Mental illness rise linked to climate

I know that "climate Change" has driven me close to the edge over the past few years

FROM-Sidney Morning Herald

Erik Jensen Health

RATES of mental illnesses including depression and post-traumatic stress will increase as a result of climate change, a report to be released today says.

The paper, prepared for the Climate Institute, says loss of social cohesion in the wake of severe weather events related to climate change could be linked to increased rates of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress and substance abuse.

As many as one in five people reported ''emotional injury, stress and despair'' in the wake of these events.

The report, A Climate of Suffering: The Real Cost of Living with Inaction on Climate Change, called the past 15 years a ''preview of life under unrestrained global warming''.

''While cyclones, drought, bushfires and floods are all a normal part of Australian life, there is no doubt our climate is changing,'' the report says.

''For instance, the intensity and frequency of bushfires is greater. This is a 'new normal', for which the past provides little guidance …

''Moreover, recent conditions are entirely consistent with the best scientific predictions: as the world warms so the weather becomes wilder, with big consequences for people's health and well-being.''

The paper suggests a possible link between Australia's recent decade-long drought and climate change. It points to a breakdown of social cohesion caused by loss of work and associated stability, adding that the suicide rate in rural communities rose by 8 per cent.
The report also looks at mental health in the aftermath of major weather events possibly linked to climate change.

It shows that one in 10 primary school children reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in the wake of cyclone Larry in 2006. More than one in 10 reported symptoms more than three months after the cyclone.

''There's really clear evidence around severe weather events,'' the executive director of the Brain and Mind Research Institute, Professor Ian Hickie, said.
''We're now more sophisticated in understanding the mental health effects and these effects are one of the major factors.

''What we have seriously underestimated is the effects on social cohesion. That is very hard to rebuild and they are critical to the mental health of an individual.''

Professor Hickie, who is launching the report today, said climate change and particularly severe weather events were likely to be a major factor influencing mental health in the future.

''When we talk about the next 50 years and what are going to be the big drivers at the community level of mental health costs, one we need to factor in are severe weather events, catastrophic weather events,'' he said

"...getting back to normal.”

Not being a scientist, or truth be told not even a great intellect, much of my education and knowledge is based upon common sense observation and instruction. When it comes to the topic of global warming aka "climate change" my skepticism has been a product of simple common sense rather than any great intellectual mastery of the subject. Early on in my study of the narrative of global warming one of the best lessons in common sense skepticism was hammered home to me when I read this article and interview of the late Reid Bryson.

In the article he recounts this simple tale:

Bryson mentions the retreat of Alpine glaciers, common grist for current headlines. “What do they find when the ice sheets retreat, in the Alps?”

We recall the two-year-old report saying a mature forest and agricultural water-management structures had been discovered emerging from the ice, seeing sunlight for the first time in thousands of years. Bryson interrupts excitedly.

“A silver mine! The guys had stacked up their tools because they were going to be back the next spring to mine more silver, only the snow never went,” he says. “There used to be less ice than now. It’s just getting back to normal.”

The implications of this observation on the entire theory of man made global warming are immense if only common sense had anything to do with the discussion at all, but alas it does not. Everyone wants to be an intellectual but it is common sense which is discrediting the narrative more than scientific papers.

So it was with some interest and another "whoa Betsy" moment that I read this post over at the Inconvenient Skeptic site earlier. The entire post is well worth the read, the main focus being on a recent trip to Glacier National Park by the author and some pictures of glaciers he took comparing them to earlier pictures from the recent past. The pictures seem to indicate that the glaciers may be making a comeback despite the doomsday projections of warmist. But what really caught my attention was this comment:

One question I wanted to ask the rangers there was “How old are the glaciers there?” There is a very common misconception that the glaciers there exist from the last ice age. That of course is wrong, but I was curious what they would say. The answer I got from the ranger was 3,000 years old. That is a reasonable answer, but one I find unlikely. Glaciers farther north and higher than Glacier National Park are typically much younger than that. I have never been able to find an ice core from glacier national park that would answer this question. Certainly it is possible that some of the glaciers are 3,000 years old, but I suspect that 900-1,000 is more accurate. I have yet to find enough accurate information to answer this though.

This comment blew me away, I admit that it had never occurred to me to question how old these or any other glaciers might be. As the author notes if I had ever thought about it I would have assumed that these and most glaciers date back to the last ice age. However even taking the rangers answer at face value this would put the glaciers well within a human historic time frame rather than some prehistoric event explained away by planetary orbits or primordial volcanic eruptions. To put it simply during the rise of the Roman Empire (Roman Warming Period) there were no glaciers in Glacier National Park.

Being enthralled by this I did a quick search to see if there was any scientific literature about the age of the glaciers in Glacier National Park. It took me all of two clicks of my handy mouse to find this paper from the U.S. Geological Survey titled

Glaciers of North America—
GLACIERS OF THE CONTERMINOUS UNITED STATES
GLACIERS OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES
By ROBERT M. KRIMMEL

With a section on GLACIER RETREAT IN GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, MONTANA
By CARL H. KEY, DANIEL B. FAGRE, and RICHARD K. MENICKE

There is a very detailed account of previous studies of the glaciers in the park and the retreat of the glaciers over the past 150 years.

All named glaciers within the park are mountain glaciers that have retreated dramatically since the middle 19th-century end of the Little Ice Age in the Western United States.

Since the end of the Little Ice Age, small glaciers that were insulated or protected by the surrounding topography tended to lose proportionately less area to recession. Commonly, they changed rapidly to a stagnant condition. The larger glaciers generally experienced proportionately greater and more rapid reduction in area than the smaller glaciers, but they still continue to be active (fig. 25A). During the last 150 years, the larger glaciers,which had descended below cirque margins into subalpine terrain, would have had the greatest exposure to solar radiation and warmer temperatures for longer periods of time. As these large glaciers retreated and shrank in area, they regularly separated into discrete ice masses.

As you can plainly see the glacier melt in the park is not a recent development and easily preceding the advent of the internal combustion engine.

On the subject of time lines I found this comment to be quite interesting:

In all cases, it must be noted that, although initially the distance of retreat was small, substantial thinning—and therefore appreciable volume loss—likely took place. This
preceded the eventual retreat of termini. From 1910 onward, recession rates increased (Dyson, 1948; Johnson, 1980). This corresponded to a period of increased scientific interest in Glacier National Park glaciers, and many of the early investigators bore witness to dramatic instances of glacier recession. Following the middle 1940’s, recession rates decreased, and glaciers became increasingly confined within cirque margins

So it a pretty well established fact that the Glaciers in Glacier National Park have been receding for over 150 years and not some cataclysmic current event except in the minds of the ALGORES of the world. Also note the timeline of this recession "Following the middle 1940’s, recession rates decreased. " If increased global temperatures as the result of AGW is the reason for the recession, why then has recession decresased at the point in time when man's contribution to increased atmospheric CO2 most dramatically increased?

We will ignore this and get back to the original question,how old are the glaciers in Glacier National Park? (My emphasis)

Because of the apparently long and relatively stable climatic interval preceding the Little Ice Age, it is believed that most of the glacier ice remaining in Glacier National Park was formed during the Little Ice Age and is not a relic from the Pleistocene Epoch...

Interesting isn't it that they refer to the time prior to the formation of glaciers in the park as "relatively stable climatic interval " or as Reid Bryson might have said "back when it was normal."

