inflicted power black outs in the most industrialised country in the world, the USA, are not far off for some communities. Interestingly not much thought seems to have been given by our noble overlords that in business increased risk means greater returns are required, thus more costs for consumers and greater lead times on capital investment. In fact capital investment may need to be forgone entirely if the economic environment is uncertain.

Now that might be an inconvenience if it is a factory not being built but when it is a power plant that will not be upgraded then everything just stops. No power for lighting, cooking, hospitals, water pumps, fuel pumps, you name it. A district with unreliable power supplies will also be unable to attract industry which will instead locate to an area where supply is reliable thus leading to the economic as well as social impoverishment of the affected district.

Welcome to the 15 Missouri communities served by Sho-Me Power forced to look for new power supply. Marshfield-based Sho-Me Power sent notices to the 15 communities in December saying it can no longer sell them electricity after Christmas of 2013 on a long-term basis.

"Getting electricity to our co-ops is our priority; that's who owns us," said Jerry Hartman, manager of administrative services for Sho-Me Power.

Associated Electric, which sells power wholesale to Sho-Me Power, is scaling back on selling electricity to municipal utilities because of an uncertain future in generating additional energy, said spokeswoman Nancy Southworth.
Proposals in Congress to rein in carbon dioxide emissions believed to be contributing to man-made global climate change have brought any plans to build or invest in new coal-burning power plants to a halt.

"Looking 20 years out, it gets very difficult to do that in today's environment," Hartman said. "It's an uncertain future on coal and it takes a few years to build (a plant)."

Read all about it here on News-Leader.com.

EU Parliament Climate Change Debate: Strasbourg 21 Jan 2010

2010-01-26T01:00:00.002+10:00

No punches pulled debating the climate scam in the EU parliament in Strasbourg on 21 Jan 2010.

Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Viscount has landed.

2010-01-25T23:30:00.005+10:00

Lord Monckton landed in Sydney, Australia on the 21st January and immediately jumped another aircraft to fly 4,000 km to Perth, West Australia where he met with Jo Nova and others at a skeptics social event.

Highlights of his schedule follows:

January 24 Radio interview Ian Plimer on 2UE 11 am

January 25 Radio interview with Alan Jones, 2GB Radio 7-9am

January 26 Radio interview with Brian Wilshire, 2GB Radio 10-11.59pm

January 27 - Sydney 12.30pm Union Club Lunch

January 27 - Sydney $20 5.30pm Grand Ballroom, The Sheraton on the Park, Elizabeth Street.

January 28 - Newcastle $2 12:30p.m. Pay at the door.
VENUE: The Banquet Room, Newcastle City Hall, King St, NEWCASTLE.

January 29 Radio Interviews with 4BC(between 4-6pm) and United Christian Broadcasters
- Brisbane 12.30pm Lunch Grand Ballroom Hilton Hotel
Queens Street - ($130) See attached pdf flyer climate-debate-brisbane
To book, Damian Wyld, thomasmore@chariot.net.au, Ph 08 8379 0246

January 29- Brisbane 3pm Brisbane Irish Club, Tara Ballroom

January 30 - Noosa $20 The J in Noosa Junction @2p.m. Payment at the door

February 1 - Melbourne $20 luncheon, 12.00 for 12.30, will be held at 6/112 Millswyn St, South Yarra: (RSVP no later than c.o.b. on Thursday, January 28, by email to ipe_2@bigpond.com)

February 1 -5.30 Melbourne $20 "Town Hall Meeting," Venue Sofitel Hotel Grand Ballroom. contact: Case Smit case.smit@gmail.com

February 3 - Canberra -3pm- Address at National Press Club, Canberra

February 5 - Adelaide 5.30 Public lecture Intercontinental Hotel (formerly Hyatt)
North Terrace

February 8 - Perth Lunch - Parmelia Hotel

- Perth 5:30pm "Town Hall Meeting" Parmelia Hilton, 14 Mill Street, Perth.
To cover costs a “donation” of $10pp will be collected at the door.
Assorted homemade biscuits, coffee & tea provided.
Please email: Daphne Dhimitri daphne_dhimitri@hancockprospecting.com.au
or Ph: (61 8) 9429 8248 l Fax: (61 8) 94298268

Before attending any events please confirm details with John Smeed johnsmeed@adna.com.au as details may change.

The next week or two should be very entertaining as we watch our PM, Kevin Rudd, trying to avoid Monckton and stay silent on AGW. Rudd is currently galavanting around Australia beating the election drum already but I would bet a substantial sum he will maintain his mute stance on climate change as he has done since emerging from his failed COP15 fiasco. He will blab on as usual about grand schemes, fail to spell out any viable action, and studiously continue to ignore "the greatest moral issue of our time" (as he has stated) ie. AGW! He will also be trying to hush up his his personal tour of Pachauri’s TERI facility, the photos of hand shakes with the carbon conman and those pledges of millions of dollars (h/t Bulldust on WUWT).

Your pathetic Kev; just pathetic. I feel somewhat sorry for Penny Wong and Julia Gillard having to cover for you when the going gets tough.

IPCC Makes Yet Another Major "Error"

2010-01-25T21:00:00.001+10:00

How does the saying go; “Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive” (Sir Walter Scott 1808).

We've had the Climategate emails resulting in leading IPCC scientists Prof Phil "Hide the Decline" Jones being investigated and stood down as head of the Climatic Research Unit as well as Prof Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann also being investigated by his Penn State University employer. We have the Chairman of the IPCC, Raj Pachauri, being called to resign after use of incorrect and non-reviewed data on Himalayan glaciers was included in the IPCC's 2007 AR4 report as reported yesterday in this blog, and now we have another major error in that same report as published in the Times Online.

UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters

THE United Nations climate science panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.

It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny — and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report's own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough.

The claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that global warming is already affecting the severity and frequency of global disasters, has since become embedded in political and public debate. It was central to discussions at last month's Copenhagen climate summit, including a demand by developing countries for compensation of $100 billion (£62 billion) from the rich nations blamed for creating the most emissions.

...

Last month Gordon Brown, the prime minister, told the Commons that the financial agreement at Copenhagen "must address the great injustice that . . . those hit first and hardest by climate change are those that have done least harm".

...

The Sunday Times has since found that the scientific paper on which the IPCC based its claim had not been peer reviewed, nor published, at the time the climate body issued its report.

When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."

Despite this change the IPCC did not issue a clarification ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit last month. It has also emerged that at least two scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts — but were ignored.

That is not the end of it. There is more coming out as you read this. Stay tuned.

Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn't been verified

2010-01-25T20:23:00.000+10:00

SOURCE: MAIL Online

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders. Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action. ‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’

Dr Lal’s admission will only add to the mounting furore over the melting glaciers assertion, which the IPCC was last week forced to withdraw because it has no scientific foundation. According to the IPCC’s statement of principles, its role is ‘to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis, scientific, technical and socio-economic information – IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy’.

The claim that Himalayan glaciers are set to disappear by 2035 rests on two 1999 magazine interviews with glaciologist Syed Hasnain, which were then recycled without any further investigation in a 2005 report by the environmental campaign group WWF. It was this report that Dr Lal and his team cited as their source.

The WWF article also contained a basic error in its arithmetic. A claim that one glacier was retreating at the alarming rate of 134 metres a year should in fact have said 23 metres – the authors had divided the total loss measured over 121 years by 21, not 121. Last Friday, the WWF website posted a humiliating statement recognising the claim as ‘unsound’, and saying it ‘regrets any confusion caused’.

Dr Lal said: ‘We knew the WWF report with the 2035 date was “grey literature” [material not published in a peer-reviewed journal]. But it was never picked up by any of the authors in our working group, nor by any of the more than 500 external reviewers, by the governments to which it was sent, or by the final IPCC review editors.’

In fact, the 2035 melting date seems to have been plucked from thin air. Professor Graham Cogley, a glacier expert at Trent University in Canada, who began to raise doubts in scientific circles last year, said the claim multiplies the rate at which glaciers have been seen to melt by a factor of about 25. ‘My educated guess is that there will be somewhat less ice in 2035 than there is now,’ he said. ‘But there is no way the glaciers will be close to disappearing. It doesn’t seem to me that exaggerating the problem’s seriousness is going to help solve it.’

One of the problems bedevilling Himalayan glacier research is a lack of reliable data. But an authoritative report published last November by the Indian government said: ‘Himalayan glaciers have not in any way exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat.’

When this report was issued, Raj Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, denounced it as ‘voodoo science’. Having been forced to apologise over the 2035 claim, Dr Pachauri blamed Dr Lal, saying his team had failed to apply IPCC procedures. It was an accusation rebutted angrily by Dr Lal. ‘We as authors followed them to the letter,’ he said. ‘Had we received information that undermined the claim, we would have included it.’

However, an analysis of those 500-plus formal review comments, to be published tomorrow by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the new body founded by former Chancellor Nigel Lawson, suggests that when reviewers did raise issues that called the claim into question, Dr Lal and his colleagues simply ignored them. For example, Hayley Fowler of Newcastle University, suggested that their draft did not mention that Himalayan glaciers in the Karakoram range are growing rapidly, citing a paper published in the influential journal Nature.

In their response, the IPCC authors said, bizarrely, that they were ‘unable to get hold of the suggested references’, but would ‘consider’ this in their final version. They failed to do so.

The Japanese government commented that the draft did not clarify what it meant by stating that the likelihood of the glaciers disappearing by 2035 was ‘very high’. ‘What is the confidence level?’ it asked. The authors’ response said ‘appropriate revisions and editing made’. But the final version was identical to their draft.

Last week, Professor Georg Kaser, a glacier expert from Austria, who was lead author of a different chapter in the IPCC report, said when he became aware of the 2035 claim a few months before the report was published, he wrote to Dr Lal, urging him to withdraw it as patently untrue. Dr Lal claimed he never received this letter. ‘He didn’t contact me or any of the other authors of the chapter,’ he said.

The damage to the IPCC’s reputation, already tarnished by last year’s ‘Warmergate’ leaked email scandal, is likely to be considerable. Benny Peiser, the GWPF’s director, said the affair suggested the IPCC review process was ‘skewed by a bias towards alarmist assessments’.

Environmentalist Alton Byers said the panel’s credibility had been damaged. ‘They’ve done sloppy work,’ he said. ‘We need better research on the ground, not unreliable predictions derived from computer models.’

Last night, Dr Pachauri defended the IPCC, saying it was wrong to generalise based on a single mistake. ‘Our procedure is robust,’ he added.

CLACIERGATE: Hitler's Last Straw

2010-01-25T19:45:00.000+10:00

Post of the Week

2010-01-25T05:00:00.002+10:00

A comment by a reader on WUWT, Martin Brumby on WUWT, Martin Brumby comments on the fake data used by the IPCC in the 2007 IPCC AR4 report which stated Himalayan glaciers would dissapear by 2035.

Martin Brumby (23:54:06) :

We need to remember that this is very far from being the first example of fraud revealed in the IPCC’s reports.

Most obviously our old friend Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick.

But also the Snows of Kilimanjaro, the spread of Tropical Disease into temperate zones, Rising Sea Levels, Species Extinction, Antartica Melting, Increased Hurricane Frequency. The list just goes on and on.

Anthony’s archives of postings on WUWT are stuffed with examples.

A good recent account is (here).

The IPCC isn’t the fruit of the toil of 2000 honest and expert Climate Scientists, which is how it has invariably been portrayed, it is a tendentious and thoroughly dishonest propaganda document designed to mislead and to promote the destruction of the economies of the developed world. And the vast majority of western politicians just went along with it, due to their scientific ignorance and the fact that they had deliberately appointed some of the most egregious Alarmists as their ’scientific advisors’.

The only difference with the Glacier story is the fact that – very belatedly – this has been picked up by a few of the mainstream media.

Nothing else has changed.

We still have a mountain to climb. But at least we’re above the foothills.

BREAKING NEWS: scientist admits IPCC used fake data to pressure policy makers

2010-01-24T22:52:00.002+10:00

What a busy Sunday this has turned out to be. I am in the middle of preparing a BBQ to roast a nice leg of lamb and to enhance my carbon footprint by burning (gasp) charcoal to do so but the IPCC keeps on intruding as it just can't seem to get it's facts right. Worse than that, it uses fake data.

You know the IPCC - the mob that our government tells us they rely upon as the science is settled; the mob that organised the Copenhagen gabfest for tens of thousands from the chattering class - yep that mob.

