Global Warming / Climate Change scam

[mr anderson]

Plan B for global warming

April 22, 2009

http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/04/22/plan-b-for-global-warming/

There’s a drawing of Don Quixote tacked to the wall of David Keith’s University of Calgary office; one of Gustave Doré’s famous illustrations showing the aging knight flying backwards off his horse as his lance bends against the blade of a windmill. The 45-year-old environmental scientist purchased it as a self-mocking reward after the publication of his 2004 paper, “The influence of large-scale wind power on global climate.” Using computer modelling, Keith and his colleagues posited that wind energy might not be quite as green as envisioned, potentially changing climate on a worldwide scale as fields of turbines slow the winds, changing rainfall and the amount of moisture in the soil. Their conclusion that the much-touted benefits from wind farms might actually be outweighed by the costs didn’t meet with broad public approval. Keith’s email inbox quickly filled with hate messages, a rare trick for an academic.

Should the trend hold, the professor might want to start clearing space on his wall for a crucifix. The work Keith is engaged in now messes with nature itself, breaking some of the greatest taboos of the world’s environmental movement. Spurred by new data suggesting global warming is progressing faster, and at a much more profound level than even the worst-case scenarios, he is at the fore of a small group of scientists proposing a quick technological fix: a “Plan B” to slow climate change and cool the earth almost overnight via massive human interventions. Among their science-fiction-style ideas: the deployment of millions of lenses the size of doughnuts in geo-stationary orbit between the earth and the sun, the creation of vast banks of artificial clouds over the world’s oceans, covering deserts with reflective material, and Keith’s preferred solution—seeding the stratosphere with sulphate or other particles. All schemes designed to send a portion of the sun’s rays back into the cosmos, and buy politicians, business and the public time to finally get serious about cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

When Keith first took an interest in such ideas—lumped together under the broad rubric “geoengineering”—as a grad student 20 years ago, they could hardly be discussed in polite scientific company. Even less so in environmental circles, where many viewed any proposal to manage climate change as a threat to efforts to stop it. “It was a freak show,” he recalls. Verboten in mainstream forums, the topic was only debated at secret NASA and White House-organized confabs.

But somewhere amid reports of melting icefields, worsening droughts, and soaring CO2 concentrations, previously closed minds snapped open. In the last two years, geoengineering has gone from the implausible purview of Dr. Evil-style kooks to a subject of serious scientific and political debate. In the U.K., the Royal Society, the country’s de facto academy of science, has launched a major study (Keith is on the panel) and a parliamentary committee is preparing a report. In the U.S., the National Academy of Sciences is planning a similar probe. Last week, President Barack Obama’s chief science adviser, John Holdren, revealed the administration has been discussing the options, with a focus on scattering—perhaps by plane, balloon, giant floating chimneys, or even artillery fire—massive quantities of sulphates or other aerosols in the upper atmosphere.

The idea is to mimic the effect of massive volcanic eruptions like Mount Pinatubo, which lowered global temperatures by 0.5° C after spewing out 18 million tonnes of SO2 in 1991. But what he didn’t mention should be of particular concern to Canadians. The logical lab for such experiments—100,000 tanker plane flights a year per one estimate—would be the Arctic, where the cooling would be of the greatest benefit, restoring sea ice and turning down the global thermostat.

Look at the eccentric history of geoengineering over the past two decades and Keith is there every step of the way. But now, with the research money about to start flowing, he worries things are maybe moving a little too fast. In late January, a joint Indian-German expedition defied a United Nations ban and dumped 20 tonnes of iron sulphate particles off Antarctica in hopes of fertilizing the growth of CO2-eating plankton. It failed—schools of hungry shrimp ate the plankton blooms.

And that’s the basic problem with geoengineering: no one is quite sure what happens “downstream” when you start messing with bits and pieces of the global climate. Would a colder Arctic mean more or less rain in the tropics? If you dissolved more CO2 in the seas, how would that effect marine life? Would the ecosystem be able to handle all that extra sulphur in the atmosphere? The cure could very well end up being worse than the disease.

“I have mixed feelings about it,” says Keith. “I think there are a lot of ways to manipulate the system, and when you start thinking about them, you just come up with more and more.” He clicks through on his computer to a research paper on “levitating particles,” a possible alternative to sulphate. For months, he wasn’t able to bring himself to submit it for publication. “I’m worried about opening up Pandora’s box,” he explains. “Even though I am basically doing it.”

Global warming can’t be stopped. Even if greenhouse gas emissions were reduced to zero today, the CO2 we’ve already pumped into the atmosphere will take 1,000 years to dissipate. Worldwide temperatures would continue to rise—about three-quarters of a degree Celsius according to the best estimates. And that’s the good news.

For all the talk about climate change, no real progress—political or otherwise—has been made. In fact, things are getting worse. According to new data, global carbon emissions have grown 3.5 per cent a year since 2000, substantially up from the 0.9 per cent annual growth of the 1990s. The main cause has been the booming, coal-reliant economies of the developing world, although it’s not as if Europe or North America have lessons to impart: no region’s emissions have declined.

Current rates of warming already have glaciers melting at alarming rates. Arctic waters may be ice-free in summer as soon as 2013. And the latest satellite measurements show sea levels rising even faster than expected—as much as a centimetre a year. As things accelerate, they could be up to 78 cm higher by century’s end. This all means that the International Panel on Climate Change’s worst-case scenarios of just two years ago—a 7° C global average temperature rise by century’s end—may now be too optimistic. And it is frankly scaring the hell out of a lot of experts. “The recent science suggests we have to rethink everything,” says Joe Chaisson, director of research for the Clean Air Task Force, a Boston-based group that focuses on atmospheric issues. “Because we’re a lot closer to the lip of the cliff than we thought.”

And in bad times, desperate measures begin to look a lot more inviting. Earlier this year, the British newspaper the Independent asked 80 international climate specialists whether things are so dire that the world needs a back-up plan. Just over half—54 per cent—came down in favour of goosing the climate. True, a bare majority is hardly a ringing endorsement, but one has to understand how unpopular the concept of artificial manipulation has been. “As recently as last year, nearly the whole community would fit comfortably in a university seminar room,” David Victor, the head of Stanford University’s Program on Energy & Sustainable Development, and his co-authors write in “The geoengineering option,” a piece in this month’s issue of Foreign Affairs. “And the entire scientific literature on the subject could be read during the course of a transcontinental airplane flight.”

For years, mainstream researchers wrote climate-fixing ideas off as more fantasy than science. It didn’t help that most early advocates were fierce Cold Warriors, and proponents of using the weather as a military weapon. In Russia, it was the geophysicist Michael Budyko who in the early 1970s first suggested reducing the albedo (earth’s solar reflection) by adding particles to the stratosphere. In the U.S. it was Edward Teller, co-founder of the famous Lawrence Livermore weapons lab, father of Reagan’s “Star Wars” initiative—and the inspiration for Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove—who was most intrigued with the idea of playing with the temperature control. “This is just part of a continuous history of tinkering on larger scales,” says James Fleming, a science historian at Maine’s Colby College, whose book, Fixing the Sky: The chequered history of weather and climate control, will be published later this year. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, for example, the U.S. flew more than 2,600 cloud-seeding sorties over the jungles of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in hopes making the Ho Chi Minh Trail impassable. The most they could claim was a 10 per cent rainfall increase, and even that was unverifiable.

David Keith was different. He first stumbled across geoengineering while working on his Ph.D. in experimental physics at MIT in the late 1980s. The schemes appealed to the Ottawa native’s contrarian nature, and offered a fun way to explore earth sciences, a field he knew little about. “Asking hard questions is a useful way to learn your way into something new,” he says. The same went for global warming. At the time, he was openly skeptical about claims it was man-made. A heresy he long ago repented.

Keith’s first work on the subject was a presentation for a group of fellow MIT and Harvard brainiacs who met weekly for lunchtime seminars. It must have been impressive. Twenty years later, many of those who were around the table are among the voices now calling for more research. David Victor is one. So is Thomas Homer-Dixon, the University of Waterloo futurist who co-authored a New York Times op-ed on geoengineering with Keith last fall. (Keith has returned the favour, penning a chapter in Dixon’s new book, Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future, out next week.) “It’s astonishing that we’ve come to this,” says Ted Parson, a fellow Canadian who organized the group, now a University of Michigan law professor. “But the longer we screw up and fail to get serious action on mitigation, the more attractive the geoengineering option starts to look.”

Keith and a colleague published a paper with the somewhat defensive title, “A serious look at geoengineering,” in 1992. And through his early career as a researcher at Harvard, then a prof at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University, he remained one of the few serious academics who would talk publicly on the subject. “David is really one of the most far-seeing thinkers on this question,” says Parson.

In October 2001, Keith was among 25 bureaucrats and academics quietly brought together by the U.S. Department of Energy to brainstorm about technological responses to “rapid or severe climate change.” An odd assignment given George W. Bush’s public questioning of whether climate change was even happening, and his controversial decision to abandon the Kyoto Protocol just months before. “If they had broadcast that meeting live to people in Europe, there would have been riots,” Keith has said. Which surely explains why the white paper that flowed from the discussions—a research agenda not dissimilar to what geoengineering backers want today—never saw the light of day.

It’s not that the climate change community was unaware of the schemes. But there was a general consensus that publicly airing them was somehow irresponsible, if not downright dangerous. Environmental groups and many senior scientists viewed the very idea as a “moral hazard,” and were not keen to provide governments and business with an excuse to turn away from the tough work of emission cuts. In 2006, NASA organized a hush-hush conference at its Ames Research Center in San Francisco (Keith was in attendance); it was billed as a meeting on “managing solar radiation.”

When you ask geoengineering supporters what finally pushed them out of the closet, all point to one event: an article on sulphur injections by the Dutch chemist Paul J. Crutzen, winner of a 1995 Nobel Prize for his work on the degrading ozone layer. His cautious endorsement of more research gave the schemes instant scientific credibility.

In 2007, Keith and Dan Schrag, a Harvard climate scientist, organized a conference in Cambridge, Mass., that brought together not just the usual enthusiasts, but climate modellers, oceanographers, and political heavyweights like Larry Summers, now President Obama’s chief economic adviser. According to some participants, the off-the-record two-day session was wrenching, as scientists clashed, grappling with the implications. “A lot of people when they hear this topic for the first time think it’s horrible,” says Schrag. “What arrogance to think we can control such a complex system.” But the meeting marked another turning point. Geoengineering was now undeniably on the climate change agenda. “I talk about this as a tourniquet. It’s not a fix and it’s not a Band-Aid. It’s only to be used when you think you are going to bleed to death,” says Schrag. “It’s the worst possible solution in the world. Except for the alternative.”

Ask Ray Pierrehumbert, a University of Chicago climate dynamicist, about geoengineering, and he doesn’t mince words. “It’s like taking Aspirin when you’ve got a brain tumour.” For people who have spent their careers trying to get the world to take global warming seriously, the abrupt shift toward a quick fix is galling. “The science is really cool. It’s a way that some people can get their names in the newspapers as the saviours of the globe,” he says. “But we will never know how dangerous it is until we try it on a large scale. It could be like throwing gasoline on the fire.”

A handful of recent papers are raising similar concerns. Last spring, scientists at the Livermore Labs predicted that “sunshade” geoengineering projects like stratospheric particles or space-based lenses will slow the global water cycle and lessen rainfall. Another study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado suggested that adding sulphates will destroy a quarter to three-quarters of the ozone layer over the Arctic. And in December, Richard Turco, a UCLA professor, estimated the “preposterous” stratospheric spraying being talked about would require thousands of high-altitude jet flights every day.

Pierrehumbert says he sympathizes with his colleagues’ despair over the bleak new climate change data, but that their “sincere panic” isn’t helping. Geoengineering will do nothing about the root problem—growing CO2 concentrations—and once started would have to be maintained almost indefinitely. “It would become addictive,” he says. “It would just result in people putting off the hard decisions because some of the most obvious problems in the First World would be mitigated.”

James Fleming, the science historian, likens proponents to the “loonies, charlatans and pathological scientists” of the past who promised governments and the public that they could control the weather, with negligible results. One of the few outsiders in attendance at the NASA conference (Keith invited him), he describes the vibe as chilling. “This is an odd bunch of people that really, truly believe there is a planetary emergency,” he says. “It’s post-Al Gore. Gore believes we’ll be all right if everybody brushes their teeth. These guys are into severe restorative dentistry.”

Yet even the harshest critics seem to agree further research into geoengineering is both inevitable, and to some extent, desirable. Pierrehumbert offers what may be the most grudging endorsement in the history of grudging endorsements. “I thought it should be obvious to any sane person that this is barking mad. But since it isn’t going away, and in the absence of any international treaty to ban people from doing it, I feel like we do have to have a very small amount of research just to expose the downsides.”

Protests may be futile anyway. Novim, an influential science think tank in California, has started circulating a research blueprint. (Keith is one of the authors. So is Steve Koonin, Obama’s pick for undersecretary for science.) A surprising array of climate change bodies—including environmental groups and one of Washington’s most conservative policy factories—are quietly working on a coordinated lobbying strategy in support of government funding. Money that is surely on its way, given the White House’s new links and interest.

The focus is already shifting to the next big challenge surrounding geoengineering: how to regulate it. The early estimates that make sulphate scattering look both technologically simple and incredibly cheap—an annual cost of less than 0.5 per cent of global economic output, suggests Keith—also make it dangerous. “You need a strategy because it’s not inconceivable that you could see one country, or even a very wealthy individual, decide to intervene in the climate system,” says Stanford’s Victor. Last spring, he organized a Council on Foreign Relations workshop to kick-start discussions about an international regulatory framework. Another meeting, involving representatives from several European nations and the EU, will take place in Portugal next week.

So far, geoengineering doesn’t appear to be on Ottawa’s radar, but it should be. “The Arctic is going to be the first testing ground,” says Michael Ditmore, the executive director of Novim. The think tank’s 70-page research agenda maps out a quick progression from climate modelling, to lab experiments, then atmospheric tests. “We need to build an international consensus,” he says. But the sulphate-sunshield testing may already have begun. The Russians, keen supporters, tried to put it on the G8 agenda in 2008, and this past summer, Yuri Izrael, their senior climate scientist, announced plans to conduct his own experiments, although it’s not clear if he has followed through.

Keith, who has strong ties to the North—an avid outdoorsman, he has hiked, skied and canoed across much of the Arctic—isn’t that worried. In his mind, there is no question that seeding the stratosphere would be a boon to Canada, reversing the upward temperature trend and protecting the North’s fragile environment. It’s around the equator, where the benefits—and more importantly risks—are harder to predict.

Besides, geoengineering will hardly happen overnight. For all the worry over new data, climate change remains a slow-moving problem, he says. And the research he and other proponents are talking about is merely prudent, like having a fire extinguisher in your house. All the controversy might just spur some meaningful action, Keith argues. “We’re in a phony war on climate. Real money is being spent, but it’s being pissed away. Programs are being enacted, but they’re not close to what you would do if you are serious.”

He pulls up another file on his computer, a joke graphic plotting a colleague’s research interests along the axes of importance and probability of success. A good scientist has a range of projects, says Keith, from the mundane sure bets, to the spectacular long shots. Geoengineering is the perfect synthesis because “it actually might be important, and we might have to do it.”

It’s a neat explanation, but it leaves the whole matter of hubris out of the equation. More than 2,200 years ago, the Greek mathematician Archimedes came up with a formula to explain the workings of the lever. It led him to boast he could move the whole world, if only he had a sufficiently distant place to stand. There’s a famous illustration from the early 19th century of the old Greek doing just that. Keith has included it in a chapter he’s written on geoengineering for a soon-to-be-published textbook. Perhaps someday it too will hang on his office wall.

[mr anderson]

FRONTLINE police will be forced to become "carbon cops"

Ben Packham
June 12, 2009

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25623185-661,00.html

EXCLUSIVE: FRONTLINE police will be forced to become "carbon cops" under the Government's blueprint to cut greenhouse emissions.