Further we learn

The Little Ice Age comprised a several-hundred-year-long cool period (about 1400 to about 1850 in North America), during which Glacier National Park glaciers formed and expanded

So it seems that perhaps our ranger may be off a bit in his information. According to this paper the glaciers in the park are a product of the Little Ice Age. If this is indeed  true and I have little reason to question the authors, they being scientist and all, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 the glaciers in Glacier National Park were just babies if they were there at all.

So for all the hysteria over melting glaciers in Glacier National Park, the facts seems to be that they are a product of an unstable and hostile period of "climate change" which disrupted the normal optimum which we ought to enjoy while we have it.

So as I have previously observed:

If for example as was proven before the AGW nonsense took hold of science, the Medieval Warming Period was warmer than today, as was accepted until these guys got their hands and agenda on the data and the process, why did we not have runaway warming? Where was the enhanced greenhouse effect while they were making wine in England?

Or when there were no glaciers in Glacier National Park.

Kids 'Scared Straight' to Climate Activism

FROM-American Thinker

By Anthony J. Sadar and JoAnn Truchan

Teenagers, like many adults, are not too old to believe in fairy tales. But, youngsters typically have much more time and energy to devote to acting on their fantasies, like the one showcasing a global-warming goblin.

For example, from May 7 through May 14, kids the world over were to tramp in the "iMatter March" to convince adults that the most pressing global issues are not bloody terrorist attacks, abject poverty, tyrannical socialism, or even kooky environmentalism, but rather the planet's real peril comes from climate change.

The week before the marches, some of the participants were plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in federal court against EPA chief Lisa Jackson, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and others. The kids claimed they have a profound interest in "ensuring our climate remains stable enough to ensure their right to a livable future." Their support and talking points come from high-powered climate prognosticator James Hansen, whose sincerity and ability to convince is not in doubt. Additional support and encouragement for the youth is coming from numerous progressive organizations who have become exasperated with discerning adults.

Most adults (this excludes heavily-financed global-warming gurus and their minions) have come to realize that one of the solid truths in life is that no one knows the future. And, if someone claims to know that the Rapture will occur on May 21st, or the earth will end on December 12, 2012, or the globe will be intolerably warmer in 2050, they're usually deluded, arrogant, or both.

Well-grounded adults understand that the future is not fixed, or many simply lack the interest to care. Adults, after all, have adult responsibilities.

So, if the climate scare-mongers can't frighten the adults, the next logical step is to heap angst on their children who then frighten (or better, pester) the adults into action.

Oscar Wilde once said, "In America, the young are always ready to give those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience." What was true in 1887 is still true today, as those with limited or non-existent adult responsibilities can find the time to take up causes. However, there is a reason why 13-year-olds are not allowed to drive, purchase alcohol, vote, or hold elected office -- they simply lack the experience to do so intelligently and with maturity....

Read article here

Top Green Admits: “We Are Lost!

FROM-The American Interest

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD

George Monbiot of the left-leaning British newspaper The Guardian has a must-read column in which he admits that because of a whole series of intellectual mistakes, the global green movement’s policy prescriptions are hopelessly flawed.

Read the whole piece for a thoughtful and brutally clear expose of the intellectual bankruptcy of the green movement from one of the smartest people in it. This is what I’ve been getting at for more than a year here: regardless of what is happening to Planet Earth, the green movement does not have coherent and workable solutions.

Greens like to have it both ways. They warn darkly about “peak oil” and global resource shortages that will destroy our industrial economy in its tracks — but also warn that runaway economic growth will destroy the planet through the uncontrolled effects of mass industrial productions. Both doomsday scenarios cannot be true; one cannot simultaneously die of both starvation and gluttony.

Monbiot gets it, and furthermore concedes one of the main arguments of the anti-green case. The ‘problem’ is not a shortage of carbon rich non-renewable futures. The problem is the abundance of these fuels. We are not running out of hydrocarbons; shale natural gas, tar sands and coal offer enormous reserves that can cover our needs for the foreseeable future. We have an abundance of fossil fuel. Moreover, it seems likely that for a very long time to come, fossil fuels will be substantially cheaper and more abundant that expensive renewables. (One should also note that these new fuel sources are found in places like Canada and the United States rather than Saudi Arabia and Iran.)

More, Monbiot also acknowledges the contradictory and inconsistent nature of the green solutions. He acknowledges that there is no prospect for democratic politics to impose the draconian limits on consumption and economic activity that green dogma requires. Every ‘solution’ the greens have come up with has a fatal flaw of some kind; none of it works, none of it makes any sense. As Monbiot concludes,

“All of us in the environment movement, in other words – whether we propose accommodation, radical downsizing or collapse – are lost. None of us yet has a convincing account of how humanity can get out of this mess. None of our chosen solutions break the atomising, planet-wrecking project. I hope that by laying out the problem I can encourage us to address it more logically, to abandon magical thinking and to recognise the contradictions we confront. But even that could be a tall order.”

This is an awesome admission of categorical intellectual, political and moral failure. For two decades greens have arrogated to themselves the authority of science and wrapped themselves in the arrogant certainty of self-righteous contempt for those who oppose them. They have equated skepticism about their incoherent and contradictory policy proposals with hatred of science and attacked their critics as the soulless hired shills of the oil companies, happy to ruin humanity for the sake of some corporate largesse.

Monbiot has worked his way through to a cogent description of the dead end the global green movement has reached, but he has not yet diagnosed the cause. In particular, he remains a staunch Malthusian. In his view, humanity is good at creating new ways to destroy itself, but not at finding solutions to the problems we create. Our ingenuity is magically good at finding new fossil fuels, but we have no skill whatsoever at managing the consequences of our discoveries. The unknown technologies of the future will create horrible new disasters, but they will offer no new ways to contain or manage the disruption they cause.

Economic growth is a cancer, in this view. Its bad effects are permanent and cumulative, its blessings are evanescent and ultimately trivial.

Malthusianism is a religious conviction that desperately needs to think of itself as a science. From Thomas Malthus and his mathematical certainties to Paul Ehrlich with his famine timetables and the Club of Rome with its ‘scientific’ predictions of resource exhaustion, Malthusians have made confident predictions about the future and claimed scientific authority for statements that turned out to be contemptibly silly. That is the brutal fate that often awaits people who can’t keep the boundaries between science and religion straight.

It is happening on a massive and humiliating scale to the world’s greens today. Monbiot’s sober assessment of the consequences is dead on; when the greens digest his analysis and go a bit further to ask how they got into this mess, they will be ready to join something that the world truly and urgently needs: a serious and grownup conversation about how to conserve the beauty and viability of our glorious home as the human race continues to develop the extraordinary intelligence Mother Nature has seen fit to give us.

"Stupid is as stupid does"

FROM-American Thinker

Dear Southern Storm Victims: You are dead because you didn't believe in global warming

Rick Moran

Liberal hate site Think Progress ("When you Think Progress - think stupid") has a jaw dropping blog post that is beyond "I told ya so" with regards to the dubious connection between climate change and severe weather. The headline says it all:

Storms Kill Over 250 Americans In States Represented By Climate Pollution Deniers

Note the slavish devotion to the cockamamie administration idea that CO2 is pollution. Someone should tell them that licking the boots of politicians in cases where even the administration knows they themselves are full of bull only makes the boot lickers look pathetic.

But what is up with that headline?

"Given that global warming is unequivocal," climate scientist Kevin Trenberth cautioned the American Meteorological Society in January of this year, "the null hypothesis should be that all weather events are affected by global warming rather than the inane statements along the lines of ‘of course we cannot attribute any particular weather event to global warming.'"
The congressional delegations of these states - Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky - overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous. They are deliberately ignoring the warnings from scientists.