I hope you have been keeping up with the 2007 IPCC AR4 report containing the now debunked statement that glaciers in the Himalayas will dissapear by 2035.

NASA went even further on their "evidence" web page linking to the IPCC AR4 report but stating the glaciers would dissapear by 2030. They have changed that statement without comment and deleted the link to the IPCC AR4 report. To do this without crediting and explaining the reason for the change is scientifically dishonest and misleads the public. Could it be that this is more about policy leading science rather than the other way around?

Dr John Ray summarises it thus:

The IPCC’s 2007 report, which won it the Nobel Peace Prize, said that the probability of Himalayan glaciers “disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high”.

But it emerged last week that the forecast was based not on a consensus among climate change experts, but on a media interview with a single Indian glaciologist in 1999. The IPCC admitted on Thursday that the prediction was “poorly substantiated” in the latest of a series of blows to the panel’s credibility.

Dr Pachauri said that the IPCC’s report was the responsibility of the panel’s Co-Chairs at the time, both of whom have since moved on.

They were Dr Martin Parry, a British scientist now at Imperial College London, and Dr Osvaldo Canziani , an Argentine meteorologist. Neither was immediately available for comment.

“I don’t want to blame them, but typically the working group reports are managed by the Co-Chairs,” Dr Pachauri said. “Of course the Chair is there to facilitate things, but we have substantial amounts of delegation.”

He declined to blame the 25 authors and editors of the erroneous part of the report , who included a Filipino, a Mongolian, a Malaysian, an Indonesian, an Iranian, an Australian and two Vietnamese.

Over the last couple of days more shoddy "mistakes" have been found in the IPCC report including incorrect basic maths. I will post further examples in a seperate article shortly including suspicions of missapropriation of hundreds of thousands of pounds of gullible EU taxpayer's funds. How could this rubbish ever make it through the (we are told) "thousands of reviewing scientists"? Any glaciologist worth his or her salt even giving the IPCC "evidence" a passing glance would have seen the glaring errors and mistatements.

We may now have part of the explanation.

We have this breaking news from WUWT and it is remarkable.

BREAKING NEWS: scientist admits IPCC used fake data to pressure policy makers

From the Daily Mail

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

"It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in."

Thus we now have the confirmation that has been strongly suspected for a long time. Scientists involved with IPCC AR4 have allowed glaring errors and unchecked heresay "data" to be included in the IPCC AR4 report for the express purpose of encouraging policy makers and governments to take action. Let me say that even more clearly. Scientists knowingly allow fake "data" to be published in the "gold science standard" IPCC report knowing that governments will use this to justify policy changes including but not limited to the imposition of taxes, the payment of "climate damages" to undeveloped countries and the imposition of a substantially reduced level of economic well upon citizens. Penny Wong (Minister for Changing the Climate here in Australia) for example waved that 2007 IPCC report at Senator Fielding who questioned the validity of "the science" and stated that she had to write her policy based on it. Of course she did - "the science is settled" is it not? Australian PM Kevin Rudd also relies on the IPCC. He had this to say in a 2008 60 Minutes TV interview with Tara Brown:

PM KEVIN RUDD: Well, I just look at what the scientists say. There's a group of scientists called the International Panel on Climate Change - 4000 of them. Guys in white coats who run around and don't have a sense of humour. They just measure things.

Note that number of scientists - it varies every time you see it from 1,500 up to 4,000. One thing the IPCC is not good at is measuring their own scientist contributors. If only the scientists involved with the IPCC were running around measuring things instead of using faked data to further grant applications, fool government policy makers and boost flagging publishing scores we might get somewhere. Unfortunately there is proof they haven't had their eye on the "settled science" very much at all.

Read the link to WUWT carefully. Especially if you are a late comer to this growing farce, read it and ask yourself is this what you want your tax system and economic policy based on. Now if you are an Australian, email your senators and MP's and ask them not to vote for Labor's Cap and Trade tax. Remember once a tax is imposed it is almost impossible to remove due to the flow on effect of government becoming dependant on the revenue stream. You'll get one shot at this - make it count.

UK Parliament to Investigate Climategate and Data Issues

2010-01-23T12:08:00.015+10:00

Here in Australia there has been some questioning of the UN/IPCC/CRU Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) conjecture but for some reason, perhaps due to our geographic isolation, we have largely been quarantined by main stream media from the plethora of overseas reports promulgated in the media.

In western civilization (with the exception of Australia and possibly New Zealand) there is continuing and growing questioning of CAGW in the main stream media. We have seen leading CAGW players Prof Phil Jones of CRU fame being stood down and investigated and Prof Mann (of IPCC Hockey Stick fame) currently being investigated by Penn State University. Now the UK Parliament has seen fit to run its own investigation into Climategate and the CRU. For the terms of reference see link at WUWT which is reproduced in part here:

Terms of Reference

The Science and Technology Committee today announces an inquiry into the unauthorised publication of data, emails and documents relating to the work of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA). The Committee has agreed to examine and invite written submissions on three questions:

—What are the implications of the disclosures for the integrity of scientific research?
—Are the terms of reference and scope of the Independent Review announced on 3 December 2009 by UEA adequate (see below)?
—How independent are the other two international data sets?
The Committee intends to hold an oral evidence session in March 2010.

...

The Independent Review will:

1. Examine the hacked e-mail exchanges, other relevant e-mail exchanges and any other information held at CRU to determine whether there is any evidence of the manipulation or suppression of data which is at odds with acceptable scientific practice and may therefore call into question any of the research outcomes.

2. Review CRU’s policies and practices for acquiring, assembling, subjecting to peer review and disseminating data and research findings, and their compliance or otherwise with best scientific practice.

3. Review CRU’s compliance or otherwise with the University’s policies and practices regarding requests under the Freedom of Information Act (‘the FOIA’) and the Environmental Information Regulations (‘the EIR’) for the release of data.

4. Review and make recommendations as to the appropriate management, governance and security structures for CRU and the security, integrity and release of the data it holds .

The deadline for submissions is tight. The UK Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee asks for written submissions no later than Noon 10 February 2010 (I assume that is GMT) and any submissions must be in Microsoft Word 2003 format (ok no jokes as to why the Science and Technology Committee demands submissions to be made using software technology that is 7 years out of date).

What passes for reasoned debate here in Australia by comparison? Let us look at our beloved Prime Minister Kevin Rudd who in one of his brief stop overs here in Australia had this to say at a speech at the Lowy Institute on 6 November 2009 before jetting off again in a cloud of thousands of tonnes of CO2 emissions:

“Climate change deniers are small in number, but they are too dangerous to be ignored.”

...

“This brigade of donothing climate change skeptics are dangerous because if they succeed, then it is all of us who will suffer.”

He rambles on with a peer reviewed comparison of his pet theory to a game of cards.

“You've got to know when to fold 'em and for the skeptics, that time has come.

The Government I lead will act.”

Thanks Kevin for classifying those Australians that don't agree with your views as dangerous. Perhaps, Kevin, all these dangerous people should be rounded up and interred in government re-education "facilities". I hate to point this out Kevin but you are talking about 54% of Australians according to the latest Gallop Poll research.

Yes, our Idiot In Chief will act. Fast foward one month to Copenhagen. And how did that all turn out for Kevin and his 114 man ~~invasion force~~ delegation? Oh yes, 3 pages of nonsense from Copenhagen in the form of an Accord (download the accord here), no deadlines, nothing binding, and no one even silly enough to sign it before the caviar had run out and everyone deserted Norway for the next Big Conference. Thank God you’re not a general leading an army. If you were I would humbly suggest that your greatest danger would be from your troops behind you and not the ones in front if your same withering display of logic was presented to them.

It makes sense to Kevin to act before he even knows the question even if it means “acting” in totally the wrong direction, such is the state of leadership in Australia. Kevin Rudd, you are truly Australia’s Greatest Living Actor.

That bunch of dangerous right wing conservative radicals Kev, the UK Labour led Parliament, on the other hand obviously doesn’t assume that the debate is so clear cut and instead is conducting an inquiry. No chance of that happening here with Kevin at the tiller.

Kev, how about acting now to pay back the massive debt you and you alone have inflicted upon we Australians,

and our children,

and our grandchildren (these last two lines were lifted from Kevin's landmark Lowy speech so I thought it appropriate to reuse them here - H/t Kev).

Act Kev. Please, act.

Impose the higher taxes necessary to solve your problem. Slash your government’s spending. Let’s see you do that without your massive Bait and Switch Tax Scheme. Then take it to an election. And please, stop your ridiculous attempt at blaming your indebtedness on former Prime Minister John Howard who left this country massively in funds – you are just embarrassing yourself. It is called responsibility Kev. Look it up in your Cantonese-English dictionary. I am sure it will be in there somewhere. See also “the buck stops here”.

[UPDATE: The Dawg gets a mention on the SPPI blog.]

UAH Complete 25 Satellite Series Dec 2009

2010-01-22T00:05:00.004+10:00

Here is the complete UAH satellite temperature anomaly series for various regions of the globe ranging from Global to North Polar to South Polar that I have prepared. Note that I have retained the same scale on all plots so a viewer can get a reasonable comparison of all regions although in order to retain detail of much of the data it results in plots of some regions being off scale.

[UPDATE: Welcome to new readers from www.euroekonom.cz. I hope you find this and upcoming future analysis useful.]

For the First Time Less Than Half of Australians Approve of Australia’s Proposed CPRS

2010-01-21T06:00:00.002+10:00

For the first time less than half of Australians (46%, down 4% since November)approve of Australia’s proposed CPRS

Now 31% (up 1%) say “Concerns are exaggerated” about Global Warming

Now only 46% (down 4% since November 11/12, 2009) of Australians approve of the Government’s proposed carbon emissions trading scheme when asked “In December the Government's carbon emissions trading scheme was defeated in Parliament. The Rudd Government has pledged to reintroduce the legislation, known as the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, to Federal Parliament in February 2010. Do you approve or disapprove of this legislation?” according to a special telephone Roy Morgan survey conducted over the last two nights (January 13/14, 2010).

CSIRO Backing Off

2010-01-20T20:35:00.003+10:00

Jury out whether climate change is driving Tasmania's drought: CSIRO

AUSTRALIA'S peak science agency, the CSIRO, has backed away from attributing a decade of drought in Tasmania to climate change, claiming ''the jury is still out'' on the science.

Barrier Reef still 'pristine', despite concerns: scientist

THE Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is in excellent shape - farming and other human activity are not killing the reef, according to James Cook University's reef scientist Dr Peter Ridd.

When are we going to wake up?

The past few months has been a frustrating time for the climate change industry. Earlier in the year they were on a roll and it looked like a global treaty agreement at Copenhagen in December was a done deal. The heady scent of unprecedented power and money was palpable.

Abbott's 'Green Army'

In Australia, this mythology of a natural ‘left-green’ alliance was forged in the early 1980s as the traditional communist parties disintegrated and their cadres scrambled for a way to re-assert the ideology of state socialism in Australian politics. A key event at the time was a visit to Australia of leading figures in the extremist Deep Ecology movement, including its intellectual founder, Arne Naess. Its manifesto called explicitly for a reduction of the human population by some 95% to around one hundred million people, living in a society pegged at pre-historic levels of economic activity and social organization.

Scientists 'crying wolf' over coral

A SENIOR marine researcher has accused Australian scientists of "crying wolf" over the threat of climate change to the Great Barrier Reef, exposing deep division about its vulnerability.

Peter Ridd's rejection of the consensus position that the reef is doomed unless greenhouse emissions are checked comes as new research on the Keppel group, hugging Queensland's central coast, reveals its resilience after coral bleaching. Professor Ridd, a physicist with Townsville's James Cook University who has spent 25 years investigating the impact of coastal runoff and other problems for the reef, challenged the widely accepted notion that coral bleaching would wipe it out if climate change continued to increase sea surface temperatures. Instead of dying, the reef could expand south towards Brisbane as waters below it became warmer and more tolerable for corals, he said.

Reduced Emission Sheep May Hold Key To Global Warming in Australia

2010-01-19T20:30:00.004+10:00

Vital studies into the menace of burping and farting sheep are being carried out in Australia and may hold the key to saving the world from catastrophic climate change. Scientists in Australia are measuring sheep burps by enclosing sheep in containers and counting and measuring their deadly burps. Presumably the scientists are standing outside the container while all this gassing is going on. Similar studies investigating farting cattle have also been carried out.

