UN forecasts huge rise in costs of emissions reduction

You won't have seen this anywhere in the Australian media, of course, but the UN Framework Commission on Climate Change has just revised its estimates of the cost of emissions reductions, upwards by 170%. Hands up who thinks this won't be the last upward revision?

The report, to be presented at the December 1-12 conference in Poznan, Poland updates 2007 estimates that said investment to mitigate carbon emissions had to be ramped up in the coming years, reaching between 200-210 billion dollars annually in 2030.
...
It cited "higher projected capital costs," especially in the energy sector, to introduce solar panels and fuel cells that had yet to become competitive with fossil fuels.

There was also the potential bill for implementing carbon storage, a technology that is still at the pilot stage, said the report.

Nothing in this should surprise anyone, of course. What does surprise us is the fact that this comes from the UN itself...

Read it here.

Australian media bias exposed

The Australian comments on the blatant pro-warming bias in our media, in particular the Fairfax publications (The Age and Sydney Morning Herald) and our national broadcaster, the ABC.

In May last year, The Sydney Morning Herald breathlessly reported that climate change had reduced the Southern Ocean's ability to soak up carbon dioxide, claiming that as a result global warming would accelerate even faster than previously thought.

The story was picked up and repeated in a number of different journals around the region.

But this week the CSIRO suggested the exact opposite. "The new study suggests that Southern Ocean currents, and therefore the Southern Ocean's ability to soak up carbon dioxide, have not changed in recent decades," it said. This time the story got no coverage in the SMH, and was run on the ABC's website as evidence the Southern Ocean was adapting to climate change.

No surprise there. We've always known the ABC, like the BBC in the UK, has made up its mind on "climate change" and has an editorial agenda that fits that conclusion.

ABC board member Keith Windschuttle said yesterday the national broadcaster was in breach of its charter to provide a diversity of views. "The ABC and the Fairfax press rarely provide an opportunity for global warming sceptics to put their view," Mr Windschuttle said. "The science is not settled.

"We are seeing an increasing number of people with impeccable scientific backgrounds questioning part or whole of the story. I don't believe the ABC has been reflecting the genuine diversity of the debate. Under its own act, the ABC is required to produce a diversity of views."

Read it here.

Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Round-up

The Daily Bayonet's author is laid up in bed, so Skeptics Global Warming have kindly produced this week's Hoax Round-up.

Climate madness from Rudd & Wong

That's right, they just carry on regardless, brushing the observations and the science aside in their pointless quest to "tackle climate change" whilst at the same time committing economic suicide. Krudd and Co are preparing to release the white paper on Australia's ETS, or, if you wish to use the government's name for it (complete with two errors in four words), the Carbon* Pollution† Reduction Scheme...

"The global financial situation has heightened the importance of providing business certainty on the scheme," Senator Wong said in a statement.

The economy is already weakened, and the ETS will only make it worse. She just stops short of using the dreaded "D" word about the Opposition, however:

Opposition calls to delay carbon trading were undermining business certainty and were out of step with community attitudes.

"The opposition is looking for any excuse to delay action on climate change, but Australians understand that the longer we wait, the more it will cost us," Senator Wong said.

Once such "excuse" possibly being the fact that it will make not one iota of difference to global climate even if CO2 is a driver of temperature, which, given present cooling trends, is looking less and less likely.

Pure climate madness.

Read it here.

* Carbon Dioxide ain't Carbon
† For the last time, it's NOT POLLUTION

Bravo New Zealand

Krudd and his cronies in our blinkered government could learn a great deal from our neighbours across the ditch. The greenie hordes are up in arms because the new centre-right government of John Key in New Zealand has dared to open up a debate on "global warming":

The government has also suggested a possible review of the science behind climate change, a move that has outraged environmental groups, who say New Zealand's reputation will be damaged if the concept of global warming is questioned.

Have you ever heard such unadulterated nonsense in a single sentence? Did I read that correctly? A possible review has "outraged environmental groups"? Sorry, is this science we're talking about, or the dogma of religion? Perish the thought that the divine words of the IPCC, as spoken through the prophet Al Gore, should ever be questioned. Quick, throw another heretic on the fire.

As for their reputation being damaged, in my book, it's quite the reverse. Bravo New Zealand.

Read it here.

Carbon Sense - Time to review ETS

From Viv Forbes at Carbon Sense:

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called on the Queensland Government to follow the lead of New Zealand and initiate a complete review of the science and the cost-benefits of the proposals to levy a new tax on coal and petrol usage.

“All over the world, three factors are triggering a revolt against the lemming-like rush led by the Anglo-Saxons to commit carbon suicide via Emissions Trading Schemes.”

“Firstly, the science behind the scare forecasts from IPCC computer models has been shown to be deficient by a growing band of independent scientists.

“Secondly, the globe itself is sending a warning as daily reports of unseasonal frosts, snow and ice make a mockery of the global warming hysteria. We certainly have climate change, but it is natural global cooling, not man-made global warming.

“Thirdly, the world financial collapse has forced alert politicians to focus on the immediate concerns of voters – real jobs, and the security of supply for food and power.

“The revolt against new carbon rationing and taxes affecting New Zealand now encompasses much of the world including India, China, Indonesia, Brazil, Poland, Italy, Germany and the whole Ex-Soviet bloc. There is naturally no support for carbon rationing from the OPEC world, and falling support from Canada. There is also scant chance that the US Congress and Senate will embrace any expensive new Kyoto pact.

“Soon the only true believers will be the blinkered political and Green zealots in UK and Australia, with cynical support from nuclear-powered France.

“Queensland has more to lose from carbon taxes and rationing than any other place in the world. And there has been no unbiased assessment of the costs and benefits of such moves. Any government honestly representing the real long term interests of the carbon capital will lead the push to review where we are headed, why and at what cost?”

The Australian - climate madness again

The old Maldives story rehashed for the umpteenth time by The Australian (see here and here). It starts off with the usual scaremongering nonsense:

AMONG the many grim predictions of climate change experts, the future fate of The Maldives stands out as a genuine doomsday scenario, with the island chain nation facing nothing short of extinction.

A 1m rise in sea level would almost totally submerge the country's 1,192 coral islands scattered off the southern tip of India. Experts predict a rise of at least 18cm is likely by the end of the century.

Oh, please. I thought we'd moved on from this. Sea levels have been rising at 1-2 mm per year since the last Ice Age, so 18cm in a century is bang on target (which, by the way, has nothing to do with "global warming" or that evil trace gas CO2). Some experts go even further, such as Nils-Axel Morner, former head of the department of paleogeophysics and geodynamics at Stockholm University, quoted in The Australian just two weeks ago:

Our research data does not lend support to any such flooding scenario, however. On the contrary, we find no signs of any ongoing sea-level rise. Our results comes from visits to numerous islands ... and includes coring, levelling, sampling and carbon dating.

Present sea level was reached about 4500BC. In the past 4000 years, sea level oscillated around the present. In the past decade, there are no signs of any rise in sea level. Hence, we are able to free the islands from the condemnation to become flooded in the 21st century.

And none of this mentions the possibility of tectonic movement of the land itself downwards...

Read it here.

Climate sense from Miranda Devine

There appears to be a preponderance of climate sense at the moment - what's going on? Another spot on article from Miranda Devine in the Sydney Morning Herald (how on earth does she get published?), which discusses Ian Plimer from the University of Adelaide:

Plimer said there is a division between those scientists who sit in front of super computers and push piles of data into the mathematical models that drive the theory of climate change, and those who take measurements in the field.