The Herald Sun can reveal Australian Federal Police agents will have to prosecute a new range of climate offences.

But they are yet to be offered extra resources, stretching the thin blue line to breaking point.

"The Government is effectively saying to us, 'Ignore other crime types'," Australian Federal Police Association chief Jim Torr said.

The group had been trying for months, without success, to discuss the issue with Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, he said.

Interpol has warned the carbon market will be irresistible to criminal gangs because of the vast amounts of cash to be made. Possible rorts include under-reporting of carbon emissions by firms and bogus carbon offset schemes.

"If someone is rorting it by even 1 per cent a year, we're talking about many, many millions of dollars," Mr Torr said.

Ms Wong's office said AFP agents would be expected to enter premises and request paperwork to monitor firms' emissions reductions. They would act on the 30-strong Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority's orders.

It said the authority could appoint staff members or police as inspectors.

She said the Department of Climate Change had spoken to the AFPA and the parties would talk again. Carbon trading involves carbon emissions rights buying and selling. Businesses can offset emissions by investing in climate-friendly projects, or carbon credits.

Ms Wong's office said provisions had been made to ensure compliance. "Inspectors may enter premises and exercise other monitoring powers," she said. "The inspectors may ask questions and seek the production of documents. There is provision for the issue of monitoring warrants by magistrates."

The AFP's 2855 sworn agents are involved in law enforcement in Australia and overseas, investigating terrorist threats, drug syndicates, people trafficking, fraud and threats against children.

Mr Torr said breaking carbon trading laws would be like breaking other laws. "These offences will constitute another federal crime type, along with narcotics importing, people smuggling and all the rest of it, that the AFP will be expected to police," he said. "I can see very complex, covert investigations . . . a lot of scientific expertise required."

The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is facing Senate defeat unless it can secure the support of key cross-benchers or the Opposition.

Opposition climate change spokesman Andrew Robb said the scheme was problematic.

[Jon W]

So, they are going to police big business in Australia.

This would never happen in the US, because of the leverage the big business lobby has.

Remember our government works for Big business and not for the people.

[mr anderson]

f**king hell this makes me furious! 

It's one thing to ignore the science but to turn the AFP into Eco-Stasi!!

[Brocke]

CEI Releases Global Warming Study Censored by EPA
The Public Shouldn’t Be Kept in the Dark by an Agency Supposedly Committed to Transparency

http://cei.org/news-release/2009/06/25/cei-releases-global-warming-study-censored-epa

by Richard Morrison
June 25, 2009

Washington, D.C., June 26, 2009—The Competitive Enterprise Institute is today making public an internal study on climate science which was suppressed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Internal EPA email messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the Administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide.

The report finds that EPA, by adopting the United Nations’ 2007 “Fourth Assessment” report, is relying on outdated research and is ignoring major new developments. Those developments include a continued decline in global temperatures, a new consensus that future hurricanes will not be more frequent or intense, and new findings that water vapor will moderate, rather than exacerbate, temperature.

New data also indicate that ocean cycles are probably the most important single factor in explaining temperature fluctuations, though solar cycles may play a role as well, and that reliable satellite data undercut the likelihood of endangerment from greenhouse gases. All of this demonstrates EPA should independently analyze the science, rather than just adopt the conclusions of outside organizations.

The released report is a draft version, prepared under EPA’s unusually short internal review schedule, and thus may contain inaccuracies which were corrected in the final report.

“While we hoped that EPA would release the final report, we’re tired of waiting for this agency to become transparent, even though its Administrator has been talking transparency since she took office. So we are releasing a draft version of the report ourselves, today,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman. 

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government.  For more information about CEI, please visit our website at www.cei.org.

Proposed NCEE Comments on the Draft Technical Support Document for the Endangerment Analysis
for Green House Gas Emissions Under the Clean Air Act

March 2009

Download the PDF here
http://cei.org/cei_files/fm/active/0/DOC062509-004.pdf

[Biggs]

Australia town bans bottled water
 
Campaigners say bottled water is bad for the environment

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8141569.stm

A rural town in Australia has voted overwhelmingly to ban the sale of bottled water over concerns about its environmental impact.

Campaigners say Bundanoon, in New South Wales, may be the first community in the world to have such a ban.

They say huge amounts of resources are used to extract, package and transport bottled water.

The discarded plastic bottles then end up as litter or go into landfill sites, the "Bundy on Tap" campaign says.

More than 350 residents turned out to vote at the public meeting in the town hall.

Only one resident voted against the ban, along with a representative from the bottled water industry, ABC news reported.

The BBC's Nick Bryant in Sydney says locals have promised not to set upon visitors if they ignore the ban, but they will be encouraged to fill a reusable container from water fountains in the main street.

The reusable bottles will bear the slogan "Bundy on Tap".

Campaigner John Dee said local opinion had been incensed when a drinks company announced plans to tap an underground reservoir in the town.

Environmental impact

"The company has been looking to extract water locally, bottle it in Sydney and bring it back here to sell it," he said.

"It made people look at the environmental impact of bottled water and the community has been quite vocal about it."

The ban has been supported by shopkeepers in the town, which has a population of about 2,500.

"We believe Bundanoon is the world's first town that has got its retailers to ban bottled water," said Mr Dee. "We haven't found it anywhere else."

New South Wales Premier Nathan Rees has backed the cause, ordering government departments to stop buying bottled water and use tap water instead.

Mr Rees says it will save taxpayers money and help the environment.

[Brocke]

Here come the rolling blackouts to save the planet...


Victoria the least climate-friendly state

AAP
July 21, 2009 12:20am

VICTORIA is Australia's least climate-friendly state, an environmental think tank has found.

An analysis by the Climate Group has found Victoria is home to three of the four dirtiest Australian power stations and none of the 12 largest renewable energy plants, The Age newspaper reported.
Only 2 per cent of the state's power was generated from renewable sources, compared with 94 per cent from brown coal and 2 per cent from gas, Climate Group found.

The largest renewable energy producer is not a dedicated power station but the Maryvale pulp mill, near Traralgon in the Latrobe Valley, which makes its own energy and transmits some into the grid.

Meanwhile, the Loy Yang A, Yallourn W and Hazelwood brown coal power stations were among the four highest greenhouse gas-emitting plants in Australia.

"What's clear is we need to rapidly scale up renewable energy,'' Climate Group Australia director Rupert Posner said.

"It is far too small a part of the energy mix.''

Thirteen per cent of South Australia's electricity comes from renewable sources, with 6 per cent in NSW and 3 per cent in Queensland.

"A large chunk of our renewable energy to date has come from large-scale hydro projects,'' Mr Posner said.

Victoria has approved new power farms that will lead to an almost four-fold increase in wind power production.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25812376-29277,00.html

[mr anderson]

Former Howard minister to lead Carbon Trust

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/21/2632081.htm

Former Liberal minister Robert Hill will chair a Federal Government trust designed to improve the energy efficiency of buildings. The Brisbane-based Carbon Trust will see $75 million loaned to households, organisations and companies to refurbish buildings to make them more energy efficient.

The money will be paid back to the trust by the recipients through savings from lower energy bills. Mr Hill held the positions of environment minister and defence minister in the Howard government. He recently served as Australia's representative to the United Nations.

Mr Hill says his appointment is no reflection on whether the Opposition should support the Government's emissions trading scheme in the Senate next month.

"The particular work of this trust I don't think is politically partisan in any way," he said.

"Nobody is going to argue against giving the public the opportunity to better climate outcomes or helping facilitate the refurbishing of buildings in a more or efficient ways.

"So I don't think it is really relevant to the domestic political debate at all."

Mr Hill says both sides of politics support the trust and he expects there will be an agreement at some point on the emissions trading scheme as well.

"I started work on a potential cap and trade for Australia almost a decade ago; the political time wasn't right then. Perhaps it's getting closer," he said.

"But basically, as with most Western nations, I think a cap and trade is the way to go.

"But there's clearly a domestic political debate about the detail and that will work it's way through."

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong says the trust will give companies the right incentive to reduce their carbon footprint.

"We've got to get people more focused on it, we've got to demonstrate the benefit to Australian business from this type of activity, that is, reducing your energy through retro-fitting and through improving your energy efficiency," she said.

[Brocke]

The greenest country on the planet is worried about their natural C0² emissions. This is really environmental insanity. How paranoid can we get?


Iceland to lock up CO2 in stone
(01:53) Report



http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=107998&videoChannel=6&refresh=true

Jul 15 - Scientists in Iceland are set to begin an experiment that will see CO2 exhaust gas from one of Iceland's geothermal power stations pumped below ground into the bedrock.

[Brocke]

Bumper crop of plums predicted after ideal weather conditions


Fruit pickers collecting the plum harvest
This year's spectacular crop is due to a very cold winter followed by a gradual spring warming

July 21, 2009
Valerie Elliott, Countryside Editor

Growers are predicting a bumper crop for British plums this summer after the best weather conditions in years.

Trees have been so laden with fruit that growers have had to thin the branches to protect the crop and ensure that the plums reach the 45mm diameter desired by supermarkets.

The key this year has been the combination of a very cold winter with temperatures falling below zero on many successive nights followed by an ideal spring, with temperatures growing steadily warmer.

Most growers hope for at least 1,000 chill hours during the winter but this year there were about 2,000. Sarah Calcutt, spokeswoman for Norman Collett of Paddock Wood, Kent, which supplies 40 per cent of all plums sold in supermarkets, said: “This chill put the trees into dormancy and gave them a proper rest. Then we had an optimum spring. It got warm gradually and April was beautiful with high temperatures, good sunshine and little wind. This was great for pollination. Now the orchards look stunning and it is going to be the best crop in years.”

Robert Hinge, who grows 15 acres of plums near Sittingbourne and has been in the business for 20 years, said: “I have never seen a plum harvest like it and I have never seen a year with so many fruit on a tree. We supply Marks & Spencer and I was very conscious that I had to ensure the best size for the plums. If you keep all the plums they won’t grow — they stay small and are unsellable — so we have had to spend a fortune thinning the fruit out. It has cost £700 an acre with six people doing it by hand and every plum has been spaced out two inches apart.”

He suggested that plum trees in household gardens may also bear more fruit this year but warned that if the trees had not been thinned some branches could break with the weight of the fruit and might not produce plums next year.

Plums will start appearing in shops next month, with Victorias the most popular variety in Britain. The average yield for a 7ft plum tree is about 25kg or 425 plums, although for trees about 21ft tall the yield can be as much as 80kg.

Plums are a tiny market for British growers with the 14,000 tonnes produced each year worth just £10 million. The value of all fruit grown in Britain is £521 million.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article6720910.ece

[Brocke]

San Francisco Transforming Toxic Site into UN Global Warming Center
by Ariel Schwartz



The Hunter’s Point Shipyard in San Francisco is a former naval shipyard filled with radiation and industrial toxins. It’s so dangerous that the U.S. Environmental Agency has designated it as one of the most polluted sites in the nation. But instead of letting the site fester, San Francisco has just announced plans to rid the shipyard of its toxins and build the U.N. Global Compact Center, a world class climate change think tank and green tech incubator. Due for competition in 2012, the new development will comprise over two million square feed of LEED-certified space.

The city hopes to begin construction in 2011 and when complete, the $20 million, 80,000 square foot center will feature UN Global Compact offices, a clean tech incubator, and a conference center. It will, according to Mayor Gavin Newsom, “serve as an anchor for other sustainable businesses at the Shipyard in much the same way that the University of California and the Stem Cell Institute have anchored Mission Bay’s burgeoning biotech and life sciences cluster.” Translation: the center will hopefully lead to a fresh crop of sustainability-focused businesses in the same area.

There are still some snags to overcome before the center can be built; toxins aren’t projected to be completely cleaned out of the area until the middle of 2012, and it will be a stretch for San Francisco to finish construction the same year. Regardless, the U.N. Global Compact Center will serve as an example of how toxic Superfund sites can be transformed into centers of innovation and inspiration.

http://gizmodo.com/5329230/san-francisco-to-provide-home-for-new-un-global-warming-center

[Brocke]

Cloud-Generating 1900-Ship Armada To Sink Climate Change

By Jesus Diaz on August 8, 2009 at 11:20 AM



The Copenhagen Consensus Centre—a respected European think tank which used to be skeptic on climate change—is now advising that we should spend $US9 billion in building 1900 cloud-generating ships like the one above. Why? To cool down Earth:

    When you spray saltwater into the air, you create nuclei that cloud condenses around, creating bigger and whiter clouds, thus bouncing more sunlight back into space.

That’s what David Young, a member of the panel that created the report, says. The fully automated vessels will cross the oceans absorbing water and spraying it into the skies. They say this will help the formation of big, whiter clouds, which will make the sun light bounce, lowering temperatures.

The idea seems neat, but the concept of anyone in planet Earth claiming to understand how climate works to this extend blows my mind. We are still trying to grasp how a complex system like the weather works, but someone wants to put an idea like this in motion, without knowing about the ultimate consequences? Like we say in my home country: Do you experiments with pop soda.

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2009/08/cloud-generating-1900-ship-armada-to-sink-climate-change/

[mr anderson]

Make green your second team



By Chelsea Roffey
11 August, 2009

http://www.afl.com.au/news/newsarticle/tabid/208/newsid/82479/default.aspx

FANS are encouraged to do their bit for the environment during the AFL’s Green Round and beyond, by adopting energy saving measures at home, using sustainable modes of transport and recycling waste.

As a reminder to ‘be green’, the centre circles at AFL grounds during this week’s matches will feature the three-arrow recycling logo. AFL umpires will wear green uniforms and goal umpires will use green flags.

Each of the games during the round will incorporate Green Round activities, including a ‘Green Menu’ in the function dining rooms of the Hawthorn v Adelaide clash at the MCG on Friday. All food on the menu will be sourced within a 100 mile radius of the venue.

Spectators for Richmond v Collingwood on Saturday and Melbourne v Fremantle on Sunday are encouraged to ride their bikes to the MCG. A designated parking bay will be set up at the foot of the William Barrack Bridge, near Gate 2. Players will be present to sign autographs, with random prize giveaways and a mobile mechanic on hand to make repairs.

Integrated ticketing and transport programs will be in place for the West Coast v North Melbourne, Brisbane Lions v Western Bulldogs and Sydney v Geelong games, so fans at Subiaco the Gabba and ANZ Stadium are encouraged to use public transport.

ANZ Stadium will even be powered by ‘Green Power’ – using renewable energy that produces no net greenhouse gas emissions.

Trees for Life will give away seedling packs at the Port Adelaide v Carlton game at AAMI Stadium, and the match ticket price includes a SA Lotteries Footy Express transport service fare to the game.

Essendon and St Kilda encourage their fans to catch the train to Southern Cross for their clash at Docklands on Sunday.

http://www.afl.com.au/green/www.afl.com.au/aflhq/greenround/tabid/14778/Default.aspx

The issue of climate change affects us all, the game we all know and love is being severely impacted by climate change and sadly it is grass roots football that is copping the worst of it. Faced with these problems the footy community from grass roots through to the AFL, the clubs, our corporate partners and the stadiums are banding together and calling in the experts to come up with solutions to save our game and ensure its healthy future – from Green Round and beyond.

There are a few easy steps that we can all do when we go to the footy during Green Round:

1. Turn off your lights and your appliances at the wall before you leave the house

2. Car pool, catch public transport, walk or ride your bike to the game

3. Don’t dump your rubbish under your seat, put it in the right bin

[mr anderson]

Transcript of remarks at launch of AFL Green Round
Parliament House
11 August 2009

http://www.pm.gov.au/node/6105

PM:              Well, the weather Gods have conspired today so that we’re inside rather than outside, which you know, Penny and I are very pleased about because we would have been able to display our full range of football skills outside, which you’ve all been spared, and Chris, you could have showed us something genuinely serious about the skills necessary in the game.

What are we here to do today? It’s a great initiative of the AFL which we’re supporting as the Government to ensure that this weekend’s Green Round in the AFL is about how do we encourage mums and dads, fans, supporters, clubs, players - right across the country on doing their bit to bring down greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, to do their bit on climate change.