It is suprising that New Zealand doesn't have the jump on Australia on scientific investigations into sheep burping but obviously they are content to fiddle while Rome burns. Telephone calls placed with the office of Penny Wong, Australia's Minister for Changing the Climate, questioning whether a cardigan tax is being considered for the next budget have not been returned.

Although no deaths have been directly linked in humans to a burping sheep or farting bull, excessive out gassing by these noxious yet delicious animals may contribute to the likelihood of the planet erupting in catastrophic global warming/climate change/extreme weather.

Scientists hope to produce a strain of sheep that burps and farts less and will be essential to Australia’s future agricultural well being. A CSIRO map of total emissions from burping and farting Australian livestock produced in 2000 by Australia’s peak science body, the CSIRO, is reproduced below.

This vital research follows amazing studies by Australia’s CSIRO into termite out gassing. Termites are another species emitting gases contributing to worldwide greenhouse emissions so it is essential we measure the emission output of termites. I couldn’t find a map of termite farts but I will be sure to link to it when such a document becomes available.

Emmissions from Australian Livestock - CSIRO 2000

Now that is what I call bang for our scientific buck.

UAH Temperature Anomaly Series Dec 2009

2010-01-15T21:38:00.029+10:00

Continuing with data plots using "R" I have written a program to automatically download the latest satellite temperature data from UAH, perform some statistical analysis and plot the results. The output follows.

Note that the red linear trend line is fitted for illustrative purposes only as a straight line plot is a very poor representation of the variability of the data (R2 coefficient is very low). The fitted least squares straight line regression is used to calculate the decadal trend in the temperature anomaly only to enable us to make comparisons between the various areas plotted.

As expected it is immediately obvious that the temperature anomaly is greatest in the northern hemisphere and much less in the tropics and southern hemisphere. Also noted is that the variability of the temperature data is greatest in the tropics. The temperature globally and in all regions plotted has been trending down since at least 1998.

The blue line is LOESS smoothing with q = 0.25.

Further analysis will follow as we develop this series.

If you would like the actual R code that I wrote to produce these graphs please feel free to ask and I will email it to you.

Extreme Weather linked to Demonic Powers

2010-01-13T22:21:00.002+10:00

In today's Australian newspaper Frank Furedi looks at ~~global warming~~ ~~climate change~~ extreme weather and witchcraft.

Frank Furedi, Professor of sociology at the University of Kent

Throughout history people have sought to blame unusual climatic conditions on demonic forces. What the association of witchcraft with weather-making accomplished was to mobilise people's fears against the evil forces of heretics and non-believers. Scaremongering about witchcraft promoted the idea that its demonic powers could literally dominate nature. Father Friedrich Spee, a Jesuit critic of witch-hunting, noted sarcastically that "God and nature no longer do anything; witches, everything". But such beliefs were no joke. A late winter in the province of Treves in the 15th century led to more than 100 people being burned at the stake.

See the full article in the Australian.

Clouds Dominate CO2 as a Climate Driver Since 2000: Dr Roy Spencer

2010-01-11T23:34:00.004+10:00

Dr Spencer has posted a summary of how the satellite-observed variations in Earth’s radiative budget compare to that expected from increasing carbon dioxide on his website. Dr Spencer is a climatologist and former NASA scientist who is widely published.

He compares his satellite data to the IPCC view of inferred forcing assuming high climate sensitivity. His article specifically addresses the zero net warming recorded in the last decade. AGW models cannot explain this lack of warming. Spencer concludes his analysis as follows:

What this Might Mean for Global Warming

The main point I am making here is that, no matter whether you assume the climate system is sensitive or insensitive, our best satellite measurements suggest that the climate system is perfectly capable of causing internally-generated radiative forcing larger than the “external” forcing due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Low cloud variations are the most likely source of this internal radiative forcing. It should be remembered that the satellite data are actually measured, whereas the CO2 forcing (red lines in the above graphs) is so small that it can only be computed theoretically.

The satellite observed trend toward less energy loss (or, if you prefer, more energy gain) is interesting since there was no net warming observed during this time. How could this be? Well, the satellite observed trend must be due to forcing only since there was no warming or cooling trend during this period for feedback to act upon. And the lack of warming from this substantial trend in the forcing suggests an insensitive climate system. If one additionally entertains the possibility that there is still considerable “warming still in the pipeline” left from increasing CO2, as NASA’s Jim Hansen claims, then the need for some natural cooling mechanism to offset and thus produce no net warming becomes even stronger. Either that, or the climate system is so insensitive to increasing CO2 that there is essentially no warming left in the pipeline to be realized. (The less sensitive the climate system, the faster it reaches equilibrium when forced with a radiative imbalance.)

Any way you look at it, the evidence for internally-forced climate change is pretty clear. Based upon this satellite evidence alone, I do not see how the IPCC can continue to ignore internally-forced variations in the climate system. The evidence for its existence is there for all to see, and in my opinion, the IPCC’s lack of diagnostic skill in this matter verges on scientific malpractice.

Note the concluding paragraph. Just keep repeating “the science is settled”. As Spencer and many other qualified and highly respected scientists are showing, the science is never settled. When you hear a statement being made like that one needs to be instantly cautious and, dare I say it, skeptical.

Refer to Dr Spencer's site for the full article.

Air Vent Guest Post by Dr Ismail Bhat

2010-01-10T01:52:00.000+10:00

An excellent article by Dr. Ismail Bhat appears over on Air Vent. Dr. Bhat raises some important issues with respect to the politicisation of science. I recommend this article.

Guest post from Dr. Ismail Bhat, Professor & Head of Department of Geology & Geophysics at University of Kashmir. Dr. Bhat is yet another professional scientist with the understanding and credentials to challenge the consensus. This time on sea level rise, he rightly compares how the current political situation has handled prominent and reasoned disagreement to the inquisition of Galileo by the Romans. How far have we really come since Galileo’s time?
———–

Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner: the Galileo of our “scientific age”

M. I. Bhat

E-mail: bhatmi@hotmail.com

Science has taken a leap four centuries back to dark age when science lost to theology. Then the butt of condemnation and punishment were just two souls – Bruno and, the better remembered, Galileo. Now it is a huge horde of scientists from across the planet, who dare challenge the mainstream belief in CO2-induced global warming or anthropogenically-induced global warming (AGW), that are being condemned with calls for punishment of these “traitors” for committing “high crimes against humanity,” “deserving Nuremberg-style trials,” ……… Reviling and calls for punishment are unending. If theology was settled then for a particular cosmological view, now it is “science is settled’ for AGW. Then it was cosmological data gathered through telescope versus theological view; now it is clean, hard core science versus manipulated science backed by political interests. Then it was Cardinal Bellarmine backed by Pope Clement VIII/Pope Paul V; now it is Dr. R. K. Pachauri backed by our political Pope, Mr. Banki Moon.

Hop on over to Air Vent to read the whole article.

I'll have a series of plots of the UHA lower troposphere data ready shortly updated to the end of December. I am just finalising my programming now.

Popular Technology.net: Global Cooling in 2009

2010-01-08T00:52:00.001+10:00

A few (hundred) links to global cooling in the press for 2009.

Popular Technology.net: Global Cooling in 2009

ALERT: The Arctic is Melting! in November 1922

2010-01-08T00:30:00.005+10:00

We hear often on the tube and read in the press that we need to worry about the weather because man made global warming is causing “unprecedented” changes such as melting ice in the arctic. I have written before here and here about precedents in the 20th and even 19th centuries where scientists were worried about global cooling, warming, cooling and back to warming again and each time the global thermometer swung down or up and the doomsdayers were predicting ... well, doomsday.

From WUWT and getting a lot of main stream press at the moment in the USA is a copy of an article (below) on the melting ice in the arctic. Only problem is that the article is from the Monthly Weather Review dated November, 1922.

The melting was extensive enough that tours were organised for the wealthy to see this “unprecedented” event.

There are thousands of examples of this if you care to look and I will be posting a few more for your entertainment. It is interesting that you could change the date on that article to 2009 and no one would bat an eyelid. Let’s dispense with this unscientific misstatement of the facts that the current climate is “unprecedented”. It is an “argument” used either by fools or liars when the scientific evidence is that such events are not unprecedented. We’ve seen this nonsense being promulgated with respect to droughts and heat waves here in Australia, with respect to shipping through the arctic and with respect to hurricanes and flooding as if this is somehow unusual. If you think it is unusual please do the gene pool a favour and abstain from having children.

UK MET Director Pawned in BBC Interview

This is a link to a BBC program absolutely slamming the head of the MET in the UK. The so called climatologist is ridiculed in the interview. I was surprised by the video for three reasons:

1. It was the climate doomsdayist BBC that showed it! Even the BBC seems to be jumping ship or at least entertaining the idea of a smidgen of balance.
2. The MET director is being held accountable for past alarmist predictions that were inaccurate – this is a first for main stream media such as the BBC.
3. The interview was brutal without the kid gloves and free rein normally given to alarmists.

The MET director then changed tack and lied about the MET predictions saying that he had predicted cooling when of course the only “prediction” the MET made of any cooling was after the snow started to fall. It seemed to this observer that the TV host knew more about the weather than the director of the MET! It would be a good thing if alarmist climatologists responsible for the massive misallocation of community resources were held responsible and purged from the climate industry populated by politicians and scientists expert in dodgy excel spreadsheets and leave the field to the boring, less glamorous but more valuable qualified practitioners of the good old scientific method.

R 2.10.1 Statistical Suite

2010-01-07T03:58:00.013+10:00

I have been busy teaching myself R scripts for the last 24 hours. R is a suite of statistical software that offers almost limitless capabilities. Instead of a limited point and click interface like excel it uses a scripting language known as "R". Excel is fine for its intended purpose but it is limited in its capacity for automation, presentation and repeatability. I therefore decided to take the plung and learn R and have been pleasantly surprised how easy it is to learn enough in a day to do something useful. I was prompted to do this when I realised the presentation shortcomings of excel were preventing me from developing the sort of graphs I wanted to display on this blog to review some of the data. I also wanted to be able to use a tool that would automatically download new data as it was released on FTP sites and graph it without having to manually do this each time. After reading a few scripts I decided to download R and teach myself and after a day I feel I have made good progress.

Once I get the basics sorted out to my satisfaction I will write a PERL script to automatically call my R scripts on a regular basis so the computer can do all the work and produce the graphs once I have developed the scripts - "look mum no hands!"

Exciting stuff.

You can follow me along as I get this little project up and running if you are interested in R or merely look at the graphs and stats.

The first graph I have produced is the Australian Mean Temperature Anomaly from the adjusted data available on the BOM server for the period 1 January 1910 to 31 December 2009. Unfortunately there is no raw data available so it is not much use by itself for investigating however as there are other data sets available it will be useful for comparative purposes. We will be drilling down to individual station data sets and seeing what we find concerning local conditions. I will also be posting a detailed series of Satellite data which is the only data I trust for reasons I will discuss as we go on over a period of time.

The chart I developed is a step graph of the average yearly anomaly based on BOM adjusted temperature data. I have applied a LOESS smoothing function which is the blue line you can see. I applied a LOESS smoothing parameter of q = 0.10 as it retained just enough of the randomness to prove of interest.

We will reserve any discussion of the graph for another post as I beg your indulgence to let me enjoy a self satisfied glow at having achieved some small mastery over R scripts today. The actual script is posted under the Read More link if you want to have a good laugh at my first script.

This is the script I knocked up tonight. There are many improvements to be made but as a quick hack I am pleased to say it works and produced the graph above. I also want to use the Cairo package to get the graphic output antialiased and prettied up.

Update: Well it looks like my blog trashes the formatting on my script so I will put an image of it up tomorrow instead to replace the mess below.

