Alarmist vs Deniers

[Kubes.SG]

Now with Obama moving into office, I have the same anticipation of change that I did for when Rudd won the election in Australia 12 months ago.  However, I also have a gnawing fear and concern that like the Rudd Govt, his Administration will also run full-steam ahead to cut Carbon and other supposed green house gas emissions. 

We don't need the distraction of ridiculous manmade global warming claims to sidetrack discussion, research and funding towards more long-terms sustainable energy provision, and management of water resources. 

And just quietly, we better start looking at investments and infrastructure that could protect us through of cycle of cooling.  If you really want to fear, that is something that is much worse the than mild reality of warming.


Some alarmist clearly think I am a loony, and that the "science is settle", the "debate is over".. 


Alarmists Still Heated Even As World Cools
Investor's Business Daily   
Wednesday, 05 November 2008

Climate Change: It's been a bad year for global warming alarmists. Record cold periods and snowfalls are occurring around the globe. The hell that the radicals have promised is freezing over.

As the British House of Commons debated a climate-change bill that pledged the United Kingdom to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050, London was hit by its first October snow since 1922.

Apparently Mother Nature wasn't paying attention. The British people, however, are paying attention — to reality. A poll found that 60% of them doubt the claims that global warming is both man-made and urgent.

Elsewhere, the Swiss lowlands last month received the most snow for any October since records began. Zurich got 20 centimeters, breaking the record of 14 centimeters set in 1939. Ocala, Fla., experienced its second-lowest October temperature since 1850.

October temperatures fell to record lows in Oregon as well. On Oct. 10, Boise, Idaho, got the earliest snow in its history — 1.7 inches. That beat the old record by seven-tenths of an inch and one day on the calendar.

In the Southern Hemisphere, where winter was winding down, Durban, South Africa, had its coldest September night in history in the middle of the month. Some regions of the country had unusual late-winter snows. A month earlier, New Zealand officials reported that Mount Ruapehu had its largest snow base ever.

At the top of the world, the International Arctic Research Center reported last month, there was 29% more Arctic sea ice this year than last.

None of this matters, of course, to the warming zealots. It doesn't matter if it's too dry or too wet, too hot or too cold. All of it, they say, is caused by global warming.

We believe, however, as do many reputable scientists, that the warming and cooling of the Earth is a natural phenomenon dictated by forces beyond our control, from ocean currents to solar activity.

The latest warming trend, which appears to have ended in 1998, is the result of the end of the Little Ice Age, which extended from roughly the 16th century to the 19th. During that period, Muir Glacier in Alaska filled Glacier Bay. In fact, when the first Russian explorers arrived in Alaska in the 1740s, there was no Glacier Bay — just a wall of ice where the entrance would be.

As the Earth warmed, long before SUVs roamed the globe, Alaska's glaciers also warmed and began to recede, starting in the 1800s. All that may be changing. During the winter and summer of 2007-2008, unusually large amounts of winter snow were followed by unusually cold temperatures in June, July and August.

"In June, I was surprised to see snow still at sea level in Prince William Sound," says U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist Bruce Molnia. "On the Juneau Icefield, there was still 20 feet of new snow on the surface of the Taku Glacier in late July."

It was the worst summer he'd seen in two decades.

As the Anchorage Daily News reports, "Never before in the history of a research project dating back to 1946 had the Juneau Icefield witnessed the kind if snow buildup that came this year. It was similar on a lot of other glaciers too."

It's been "a long time on most glaciers," Molnia says, "where they've actually had positive mass balance." In other words, more snow is falling in the winter than melts in the summer, making the glaciers thicker in the middle.

Glaciers can appear to be shrinking even as they are growing. Photos taken from ships can record receding edges even as mass is building inland. When they get thick enough, the weight forces the glacier to advance.

The U.S. may owe its ascension to a global power on the global warming that began with the end of the Little Ice Age, which almost doomed the American Revolution. George Washington's famous winter at Valley Forge was part of that natural phenomenon.

As the climate warmed from 1800 to 1900, the U.S. tripled in size, spreading westward to straddle a continent. The population of the windy and very cold trading post known as Chicago grew from 4,000 in 1800 to 1.5 million by 1900, sitting on a great lake carved by glaciers long since receded.

Due to a decline in solar activity and other factors, the Earth is cooling and has been since 1998. And a peer-reviewed study published in April by Nature predicts the world will continue cooling at least through 2015.

Now, if only we could get the warming alarmists to face facts and cool it as well.

