Watch the web for climate change truths
04/05/2008
By Christopher Booker
A notable story of recent months should have been the evidence pouring in from all sides to cast doubts on the idea that the world is inexorably heating up. The proponents of man-made global warming have become so rattled by how the forecasts of their computer models are being contradicted by the data that some are rushing to modify the thesis.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/05/04/do0405.xml

---

Climate facts to warm to

Christopher Pearson | March 22, 2008
CATASTROPHIC predictions of global warming usually conjure with the notion of a tipping point, a point of no return.
Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.

Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"
She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"
Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."

Duffy: "It's not only that it's not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there's any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it's put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary."

Duffy then turned to the question of how the proponents of the greenhouse gas hypothesis deal with data that doesn't support their case. "People like Kevin Rudd and Ross Garnaut are speaking as though the Earth is still warming at an alarming rate, but what is the argument from the other side? What would people associated with the IPCC say to explain the (temperature) dip?"

Marohasy: "Well, the head of the IPCC has suggested natural factors are compensating for the increasing carbon dioxide levels and I guess, to some extent, that's what sceptics have been saying for some time: that, yes, carbon dioxide will give you some warming but there are a whole lot of other factors that may compensate or that may augment the warming from elevated levels of carbon dioxide.

"There's been a lot of talk about the impact of the sun and that maybe we're going to go through or are entering a period of less intense solar activity and this could be contributing to the current cooling."

Duffy: "Can you tell us about NASA's Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we're now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?"

Marohasy: "That's right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you've got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you're going to get a positive feedback. That's what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite ... (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they're actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you're getting a negative rather than a positive feedback."

Duffy: "The climate is actually, in one way anyway, more robust than was assumed in the climate models?"
Marohasy: "That's right ... These findings actually aren't being disputed by the meteorological community. They're having trouble digesting the findings, they're acknowledging the findings, they're acknowledging that the data from NASA's Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they're about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide."

Duffy: "From what you're saying, it sounds like the implications of this could beconsiderable ..."
Marohasy: "That's right, very much so. The policy implications are enormous. The meteorological community at the moment is really just coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and (climate scientist) Roy Spencer's interpretation of them. His work is published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock at this point."

If Marohasy is anywhere near right about the impending collapse of the global warming paradigm, life will suddenly become a whole lot more interesting.

A great many founts of authority, from the Royal Society to the UN, most heads of government along with countless captains of industry, learned professors, commentators and journalists will be profoundly embarrassed. Let us hope it is a prolonged and chastening experience.

With catastrophe off the agenda, for most people the fog of millennial gloom will lift, at least until attention turns to the prospect of the next ice age. Among the better educated, the sceptical cast of mind that is the basis of empiricism will once again be back in fashion. The delusion that by recycling and catching public transport we can help save the planet will quickly come to be seen for the childish nonsense it was all along.

The poorest Indians and Chinese will be left in peace to work their way towards prosperity, without being badgered about the size of their carbon footprint, a concept that for most of us will soon be one with Nineveh and Tyre, clean forgotten in six months.

The scores of town planners in Australia building empires out of regulating what can and can't be built on low-lying shorelines will have to come to terms with the fact inundation no longer impends and find something more plausible to do. The same is true of the bureaucrats planning to accommodate "climate refugees".

Penny Wong's climate mega-portfolio will suddenly be as ephemeral as the ministries for the year 2000 that state governments used to entrust to junior ministers. Malcolm Turnbull will have to reinvent himself at vast speed as a climate change sceptic and the Prime Minister will have to kiss goodbye what he likes to call the great moral issue and policy challenge of our times.

It will all be vastly entertaining to watch.
THE Age published an essay with an environmental theme by Ian McEwan on March 8 and its stablemate, The Sydney Morning Herald, also carried a slightly longer version of the same piece.

The Australian's Cut & Paste column two days later reproduced a telling paragraph from the Herald's version, which suggested that McEwan was a climate change sceptic and which The Age had excised. He was expanding on the proposition that "we need not only reliable data but their expression in the rigorous use of statistics".

What The Age decided to spare its readers was the following: "Well-meaning intellectual movements, from communism to post-structuralism, have a poor history of absorbing inconvenient fact or challenges to fundamental precepts. We should not ignore or suppress good indicators on the environment, though they have become extremely rare now. It is tempting to the layman to embrace with enthusiasm the latest bleak scenario because it fits the darkness of our soul, the prevailing cultural pessimism. The imagination, as Wallace Stevens once said, is always at the end of an era. But we should be asking, or expecting others to ask, for the provenance of the data, the assumptions fed into the computer model, the response of the peer review community, and so on. Pessimism is intellectually delicious, even thrilling, but the matter before us is too serious for mere self-pleasuring. It would be self-defeating if the environmental movement degenerated into a religion of gloomy faith. (Faith, ungrounded certainty, is no virtue.)"