#################################################################
#################################################################
##                                                             ##
## Step chart of NASA GISS annual temperature anomaly (C) data ##
##                                                             ##
#################################################################
#################################################################

###############################
#  Step 1: SETUP SOURCE FILE  #
###############################

rm(list=ls()) 
link <- "C:\\Rdata\\Bom_Yrly_Anom_1910_2009.csv"
   script<- " C:/Rdata/Australian_Data_Script_V3.r"

#############################################################
#  Step 2: READ DATA FROM CSV FILE WITH FIRST ROW HEADINGS  #
#############################################################

   my_Data <- read.table(link,
  sep = ",", dec=".", skip=0,
  row.names = NULL, header = T,
  colClasses = rep("numeric", 2),
  na.strings = c("", "*", "-", -99.99, 99.9, 999.9))

#############################
#  STEP 3: MANIPULATE DATA  #
#############################

  # Construct chart title - nothing to manipulate this time
  Title <- paste("Annual Mean Surface Air Temperature Anomaly - Australia (1910 - 2009) \nBOM - High Quality Annual T Network (adjusted data)" )

#########################
#  STEP 4: CREATE PLOT  #
#########################

## GRAPHIC PARAMETERS
   win.graph(width = 10.5, height = 7, pointsize = 12) ### Sets size of graphics window ###
   par(bg = "white"); # sets background colour, default = transparent
   par(las = 1)       # Sets Y axis label orientation to vertical, set text font sizes
   par(cex.main=0.8); par(cex.sub=0.7); par(cex.lab = 0.8); par(cex.axis =.75);
   
## HIGH LEVEL GRAPHIC FUNCTION CALL
#usr <- par("usr") ,
#rect(usr[1], usr[3], usr[2], usr[4], col="cornsilk", border="black"), 
   
   plot(Anomaly ~ Year, my_Data,
         ylim = c(-1.25,1.25),
         type=c("s"),
         col = "dark grey",
         lwd = 2, #line width
         xlab = "Year",
         asp = "FULL",
         bty ="o",
         ylab = expression(paste("Annual Temperature Anomaly - ",degree, "C (Baseline: 1961-1990)")),
         main = Title,
         sub = "Source: BOM - @ http://reg.bom.gov.au/climate/change/hqsites/data/temp/meanT.040842.annual.anom.txt")

## LOW LEVEL GRAPHIC FUNCTION CALL
   lines(lowess(my_Data$Anomaly ~ my_Data$Year, f=0.1),col = "blue", lwd = 3)
   arrows(1961,-1.0, 1990, -1.0, code = 3, angle = 20, col = "dark grey")
   abline(h=0, col = "grey")          # o.o horizontal line
   text(1965, -.990, "Baseline\n Period\n1961-1990", cex = 0.6, pos=3)
   text(1931, -1.20, "LOESS smoothing, q = 0.10", cex =0.65, pos =1)
   points(c(1910,1921), c(-1.3,-1.3), col="blue",  type = "l", lwd = 2)
   text(2005, -1.2, "The Dog Ate My Data", cex=0.65, pos=1)
## Add script name &  print date to chart
   my_date <- format(Sys.time(),"%d/%m/%y ")
   mtext(script, side=1, line = -1, outer = T, adj = 0, cex = 0.65)
   mtext(my_date, side = 1, line = -1, outer = T, adj = 1, cex = 0.7)

###################
#  STEP 5: CLOSE  #
###################

#  todo

World Cycle Tour to Promote Awareness of Global Warming Cut Short Due to Freeze

2010-01-05T03:00:00.002+10:00

It keeps getting better. The Global Delusionists are providing enough material for 3 generations of comedians. It could lead to the catastrophic global hilarity in less than 5 years if present trends continue.

Mr Khandekar from India planned to pedal around the world to promote awareness of Global Warming but his plans came unstuck due to record freezing conditions in Europe as reported in the Hundustan Times.

Though Khandekar had planned a 282-day trip, he had to cut short his trip due to record cold conditions.

“While I was in Europe, there was heavy snowfall due to which I cancelled part of my trip. Though I had warm clothes on, there were times when my feet would be frozen,” he said.

Not to be outdone Mr Khandekar plans to look for sponsors and do another trip next year.

“No one was ready to sponsor my tour this time. I hope I get sponsors next time so that I can spread more awareness among the people,” Khandekar said.

That’s either a brilliant idea or ... not.

In my next scoop tomorrow I will show catetrophic alarmist scientists blaming Global Warming for freezing weather killing Peruvians (I kid you not). Do these scientists have the right to vote? That is a cause for concern.

Climategate Helping Scientists Speak Out

2010-01-04T18:30:00.006+10:00

In an insightful article noted American commentator Robert Bradley Jr examines the way Climategate has emboldened many professional people including scientists to “come out” and challenge the catastrophic alarmism of the main stream global warming crowd such as professors Mann, Hansen, Barrett and others who predict catastrophic consequences within 90 years up to and including the extinction of the human race.

Climategate: Here Comes Courage! (Is climate catastrophism losing its ‘politically correct’ grip?)

by Robert Bradley Jr

The times are changing in the wake of Climategate. And more is to come as the polluted science embedded in the email exchanges gets reviewed by talented amateurs and pros alike on the blogosphere (see Climate Audit, Roger Pielke Jr., and WattsUpWithThat, in particular).

Given time, the rethink will go mainstream. Scientists are truth seekers at heart, but an entrenched mainstream of climate scientists–so many of them friends and political allies–will need to be nudged out of their denialism.
Old voices are challenging their ‘mainstream’ colleagues, and new voices are coming forth. I have seen this clearly here in Houston (examples below), and I expect it is happening elsewhere.

The full article can be found on Master Resource which is a very high end blog by leaders in their fields that deserves careful attention.

I also get the feeling that the tide has turned. I do not fool myself into believing that the statist green-red appropriators will not rgroup quickly as after all they have much of the UN behind them and billions of our dollars in their war chest. The catestrophic alarmist scientists are really the small fish. The big fish are the mechanisms already in place in the UN. Institutionalised mechanisms and he money that goes with them are extremely difficult to defeat and it will take nothing short of a massive upwelling of public opinion to retain what little is left of private property and economic freedom and the wealth that it creates.

Monckton Australian Tour

2010-01-04T17:30:00.006+10:00

The SPPI blog has announced that Christopher Monkcton is doing an Australian tour in January/February this year.

Apocalypse? NO! ‘Global Warming’ is Not a Global Crisis

Christopher Monckton, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, has accepted an invitation to visit Australia for a major lecture tour on the theme Apocalypse? NO! ‘Global Warming’ is Not a Global Crisis in late January to early February 2010. He will be accompanied by his wife Juliet, Viscountess Monckton of Brenchley.

Professor Ian Plimer, who will also accompany Lord Monckton on his whirlwind tour of the mainland’s capital cities starting in Sydney on January 26 and finishing in Perth on February 8, says: “Although I modestly state that I am a good performer, Lord Monckton is superb. I have seen him fielding a very hostile BBC and other networks. He has the ability to change thinking.”

Lord Monckton's Brisbane presentation will be in the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton Hotel, at 2pm Friday 29 January 2010 with admission by $20 donation at the door. Full details for other cities can be obtained by going to the SPPI article linked above and emailing the organisers who appear on that page.

Kyoto Land Grab: No Compensation Payable

2010-01-04T06:00:00.007+10:00

The appalling story about Peter Spencer, an Australian farmer who has had his land locked up to provide free “carbon sinks” (as a result of Kyoto) for the government without any form of compensation is bad enough. Peter still pays rates and has spent millions on the property and now watches it turn to weeds. Get the whole story here from Jo Nova. There appears however to be a vicious and very nasty twist to the story so read on.

As if the main story was not bad enough there appears to be a very nasty and insidious last minute twist. I received this email from Leon Ashby on Saturday 2 Jan 2010. American readers might find it hard to believe that property rights can be taken without compensation in Australia but I assure you it is true and I personally know other people in a similar situation. Peter has only days left until the bank seizes the property (which cannot earn an income any longer) and Peter is into his 43 day of a hunger strike having chained himself atop an enormous pole. It is amazing he has survived this long. It appears that the government is using technical measures to stop buses moving people down to Canberra to protest in the Coooeee March for Peter.

Here is the text of the email.

Attempts by NSW Govt to stop Coooeee March

Hi Everyone,

Just in is the news from Steve Truman.

What is happening is people are planning to get to Canberra behind Old Parliament House on Monday at 10.30am to march in support of Peter Spencers protest saying Australia is not a free country any more and we want a royal commission into the injustices concerning the Kyoto protocol & property rights.

Land can now be taken from anyone without Just terms and the fact that Peter Spencer cannot get heard in court despite 200 days attempting to do so is ample evidence the system is not working.

Now we have a NSW state government conspiring to subvert the plans of many people to attend the march by sending out road traffic inspectors to inspect the buses going to the march and thereby either delaying them or putting them off the road altogether. (we are yet to find out what the instructions were precisely)
=================

Steve Truman writes,

I have spoken to COOEE Bus Drive coordinator Bob Jones and he has confirmed that two of the buses that were booked to go - the one from Coffs Harbour and the one from Qirindi have been cancelled due to RTA (Road Transport Authority)harassment.

People who were booked on those buses have now made private travel arrangements and will still be attending the March.

Bob said that he'd received a call from an RTA inspector who was in a motel at Coffs Harbour. Bob was not prepared to release the RTA officers name and number, but he has handed the details on State National party member for Barwon Kevin Humphries who is following the matter up with the minister.

The RTA officer told Bob that 5 inspectors had been dispatched to the North and the West of the state to target the buses heading to Canberra for the COOEE March.

Buses can be held for up to 6 hours in the road side inspection places whilst being assessed for mechanical defects and and driving breaches. It is an outrageous action and as the RTA officer told Bob, they were just following orders from above. Bob told me that Kevin Humphries was also outraged by this and was talking about taking it to the highest possible authorities.

I was under the impression that we lived in a free and democratic country. This is an outrageous Sate Government sponsored attempt to intimidate and disrupt a peaceful demonstration of grass-roots Australian citizens.

If you are not as mad as hell about Peter's situation, than you should be now. It is time for the ordinary citizens of this great country to band together to end this excessive Sate & Federal control of our lives.

Leon Ashby
President The Climate Sceptics
PO, Box 721, Mt Gambier SA 5290
Ph 0887259561 or 0887235550
info@climatesceptics.com.au
http://www.climatesceptics.com.au/

This story is getting almost no MSM coverage at all. Although I have seen this happen to others it is a shocking indictment on the Australian system of government. Please read Jo Nova’s article on this that I linked to above for more information.

This can apply to any Australian not only farmers. It has happened to residential land owners thorugh council vegetation protection orders and it WILL become more common as the government makes you pay with your land for the international promises it makes. Contact your MP today if you value your future. This is very serious for all property owners. You will receive NO COMPENSATION for your loss - a life's work wiped out by a government at the stroke of a pen. In ten years time when this becomes much more common it will be very hard to address so the time to address it is now. Theft of assets by government is not something we expect in a democracy but it is now something we in fact have - I urge you to act now by phoning your parliamentary representative and asking how this can happen and what he or she intends to do to adddress the matter for Peter and for all Asutralians who are facing the problem now or will be facing it in the future.

USA readers watch out – this is coming your way. Google “The Little REDD Book” by the UN and Agenda 21. Once in place, and the REDD scheme is already in the Copenhagen Accord which you can read for yourself in an early post on this site, you too will be liable to suffer a similar fate. Spread the word while you still have time. I will update this article with direct links to the REDD book (cute name isn’t it – no doubt in memory of Mao, the killer of tens of millions of his own people) and Agenda 21 in case you have difficulty finding them.

Further updates to come as I link this article to resources.

Update: See also the Freedom Graffiti report.

The ABC has it on their website here as well.

Apocalyptic Syndrome

2010-01-03T05:00:00.005+10:00

And from Professor Denis Dutton, professor of philosophy at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand we have more clarifying good sense percolating to the top of the cesspool that is climate science in the New York Times on 31 December 2009; a fitting and thoughtful commentary for the end of the decade published in the New York Times.

“It’s Always the End of the World as We Know It

... Apocalyptic scenarios are a diversion from real problems — poverty, terrorism, broken financial systems — needing intelligent attention. Even something as down-to-earth as the swine-flu scare has seemed at moments to be less about testing our health care system and its emergency readiness than about the fate of a diseased civilization drowning in its own fluids. We wallow in the idea that one day everything might change in, as St. Paul put it, the “twinkling of an eye” — that a calamity might prove to be the longed-for transformation. But turning practical problems into cosmic cataclysms takes us further away from actual solutions.

This applies, in my view, to the towering seas, storms, droughts and mass extinctions of popular climate catastrophism. Such entertaining visions owe less to scientific climatology than to eschatology, and that familiar sense that modernity and its wasteful comforts are bringing us closer to a biblical day of judgment. As that headline put it for Y2K, predictions of the end of the world are often intertwined with condemnations of human “folly, greed and denial.” Repent and recycle!”