[Kubes.SG]

This weekend was interesting as for the first time I have have ever seen, Australia's leading newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald published an article, actually an opinion piece, questioning the conventional wisdom that mankind contributes to global warming.  Like the BBC, the SMH has been very pro-manmade warming, and provided vast coverage and support for that theory.

This has changed.  Let's hope this the start of the real discussion.


Truly inconvenient truths about climate change being ignored
Michael Duffy, Sydney Morning Herald   
Friday, 07 November 2008

Last month I witnessed something shocking. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was giving a talk at the University of NSW. The talk was accompanied by a slide presentation, and the most important graph showed average global temperatures. For the past decade it represented temperatures climbing sharply.

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?

In his talk, Pachauri said the number of global warming sceptics is shrinking, a curious claim he was unable to substantiate when questioned about it on Lateline. Still, there's no doubt a majority of climate scientists agree with the view of the IPCC.

Today I want to look at why this might be so: after all, such a state of affairs presents a challenge to sceptics such as me. If we're right, then an awful lot of scientists are wrong. How could this be?

This question was addressed in September in a paper by Professor Richard Lindzen, of the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen, probably the most qualified prominent global-warming sceptic, suggested that a number of changes in the way science is conducted have contributed to the rise of climate alarmism among American scientists.

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. The administrators who work with the scientists join in with enthusiasm: much of their own funding is attached to the scientific grants. Lindzen says this state of affairs favours science involving fear, and also science that involves expensive activities such as computer modelling. He notes we have seen "the de-emphasis of theory because of its difficulty and small scale, the encouragement of simulation instead (with its call for large capital investment in computation), and the encouragement of large programs unconstrained by specific goals.

"In brief, we have the new paradigm where simulation and [computer] programs have replaced theory and observation, where government largely determines the nature of scientific activity, and where the primary role of professional societies is the lobbying of the government for special advantage."

Lindzen believes another problem with climate science is that in America and Europe it is heavily colonised by environmental activists.

Here are just two examples that indicate the scale of the problem: the spokesman for the American Meteorological Society is a former staffer for Al Gore, and realclimate.org, probably the world's most authoritative alarmist web site, was started by a public relations firm serving environmental causes.

None of this is necessarily sinister, but the next time you hear a scientist or scientific organisation warning of climate doom, you might want to follow the money trail. Sceptics are not the only ones who have received funding from sources sympathetic to their viewpoint. (And yes, Lindzen did once receive some money from energy companies.)

Lindzen claims that scientific journals play an important role in promoting global warming alarmism, and gives a number of examples.

Someone else who's looked closely at scientific journals (although not specifically those dealing with climate science) is epidemiologist John Ioannidis of the Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. He reached the surprising conclusion that most published research findings are proved false within five years of their publication. (Lest he be dismissed as some eccentric, I note that the Economist recently said Ioannidis has made his case "quite convincingly".)

Why might this be so? Later work by Ioannidis and colleagues suggests that these days journal editors are more likely to publish research that will make a splash than that which will not. They do this to sell more copies of their publications and of reprints of papers in it. Ioannidis believes these publication practices might be distorting science.

It's possible the forces described by Lindzen and Ioannidis have imbued climate science with a preference for results that involve (or seem to involve) disastrous change rather than stability. Rajenda Pachauri's recent Sydney lecture suggests that in this relatively new field, inconvenient truths to the contrary are not welcome.

[Splat]

It was any cooler in Singapore this year.  Well, it didn't feel like it any-way.

[helping hand]

I wouldn't call the SMH Australia's leading newspaper... it's rubbish.  All of them are rubbish with the exception of the Australian and the Canberra Times, but sadly the later is also going down the toilet as well.

This weekend was interesting as for the first time I have have ever seen, Australia's leading newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald published an article, actually an opinion piece, questioning the conventional wisdom that mankind contributes to global warming.  Like the BBC, the SMH has been very pro-manmade warming, and provided vast coverage and support for that theory.

This has changed.  Let's hope this the start of the real discussion.

[Old Mike]

From today's Daily Telegraph.

The world has never seen such freezing heat
By Christopher Booker

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

 This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.

Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

 

[resm]

Now with Obama moving into office, I have the same anticipation of change that I did for when Rudd won the election in Australia 12 months ago.  However, I also have a gnawing fear and concern that like the Rudd Govt, his Administration will also run full-steam ahead to cut Carbon and other supposed green house gas emissions. 

We don't need the distraction of ridiculous manmade global warming claims to sidetrack discussion, research and funding towards more long-terms sustainable energy provision, and management of water resources. 

And just quietly, we better start looking at investments and infrastructure that could protect us through of cycle of cooling.  If you really want to fear, that is something that is much worse the than mild reality of warming.