We are not sceptical enough about the data. For instance, Plimer cited differences between results from temperature measuring stations in urban and rural areas. Those in urbanised Chicago, Berkeley, New York, and so on, show temperature rises over the past 150 years, whereas those in the rural US, in Houlton, Albany and Harrisburg (though not Death Valley, California) show equally consistent cooling. "What we're measuring is urbanisation," Plimer said.

This is quite right, because if you look at the satellite records, there just isn't any warming!

Plimer says creationists and climate alarmists are quite similar in that "we're dealing with dogma and people who, when challenged, become quite vicious and irrational".

Human-caused climate change is being "promoted with religious zeal … there are fundamentalist organisations which will do anything to silence critics. They have their holy books, their prophet [is] Al Gore. And they are promoting a story which is frightening us witless [using] guilt [and urging] penance."

More of the same, please.

Read it here.

Climate sense from Piers Ackerman

No time to summarise this article fully (it's late), but read it anyway. It's right on the money.

AGW sceptic to be EU president

This will really put the cat among the blinkered alarmist pigeons of the EU. Vaclav Klaus, Czech president and noted AGW sceptic, is due to take over the rotating presidency of the EU, and the New York Times cannot resist taking cheap ad hominem pot shots (thanks to Andrew Bolt):

In the 1980s, a Communist secret police agent infiltrated clandestine economics seminars hosted by Vaclav Klaus, a fiery future leader of the Czech Republic, who had come under suspicion for extolling free market virtues. Rather than reporting on Marxist heresy, the agent was most struck by Mr. Klaus’s now famous arrogance.

“His behavior and attitudes reveal that he feels like a rejected genius,” the agent noted in his report, which has since been made public. “He shows that whoever does not agree with his views is stupid and incompetent.”

Decades later, Mr. Klaus, the 67-year-old president of the Czech Republic — an iconoclast with a perfectly clipped mustache — continues to provoke strong reactions. He has blamed what he calls the misguided fight against global warming for contributing to the international financial crisis, branded Al Gore an “apostle of arrogance” for his role in that fight, and accused the European Union of acting like a Communist state.

At least the last couple of lines are right. And it doesn't stop there. The NYT digs up anybody they can find to slag off Mr Klaus:

But Mr. Klaus’s sheer will and inflammatory talk — the eminent British historian Timothy Garton Ash once called him “one of the rudest men I have ever met” — are likely to have some impact.

“Klaus is a provocateur who will twist his arguments to get attention,” said Jiri Pehe, a former adviser to Vaclav Havel, Mr. Klaus’s rival and predecessor as president.

To supporters, Mr. Klaus is a brave, lone crusader, a defender of liberty, the only European leader in the mold of the formidable Margaret Thatcher. (Aides say Mr. Klaus has a photo of the former British prime minister in his office near his desk.)

To his many critics, he is a cynical populist, a hardheaded pragmatist long known as a foil to Mr. Havel, the philosopher-dreamer, and a troublemaker.

Successful character assassination complete, I think. And finally, this gem:

Mr. Klaus declined to be interviewed for this article. His office called a list of proposed questions “peculiar.”

Now there's a surprise.

Read it here.

Snowfalls in Australia a week before Summer

Of course, weather isn't climate, as we all know, but anecdotally it is hard to avoid the fact that there is a lot of cold weather about right now. From the Lithgow Mercury:

We know that Summer, at least according to the calendar, is only a week away. But across the Tablelands and much of eastern NSW at the weekend it might as well have been mid Winter.

In fact there were very few occasions during the official Winter when the weather was as severe as during the freakish conditions at the weekend.

The predicted cold front moving in from a deep depression off Victoria reached the Blue Mountains-Lithgow area early on Friday night, sending temperatures plunging and rapidly worsening.

On Saturday the Lithgow area had just about everything from the Winter weather book — gale force winds, sleet, snow showers, rain and single digit temperatures that were aggravated by the wind chill factor.

Read it here.

David Bellamy in The Australian

The Australian reprints an article originally published in the UK Daily Mail. If you missed it the first time (here) it's well worth a read (link).

Climate sense - Bjørn Lomborg in The Australian

Bjørn Lomborg skillfully skewers the dumb argument that a "green economy" is the panacea for the world's ills:

Many green pundits have, however, started saying that the financial crisis only makes the need for action on climate change greater. They urge US president-elect Barack Obama to pursue a "green revolution" with big investments in renewable energy, arguing that this could create millions of new "green collar" jobs and open huge new markets.

Unsurprisingly, such sentiments are strongly voiced by business leaders who live off such subsidies. But are such pleas smart investments for society?

The problem with the green revolution argument is that it doesn't trouble itself about efficiency. It is most often lauded for supplying new jobs. But billions of dollars in tax subsidies would create plenty of new jobs in almost any sector: the point is that many less capital-intensive sectors would create many more jobs for a given investment of taxpayers' money.
...
President-elect Obama is now facing countless people who claim that subsidies for renewable energy and CO2 taxes are great ways to tackle global warming and forge a new green economy. Unfortunately, this is almost entirely incorrect. Taxes and subsidies are always expensive, and will likely impede growth. Moreover, if we really want to tackle global warming, we shouldn't spend vast sums of money buying inefficient green technology. We should invest directly in R&D to make future green technology competitive.

Read it all here.

Why would Malcolm Turnbull praise Kevin Rudd for signing Kyoto?

But that's what he did in a speech at the National Press Club, as reported in the Herald Sun.

Mr Turnbull's speech coincided with the first anniversary of Labor's election win over the previous coalition government, which held power under John Howard for more than 11 years.

Mr Turnbull praised Mr Rudd for making a national apology to indigenous people and for ratifying the Kyoto protocol on climate change.

Odd that Malcolm Turnbull thinks it right to praise someone for an empty political gesture which achieved nothing.

Read it here.

ABC - Old scare rehashed yet again

The ABC exhumes a tedious old cliché from the alarmists' handbook - the threat of increasing disease.

The head of the Public Health Association, Michael Moore, says emissions must by reduced by at least 20 per cent by 2020 to minimise disease, depression and health costs.

"What we're really concerned about is if the Government doesn't go for those bold emissions targets, we will see a significant spread of vector borne diseases like malaria, dengue fever, like ross river fever - we're already seeing some of it," Mr Moore said.

Well, the increase you speak of can't be caused by global warming, because there hasn't been any for nearly a decade... yawn.

Read it here.

The Age - Unintended Joke Alert

Another scaremongering article in The Age this morning, about how "global warming" could have a "devastating" effect on "hundreds of millions" of people in the Asia-Pacific region. But at least Allan Behm, a political risk and strategy consultant, has a sense of humour:

Despite calls in recent years for Australia to take a lead in working with regional governments, progress had been glacial, he said.

Does that mean "moving slowly", or "disappearing fast"... ?

Read it here.

Piers Ackerman - Rudd's pre-election agenda in tatters

From The Daily Telegraph columnist Piers Ackerman, who rains on Rudd's 1st anniversary parade:

A year in office and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s pre-election agenda is in tatters.

Australian schoolchildren don’t have their promised computers, FuelWatch is dead, GroceryWatch is dying and the states are not enjoying a new spirit of co-operation.

Signing Kyoto has done nothing but underscore the certainty that Labor’s insistence climate change is man-made will increase unemployment beyond the levels expected from the global financial mess.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s modelling, on which the overblown, apocalyptic Garnaut report is based, has been shot to pieces.

And the Treasury modelling on which the Government has based its planned emissions-trading scheme doesn’t take into account the current economic situation.

Read it here.

Rudd still clueless on climate

Glad to see that Rudd's still obsessed with controlling the climate, despite the world entering a recession the likes of which we haven't seen since the 1920s. He has chosen the APEC conference to pontificate on climate change, as if the last 8 years of global cooling have completely escaped him:

"Some have said that the financial crisis means that governments should postpone acting on climate change, but the Australian government does not share that view," he said.