Self loathing seems to be a symptom of modern ecokookism which must be why its proponents seem so drawn to one Armageddon scenario after another with each being more ludicrous than the previous. The absurdity of discussing the immanent species extinction of home sapien species whilst dining in elegant surroundings at exotic locations seems to escape them. After returning to Bali in October 2009 (it was last there in December 2007), the IPCC circus would have barely had time to unpack before they all flew off to Copenhagen in December 2009.

Scientists Gone Wild! End of Human Race Within 90 Years.

2010-01-03T00:43:00.009+10:00

It's hard to drink coffee at the same time as reading the prediction of this top scientist without laughing and choking as the liquid goes down the wrong way. I stumbled upon this little gem all the way back from late 2004.

A top NZ scientist believes that there will be no human race left inside 90 years. That means there are people being born today that will probably see the last day of human beings on planet Earth.

Scary thought isn't it? Only of course if you smoked too much weed during your youth. For the rest of us it is just more petrol on the fire that has become the global warming scam.

Stand back while I toss a match.

(See the original article here.)

A top New Zealand researcher is using a prestigious award ceremony in Christchurch to warn that humans face extinction by the end of the century.

Professor Peter Barrett will be presented with the Marsden Medal tonight for his 40-year contribution to Antarctic research, latterly focusing on climate change.

The director of Victoria University's Antarctic Research Centre expects to use his acceptance speech to warn climate change was a major threat to the planet.

"After 40 years, I'm part of a huge community of scientists who have become alarmed with our discovery, that we know from our knowledge of the ancient past, that if we continue our present growth path, we are facing extinction," Barrett said. "Not in millions of years, or even millennia, but by the end of this century."

Barrett won the award – designed to mark lifetime achievement in the sciences – for his research into Antarctica, which began with helping prove New Zealand was once part of the Gondwanaland supercontinent.

He then changed disciplines, to predicting the impact of climate change. The result was a body of research on Antarctic ice sheets "which to our surprise is becoming increasingly relevant to the world as a consequence of global warming".

In a way this might be good news. I am going to ask politicians to stop wasting money funding long term infrastructure like roads, railways, universities etc. In fact education funding can be cut to zero right now. What's the point of spending money on education when it's only got a less than 90 year time frame for pay back. Space research and medical research should likewise be stopped.

Is there anyone else besides Kevin Parker of Deutsche Bank that actually believes this nonsense? If you do believe it please contact me and I will arrange medical assistance for you.

Update: I almost forgot, UN chief Ban Ki-moon also believes the human race will be driven to extinction. He announced his prophecy in 2007 at yet another climate conference in Bali. Kevin Rudd was there and didn't criticize that statement. It would be a good question to ask him if he agrees with Ban Ki-moon and Barrett that we are going to become extinct due to AGW. I wonder if Ban Ki-moon also believes in the tooth fairy. You have to be a little worried when the leader of the UN makes absurd statements.

The good Dr Barrett appears to have spent far too long down in Antartica with his head buried in cold snow.

I wonder when we are going to see the billions of humans die that Barrett predicts. Will we see it beginning in the next 30 years? 70 years? or will they all die in the last decade leading up to 2100.

As a member of an endangered species I am going to have myself listed in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and try to get my own world heritage reserve to live in. I hope they can make the reserve somewhere around Port Douglas up on the Barrier Reef - that would be nice. I am sure Dr Barrett would support such a IUCN Red listing - he really has no choice.

Prof Paltridge On Possible Illegal Climate Scientists Activities

2010-01-02T16:10:00.007+10:00

Emeritus Professor Garth Paltridge is an atmospheric physicist and was a Chief Research Scientist with the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research before taking up positions in Tasmania as Director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies and CEO of the Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre. He retired in 2002 and continues to live in Hobart. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Tasmania and a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. He is author of The Climate Caper.

In an article published today in the Australian Prof Paltridge comments on Climategate and the Hockey Team at the CRU.

Boffins may be illegal

THE Climategate scandal continues to unfold. The thousands of emails leaked to the internet from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia reveal a tight-knit, influential group of scientists whose attitude to their profession is, to say the least, distorted.

It seems that a religious belief in disastrous climate change has destroyed their common sense and their appreciation of what is the appropriate way to carry out research.

See Read More link for further details

Prof Paltridge continues,

Climategate may at least demonstrate that the concept of a scientific consensus with regard to global warming is nonsense. There may indeed be thousands of scientists contributing to the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but on any particular aspect of the overall story all have to rely on the word of the few scientists who are directly involved. And when the particular aspect concerns experimental data on which the whole story rests, the data purporting to show the world is getting warmer, then the consensus argument is indeed on shaky ground.

On the evidence so far, there is not much doubt that the group of scientists linked to the CRU has behaved fairly badly. Any individual email from the Climategate pile may be explained and excused as a stupid mistake of the time, but when all are taken together it seems obvious enough that there have been lots of violations of what might be called the scientific code. The most glaring examples concern efforts to keep basic sets of data out of the hands of people who may not be sympathetic to the official story about the disastrous nature of global warming. This, when the CRU is specifically paid to collate the data gathered by national meteorological services across the world, and to make the data available to outside scientists to check and to use.

In any event, the CRU information is covered by environmental information regulations that specifically require public bodies in Britain to make their data progressively available to the public by electronic means that are easily accessible.

So the ducking and weaving in the face of reasonable requests for CRU data by outside scientists and indeed in the face of Freedom of Information requests by those same outside scientists may not be just bad scientific form. It may be illegal. Which makes the lukewarm reaction to Climategate by the great and powerful of the scientific establishment even more difficult to swallow. The journal Nature, for instance, has this to say: "If there are benefits to the email theft, one [of those benefits] is to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts. ..."

The full article is available in the Australian here.

Prof Paltridge certianly is not the first scientist speaking out about Climategate and the activities of the Climatic Research Unit of the East Anglia University of which Prof Phil Jones was the director of until he stepped down recently following publication of the Climategate emails.

Prof Paltridge does a service to the Australian public by keeping this conduct squarely in the public eye.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010

2010-01-01T05:04:00.001+10:00

Happy New Year to all climate protaganists. All the best for 2010.

End of The World: News of The Day

2009-12-31T19:30:00.007+10:00

Dr Spencer Releases Original Recordings: Tribute to Gore (04:36 UTC 311209)

Dr Spencer was busy in his evil subterranean lab looking for signs of catastrophic global warming in the closing hours of the end of the first decade of the Last Millennium for mankind when he stumbled upon an archeological treasure in the form of his twin brother’s (Butch Spencer of EcoFreako fame) original cuts of their famous Al Gore tribute singles.

Lost Digital Treasure Recovered

Dr Spencer and Butch have generously decided to release this important historical EcoGreenCarbonNeutralGenderSensitiveHistoricallyRecontextualisedGlobal PostScientificArt to Civil Society for the salvation of all nongenderspecificspecieskind and as a special sacrifice to Mother Gaia on this post-tipping point day, the day of days, the day before the day to end all days.

DocRock writes,

"You might remember Live Earth. It was a worldwide string of concerts which frivolously wasted huge amounts of fossil fuels to help raise awareness of mankind’s frivolous waste of fossil fuels.

Now that Mr. Gore has moved on to other things such as winning Nobel Peace Prizes, it’s only appropriate that he should have a tribute band. At least that’s what my evil twin brother and rocker, Butch Spencer, told me. Butch and several of his musician friends got together a year or so ago and recorded a couple of songs (mp3’s and lyrics below) to honor Mr. Gore’s tireless efforts to Save the Earth.

The band was called EcoFreako, and it lasted about a week before everyone found better things to do with their free time. Since then, the songs have been wasting away on my computer until I re-discovered them when transferring files to my new, Energy Star-compliant desktop supercomputer."

Ahmen to that bro’. Go here to get your fix of these rockin’ baaaaaaaaaaadasss mp3’s.

Bishop Tutu On Going Down (05:02 UTC 311209)

Following a couple of shots of Viagra, Desmond Tutu opined with the following message; and a warning,

We are saying to the rich countries, “You are not going to be able to quarantine yourself, there is no place that’s going to be safe. If we go down, we all go down. We have the chance of survival, and more than just survival: we have the chance of building a new world.”

Those are reported to be the first democratic words uttered by Desmond since the fall of apartheid. Sorry Des, but you are not doing too well with your "new world" building in Africa so I think I'll stick with my old one.

Misogynist Scientists Prove Women Suffer More from Post Copenhagen Blues (05:05 UTC 311209)

And following on with the going down theme, here’s a picture of some cute EcoHotties on their way to Copenhagen.

All aboard to Copenhagen!

It was a different story after the party.

Post-Copenhagen Blues - Pic of glum EcoHottie listening to
Obama in the dying hours of COP15 and in need of some luvin'

And just to prove that not all the hotties are deluded I present Miss Maria dos Santos.

Maria is a firm (some would say very firm) AGW skeptic. She refuses to date “any of those doomsday AGW morons. The climate is nothing to be afraid of,” says Maria. "I like to get out every day on the beach here at Ipanema and play. The weather here varies as much as 10 degrees in a day. Humans are adaptable. When it gets hot I just put on a skimpier bikini. No harm has every come from it.”

Way to go Maria!

Scientists Discover Temperature Anomalies Make Fish Real Mad (05:55 UTC 311209)

Temperature anomaly enraged Great White Shark

The year 2009 saw another important discovery by scientists. Rising temperatures makes good fish go bad.

Early Paleo-Climatologist Found (06:00 UTC 311209)

Scientists have just discovered the remains of what appears to be an early AGW climatologist in Africa. They believe they may have stumbled upon an early UN paleogabfest on anthropogenic global warming that was suddenly overtaken by a bliazzard, tragically killing all in attendance. A computer reconstruction appears at left.

Scientists found other similar fossils in the area and the remains of numerous illegible placards together with scratchings in nearby ancient river clay deposits representing, according to archeolinguists, a draft document detailing a scheme to tax emissions from the then newly discovered cooking fire technology sweeping the rich developed homo clans of the region and all but impoverishing proto homos in the process who were forced to eat raw vegetables instead of juicy steaks. There were also provisions relating to fire technology transfer rights and a complex coconut reparations justice model.

Dr Mann of Penn State University is quoted as saying, “the evidence is undeniable; AGW was recognized by scientists then and now. This is clear proof of a body of evidence. There is no debate.” Unfortunately my interview with Dr Mann was cut short by a hearing he had to attend by the Penn State University Senate into his research. Damn.

Archeologists speculate that the early development of an unproductive activist “civil society” class by the as yet unnamed proto homo species was simply too much for their primitive technology and economy to sustain leading to the early extinction of the species. We will never know for certain but one thing that is certain is that much more funding and research into this remarkable find is required.

An alternative IPCC backed reconstruction of the digitised remains performed by CRU scientists using the University of East Anglia SuperDooper Computer Array which put the data through a 100,000 year 14th polynomial inverted contortion filter (patent pending) following Jones et al 1999 and smoothing and smearing the result yielded this:

Prof Jones' reconstruction using homogenised data

I know what I would rather believe. I think CRU's funding worries are over.

Gay Whale Molests Lesbian Greenpeace Eco Warrior (07:18 UTC 311209)

Reports are filtering in that a gay humpback whale has inappropriately “touched” a lesbian Greenpeace activist during a specially authorized US EPA close encounter research dive. The woman is reported to have filed a law suit against the US government for negligence in authorizing the dive. Damages could exceed the entire national US debt. Upon hearing the news the whale expelled such a quantity of noxious methane and carbon dioxide gases that the nearby Green Peace ship, Eco Something or Other sank in less than 3 minutes. An all female rescue crew has been dispatched from a yurt in Nepal to perform a gender sensitive rescue and is expected on the scene in less than 82 hours. The US Coast Guard is investigating claims that laughter was heard in radio transmissions allegedly originating in the area of operations of the Japanese whaling fleet.

Greenpeace broadcast the following video of a constipated angry child to the whales in an attempt to scare them from further hostilities.

A spokesperson for Greenpeace said, “if the whales see the kind of threats from children that we are prepared to release on our own species, they will know we mean business when it comes to dealing with them! The whales would be very unwise to underestimate either our capabilities or our resolve.” Garbled reports of a second Greenpeace ship just being sunk by a suspiciously odorous bubble in Copenhagen harbor have yet to be confirmed.

Weather (08:02 UTC 311209)

Eight inches of Global Warming fell in London

The UK Met Office released their forecast for New Year’s Day. They say there is a 51% chance that the weather tomorrow will be different from today.

“We have reached a broad consensus,” stated the director (snowbound on holidays in the Scottish Highlands) of the clandestine AGW First Response Climate Team operating undercover within the bureau. This could be the last snowfall we see for a millennium.”