Kevin Trenberth is one of the lead authors of the UN IPCC Reports which failed to incorporate skeptical analysis from responsible opponents and predicted such events as Himalayan glaciers melting based on unproved research. It is a flawed document that climate change religionists treat as their Bible.

The problem with Trenberth's statement is that it is laughably false. If we are to take the position that all weather events are the result of global warming, then how about non-events? How about a less than predicted number of hurricanes as we had last year? If bad hurricane season prove global warming, then few hurricanes must prove it's a crock.

Neither is true. Trenberth knows better but he also knows where his bread is buttered; grants and position due to his unwavering support for warming and vicious attacks against critics. Imagine him coming out tomorrow in opposition to the IPCC. How long do you think he'd have a job?

Scientists who have so much vested in the global warming industry are as suspect as those who receive grants from industry. They are both shilling for a master other than scientific truth.
Think Progress exhibits the empathy of a marmoset. To try and blame the victims of the storm for their own deaths because they didn't "believe" in global warming (scientists - real ones - neither "believe" or "deny" warming. They examine the evidence and either agree or disagree with the hypothesis) and had no "faith" that charlatans pushing this theory for their own nefarious agenda were correct.

Next time a storm kills someone from a blue state, I'll be eager to see what Think Progress has to say about that.

More Boiling Fish

Recently we had the problem with poached salmon in Canada and now we have more fish frying going on "Down Under"

I first came across the tragedy in this article from News Mail

Global warming affecting fish

After reading the article which you are more than welcome to read, it is not very long, I was somewhat perplexed since there were a couple of statements which raised some questions in my skeptical mind about the study.

First an excerpt to show that obviously the fish are in dire straits:

The findings of a study published in Nature Climate Change indicate negative effects on the growth of a long-lived south-east Australian and New Zealand inshore species, banded morwong. (Cheilodactylus spectabilis).

The bony structures fish use for orientation and detection of movement – called otoliths – have annual growth rings which were measured for changes.

But after reading the article I was reminded that as usual, things are not quite as dire or clear cut as originally portrayed:

“We are looking at whether climate change is beginning to push fish past their physiological limits.  

“By examining growth across a range that species inhabit, we found evidence of both slowing growth and increased physiological stress as higher temperatures impose a higher metabolic cost on fish at the warm edge of the range."

This seemed a bit contradictory to me. Either they are beginning to study if there is an effect, or they have evidence that there is an effect on the fish. The most likely explanation is that they have some preliminary results and wanting to be the "first" to find a connection between global warming and fish they released a study without, as yet, definitive proof. This was one of the reasons I wanted to look and see if I could find out more, The other reason was this:

  This rapid warming, in southern hemisphere oceans, is due to globally increasing sea-surface temperatures and local effects caused by southward extension of the East Australian Current.

This really caught my attention. I wondered just how much of this ocean warming was attributed to "global warming" and how much was due to local effects, or if they even tried to quantify it.

So I went on a Google journey hoping I could find the actual study. As yet I have not found it but I did find some interesting takes on the study. Here we have basically the same story but a more ominous headline:

Ocean Warming Detrimental to Inshore Fish Species

So we go from global warming affecting the banded morwong to it being detrimental. We find that the "detrimental" affect is based on :

“Preliminary field and laboratory studies suggested that this decline in growth may be related to temperature induced physiological stress, resulting in increased oxygen consumption and reduced ability to sustain swimming activity,” 

So as I suspected these stories and their headlines are based solely on “Preliminary field and laboratory studies " so nothing has really been proven has it? In fact we still do not know if the poor fish ares suffering from man made boiling oceans or "local effects"

As we all know on slimmer threads than this can whole species be decimated by our objective scientific community and their media parasites. Think they are at the least jumping the gun? How about this:

Warmer waters fatal for some fish

Wow we went from detrimental to fatal! At least this article is based on a more complete interview with one of the scientist. But consider this exchange between the environmental reporter and the same objective scientist who also said “Preliminary field and laboratory studies suggested that this decline in growth may be related to temperature induced physiological stress....”


Please note the lack of actual fatalities in the exchange below as well as obvious pre-determination in  the scientists answers.

SARAH CLARKE: At first it looked promising, even positive. As temperatures rose, so too did the size of the fish 

But when it got too hot, scientists found the news wasn't so good. 

Growth performance began to suffer, the fish became stressed, they needed more oxygen, they couldn't swim as fast and climate change was beginning to push them past their physiological limits. 

Here's Ron Thresher from the CSIRO again 

RON THRESHER: And what it's telling us is that climate change has now reached a point where, as things continue to warm up, we're passing the point where warm water is good for fish. Now warm water is becoming hot water and it's becoming bad for the fish and this is the first real indication, certainly in our part of the world, that climate change is having an adverse impact on the physiology and probable reproduction and everything else of these fish. 

SARAH CLARKE: And your concern is obviously that this may eventually lead to death? 

RON THRESHER: Well, if you warm things up too much, if you put a gold fish in a pot on top of your stove sooner or later it's going to get warm enough that the fish will die. It's a very bad sign for what this thing is going to do. 

I know, I know, people actually do take these people seriously. People actually believe that scientist like Ron Thresher represent objective unbiased scientific inquiry. As sad as this is, perhaps the saddest point to be made is that these scientist actually believe that man's minute contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere over the past sixty years has warmed the Earth's waters enough to boil fish both in the rivers of Canada and the seas off of Australia, Consider how absurd all this is, but don't miss this article on the banded morwong from Science Alert


Warming ocean killing fish

But will they keep the pubs open ?

From the we report you decide file

"We cannot know precisely how the disaster will unfold, but the southern megacities in Africa, the sub-continental states and Asia will be the first to go under, taking with them a substantial proportion of our species,"

No hyperbole here.

FROM-Irish Independent

Ireland will be a 'lifeboat' for people fleeing climate chaos

By Treacy Hogan Environment Correspondent


IT MIGHT sound like the script for a terrifying Hollywood end-of-the-world blockbuster.

Ireland will act like a lifeboat for people fleeing drought, rising seas and destructive weather in decades to come, a leading climate change expert has warned.

NUI Maynooth professor Brendan Gleeson predicted that world temperatures would rise by three or four degrees, leaving only a few currently cool 'lifeboat' regions habitable.

In a speech last night he said Ireland, one of his 'lifeboats', could not refuse to engage with the climate crisis as crippled countries would see us as a safe haven.

Prof Gleeson, one of the world's leading urban oceanographers, also forecast that his native Australia may become a place to leave rather than a destination for Irish migrants.

"Australia, the desiccated continent, is already witness to record droughts, soaring average temperatures and plummeting catchments for the cities," he said.

"It may be a place to leave, not arrive, a place to be childless, not fertile -- a withering society."

The professor said that unlike Australia, Ireland was on his "lifeboat register".

"For this reason alone Ireland must consider and cannot refuse to engage the climate crisis."

He added that recent weather and seismic and nuclear events were a window into the future.

Dangers

"Cities, including in Ireland, can be reconceived as escape rafts during the painful journey to a new climate regime," he said.

Prof Gleeson, who joined NUI Maynooth from Griffith University, Australia, was speaking at Maynooth on the dangers of climate change.

In 'An Urban World at Risk', the first in a series of professorial lectures at the university, the oceanographer outlined what he called "the climate emergency".

"We cannot know precisely how the disaster will unfold, but the southern megacities in Africa, the sub-continental states and Asia will be the first to go under, taking with them a substantial proportion of our species," he said.

"This will generate enormous migratory shifts, as displaced and stressed populations flee the sea level rise and wildly destructive weather.