Some alarmist clearly think I am a loony, and that the "science is settle", the "debate is over".. 


Alarmists Still Heated Even As World Cools
Investor's Business Daily   
Wednesday, 05 November 2008

Climate Change: It's been a bad year for global warming alarmists. Record cold periods and snowfalls are occurring around the globe. The hell that the radicals have promised is freezing over.

As the British House of Commons debated a climate-change bill that pledged the United Kingdom to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050, London was hit by its first October snow since 1922.

Apparently Mother Nature wasn't paying attention. The British people, however, are paying attention — to reality. A poll found that 60% of them doubt the claims that global warming is both man-made and urgent.

Elsewhere, the Swiss lowlands last month received the most snow for any October since records began. Zurich got 20 centimeters, breaking the record of 14 centimeters set in 1939. Ocala, Fla., experienced its second-lowest October temperature since 1850.

October temperatures fell to record lows in Oregon as well. On Oct. 10, Boise, Idaho, got the earliest snow in its history — 1.7 inches. That beat the old record by seven-tenths of an inch and one day on the calendar.

In the Southern Hemisphere, where winter was winding down, Durban, South Africa, had its coldest September night in history in the middle of the month. Some regions of the country had unusual late-winter snows. A month earlier, New Zealand officials reported that Mount Ruapehu had its largest snow base ever.

At the top of the world, the International Arctic Research Center reported last month, there was 29% more Arctic sea ice this year than last.

None of this matters, of course, to the warming zealots. It doesn't matter if it's too dry or too wet, too hot or too cold. All of it, they say, is caused by global warming.

We believe, however, as do many reputable scientists, that the warming and cooling of the Earth is a natural phenomenon dictated by forces beyond our control, from ocean currents to solar activity.

The latest warming trend, which appears to have ended in 1998, is the result of the end of the Little Ice Age, which extended from roughly the 16th century to the 19th. During that period, Muir Glacier in Alaska filled Glacier Bay. In fact, when the first Russian explorers arrived in Alaska in the 1740s, there was no Glacier Bay — just a wall of ice where the entrance would be.

As the Earth warmed, long before SUVs roamed the globe, Alaska's glaciers also warmed and began to recede, starting in the 1800s. All that may be changing. During the winter and summer of 2007-2008, unusually large amounts of winter snow were followed by unusually cold temperatures in June, July and August.

"In June, I was surprised to see snow still at sea level in Prince William Sound," says U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist Bruce Molnia. "On the Juneau Icefield, there was still 20 feet of new snow on the surface of the Taku Glacier in late July."

It was the worst summer he'd seen in two decades.

As the Anchorage Daily News reports, "Never before in the history of a research project dating back to 1946 had the Juneau Icefield witnessed the kind if snow buildup that came this year. It was similar on a lot of other glaciers too."

It's been "a long time on most glaciers," Molnia says, "where they've actually had positive mass balance." In other words, more snow is falling in the winter than melts in the summer, making the glaciers thicker in the middle.

Glaciers can appear to be shrinking even as they are growing. Photos taken from ships can record receding edges even as mass is building inland. When they get thick enough, the weight forces the glacier to advance.

The U.S. may owe its ascension to a global power on the global warming that began with the end of the Little Ice Age, which almost doomed the American Revolution. George Washington's famous winter at Valley Forge was part of that natural phenomenon.

As the climate warmed from 1800 to 1900, the U.S. tripled in size, spreading westward to straddle a continent. The population of the windy and very cold trading post known as Chicago grew from 4,000 in 1800 to 1.5 million by 1900, sitting on a great lake carved by glaciers long since receded.

Due to a decline in solar activity and other factors, the Earth is cooling and has been since 1998. And a peer-reviewed study published in April by Nature predicts the world will continue cooling at least through 2015.

Now, if only we could get the warming alarmists to face facts and cool it as well.

This was first published in 1986, long before the discussion about climate change became popular.

read it before bashing it !


The Poles Shift Their Respective Positions

By P.R. Sarkar
The subject of today's discourse is, "The Poles Shift their Respective Positions." Cardinal human principles are almost unchangeable. I say almost unchangeable because they always maintain a tactual relationship with the cosmological order and so the cardinal human principles or cardinal points of human existence do not undergo any change or physical metamorphosis. But this is not the case with the physical body. In the realm of physicality, in the arena of physical emanations, such a change may take place, and in the past took place several times in the history of this planet Earth, and also in the history of so many other planets, stars, satellites, nebula, etc. In the physical sphere change is the order of existence. In the psychic sphere, there is change in the collective structure, but because that change maintains a link with the cosmological order, with cosmic conation, it is not so prominent as that of the physical sphere.