Asked to explain how the lingering cold snap fits in with the AGW hypothesis the director was heard to say, “why don’t you flat earther’s just F### OFF!”

The director then hurled a large wad of homogenized climate statistics weighing in excess of 5 kilo’s at the reporter. UK prosecuting authorities are expected to lay charges against the director for assault in the next few hours. Latest information is that ambulances have been prevented from attending the scene due to impassible roads covered in deep powder snow.

Lord Monckton issued a statement that he would be willing to attempt a rescue with a 4WD Land Rover assuming relevant persmissions could be obtained from the newly incorporated UK Carboncops in time but he had almost used all his carbon allowance for the year and still had a new years party to get to in a neighbouring glen later this evening.

Have a great last day for 2009!

Nature Admits: There is No Real Evidence of Anthropogenic Global Warming

2009-12-31T00:30:00.000+10:00

Most would already know that there is not one paper, not one testable hypothesis, not one piece of hard scientific proof to verify the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming case despite billions of dollars being invested in the research to date. All we have are computer models which of course tell us exactly what they are asked to tell us.

Alan Cheetham, an engineer with extensive scientific training and who has published several papers on data modelling, has written an article on Climate Science Warming that examines this in some detail together with the evidence. Specifically he looks at a 3 December 2009 Nature editorial attempting to defend the AGW hypothesis. It seems that catestrophic global warming scientists "test" assertions by "running their models". This is an amazing admission from a Nature. Assertions are tested by running untested models. The models do not even simulate the 1930-1940's warming let alone the decline in average global temperature anomolies since the beginning of this century. As the models do not simulate historical climate it is beyond comprehension that they are used for what are coyly called future "projections". To quote a snippet from Alan:

The Nature editorial states: “Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.” It then mentions the usual symptoms: “glacier retreat, thinning and areal reduction of Arctic sea ice, reductions in permafrost and accelerated loss of mass from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets … the global sea level is rising … spring is arriving earlier each year.”

So where are the “robust lines of evidence” for causation?

“Denialists often maintain that these changes are just a symptom of natural climate variability. But when climate modellers test this assertion by running their simulations with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide held fixed, the results bear little resemblance to the observed warming. The strong implication is that increased greenhouse-gas emissions have played an important part in recent warming, meaning that curbing the world's voracious appetite for carbon is essential”.

That’s it – running model simulations. That’s all there is. No real evidence. The models don’t work without CO2. Just curb your appetite. If there was actual empirical evidence of CO2 causation they would have mentioned it.

It is essential that this article be read in full from Global Warming Science.

Models can aid in our understanding of systems but it is absurd to "test" an assertion by running an untested simulation or model that is clearly deficient. The models cannot be used as predictive devices nor as a means for testing assertions.

French Toss Carbon Tax

2009-12-30T18:03:00.000+10:00

The French Carbon Tax was ruled as unconstitutional just days before it was to come into effect. Read all about it at WUWT.

Climategate Video

2009-12-30T16:55:00.000+10:00

I am including a Finnish television documentary (English subtitles) which is a very good and will bring you up to speed quickly on Climategate which involves IPCC scientists being currently investigated by the prosecuting authorities. There are a few minor errors but overall it is very good.

Now why can't we get something like this from our publicly funded ABC in Australia? I am not being serious of course. We know the reason.

It’s Not the Weather, Stupid

2009-12-29T19:45:00.003+10:00

I came across an interesting article and quote concerning Desmond Tutu at Copenhagen.

"At a candle light vigil, Tutu almost incoherently squealed:

“If you are responsible for most of the emissions, which are—look—look—look at the ozone layer. People are now suffering from all kinds of skin diseases, because we are thinning the ozone layer. Whoa! Whoa-ho!”

Getting straight to the point, Tutu importuned the wealthy West to fork it over:

“For your own sakes, rich people, please, for your own sakes, for your children’s sakes, for the sake of our world, be nice. Be nice, and pay up. Pay up, please. Please, for your own sake.”

Most prominent among the religious prelates in Copenhagen were Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and retired South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who solemnly told religious activists at a rally that an unidentified 300,000 people were “dying as a result of the poverty caused by all of the emissions coming from the rich countries.” Lest anyone misunderstand his target, Tutu pleaded: “Hello, rich people. Hello there, hello America.” Tutu did not mention how many hundreds of millions of people are alive and living with greater health and wealth because of Western industry."

Poor Desmond, not only does Desmond seem to be getting his global catastrophies mixed up (global catastrophy due to thinning ozone layer is so last century Des) but massively increasing aid by way of “climate reparations” to the tune of USD100 billion a year (see here), and that’s just for starters, is not the answer. Rewarding murderous and/or inept regimes with billions of dollars for their offshore bank accounts and incestuous business transactions is not a solution. It has never succeeded in the past and it will not succeed in the future.

Transferring wealth from the poor of the west to the rich of the despotic African nations by way of a climate tax will only extend the murderous regimes the people live under.

The problems of Africa have nothing to do with the weather. They have to do with corrupt and murderous African elites siphoning off the wealth of their nations and destroying their economies through either wanton malfeasance or willful incompetence. The biggest single factor in determining life-expectancy in poor nations is the amount of fossil fuels they burn. The more they burn, the more prosperous they become, and the less poverty and early death there is. This is because fossil-fueled electricity is nearly always the cheapest on the market, and is relatively low-tech, and is therefore very suitable for poorer countries that do not have the scientific or technical infrastructure to run nuclear reactors, for instance. Of course the global lunatics of the religious left either do not understand this or do not care about it and continue to support failed and regressive policies and ludicrous notions of a climate tax.

Tutu has become nothing but a global beggar. Sucking on the tit of the west will not secure investment for Africa nor will it sustain its future. Development and capitalism will. Your choice, your consequences Desmond.

No wonder Church attendances are down.

More Evidence CO2 Not Driving Climate

2009-12-29T04:34:00.000+10:00

Professor Michael Asten of the school of geosciences at Monash University, Melbourne writes in today’s Australian that CO2 has a diminished role in global warming and points to non man made factors as drivers of changes in climate. In other words forget the IPCC and its pseudo science models and unfalsifiable “projections” and let’s get on with the real observational science.

Prof Asten writes,

“The Copenhagen climate change summit closed two weeks ago in confusion, disagreement and, for some, disillusionment. When the political process shows such a lack of unanimity, it is pertinent to ask whether the science behind the politics is as settled as some participants maintain.

Earlier this month (The Australian, December 9) I commented on recently published results showing huge swings in atmospheric carbon dioxide, both up and down, at a time of global cooling 33.6 million years ago.

Some senior scientists, who are adherents of orthodox global warming theory, do not like authors publishing data that can be used to argue against orthodoxy, a point made by unrelated authors with startling clarity in the Climategate leaked emails from the University of East Anglia.”

It is interesting that Prof Asten sees fit to mention the Climategate leaked emails. Refer to yesterday’s blog entry for more on that matter.

He goes on to cite one of several recent studies.

“... as Pearson and his colleagues pointed out in their letter two weeks ago, "We caution against any attempt to derive a simple narrative linking CO2 and climate on these large time scales. This is because many other factors come into play, including other greenhouse gases, moving continents, shifting ocean currents, dramatic changes in ocean chemistry, vegetation, ice cover, sea level and variations in the Earth's orbit around the sun."”

Note to the IPCC; so the science is settled by a so called “consensus”? With more and more scientists coming out of the closet it is obvious the UN/CRU people really need to get out more. Of course I know they are busy fighting police and university investigations at the moment but when it’s all over take a break and get some air and talk to other scientists rather than corruptly trying to get them sacked or gagged. Who knows, maybe they’ll learn something.

It is very fortunate indeed that Tony Abbott stepped in at the last minute and saved us from a taxing regime, at least for now, that would ruin the Australian economy when all the while it would be based on a false premise that CO2 was a significant force for global warming. If correct of course the renders the models upon which the IPCC relies useless for both predicting future climate based on CO2 in the atmosphere and for setting policy. The whole IPCC process would be proved to be a sham. I wonder how the vested interests of the climate industry including the hoodwinked politicians and the CSIRO will be spinning this – they have their reputations riding on this and there is a lot at stake. We live in interesting times.

Hide the Decline Revisited

2009-12-28T20:30:00.009+10:00

"I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temp[erature]s to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) a[n]d from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline."

Prof Phil Jones (Director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) who has now stepped aside under investigation)

To investigate easily the actual text of the Climategate emails I recommend a site set up by Dr John Costella. He has set up the site with commentary to put emails into perspective for the uninitiated and all is linked to a data base containing all emails and computer code. Sure you can download all the files yourself but they can be difficult and time consuming to read. Set out cleanly on the web site it is a breeze to navigate.

Metastatistics on the Climategate emails - number of times words appear:
•Fraud: 79
•Falsify: 6
•Inflate: 14
•Conceal: 5
•Hide: 19

From: Phil Jones To: "Michael E. Mann" , "raymond s. bradley"
Subject: A couple of things
Date: Fri May 9 09:53:41 2008
Cc: "Caspar Ammann"

....

2. You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet also, but this is the person who is putting in FOI requests for all emails Keith and Tim have written and received re Ch 6 of AR4. We think we've found a way around this.

And then there's this...

From: Phil Jones To: "Michael E. Mann"
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008

Mike,

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!
Cheers
Phil

Click the Read more link below for the full post.

Don’t fall for the MSM trick of trying to say the emails are harmless or insignificant or for Al Gore’s “misstatement” that they are ten years old. These emails discuss amongst other things, alteration of scientific data, and illegal deletion of data to avoid FOI demands. The most recent emails are dated October 2009. Just for a taste let us look at the notorious statement by Prof Phil Jones above on Dr Costella’s site. Commentary is by Dr Costella. Remember these people produced the data and graphs that fed straight into the IPCC reports. The IPCC was aware of what was going on or at least that there was a problem with the data because they wanted it fixed.

“September 22, 1999: email 0938018124

...In other words, tree rings had been proved to be completely unreliable thermometers.

It is with this scandal in mind that Keith Briffa writes to writes to Mike Mann, Phil Jones, Tom Karl, and Chris Folland, expression severe reservations about their contribution to the next Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, at that time in the revision stages:

“I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the [temperature] proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple. We don’t have a lot of [temperature] proxies that come right up to [today] and those that do (at least a significant number of tree proxies) [have] some unexpected changes in response that do not match the recent warming. I do not think it wise that this issue be ignored in the chapter.”

That is an understatement! Indeed, Briffa states his key opinion even more clearly:

“I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago.”

This is a remarkable statement, which undermines the entire argument propounded by Briffa and his colleagues that global warming was “unprecedented”.

Mike Mann responds to this catastrophic development:

“[I w]alked into this hornet’s nest this morning! Keith and Phil [Jones] have both raised some very good points. And I should point out that Chris [Folland], through no fault of his own, but probably through me not conveying my thoughts very clearly to the others, definitely overstates any singular confidence I have in my own (Mann [and coworkers]) [results].”

In other words, Mann has no confidence in his own results!

Mann now engineers what became the infamous “green graph”—the green tree-ring line in the graph in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report that mysteriously passes behind the other lines at the year 1961—and never emerges on the other side. First, he needs to fiddle the data, to make sure that the lines all cross at right place:

“I am perfectly amenable to keeping Keith’s series in the [graph], and can ask Ian Macadam (Chris?) to add it to the [graph] he has been preparing (nobody liked my own color [and] [graph]ing conventions so I’ve given up doing this myself). The key thing is making sure the [lines] are vertically aligned in a reasonable way. I had been using the entire 20th century, but in the case of Keith’s, we need to align the first half of the 20th century w[ith] the corresponding [average] values of the other [lines], due to the late 20th century decline.”

Satisfied with that solution, he then turns to the problem of that bothersome “late 20th century decline”:

“So if Chris and Tom (?) are ok with this, I would be happy to add Keith’s [line] [to the graph]. That having been said, it does raise a conundrum: We demonstrate […] that the major discrepancies between Phil’s and our [line] can be explained in terms of [statistical excuses]. But that explanation certainly can’t rectify why Keith’s [data], which has similar [properties] to Phil’s [data], differs in large part in exactly the opposite direction that Phil’s does from ours. This is the problem we all picked up on[—]everyone in the room at [the] I[ntergovernmental] P[anel on] C[limate] C[hange] was in agreement that this was a problem and a potential distraction/detraction from the reasonably con[s]ensus viewpoint we’d like to show w[ith] the Jones [and coworkers] and Mann [and coworkers] [results].”

