Science Fiction: ‘Climate Vulnerability Monitor Report’ Released

This irresponsible report does not belong anywhere near policy planners.

FROM-PJ Media

On Wednesday, the 2012 “Climate Vulnerability Monitor – a Guide to the Cold Calculus of a Hot Planet“ was released to great fanfare in New York City. Conducted by the DARA group, a non-governmental organization based in Europe, and the Climate Vulnerable Forum, the 331-page report forecasts death and destruction on a scale normally reserved for science fiction.

Media covering the report printed extraordinary headlines. Per US News & World Report: “Report: 100 Million Could Die From Climate Change By 2030.”

The Manila Bulletin headlined an Agence France-Presse newswire article: “Climate Change Choking World Economy — Report.”

Businessweek announced: “Climate Change Reducing Global GDP by $1.2 Trillion.”

Only a few questioned whether the report made any sense. Calling it “a triumph for public relations,” statistician Bjorn Lomborg — director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center in Denmark — showed how the report’s handling of “climate change deaths, economic costs, and the costs of ‘action versus inaction’” is nonsense.

However, even Lomborg accepts the climate change science underlying the report. This is a serious mistake. Science misunderstandings continue to drive the climate scare, and lead to exaggerated reports such as the “Monitor.” While humans undoubtedly have some impact on climate, especially at regional levels due to the “urban heat island” effect, preventing climate from changing on a global basis is science fiction.


Read article here

First they came for the Alfalfa, and I said nothing

Then they came for the Brussels Sprouts.....

FROM-The Davis Enterprise

Supervisor and scientist question county’s climate change plan

Part of Yolo County’s strategy for slashing greenhouse gases is “dead wrong,” according to a UC Davis agriculture scientist.

On Wednesday afternoon, alfalfa expert Dan Putnam questioned the science underlying the county’s Climate Action Plan, which the Board of Supervisors passed at its Tuesday meeting on a 3-1 vote. Supervisor Don Saylor voted no. Supervisor Mike McGowan was not present.

Putnam, who works with farmers to implement academic research in the field, is skeptical of the county’s plan to cut emissions by 4,200 metric tons over the next decade by reducing the amount of fossil fuel-based fertilizer spread on alfalfa fields.

The entire plan outlines a way to cut emissions by nearly 6 percent between 2008 and 2020, the state deadline to roll back to 1990 levels. The county’s unincorporated area generated 613,651 metric tons of carbon dioxide that year. In 2008, the number increased 6.2 percent to nearly 652,000 metric tons.

Preparing the plan has cost the county $238,000 so far, said rural Supervisor Duane Chamberlain, and it’s “just a mass of errors.”

Alfalfa farmers, by and large, don’t use nitrogen fertilizer, Putnam said, and reducing what they do use by 25 percent would not result in a crop increase of 0.35 percent as the plan predicts.

“The alfalfa part of that is just wrong — dead wrong,” Putnam said. ”That’s just nonsense. I don’t agree with that at all.”

Moreover, Putnam said he usually needs to see much larger fluctuations in yield — at least around 3 percent — to attribute it to something other than margin of error.

“They’re using modeling to come to their conclusion,” he said of the plan’s architects. “There’s nothing wrong with using modeling … but the question is you have to be realistic about … the vagaries of nature.

“It’s one thing if the model spits out (a number), and it’s another if it’s something we can measure in the field. It’s another thing to ‘ground truth’ it.”

Chamberlain represents the county’s rural areas, farms alfalfa and lets Putnam conduct studies in his fields. He voted to approve the Climate Action Plan, but was the most vocal about his concerns over the underlying science.

Chamberlain said he talked to several UCD scientists, including Putnam, and they all agree carbon dioxide levels are going up. That, however, is about all they agree on. There’s no consensus about whether that’s a good or bad thing.

Board Chair Matt Rexroad said the “large global view” of climate change theory is irrelevant to the Yolo County Board of Supervisors.

“I’m not prepared to argue that today,” he said at Tuesday’s meeting. What is relevant is that the state Legislature and governor passed a law that requires local government, Yolo County included, to cut emissions by 2020.

“We’ve beat this thing to death,” he added.

Saylor, who ultimately voted against adopting the plan, said the science behind climate change is solid.

“It’s unambiguous that change is happening to our planet, and that human actions have led to many of these changes,” he said. “It’s important we begin to correct that.”

Chamberlain not only took issue with climate change theory on a global scale, he also questioned the specific data underpinning the plan’s strategy.

“We don’t have any real science that’s on the ground,” Chamberlain said of the plan. ”We’re still missing the true science. I’m not sure it’s even there. The guys that are doing the on-the-ground science say, ‘We’re not sure. We can’t answer this.’ I don’t want to make decisions based on erroneous assumptions.

“I’d like to see some science in here,” Chamberlain said of the plan. “The science is terrible. We don’t have any science. We have modeling. This is people who’ve drawn pictures.

“We don’t know this stuff,” Chamberlain said of data underlying the plan. “Someone’s made up all these numbers.”

HURRY SAVE THE CHILDREN !

That evil denial industry sure is warping peoples minds, better save the kids before its too late!


Maybe killing the the Polar Bears is not scary enough what can we do?

Climate change makes birds shrink in North America




H/T EU Referendum
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World Rejects Planetary Panic

FROM-American Thinker

By William R. Hawkins


President Barack Obama resorted to the same tactic at the United Nations last week that he has been using at home in the health care debate. He has escalated the rhetoric as political support has collapsed. At the UN Climate summit Sept. 22, President Obama opened his address by asserting, "we risk consigning future generations to an irreversible catastrophe" if the "threat" of climate change is not reversed by a massive reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from industry, transportation and energy generation.