Take the case of our poles: the poles may shift their positions. In the past, such a shifting took place several times -- in the annals of this planet and also in the history of so many other planets. As a result of this shifting, as a result of this changing, the people say that satellites moved in and out of this earth when its outer crust, its lithospherical body, was not so solid as it is now. And some are of the opinion that as a result of this emergence of the Earth's lithospherical body, the Pacific Ocean was created. According to old astronomy and also astrology, Mars also came out of this Earth, but it did not move around the Earth as its satellite. And that is why a name for Mars is Kuja: Shani raja Kuja mantrii (Saturn is the king, Mars is the minister). Ku means earth and Kuja means born out of ku. So in the physical sphere such a change took place in the past and will take place in the future.

The poles shift their positions. Now as a result of this shifting in the past, so many times, the time taken by the Earth in moving around itself varies, and also the time taken by the Earth in the moving around the sun -- that is, its year -- also changed. Day and night together were not of 24 hours, and the year was not of 365/366 days. So as a result of this change in polar positions, seasonal order also changed and its relationship with Mars varied so many times. And the order of our calendar, the system of our calendar had to be changed in the past. If the poles change their positions, the time taken by the Earth to move around itself will certainly be either lessened or increased. And similarly the time taken by the Earth in moving around the sun will either increase or decrease. That is why sometimes we see the seasonal orders are not maintaining proper adjustment with the months: this shows that the shifting is taking place fast. Now as result of this change, not only the adjustment between the months and the seasons will be lost, but the environmental order as well as the ecological order of the Earth will be disrupted. And as a result of this disruption, there must be physical and biological changes in the structures of all living bodies, all living creatures, including plants. The plants of Tertiary Age could not be found in the Craterian Age. The plants and animals of the Craterion Age could not be found in later ages, such as the Pliocene, Miocene, Obligocene, Mesazoic and Caenazoic Ages, because their existence, their births and deaths also depend on ecological balance. And as a result of the change in position of the poles, some people say that in the eastern hemisphere, the north pole is moving from north to south and in the western hemisphere, the south pole moves from south to north, and it cannot be assured that their relative distance will remain unchanged. So we should be prepared for the future; we should be prepared for the resultant of these changes in polar positions, in environmental order and also in ecological structure.

As a result of this change the magnetic structure of this Earth will change, as a result of which other planets and satellites of the solar system will also undergo certain remarkable metamorphosis. And if the magnetic order is disrupted, then certain remarkable changes, certain remarkable metamorphoses in the electromagnetic vibrations of this Earth and also of the entire solar system, will occur. As a result of this type of change in the electromagnetic vibrations, human thought waves will certainly be affected.

Our progress in the arena of science depends much on the progress of our knowledge in electromagnetic waves, electromagnetic emanations. So our progress in the fields of both humanities and science will suffer much, will be much assailed as the result of this change. We should be prepared for such change, and that change may take place in the very near future.

You know, human existence is not only an existence of physicality, an existence in physical structure, it is a [mesh] of vibrations of so many wavelengths. So if the physical waves change, if the climatic conditions undergo a certain gigantic metamorphosis, certainly the emanations and perceptions of nerve cells and nerve fibres will be changed, and disrupted. It may be for the good, it may be for the bad, but change is a must. In the case of such a change in the physical order and also in the physico-psychic order, the change is sure to take place in the realm of spirituality. We hope that the movement -- that is, the movement of humanity, and of each and every living being -- is from matter to consciousness, from extroversion to introversion. So the thought waves of human beings will be more of a spiritual nature than they are at present. That is, humanity in that developed condition will be more spiritual-minded than it is at present.

The Cosmic Entity, the Supreme Cognitive Faculty, never stops His emanations in the physical, metaphysical, supraphysical and spiritual strata. In the case of microcosm, if the change is neurological as a result of physical change, then certainly the cells and then nerve fibres will function some other way than at present. Then the thought waves of the Great, the thought waves of the Supreme Cognitive Faculty, are sure to undergo some transmutation when they pass through unit human structures. And it is expected that under such circumstances the progress of human beings in the realm of introversion will be more accelerated than it is at present. If the poles in a particular small planet, like the Earth, shift their respective positions, it may be beneficial to human beings or it may not be beneficial to human beings, but it is certain that the thought waves of the Supreme will do their own duty under the changed circumstances. Humanity will be more meditative and will accept Parama Purus'a, the Cosmic Cognitive Faculty, as its object of ideation in a better and more scientific way. One must not think that anything is fixed or stationary in this universe. Everybody moves -- certainly the poles move -- and they have already started their function of shifting their respective positions. And you see as a result of such a change, especially if the change takes place very fast, then another ice-age may occur here on this Earth. Between the pre-condition and post-condition of the ice-age there may be a long gap -- that is, the pre-age and the post-age will have a long gap between them. But we have much expectation and hope from human intellect; and we hope, if a catastrophe comes, the human intellect will be able to overcome such a catastrophe and arrange for shifting the population to some other planet having suitable environmental conditions and a better ecological order. Let humanity rise, and let this development of humanity be more and more spiritually-oriented!