"Where are the lifeboats? They are surely the cities, the few cities, in which most of our population resides.

"This applies to Ireland. We might hope to make them resilient and worthwhile, even for a scarifying climate.

"Of all the threats that have faced capitalist modernity in the past 400 years, none has possessed the lethal potency of climate change."

The scientist predicted: "The next world will be very much hotter and drier -- but with whirling under- and counter-currents.

"It will be much less conducive to human existence.

"It will be a world dominated by a global climate shift that we cannot yet describe fully, but which is inevitable and approaching fast."

- Treacy Hogan Environment Correspondent

WARNING!! Your underwear purchase may kill polar bears.!

In a post the other day about loblolly pines I half jokingly commented on the idea of CO2 labeling on lumber:

As a carpenter I often consider the CO2 content in my lumber as I build, I assume soon Home Depot will be required to label CO2 content on their lumber so as to take advantage of some government subsidy.

Of course I should have known that both my jest and the scope of my idea was too narrow for the current paranoia that grips academia when it comes to carbon dioxide. I give you an article today from the UPI

Carbon labels for consumer products urged

NASHVILLE, March 29 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say a global carbon-labeling scheme for consumer products should be initiated as a sorely needed measure to mitigate climate change.

Writing this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, Michael Vandenbergh of Vanderbilt University and Thomas Dietz of Michigan State University say such a scheme could influence consumers to choose low-carbon products.

It could also improve the energy efficiency of firms, which would be concerned about brand reputation even if consumers only demonstrate limited willingness to pay for lower-carbon goods, they say.

While several carbon label efforts exist, no one scheme that accurately informs consumers and can be adopted cross-culturally and across products is in place to provide clear and effective labels.

Although labels by themselves will not solve the climate problem, the researchers say, the size of the consumer footprint suggests small changes in consumer purchasing behavior could bring significant emissions reductions.

Even more frightening is this is being seriously presented by a Professor of Sociology and Environmental Science and Policy (a very disturbing title in my opinion) and an an even more disturbingly credentialed Professor of Law , Tarkington Chair in Teaching Excellence Director, Environmental Law Program Director, Climate Change Research Network. One shudders to think of what these two gentleman brainwash teach our children, or how they can possibly use it in their future lives.

Besides the absolute worthlessness of the proposal, what are the chances that either of these two esteemed academics have a clue as to the terrible regulatory and economic burden this would place on global industry. Not to mention the government bureaucracies which would need to be established to create, monitor and enforce it. All of which would be passed onto the consumer and taxpayers.

How narrow and and closed minded has this entire exercise in elitist academic gobbledygook thinking gone when obviously intelligent people would consider such destructive policies as somehow warranted. This is what happens when people whose sole purpose in life is to sit around and think of theoretical schemes and have virtually no clue about the real world in which they live.


Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools.

Back to 1997

Or Riding the Titanic
 (also from 1997)

Pollsters and pundits will tell you that the most important criteria in evaluating a candidate, policy, issue etc is not so much the poll numbers themselves but the intensity level behind the polls. This is why as you get closer to an election pollsters, if they do not already, switch from general public polling to "likely" voter polling. The voters after all are the ones who actually determine the election, regardless of the popularity contest amongst the public.

The same holds true in regards to issues and policies, the reason that Obamacare is in so much political trouble is that more people strongly oppose it than strongly support it, The intensity level is with those who want to repeal it. The intensity for or against something or someone is what generally determines the outcome.

Much is being made of today's Gallup poll which shows global warming at the bottom of the list of environmental issues with the American public.

Although this is important, it is nothing new, global warming has been at or near the bottom of that polling question since it has been asked.In fact in today's write up of the poll they compare it to a similar poll taken in 2001

As you can see global warming was at the bottom back then too, it usually is. Although concern has dropped considerably since 2001, concern for all of the environmental issues has dropped compared to 2001, In my opinion the drop in concern over the loss of tropical rain forests is actually more troubling than any benefit in the drop in concern over global warming. But that is for another day.

The true metric of how far global warming has fallen as an issue is the "intensity" of how people look at it as a problem. In the methodology link to the poll they have a chart which shows what percentage of people worry about the various issues "a great deal", their intensity. Here is a summary;


 2011 Mar 3-6 (sorted by “a great deal”)   
                
Pollution of drinking water     51 %  
Contamination of soil and water by toxic waste     48 %      
Pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs     46 %     
Maintenance of the nation’s supply of fresh water for household needs     46 % 
Air pollution     36 %        
Extinction of plant and animal species     34 %   
The loss of tropical rain forests     34  %    
Urban sprawl and loss of open spaces     27  %    
Global warming     25 %    

As you can see not only is global warming at the bottom of the list overall, it is at the bottom of the list as far as the intensity of peoples concern about it. So how do we judge this most recent poll compared to the past intensity of concern about global warming.

Last year Gallup posted a graph reflecting the "great deal" of concern figures on the issues;

As you can see in 2010 it had dropped to 28% from the 33% it had held in 2009. So in two years global warming has fallen from being of great concern for one third the public to being of great concern for only one quarter of the public.

How does this compare historically? Well for some reason Gallup is making us do a bit of digging to compare apples to apples but we have done so. Perhaps in the future they will simply post the graph below updated to reflect their polls since 2008, but I can not find it on their web site. Here is the historical record of Gallup's polling on the intensity level regarding global warming through 2008: 

As you can see since its high in 2007 of 41% can you say An Inconvenient Truth, Gallup did, the public's  intensity about global warming has dropped from 41% to 37% to 33% to 28% and is now at 25% just slightly above the historical 1997 low of 24% which occurred just prior to the pre super El Nino year of 1998.

As you can see not only are the global warming alarmist losing the war on science, they are losing the only real thing they had going for them, they are losing the ability to scare the public.

More Climate Disruption Drivel

FROM-American Thinker

By Anthony J. Sadar and Stanley J. Penkala


It certainly didn't take long for someone, a British academic this time, to couple the tragedy in Japan to the specter of future tsunamis caused by global warming. In 2004, Michael Crichton's State of Fear had the plot line of an extreme environmental group planning to trigger a tsunami using a massive underwater explosion, with the intention of blaming it on man-made climate disruption. Sadly, Japan's tsunami is now being used to stoke the dying embers of climate-change mania.

Even before nature's fury ravaged Japan, meteorological mischief was contemplated to awaken the world's interest in climate change. This effort would take the form of coordinated messages using political rhetoric in the media to blame climate change on the industrialized nations of the world.

But, after studying the climate-change science "business" for the past thirty years, many of us old-timers see the situation as clear and settled as ever: The global climate changes and humans play a negligible role in that change.

The revelations of Climategate and ten years of stagnant global temperatures have produced a decline of public belief in human-induced climate collapse. But, rather than strengthening the foundations of climate science by increasing transparency in data analysis, releasing raw data for third party evaluation, and allowing their hypotheses to be debated in the literature, government-funded scientists instead have decided it's best to just change their method of messaging. The latest tactic is for these man-made global-warming faithful to sharpen their communication skills and tighten their influence on the editorial boards of the environmental journals of record. The intent is to deflect or bury challenges to their climate-catastrophe canon, not defend their hypotheses.

Professional communicators and PR experts are assisting with the propaganda, as was evident from activity at the December 2010 American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. In a special workshop, speaker after speaker advocated for a more successful war of words, rather than clarifying their application of scientific principles to the study of climate. In addition, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado hosted a seminar last month to help their climate scientists better understand critical communication issues. The speaker was the author of The Republican War on Science. And, the theme of the January 2011 annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society was "Communicating Weather and Climate," which pushed some of the same polished-prose tactics as the AGU gathering.