Governments do their bit on climate change, and we’re having that debate here in Canberra at the moment. But it’s important the community does its bit on climate change, and a huge slice of our national community is what happens in footy. I’m told that we’ve got, on any given weekend, 250,000-300,000 people going to games right across the country. Viewing audiences this weekend, I’m told, is about one million people.

So we have a very simple message as a Government, which is: how do we, as Australians all, do our bit on climate change – Government doing its bit, the community doing its bit, and footy fans doing their bit as well. So we’re pleased to partner with the AFL on this one.

People ask ‘well, what are the practical things that can be done to bring down carbon pollution?’  Well if you’re in a football club, practical stuff like have you got insulation in your ceiling to bring down your overall cost of energy – good for the club’s electricity bills over time, as well. On top of that, what can you do to bring in a solar hot water system for the showers and the other needs that you’ve got within the club itself? What can you do with solar panels on the roof? What can you do, also, in terms of encouraging your fans and your supporters to use public transport where that’s available? These are the practical things, together with energy efficient light bulbs which all go towards making a difference.

Each club, each player, each footy family making their difference on climate change in Australia because together we can make a difference worldwide. The Government’s agreed to contribute up to $200,000 to our new climate change partnership with the AFL. We believe this is a good investment for the future, and we look forward to the AFL being our partners in this so that Australia can make a difference on climate change.

Enough from me, and now I’m turning to Penny – over to you.

[mr anderson]

We reveal AFL boss Andrew Demetriou's $7m Toorak base

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22799830-661,00.html



AFL supremo Andrew Demetriou has splashed out more than $7 million on a Toorak mansion complete with lap pool, wine cellar and five-car garage. Mr Demetriou's family of five will join the likes of Solomon Lew, Ron Walker, Lindsay Fox and Steve Vizard as residents of Melbourne's richest suburb.

The league CEO bought the exclusive six-bedroom, four-bathroom property at auction on Saturday. It was built in the 1930s by famed architect Marcus Martin and has had extensive renovations. Mr Demetriou can expect to pay at least another $385,000 to the government in stamp duty.

Mr Demetriou, 46, and wife Symone in February added a third daughter to twin girls and are expected to sell their current home in East Hawthorn.

However he declined to comment yesterday on whether he would be putting his new 25m pool to immediate use.

"I don't talk about my purchases or my homes, so I'm not going to comment," he told the Herald Sun.

Asked if he was expecting a fourth child, he replied: "Not that I'm aware of . . . I've already got a large family."

A website for selling agent R.T. Edgar describes the 1083sq m Toorak property as beautifully renovated.

"This deceptively large . . . and extended family residence features a huge kitchen and family room, opening to private north facing rear garden with stunning in-ground pool, walking distance to private schools," it says.

Mr Demetriou pockets an annual salary of $960,000 -- about 20 times average annual earnings, and as much as the game's best player Chris Judd.

The AFL commission has defended Mr Demetriou's rising price tag, arguing he has overseen an explosion in revenue, including the league's $780 million TV rights deal.

Before joining the AFL, Mr Demetriou, the son of Cypriot immigrants, made his fortune in the dental import business.

[menace]

The Australian parliament has rejected government plans to introduce an ambitious carbon trading scheme to tackle global warming.

The measure was the centrepiece of the government's environment plans, and would have cut greenhouse gas emissions by 5% over the next 10 years.

But opposition senators who control the upper house feared the legislation would harm the country's mining sector.

The battle is not yet over, however. Bloomberg reports:

Rudd, who needs support from seven senators outside the government to pass laws through the upper house, can resubmit the bill after making amendments. A second rejection after a three-month span would give him a trigger to call an election.

"We may lose this fight, but this issue will not go away," Climate Change Minister Penny Wong told the Senate in Canberra. "Australia cannot afford for climate change to be unfinished business."

But warmism opponents welcome a full debate. Australian Senator Steve Fielding writes some interesting common sense:

Australia is really yet to have the debate about what is driving climate change.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/08/australian_senate

[mr anderson]

MP fears salad, wind chimes for Aussies

August 24, 2009 - 5:59PM
http://news.brisbanetimes.com.au/breaking-news-national/mp-fears-salad-wind-chimes-for-aussies-20090824-ewed.html

Environmental policies are pushing Australians towards a life of eating salad and listening to wind chimes, outspoken Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce says.

Senator Joyce has reiterated his opposition to emissions trading.

"We'll be living on a diet of peanuts and salad with the power of wind turbines," he told SkyNews.

Senator Joyce said if people wanted to cut greenhouse gas emissions, then Australia should go nuclear.

"But of course that's a sacred cow, can't talk about that, we've got to talk about 1001 wind chimes and 1001 wind turbines and solar panels."

The Nationals have decided to vote against any ETS, while the Liberals may vote for it. Senator Joyce said he had seen hundreds of supportive emails for the Nationals' position, many from people in outer suburbs who were "calling rubbish" on the ETS.

Senator Joyce, who has called for a referendum on nuclear power, said on Monday that opponents of nuclear power always raised the issue of whether people wanted a reactor in their backyard.

"Let's give people's backyard a chance to say whether they want it or not," was Senator Joyce's suggestion.

© 2009 AAP

[mr anderson]

These are excerpts from 'The Nationals Fed Council 2009'.

The Nationals are in a coalition with the Liberals (Centre-right) = LNP [Liberal National Party] who are in opposition to Labor (Centre-left) who have been in government since 2007. The National party represent regional and rural Australia and have been open in their opposition and criticism of Labor & Liberals backing for an ETS.

Senator Joyce (Nationals Senator) has been the most vocal and critical of an ETS while keeping his scepticism of the science somewhat politically quite.

Full transcript here:
http://barnabyjoyce.com.au/Issues/Thisweekinpolitics/tabid/56/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/949/Senator-Barnaby-Joyce-Transcript-of-Speech-Nationals-Fed-Council-2009.aspx

Let’s look at some of the things that we have talked about so far.

We talked about the ETS. The National Party at a Federal level has been completely consistent on the ETS. It is the Employment Termination Scheme. It is the Extra Tax System and when that metaphor was working and cutting through the Labor Party got cunning and thought they would change it to the CPRS. Well the CP stands for cunning plan to get yourself to a double dissolution and RS stands for what the economy will look like if they ever get there.

This is just another tax. It is a tax that is going to come to you from the power points. Every electrical appliance in your house will have a tax on it. The ironing will be taxed, the vacuuming will be taxed, watching footy on a Sunday will be taxed, turning the lights on will be taxed. Who will they be taxing, working families. Then you’ll want to go shopping and what will happen? All your food will be taxed. If you are sick of it and want go on a plane and go away for the weekend, it’s on aviation fuel, you’ll be taxed. Everything in this new world under Kevin Rudd is taxed. Kevin in the shopping trolley, Kevin at the ironing board, Kevin in the kitchen, Kevin on the plane n the plane, too much Kevin makes me feel very sick.

And what is he going to do this for? Because Kevin is going to change the climate. It is amazing, he is going to make that out there different. He told us so, it must be true. The reality is the ETS Iis not going to change the climate one iota. Not one thing will change in the climate because of this new tax. Metaphorically speaking, the difference Australia will make is the equivalent of a the breadth of a hair on the length of about a one kilometre bridge.

It is so infinitesimally small. So ridiculous, so pointless, yet we are putting our economy out to dry.

I was talking to Brad and he said you have got to talk about jobs. If you want to talk about jobs, talk about the ETS. Just the other in Rockhampton, in my state, they are putting off people, working families out on the street because of the CPRS. That’s what Kevin has done for working families.

He’s put them out of a job and we are going forward with this scheme that will bring a 20% reduction in regional economies. We worry about two negative quarters which gives us a recession and they’re probably ¼% and ½%. Yet if we agree to this ETS, we sign our regions up to a 20% reduction in their economy.

There is nobody, nobody who should be supporting that. If we believe in that (pointing to sign Regional Australia), then we do not believe in a new tax to put them out of a job. It is as straightforward as that. It is as straightforward as that. If we confuse that metaphor we are lost.

......................

Then people say oh you are a climate sceptic. How do you get around this debate? I am not sceptical about climate at all. I walk round in it every day. I breathe it, I know it is there. What we can do if we are serious, if we really want to move ahead on the agenda is we start asking ourselves some very serious questions about how we do things.

One of the agendas we must start looking at is nuclear power. We must be serious about it. We have to start asking the question, do we live in 1954? Paul Howes from the AWU is out saying this is ridiculous it is time to move on.

Well we should be saying this as well. We export this product all around the world, we obviously think it is philosophically correct to export it to everybody but we don’t believe we should use it ourselves.

Then you have the query that everyone will put up well do you want one in your backyard? That’s the ultimate payback, but do you want one in your backyard? Well I bet we can devise a plan so that I do. You give me my power at half price I’ll take one. I’ll take one tomorrow and if gave every council in Australia the right to have a referendum to ask if you want one we’ll give you your power at half price, that is your choice. And then just let the Australian people make the decision. That would be a nice way to go about doing business. Let the Australian people make the decision about whether they want to do it.

This is what we have to do if we really want to think around the corners. If we really want to reduce carbon emissions then these are the issues you are going to have to do. If we just run around thinking that we are going to stack the world up with windmills and solar panels that are going to cover half of Victoria, well that is a noble gesture. You could put it at the side but don’t rely on that as a baseload power source. And if we lose our baseload power source we lose the whole mechanism of one of the greatest efficiencies Australia has. Cheap power.

These are the issues which the National Party can be at the fore at.

We talk about the issues and we do lead, we have led on things. We have led on the ETS, we are leading on food security, we are leading on indigenous issues, we have talked about the way we can go through in the future.

We have the capacity, we have made the commitment now that we are for regional Australia. That is it, we have burnt the boats, there is no going back. This is it, there is nowhere to go back to, we have made the commitment now that we are either going to differentiate ourselves as a unit, we can do that within the Coalition, there is absolutely no reason at all we can’t.

[mr anderson]

Australian firm linked to PNG's $100m carbon trading scandal

MARIAN WILKINSON AND BEN CUBBY
September 4, 2009

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/australian-firm-linked-to-pngs-100m-carbon-trading-scandal-20090903-fa2y.html

AN AUSTRALIAN company has been swept up in a $100 million carbon trading scandal in Papua New Guinea after claims fake carbon certificates were given to landowners to help persuade them to sign over the rights to their forests.

The scandal threatens to undermine efforts by the Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, to win support at the United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen for a global carbon trading scheme to include forests in the likes of PNG and Indonesia. She declined yesterday to answer questions on whether the scandal had been raised at UN climate talks last month or whether she had discussed the matter with the PNG Prime Minister, Michael Somare, or his officials.

An investigation has begun and the head of PNG's Office of Climate Change, Theo Yasause, has been removed.

Dave Sag, the chief executive of the company involved, Carbon Planet, admitted yesterday that his PNG partner, Kirk Roberts, had used mocked-up carbon certificates signed by Mr Yasause as ''props'' when negotiating with landowners. But he denied media reports in PNG the certificates were stolen or were intended to mislead.

He said the documents, which purport to represent a million tonnes of ''voluntary carbon credits'' issued by the UN under the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation - or REDD scheme - were created by PNG officials simply to explain the scheme. ''Those certificates are worthless. … No one who knows anything about carbon would take them in any way seriously,'' Mr Sag said. ''They ended up in Kirk's hands because they would have been produced as a prop to be taken out and waved in front of people in order to provide some physicality to what is essentially an ephemeral thing.''

Carbon Planet, which has acquired a publicly listed company, told investors recently it had $100 million in potential REDD projects in PNG. Mr Sag said this figure was ''estimates based on contracts we have in place''. But as the scandal escalated, PNG's acting climate change director, Wari Iamo, warned landowners on Monday against signing carbon trading agreements over their forests. Dr Iamo said PNG had no laws or policy that covered carbon trading.

The talks in Copenhagen in December will decide whether the REDD scheme will get official recognition. The scheme, backed by Australia, is designed to allow developing countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by saving forests from logging. In exchange, landowners would earn ''carbon credits'' they could trade with greenhouse polluting industries for money.

But since discussion over the scheme began, scores of carbon traders, Carbon Planet among them, have been active in PNG and Indonesia trying to sign landowners. Tim King, from the Wilderness Society, said there had been ''a tsunami of carbon traders spreading across PNG. Carbon finance and REDD have triggered a 'gold rush' mentality.''

Environmental groups are increasingly concerned UN negotiations have failed to address the vexed issued of corruption and landowners' rights.

[mr anderson]

Trilateral Commission

Pacific Asian Group -
Ross Garnaut, Head, Department of Economics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra.

------

Pass ETS now: Garnaut

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/15/2685978.htm?section=australia

The Federal Government's former climate change adviser Ross Garnaut says Australia's credibility on the issue would be boosted if the Senate were to pass an emissions trading scheme.

Professor Garnaut says the differences between the Government and Opposition over the scheme do not look good internationally.

"With the 2020 target on the table, if the rest of the world is prepared to accomodate strong mitigation, I think our interests would be served by passing ETS," he said.

"Australia has a bit of a credibility problem; Australian signed Kyoto and then didn't ratify it, and we're the highest per capita emitter amongst developed countries."

The Government plans to reintroduce the legislation in November after it was defeated in the Senate earlier this year.

[mr anderson]

World Bank warns 2C rise will cripple development efforts

16 September 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/16/network-climate-change

The World Bank yesterday issued its clearest warning to date that development efforts in poorer nations will be derailed without a huge increase in funding for climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. From BusinessGreen.com, part of the Guardian Environment Network.



The World Bank yesterday issued its clearest warning to date that development efforts in poorer nations will be derailed without a huge increase in funding for climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts.

The Bank's annual World Development Report warns that even if the G8 group of industrialised nations achieves its target of limiting global warming to two degrees above pre-industrial levels, the increase in global average temperatures will still result in shrinking levels of GDP for many African and Asian countries.

In a move that is likely to bolster the negotiating position of emerging economies, such as China and India, World Bank president Robert Zoellick echoed their view that the onus was on rich nations to deliver an "equitable deal" at the upcoming UN climate change conference in Copenhagen that acknowledges their historic responsibility for global warming.

"Developing countries are disproportionately affected by climate change - a crisis that is not of their making and for which they are the least prepared," he said.

The report recommends that by 2030 rich nations will need to invest $400bn a year to help developing nations cut emissions through the adoption of new low carbon technologies and $75bn a year to help them adapt to the impact of climate change, in addition to the hundreds of billions of dollars of R&D investment that will be required to develop cost-effective clean technologies.

The scale of the sums involved are an order of magnitude higher than those currently being considered by many rich nations. For example, to date the only offer of climate change investment made as part of the Copenhagen process is UK prime minister Gordon Brown's proposal that rich nations invest $100 billion a year to help poorer nations cut emissions.

Justin Lin, World Bank chief economist, warned that without increased investment from developed economies poorer nations would find themselves unable to cope with the impacts of climate change. "Developing countries, which have historically contributed little to global warming, are now, ironically, faced with 75 to 80 per cent of the potential damage from it," he said. "They need help to cope with climate change, as they are preoccupied with existing challenges such as reducing poverty and hunger and providing access to energy and water."

The report also claims that such investments will make economic sense for industrialised economies, arguing that the cost of addressing climate change will only rise as "more and more investments are made in the wrong kinds of infrastructure and energy".

The report is likely to be welcomed by green groups, many of whom have long complained that the World Bank has been guilty of undermining investment in low carbon technologies in the developing world by favouring carbon intensive projects.

For example, the bank has faced consistent criticism for funding coal projects and it recently suspended investment in the palm oil sector after an investigation found that it had provided financing to a company allegedly linked to rainforest deforestation.

The Bank said that it has improved its record of investment in clean technologies, increasing financing for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in developing countries by 24 per cent in the fiscal year 2009 to over $3.3bn, a record high. It added that renewable energy and energy-efficiency projects last year made up over 40 per cent of the $8.2bn of energy financing provided by the bank, although critics will point out that 60 per cent of fina ncing is still funnelled into conventional energy projects.