31 May 1986, Calcutta
A Few Problems Solved Part 7

Copyright Ananda Marga Publications 2004
 

[Old Mike]

The UK regime expands its "green" scam taxes.
Protests as carbon permits auction raises £54m
The Government has provoked anger by saying proceeds of sale will not necessarily be used to tackle climate change issues Robin Pagnamenta, Energy and Environment Editor
The Government provoked protests from campaign groups yesterday as it began Europe's first auction of carbon emissions permits but admitted that the proceeds would not necessarily be used to tackle climate change.

The Treasury said that it had raised £54 million through the sale of four million permits for £13.60 per tonne under the next stage of the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). Yesterday's auction marked a departure from the policy of handing out the permits to industry for free. By 2012, in the second phase of the scheme, 85 million permits will be auctioned, possibly raising more than £1 billion for the Treasury. From 2013, this figure is expected to rise to about £2.5 billion a year, according to WSP, the environmental consultancy.

Campaigners said that the Treasury's decision to put the proceeds into its coffers rather than ringfencing them for use in environmental projects plays into the hands of critics, who fear that the ETS will be treated as little more than a green tax.

Robin Oakley, the head of Greenpeace's climate change team, said: “Investing in new low-carbon technology while making our homes and businesses more efficient is good news for our country and for the wider fight against climate change, but by hoarding revenues from the emissions trading scheme this Government is eroding trust in the concept of green taxes.”

[Kubes.SG]

If the temperatures in the mountainous regions of Australia had had heatwave temperatures (say 30C) the week before the official start of Winter, I would have doubts about whether my disbelief in the man-made global warming.   But of course I don't have doubts, and it is just utterly astonishing that people still think we are experiencing global warming, let alone that mankind is actually causing it.   If people can't understand the science, at least the actual weather conditions and noticeably cooling climate with knock them into reality.

I guess we can be thankful at least for now, that some uneducated greenie idiot has not come out and declared:  "The snow and freezing conditions in Summer are caused by global warming."

Snow in NSW - a week before summer
November 23, 2008 - 10:32AM

Gale force winds and snow in the NSW central-west are keeping State Emergency Service volunteers busy, just a week from the start of summer.

Since Friday, SES crews have responded to 18 requests for assistance in the Blayney, Bathurst, Lithgow and Orange areas.

Most of the damage has been caused by falling trees, but local roads are also being monitored after snow falls on Saturday night.

The road between Bathurst and Oberon is closed but all other roads are open.

SES Central West Region Controller, Craig Ronan, said the weather conditions were particularly unseasonable.

"It's very unusual the week before summer to have such weather conditions," Mr Ronan said.

"I believe it's supposed to ease this afternoon.

"Let's hope it does ease but obviously our volunteers are ready to help and they're willing to help."

The Bureau of Meteorology has issued a severe weather warning for NSW, with a deep low pressure system off the South Coast expected to bring gale-force winds to most of the state before it moves east late on Sunday.

Winds are expected to average 65kmh with peak gusts in excess of 90kmh.

Blizzard conditions are also anticipated in alpine areas of the Southern Tablelands, South West Slopes and the ACT.

"As winds continue, I'd say we'll get a few more calls today," Mr Ronan said.

Anyone in need of emergency help can phone the SES on 132 500.

AAP

[Kubes.SG]

[Kubes.SG]

The price of dissent on global warming

David Bellamy | November 25, 2008
Article from:  The Australian

WHEN I first stuck my head above the parapet to say I didn't believe what we were being told about global warming, I had no idea what the consequences would be. I am a scientist and I have to follow the directions of science, but when I see that the truth is being covered up I have to voice my opinions.

According to official data, in every year since 1998, world temperatures have been getting colder, and in 2002 Arctic ice actually increased. Why, then, do we not hear about that? The sad fact is that since I said I didn't believe human beings caused global warming, I've not been allowed to make a television program.

My absence has been noticed, because wherever I go I meet people who say: "I grew up with you on the television, where are you now?"