"Climate change represents a very real threat to global economic growth, jobs and prosperity...taking strong and urgent action will help safeguard economic and environmental stability." Mr Rudd said.

No, Mr Rudd, the only threat to economic growth, jobs and prosperity is your crazy and ill-conceived ETS, and all other similar emissions schemes hastily being enacted throughout the world.

Read it here.

Cute fluffy creatures threatened by "climate change"

As Andrew Bolt puts it:

How to push the warming scare. First, pick a loved icon and hold a gun to its head.

The Sydney Moonbat Herald chooses the koala, and claims that "climate change" will cause the cute cuddly koalas to die in greater numbers.

Dan Lunney told a conference of the NSW Nature Conservation Council that rising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere would push up toxins and lower nutrients in eucalyptus leaves.

As leaf quality dropped and bush fires intensified, koalas would be forced to roam further afield as they foraged for food in shrinking bushland surrounded by farms, housing developments and logging operations.

Koalas, like many other animals, have clearly adapted perfectly well to "climate change" in the past (when it couldn't possibly be due to the evil emissions of unregulated capitalism), including periods of significantly lower temperatures, which would have made life far more difficult than the gentle warming we have experienced since the end of the Little Ice Age.

But this is the Herald we're talking about, so unless there's an alarmist angle, it won't get printed.

Read it here.

Tim Blair - Global Warming for President

An amusing article in the Daily Telegraph for your enjoyment this morning.

At that moment Dave's son came up with the perfect slogan for the 2012 US election: Global Warming for President!

The boy's a genius. How could global warming possibly lose?

Global warmings got 100 per cent name recognition, awesome fund-raising powers and the ability to kill anyone who opposes him. Global warming, should he choose to run, has a total lock on the White House. If he doesn't flood it first, of course, or fill it with sad polar bears.

Read it here.

Obama's climate promises - so much hot air

The Australian has an article from the Wall Street Journal which doesn't rate very highly the chances of any of Barack Obama's empty promises on climate change actually making it onto the US statute book:

"Funding has stalled," says Ezra Green, chief executive of Clear Skies Solar. The New York company recently cancelled plans to build a one-megawatt solar plant in California's Mojave Desert, unable to get financing even though a California utility agreed to buy all the output.

"We've cancelled the solar-panel order," Mr Green says.

Hobbled by the financial crisis, power companies across the US are slashing capital budgets and cancelling projects for clean electricity. Financing for new nuclear power plants appears shaky. And some energy companies are even having trouble satisfying their short-term needs for cash.

Forging a new energy future by creating vast amounts of wind, solar and, possibly, nuclear energy is one of Mr Obama's highest priorities. But enacting that policy depends to a large degree on the ability of energy companies and utilities to finance the massive new investments that would be needed. With many of those companies cutting spending, a lot of those investments are being pared back or eliminated.
...
Many utility-sector executives and analysts now expect Congress to water down any climate-change legislation out of fear that it would push up electricity prices for consumers.

Strange, because aren't we always hearing that the transition to a green economy would be utterly painless and wouldn't cost a cent?

Read it here.

American Climate Madness

Denial Alert Number 2: After Obama's ignorant comments on "global warming" earlier in the week, there's more barking nonsense emanating from the US. Once again, some moonbat senator thinks that the green revolution will cost nothing, will have no detrimental effect on an economy already weakened by a global financial crisis, and will be a panacea for the ills of the world:

"The time to start is now," said Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, vowing to step up to Obama's challenge to combat climate change and create millions of "green jobs" in the reeling US economy.

Yep, we have to "do something" and it has to be NOW!! And again, she uses the "D" word to brush off the thousands of scientists who believe that CO2 emissions have little to do with "climate change":

"Instead of denial we will have resolve, instead of procrastination, we will have action. Instead of listening to the voice of the stagnant status quo, our committee hears the voice of our president-elect," Boxer said.

"We are facing a sea change," Boxer said, arguing that Obama's election and the big gains in congressional elections for Democrats would transform the attitude of the United States to global warming, the world's biggest polluter.

That's the "global warming" which, er, stopped nearly a decade ago, right? Madness indeed.

Read it here.

Queensland storms "consistent with climate change"

Tenuous Link to Climate Change Alert: Here we have a typical non-story about the rare, but not unheard of, storms in Queensland this week, which some climatologist has hijacked to try to make a link with "climate change". This story is so full of contradictions I had to read it about five times, and it still doesn't make any sense. It reads like a "good news, bad news" joke. First the good news:

University of Southern Queensland professor of climate and water resources Roger Stone and Queensland weather bureau spokesman Gavin Holcombe said that while November in southeast Queensland had generally been a dry month over the past decade, big storms such as the last two were not unusual.

OK, not unusual. However, here's the bad news:

"But this sort of violent weather activity is consistent with climate change predictions. We're coming off a long drought in southeast Queensland, and that has been an extreme weather event. Now we're getting these storms, and they're also extreme weather events."

We'll gloss over the fact that there is no proven link between warming and more extreme weather... But then after getting us all excited, it's all a damp squib, and there's good news again:

He cautioned against reading too much into the storms, saying that a series of events by themselves did not "prove" climate change one way or the other.

But under what headline does the usually sensible Australian run this story?

Wild weather in Queensland 'a sign of climate change'

This is just one of hundreds of examples of appalling journalism about climate change in the mainstream media - articles written by journos who have no understanding of science and are incapable of separating fact from fiction. No wonder the general public don't have a clue what is really going on.

Read it here.

The Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

As usual, a great read.

Cocaine users: think of the environment

If it was April 1, then this story would be a corker. Unfortunately, however, it isn't April 1, and it's genuine. From the UK's moonbat Guardian (reprinted in The Age):

Francisco Santos Calderón, the vice-president of Colombia, appealed to British users of the class A drug [cocaine] to consider the impact on the environment. He said that while the green agenda would not persuade addicts to give up, the middle-class social user who drove a hybrid car and was concerned about the environment might not take the drug if they knew its impact.
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Santos said many middle-class Britons who used cocaine were unaware of its environmental impact. "For somebody who drives a hybrid, who recycles, who is worried about global warming - to tell him that that night of partying will destroy 4m square of rainforest might lead him to make another decision."

Only the liberal coke-snorting intelligentsia that read The Grauniad and The Age would be more influenced by the effect cocaine use has on the environment than by more traditional reasons to avoid it, such as, you know, it's illegal...

Read the Guardian article here. (Thanks to Tom Nelson)

Asia-Pacific: Climate change momentum fading

As well it might, given the economic situation, and the fact that "global warming" hasn't happened for nearly a decade and people are beginning to smell a large Gore-shaped rat. A recent survey of Asia-Pacific government leaders shows that "global warming" doesn't even appear on the list of top priorities this year.

"We've been swamped by bad economic news and you don't have to look at our survey results alone to see that the interest and focus on climate change has dissipated somewhat," said Yuen Pau Woo, co-author of the report.

"You see the same shift in focus in the public away from climate change questions to questions of economic survival and growth," said Woo, president of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

Yet again, this is simply a statement of the only too obvious.

Read it here.

Andrew Bolt skewers the Treasury's ETS modelling

On the one hand, Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner says we can only rely on financial modelling for 6 - 12 months, yet on the other, when it relates to climate change and his precious ETS, Kevin Rudd is happy to rely on such modelling for nearly 50 years. As Andrew Bolt comments:

No wonder smarter economists are alarmed:

THE global financial crisis showed how foolish the Rudd Government would be to base its climate change response on economic forecasts for the coming century, academic and Reserve Bank board director Warwick McKibbin said yesterday....