[Brocke]

And the fear mongering continues... 


Sydney's hottest September in 150 years

AAP
September 30, 2009 08:37pm

SEPTEMBER was Sydney's hottest in 150 years, with an average temperature three degrees warmer than usual.

And the unseasonable heat may be a sign of things to come -  Weatherzone says the thermometer is expected soar above average in October.

September's record was helped along by three hot days of 32.2, 32.1 and 31.7 degrees in the city, bumping up the monthly average to 18.

"The long-term average is 15 degrees, which means this September was the warmest in 150 years of records," Weatherzone meteorologist Brett Dutschke said.

"It's fairly unusual to get that many hot days (in September). Last year we had three days above 30 degrees, and again in 2006, but it's only happened three times in 150 years."

Mr Dutschke said an el nino weather event was partly responsible, with clearer skies allowing temperatures to remain high.

He said other factors included fewer cold fronts from the south, more westerly and north westerly winds carrying extreme heat from north west Australia, and a lack of rain.

Just 16mm of rain fell over Sydney during four wet days, significantly less than the 69mm average,
making it the driest September in six years.

The hot and dry weather is expected to continue throughout October, with a total fire ban declared for the first day of the month tomorrow in Sydney.

The severe weather warning is also in force for the Greater Hunter, Illawarra/Shoalhaven, far south coast, northern Riverina and the lower central west plains.

Mr Dutschke said the extreme conditions wouldn't last, with average temperatures expected for the summer months.

"I'd imagine in October the fire season will be quite bad but it's likely to tone down a bit in November and December, with frequent rain and normal temperatures," he said.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26148245-29277,00.html

[Brocke]

Unstoppable global warming: every 1,500 years

By Siegfried Fred Singer, Dennis T. Avery

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=DJxlzuOdK2IC&lpg=PP1&ots=vZgQy3qLTK&dq=%22global%20warming%22&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Book overview

Supported by in-depth scientific evidence, Singer and Avery present the compelling concept that global temperatures have been rising mostly or entirely because of a natural cycle. Unstoppable Global Warming explains why we're warming, why it's not very dangerous, and why we can't stop it anyway.

[Brocke]

CEI releases global warming study censored by Obama's EPA

By: Kevin Mooney
Commentary Staff Writer
06/26/09 12:09 PM EDT

Natural forces as opposed to human activity are largely responsible for temperature fluctuations, according to a new study the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released today as Congress prepares to vote on global warming legislation.

Internal email messages show the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suppressed the report and silenced the author because the scientific evidence did not square with the Obama administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide, CEI claims. The EPA has become overly reliant upon outdated information from the United Nations and has ignored major new scientific developments, the censored study concludes.

“While we hoped that the EPA would release the final report, we’re tired of waiting for this agency to become transparent, even though its administrator has been talking transparency, since she took office,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman.
New scientific data highlighted in the report shows that ocean cycles and solar cycles are probably the most important factors behind temperature fluctuations. Moreover, satellite information now indicates there is little chance of endangerment from greenhouse gases, according to the report.

Some of the major developments overlooked by EPA official include a continued decline in global temperatures, an emerging consensus that hurricanes will not be more frequent or intense and new studies that demonstrate water vapor will have a moderating influence on temperature.

Going forward, CEI has called upon the EPA to independently analyze the science and to become more transparent in its own reporting.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/CEI-releases-global-warming-study-censored-by-Obamas-EPA--49181632.html

[LouLouSay]

 

Any of you ever heard of Morris Strong aka rio Summit, please see my new post on that subject

kisses

Lou Lou

[luckee1]

LouLouSay ,

Here is a link regarding him, forgive me as it is Wiki 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Strong


Are you sure about the first name?  It show his name is spelled Maurice.  Is this the guy you are asking about?

[mr anderson]

Beware the UN’s Copenhagen plot

Janet Albrechtsen Blog | October 28, 2009 | 157 Comments
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/janetalbrechtsen/index.php/theaustralian/comments/beware_the_uns_copenhagen_plot/

SHAME on us all: on us in the media and on our politicians. Despite thousands of news reports, interviews, analyses, critiques and commentaries from journalists, what has the inquiring, intellectually sceptical media told us about the potential details of a Copenhagen treaty? And despite countless speeches, addresses, interviews, doorstops, moralising sermons from government ministers, pleas from Canberra for an outcome at Copenhagen, opposition criticism of government policy, what have our elected representatives told us about the potential details of a Copenhagen treaty?

With just over 40 days until more than 15,000 officials, advisers, diplomats, activists and journalists from more than 190 countries attend the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, we know nothing. Nothing about a climate change treaty that the Rudd government is keen to sign and one that will bind this country for years to come.

Of course, there is no final treaty as yet. That is what they are hoping to finalise in Copenhagen. But there are 181 pages that make up the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change dated September 15, 2009: a rough draft of what could be signed in Copenhagen. And yet, not one member of the media or political class has bothered to inform us about its contents as an important clue to what may happen in Copenhagen. The shame of that state of affairs started to trickle in last week.

Emails started arriving telling me about a speech given by Christopher Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, at Bethel University in St Paul, Minnesota, on October 14. Monckton talked about something that no one has talked about in the lead-up to Copenhagen: the text of the draft Copenhagen treaty.

Even after Monckton’s speech, most of the media has duly ignored the substance of what he said. You don’t need me to find his St Paul address on YouTube. Interviewed on Monday morning by Alan Jones on Sydney radio station 2GB, Monckton warned that the aim of the Copenhagen draft treaty was to set up a transnational government on a scale the world has never before seen. Listening to the interview, my teenage daughters asked me whether this was true.

So I read the draft treaty. The word government appears on page 18. Monckton says: “This is the first time I’ve ever seen any transnational treaty referring to a new body to be set up under that treaty as a government. But it’s the powers that are going to be given to this entirely unelected government that are so frightening.”

Monckton became aware of the extraordinary powers to be vested in this new world government only when a friend of his found an obscure UN website and hacked his way through several layers of complications before coming across a document that isn’t even called the draft treaty. It’s called a “note by the secretariat”. The moment he saw it, he went public and said: “Look, this is an outrage ... they have kept the sheer scope of this treaty quiet.”

Monckton says the aim of this new government is to have power to directly intervene in the financial, economic, tax and environmental affairs of all the nations that sign the Copenhagen treaty.

In a sense, countries that sign international treaties always cede powers to a UN body responsible for implementing the treaty obligations. But the difference is that we usually understand the details of the obligations and the power ceded.

Now read the 181-page draft treaty. It is impossible to fully understand the convoluted UN verbiage. Yet even those incomprehensible clauses point to some nasty surprises that no politician has told us about. For example, Monckton says the drafters want this new world government to have control over once free markets: the financial and trading markets of nation-states. “The sheer ambition of this new world government is enormous right from the start; that’s even before it starts accreting powers to itself in the way that these entities inevitably always do,” he says.

The reason for that power grab is clear enough from the draft treaty. Clause after complicated clause sets out the requirement that developed countries such as Australia pay their “adaptation debt” to developing countries. Clause 33 on page 39 says that by 2020 the scale of financial flows to support adaptation in developing countries must be at least $US67 billion ($73bn), or in the range of $US70bn to $US140bn a year.

How developed countries will pay is far from clear. The draft text sets out various alternatives, including Option 7 on page 135, which provides for “a (global) levy of 2 per cent on international financial market (monetary) transactions to Annex I Parties”. This means industrialised countries such as Australia, if we sign.

Monckton’s warning to Americans that “in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your President will sign your freedom, your democracy and your prosperity away forever” is colourful. But no more colourful than the language used by those who preach about the perils of climate change and the virtues of a hard-hitting Copenhagen treaty.

Put aside Monckton’s comments. Ask yourself this: why has our government failed to explain the possible text of a treaty it wants Australia to sign? There has been no address from any Rudd minister to explain the draft treaty. No 3000-word essay from the thoughtful PM. No speech in parliament. No interview. No press release. Nothing.

Presumably the hard-working Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has read the 181-page draft text. Presumably our central control and command PM has been briefed about the draft text. In Germany a few months ago, Kevin Rudd complained about the lack of “detailed programmatic specificity” going into the Copenhagen talks. Yet the draft text provides much detailed specificity about obligations on developed nations to transfer millions of dollars to developing countries under formulas to be set down by an unelected body. So why the silence? Are they hiding the details of this deal from us because most of the polls now suggest that action on climate change is becoming politically unpalatable?

And what explains the media’s failure to report and analyse the only source document that offers any idea of what may happen in Copenhagen? Ignorance? Laziness? Stubborn adherence to the orthodox government line that a deal in Copenhagen is critical? An obsession with the politics of climate change rather than policy?

At least we have heard from Monckton. He told Jones there had already been a million hits on the link to his St Paul address. “So the message in America is now out ... Now you know about it and you need to spread the word.”

Perhaps now our PM and our Climate Change Minister can spare a few moments to tell us about the details they know about but have so far chosen not to tell us about.

[Brocke]

Religious institutions may be key new allies in climate fight - UN

30 Oct 2009 15:06:00 GMT
Laurie Goering

People attend Friday prayers at the Imam Hussein shrine in Kerbala, southwest of Baghdad, on August 14, 2009.

LONDON, Oct 30 (AlertNet) - They own 7 percent of the world's habitable land, run half its schools, account for more than 6 percent of global investments and have the power to set moral standards for billions of people.

That's why religious institutions around the world may turn out to be powerful - and unexpected - new recruits in efforts to combat climate change, United Nations officials say.

 "We've been trying to figure out how to beat back climate change for decades now.We've worked with governments, with the private sector, and many strong environmental NGOs," said Olav Kjorven, director of development policy for the U.N. Development Programme.

But religious institutions - once largely discounted by the science-based environmental movement - have over the last year begun stepping forward and developing action plans to cut their own emissions and establishing climate-friendly behaviour as a key part of their moral codes, he said.

Sikhs in India have committed to retrofitting their temples - which feed 30 million people a day - with energy-efficient kitchens. Daoists in China are converting all their temples to solar power and solar panels adorn many Buddhist monasteries in India. Leaders of a group of moderate Muslim nations are in the process of creating a labeling system to promote environmentally friendly products and services.

Just as important, Jesuits - who run legions of schools in Latin America - are mainstreaming environmental and climate issues into their curriculum, and other faiths are increasingly preaching about caring for the earth as a moral imperative.

"Suddenly you have imams talking about going low-carbon as a religious mandate, a faith issue, something that is right in the eyes of Allah," Kjorven said. "That's enormously important."

Most of the institutions' emissions-cutting plans and other green efforts are still at an early stage. Many will be formally adopted between Nov. 2 and Nov. 4 at a gathering at Windsor, outside London, organised by the United Nations and the Alliance of Religions and Conservation, which works with 11 major faiths representing 80 percent of the world's population.

The potential reach of the climate efforts driven by "the world's oldest human institutions", is substantial, Kjorven said.

Under the proposed Muslim-backed product labeling system, for instance, the faithful will be urged to use sources of renewable energy - a milestone in the oil-rich Middle East - as well as internationally certified building products and sustainably fished seafood, said Martin Palmer, secretary-general of the UK-based Alliance of Religions and Conservation.

The effort would also focus on making the Haj pilgrimmage to Mecca more environmentally friendly, and printing 15 million Korans a year on sustainably produced paper and vegetable ink.

Hindu and Sikh institutions are expected to adopt similar labeling systems, Palmer said.

"This could launch the largest change in consumer policy ever," he said.

The changes are key not least because the world's religious institutions have such a large and devoted following, Palmer and Kjorven said.

"Holy scriptures are full of spiritual teachings and moral messages about caring for creation. And religious leaders reach more people than anybody else. Eighty-five percent of the planet regularly tunes in to what religion has to say," Kjorven said.

"Religions may not act fast. But when they make a decision, they build it into their teachings and it sticks for generations," he added.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/125691574951.htm

[trailhound]

Unstoppable global warming: every 1,500 years

By Siegfried Fred Singer, Dennis T. Avery

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=DJxlzuOdK2IC&lpg=PP1&ots=vZgQy3qLTK&dq=%22global%20warming%22&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Book overview

Supported by in-depth scientific evidence, Singer and Avery present the compelling concept that global temperatures have been rising mostly or entirely because of a natural cycle. Unstoppable Global Warming explains why we're warming, why it's not very dangerous, and why we can't stop it anyway.

 Thanks Brocke, so everybody knows you can read this book free at the above link. Im working on a response to this email a friend sent, anybody's input to my response is welcome.  Obviously there is a lot to work with, im trying to boil down a good strong response.  The man is just legitimately concerned about conservation and I agree with alot of his points, people are damaging the environment, same time the carbon scam needs to be fought.

 Anyways here is his response to me pointing out the ice in antarctica is growing.

You asked:  What do you think of the argument against global warming that states the data showing the Antartica ice that is actually growing due to dropping ice temperatures?  They say because it's the largest ice mass on the planet that this shows global warming is only actually isolated warming.
Before I address the specifics in that question, let me make a few general comments.
 
There were two parts to the question of global warming.  One had to do with the reality of global warming and the second had to do with significant anthropomorphic cause. Debate within the true scientific community ended on the first part two decades ago, and on the second part a decade ago.  There is no longer any debate within the scientific community as to whether global warming is real, or if man is the major cause.
The "argument" against global warming using measurements of increase in ice in the Antarctic is not taking place within the scientific community, but rather outside the community among pseudo scientists, the popular media, lay people, people and groups with a vested economic interest etc.
 
A couple years ago a friend sent me an article from the Wall Street Journal asking for my comments.  I thought I had sent a copy of my response to you, but in checking apparently I had not.   I am pasting a copy of it here:

Hi Bill,
 
Thanks for sending the WSJ article on global warming.  The fact that a major media still publishes such articles speaks to the effectiveness of the anti-global warming propaganda machine that has be operative in the US for decades now (I use the term machine in light of the documented orchestrated campaign by the oil companies et al to discredit the theory).
The anti's exploit the extremely complex nature of the problem by quoting various studies that suggest that either global warming is a myth, or that it is not affected by human activity.  Because of the thousands of scientific studies/articles and the complexity of the problem, it is impossible for the layman to make an intelligent judgment from reading such an article which quotes a number of selective studies.
 Since it is impossible for the lay person to sift through the numerous scientific articles on the myriad of subjects related to the global warming problem, where does one turn for the best available scientific conclusions and consensus.  The best mechanism available is through sources involving peer review.   So what do the peer reviewed scientific journals, along with the various international scientific organizations and national academies of sciences, say about the problem?
 
Peer reviewed scientific journals
 
A 2004 article by geologist and historian of science Naomi Oreskes summarized a study of the scientific literature on climate change. The essay concluded that there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. The author analyzed 928 abstracts of papers from refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, listed with the keywords "global climate change". Oreskes divided the abstracts into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. 75% of the abstracts were placed in the first three categories, thus either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, thus taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change; none of the abstracts disagreed with the consensus position, which the author found to be "remarkable". According to the report, "authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point."
 
National and International scientific organizations
 
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released their Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.  This report concluded that human actions are "very likely" the cause of the extremely high rate of global warming over the past 100 years. ("very likely" means a 90% or greater probability.)
The following is a list of scientific organizations which have issued statements relative to this conclusion of the IPCC:
 
Organizations concurring
 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007
InterAcademy Council
Joint science academies’ statement 2007 (signed by academies from 15 countries)
International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences
European Academy of Sciences and Arts
Network of African Science Academies
International Council for Science
European Science FoundationAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science
Federation of American Scientists
World Meteorological Organization
American Meteorological Society
Royal Meteorological Society (UK)
Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Physics
American Astronomical Society
American Physical Society
American Chemical Society
National Research Council (US)
Federal Climate Change Science Program (US)
American Quaternary Association
Geological Society of America
Engineers Australia (The Institution of Engineers Australia)
Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London
European Geosciences Union
International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
International Union of Geological Sciences
 
Organizations which issued noncommittal statements
 
American Association of State Climatologists
 American Association of Petroleum Geologists
 
Organizations which issued dissenting statements
 
With the July 2007 release of the revised statement by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, no remaining scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the IPCC basic findings of human influence on recent climate.
 