It was in 1996 that I criticised wind farms while appearing on children's program Blue Peter, and I also had an article published in which I described global warming as poppycock. The truth is, I didn't think wind farms were an effective means of alternative energy, so I said so. Back then, at the BBC you had to toe the line, and I wasn't doing that.

At that point, I was still making loads of TV programs and I was enjoying it greatly. Then I suddenly found I was sending in ideas for TV shows and they weren't getting taken up. I've asked around about why I've been ignored, but I found that people didn't get back to me. At the beginning of this year there was a BBC show with four experts saying: "This is going to be the end of all the ice in the Arctic," and hypothesising that it was going to be the hottest summer ever. Was it hell! It was very cold and very wet and now we've seen evidence that the glaciers in Alaska have started growing rapidly, and they have not grown for a long time.

I've seen evidence, which I believe, that says there has not been a rise in global temperature since 1998, despite the increase in carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere. This makes me think the global warmers are telling lies: CO2 is not the driver. The idiot fringe has accused me of being like a Holocaust denier, which is ludicrous. Climate change is all about cycles. It's a natural thing and has always happened. When the Romans lived in Britain they were growing very good red grapes and making wine on the borders of Scotland. It was evidently a lot warmer.

If you were sitting next to me 10,000 years ago, we'd be under ice. So thank God for global warming for ending that ice age; we wouldn't be here otherwise.

People such as former American vice-president Al Gore say that millions of us will die because of global warming, which I think is a pretty stupid thing to say if you've got no proof. And my opinion is that there is absolutely no proof that CO2 has anything to do with any impending catastrophe. The science has, quite simply, gone awry.

In fact, it's not even science any more; it's anti-science.

There's no proof, it's just projections, and if you look at the models people such as Gore use, you can see they cherry-pick the ones that support their beliefs. To date, the way the so-called Greens and the BBC, the Royal Society and even political parties have handled this smacks of McCarthyism at its worst.

Global warming is part of a natural cycle and there's nothing we can actually do to stop these cycles. The world is now facing spending a vast amount of money in tax to try to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist.

And how were we convinced that this problem exists, even though all the evidence from measurements goes against the fact? God knows. Yes, the lakes in Africa are drying up. But that's not global warming. They're drying up for the very simple reason that most of them have dams around them.

So the water once used by local people is now used in the production of cut flowers and vegetables for the supermarkets of Europe. One of Gore's biggest clangers was saying that the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan was drying up because of global warming.

Well, everyone knows, because it was all over the news 20 years ago, that the Russians were growing cotton there at the time and that for every tonne of cotton you produce you use a vast amount of water. The thing that annoys me most is that there are genuine environmental problems that desperately require attention. I'm still an environmentalist, I'm still a Green and I'm still campaigning to stop the destruction of the biodiversity of the world. But money will be wasted on trying to solve this global warming "problem" that I would much rather was used for looking after the people of the world. Being ignored by the likes of the BBC does not really bother me, not when there are bigger problems at stake.

I might not be on TV any more but I still go around the world campaigning about these important issues. For example, we must stop the destruction of tropical rainforests, something I've been saying for 35 years.

Mother nature will balance things out, but not if we interfere by destroying rainforests and overfishing the seas. That is where the real environmental catastrophe could occur.

David Bellamy is a botanist, author of 35 books, and has presented 400 television programs.

[Kubes.SG]

[Old Mike]

Believe our models, don't confuse us with the facts!!!


2008 will be coolest year of the decade.
Global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, but cooler temperature is not evidence that global warming is slowing, say climate scientists James Randerson guardian.co.uk, Friday December 5 2008 15.00 GMT

This year is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of global average temperature that is due to be released next week by the Met Office. The global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, which is 0.14C below the average temperature for 2001-07.

The relatively chilly temperatures compared with recent years are not evidence that global warming is slowing however, say climate scientists at the Met Office. "Absolutely not," said Dr Peter Stott, the manager of understanding and attributing climate change at the Met Office's Hadley Centre. "If we are going to understand climate change we need to look at long-term trends."

Prof Myles Allen at Oxford University who runs the climateprediction.net website, said he feared climate sceptics would overinterpret the figure. "You can bet your life there will be a lot of fuss about what a cold year it is. Actually no, its not been that cold a year, but the human memory is not very long, we are used to warm years," he said, "Even in the 80s [this year] would have felt like a warm year."

And 2008 would have been a scorcher in Charles Dickens's time - without human-induced warming there would have been a one in a hundred chance of getting a year this hot. "For Dickens this would have been an extremely warm year," he said. On the flip side, in the current climate there is a roughly one in 10chance of having a year this cool.