While partly involved in the modelling, Professor McKibbin said he was not responsible for the scenarios and believed it was “stretching the imagination” to believe you could forecast 100 years in advance and use that process to determine targets....

Professor McKibbin said the Kyoto experience showed how even most environmentally-friendly countries, such as New Zealand and Canada, could commit to rigid, long-term targets only to find themselves disadvantaged when their economies or external conditions changed. He declared there would never be a uniform global carbon scheme and urged the Rudd Government to take the time necessary to develop a workable national scheme.

Read it here.

Obama - clueless on climate

Denial Alert: Obama is demonstrating himself to be as clueless on climate as we would expect, using the "D" word in a video message to a climate change conference.

"And once I take office, you can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations, and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change.

"Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high. The consequences, too serious."

And Tom Nelson has picked up some outright lies from the Obaminator in the same address:

"The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We’ve seen record drought, spreading famine, and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season."

Obama has clearly swallowed whole the alarmism and bad science of Gore and the IPCC. Fortunately, however, there is no guarantee that Congress will pass any legislation on the subject.

Climate change is a paper tiger, and a gift for guys like Obama: it allows them to appear decisive and firm by talking tough and "doing something" about an issue that isn't really an issue at all, and diverts attention from the far more real and difficult problems they face, which they don't have the first idea how to deal with.

Read it here.

Idiotic Comment(s) of the Day: Merrick Watts

This, according to some SMH journo, is news, apparently. Every week the Moonbat Herald wheels in some D-list celeb to prattle on about how "green" they are. Today, it's Merrick Watts, host of a breakfast show on Nova FM. He admits to having been trained (along with is conjoined twin, Tim "Rosso" Ross, who laughably has an abbreviated name longer than his actual name...) by the Gore-meister himself as part of his despicable Climate Project. Merrick oddly appears to be proud of this fact.

Q You are renowned for being a clown. Is there anything you don't find funny when it comes to the state of the planet?

A Yes. Inaction. Particularly by people who should know better: politicians and the heads of big businesses. Also, there are still people who attempt to argue climate change hasn't begun.

Er, we don't argue the climate doesn't change, because it does, and has done for millions of years without any help from us, but we do argue very strongly about the cause. He admits to driving a V8 car, but then ties himself in knots trying to explain it away:

I am aware that my car is a V8 but it doesn't do as many kilometres as the average vehicle and runs on the cleanest fuel available, so is well below the national carbon output average. The next car I purchase will be more efficient. I am interested in seeing developments using hydrogen.

I believe you, mate, thousands wouldn't.

Read it here (if you can bear it)

Act on climate in haste - repent (in $$$) at leisure

Stating the Obvious Alert: That's the conclusion of Access Economics, who have said that the cost of taking fast action to "tackle climate change" would be up to 45% higher than taking a slower, more considered approach. This is in stark contrast to the modelling carried out by our own Treasury, which gave Krudd & Co the figures they all wanted to hear and said that it would make virtually no difference. No surprise there, given the Treasury has lost all credibility.

All this of course assumes:

• that reducing emissions in Australia will actually make any difference to atmospheric CO2 levels which, unless the rest of the world (including China, India, the US and the EU) participates as well, it emphatically won't; and
• that reducing atmospheric CO2 levels will actually have any effect on climate, which is still far from certain despite what Archbishop Gore and the High Church of the IPCC say.

Read it here.

ABC - a tale of two stories

The ABC is on fire today, with two diametrically opposed stories appearing within the space of a few minutes. I wonder if these ABC journos ever actually speak to each other?

Story One:

Canberra scientists say they have proven that the world's climate is changing faster than ever before.

And Story Two:

Climate change may not be as severe as predicted, suggests an international study that shows current modeling of carbon dioxide emissions from soils are overestimated by as much as 20%.

But hang on, the science is settled, right? The debate's over, isn't it?

Read them here, and here.

ABC journos can't be bothered to write yet another climate change story

Some words might help...

Read it here (although they'll correct it soon no doubt...!)

"Global warming" not happening at Sydney beach

Despite all the hysteria, an anecdotal report of sea temperatures at Balmoral Beach, Sydney, shows no sign of an increase, says the Sydney Morning Herald:

COME in, swimmer, the water's wonderful. So says Stephen Wilson, and he should know.

Every day, just after dawn, he wades into the sea off Balmoral beach, takes its temperature and records it in a square of sand, at the foot of the fifth column of the esplanade wall to the left of the Raglan Street steps.

Yesterday's temperature: 21.2 degrees. "Just right for the early morning regulars," says Mr Wilson. "They prefer it between, say, 18 and 21. Anything lower is a bit coolish; anything above, the water feels sort of soupy."
...
A typical summer high would be 24 degrees. The Balmoral figures do not support global warming theories. "In the last few years, the figures seem to be generally lower," says Mr Wilson.

Ah yes, but James Hansen hasn't had a chance to massage the figures yet...

Read it here.

Russia the latest country to throw spanner in the works of AGW

The dream of a global agreement in Copenhagen in 2009 is disappearing faster than a cloud of CO2 in a (global-warming-induced) hurricane. China and India unlikely to play ball, the EU is in disarray about its emissions policies, and now Russia is displaying encouraging scepticism of the whole AGW alarmist agenda by putting emissions reductions on the back burner.

"The Russians are now showing a dangerous indifference to the whole issue of climate change because they have this perception they might actually benefit from climate change," says former British government adviser on environment policy Nick Mabey, who heads E3G, a London-based environmental lobby group and think tank.
...
"Unfortunately, it is a common view within the Russian Government that the whole issue of climate change is important but not urgent," says Alexey Kokorin, the Moscow-based climate change analyst for international conservation group WWF.

"Instead of seeing threats and dangers, the most important government people here think an open Arctic Ocean will actually be a good thing."

The Australian then adds its own bit of scaremongering for good measure:

The North Pole may soon be covered in blue waves in summer for the first time in human history. The entire Arctic Ocean has not been free of ice in summer for more than a million years, but analysts believe this could happen again sometime between 2013 and 2040.

Actually, it is likely that the North Pole was ice-free six or seven thousand years ago, without any help from evil capitalist emissions, and sea ice is recovering 30% faster than this time last year. But, as usual, why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

Read it here.

Maldives: A tale of two stories

From The Age today:

Headline: Maldives sends mayday signal as seas rise

Climate change will affect the Maldives more than most places. Sea levels in the area have risen by about 20 centimetres in the past century and the UN estimates they will rise 58 centimetres more by 2100.

From The Australian on Wednesday 12 November 2008:

Our research data does not lend support to any such flooding scenario [for the Maldives], however. On the contrary, we find no signs of any ongoing sea-level rise. Our results comes from visits to numerous islands ... and includes coring, levelling, sampling and carbon dating.

Present sea level was reached about 4500BC. In the past 4000 years, sea level oscillated around the present. In the past decade, there are no signs of any rise in sea level. Hence, we are able to free the islands from the condemnation to become flooded in the 21st century.

Which do you believe?

Thousands protest against something that isn't happening

The greenie hoards were out in force in Sydney today, with fifteen thousand gathering in Martin Place to protest against global warming. Fifteen thousand sounds quite a lot, but if this really is the most urgent crisis in the history of mankind, out of a city with a population of over 4 million it is an abysmal turnout (less than half of one percent). As usual, The Age delights in the mother-earthiness of the whole event:

Despite grey skies, a colourful crowd showed up in Martin Place Saturday to support the Nature Conservation Council of NSW's fourth Walk Against Warming march.