So who is one to believe  -  the fly-by-night organizations, or the prestigious science publication the Wall Street journal?
 
Regards,
 
Bob
 
 
 Keep in mind that there is a great difference between some of the 'Scientific Organizations'. Some, like the National Academy of Sciences, are dedicated to promote good basic scientific research and understanding. Others, like the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, while made up of geologic scientists,  exists solely to advance understanding of oil occurrence, exploration and production of hydrocarbons (they almost could be considered to be a scientific trade group).  Therefore they are intimately intertwined with the oil industry, which feels threatened by talk of global warming and required mitigation actions. As a result the AAPG has historically refused to accept the findings of the IPPC ( not based on any research mind you, just a philosophical [read economic] position).


It should be pointed out that these scientific societies , by nature,  are all very conservative. ie. they demand an extreme confidence level before taking an official position.
 
Back to your specific question concerning ice thickening in Antarctica.
Keeping in mind the fact that such an issue, having been solved years ago by the scientific community and now only being use as an argument against global warming within the 'non-scientific community', let me tell you a personal pertinent experience I had with ice growth/shrinking.  Some fifty six years ago I joined an expedition which left to cross the Greenland Icecap.  My specific task was to make measurements of the thickness of the ice along the way using seismic and earth gravitational measurements. Several glaciologists in our group were also tasked with making measurements to determine whether a number of coastal alpine glaciers were growing or shrinking. Several of the glaciers they measured showed dramatic evidence of shrinking.  However, a couple others showed conclusive evidence that they were advancing.  At first this may appear contradictory, but has a simple explanation.  Because of overall warming melting sea ice was leaving more area of seawater exposed.  This results in more evaporation and more resulting precipitation somewhere. When considering the local geography and climatology, it was clear that the source areas of some glaciers was getting more snowfall than others, hence resulting is more glacial ice.
 
So if someone asked me that since I believe in global warming, would I expect to now see the Icecap thicknesses that I measured 56 years ago to be less.  The answer is that I would expect the thickness to have increased in many areas.  The areas I would expect a thickening of the ice in the areas above the firn line.  Let me explain.  As you increase in elevation there is a point at which the temperature never goes above freezing, therefore no melting ever occurs.    This point will obviously change position with any short or long term global warming.  However, well above this point no melting ever occurs.   With the well documented increase in open seas in the Arctic, increase precipitation has occurred, leading to greater accumulation of snow/ice above the no-melt line and to greater thickness of glacial ice (so is that thickening of the ice an argument against global warming?  It could actually be quoted more accurately as evidence for global warming!).  Meanwhile the greater snowfalls do not increase the ice below the no-melt line in the coastal areas near sea level.  Here the warmer summers and warmer greater rainfalls contribute to faster melting of the glaciers.  You can see the result here:
The no-melt line would be roughly delineated by the darker grey, with everything inside that line being where no melting occurs, resulting in the thickening of the ice.
 
Keeping this in mind and moving to Antarctica one should remember that Antarctica is much colder than Greenland. As a result the vast majority of the Antarctic continent never experiences any melting.  So if you are making measurements of the amount of ice in areas of Antarctica where there is never any melting, why would you necessarily expect a decrease in the amount of ice just because there may be an overall increase in temperatures?  The reports of decreasing ice thickness,  breaking up of ice sheets,  increases in meltwater, receding glaciers etc. are mostly from studies in the coastal regions of Antarctica.
 
My above discussion is based on general principals and of course what one finds in any local area is going to be affected by the complexities of local topography,  oceanography, and microclimate.
 
I would like to close by repeating  the fact that the arguments as to whether global warming is occurring ceased within the scientific community a couple decades ago.

[trailhound]

 Never mind guys I got plenty of argument for all that above!

[Brocke]

Never mind guys I got plenty of argument for all that above!

I come across this more and more. People believing that the evil oil companies are behind the "anti-global warming conspiracy" and the fact that because many (not all) scientists and many (not all) organizations with environmental interests have accepted Climate Change as a fact. They just parrot the same tired "it's scientific consensus" argument. These are not stupid people they are highly educated and very intelligent. I am becoming very much aware that there are some people that will just not wake up. Not because they can't but because they won't. It's just too much for them to handle.

[trailhound]

I come across this more and more. People believing that the evil oil companies are behind the "anti-global warming conspiracy" and the fact that because many (not all) scientists and many (not all) organizations with environmental interests have accepted Climate Change as a fact. They just parrot the same tired "it's scientific consensus" argument. These are not stupid people they are highly educated and very intelligent. I am becoming very much aware that there are some people that will just not wake up. Not because they can't but because they won't. It's just too much for them to handle.

Here is my reply...

Bob wrote: I would like to close by repeating  the fact that the arguments as to whether global warming is occurring ceased within the scientific community a couple decades ago.

 This statement is not patently false; however, the debate about whether or not man made co2 emissions is far from over.  Here is a free book written by some atmospheric physicists about the natural warming and cooling cycles that it is demonstrably provable the earth goes through industry or no industry.  Also below is a link to a recently uncovered (suppressed) EPA report that indicates man made emissions are not affecting the climate in any significant fashion.

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=DJxlzuOdK2IC&lpg=PP1&ots=vZgQy3qLTK&dq=%22global%20warming%22&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

 While I will readily agree that men have polluted and harmed the environment in many devastating ways the co2 credit trading scam and the subsequent collapse of the U.S. is a ridiculous proposition that will no more affect the environment than me taking a leak on a tree.  We have far bigger fish to fry and this scam will only further empower the fish that need frying. If you dont believe me now you will believe me later.

 Also I think it prudent to look at the effects of the sun in its changing cycles, there is data that shows mars,jupiter,neptune are heating up as well. There are no evil oil companies on these other planets so I think that conspiracy might need to be laid to bed.  Same time I am very critical of the oil companies as well for supressing clean tech that would make their commodity obsolete. We need to take them down ,no doubt, but I suspect it is them who are set up to benefit from the co2 scam...we shall see.

Greenland Ice Core Analysis Shows Drastic Climate Change Near End Of Last Ice Age

ScienceDaily (June 19, 2008) — Information gleaned from a Greenland ice core by an international science team shows that two huge Northern Hemisphere temperature spikes prior to the close of the last ice age some 11,500 years ago were tied to fundamental shifts in atmospheric circulation.
 

The ice core showed the Northern Hemisphere briefly emerged from the last ice age some 14,700 years ago with a 22-degree-Fahrenheit spike in just 50 years, then plunged back into icy conditions before abruptly warming again about 11,700 years ago. Startlingly, the Greenland ice core evidence showed that a massive "reorganization" of atmospheric circulation in the Northern Hemisphere coincided with each temperature spurt, with each reorganization taking just one or two years, said the study authors.

The new findings are expected to help scientists improve existing computer models for predicting future climate change as increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere drive up Earth's temperatures globally.

The team used changes in dust levels and stable water isotopes in the annual ice layers of the two-mile-long Greenland ice core, which was hauled from the massive ice sheet between 1998 to 2004, to chart past temperature and precipitation swings. Their paper was published in the June 19 issue of Science Express, the online version of Science.

The ice cores -- analyzed with powerful microscopes -- were drilled as part of the North Greenland Ice Core Project led by project leader Dorthe Dahl-Jensen of the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Neils Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen. The study included 17 co-investigators from Europe, one from Japan and two from the United States -- Jim White and Trevor Popp from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

"We have analyzed the transition from the last glacial period until our present warm interglacial period, and the climate shifts are happening suddenly, as if someone had pushed a button," said Dahl-Jenson.

According to the researchers, the first abrupt warming period beginning at 14,700 years ago lasted until about 12,900 years ago, when deep-freeze conditions returned for about 1,200 years before the onset of the second sharp warming event. The two events indicate a speed in the natural climate change process never before seen in ice cores, said White, director of CU-Boulder's Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research.

"We are beginning to tease apart the sequence of abrupt climate change," said White, whose work was funded by the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs. "Since such rapid climate change would challenge even the most modern societies to successfully adapt, knowing how these massive events start and evolve is one of the most pressing climate questions we need to answer."

Both dramatic warming events were preceded by decreasing Greenland dust deposition, indicating higher tropical temperatures and significantly more rain falling on the deserts of Asia at the time, said White. The team believes the ancient tropical warming caused large, rapid atmospheric changes at the equator, the intensification of the Pacific monsoon, sea-ice loss in the north Atlantic Ocean and more atmospheric heat and moisture over Greenland and much of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere.

"Here we propose a series of events beginning in the lower latitudes and leading to changes in the ocean and atmosphere that reveal for the first time the anatomy of abrupt climate change," the authors wrote. White likened the abrupt shift in the Northern Hemisphere circulation pattern to shifts in the North American jet stream as it steers storms around the continent.

"We know such events are in Earth's future, but we don't know when," said White. "One question is whether we can see the symptoms before big problems occur. Until we answer these questions, we are speeding blindly down a narrow road, hoping there are no curves ahead."

Each yearly record of ice can reveal past temperatures and precipitation levels, the content of ancient atmospheres and even evidence for the timing and magnitude of distant storms, fires and volcanic eruptions, said White. The cores from the site -- located roughly in the middle of Greenland at an elevation of about 9,850 feet -- are four-inch-diameter cylinders brought to the surface in 11.5-foot lengths, said White.


[Print]  [Email]       
CEI releases global warming study censored by Obama's EPA
By: Kevin Mooney
Commentary Staff Writer
06/26/09 12:09 PM EDT

Natural forces as opposed to human activity are largely responsible for temperature fluctuations, according to a new study the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released today as Congress prepares to vote on global warming legislation.
Internal email messages show the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suppressed the report and silenced the author because the scientific evidence did not square with the Obama administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide, CEI claims. The EPA has become overly reliant upon outdated information from the United Nations and has ignored major new scientific developments, the censored study concludes.
“While we hoped that the EPA would release the final report, we’re tired of waiting for this agency to become transparent, even though its administrator has been talking transparency, since she took office,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman.
New scientific data highlighted in the report shows that ocean cycles and solar cycles are probably the most important factors behind temperature fluctuations. Moreover, satellite information now indicates there is little chance of endangerment from greenhouse gases, according to the report.
Some of the major developments overlooked by EPA official include a continued decline in global temperatures, an emerging consensus that hurricanes will not be more frequent or intense and new studies that demonstrate water vapor will have a moderating influence on temperature.
Going forward, CEI has called upon the EPA to independently analyze the science and to become more transparent in its own reporting.

[trailhound]

Oh here's the link to the PDF of that EPA document.

http://cei.org/cei_files/fm/active/0/DOC062509-004.pdf

[Brocke]

Carbon Footprint Calculators Don’t Make Sense

http://ecopreservationsociety.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/carbon-footprint-calculators-dont-make-sense/

We are baffled.

The carbon footprint calculators make no sense to us when it comes to the calculations for Jet travel.

Lets run some numbers.

A Boeing 737 burns 800 gallons of fuel per hour

A gallon of jet fuel weighs just less than 7 pounds

In a five-hour flight that is 4000 gallons of fuel weighing 28,000 pounds

Or 14 tons of jet fuel

The 737 will carry up to 162 passengers. Lets assume 80% capacity or 130 in a typical flight

Here is what does not make sense to us:

That works out to 0.107 tons of fuel per person (about 200 pounds of fuel per person)

Yet according to their Carbon Calculators that same 5-hour flight produces the following TONS of carbon per person:

ZeroFootPrint.com 2.71 Tons p/ person (24 times the weight of the fuel)

CarbonFootPrint.com .496 Tons p/person (2.5 times the weight of the fuel)

Green.yahoo.com 2.0 Tons p/person (20 times the weight of the fuel)

How can this possibly be? Certainly the vast majority of the fuel is converted to energy. How is it possible that the jet fuel produces many more times as much carbon as the weight of the fuel itself? Never mind the question as to why all of these calculators give us such wildly different calculations. Something is wrong here or are we missing something?


How much fuel does an international plane use for a trip?

A plane like a Boeing 747 uses approximately 1 gallon of fuel (about 4 liters) every second. Over the course of a 10-hour flight, it might burn 36,000 gallons (150,000 liters). According to Boeing's Web site, the 747 burns approximately 5 gallons of fuel per mile (12 liters per kilometer).

This sounds like a tremendously poor miles-per-gallon rating! But consider that a 747 can carry as many as 568 people. Let's call it 500 people to take into account the fact that not all seats on most flights are occupied. A 747 is transporting 500 people 1 mile using 5 gallons of fuel. That means the plane is burning 0.01 gallons per person per mile. In other words, the plane is getting 100 miles per gallon per person! The typical car gets about 25 miles per gallon, so the 747 is much better than a car carrying one person, and compares favorably even if there are four people in the car. Not bad when you consider that the 747 is flying at 550 miles per hour (900 km/h)!
http://www.howstuffworks.com/question192.htm


747-400 fuel calculator
http://www.aerotransva.es/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,16/Itemid,29

My results for a flight from Melbourne, Australia to L.A (8,000 nautical miles)
(A Boeing 747 can carry approximately 57,000 gallons or 216,000 liters of fuel)
 1 ton = 1 meter cubed = 264 gallons

8,000 nautical miles X 0.01 gallons = 80 Gallons of fuel per person or 0.3 of a Ton or 1/3 of a ton.
 
On a flight from Melbourne, Australia to Los Angeles, California I would use approximately 1/3 of a ton of fuel
 
Here are the results of various "Carbon Footprint" Calculators for the same flight found on the web.

3.79 tonnes CO2 (11 times my fuel consuption)
Carbon Reduction Institute
https://noco3-px.rtrk.com.au/?Calculator

0.96 tonnes CO2 (3 times my fuel consuption)
TerraPass
http://www.terrapass.com/carbon-footprint-calculator/#air

1.59483 tonnes CO2 (4 times my fuel consuption)
Green Progress :: Carbon Footprint Calculator
http://www.greenprogress.com/carbon_footprint_calculator.php

1.59 tonnes CO2 (4 times my fuel consuption)
Berkeley Institute of the Environment
http://bie.berkeley.edu/aircalculator

1 tonnes CO2 (3 times my fuel consuption)
ICAO Carbon Emissions Calculator
http://www2.icao.int/en/carbonoffset/Pages/default.aspx

1.6 tonnes CO2 (5 times my fuel consuption)
Carbon Neutral
http://www.carbonneutral.com/cncalculators/flightcalculate.asp

The correct calculation should be for every 1 unit of fuel burned 3 units of CO² are released from the burn process, as follows:

Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Aircraft Flights…

The Chemistry

There are some general guidelines for aircraft flights that are used in the industry. There are also some real opportunities for confusion and conflicts. Aircraft fuel is can be either gasoline or kerosene based, (JET A or JET B Fuel). Most commercial transport aircraft burn JET A fuel, which is based on Kerosene.

Kerosene is a component of Crude Oil that has a specific boiling range, and it is made up of hydrocarbon chains that have an average molecular weight of 170. That weight is likely made up of, for the most part, C12H26. Combustion of that product occurs as follows:

2C12H26 + 37O2 -> 24CO2 + 26H2O

The molecular weights are as follows:
C12H26 = 170
O2 = 32
CO2 = 44
H2O = 18

What this means is that if one burns 340 grams of Kerosene (2 units) the combustion will need 37 x 32 = 1,184 grams of Oxygen from the air. The result will be 24 x 44 = 1,056 grams of CO2 and 18 x 26 = 468 grams of water vapour.

Put in terms of ratio, for every pound of fuel burned, the aircraft will emit 1056/340 = 3.1 pounds of CO2 and a further 1.38 pounds of water vapour. This result is a potential source of issue because in calculating GHG emissions, people tend to consider the carbon footprint only. In fact, water vapour is the largest factor in GHG trapping heat in the atmosphere. In most cases, the water vapour is ignored because it can condense out quickly, and generally does not have a large impact over time. Aircraft, on the other hand, discharge large quantities of water in the high levels of the atmosphere where it may persist for a considerable period. Airlines generally do not include this number in their calculations.