But, authentic unvarnished Truth in Science doesn't need political claptrap or Shinola to convey its message. Integrity in Science requires clearly stated hypotheses, reproducible data and results, and robust statistical interpretations of that information to test each. Science doesn't condone its practitioners in "bending the data" to champion personal beliefs or causes. Calling in the PR flacks is fine when you're trying to sell something using glitz and fast talk, but we hoped that, of all things, science wouldn't be up for sale.

In the aftermath of weak decisions and unenforceable agreements at Cancun and Copenhagen, radical environmentalists with their spin doctors in tow are redoubling their efforts to sell the idea of anthropogenic emissions as the only significant agent of climate disruption. Any competing mechanisms that do not buy into that conclusion will simply be dismissed as non-science.

To help assure that outcomes from future climate summits tilt the way of "consensus opinion," a UN-type group called the InterAcademy Panel on International Issues (IAP) has stepped up efforts to hawk their brand of science. The IAP, founded in 1993 in New Delhi, is a global network of the national science academies. According to IAP's website, their primary goal is "to help member academies work together to advise citizens and public officials on the scientific aspects of critical global issues." The IAP has more than 100 members, in countries ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. IAP issues statements to the world on such topics as population growth, human reproductive cloning, science education, science and the media, bio-security, evolution, ocean acidification, and of course climate change.

Input from a variety of perspectives is valuable to science. However, for the academics of the IAP to speak as the world's authority on science limits other legitimate input. Non-member academies and societies, industry scientists and engineers, and even private consultants, all have their own valuable insights into addressing global challenges. Yet, the IAP strives to exert undue influence on international politics by advancing their version of "facts" (read: certainty of anthropogenic climate disruption) as opposed to "irrational opinion" (read: doubts about the significance of human impacts). Such hubris ultimately does not serve society, or science, well.

Nature is the ultimate teacher. Humility and a willingness to go where the data leads are fundamental virtues for an ethical scientist. Arrogance is especially dangerous in the world of science, as it can blind a researcher to the possibility that their favored hypothesis is inconsistent with reality. Unfortunately, humility seems to be an unfamiliar, even unwanted, trait among certain climate scientists. In the "science is settled" group, humility is a sign of weakness, a loss of respect among peers and popularity in the press, and can result in the financial loss of beaucoup bucks in government funding.

So it's not surprising that those who have broken ranks from the "blame humans" crowd have been atmospheric scientists and professors of a certain stature. They include, for instance, physicist Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and meteorology professor Dr. Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These are scientists who have either retired, who do not rely on government coffers for their research, or who have just been gutsy to pursue an honest quest for knowledge.

Science is never "settled." It is a never-ending journey of investigation, with hypotheses proposed, and data gathered and analyzed to prove or disprove them. Climate investigations are particularly complex, because the scope of the test platform is literally global. The assertion by anyone or any group, even in the wake of a terrific natural disaster, that the cause of climate disruption is clearly settled, and due primarily to human action, is and should be characterized as pure political drivel.

Anthony J. Sadar is a Certified Consulting Meteorologist and primary author of Environmental Risk Communication: Principles and Practices for Industry (CRC Press/Lewis Publishers 2000). Stanley J. Penkala, Ph.D., is a chemical engineer and President of Air Science Consultants, Inc.

CYBER WAG Eating Maple Bars!

It has come to this! When CYBER WAG (computer generated Wild Ass Guess) went after the Polar Bears, or Tweety Bird, or even when CYBER WAG brought out the stochastic weather generator to kill crops in California I held out hope that these modelers of mayhem could be stopped.

Perhaps I have naively assumed reasonable scientist would step forward and unplug these....these...these fantasy world demons of darkness and destruction who lurk amongst us. These scientific panderers of flim flammery who appear to be normal  human beings, but who in fact live in a Matrix world of computer games and are hell bent on pulling the few sane amongst us into their apocalyptic world of never ending crisis and disaster. Not to be confused with the MSM.

Since childhood I have loved these simple but delicious delicacies, perhaps even more, yes indeed even more, than the salmon which the CYBER WAG is attempting to devour, but now CYBER WAG has set it's covetous eyes upon my Maple Bars.

Snuck away in the pages of a local rag newspaper we find this:

Sugar maples and climate change

Michael J. Caduto

Unlike the Ents in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, real trees can’t walk away from danger or fight their own battles. When climate becomes inhospitable, forests can only shift ranges over long periods of time. This isn’t a problem when natural climate change occurs slowly. At the end of the recent post-glacial period, it took 4,300 years for the ice sheet to melt back from Middletown, Conn., to St. Johnsbury -- averaging 245 feet a year. Forest communities in front of the glacier gradually migrated northward in its wake.

Starting about 9,000 years ago and stretching for the next 4,000 to 5,000 years, the average temperature in the New England area became nearly 4°F warmer than it is today, and the climate was similar to modern-day Virginia. Hemlock and white pine grew 1,300 feet higher up the mountain slopes. Evidence now shows that the engines of the industrial age are taking today’s climate forward, into the past. U.S. Climatological Network Data reveals that the mean annual temperature has increased by 3.8 degrees F since 1835, but 70 percent of this rise in temperature has occurred since 1970.

 Being the trusting soul that I am I will allow that the facts presented thus far are correct, although it is a bit disconcerting being as they are intertwined with the Ents from the fantasy world of JRR Tolkien. Perhaps that is appropriate both from  the fantasy aspect and that Lord Of The Rings was a metaphor for the struggle against oppressive centralized statism.

Please do remember however that according to this article temperatures in New England have already increased 3.8 degrees F since 1835, but also according to this article that  temperatures were 4 degrees F warmer than today, just 4 to 5 thousand years ago. This means that during the time that the Pharaoh's of Egypt were building the pyramids, Stonehenge was built, the calender was invented by the Mesopotamians, glass was invented, the first library was built, the first civilization in India was established, paper was invented, and a host of other accomplishments occurred , temperature were considerably warmer than today. If in fact the temperatures were that much warmer 4 thousand years ago, how are today's temperatures unprecedented? And more importantly how is it we did not tip the all important tipping point?


Onto the devouring of my maple bars:

Barry Rock, Professor of Natural Resources at the University of New Hampshire in Durham predicts that, based on two climate models in a New England regional climate assessment study, "Within the next 100 years, Boston could have a climate similar to either Richmond, Virginia, or Atlanta, Georgia." These computer models project that the average regional temperature will rise from between 6 degrees and 10 degrees over the next century.

 Here we see the introduction of CYBER WAG into the article "based on two climate models" in a New England regional climate assessment study." You also see how these people are constantly putting themselves in a pickle.

Let's do the math.

* In 1835 it was 3.8 deg F colder than today

* From 2000-3000 BC it was 4 deg F warmer than today.

* This means that in 1835 it was 7.8 deg F colder than when the Egyptians built the pyramids. Quite a difference isn't it? So much for the sensitivity of our eco-systems not to mention mankind to drastic climate change

Back to the maple bars, yum. In order to wipe out this delicacy, temperatures must be unprecedented in the future, they've already admitted that they are not now. So our CYBER WAG industrial Complex fires up the computer models and decides that it will be more than 4 degrees F warmer by 2100 than it is now. Why? Perhaps this may explain:

Figure 2. Natural range of sugar maple

You will note that neither Richmond Virginia or Atlanta Georgia are know for their sugar maples. But you will also notice that climates far and wide are capable of nurturing the goddess of the golden nectar. From the same Cornell paper:

Climate
Average temperatures within the geographic range of sugar maple have average January temperatures from 0 to 50° F and average July temperatures from 60 to 80° F. Maximum temperatures in the summer months range from 90 to 100° F, while winter minima vary from -40 to +20° F. Annual precipitation throughout the geographical range averages 20 to 50 inches of rain, plus from 1 to 150 inches of snow. In unusually wet years in the southern reaches of this broad range total annual rain in excess of 80 inches has been recorded.