Some were dressed as polar bears. Others wore windmills on their backs. Others carried placards of penguins with messages that read: "Don't build your home on my home", and "Some like it hot, penguins not".

Oops! Somebody forgot to tell them that global warming stopped in 2001... oh well, with a bit of luck they will all have copped a good soaking from a passing shower ...

Read it here.

CSIRO moonbats screen alarmist climate film

Abandoning all sense of impartiality, the idiots at CSIRO are hosting the premiere of a film entitled Telling the Truth, on which I commented when Cate Blanchett attended an earlier premiere (see here).

Just for the record, let's remind ourselves that this is a film about a number of individuals who have been "personally trained" by Al Gore's Climate Project. As I said in my earlier post:

The Climate Project is a despicable propaganda machine whose sole purpose is to spread the outright lies Gore tells in AIT. Let's not forget, Al Gore won't debate the issues in that film with anyone. Why not? Answers on a postcard.

Today, in the Canberra Times, it appears that CSIRO has taken complete leave of its senses by hosting the "green carpet" premiere of this propaganda film at its Discovery Centre, Black Mountain, a centre supposedly to educate and inform the public, in particular young people, about Australian science and its history.

The majority of An Inconvenient Truth has been shown to be nothing more than scaremongering with no basis in science, and yet CSIRO, our national science research organisation, is happy to show, and associate itself with, a film about the Climate Project, which shamelessly plugs An Inconvenient Truth and the lies and misrepresentations it contains.

Read it here.

AGW alarmism slithers into sport

Around every corner you'll find an AGW alarmist. Unfortunately, it is now politically incorrect not to associate oneself with the "greenie" agenda or commit to "saving the planet", no matter how empty-headed such a commitment is. This PC attitude is now pervading the sports field, as the Manly Sea Eagles NRL team announces how proud it is to be sponsored by a green company, Quantum Energy Technologies:

The Sea Eagles said they were proud to be the first NRL team to be sponsored by a "green" company as Quantum specialises in renewable hot water and pool heating systems.

"At a time of much financial gloom it is refreshing that the code and the Sea Eagles in particular can clinch such a significant financial partner," said Manly chief executive Grant Mayer.
...
"It is a tremendous fit for the club and also makes a statement that we take the issue of climate change seriously".

Read it here.

Brown cloud "accelerates global warming" (but also slows it down)

Here's an article that goes to show the lengths that alarmist UN will go to in order to keep the AGW bandwagon rolling, as reported in The Australian:

A THICK brown cloud of soot, particles and chemicals stretching from the Persian Gulf to Asia threatens the world's health and food supplies, the UN said yesterday, describing it as the newest threat from global warming.

These "brown clouds," caused by the burning of fossil fuels, wood and plants, play a significant role in exacerbating the effects of greenhouse gases in warming up the Earth's atmosphere, the report said.

"Imagine for a moment a 3km-thick band of soot, particles, a cocktail of chemicals that stretches from the Arabic Peninsula to Asia," said Achim Steiner, UN undersecretary general and executive director of the UN program.

We'll skate over the fact that "global warming" stopped in 2001... But these brown clouds are very cunning, because not only do they make global warming worse, they also slow it down - miraculously both at the same time. And there was me thinking it was just the natural climate cycles demonstrating once and for all that anthropogenic CO2 has little effect on global temperature. Silly me. Of course, global warming is still rampaging through the planet, it's just that its effects are being hidden by the brown clouds.

The phenomenon complicates the climate change scenario globally because the brown clouds also help cool the Earth's surface and "masks" the impact of global warming by an average of 40 per cent, the study said.

The ever impartial and totally un-political UN is now clutching at straws to explain why the planet simply won't co-operate and warm up like an oven as the projections of the IPCC's hopelessly incomplete and simplistic climate models say it should.

All of which leads to the inevitable conclusion, namely that we should "do something, quick":

"All of this points to an even greater and urgent need to look at emissions across the planet because this is where the stories are linked in terms of greenhouse emissions and particle emissions and the impact that they're having on our global climate."

If the science of global warming is so settled, as we are continually told, why does this kind of story come as such a surprise to everybody? Put bluntly, it simply rams home the point that the science is far from settled, the debate ain't over, and in fact the climate is even less understood than we suspected. Even the UN, with its band of alarmist scientists, doesn't really have a clue what is going on in the atmosphere.

Read it here.

Ban Ki-Moonbat - "Green is good"

More from the UN chief who thinks we should all return to the Dark Ages in order to "tackle climate change", in this article gleefully printed in the Herald, and co-authored by the Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Prime Minister of Denmark.

Tusk's inclusion is the most bizarre, as he is vehemently against the whole emissions trading nonsense being proposed in the EU (see here) - maybe he just checked the spelling.

We do not need to await the arrival of new technologies, nor need we worry excessively about the costs of taking action. Studies show that the United States could cut carbon emissions significantly at low or near-zero cost, using existing know-how. For evidence, consider how Denmark has invested heavily in green growth. Since 1980, GDP increased 78 per cent with only minimal increases in energy consumption. For businesses, such savings translate into profits. Today, for example, European companies in the green tech sector enjoy substantial "first mover" advantages, accounting for one-third of the world's burgeoning market in environmental technologies.

With the right policies and financial incentives - within a global framework - we can steer economic growth in a low-carbon direction. With the right policies and the right incentives, we can be sure that developed and developing countries alike contribute to the cause of fighting global warming, each in their own way and without compromising every nation's right to development and the economic well-being of its citizens.

"Low or near zero cost" to cut emissions in the US? "Fighting global warming" (which stopped in 2001)? Who are they kidding?

Read it and weep.

The Age celebrates enviro-hippie Oxfam film

This is news? Apparently, if you're the environment editor of The Age. The article features yet another "climate change" doco, spruiked by Oxfam, Sisters of the Planet, which features Helen Henry:

Her story started after the 32-year-old Hamilton mother wrote of her fear that her children may never enjoy the natural beauty of their region due to climate change. Her letter made the front page of the Hamilton Spectator, imploring anyone who was interested to come to a meeting. "I didn't expect any more than one or two people, so when 30 to 40 turned up, from all walks of life, it restored my faith in humanity," Ms Henry said.
...
After seeing Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, Ms Henry became a follower of the former US vice-president, hosting seminars to audiences that included children, councillors and farmers.

There's one born every minute.

Read it here.

Cracks appear in Rudd's ETS plans

The Australian reports that the chorus of dissenting voices is growing stronger, and now includes two State premiers:

The premiers of South Australia and Tasmania have written to the Prime Minister raising specific concerns about the design of the scheme, its impact on major industries and expressing fears that the ETS will spark major losses of jobs and revenue.

Queensland, Victoria and the West Australian Liberal Government have raised concerns about the effects on emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries.

The concerns come as one of the world's largest petroleum companies warned that a $7billion gas project could literally be floated out of Australian waters to avoid the impact of the Government's ETS.

But Penny Wong is undeterred.

Senator Wong attempted to hose down concerns about Nyrstar and other trade-exposed companies, saying consultation on the scheme was still continuing.

"The Government has considered and will continue to consider the views put to us by industry and by state governments," Senator Wong said. She has also been pressured from those within her party to change the ETS compensation formula.

She'll listen patiently, and then carry on exactly as before.

Read it here.

The Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

As always, a great read.

Rudd's ETS will seriously harm economy

The only people that don't seem to recognise this are Krudd & Co, the Treasury, Ross Garnaut, and all their various associated hangers-on. Everyone else realises that it's economic suicide wrapped up in nice green eco-friendly bio-degradable paper. It hasn't even come into force yet, but its effects are already becoming apparent:

The chief executive officer of Nyrstar smelter operations, Greg McMillan, says more than 3,000 jobs are at stake if the Federal Government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme goes ahead.