The story is actually somewhat worse than shown here because aircraft engines also produce a number of other by-products that are greenhouse gasses with serious impacts. Some of these are NOx, SOx, unburned hydrocarbons, and CO.
Fuel Burn
An approximation used by airlines to calculate fuel burned is that an aircraft will burn about 4% of its flight weight in fuel for each hour of flight. On long flights, this may be as low as 3%. So a flight to Hong Kong taking 15 hours would burn about 45% of its total weight in fuel. On the other hand, if the weather is bad, and one needed to arrive over Hong Kong with an additional 1,000 pounds of fuel in order to get to a more distant alternate airport, the airline would have to have put almost 1,800 pounds at departure because the flight would have burned the additional 800 pounds just to carry the 1,000 extra fuel required for arrival.

There are two calculations that can be done; marginal burn and average burn per passenger. The marginal fuel burn is that amount of fuel that is burned by adding a single passenger to a flight, while the average is the total fuel burned for the flight divided by the number of passengers. The two numbers are very different because the marginal calculation assumes that the aircraft will make the flight regardless – and the calculation identifies the amount of extra fuel required for the additional passenger. The average burn includes the weight of the airplane and the fuel required to carry the structural weight – in addition to all of the passengers. Hence the average number is much larger than the marginal number.

Example – Toronto – Vancouver
A Boeing 767 300 ER has an empty weight of about 190,000 pounds and a maximum take off weight of 412,000 pounds. The payload is 222,000 pounds and is made up of passengers, baggage and cargo and fuel. The aircraft will carry approximately 250 passengers and crew. Passenger weight will be approximately 50,000 pounds (including a 35 pound allowance for baggage) and fuel carried for a 5 hour flight will be about 70,000 pounds, including required reserves. The overall weight would be 310,000 pounds at take off. Fuel burn for a 5 hour flight would be approximately 50,000 pounds. This weight would result in the release of 155,000 pounds of CO2 plus an additional 69,000 pounds of water vapour.

Based on the assumption that the aircraft would burn 4% of any additional weight, a 165 pound passenger with an additional 35 pounds of baggage would result in an increased fuel burn of 4% x 200 x 5 hours = 40 pounds of fuel. This would result an increase CO2 released by 124 pounds with a further 55.2 pounds of water vapour.

If one assumes that the airplane will fly – the average impact of adding a single passenger will be 124 pounds of CO2. On the other hand, if one calculates the average emissions per person on the entire flight, the number grows. Average emissions per person increases to 155,000/250 = 620 pounds per passenger. The reason for the large increase is the fact that the airplane weighs 190,000 pounds and this is the basic weight that is required in order to carry a full passenger load of 50,000 pounds. The added weight of the fuel increases it further.

Rules of Thumb…
To calculate the marginal increase in CO2 resulting from the addition of a passenger…
Passenger weight (including bags) x Flight Hours x 12% = CO2 Emissions
A flight of 8.5 hours will result in the release of CO2 equal to the passenger weight…

To calculate the average increase in CO2 resulting from a flight,
Passenger weight (including bags) x Flight Hours x 62% = CO2 Emissions
A flight of 1.5 hours will result in the release of CO2 almost equal to the passenger weight…
In simpler terms, the emissions are about 12% of a person’s weight on a marginal basis for every hour of flight, but on an average basis, they are as high as 62%.

One can see why the new aircraft that are made from carbon fibre have high value for an airline. Besides being very strong, the carbon fibre is very light. In the case of a B767, the weight of the airplane itself is more than 3 times the weight of the passenger load that it carries. The aircraft weight consumes much more than half of the fuel required for a trip.

To go one step further, if one wishes to calculate the total GHG emissions, including water vapour, the rules of thumb become...

For Marginal increases in GHG emissions resulting from a flight
Passenger weight (including bags) x Flight Hours x 17% = CO2 Emissions

A flight of 5.8 hours will result in the release of CO2 equal to the passenger weight…
For Average increases in GHG emissions resulting from a flight

Passenger weight (including bags) x Flight Hours x 90% = CO2 Emissions
A flight of 1.1 hours will result in the release of CO2 equal to the passenger weight…
It is apparent that air travel, while a small emitter in total is in fact a large emitter when compared to other forms of transportation. The impact of water vapour releases at high altitudes are not well documented, but are likely have more serious impacts than releases of water vapour at the surface of the earth.

New aircraft have two significant improvements that will help to improve the emission numbers. First, engine technology continues to improve, resulting in a more efficient power source. This has a double impact, in that there is a smaller demand for fuel for a given trip, and the cost for carrying fuel for the longer trips decreases as well. The other improvement, which is potentially larger is in the construction of the aircraft itself. Composites are now used extensively. These materials are much lighter and stronger than the metal products that were used in the past. The B 767 used as an example earlier in this paper had an empty weight of almost half of the maximum gross takeoff weight. This percentage will decrease somewhat as more composites are used. The savings from this change will be very large.

http://www.sempapower.com/discussions/comments.php?DiscussionID=1

[mr anderson]

The PM's address to the Lowy Institute

November 06, 2009
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/the-pms-address-to-the-lowy-institute/story-e6frg6nf-1225795141519

I acknowledge the First Australians on whose land we meet, and whose cultures we celebrate as among the oldest continuing cultures in human history.

Thank you Michael and thanks to all the supporters of the Lowy Institute for joining us today.
 
As you know, I attended the Major Economies Forum in L’Aquila in July; I was recently at the G20 Leaders meeting in Pittsburgh; and next week I will travel to the APEC Leaders meeting in Singapore.
 
At each of these meetings, and in constant bilateral conversations being conducted by national leaders around the world, the common thematic is: What does our nation, what does our region and what does the world do to respond to climate change, the greatest long term threat to us all?
 
As APEC leaders gather in Singapore next week, this is a critical question.
 
The Asia Pacific region will play the key role in leading the world into economic recovery. Similarly, our region must play a central role if we are to forge a global consensus on tackling climate change.
 
This afternoon I want to set out the views that I will be reflecting to other world leaders in the days and weeks ahead, in bilateral conversations and in forums such as APEC, leading up to the Copenhagen summit.
 
Australia and the world today stand at critical junctures in our national and global strategies to tackle climate change.
 
It is around 20 days until the Senate votes on the Australian Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
 
20 days until the most important vote on our national strategy to tackle climate change.
 
20 days away from the vote on the Government’s cap and trade emissions trading system which both sides of politics have recognised as the lowest cost way to tackle climate change.
 
And we are just 31 days away from the Copenhagen Conference of Parties – an historic moment to forge a global deal to put a global price on carbon.
 
Today we are approaching the crossroads. Both these policies are reaching crunch time.
 
When you strip away all the political rhetoric, all the political excuses, there are two stark choices – action or inaction. The resolve of the Australian Government is clear – we choose action, and we do so because Australia’s fundamental economic and environmental interests lie in action.
 
Action now. Not action delayed.
 
As one of the hottest and driest continents on earth, Australia’s environment and economy will be among the hardest and fastest hit by climate change if we do not act now. The scientific evidence from the CSIRO and other expert bodies have outlined the implications for Australia, in the absence of national and global action on climate change:
·        Temperatures in Australia rising by around five degrees by the end of the century.
·        By 2070, up to 40 per cent more drought months are projected in eastern Australia and up to 80 per cent more in south-western Australia.
·        A fall in irrigated agricultural production in the Murray Darling Basin of over 90 per cent by 2100.
·        Storm surges and rising sea levels – putting at risk over 700,000 homes and businesses around our coastlines, with insurance companies warning that preliminary estimates of the value of property in Australia exposed to the risk of land being inundated or eroded by rising sea levels range from $50 billion to $150 billion.
·        Our Gross National Product dropping by nearly two and a half per cent through the course of this century from the devastation climate change would wreak on our infrastructure alone.
 
The Government took a plan to tackle climate change to the last election, to tackle the risks climate change poses to our planet, and especially to the health, lifestyle and livelihoods of our children.
 
That plan included two fundamental parts:
·        First, a domestic plan of action to reduce Australia’s carbon pollution, including:
o       Expanding the Renewable Energy Target to 20 per cent by 2020 (and subsequently directly investing over $2 billion in renewable energy, including investment in large scale solar generating capacity that will be three times larger than the world’s current largest project).
o       A national energy efficiency strategy to reduce the energy that we can consume, and undertaking the largest investment in energy efficiency ever seen in this country.
o       A Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme that will increase the cost of carbon over time and facilitate a transition to a low carbon pollution economy.
·        The second part of our strategy is participation in global action to tackle climate change, including:
o       ratifying the Kyoto Protocol;
o       participating in global technology transfers – including Australian leadership in a global coalition to develop carbon capture and storage through the Australia-initiated Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute; and
o       strong engagement towards a new post-Kyoto global agreement .
 
This was the platform we took to the Australian people at the election. This is the program of action we have been prosecuting over the past two years. Yet the cornerstone of this program of action, the CPRS, still lies stymied in the Senate.
 
Australia has certainly not been alone in our endeavours to tackle global climate change. At the same time, around the world we have seen nations of every political stripe take concrete action to work towards legislation in this critical area – actions which have been slowly building towards coordinated international action to tackle climate change. And most nations have been engaged in the multilateral process – through the Bali Roadmap two years ago, through the 14th Conference of the Parties in Poznan, Poland last year, and the intensifying global negotiations leading up to the 15th Conference of Parties in Copenhagen this year.
 
Today, the culmination of this domestic and global action is in sight. Much progress has been made, but, the truth is that there is still a long way to go. In fact, the hardest part of our journey is ahead of us over the next 31 days.
 
This is a profoundly important time for our nation, for our world and for our planet.
 
In Australia, we must pass our Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme – to deliver certainty for business at home and to play our part abroad in any global agreement to bring greenhouse gases down.
 
President Obama in the United States is also working hard so that he can take strong commitments to Copenhagen. And let us never forget that in the US, as in Australia, under both our respective previous governments, zero action was taken on bringing in cap and trade schemes meaning that the governments that replaced them began with a zero start.
 
Other countries are striving to build domestic political momentum in their own countries to take strong commitments into the global deal.
 
The challenge we face, and others around the world face, is to build momentum and overcome domestic political constraints.
 
The truth is this is hard, because the climate change skeptics, the climate change deniers, the opponents of climate change action are active in every country.
 
They are a minority. They are powerful. And invariably they are driven by vested interests.
 
Powerful enough to so far block domestic legislation in Australia, powerful enough to so far slow down the passage of legislation through the US Congress. And ultimately – by limiting the ambition of national climate change commitments – they are powerful enough to threaten a deal on global climate change both in Copenhagen and beyond.
 
The opponents of action on climate change fall into one of three categories.
·        First, the climate science deniers.
·        Second, those that pay lip service to the science and the need to act on climate change but oppose every practicable mechanism being proposed to bring about that action.
·        Third, those in each country that believe their country should wait for others to act first.
 
Together, these groups, alive in every major country including Australia, constitute a powerful global force for inaction, and they are particularly entrenched in a range of conservative parties around the world.
 
As we approach Copenhagen, these three groups of climate skeptics are quite literally holding the world to ransom.
·        Provoking fear campaigns in every country they can.
·        Blocking or delaying domestic legislation in every country they can.
·        With the objective of slowing and if possible destroying the  momentum towards a global deal on climate change.
 
As we approach the Copenhagen conference these groups of climate change deniers face a moment of truth, and the truth is this: we will need to work much harder to reach an agreement in Copenhagen because these advocates of inaction are holding back domestic commitments, and are in turn holding back global commitments on climate change.
 
It is time to be totally blunt about the agenda of the climate change skeptics in all their colours – some more sophisticated than others.
 
It is to destroy the CPRS at home, and it is to destroy agreed global action on climate change abroad, and our children’s fate – and our grandchildren’s fate – will lie entirely with them.
 
It’s time to remove any polite veneer from this debate. The stakes are that high.
 
The first category of those opposed to action is the vocal group of conservatives who do not accept the scientific consensus. This group believes the science is inconclusive and does not provide an evidentiary basis for anthropogenic climate change.
 
In Australia, before the 2007 election, this group was thought to be relatively small. There appeared – for a time – to be bipartisan consensus on the need for action on climate change. In recent times, this bipartisan support has frayed.
 
As one Liberal Member of Parliament said to Phil Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald last year:
“[at the last election we supported an ETS because] we were staring at an electoral abyss. We had to pretend we cared.”
(SMH, 28 JULY 2008)
 
More recently that pretence has been increasingly cast aside. Would-be Liberal leader Tony Abbott said in July this year that “the science … is contentious to say the least”.(27 July 2009)
 
Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi said:
“I remain unconvinced about the need for an ETS given that carbon dioxide is vital for life on earth”.
 
Liberal Senator Alan Eggleston said:
“Levels of carbon dioxide have risen in the world, but whether or not this is the sole cause or just a contributor to climate change is, I think, unanswered.”
(11 AUGUST 2009)
 
Liberal Senate leader Nick Minchin said this year:
“CO2 is not by any stretch of the imagination a pollutant… This whole extraordinary scheme is based on the as yet unproven assertion that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are the main driver of global warming.”
(11 AUGUST 2009)
 
Alternative Liberal leader Joe Hockey – who knows better – has been drawn into the same sort of doublespeak, remarking on the Today Show in August:
“Look, climate change is real Karl, you know whether it is made by human beings or not that is open to dispute.”
(12 AUGUST 2009)
 
Even the leader of the Opposition, once Minister for the Environment, Malcolm Turnbull, has flirted with this doublespeak, telling Alan Jones on 2GB:
“I think most people have at least some doubts about the science.”
(19 JUNE 2009)
 
The tentacles of the climate change skeptics reach deep into the ranks of the Liberal Party, and once you add the National Party it’s plan the skeptics and the deniers are a major force.
 
Climate sceptics are also a powerful political lobby in the United States.
 
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steel said on 6 March 2009:
“We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process.”
 
House Minority Leader John Boehner said on April 19 2009:
 "The idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide.”
 
Republican Congressman John Shimkus said on 25 March 2009:
 "If we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere?"
 
The legion of climate change skeptics are active across the world, and they happily play with our children’s future.
 
The clock is ticking for the planet, but the climate change skeptics simply do not care. The vested interests at work are simply too great.
 
It's been more than 30 years since the first World Climate Conference called on governments to guard against potential climate hazards.
 
It's been 20 years since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was formed and produced its first report.
 
17 years ago, in 1992, the international community acknowledged the importance of tackling climate change at the Rio Earth Summit and created the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
 
And the most recent IPCC scientific conclusion in 2007 was that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and the “increase in global average temperatures since the mid 20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”
 
This is the conclusion of 4,000 scientists appointed by governments from virtually every country in the world, and the term “very likely” is defined in the scientific conclusion of this report as being 90 per cent probable.
 
Attempts by politicians in this country and others to present what is an overwhelming global scientific consensus as little more than an unfolding debate, with two sides evenly represented in a legitimate scientific argument, are nothing short of intellectually dishonest. They are a political attempt to subvert what is now a longstanding scientific consensus, an attempt to twist the agreed science in the direction of a predetermined political agenda to kill climate change action.
 
It reminds me of the efforts of the smoking lobby decades ago as they tried for years to politically subvert by so-called scientific means that there was any link between smoking and lung cancer.
 
Put more simply: these climate change sceptics around the world would be laughable if they were not so politically powerful – particularly in the ranks of conservative parties.
 
The second group of do-nothing climate change skeptics are those who purport to accept the scientific consensus, but in the next breath are unwilling to support any of the practicable plans of action that would actually do something about climate change. This group plays lip service to the climate change science but when push comes to shove refuse to support climate change action. In Australia, these naysayers have successfully blocked the development of an emissions trading scheme for more than a decade.
 
After 12 years of inaction under the previous government, this government has worked to build a national consensus around our Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. We took the concept to the people at the 2007 election, and since then we have methodically, clearly and comprehensively worked towards passage of our scheme.
 