The first killing frost usually occurs between September 1 and November 10 and the last from March 20 to June 15, depending on latitude and elevation. Thus average growing seasons are from 80 to 260 days.

It is also important for the narrative that drastic change in temperatures  be swift as Dr Rock explains:

If the models prove accurate, Rock says that, "In 100 years, New England’s cooler regions will no longer promote the growth of sugar maples, which are well adapted to the region’s current climate. This climate will support species that now grow to the south and in lower elevations, especially oaks and southern pines. On average, trees can only move their range from 10 to 25 kilometers over a 100-year period, and the current rate of climate change will not allow enough time for trees to ‘migrate’ northward in a smooth transition."

Always the big "If the models prove accurate", yes indeedy that really is the question of our times isn't it?

In order for the CYBER WAG to have its way with the trees, the warming must be fast and furious. Interesting that they are not only predicting  that this heat monster will wipe out our sweet maple in the next 100 years, but that we will be left with a barren wasteland, "This [new] climate will support species that now grow to the south and in lower elevations, especially oaks and southern pines.... But "... the current rate of climate change will not allow enough time for trees to ‘migrate’ northward in a smooth transition."

It's a CBER WAG twofer! A double apocalypse with one fell swoop, or more accurately a well placed entry on the keyboard. I guess this also means we will be growing oranges in Nashville soon?


Now it's time for the caveats. You know where the scientist and their lackeys in the media scare the bejezzuz out of everyone then say "well we did say this was just a possibility, I don't know why people take us so seriously"

Ultimately, under this scenario, the optimal range for sugar maples in New England could retreat up the high mountain slopes and to northern Maine. (Sugar maple’s current range extends as far south as Virginia and Tennessee, though only in the higher mountains.) Of the five computer models created by the U.S. Forest Service to predict the geographic shift in the ranges of forest species, only one foretells that global warming will cause sugar maples to disappear completely from parts of New England. Even if the climate warms considerably, our forests will still support the growth of some sugar maples, especially in higher terrains.

Although the range of sugar maples changes slowly, the flow of sap in a sugarbush is dynamic and depends on fine temperature variations that occur daily throughout late winter and early spring. Sap flows best when nighttime temperatures drop into the mid-20s and when daytime highs reach around 38-40 degrees.

From here the effects of climate change are harder to predict. If the daily cycling between freeze and thaw occurs less frequently, sugaring will suffer, as it will if the season is shortened by several weeks. But if sugaring as we now know it is simply shifted earlier into the year, the effect could be less pronounced. Making predictions about sugaring season has always been an uncertain but popular pastime, even before the dawn of climate change.

Ah yes the scenario gambit. Take the worst possible scenario, based upon computer projections whose output was derived from input entered by people who make a living by keeping everyone else on edge over the destruction of the planet. Then going to journalist 
who make their living  by keeping everyone else on edge over the destruction of the planet, or any other crisis for that matter. This sounds like a perfectly common sense way for science and the dissemination of science to be conducted, don't you think?

But they can not quite let it go. They know they must conclude with the dire threats they have unleashed upon humanity. So that there may be no doubt that temperatures returning to where they were at the cradle of human civilization is a bad thing.

The maple sugar industry can compensate somewhat for the uncertainties of the shifting climate. According to Dr. Timothy Perkins, director of the University of Vermont’s Proctor Maple Research Center, "The best equipment in the sugar house isn’t going to make you any more money. It’s how you manage the sugarbush that counts."

Producers need to tap their trees earlier, before the sap starts to flow, so they can gather the best quality sap of the season. Old tubing must be replaced with new, which is made of superior material and is more efficient. Getting rid of leaks in the system will help, as well as using a vacuum system for collecting sap. Collectively, these steps can help mitigate the problem.

No matter what steps are taken, the wheels have been set in motion. The question is: How far down the road will sugar maples have to travel before we put the brakes on climate change?

To view maps that predict shifts in the ranges of trees that will be brought on by global warming, visit www.fs.fed.us/ne/delaware/atlas/index.html.

Yes how far must the sugar maples travel?

Do you find it strange, or is it just me, that so called moderate scientist, you know those that are not "deniers" or "alarmist" do not see all the inconsistencies and hypocrisies in the scientific community when it comes to climate science? Here is one of literally hundreds of stories done to warn of the dire consequences of global warming which within the story itself states unequivocally that the very foundation of man made global warming "it is unprecedented!" states that it is not unprecedented at all.

It is not as if Mr Caduto made this all up out of thin air, he quotes scientist who one must assume have read the article in which they are quoted. If they thought that anything was inaccurate one would assume they would have corrected it or asked for a correction.

Do you see a mad rush to the cameras by these so called "moderate" scientist to correct or clarify the glaring inconsistencies constantly being foisted upon the general public? Does it not concern these scientist that if the very foundations on which the science of global warming is built is being shown to be a sham that the entire enterprise is probably a sham as well? Do they not care? Or as was written when temperatures were about 4 degrees F warmer than they are now.

"When I saw in the plunder a beautiful robe from Babylonia, two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent, with the silver underneath."

You can keep your shekels, just quit messing with my maple bars

The icy grip of the politics of fear

FROM-Spiked


The snow crisis of December 2010: what a striking snapshot of the chasm that separates the warming-obsessed elite from the rest of us.

Brendan O’Neill

You couldn’t have asked for a better snapshot of the chasm that divides today’s so-called expert classes from the mass of humanity than the snow crisis of Christmas 2010. They warn us endlessly about the warming of our planet; we struggle through knee-deep snow to visit loved ones. They host million-dollar conferences on how we’ll cope with our Mediterranean future; we sleep for days in airport lounges waiting for runways to be de-iced. They pester the authorities for more funding for global-warming research; we keep an eye on our elderly neighbours who don’t have enough cash to heat their homes.

This isn’t to say that the entire climate-change thesis is wrong. I’m not one of those people who believes snowfall necessarily disproves every claim made by warming-obsessed climatologists. Rather the snow crisis demonstrated, in high definition, the gap between the fear-fuelled thinking of the elite and the struggles of everyday people. It illuminated the million metaphorical miles that now separate the fantasy politics of our so-called betters from the concerns of the rest of us.

Not surprisingly, with snowstorms smothering Western Europe and the East Coast of America, many asked: ‘What happened to global warming?’ On the 20-hour bus-and-boat-and-train-and-car journey I took from London to Galway, surrounded by people forced to make a similar trek because their flights were also cancelled, there was much jocular banter along the lines of: ‘So this is the climate change we’ve been warned about…’ As people made new friends and arranged impromptu carpools for the final legs of their journeys, there was a palpable sense that the world we inhabit is not the same as that inhabited by greens.

That isn’t surprising when you consider that greens have been telling us for the past decade that snow will disappear from our lives. Literally. ‘Snow is starting to disappear from our lives’, reported the Independent in March 2000. It quoted an expert from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (of recent Climategate fame) who said ‘children just aren’t going to know what snow is’. In 2006, the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists said winters had become ‘warmer and less snowy’ thanks to global warming.