The missing sentences do not appear anywhere else in The Age's version of the essay. The attribution reads: "Copyright Ian McEwan 2008" and there is no acknowledgment of editing by The Age.

Why did the paper decide to offer its readers McEwan lite? Was he, I wonder, consulted on the matter? And isn't there a nice irony that The Age chose to delete the line about ideologues not being very good at "absorbing inconvenient fact"?  http://mercury.tiser.com.au/ADCLICK/CID=fffffffcfffffffcfffffffc/acc_random=77344149/SITE=TAUS/AREA=NEWS.OPINION/AAMSZ=1

---

Gore Warns U.N. on Climate Change

Stewart Stogel
Sept. 29, 2006
UNITED NATIONS -- Self-proclaimed "global warming warrior" Al Gore came to U.N. headquarters Thursday to lecture on the "perils" of climate change.
The former vice president and U.S. senator spent almost three hours lecturing more than 1,000 U.N. staffers and diplomats on the imminent perils mankind is bringing upon itself.
Gore, invited by an old "friend," retiring Secretary-General Kofi Annan, spent the evening preaching about the "global warming" dilemma.
Once the house lights dimmed and the video lecture began, many in the somewhat confused U.N. audience used the cover of darkness to take to the exits.
Those who remained often looked transfixed, like folks wearing 3-D glasses in a movie house.
Gore's allegations often seemed like they were taken from "Ripley's Believe It or Not."

Among some of the "facts:"
· Greenland runs a real risk of "splitting in two."
· If that happens, substantial parts of Manhattan, Shanghai and Bombay "will disappear."
· Certain species of frogs and many other amphibians are decreasing at a rate "1,000 times greater" than normal.
· Cigarette smoking is a "significant" contributor to global warming.
· The U.S. still contributes more than 40 percent of all current atmospheric contaminants contributing to global pollution, though Gore did admit the exploding economies of China and India are playing a greater role in the Earth's deteriorating situation.

Nevertheless, he took time to thank the efforts of "Wal-Mart and General Electric" for their role in combating global warming. "It has become profitable for them," Gore boasted.
What Gore did not mention is ongoing litigation between GE and residents of New York's Hudson Valley over charges of illegal dumping of (carcinogenic) PCBs in the Hudson River in the 1970s.
While Gore was warmly welcomed by the U.N. audience, he felt obligated to repeatedly tell those in attendance "this is not as complicated as it looks."
After a Q&A with the audience, which had little to do with global warming and more about Gore's political future, Annan bid "adios" to his old comrade.
Then, Gore had his aides open a stack of cardboard boxes to begin selling his book, "An Inconvenient Truth."
So, in the end, Gore's lecture on global warming turned into no more than a lavish book party.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric had no comment on who footed the bill for the bash.
NewsMax requested from UNTV an audio copy of Gore's address.
At first, NewsMax was told a copy would be provided by the U.N. audio library.
Later, NewsMax was told that copies of the Gore speech would not be available.
"We destroyed all copies of the speech, except for one master which cannot be released," explained one audio librarian.
Dujarric added: "The Gore speech was copyrighted and therefore we cannot release any copies of it."
The formerly "open" address, has now been reclassifed in the UN files as "a closed meeting."
Read

INHOFE TO BLAST GLOBAL WARMING MEDIA COVERAGE IN SPEECH TODAY ON THE SENATE FLOOR
September 25, 2006
Senator Inhofe on projections of global warming disaster:
“In fact, after years of hearing about the computer generated scary scenarios about the future of our planet, I now believe that the greatest climate threat we face may be coming from alarmist computer models. This threat is originating from the software installed on the hard drives of the publicity seeking climate modelers.
The history of the modern environmental movement is chock full of predictions of doom that never came true. We have all heard the dire predictions about the threat of overpopulation, resource scarcity, mass starvation, and the projected death of our oceans. None of these predictions came true, yet it never stopped the doomsayers from continuing to predict a dire environmental future.
The more the eco-doomsayers’ predictions fail, the more the eco-doomsayers predict.”
Read More

Global warming possibly linked to an enhanced risk of suicide: Data from Italy, 1974–2003
Received 27 October 2006; revised 2 December 2006; accepted 4 December 2006. Available online 17 January 2007.
Abstract
Background
The global increase in surface temperature (known as global warming) was found to impact on mortality through ill health, particularly among the elderly and in summer. This study sets out to explore the impact of global warming on suicide mortality, using data from Italy.
Methods
Monthly data on suicide mortality and temperature were obtained for a 30-year period (from January 1974 to December 2003), and the relation between them was investigated using the Gaussian low-pass filter, linear correlation analysis and rank analysis.
Read

FREE ! Join The Smoker's Club
on line   or  off line
Join now and be counted!