The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Green Paper was released on 16 June 2008.
 
The Garnaut Climate Change Review was released on 30 September 2008.
 
The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme White Paper was released on 15 December 2008.
 
The Draft Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation was released in March.
 
There have been numerous Senate Inquiries.
 
There have also been numerous industry consultations.
 
As of May 2009, the Government had built wide support for action on climate through a carbon pollution reduction scheme.
 
There was broad business, environmental and community support from:
-          The Business Council of Australia
-          The Australian Industry group
-          The Climate Institute
-          The Australian Conservation Foundation
-          The World Wildlife Fund
-          The Australian Council of Social Services representing lower income Australians.
 
Today, after so many reports, reviews, consultations, not to mention the small matter of an election - the overwhelming need for Australia to tackle the great challenge of our generation is being frustrated by the do-nothing climate change skeptics.
 
As recently as last year, the Leader of the Opposition was emphatic in his support for an emissions trading scheme. He said it was the “central mechanism” in the fight against climate change.
 
Speaking at the National Press Club in May last year, he stated:
“The Emissions Trading Scheme is the central mechanism to decarbonise our economy."
(21 May 2008)
 
A few days later, he said:
“The biggest element in the fight against climate change has to be the emissions-trading scheme.”
(HANSARD - 26 MAY 2008)
 
 
But still today, after so many reports and consultations, the Liberal Party, the National Party and other opponents of action raise objections to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
 
Their objections fall into three categories:
·        Some argue that the cost is too high in terms of its impact on our economy.
·        Others argue that the cost is too high in terms of its impact on households.
·        And others object to the system of global emissions trading because they believe it will unjustifiably transfer money and power from rich countries to poor countries.
 
Let us take each of these in turn.
 
First is the cost to our economy and jobs.
 
This has been a constant theme of the Liberal and National Parties’ attacks on the CPRS. Mr Turnbull said the CPRS “is guaranteed to slow our economic recovery, cost us jobs.”
 
And the de facto leader of the National Party, Barnaby Joyce, refers to the emissions trading scheme as the “employment termination scheme” – whereas I thought any self-respecting National Party leader would be out there standing up for farmers facing 40 to 80 per cent more drought in the future, rather than betraying them.
 
The facts about the impact of unmitigated climate change on the one hand and the CPRS on the other tell a very different story, but that eternal motto of the Liberal and National Parties is never let the facts stand in the road of a good fear campaign – whether it’s debt, border security or climate change.
 
Here are the facts.
 
Treasury modelling done in 2008 demonstrates Australia can continue to achieve strong trend economic growth while making significant cuts in emissions through the CPRS. Treasury modelling also demonstrates that all major employment sectors grow over the years to 2020 - substantially increasing employment from today’s levels. Treasury modelling also projects that clean industries will create sustainable jobs of the future – in fact by 2050 the renewable electricity sector will be 30 times larger than it is today.
 
Another element of the Liberal and National fear campaign about the design of the CPRS is that it will impose unmanageable cost on households.
 
Again, Senator Joyce – fearmonger in chief on climate change, he who therefore betrays the real interests of Australian farmers – puts the position of the Liberal and National parties as follows:

“If you live in a cave with a candle you would probably be OK, but if your house is wired up for power then every electrical appliance will be attached to a power generator which in all likelihood will pay a tax and that tax will be passed on to you, the consumer.”
(Joyce - 27 JULY 2009)
 
Again, the facts on the true household costs and impacts of the CPRS tell a different story. Treasury modelling again demonstrates that the price impact of the CPRS is modest. The CPRS is expected to raise household prices by 0.4 per cent in 2011-12 and 0.8 per cent in 2012-13, and the government has provided household compensation to help assist with these modest cost rises.
 
Pensioners, seniors, carers and people with disability and low-income households will receive additional support to fully meet the expected overall increase in the cost of living flowing from the scheme. Middle-income households will also receive additional support to help meet the expected overall increase in the cost of living flowing from the scheme.
 
A third argument from those who quibble with the design of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is that the international design aspects of the scheme are flawed.
 
Lord Christopher Monckton - a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher - was quoted this week in the Australian press by Janet Albrechtsen. Lord Monckton describes the potential Copenhagen agreement as a plan to set up a transnational "government" on a scale the world has never before seen. Enter the “world government” conspiracy theorists.
 
Lord Monckton also publicly warned Americans that "in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy and your prosperity away forever."
 
Janet Albrechtsen, in her understated neo-conservative way, refers to the potential Copenhagen agreement as a UN “power grab”. This gaggle of world government conspiracy theorists are so far out there on the far right, that they rub up next to the global anarchists of the far left.
 
Those who argue that any multilateral action is by definition evil.
 
Those who argue that climate change does not represent a global market failure.
 
Those who argue that somehow the market will magically solve the problem.
 
And that uncoordinated national actions will fix the problem.
 
Without answering the basic logical question of how can we deal with an existential challenge for the whole planet which lies beyond the capacity of any individual national action to address.
 
The climate change deniers now form the comfortable bedfellows of the global conspiracy theorists – in total bald-faced denial of global scientific, economic and environmental reality.  These arguments – thinly veiled attempts to create a new climate change global conspiracy theory – are now being used in Australia.
 
Like the arguments from climate change deniers, these arguments have zero basis in evidence.
 
Where is their equivalent evidence basis to Treasury modelling published by the Government of the industry and employment impacts of climate change?
 
Where is their equivalent evidence basis to Treasury modelling published by the Government on the cost impacts for households from the CPRS – and on the adequacy of the compensation arrangements put in place by the Government in our White Paper?
 
The answer once again is there is none.
 
Where is the evidence basis offered by the new league of world government conspiracy theorists that climate change can be effectively dealt with by market means or by uncoordinated national means?
 
Answer – there is none.
 
The truth is that the do-nothing climate change skeptics offer no alternative official body of evidence from any credible government in the world.
 
Absolutely none.  The truth is they offer zero evidence.
 
Instead they offer maximum fear, the universal conservative stock in trade.
 
And by doing so, these do-nothing climate change skeptics are prepared to destroy our children’s future.
 
The third group of climate deniers are those who pretend to accept the science but then urge delay because they don’t want their country to be the first to act.
 
In Australia there was once a political consensus resisting this parochial view.
 
The Shergold Report commissioned by John Howard and written by the head of the Prime Minister’s department recommended that Australia should not wait for the rest of the world to act:
 
“... waiting until a truly global response emerges before imposing an emissions cap will place costs on Australia by increasing business uncertainty and delaying or losing investment."
(Report of the Prime Ministerial Task Group on Emissions Trading, June 2007, p.6)
 
The current Leader of the Opposition also stated that a domestic ETS would help in international negotiations too:
 “... our first hand experience in implementing … an emissions trading system would be of considerable assistance in our international discussions and negotiation aimed at achieving an effective global agreement.”
 (Turnbull – SMH Opinion Piece – 9 July 2008)
 
Then the Leader of the Opposition stated he no longer supported domestic action before Copenhagen:
 “I would not find, I would not support finalising the design this year. Even the best designed scheme in theory needs to have the input of the knowledge of what happens at Copenhagen and what the Americans will do.”
(AM – 16 MARCH 2009)
 
Seven times the Liberals and Nationals have promised to make a decision on their policy on climate change – and seven times they have delayed.
·        In December 2007 they said wait for Garnaut.
·        In September 2008 they said wait for Treasury modelling.
·        In September 2008 they said wait for the White Paper.
·        In December 2008 they said wait until the Pearce Report.
·        In April 2009 they said wait for the Senate Inquiry.
·        In May 2009 they said wait for the Productivity Commission - forgetting that the Productivity Commission already made a submission on emissions trading to the Howard Government’s Shergold Report.
·        Now the Liberals and National have said wait for Copenhagen and for President Obama’s scheme.
 
It is an endless cycle of delay – and I am sure that with December almost upon us, the eighth excuse cannot be far away – which will be to wait until the next year or the year after until all the rest of the world has acted at which time Australia will act.
 
What absolute political cowardice.
 
What an absolute failure of leadership.
 
What an absolute failure of logic.
 
The inescapable logic of this approach is that if every nation makes the decision not to act until others have done so, then no nation will ever act.
 
The immediate and inevitable consequence of this logic – if echoed in other countries – is that there will be no global deal as each nation says to its domestic constituencies that they cannot act because others have not acted.
 
The result is a negotiating stalemate. A permanent standoff.
 
And this of course is the consistent ambition of all three groups of do-nothing climate change deniers.
 
As we approach Copenhagen, it becomes clearer that the domestic political pressure produced by the climate change skeptics now has profound global consequences by reducing the momentum towards an ambitious global deal. The argument that we must not act until others do is an argument that has been used by political cowards since time immemorial – both of the left and the right.
 
To take just one example, it has been used as an argument to retain protectionism, stifling economic growth and global competition, and preventing the spread of global prosperity.
 
As many have noted, it is the international political version of the prisoner’s dilemma. If we allow our actions to be dictated by what we falsely conclude to be in our narrow self-interest, then we harm not just others but ourselves as well because climate change inaction harms us as well.
 
Climate change deniers are small in number, but they are too dangerous to be ignored. They are well resourced and well represented by political conservatives in many, many countries.
 
And the danger they pose is this – by collapsing political momentum towards national and global action on climate change, they collapse global political will to act at all. They are the stick that gets stuck in the wheel, that despite its size may yet bring the train to a complete stop.
 
And that is what they want, because they are driven by a narrowly defined self interest of the present and are utterly contemptuous towards our children’s interest in the future.
 
This brigade of do-nothing climate change skeptics are dangerous because if they succeed, then it is all of us who will suffer.
 
Our children.
 
And our grandchildren.
 
If we fail, then it will be a failure that will echo through future generations.
 
The consequences for Australia of failing to act domestically and internationally on climate change are severe. We know from formal global and national economic modelling that the costs of inaction are greater than the costs of acting. Treasury modelling from October 2008 shows that economies that defer action on climate change face long-term costs around 15 per cent higher than those that take action now.
 
The sooner we act, the better placed our companies will be to benefit from new emerging global markets, and to benefit from the economic gains from improved efficiency. Moving to a low pollution economy will require significant investment in renewable energy, carbon capture and storage, energy efficiency and other low emissions technologies.
 
We need to start giving the signal to investors that they need to factor the price of carbon into their decisions to make the investments we need. Importantly, business needs certainty to make these investments.
 
As Greig Gailey, former President of the Business Council of Australia said:
 “Only business can make the many investments needed to transition Australia to a low carbon economy. To do this business needs certainty.”
 
Without passage of the CPRS there will be no certainty for business. That is why business groups like the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Industry Group want to see the major parties come together and vote on the CPRS this year.
 
Heather Ridout, Chief Executive of the Australian Industry Group said:
“.... many of our members are telling us that they are holding off making investments until there is a greater degree of clarity around domestic climate change legislation.”
 (ADECCO Group Australia Breakfast – 15 October 2009)
 
Russell Caplan, Chairman of Shell Australia, said:
 "... we believe a far greater risk is that Australia misses the opportunity to put a policy framework in place to deal with this issue. This would create a climate of continuing uncertainty for industry and potentially delay the massive investments required."
(BRW - 6 August 2009)
 
These are the implications for Australia. These are the political challenges we now face both at home and abroad.
 
But my unequivocal message to the nation today is that this nation Australia will not be deterred.
 
Our course is clear.
 
That is why this government will press forward with our plan to tackle climate change domestically and globally.
 
Domestically we will press forward with the passage of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
 
It will be voted on in the House in the week beginning Monday November 16.
 
It will be introduced into the Senate immediately after the vote in the House.
 
It will then be voted on in the Senate in the week beginning 23 November.
 
We welcome the Opposition’s recent cooperation and I’m pleased to hear from Minister Wong that negotiations are proceeding in good faith. I’d like to personally commend the Member for Groome for his genuine efforts to engage with the Government in good faith to reach a reasonable outcome with the Government that will finally deliver action on Climate Change.
 
We are of course concerned by the comments of the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate that “even if the government accepts all our amendments, we may well still vote against the bill.”
(NICK MINCHIN- 2UE- 30 OCTOBER 2009)
 
The do-nothing climate change skeptics are still alive and well in the Coalition. After 12 years of inaction, and after two years of preparation, the nation demands a genuine timetable and good faith negotiations to give business the certainty they need with climate change.
 
The Australian Government is also committed to intensively engaging to support an ambitious agreement in Copenhagen.
 
At Copenhagen we need an ambitious agreement on mitigation, adaptation, finance and technology.
 
As UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said yesterday, the formal UN negotiations are moving slowly.
 
The UN Secretary-General has said we must maximise the agreement we can reach in Copenhagen. They can resolve some issues, but not others.
 
Now is time for strenuous efforts by all leaders and ministers.
 
Denmark’s Prime Minister Rasmussen is engaging a growing number of leaders – in the Copenhagen Commitment Circle – to accelerate engagement by leaders.
 
Australia is committed to playing a leadership role and has joined Mexico and the UN Secretary-General in the initial group of ‘friends of the Chair’ to help build consensus and draw out concrete commitments from across the world.
 
In July this year at the G8 meetings in L’Aquila, Australia helped form a 2 degree Celsius 450 ppm ambition for global action on climate change, and it was at this meeting that Australia launched the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, a concrete initiative to make CCS technology a reality.
 
Australia is currently chair of the Pacific Island Forum which this year delivered the Pacific Leaders’ Climate Change Call to Action demanding urgent action on a real threat to the viability of some Pacific communities.
 
In September, Australia at the request of the UN Secretary-General co-chaired a roundtable at the UN Special Session on Climate Change – with a view to driving a sense of political urgency with other leaders, and representing the views of the Pacific.
 
Australia has launched the Forest Carbon Partnerships with Indonesia and Papua New Guinea – an initiative providing policy and technical support to protect the great forests in our neighbourhood.
 
And Australia has established a $150 million Climate Change Adaptation Fund - supporting vulnerable nations dealing with the real impact of climate change, with a strong focus on the Pacific.
 
For years – and then, with increasing intensity, in recent months – do-nothing climate change skeptics have been mounting a systematic campaign against action on climate change.
 
Their aim is not to convince every person on earth of the follies of acting on climate change. Their aim is to erode just enough of the political will that action becomes impossible.
 
By slowing the actions of each individual country, they aim to slowly drag global negotiations on climate change to a standstill. By hampering decisive action at a national level, they aim to make it impossible at an international level.
 
If Copenhagen does not deliver the outcome we so urgently need, no individual climate change skeptic will be responsible, but each of them will have played their part.
 
The corrosive effect of climate skeptics eroding the political will to act may be the disintegration of any possibility of meaningful action on climate change.
 
In this debate the climate change skeptics have erected an intellectual house of cards based on one simple premise: that the cost of not acting is nothing.
 
When you boil down their arguments, their world government conspiracy theories and their back of the envelope calculations – that in its starkest simplicity and entirety is what is left: that the cost of not acting is nothing.
 
That is the simplest premise upon which the scepticism of Malcolm, Barnaby, Andrew, Alan, Janet and even Lord Monckton is based. They cling to that single premise like a polar bear clings to a melting iceberg.
 
Without that premise, their scepticism is sunk. Malcolm, Barnaby, Andrew, Janet and the Thatcherite Lord Monckton are betting the house on that simple premise that the cost of not acting is nothing.
 
For people who claim to hold the conservative torch, their scepticism is in fact radical in its riskiness and recklessness. By deliberately undermining and eroding the capacity to achieve both domestic and international action on climate change the skeptics are attempting to force the world to take the single most reckless bet in our long history.
 
They are betting our future, the future of our children and our grandchildren, and they are doing so based on their own personal intuitions, their personal prejudices and their deeply ingrained political prejudices.
 
And they are doing so in the total absence of any genuine body of evidence.
 
Climate change skeptics in all their guises and disguises are not conservatives. They are radicals.
 
They are reckless gamblers who are betting all our futures on their arrogant assumption that their intuitions should triumph over the evidence.
 