Other climate-change campaigners told us to prepare for Saharan weather. A book published as part of Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ jamboree in 2007 - The Global Warming Survival Handbook - said there would soon be ‘searing temperatures, killer storms, drought, plague and pestilence’. Award-winning green theorists told us to prepare for life on a ‘hotter planet’ in which ‘the traditional British winter [is] probably gone for good’. Newspapers provided us with a ‘hellish vision of life on a hotter planet’ where deserts would ‘reach into the heart of Europe’ and global warming would ‘reduce humanity to a few struggling groups of embattled survivors clinging to life near the poles’.

Dramatic stuff. And unadulterated nonsense. The thing that occupied people’s minds at the end of 2010 was not how to explain to their sweating children in the deserts of Hampshire why snow disappeared from our lives, but rather how to negotiate actual snow. Again, this isn’t to say that the snow proves there is no planetary warming at all: if it is mad to cite every change in the weather as proof that Earth is doomed, then it’s probably also unwise to dance around in the slushy white stuff in the belief that it proves that all environmental scientists are demented liars. But the world of difference between expert predictions (hot hell) and our real experiences (freezing nightmare) is a powerful symbol of the distance that now exists between the apocalypse-fantasising elites and the public.

What it really shows is the extent to which the politics of global warming is driven by an already existing culture of fear. It doesn’t matter what The Science (as greens always refer to it) does or doesn’t reveal: campaigners will still let their imaginations run riot, biblically fantasising about droughts and plagues, because theirs is a fundamentally moralistic outlook rather than a scientific one. It is their disdain for mankind’s planet-altering arrogance that fuels their global-warming fantasies - and they simply seek out The Science that best seems to back up their perverted thoughts. Those predictions of a snowless future, of a parched Earth, are better understood as elite moral porn rather than sedate risk analysis.

Indeed, The Global Warming Survival Handbook gave the game away when it encouraged people to see the future through ‘carefully crafted “what if?” stories’. Admitting that it is virtually impossible to predict our climatic future - ‘We can’t even forecast if it will rain next week’ - it advised us to host ‘scenario parties’ to ‘pool the imaginations and experiences of your friends’. It’s the closest we’ve had to an admission by the green movement that its warnings of future desert-spread are based on its own feverish teenage imaginings rather than on scientific forecasts. The snow crisis demonstrated this in Technicolor (well, in bright white): that the expert elites have taken leave of the realm of reality, preferring to seek meaning and momentum in the fantasy notion that they are fighting a hot apocalypse.

Anyone with a shred of self-respect who had predicted The End Of Snow would surely now admit that he was wrong. But no. Perhaps the most revealing thing about the snow crisis is that it was held up as evidence, not that the experts were mistaken, but that the public is stupid. Apparently it’s those who ask ‘Whatever happened to global warming?’, rather than those who predicted ‘no more traditional British winters’, who need to have their heads checked. Because what they don’t understand - ignoramuses that they are - is that heavy snow is also proof that our planet is getting hotter, and that industrialised society is to blame, just as surely as the absence of snow was proof of the same thing 10 years ago.

‘The snow outside is what global warming looks like’, said one headline, in a newspaper which 10 years ago said that the lack of snow outside is what global warming looks like. A commentator said that anyone who says ‘what happened to global warming?’ is an ‘idiot’ because nobody ever claimed that global warming would ‘make Britain hotter in the long run’. (Er, yes they did.) Apparently the reason people don’t understand the (new) global-warming-causes-snow thesis is because they are ‘simple, earthy creatures, governed by the senses’: ‘What we see and taste and feel overrides analysis. The cold has reason in a deathly grip.’

This reveals the stinging snobbery at the heart of the politics of global warming. Because what we have here is an updated version of the elitist idea that the better classes have access to a profound and complicated truth that the rest of us cannot grasp. Where we have merely sensory reactions (experience), they have reason and analysis (knowledge). Our critical reaction to the snow actually revealed our failure to understand The Truth, as unveiled by The Science, rather than revealing their wrongheadedness in predicting an ‘end to snow’. We are ‘simple’, they are ‘reasoned’. In 2011, we should take everything that is said by this new doom-mongering expert caste with a large pinch of salt – and then spread that salt on the snow which they claimed had disappeared from our lives.

African crops yield another catastrophe for the IPCC

One more alarming claim in the IPCC's 2007 report is disintegrating under closer examination,

says Christopher Booker

FROM-UK Telegraph

Ever more question marks have been raised in recent weeks over the reputations of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and of its chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri. But the latest example to emerge is arguably the most bizarre and scandalous of all. It centres on a very specific scare story which was included in the IPCC's 2007 report, although it was completely at odds with the scientific evidence – including that produced by the British expert in charge of the relevant section of the report. Even more tellingly, however, this particular claim has repeatedly been championed by Dr Pachauri himself.

Only last week Dr Pachauri was specifically denying that the appearance of this claim in two IPCC reports, including one of which he was the editor, was an error. Yet it has now come to light that the IPCC, ignoring the evidence of its own experts, deliberately published the claim for propaganda purposes.

One of the most widely quoted and most alarmist passages in the main 2007 report was a warning that, by 2020, global warming could reduce crop yields in some countries in Africa by 50 per cent. Dr Pachauri not only allowed this claim to be included in the short Synthesis Report, of which he was co-editor, but has publicly repeated it many times since.

The origin of this claim was a report written for a Canadian advocacy group by Ali Agoumi, a Moroccan academic who draws part of his current income from advising on how to make applications for "carbon credits". As his primary sources he cited reports for three North African governments. But none of these remotely supported what he wrote. The nearest any got to providing evidence for his claim was one for the Moroccan government, which said that in serious drought years, cereal yields might be reduced by 50 per cent. The report for the Algerian government, on the other hand, predicted that, on current projections, "agricultural production will more than double by 2020". Yet it was Agoumi's claim that climate change could cut yields by 50 per cent that was headlined in the IPCC's Working Group II report in 2007.

What made this even odder, however, was that the group's
co-chairman was a British agricultural expert, Dr Martin Parry, whose consultancy group, Martin Parry Associates, had been paid £75,000 by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) for two reports which had come to totally different conclusions. Specifically designed to inform the IPCC's 2007 report, these predicted that by 2020 any changes were likely to be insignificant. The worst case they could come up with was that by 2080 climate change might decrease crop yields by "up to 30 per cent".

British taxpayers poured out money for the section of the IPCC report for which Dr Parry was responsible. Defra paid £2.5 million through the Met Office, plus £330,000 for Dr Parry's salary as co-chairman, and a further £75,000 to his consultancy for two more reports on the impact of global warming on world food supplies. Yet when it came to the impact on Africa, all this peer-reviewed work – including further expert reports by Britain's Dr Mike Hulme and Dutch and German teams – was ignored in favour of a prediction from one Moroccan activist at odds with his own cited sources.

However, the story then got worse when Dr Pachauri himself came to edit and co-author the IPCC's Synthesis Report (for which the IPCC paid his Delhi-based Teri institute, out of the £400,000 allocated for its production). Not only did Pachauri's version again give prominence to Agoumi's 50 per cent figure, but he himself has repeated the claim on numerous occasions since, in articles, interviews and speeches –such as the one he gave to a climate summit in Potsdam last September, where he boasted he was speaking "in the voice of the world's scientific community".

Only last week, in an interview available on YouTube, Dr Pachauri was asked about errors in the IPCC's 2007 report and his own Synthesis Report, with specific reference to the loss of North African crops. His reply was that – aside from the prediction that the IPCC has now had to disown, that Himalayan glaciers could vanish by 2035 – the reports contained "no errors". Passages such as those on African crops were "not errors and we are absolutely certain that what we have said over that can be substantiated".