The Met Office predicted at the beginning of the year that 2008 would be cooler than recent years because of a La Niña event - characterised by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. It is the mirror image of the El Niño climate cycle. The Met Office had forecast an annual global average of 14.37C.

Allen was presenting the data on this year's global average temperature at the Appleton Space Conference at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Didcot yesterday. The 14.3C figure is based on data from January to October. When the Met Office makes its formal announcement next week they will incorporate data from November. "[The figure] will differ from it, but it won't differ massively," said Stott, "We would expect the number to go up rather than down because the early parts of the year were still under the La Niña conditions."

Assuming the final figure is close to 14.3C then 2008 will be the tenth hottest year on record. The hottest was 1998 - which included a very strong El Niño event - followed by 2005, 2003 and 2002. The data are a combination of measurements from satellites, ground weather stations and buoys which are compiled jointly by the Hadley Centre and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

In March, a team of climate scientists at Kiel University predicted that natural variation would mask the 0.3C warming predicted by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change over the next decade. They said that global temperatures would remain constant until 2015 but would then begin to accelerate.

[Kubes.SG]

Graph updated and quite compelling:    be sure to scroll to the right.

[Kubes.SG]

Global warming bandwagon is getting lots of opportunists piling onboard for their financial benefit.  This article from the UK Telegraph shows just how completely loony these dingbats are.  If they are stupid enough to believe that CO2 causes Global Warming, it is not surprising they are excited about these "solutions".

We had a leap-second at the end of 2008.  Why is there no one bleating about the slowing of the earth's rotation?  There's got to be some serious taxpayer money in fixing that problem?


Plan to investigate using giant mirrors to reverse global warming
 
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:05AM GMT 30 Oct 2008

Scientists are investigating plans to reverse global warming by using giant mirrors to reflect the sun or growing algae in the sea to absorb carbon dioxide.

    * James Lovelock's plan to pump ocean water to stop climate change
    * Global warming fix could damage ozone layer
    * Global warming 'cure' found by scientists

The methods, known as geo-engineering, have been considered more fantasy than reality by the scientific community in the past.

However with climate change an increasing threat - despite government efforts to keep it under control - the Royal Society is to look at which methods may prove a serious option for the future of mankind.

Methods proposed for artificially altering the climate include using a series of giant mirrors or a constellation of trillions of space craft as a sunshade to reflect solar energy.

Scientists have also proposed releasing dust particles into the stratosphere to reduce the amount of sunlight warming the Earth or "seeding" the oceans with iron particles to stimulate algae which absorb the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

Another potential ploy would be to send sea spray into the air to make existing clouds whiter in order to enable them to reflect more sunlight, in a bid to offset the heat trapped by increasing levels of greenhouse gases.

However, few studies have been done into whether any of these methods would work in the long term.

John Shepherd, chairman of the Royal Society working group which will undertake the study, said it was time to separate the fact from the fiction.

"Our study aims to separate the science from the science fiction and offer recommendations on which options deserve serious consideration.

"We need to investigate if any of these schemes could help us avoid the most dangerous changes to our climate and to fully understand what other impacts they may have."

However, with the UK Government set to commit the country to cutting greenhouse gases by 80 per cent by 2050, he said the new technologies should not take away from efforts to reduce climate change by reducing carbon dioxide.

He added: "Whatever solutions technology may offer us in the future, it's clear that the need to cut emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is now more urgent than ever."

The Royal Society report on geo-engineering schemes is expected to be published in the middle of next year.

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Seven more independent measures of the climate cycles that seem strongly indicate that warming has switched to cooling.

Enjoy.............


Facts debunk global warming alarmism
Bob Carter | January 20, 2009
Article from:  The Australian

THE National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that October in the US was marked by 63 record snowfalls and 115 lowest-ever temperatures.

Over the past few years, similar signs of colder than usual weather have been recorded all over the world, causing many people to question the still fashionable, but now long outdated, global warming alarmism. Yet individual weather events or spells, whether warmings or coolings, tell us nothing necessarily about true climate change.

Nonetheless, by coincidence, growing recognition of a threat of climatic cooling is correct, because since the turn of the 21st century all real world, long-term climate indicators have turned downwards. Global atmospheric temperature reached a peak in 1998, has not warmed since 1995 and, has been cooling since 2002. Some people, still under the thrall of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change's disproved projections of warming, seem surprised by this cooling trend, even to the point of denying it. But why?