In other words, there was no consensus at all at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—other than the participants’ universal agreement that there was a problem. Mann is here telling us, in his own words, that there was an agenda to present a “consensus viewpoint”, that simply didn’t exist in reality.

Mann now buries himself, by explaining what they should have done:

“So, if we show Keith’s [line] in this plot, we have to comment that “something else” is responsible for the discrepancies in this case. Perhaps Keith can help us out a bit by explaining the processing that went into the [data] and the potential factors that might lead to it being “warmer” than the Jones [and coworkers] and Mann [and coworkers] series? We would need to put in a few words in this regard. Otherwise, the skeptics [would] have a[] field day casting doubt on our ability to understand the factors that influence these estimates and, thus, can undermine faith in the []estimates [from paleological data]. I don’t think that doubt is scientifically justified, and I’d hate to be the one to have to give it fodder!”

In other words, Mann believes that all the lines should agree, but the actual data says otherwise; and he is loathe to give that “fodder” to the critics. He tries to pressure Briffa to come up with excuses why his data might not agree with the others.

Of course, we know that, ultimately, he gave up on this impossible task, and the troublesome “decline” was removed by an amazing technique, heretofore unknown in the history of science: white-out!

November 16, 1999: email 0942777075

That background now paves the way to our understanding the historic email that generations of schoolchildren to come will study as the catchphrase of the greatest scientific fraud in the history of mankind:

Phil Jones to Ray Bradley, Mike Mann, Malcolm Hughes, Keith Briffa, and Tim Osborn, regarding a diagram for a World Meteorological Organization Statement:

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temp[erature]s to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) a[n]d from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

Those thirty-three words summarize the hoax so magnificently succinctly that the Nobel Committee should consider retrieving their Peace Prize from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore, and re-issuing it as a Literature Prize to Phil Jones.

This email was sent less than two months after the one analyzed above. Clearly, Mike Mann’s problems with Keith Briffa’s data—that it didn’t agree with the real temperature measurements from 1961 onwards—had by this time spread to the data for the other “temperature proxies”, albeit only from 1981 onwards. Jones reveals that Mann did not address this problem by making honest note of it in the paper that he and his co-authors pubished in Nature, but rather by fraudulently substituting the real temperature data into the graphs, for the past twenty or forty years as required.
That Mann did so would, in and of itself, disqualify him and all of his research from any future consideration in the annals of science; but here we have the other leader of the field, Phil Jones, bragging that he admired the “trick” so much that he adopted it himself. Moreover, his email was sent to the major players who dominated this field. It is the silence of these conspirators over the intervening decade that has forever damned the field of “climate science” to a state of irreversible ignominy...”

Now that you have read and understood that, go to another very thorough analysis of these few emails (there are a thousand more to deal with in total) found here by Steve McIntyre.

I hope you enjoy Dr Costella’s resource as much as I have as well as Steve McIntyre's analysis. Steve was aware of this problem well before the Climategate emails came to light and wrote tot he IPCC asking them to correct it - they did not of course correct it. Just out of interest is there anyone that would trust any reports or "consensus science" that these “scientists” produce? If so please contact me I some expired options I need to dump.

Dr Kary Mullis - Nobel Price Winner in Chemistry Says Global Warming is Trash

2009-12-27T05:00:00.004+10:00

Dr Kary Mullis won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing a way to copy a strand of DNA. (His technique, called PCR, jump-started the 1990s' biorevolution.) His discovery is hailed as one of the monumental scientific techniques of the twentieth century. He's known for his wide-ranging interests - and strong opinions. In this very interesting 30 minute video he looks in an entertaining way at the development of the scientific method starting back in the 17th century. He talks about his interest in backyard rocketry and then lets loose in the last 15 minutes at man made Global Warming. Use the slider to go straight to minute 15 if you don't want to watch the whole video but I do recommend the whole video for context.

Kary sure doesn't muck around. He talks about scientists who are not honest and the IPCC. He says the whole global warming theory is trash. So much for there being no debate and the science being settled.

Kary Miller is certainly very entertaining. It would be great if someone could get him out to Australia for a few sessions like the one in the video. I am sure it would be a huge success.

Terry McCrann Trashes ETS in The Australian

2009-12-26T17:00:00.013+10:00

It seems like the mainstream media (MSM) are finally starting to catch on. Terry McCrann attacks the ETS, Copenhagen and carbon dioxide pricing in perhaps the most aggressive article I have seen to date here in The Australian newspaper concerning the climate fiasco. I have said all along that once people are asked to put their money on the table and actually pay for carbon dioxide they will run faster than rats from a sinking ship and it appears that is the case. Common sense makes a comeback in Oz! I think it is worthwhile reposting my ETS countdown timer I posted earlier.

Now of course the Australian is a high brow paper and the article is in the business section which even the chardonnay swilling urban coffee club members that routinely read the paper probably skip but it is a definite milestone. It appears that global alarmists will no longer be getting the free ride they have been in the MSM and I look forward to seeing carbon apologists scrutinised in the MSM not just on their beliefs and statements but also on the cost of implementing their draconian proposals. It is my hope that this fiasco will start to be defined in terms of its lefty “green” supporters v. everyone else – a simplified paradigm that is much more easily managed and dealt with strategically than the naive religious model of piety and “saving” oneself and the earth we have seen to date. Here are a few gems from Terry McCrann’s article, Let's face it: the ETS is dead:

“Tony Abbott almost singlehandedly put the Emissions Trading Scheme on life support. Now Copenhagen has killed it stone cold, motherless dead.

Climate change minister Penny Wong, who is too emotionally committed to it to accept that truth, will carry it into the new year.

A responsible prime minister would give the ETS a decent Christian burial. And it has to be a formal state funeral.

A Treasury that was not so absolutely compromised by a bizarre combination of religious zeal, institutional pomposity and basic incompetence would be gently but persistently and emphatically advising the government that the ETS was no longer a good idea. If indeed it ever was.” ...

“Two things simply cannot be denied about Copenhagen. Australia locking in its ETS wouldn't have made the slightest difference to the outcome. Not even Kevin Rudd is delusional enough to believe that if only he and Penny had been able to arrive with their bit of paper, China would have agreed to destroy its future.

Secondly, but for Abbott's aggression -- helped in no small part by Malcolm Turnbull's overweening arrogance -- we would have been locked into a bad policy and a disastrous process, which is even worse. The ETS.

It's time the business community woke up from its dozy slumber, with the doziest of all being the Business Council.

Now it would only be the certainty of the grave. That of carbon export and permit volatility and rip-offs.

That's the export of jobs, businesses and investment to other places that had no price on carbon dioxide. Those "other places" are essentially the rest of the world except for Europe -- which doesn't matter and in any event has totally debased the permits system, just as it has cynically approached the whole sorry climate saga, starting with Kyoto.

Our ETS could only work as part of a properly regulated and audited global system in which at the very minimum the US, the second-biggest emitter, participated. Even then it would still have been extremely volatile, open to manipulation and outright rorting(Ed: see links below): the very antithesis of certainty.”

And just in case the reader is still confused Terry shines more penetrating sunlight ont he issue,

“If we believe we have to join hands with the rest of the world in a mutual suicide pact, let us at least choose the more efficient method.”

Bravo. Well said Terry McCrann.

One thing Terry doesn’t give credit to in the Australian turnaround on ETS are the tens of thousands of people that personally contacted their politicians by telephone, mail, email and bloggs on the disastrous ETS proposal. That is the driver that led to the change and a hearty well done to the people that took the time to invest in their futures and the future of Australia by doing so. Already the mainstream public is starting to awaken thanks to your efforts, and awaken in a big way.

In case you missed it the arguement that Terry refers to regarding lack of certainty of any Cap in Trade scheme has already been superbly illustrated by the $USD 7.4 Billion (AUD 8.37 Billion) fraud that hit the international headlines only a week ago.

See for example the New York Times, Europol: $7.4 Billion Lost from Carbon Trading Fraud in Europe, and

Fox News, Fraud in Europe's Cap and Trade System a 'Red Flag,' Critics Say. The top cops in Europe say carbon-trading is an organized crime scheme that has robbed the continent of $7.4 billion.

What a hoot.
Happy Holidays.

45,000 Delegates, Lots of hot air, Cop15 Agreement Failure, Priceless

2009-12-26T01:00:00.029+10:00

It began like this:

“THOUSANDS of politicians, bureaucrats and environmental activists have arrived in Copenhagen for the global climate summit with all the bravado and self-regard of a group of commandos convinced that they are about to save the world.”

But how did it end?

Barack Hussein Obama, US President, described the Cop15 agreement at a press conference just before he left Copenhagen thus:

"Today we've made meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough here in Copenhagen."

Only a week later the Barack seems to have had a change of heart in this interview with Jim Lehrer of Newshour saying,

“I think that people are justified in being disappointed about the outcome in Copenhagen. What I said was essentially that rather than see a complete collapse in Copenhagen, in which nothing at all got done and would have been a huge backward step, at least we kind of held ground and there wasn't too much backsliding from where we were."

Uhhh no Mr President that is not in fact what you essentially said only 5 days ago in Copenhagen. You see what you said was in the press release referenced in the first link above and we have this thing called the internet where we can download it and see exactly what you said. What you said (essentially, indeed exactly) was "Today we've made meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough here in Copenhagen." That is nothing like what you are saying you said now, not even close. The meaning is totally different. One statement points north and the other 180 degrees south.

Seems everyone associated with disastrous man made global warming is as slippery as an eel. The Hockey Team "scientists", the IPCC, the chair of the IPCC and politicians supporting the process. One would think that if the science was so certain the process would be crsytal clear, there would be no deleted original data by the Climatic Research Unit (the subject of Climategate affair), there would be release of original raw data and code, there would be a transparent methodology open to intense scrutiny, there would be no breach of ethics in the peer review process, no debunked hockey stick graph, no embaressing data expunged from the tree ring graph, no breach of FOI laws currently under legal investigation, no elimation of the widely recognized (in the scientific literature) Medieval Warm Period nor of the Little Ice Age.... and the list goes on and on and on. Tomorrow I will post a video of a Nobel Prize winning scientist who pulls no punches criticising the IPCC process and the scientists associated with it blasting the whole man made global warming hypothesis as trash. Watch for it as it is both entertaining and informative.

In the mean time lets look at what actually came out of Cop15. The accord itself is non-binding as some countries declined to endorse it. That means that conference organisers can only "take note" of the accord - it has no force as a UN agreement such as this requires unanimous endorsement.

The text of the unedited advance version of the COP15 accord as it currently stands:

Decision -/CP.15
The Conference of the Parties,

Takes note of the Copenhagen Accord of 18 December 2009.

Copenhagen Accord

The Heads of State, Heads of Government, Ministers, and other heads of the following delegations present at the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen: [List of Parties]

In pursuit of the ultimate objective of the Convention as stated in its Article 2,

Being guided by the principles and provisions of the Convention,
Noting the results of work done by the two Ad hoc Working Groups,
Endorsing decision x/CP.15 on the Ad hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action and decision x/CMP.5 that requests the Ad hoc Working Group on Further Commitments of Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol to continue its work,

Have agreed on this Copenhagen Accord which is operational immediately.

1. We underline that climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. We emphasise our strong political will to urgently combat climate change in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. To achieve the ultimate objective of the Convention to stabilize greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, we shall, recognizing the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius, on the basis ofequity and in the context of sustainable development, enhance our long-term cooperative action to combat climate change. We recognize the critical impacts of climate change and the potential impacts of response measures on countries particularly vulnerable to its adverse effects and stress the need to establish a comprehensive adaptation programme including international support.

2. We agree that deep cuts in global emissions are required according to science, and as documented by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report with a view to reduce global emissions so as to hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius, and take action to meet this objective consistent with science and on the basis of equity. We should cooperate in achieving the peaking of global and national emissions as soon as possible, recognizing that the time frame for peaking will be longer in developing countries and bearing in mind that social and economic development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of developing countries and that a low-emission development strategy is indispensable to sustainable development.

3. Adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change and the potential impacts of response measures is a challenge faced by all countries. Enhanced action and international cooperation on adaptation is urgently required to ensure the implementation of the Convention by enabling and supporting the implementation of adaptation actions aimed at reducing vulnerability and building resilience in developing countries, especially in those that are particularly vulnerable, especially least developed countries, small island developing States and Africa. We agree that developed countries shall provide adequate, predictable and sustainable financial resources, technology and capacity-building to support the implementation of adaptation action in developing countries.