He says the scheme will force the closure of smelters in Port Pirie and Hobart by wiping out their profits.

Mr McMillan says the scheme is futile if other countries such as China and India pick up Nyrstar's business.

"There's a cloud hanging over the future of those businesses and that's very difficult because combine those businesses [and] they export $2 billion a year in exports," he said.

"They're the best part of 3,250 jobs and the best part of $200 million worth of wages."

And this is just one company. Message to Kevin Rudd: Hello? Testing, testing?

Read it here.

UPDATE: The Tasmanian premier David Bartlett is the first Labor politician to come out openly against Krudd & Co's ETS. The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Mr Bartlett said he would fight to keep the Hobart smelter open.

"I think at the moment, in the Green Paper, (Climate Change Minister) Penny Wong and (Prime Minister) Kevin Rudd have got it wrong," Mr Bartlett told the Tasmanian parliament.

"They have it wrong because they are penalising companies such as Nyrstar."

And Opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt also said the ETS needed overhauling:

"The government's plan will drive up unemployment and it will also drive up global emissions by sending Australian jobs overseas," he said.

Hopefully Mr Bartlett won't be the first Labor politician to stand up against the nonsense that is the erroneously named "Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme".

Read it here.

"Global warming" will avert next Ice Age

Random scientist, desperate for publicity, releases ridiculous story about how man-made CO2 emissions will prevent the next Ice Age, and AFP is dumb enough to publish it (The Australian was also dumb enough to publish it, however, which is not a good sign for the only vaguely non-alarmist rag in Australia). Guess what, it's based on a computer model - you know, just like the IPCC models that accurately failed to predict the last 10 years of cooling:

According to the model, published in the British journal Nature by Crowley and physicist William Hyde of Toronto University, Canada, the next “bifurcation” would normally be due between 10,000 and 100,000 years from now.

The chill would induce a long, stable period of glaciation in the mid-latitudes, smothering Europe, Asia and North America to about 45-50 degrees latitude with a thick sheet of ice.

However, there is now so much CO2 in the air, as a result of fossil-fuel burning and deforestation, that this adds a heat-trapping greenhouse effect that will offset the cooling impacts of orbital shift, said Crowley.

And the moonbats at AFP conclude:

Last year, the UN's Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said greenhouse-gas emissions were already inflicting visible changes to the climate system, especially on ice and snow.

Left unchecked, climate change could inflict widespread drought and flooding by the end of the century, translating into hunger, homelessness and other stresses for millions of people.

I guess "other stresses" means having to read top-quality BS like this all day.

And you too can read it here.

The ABC's idea of balanced debate on climate change ...

... is to get warming loony Ross Garnaut, Professor David "only way to cool the earth is to be hit by a freaking great asteroid which destroys all of civilisation" Karoly, and oh-so-impartial Tony Jones in the Lateline studio. Laughable, if it weren't so tragic.

Read Andrew Bolt's take on it here, and the transcript here.

Bob Carter - Futility of Climate Control

Being a "sceptic" can be hard work sometimes - reporting scaremongering article after scaremongering article, discussing bad science after more bad science, suffering the rantings of hysterical greens after the rantings of more hysterical greens, considering the acts of incompetent governments after the acts of more incompetent governments.

So it's a bit of a relief to be able to point you to an article by Bob Carter in Quadrant Magazine that restores one's sanity a bit.

Enjoy.

International Energy Authority goes a-scaremongering

It seems that many sensible organisations have been infected with the scaremonger virus. The latest is the IEA, which is forecasting 6 degree temperature rises by 2100, reports The Australian, doubtless without a shred of credible evidence to support it (other than some "garbage in, garbage out" model, of course).

In its 2008 World Energy Outlook, the IEA said that if present trends continued, greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas "would be driven up inexorably", putting the world on track for a doubling in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by the end of the century.

And any story like this gives the enviro-hippies the opportunity to bang on about the new utopian economy:

Environmental campaigners, such as Robin Webster, of Friends of the Earth, welcomed the IEA's call for an "energy revolution" to address climate change, claiming that it could provide economic benefits through the creation of new "green-collar" jobs.

Read it here.

Ian Plimer does battle with ABC journo ...

... who starts the interview by calling Plimer a "heretic" - an open goal on her part, as it allows Plimer to brand climate change a religion in the first sentence! One-nil.

Read the transcript here (where you can also watch the video).

(via Jennifer Marohasy)

The Maldives - saved from the evil clutches of the IPCC

In a rare glimmer of climate sense, The Australian reports that the imminent flooding of the Maldives, predicted by (who else?) the IPCC, is far from certain and has nothing to do with "climate change" (via Tom Nelson).

It quotes the ABC (Alarmist Broadcasting Corporation), which dutifully parrots the usual IPCC line:

MOHAMED Nasheed (the new Maldives President) has named battling the effects of rising sea levels as a key priority. He's hatched an audacious plan to buy his people a new homeland and one of the destinations he's considering is Australia.

But a welcome dose of reality comes in the form of Nils-Axel Morner, former head of the department of paleogeophysics and geodynamics at Stockholm University:

THE Maldives have a unique position in sea-level research. In the past decade they have attracted special attention because, in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenario, the Maldives would be condemned to become flooded in the next 50 to 100 years.

Our research data does not lend support to any such flooding scenario, however. On the contrary, we find no signs of any ongoing sea-level rise. Our results comes from visits to numerous islands ... and includes coring, levelling, sampling and carbon dating.

Present sea level was reached about 4500BC. In the past 4000 years, sea level oscillated around the present. In the past decade, there are no signs of any rise in sea level. Hence, we are able to free the islands from the condemnation to become flooded in the 21st century.

Also, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation suggest that coral mining removes physical barriers to flooding and leaves the islands prone to increased wave action, swells, storm surges and erosion. And this is from the UN!

Sadly, the ABC, along with all the major mainstream media, can't be bothered to report the mundane reality (i.e. "climate change" not to blame), and have to peddle alarmist propaganda instead.

Read it here.

CSIRO is away with the fairies

No-one will take the CSIRO seriously as long as they continue to spout alarmist claptrap like this, reported in the Herald Sun.

THE world may be on track to face economic and ecological collapses by the middle of the century, according to CSIRO research.

The 1972 bestselling scientific report The Limits to Growth warned of possible doomsday scenarios created by unchecked use of resources.

A study by CSIRO physicist Dr Graham Turner found data projections made in The Limits to Growth were correct.
...
"There is still time to avert things, but we may have to consider some environmental degradation and impacts on the economy might still occur," he said.

It is deeply embarrassing that our national scientific research organisation, which should represent the pinnacle of Australian scientific thinking, chooses to act like a bunch of unwashed enviro-hippies. Read it here.

The Age quotes Einstein in two greenie articles

"The devil can cite scripture for his purpose" - Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice.

The Age, in a typically nauseating green diatribe, ends its article with:

As Albert Einstein said: "No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it. We must learn to see the world anew."

As if that justifies the rubbish that has gone before. And it isn't the first time either. In a similar climate alarmist article only last week entitled "We're never going to survive unless we get a little bit crazy" (see here), Catherine Deveny again quotes Einstein:

According to Albert Einstein, imagination is more important than knowledge.

The fact is that Einstein, if he were alive today, would be horrified by the politicisation of science that has taken place in the field of climate research. He knew well that if the experimental evidence did not fit with the predictions of a theory, then the theory was flawed. This does not seem to apply to climate research, where no matter what contradictory evidence is put forward against the theory of anthropogenic global warming, the alarmists manage to somehow keep it afloat, by hook or by crook.