There are two fundamentally different ways in which computers can be used to project climate. The first is used by the modelling groups that provide climate projections to the IPCC. These groups deploy general circulation models, which use complex partial differential equations to describe the ocean-atmosphere climate system mathematically. When fed with appropriate initial data, these models can calculate possible future climate states. The models presume (wrongly) that we have a complete understanding of the climate system.

GCMs are subject to the well-known computer phenomenon of GIGO, which translates as "garbage in, God's-truth out".

Alternative computer projections of climate can be constructed using data on past climate change, by identifying mathematical (often rhythmic) patterns within them and projecting these patterns into the future. Such models are statistical and empirical, and make no presumptions about complete understanding; instead, they seek to recognise and project into the future the climate patterns that exist in real world data.

In 2001, Russian geologist Sergey Kotov used the mathematics of chaos to analyse the atmospheric temperature record of the past 4000 years from a Greenland ice core. Based on the pattern he recognised in the data, Kotov extrapolated cooling from 2000 to about 2030, followed by warming to the end of the century and 300 years of cooling thereafter.

In 2003, Russian scientists Klyashtorin and Lyubushin analysed the global surface thermometer temperature record from 1860 to 2000, and identified a recurring 60-year cycle. This probably relates to the Pacific decadal oscillation, which can be caricatured as a large scale El Nino/La Nina climatic oscillation. The late 20thcentury warming represents the most recent warm half-cycle of the PDO, and it projects forwards as cooling of one-tenth of a degree or more to 2030.

In 2004, US scientist Craig Loehle used simple periodic models to analyse climate records over the past 1000 years of sea-surface temperature from a Caribbean marine core and cave air temperature from a South African stalactite. Without using data for the 20th century, six of his seven models showed a warming trend similar to that in the instrumental record over the past 150 years; and projecting forward the best fit model foreshadows cooling of between 0.7 and 1 degree Celsius during the next 20-40 years. In 2007, the 60-year climate cycle was identified again, by Chinese scientists Lin Zhen-Shan and Sun Xian, who used a novel multi-variate analysis of the 1881-2002 temperature records for China. They showed that temperature variation in China leads parallel variation in global temperature by five-10 years, and has been falling since 2001. They conclude "we see clearly that global and northern hemisphere temperature will drop on century scale in the next 20 years".

Most recently, Italian scientist Adriano Mazzarella demonstrated statistical links between solar magnetic activity, the length of the Earth day (LOD), and northern hemisphere wind and ocean temperature patterns. He too confirmed the existence of a 60-year climate cycle, and described various correlations (some negative). Based on these correlations, Mazzarella concludes that provided "the observed past correlation between LOD and sea-surface temperature continues in the future, the identified 60-year cycle provides a possible decline in sea-surface temperature starting from 2005, and the recent data seem to support such a result".

Thus, using several fundamentally different mathematical techniques and many different data sets, seven scientists all forecast that climatic cooling will occur during the first decades of the 21st century. Temperature records confirm that cooling is under way, the length and intensity of which remains unknown.

Yet in spite of this, governments across the world - egged on by irrational, deep Green lobbying - have for years been using their financial muscle and other powers of persuasion to introduce carbon dioxide taxation systems. For example, the federal Labor government recently spent $13.9million on climate change advertising on prime time television and in national newspapers and magazines.

Similarly, the London-based Institute for Public Policy Research advised the British Government "ultimately, positive climate behaviours need to be approached in the same way as marketeers approach acts of buying and consuming ... It amounts to treating climate-friendly activity as a brand that can be sold. This is, we believe, the route to mass behaviour change."

Introduction of a carbon dioxide tax to prevent (imaginary) warming, euphemistically disguised as an emissions trading scheme, is a politician's, ticket clipper's and mafia chief's dream. All will welcome a new source of income based on an invisible, colourless, odourless, tasteless and often unmeasurable gas. No commodity changes hands during its trading, and should carbon dioxide emissions actually decrease because of the existence of a carbon dioxide market (which is highly unlikely), the odds are that it will have no measurable effect on climate anyway. Nonetheless, the glistening pot of gold which beckons to be mined from the innocent public is proving nigh irresistible, and it is going to need a strong taxpayer revolt to stop it in Australia.

The present global financial crisis should be inducing politicians not to squander money on non-solutions to non-problems. Yet to support their plans for emissions taxation Western governments, including ours, are still propagating scientifically juvenile greenhouse propaganda underpinned only by circumstantial evidence and GCM computer gamesmanship.

Perhaps a reassessment will finally occur when two-metre thick ice develops again on Father Thames at London Bridge, or when cooling causes massive crop failure in the world's granary belts.

Bob Carter is an adjunct professor of geology at James Cook University.