In the wake of all the other recent scandals, "Africa-gate" may be the most damaging of all, because of the involvement of Dr Pachauri himself. Not only is the reputation of the IPCC in tatters, but that of its chairman appears irreperably damaged. Yet the world's politicians cannot afford to see him resign because, if he goes, the whole sham edifice they have sworn by would come tumbling down.



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Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion: Global Warming Hysteria Bursting Like Other Bubbles

FROM-Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion: Global Warming Hysteria Bursting Like Other Bubbles


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Ready For Act Two? The Global Warming Drama Will Play On

FROM-Big Journalism

by Rich Trzupek

Global warming hysteria has often been compared to religion, and rightly so. But, there’s also many theatrical elements to be found, facets of the genre “green drama” that are so very familiar to those of us who have spent our professional careers watching environmental tragedies debut year after year.

Global warming is the blockbuster production of the environmental movement. It’s the Broadway hit that has maintained the rapt attention of environmental activists and policy-makers throughout the course of three decades. The players are familiar, having honed their roles after years of practice.

The directors naturally, and predictably, cast big, bad corporations as villains, with Exxon-Mobil supposedly skulking behind the scenes, passing out bribes to spineless skeptical scientists and obstructing the heroic politicians and activists trying to save innocent mother earth, before it’s too late. And what a victim to have! Sure, your average activist would be happy to be part of the local neighborhood production of: “Stop Building That New Factory Before It Kills All The Babies In Town (The Musical)”, but the Global Warming Show is truly big time. It’s not just the babies in town that are in danger, it’s everyone’s babies, everywhere. This production has innocent tribes living on sinking tropical islands and disappearing glaciers and forlorn polar bears. Global Warming; it’s the show that’s got it all!

Even better, the Global Warming Show is audience-participation theater. Google “green blog” and you’ll come up with 286 million hits. That’s more hits than you get with if you google “Obama,” “Bush,” “Iraq,” or – believe it or not – “free sex.” Saving an entire planet is pretty good for the ego, and probably makes for a nice entry on the resume to boot.

Plus, anyone can join the cast of this show. The lines are easy to learn. You just have to remember to preface every statement with the phrase “yeah, but…”

For example, if I say: every climate record makes it clear that we haven’t seen any global warming for the past twelve years, then you say:

Yeah, but: “As we pump more carbon-dioxide and other greenhouse gases into that blanket from cars, buildings, agriculture, forests and industry, more heat gets trapped.” (Thomas Friedman, NY Times, December 8, 2009)

So I say: That’s silly and no scientist, not even alarmists, believes that the kind of direct relationship that Friedman implies actually exists. Carbon dioxide is a relatively weak, insignificant greenhouse gas. The alarmist argument, such as it is, is that carbon dioxide kicks up more water vapor into the air and it’s water vapor, a strong greenhouse gas, that causes this whole warming thingy. But, we’ve got more and more evidence that the climate is self-regulating and that, if the “feedback” effect does indeed increase global temperatures at all, it’s barely a blip on the radar compared to the myriad of other, entirely natural, forces at work. To which you say:

Yeah, but: “Arctic sea ice is melting so fast most of it could be gone in 30 years.” (The Huffington Post, April 3, 2009).

So I say: Arctic ice has been on the rebound since 2007, even the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (which can hardly be described as a home for skeptics) admits that the Arctic ice sheet has grown by 26% in area since 2007. To which you say:

So I say: The polar bears started it.

No, seriously, what I really do is point out that the Alaska Department of Fish and Game reported that the global polar bear population is now between 20,000 and 25,000, up from 8,000 to 10,000 in the 1960s. They’re even becoming a nuisance in Canada.
And so the dialogue goes on, round and round, eventually more closely resembling Abbott and Costello than Hamlet and Horatio.

Climategate, Copenhagen and record cold winter weather mark intermission in the Global Warming Show, but there will certainly be more to come. The chorus, faced with this frigid winter, has already started chanting that “weather” is not “climate”, leading one to wonder how much of the former one has to experience before it becomes the latter. No matter. This production has always been much more about the message than the science.

Yet, if this is not the beginning of the end, it’s at least the end of the beginning. With public support for the proposition that human activity is causing climate change continuing to erode, the players know that they will have to do some rewriting of their in Act Two. Having uttered the warning that “the world will end as we know it unless we do something this year” for so many years, it’s hard to imagine that they can come up with anything that will resonate.

Still, we must remain vigilant, for there is much work to done before the curtain finally falls on this theater of the absurd. If we do – even though the show will surely go on – I suspect that the audience will continue to quietly drift away, until the actors are left playing before a sea of empty seats, their lines audible only to themselves.

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The Met Office gives us the warmist weather

The UK's official weather forecasters are determined that winters should be mild, in the face of the frozen facts

FROM-UK Telegraph

By Christopher Booker


Shortly after midnight on Friday morning, as 200,000 merrymakers were departing from the Thames after enjoying a spectacular fireworks show in sub-zero temperatures, flakes of snow began to fall on Whitehall. In light of the Met Office's prediction that this would be a "mild" winter, with temperatures above average, it seemed an apt way to start the New Year. But hasn't the time come for us to stop treating the serial inaccuracy of Met Office forecasts as just a joke and see it for what it is – a national scandal?

The reason the Met Office so persistently gets its seasonal forecasts wrong is that it has been hi-jacked from the role for which we pay it nearly £200 million a year, to become one of the world's major propaganda engines for the belief in man-made global warming. Over the past three years, it has become a laughing stock for forecasts which are invariably wrong in the same direction.

The year 2007, it predicted, would be "the warmest ever" – just before global tempratures plunged by more than the entire net warming of the 20th century, Three years running it predicted warmer than average winters – as large parts of the northern hemisphere endured record cold and snowfalls. Last year's "barbecue summer" was the third time running that predictions of a summer drier and warmer than average prefaced weeks of rain and cold. Last week the Met Office was again predicting that 2010 will be the "warmest year" on record, while Europe and the US look to be facing further weeks of intense cold.

What is not generally realised is that the UK Met Office has been, since 1990, at the very centre of the campaign to convince the world that it faces catastrophe through global warming. (Its website now proclaims it to be "the Met Office for Weather and Climate Change".) Its then-director, Dr John Houghton, was the single most influential figure in setting up the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the chief driver of climate alarmism. Its Hadley Centre for Climate Change, along with the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU), was put in charge of the most prestigious of the four official global temperature records. In line with IPCC theory, its computers were programmed to predict that, as CO2 levels rose, temperatures would inevitably follow. From 1990 to 2007, the Department of the Environment gave the Met Office no less than £146 million for its "climate predictions programme".

But in the past three years, with the Met Office chaired by Robert Napier, a former global warming activist and previously head of WWF UK, its pretensions have been exposed as never before. The "Climategate" leak of documents from the CRU, along with further revelations from Russian scientists, have shown the CRU/Met Office alliance systematically manipulating temperature data, past and present, to show the world growing warmer than the evidence justified. And those same computers used to predict temperatures 100 years ahead for the IPCC have also been used to produce those weather forecasts that prove so consistently wrong.

Scientific method has gone out of the window, to support a theory that looks more questionable than ever. The whole set-up – Met Office, Hadley Centre, the CRU, the IPCC – looks hopelessly compromised. It is a state of affairs so bizarre that it cries out for political intervention. Yet our politicians, from Gordon Brown and David Cameron down, are so in thrall to this new religion that they cannot see evidence staring them in the face – that the show has gone off the rails. How many more winters and summers will it take before sanity finally breaks in to put an end to this scandal?



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