4. Annex I Parties commit to implement individually or jointly the quantified economy-wide emissions targets for 2020, to be submitted in the format given in Appendix I by Annex I Parties to the secretariat by 31 January 2010 for compilation in an INF document. Annex I Parties that are Party to the Kyoto Protocol will thereby further strengthen the emissions reductions initiated by the Kyoto Protocol. Delivery of reductions and financing by developed countries will be measured, reported and verified in accordance with existing and any further guidelines adopted by the Conference of the Parties, and will ensure that accounting of such targets and finance is rigorous, robust and transparent.

5. Non-Annex I Parties to the Convention will implement mitigation actions, including those to be submitted to the secretariat by non-Annex I Parties in the format given in Appendix II by 31 January 2010, for compilation in an INF document, consistent with Article 4.1 and Article 4.7 and in the context of sustainable development. Least developed countries and small island developing States may undertake actions voluntarily and on the basis of support. Mitigation actions subsequently taken and envisaged by Non-Annex I Parties, including national inventory reports, shall be communicated through national communications consistent with Article 12.1(b) every two years on the basis of guidelines to be adopted by the Conference of the Parties. Those mitigation actions in national communications or otherwise communicated to the Secretariat will be added to the list in appendix II. Mitigation actions taken by Non-Annex I Parties will be subject to their domestic measurement, reporting and verification the result of which will be reported through their national communications every two years. Non-Annex I Parties will communicate information on the implementation of their actions through National Communications, with provisions for international consultations and analysis under clearly defined guidelines that will ensure that national sovereignty is respected. Nationally appropriate mitigation actions seeking international support will be recorded in a registry along with relevant technology, finance and capacity building support. Those actions supported will be added to the list in appendix II. These supported nationally appropriate mitigation actions will be subject to international measurement, reporting and verification in accordance with guidelines adopted by the Conference of the Parties.

6. We recognize the crucial role of reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation and the need to enhance removals of greenhouse gas emission by forests and agree on the need to provide positive incentives to such actions through the immediate establishment of a mechanism including REDD-plus, to enable the mobilization of financial resources from developed countries.

7. We decide to pursue various approaches, including opportunities to use markets, to enhance the cost-effectiveness of, and to promote mitigation actions. Developing countries, especially those with low emitting economies should be provided incentives to continue to develop on a low emission pathway.

8. Scaled up, new and additional, predictable and adequate funding as well as improved access shall be provided to developing countries, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, to enable and support enhanced action on mitigation, including substantial finance to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD-plus), adaptation, technology development and transfer and capacity-building, for enhanced implementation of the Convention. The collective commitment by developed countries is to provide new and additional resources, including forestry and investments through international institutions, approaching USD 30 billion for the period 2010 . 2012 with balanced allocation between adaptation and mitigation. Funding for adaptation will be prioritized for the most vulnerable developing countries, such as the least developed countries, small island developing States and Africa. In the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation, developed countries commit to a goal of mobilizing jointly USD 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries. This funding will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance. New multilateral funding for adaptation will be delivered through effective and efficient fund arrangements, with a governance structure providing for equal representation of developed and developing countries. A significant portion of such funding should flow through the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund.

9. To this end, a High Level Panel will be established under the guidance of and accountable to the Conference of the Parties to study the contribution of the potential sources of revenue, including alternative sources of finance, towards meeting this goal.

10. We decide that the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund shall be established as an operating entity of the financial mechanism of the Convention to support projects, programme, policies and other activities in developing countries related to mitigation including REDD-plus, adaptation, capacity-building, technology development and transfer.

11. In order to enhance action on development and transfer of technology we decide to establish a Technology Mechanism to accelerate technology development and transfer in support of action on adaptation and mitigation that will be guided by a country-driven approach and be based on national circumstances and priorities.

The two appendixes are blank. Apparently they will be filled in later. When that happens I will post a pdf of the final agreement.

A stunning achievement for a meeting comprising 45,000 attendees including 190 self inflicted "Leaders of the World". Basically nothing more than a non-binding agreement to make an agreement sometime plus of course despite achieving nothing on emissions it locks in the "transfer" of hundreds of billions of dollars from developed countries to other countries to "assist" with "climate change" (see para 8). I'll have more to say about the aptly named REDD plan referred to often in the above document and I'll show where you can dowload a copy of their book, called The Little REDD Book. Apparantly modelling a book title after a Mao Tse-tung's Little Red Book, a man responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of his own countrymen, is somehow a fitting thing for the enviromental movement and the UN (and Obama) to entertain. Others would call it sickening and somewhat frightening. Anyway, keep up the hard work fellas and you might get there by 3010.

The non-outcome of COP15 is of course something of which we should be thankful. I hope we get to see a full acounting for not just the actual total cost of the conference but also the cost of various billion dollar pledges to other nations being thrown around with gay abandon. I won't be holding my breath.

One earnest 20-something that expelled vast quantities of carbon dioxide to travel from Australia to Copenhagen had this to say,

“Perhaps it’s because today I finally got more than a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, or perhaps it’s the sense of hope that was infused into the air at the vigil that civil society held tonight as we sat with candles and listened to strong young leaders from the climate movement around the world speak words more powerful and with more emotion than I could ever hope to represent in writing.

Mostly it’s too hard to find the words to describe how I feel about climate change. This is even more so here in Copenhagen. Yesterday at a talk by George Monbiot he pointed out that climate change is too benign to describe what’s happening to the world… it’s like describing an invasion as “unexpected visitors”. To be young and alive today is to witness our Earth breaking and see our “leaders” demonstrate a spectacular failure of leadership. As Alex Steffen wrote, “to be young and aware today is to see your elders as cannibals with golf clubs”.”

And in a later blog entry,

“Today, humanity, all species, all nations and all peoples’ survival hung in the balance as negotiators bargained... about what kind of world we will live in in 2050.”

There you have it. An indoctrinated climate clown who sees her “elders as cannibals”. I wonder if that includes her parents or is it just other people’s parents that are cannibals? Her references to “elders” are also interesting. From her posts we see Ana went to university in 2003. If she graduated that year at 21 that means she is now 27. She is hardly a youth and is indeed about to become a junior member of the “elder” club. I do hope she has some immunity from that cannibal virus she seems to think infests the population at a certain age. Time to grow up Ana. You are not a “youth” and haven’t been for a decade. There is no danger of extinction of life on planet earth due to AGW. No scientist is pushing that barrow; not even the discredited CRU Hockey team or the IPCC. Breath deeply, take a Bex and have a nice lie down and you'll feel better in the morning.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-25T13:00:00.003+10:00

OK so I stole the link from Borepatch (a great Blog to check out BTW) but being a dog lover this one really hits the spot.

Merry Christmas to all my readers.

Dr Sonja Boehmer-Christensen Addressing Concerns to the BBC

2009-12-24T19:38:00.007+10:00

A letter from Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christensen to the BBC is reproduced below. Sonja is Reader Emeritus, Hull University, editor of Energy & Environment (Multi-science), and a former Senior Research Fellow, Science Policy Research Unit, Energy Group. She is addressing concerns she has with a programme on the BBC concerning global warming.

Sir,

As an ‘expert’ on the science and politics of global warming since the late 1980s and the editor of a journal that has long given climate ’sceptics’ a voice, I would like to complement the BBC for attempting, this morning on Radio 4 , an open-minded discussion of the science and politics of man-made global warming. Two sides were demonstrated. However, a number of outright mistakes and omission created enough bias to turn the programme into sophisticated UK government propaganda.

Here are the main faults:

1. The IPCC was NOT asked to research the “for and against” of the man-made warming hypothesis, as claimed. It was set up(at a time when fossil fuel prices collapsed again after a long period of very high prices) to support the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change. This states, as international law, that man-made climate change exists, is dangerous and can be mitigated by reducing the emission of greenhouse gases. However, only a few developed countries accepted the obligation to reduce emissions, the UK among them. This treaty was de facto an energy policy agenda directed against carbon fuels. IPCC working group III provided the solutions to a problem that working group I was asked to demonstrate more precisely. The IPCC did not seriously evaluate alternative theories. It set out to discredit them, perhaps correctly, but this remains to be decided. Its brief was and remains to ‘underpin’ a major international political agenda with far-reaching economic implications.

2. By no stretch of the imagination can Bob Watson, John Houghton and Nick Stern be considered independent scientists or academics. At best they are loyal civil servants with a background in science or economics. All held major policy or management positions in the UK, EU, World Bank, Met Office or World Meteorological Organization. It was indeed a major conclusion of my three-year research project on the IPCC, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, that the institutions of science and their managers were a major political actor in global environmental politics, and that they had chosen the language of environmentalism to further their causes. (I researched the IPCC as a Senior Research Fellow and a member of the energy group of SPRU (University of Sussex). I observed the strong links between the environmental rhetoric and energy policy objectives. I also interviewed Houghton and Watson and followed their careers. The former saw it as his religious duty to warn us against global warming, the latter ‘promised’ me (in the mid-1990s when working for the IPCC in Washington) that the IPCC would publish majority and minority science reports, rather than the negotiated (with governments) consensus of government-funded science. Minority reports were never published.

3. The financial interests in the decarbonisation agenda are now very extensive indeed and, to the best of my knowledge, include the BBC, the UK Royal Society, and most academic institutions in the UK and elsewhere, not to mention individuals like Al Gore and the current head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, as well as former civil servants in the Department of the Environment. There is of course nothing illegal in having such ‘interests’, but they may colour belief and the interpretation of ‘the science’.

4. Oil interests may not like giving carbon dioxide a price and then trading it, but this does not apply to natural gas. In general, it is not true that the energy industries are opposed to ‘decarbonisation’. Enron, for example was a major supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. In any case, if carbon capture and sequestration becomes eligible for carbon trading, taxpayers would have to pay for the ‘evil’ gas to be injected (at huge cost) back into depleting gas and oil fields, thereby increasing their yield. Subsidies for ‘renewables’ have also made energy companies more friendly towards more expensive energy. The nuclear people were a major supporter of the global warming scare, for obvious reasons. They may even have ‘invented ‘ it originally.

5. Lastly, you paid too little to attention to a major consequence of the prevailing blame game. The accusation that global warming is the alleged responsibility of the rich and the ‘West’, is already leading to bribery, dubious aid streams and the ignoring of other factors causing poverty and disasters in poor, badly-governed nations.

Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen,

Click Read More link for more information.

Some interesting points made in the above letter, especially point 1. I will be posting a little more on the IPCC and why and how it was set up over the next week. For now however it is important to note that the IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is not a scientific organisation, It is a political and policy organisation that does not conduct scientific research. Its head is Dr Rajendra Pachauri who is not a scientist but a railway engineer currently under intense scrutiny for monetary conflict of interest.

COP15 A Failure: Kevin Rudd Expected to Visit Australia

2009-12-20T23:45:00.005+10:00

With the failure of the Copenhagen climate fiasco Australia is bracing for a visit from its PM Kevin Rudd. Kevin was excluded from the inner circle at Copenhagen for final deliberations which would have hurt especially since Rudd was an official "Friend of the Furniture" at Copenhagen. The talks failed even with the bribes on offer to poorer nations. All in all a good outcome for common sense. Australians need to now take stock and make sure clowns like Kevin Rudd will not attempt to destroy their national economy and way of life in a vain attempt to stop the climate changing.

Well it sure has been fun watching the unproductive antics of the climate fools. What better way of getting oneself into the festive spirit than watching Global Climate Lunatics live on YouTube. It started with delegates freezing for 8 hours in a queue to get into the conference and ended with massive amounts of hot air being expended by politicians and their lackeys just before a cold snap in Copenhagen, the UK, US and Australia. President Obama landed in the US to be greated by a massive snow storm. That is poetry. To top it all off no binding agreement was reached. King Canute would have been proud.

COP15 was the world's last chance according to climate alarmists; well at least until next time. See you all in Mexico for a replay!

Housekeeping Update: Due to a hard drive failure this blog will be a little slow for the next couple of weeks as I put together a more robust and massively redundant system. I will also be "upgrading" a lot of software.

One thing is very obvious with Windows 7 v. XP - I need to "upgrade" nearly all my software which is going to cost several thousand dollars just to be able to do the same thing I did before. I will be investigating some open source alternatives however so all may not be lost.