Climate alarmists should not even be mentioned in the same breath as a truly great scientist such as Einstein, let alone use his quotes to support their tawdry agenda.

Read it here.

Last word on GISS

The most alarming thing about today's GISS debacle is not that the data was wrong, but that no one at GISS thought to question what was clearly a duff anomaly (0.78). I can only imagine the glee with which Hansen greeted the draft figures when they came across his desk, rubbing his hands together and thinking to himself, "This'll shut the flat-earthers up for a while."

But the likely truth is that because the anomaly fitted GISS's pre-conceived ideas of runaway global warming so well, nobody thought to double-check the source data. The fact that this data was published with such an obvious error does little for the reputation of GISS (and NASA) - either way, they lose: if there was no quality control on on the published data, then that's unacceptable, and alternatively, if there was quality control which failed to spot an obvious flaw, then that's unacceptable too.

I await with interest the press release that re-issues the corrected data.

See my full post on the sorry tale here.

October anomalies - GISS goes off piste

...but UAH is steady (thanks to Climate Skeptic). GISS is surface stations, UAH is satellite-based. The media will pick up on GISS (which is run by the second High Priest of the Church of Global Warming, James Hansen) and we will be overrun with stories about the hottest October on record, (despite the fact that they will be fighting for space with stories about records for cold being broken all over the globe...).

Let's see how long it takes for the first "hottest October" story to hit the Aussie press!

UPDATE: Comments on Anthony Watts' article indicate that certain temperatures in Russia that contribute to the GISS anomaly figure have been copied over from September! There's quality control for you! Firstly, here is the GISS temperature anomaly map, showing the extraordinary hotspot over central and north eastern Russia:

And here's the comment, from Patrick Kiser:

Quite simply, there is an input error.

In completing random check of the cities in warm area, every city with October 2008 data has identical data for both October and September:

Moskva 10.9 both months
Kraznojarsk 8.6 both months
Turuhansk 8.1 both months
Tarko-Sale 6.9 both months
Bor 8.1 both months

These were just the first five I’ve checked. I did also look at data in the US (St. Louis) and France (Dijon), and these appear to be actual temperatures.

Given that they are using September temperature readings for October, it is no surprise that they are getting such a large positive anomaly. I would be interested in finding out if there is an efficient way to notify NASA of these errors, so that they can correct their number.

I have personally just checked a few more of the GISS text files, and as well as those listed above, I found within a few minutes the following stations:

• Enisejsk
  
• Kolpasevo
  
• Suntar
  
• Viljujsk
  
• Minusinsk
  
• Tura
  
• Verhojansk
  
• Aldan
  
• Olenek
  
• Vitim
  
• Bomnak
  
• Njaksimvol
  
• Salehard
  
• Nar'jan-mar
  
• Hanty-Mansijs
  
• Tobol'sk, and
  
• Arhangel'sk

all with October temperature data identical to the September data. This will clearly have a significant impact on the anomalies, since in previous years temperatures from these stations have varied by many degrees between these months (e.g. a 9.3°C difference from September to October at Enisejsk in 2007). If you want to see the data first hand, go here, and look up any of the stations listed above.

In short, GISS has become a joke...

My last word on GISS (for the time being) here.

The Age - the future's green

A typical Age story - throw in some cheap climate alarmism, and then follow it up with how wonderful a new green economy would be, all of it without any link to reality. So, firstly the alarmism:

The evidence is compelling. Polar ice cores show carbon [dioxide? - Ed] in the atmosphere is at an 800,000-year high. Researchers calculate that within as little as 15-20 years we may reach a crucial tipping point when carbon in the atmosphere rises above 450 parts per million.

Beyond that point, global warming may become entirely self-sustaining and increasingly rapid. Time may well be running short.

Quick - run for the hills. And then follow the misty-eyed descriptions of the new green utopia:

Many are talking about launching stimulus packages to lessen the effect of the downturn. If they do so, they should view this as an historic opportunity to climate-proof their economies by focusing spending on green infrastructure and technologies. They may, for instance, boost energy security by improving renewables and clean-coal technology. In our view, energy efficiency has clear attractions to economies heading into recession. Infrastructure spending should be directed to climate- sensitive areas such as power grids, water, buildings and transport.

Read it here.

Super storms blamed on climate change

Tenuous Link to Climate Change Alert: Despite the association between "global warming" and increased storm activity being pretty well discredited, the mainstream media still drag it up whenever required to add a bit of spice to otherwise tedious stories. The basic premise of this one is as dull as dishwater:

"Australian East Coast storms are broadly cyclical over the past 200 years, and there's little to suggest it changing in the near future,"

which, let's be honest, wouldn't rate even a 2 cm column on page 94 of the local rag, just under the 5-a-side results. However, a journo at AAP has managed to spice it up by linking it to "climate change", and getting in some besuited "expert" to make some apocalyptic predictions (which, as an added bonus, will probably deliver some Government funds into his research department):

"It's going to cut the coast further inland and it will be more severe than past stormy periods because of the underlying climate change and subsequent sea rises."
...
"Improving emergency planning is important because when the event hits, we'll have very little warning and unless we're set up for it, it'll be a disaster much like Katrina was (in the US)," Dr [Peter] Helman [of the Griffith Centre for Coastal Management] said.
...
Parts of the Gold Coast had lost several metres, but a relative quiet on the erosion front over the past 30 years had prompted both offices [of NSW's beach protection agencies] to be disbanded, he said.

You'd think that if they knew storm activity on the East Coast was cyclical, they may have worked out it would eventually increase again, so maybe it was a dumb idea to close the offices? Apparently not. 0/10. Must try harder.

Read it here.

TV boss says movie companies should ignore copyright in films that deal with "climate change"

In order to indoctrinate you better, of course. Alarmist films about climate change are not getting enough of a showing around the world because their makers are too concerned about the issue of licensing, and in particular copyright. So a TV boss has now said that such companies should not enforce their intellectual property rights (which represent, ultimately, their source of revenue) and allow such films free distribution throughout the world. Nalaka Gunawardene, director of TVE Asia Pacific, gives his vision of a rights-free utopia for climate films:

One example is the 2006 documentary Climate in Crisis, co-produced by Japan's public broadcaster NHK, along with The Science Channel and ALTOMEDIA/France 5.

The film draws heavily on the Earth Simulator - one of the world's most powerful supercomputers, used to predict climate patterns over the next century.

The results are both mind-boggling and alarming. In the coming decades, atmospheric temperatures may rise by as much as 4.2C. This could lead to more frequent and intense hurricanes, spreading deserts and significant loss of the Amazon rainforest. The documentary discusses whether and how humankind can avoid these impacts, drawing on rigorous scientific data.

Yet this hugely important film has not been widely seen, talked about or distributed in Asia - because of copyright restrictions. Only the highest bidders are allowed to acquire it for hefty licence fees.

The climate crisis challenges everyone to adopt extraordinary measures. Broadcasters and film-makers need to balance their financial interests with planetary survival.

What use is intellectual property on a dead planet?

No alarmism there, clearly.

Read it here.

Brisbane Courier Mail awarded moonbat status

From an editorial in the Courier Mail today:

GLOBAL warming is not a crisis that respects national or state borders. What harm each of Earth's inhabitants does to the atmosphere affects every other individual on the planet.

Happily, the reverse is also true: every effort, no matter how small, to reduce carbon emissions will help out the entire globe.

Our state, with less than 20 per cent of the Australian population, creates almost 30 per cent of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions.

Queenslanders, therefore, bear a special responsibility to think and act smarter about power use in the home.

That is why The Courier-Mail is proud to get behind the One Degree program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Our children's future depends on it.