The logic of these skeptics belongs in a casino, not a science lab, and not in the ranks of any responsible government.
 
Malcolm, Barnaby, Andrew, Janet, even Lord Monckton shouldn’t even bother with the pretence of science and just admit the currency of their prescription for inaction has all the legitimacy of a roulette wheel.
 
Basically, let’s just sit back, do nothing and see what happens.
 
The alternative – our alternative – is to base policy on the evidence.
 
No responsible government confronted with the evidence delivered by the 4,000 scientists associated with the international panel could then in conscience choose not to act. In any public company, it would represent a gross contempt of the most basic fiduciary duty.
 
Malcolm and Barnaby might like to bet the future of Australia on the off chance of winning an election, but this Government will not.
 
A fairly well-known bloke once said that when gambling:
 
You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em.
Know when to walk away, know when to run.
 
My message to the climate change skeptics, to the big betters and the big risk takers is this:
 
You are betting our children’s future and the future of our grandchildren.
 
You are betting our jobs, our houses, our farms, our reefs, our economy and our future on an intuition – on a gut feeling; on a political prejudice you have about science.
 
That is too big a risk, too radical a departure from the basic conservative principles of public policy.
 
Malcolm, Barnaby, Andrew, Janet – stop gambling with our future.
 
You’ve got to know when to fold ‘em – and for the skeptics, that time has come.
 
The Government I lead will act.[/size][/quote]

[mr anderson]

Malcolm and the Malcontents

http://vimeo.com/7528121 (45mins)

Reporter: Sarah Ferguson
Broadcast: 09/11/2009

Additional exclusive content:
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/special_eds/20091109/ETS/



Story details:
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2009/s2735044.htm

Reporter Sarah Ferguson goes inside the conservative parties to find out what the party members really think about climate change and why they're so reluctant to back their leader.

In October Liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull said, "I will not lead a party that is not as committed to effective action on climate change as I am."

It was a potentially dangerous strategy because it tied his leadership to a single issue. Just how risky that declaration was is only now becoming clear.

At that stage coalition MPs had clear doubts about supporting an emissions trading scheme but now a range of Nationals and Liberals have told Four Corners they don't believe that climate change is primarily man-made.

"The earth is not actually warming, we still have rain falling ... we can go outside and not cook."

"If the question is, do people believe or not believe that human beings ...are the main cause of the planet warming, then I'd say a majority don't accept that position."

This may surprise many voters and it's led some to ask if Malcolm Turnbull's position as leader is now untenable.

The problems for the opposition leader are reinforced by Liberal insiders who say his handling of the issue was a "folly". Another says Malcolm Turnbull is simply too "green" for the party he leads. Yet another senior figure justifies his refusal to support his leader's views by saying it's important for him to openly question the idea that man is changing the climate at all.

One man who does defend Malcolm Turnbull and his approach to this thorny issue is Shadow Resources and Energy minister, Ian Macfarlane. He believes ...

"Well Malcolm ... wants to show that we are a modern party ... it's part of the change, the evolution from John Howard to Malcolm Turnbull."

Others disagree. They say the decision, in 2007 to embrace the concept of man-made climate change and create a policy supporting an emissions trading scheme, was a mistake that was forced on the party by the opinion polls of the time and the proximity of the federal election.

"In 2007, and post 2007 I have to say as a party we were intimidated by the force of the climate change debate. It just seemed to be an issue of the moment."

To make matters even more complicated for Malcolm Turnbull, the Nationals leader in the Senate, Barnaby Joyce, has told Four Corners that the Liberal Party has betrayed the bush. He says he will argue against the scientific view that man has created climate change and warns that he will conduct a campaign in regional seats against any deal that would deliver a new tax on regional voters:

"I think we are going to win on the ETS. I think it's going to be blocked in the Senate and we'll end up with a double dissolution."

This view that an election could be fought and won while opposing major greenhouse gas reductions is at odds with Malcolm Turnbull's view that the Coalition must have a strong policy on greenhouse gas reductions or face electoral ruin.

To test this Four Corners commissioned a review of polling done in the past two years relating to climate change and voting intentions. That review makes it clear that concern amongst voters about climate change has "softened" over the past eighteen months.

The poll however also shows that while support for the Labor Party as the best party to manage this issue has fallen slightly, the voters have not transferred that support to the Coalition. The research review offers some intriguing insights into the dangers for any party with this issue, warning that climate change cannot be viewed in isolation from other factors, like costs and job losses.

All this makes the current negotiations over amendments to the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation significant, not just for the environment but the future of the Coalition and the leadership of Malcolm Turnbull.

"Malcolm and the Malcontents" will go to air on Monday 9th November at 8.30 pm on ABC 1. It is repeated on Tuesday 10th November at 11.35 pm.

[Belial]

"I think we are going to win on the ETS. I think it's going to be blocked in the Senate

I sure hope so.

[mr anderson]

Global Bully Rudd fights for foreign committee, against citizens

Jo Nova
November 11, 2009

http://joannenova.com.au/2009/11/global-bully-rudd-fights-for-foreign-committee-against-citizens/

The world is considering a new financial market larger than any commodity, it’s “based on science”, but if you ask for evidence, you’re called names—“Denier”, and by our Prime Minister, no less.  This is supposed to pass for reasoned debate?

In 6000 words Rudd uses ad hominem attacks, baseless allegations, argument from authority, mindless inflammatory rhetoric and quotes not a single piece of evidence that carbon drives our climate. He repeats quote after quote of sensible, ordinary points from his opponents as if it shows they are confused. Yet he can’t point out how any of them are wrong. It shows the depth of his own delusions—that he thinks merely questioning “the UN committee” is a flaw in itself.

It’s as if being a sceptic is a bad thing, yet the opposite of sceptical is gullible.

Rudd throws baseless innuendo when he claims vested interests are at work. The truth is the exact opposite. Exxon spent $23 million on sceptics, but the US government spent $79 billion on the climate industry. Big Government outspent big-oil 3000 to 1. Worse, carbon trading last year was $126 billion dollars. That’s for just one year. The real vested interests stand in the open like signposted black holes hidden in plain view by a legal disclaimer. The singularities at the centre of the climate change galaxy have names like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, ABN Amro, Deutche Bank, and HSBC.

The banks… want us to trade carbon.

And the career scientists like their “rock-star” status. “Call us heroes”. “Thanks for the institute. Ta.”

The UN bureaucrats soak in their fame and their junkets. Why wouldn’t they? Two weeks and ten thousand people in an exotic locale every year. Nobel prizes for just doing their jobs, and the promise that they might be at the centre of new world financial market: dinner with Obama and tea with Gordon Brown. Status knocks, and everyone is home.

This global gravy train got rolling in 1988 and when the evidence turned “180”, the train ran off the tracks. Now it levitates above the real world on a cushion of snarling spite and intimidation. It’s as if calling someone a “denier” replaces 100,000 radiosonde readings, 6,000 boreholes, 30 years of satellite results and ice cores that go back to a time before homo sapiens was sapien. These things are evidence, but a manufactured “consensus” from a self serving committee is not. “Denier” is an insult, a cheap attempt to bully dissent into submission.

Rudd offers up our nation to global bullies and giant bankers because he’s swallowed a UN committee report. The IPCC were set up and funded to find a link, any link between carbon and the climate: they are not audited, elected or accountable to the Australian people. Team IPCC-how-big-is-my-junket would never issue a press release that said, essentially: greenhouse gases are minor forces. “Thanks for the funding. We’ll all get new jobs”. They are not an unbiased source. Yet the Australian government seems to think they help Australian citizens by slavishly repeating UN committee decrees.

Rudd claims sceptics “play with our children’s future”, but if a nations leader just obediently accepts a foreign decree without checking it, isn’t he the one who lets our children down? He’s the one who isn’t arranging an independent audit of the claims made by a committee in Geneva before we sign away the hard work of Australian adults and children for decades to come.

Ratings agencies repacked junk securities into “AAA rated” investments and triggered the credit crunch. The IPCC has repackaged “junk science” and created an “expert triple A rated”, full gloss quasi prospectus called a “Synthesis Report”. The Australian government is buying their unaudited package hook, line and stinker.

It’s sobering to think this man is in our highest office.

Rudd will come to regret his Lowy Institute speech. It’s a sad indictment of what intelligent discourse in Australia has been reduced too. The nation that invented the bionic ear considers trashing its economy because someone thinks “denier” is a scientific term? There is no human subclass called “denier”, there are only concerned citizens, retired scientists, unpaid bloggers, and “working families”. All of whom will ship truckloads of money to foreign financial houses in the event we are forced to buy meaningless permits at the point of a gun.

Kevin Rudd gambles with our economy. He wants sweeping changes based on the science, but he hasn’t spent ten minutes checking the evidence. He claims sceptics can’t name any evidence but that’s only because he never reads a word sceptics write. He can’t name a single peer reviewed paper yet we can name hundreds. But we only need one, and Lindzen 2009 will do. (Thank you, since you asked.)

Rudd could start with The Non Governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) – an enormous non-profit production of around 800 pages of dense scientific text and references. That it exists at all is remarkable. Why do so many eminent scientists around the world feel compelled to donate time to write long detailed reports?

But talking “papers” is a waste of time, Rudd thinks evidence comes from government, and he’s waiting for the IPCC to debunk itself. He actually says: “Sceptics offer no alternative official body of evidence from any credible government in the world.”

That misunderstanding about the nature of evidence automatically rules out all independent research until such time as some bureaucratic committee agrees. Einstein pointed out that it only takes one experiment to prove him wrong.  Obviously, in Rudd’s world, if a government department hadn’t legislated the sun to rise tomorrow, it wouldn’t come up. In the real world, evidence doesn’t come from governments it comes from thermometers.

The IPCC even admits carbon will only warm us by 1 degree. Did you know? Don’t wait for the IPCC press release in plain English. The rest of the projected catastrophe is due to feedback from clouds, rain and humidity. But it isn’t there. Outgoing radiation does the opposite of what the models project. Humidity levels aren’t rising in the upper troposphere, the greenhouse hot-spot is totally missing, high cirrus clouds shrink as the world warms, which cools us. Low clouds correlate with high energy cosmic rays. Weather balloons showed the models were wrong years ago, beyond all reasonable doubt. For the last few years, sea levels have plateaued, and temperatures have cooled. Nothing bar anything is going the right way for the carbonistas. The ice cores show that temperature controls carbon and not the other way around. One hockey stick graph was based on one freak tree in northern Russia, the other used statistical tricks that create hockey sticks from random noise. The East Anglia CRU has lost the entire raw data set of global temperatures. The whole set?! The carbon crisis charade has become a farce.

The only thing confirmed about the theory of man-made global catastrophe is just how audacious and brazen it is, and how many people have been fooled into thinking they help the planet by insulting scientists. Really.

History books will be written about the global warming exaggerations, and people will marvel at how close the world came to feeding a new layer of financial parasites so soon after the economy collapsed due to the last speculative frenzy. Sub prime carbon was on its way.

Rudd scores an own-goal by saying we are deniers “who do not accept the scientific consensus”. Hell no we don’t. We stand by Galileo, Aristotle and Einstein. We demand evidence, and not just opinions. This calling to “consensus” is the stuff of tribal witchdoctors. Chief Kevin and the council of crows say storms are coming, the Gods are angry. We must pay them in barnacles to ward off the wind! For a hundred thousand years people have invented crises in order to scare their followers into submission. Rudd drags us back to the stone age.

The meaningless consensus is fake in any case. Thirty thousand scientists have signed their names against the theory of man-made catastrophe, that includes a Nobel prize winner, 9,000 PhD’s, and countless professors of physics, chemistry and meteorology.

The carbon scare is a shell game to distract the masses while bankers take Australia’s economic sovereignty and lock in a profitable carbon trading scheme for themselves. (Thanks for the tithe: here’s your meaningless paper permits to air that might-have-had-more-carbon-in-it.)

Rudd is so behind the times, he makes the mistake of thinking that we “deniers” think the evidence is “inconclusive”. Not any more we don’t. In any other branch of science this theory would be dead and buried. There are so many flaws, and so many knock-out blows, it’s not possible to seriously look at the evidence and think the carbon-crisis theory has any legs left. Sure, new evidence could change that, but it would have to be one mother of an experiment to turn around the results from oceans, sediments, satellites, stalagmites, weather balloons and ice cores.

One of the most surprising things is just how clumsy Rudd’s long speech was. Not only was 6,000 words indulgent, but the reasoning was extraordinary. Somehow he thinks people will be convinced that Liberals* are crazy if he quotes them saying tritely obvious things like this line from Liberal Senate leader Nick Minchin:

“CO2 is not by any stretch of the imagination a pollutant… This whole extraordinary scheme is based on the as yet unproven assertion that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are the main driver of global warming.”

Which was the perfect point for Rudd to name the evidence and show how Minchin was wrong, but Rudd didn’t even notice the gaping hole in his own reply. It’s as if he thinks just making any point against the hallowed theory is a flaw in itself.

Ironically Rudd manages to find the one line, the only sensible comment Malcolm Turnbull has made on the topic all year, and quotes that as if it counts against Turnbull:  “I think most people have at least some doubts about the science.”

This is not exactly diabolical stuff, it’s not like Turnbull is paying tribute to the Ku Klux Klan, or accidentally said “hot air sinks”. Instead this is Turnbull showing he’s is not an automaton robot arm of the IPCC. Apparently Rudd is.

Was there an awkward silence in the room as Rudd read sensible line after sensible line from his opponents? Did anyone in the audience notice that Rudd was acting like a cult believer with a quiet chant: The IPCC are right. The IPCC are right. Don’t question the committee. There is a consensus. The UN has never got it wrong. I can’t name a paper, I can’t name a scientist, but there is a consensus…only an ignorant tobacco funded fool conspiracy theorist who hates their own children would question it…

Rudd is clearly very frustrated that the election wedge he thought he had a handle on is bolting out from under him. And it’s not a moment too soon.

But this time he has gone too far. He needs to apologize unreservedly for baseless attacks on all the scientists who have been trying to warn him and help him understand our climate. Most of us work unpaid to help the country.

Bullying is not science. There is never an excuse.

* For non Australians: “Liberals” here are the conservative opposition. Yes, they are more liberal than the Nationals, but the most liberal are the Labor Party.

[Brocke]

Awesome Climate Widget.

Get it here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/widget/

World Climate Widget

NEWS: An iPhone version is in the works, with more features. See it at the end of this page. An imporved version of the sidebar widget will also be forthcoming soon. Check this page for updates.

When the Alpha and Beta testing is complete, this page will offer links to a larger graph, plus source data as well as alternate data for comparisons.

This experimental widget uses the UAH lower troposphere temperature data as well as the Mauna Loa CO2 data combined with NOAA SWPC solar information. Additional versions of this widget may appear on this page, check for updates regularly.

Sample image

[Brocke]

CRU says leaked data is real

http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/11/hadleycru-says-leaked-data-is-real.html

UPDATE: The link to TGIF is further down this email, but we have now posted a new story on this growing scandal which you can read here after you've finished perusing the information below.

The director of Britain's leading Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, has told Investigate magazine's TGIF Edition tonight that his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to be genuine.

In an exclusive interview, Jones told TGIF, "It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails."

"Have you alerted police"

"Not yet. We were not aware of what had been taken."

Jones says he was first tipped off to the security breach by colleagues at the website RealClimate.

"Real Climate were given information, but took it down off their site and told me they would send it across to me. They didn't do that. I only found out it had been released five minutes ago."

TGIF asked Jones about the controversial email discussing "hiding the decline", and Jones explained what he was trying to say….

More on this breaking story in TGIF Edition tonight…
http://www.tgifedition.com/

UPDATE: to save any further emails from the eager as our deadline looms…TGIF will be out in about two hours…midnight NZDT

UPDATE: Just burning PDF and Flash documents, moments away

UPDATE FINAL: The link is now live at the TGIF Edition link above, underneath the Breaking News heading

For your viewing pleasure...here's why you don't need to take these climate clowns seriously:

VIDEO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90otAJORkK