Just to clarify, Australia produces 1.5% of global emissions. Queensland's contribution is therefore about 0.3%. Reduce it all the way to zero and it will make not a bit of difference to "global warming" (which, by the way, seems not to be playing ball and stopped nearly a decade ago). Yawn.

Read it here.

Pachauri - "that" graph used in the UNSW lecture

Here is a screen grab from the YouTube video of Rajendra Pachauri's address to the University of New South Wales on 28th October 2008, and which has caused such a furore following an article in The Sydney Morning Herald (see here).

It is difficult to read the horizontal scale, but it appears that each tick is 20 years, commencing in 1860, with the last tick being "2000".



What he says is as follows (transcribed from YouTube):

"I'll just give you this diagram which gives you data and observations in global average surface temperature going back to the beginning of industrialisation, and you notice that there are ups and downs in this set of observations, and that's essentially because we are dealing with a number of natural factors that bring about changes in the climate. Climate has changed over the ages and there are a whole range of natural factors, solar activity, volcanic activity and so on that can bring about changes in climate.

But what you also would observe from this diagram is that in recent decades this graph has become much steeper and therefore if you draw a line through the last 100 years of observations, you will get something like this as a fit, which gives you a total increase in 100 years of 0.74 degrees Celsius. This is the increase that you might say took place in the twentieth century. However, if you look at the last 50 years, then you get a line which is much steeper, which is almost twice as steep as the total 100 year period. So it will be appropriate to conclude that we are now at a stage where warming is taking place much faster, and if we want further evidence of this we know that eleven of the last twelve years rank among the twelve warmest years since instrumental records of global surface temperature have been maintained.

So I'd like to emphasise the fact that we are at a stage where warming is taking place at a much faster rate and clearly if we don't bring about some changes we would have much faster changes in the future..."

The climatologists amongst you will be able to deduce which surface temperature record this is (and, being surface temperature, is encumbered with all the usual baggage concerning Urban Heat Island effects). Whatever it is, Dr Pachauri has been incredibly selective with his data, and the way in which it has been presented. We are in 2008, but the graph ends in 2000 - why? Even so, there appears to be no evidence of the El Niño spike of 1998, unless the whole graph has been helpfully transposed horizontally by a couple of years, so that the El Niño peak is where the graph ends.

By ending the graph in 2000, he has conveniently and disingenuously ignored the fact that global temperatures have been steady or falling since at least 2000.

Also, he wheels out the old chestnut about "eleven of the last twelve years being amongst the twelve warmest years since instrumental records began" which, as any fule kno, is almost meaningless, since it ignores recent warmings, such as the Medieval Warm Period, which occurred prior to the instrumental records (which have only been in existence for a period equivalent to the blink of an eye), and the fact that temperatures are currently recovering from the Little Ice Age. But since the IPCC don't even acknowledge the possible existence of the MWP or the LIA (think hockey sticks), it's not particularly surprising.

The overwhelming impression that would have been gained by his audience is that temperatures are rising faster than ever, which is very far from the truth, and such a misrepresentation must call into question the integrity of the IPCC and Dr Pachauri himself.

It makes his award of an honorary doctorate of Science all the more inappropriate.

The video can be watched here, and the section above is at around 17 - 18 minutes.

Al Gore (remember him?) desperate to get in the news

Gore tries desperately to bask in some of the reflected glory of Obama's presidential victory, by somehow claiming "the internet" could help save the planet, much as it helped elect Obama (no, I don't get it either). Anyway, the Sydney Morning Herald, willing as ever to print a non-story such as this, reports:

The one-time presidential contender turned environmental champion told Web 2.0 Summit goers in San Francisco Friday that technology has provided tools to save the planet while creating jobs and stimulating the crippled economy.

"The young people who have been inspired by Barack Obama's campaign and the movement that powered Barack Obama's campaign want a purpose," Gore said.

I guess that purpose would be transferring large sums of money to Gore's pointless climate corporations?

"One of the reasons we were all thrilled Tuesday night is it was pretty obvious this was a collectively intelligent decision."

The Internet's critical role in Democrat Obama's victory in the presidential race against Republican John McCain was a "great blow for victory" in addressing a "democracy crisis" stifling action against climate change, Gore said.

The only person stifling anything is Gore himself, who refuses to debate with anyone who might ask a difficult question about climate change.

Read it here.

"Christian duty" to tackle climate change

Forget about science, economics, or even morality (see here). Now we have God to answer to if we don't "tackle climate change". This is according to an American evangelical leader, Reverend Richard Cizik, whom our own deluded Prime Minister has agreed to meet, in an amazing display of naivety. As the Sydney Morning Herald reports:

The Reverend Richard Cizik arrived in Australia yesterday on a seven-day tour to spread God's word about saving the planet.

Mr Cizik said there was a strong biblical mandate for humans "to watch over and care for" earth's bounty and creatures. " Australia and the United States have been major blockers to action on climate change and our new governments have a special responsibility in creating a new kind of leadership," he said.

Note the absence of criticism of China and India, of course... We knew that AGW alarmists would scrape the barrel for excuses to keep their slowly sinking agenda afloat, but enlisting the help of the bible shows real desperation. Kevin Rudd (and Malcolm Turnbull) should treat this nonsense with the contempt it deserves.

Read it here.

When IPCC head has to lie about global temperatures, you know there's something seriously wrong

Last month, when the IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri was in Sydney for the Metropolis Conference, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of science by the moonbats at the University of NSW, and he gave a presentation which included a graph showing temperatures climbing sharply in the last decade. Michael Duffy, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, was understandably shocked by this:

As this was shown on the screen, Pachauri told his large audience: "We're at a stage where warming is taking place at a much faster rate [than before]".

Now, this is completely wrong. For most of the past seven years, those temperatures have actually been on a plateau. For the past year, there's been a sharp cooling. These are facts, not opinion: the major sources of these figures, such as the Hadley Centre in Britain, agree on what has happened, and you can check for yourself by going to their websites. Sure, interpretations of the significance of this halt in global warming vary greatly, but the facts are clear.

So it's disturbing that Rajendra Pachauri's presentation was so erroneous, and would have misled everyone in the audience unaware of the real situation. This was particularly so because he was giving the talk on the occasion of receiving an honorary science degree from the university.

Later that night, on ABC TV's Lateline program, Pachauri claimed that those who disagree with his own views on global warming are "flat-earthers" who deny "the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence". But what evidence could be more important than the temperature record, which Pachauri himself had fudged only a few hours earlier?

Quoting Richard Lindzen, he also correctly identifies the reasons for why alarmism is so popular in science.

Central to this is the importance of government funding to science. Much of that funding since World War II has occurred because scientists build up public fears (examples include fear of the USSR's superiority in weapons or space travel, of health problems, of environmental degradation) and offer themselves as the solution to those fears.

And he concludes:

Rajenda Pachauri's recent Sydney lecture suggests that in this relatively new field, inconvenient truths to the contrary are not welcome.

Personally, I find it incredible that anybody still believes a word the IPCC says. We always knew that it was a politically-motivated body whose sole aim was to find evidence to back up a conclusion already reached. Instead of acting like proper scientific investigators and saying, "well, the fact is that global temperatures are pretty steady or even declining, so let's use this opportunity to find out why so that we can better understand the mechanics of the climate," they lie and mislead in order to keep their preconceived ideas afloat.

The IPCC has abandoned all pretence of impartiality and has become just another in the long line of alarmist organisations desperate to keep the AGW bandwagon rolling in order to achieve political objectives. As Michael Duffy says, shocking.

UPDATE: New post with details of the presentation

Read the SMH article here.