The picture he painted of global floods and famines is highly contentious. The climate change debate is far from over, as much as the liberal-left in America, Europe and throughout the UN bureaucracy would like it to be. The high costs to be imposed on households and businesses to meet even the modest 17 percent reduction in emissions by 2020 set in the "cap and trade" bill passed by the U.S. House in June has sparked wide popular opposition. The House bill is stalled in the Senate. The Obama administration can, however, be expected to push hard for passage before the Copenhagen UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference in December that is to draw up a new international climate treaty.


But it is not the debate in the Western countries that will be decisive . It is the rejection of the global warming cult in the rest of the world that has doomed the luddites and saved humanity from a future of hopeless poverty. As the G20 replaces the G8 as the forum for international economic cooperation, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and other countries who oppose mandatory emission controls that would curtail economic growth gain power.


Chinese president Hu Jintao told the UN Climate summit Sept. 22:

"Climate change is an environment issue, but also, and more importantly, a development issue...We should and can only advance efforts to address climate change in the course of development and meet the challenge through common development."

This statement was downplayed in the Western press, but led stories in China. Placing economic growth ahead of saving the planet makes perfect sense if one does not believe the planet is in danger. President Hu did say that China would be looking at ways to improve efficiency, using more renewable and nuclear energy. Beijing will also reduce emissions per unit of output. But since Chinese output is expected to continue to grow at a rapid pace, total emissions will continue as to expand, as Chinese diplomats told the UNFCCC meeting in Bonn last June. As Hu said, "For developing countries, the top priority now is to grow the economy, eradicate poverty and improve livelihood."


Yet, Climate cult leader Al Gore praised China's efforts after Hu's speech, noting that Beijing has planted more trees in the last two years than the rest of the world combined. But China has also expanded manufacturing faster than anyone else. Planting trees is much easier and less disruptive than the "cap and trade" policy Gore and Obama favor in the United States; a measure that would slow the economy, increase poverty and lower living standards.


China's official news agency Xinhua called President Hu's remarks "sincere and inspiring" but they were not new. It must be understood that while Beijing wants to reduce urban pollution as a health hazard, improve efficiency for economic reasons, and reduce oil imports for security reasons, it does not believe in the global warming theory. Beijing will not sacrifice its national agenda to foreign mandates. It will, however, exploit climate change paranoia in the West to gain advantages for China.


Beijing's position, stated with great consistency in every forum, is that the United States and the other developed countries in Europe and Japan, should "lead" in fighting climate change by imposing crippling regulations on their economies while letting the developing world remain free to pursue its own growth objectives.


India supports the Chinese position. At the UN summit, New Delhi's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told the media that India is a "deal-maker" in the UNFCCC process. But what is the nature of the deal? "Developed countries must make substantial emissions cuts for 2020" he said, because the problem has been caused by them. In his view, the United States needs a "lifestyle change" to combat climate change. Rather than be subjected to mandatory limits under a new treaty, India's national plan will use "voluntary mitigation measures" by 2020, he said.


South Africa favors emission targets against a fixed base year for the developed world, but not for developing countries. It holds to the position taken at the Johannesburg summit in March that it will pursue environmental programs on its own, rather than accept an agenda that is forced upon it through a Copenhagen agreement. Brazil also opposes mandatory limits on economic activity. All it has offered is to reduce deforestation in the Amazon by half over the next ten years, while criticizing the United States for not doing enough to cut its emissions.


The developing countries see a golden opportunity to transfer more wealth and productive capacity from the West as it becomes more and more difficult to do any productive activity in countries dominated by Green regulations and high taxes. Beijing is pushing a more "open" policy for foreign investment in China, particularly for high-tech industry, though with the same pressures to take on Chinese partners.


There are also demands for the West to provide Green technology and money to the developing countries if they want to reduce pollution. At UNFCCC negotiations in August, developing countries requested $400 billion a year. The UN's Department of Economic and Social Affairs report "Promoting Development, Saving the Planet" (released Sept. 1) claimed more than $500 billion a year is needed. The African Union has threatened to walk out of the Copenhagen conference if it does not get $65 billion a year. If someone else will pay for it, the developing states will act, but they will not divert resources from domestic growth to pursue some quixotic crusade to "save the planet." And neither should the United States.
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Scaring the masses

FROM-Examiner

by-Justin Clarke

Kerry threatens war over climate change

John Kerry is worried that we’re all going to die from global warming. That may be a slight exaggeration of his position, but it pales in comparison to the exaggerating that ‘ol John and his Senate panel do here:

Massive crop devastation, melting glaciers, water shortages, millions of displaced people -- all of these will drag the US military into conflict if global climate change goes unchecked, a Senate panel was warned today.

This is just a blatant scare tactic. Global warming is going to drag the US military into conflict? I don’t think the US military has ever needed to be dragged into anything; we seem to prefer barging in to being dragged. Since we’re supposedly so keen on staying out of wars, why doesn’t Kerry do something helpful and critically lay into Obama for continuing the unnecessary and unlawful wars we’ve already got on the books?

In the last ten years we’ve invaded and conducted regime change in both Afghanistan and Iraq, we’re conducting some dicey operations in Pakistan while threatening Iran and North Korea and arguing with Russia. Would we actually go to war over the weather? Probably yes, but at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if we started a nuclear war over the correct pronunciation of 'nuclear'.

The point is that Kerry, Bush, Cheney, Obama, Biden and all the rest of them are responsible for us going to war. I repeat – they send us to war. It is the height of absurdity for government officials to make claims against normal civilians in the name of protecting us from war they claim they don't want to wage. The government, however, seem to think that war comes to us. Witness Kerry’s statement comparing global warming to 9-11:

Just as 9-11 taught us the painful lesson that oceans could not protect us from
terror,

I’m not even going to supply the rest of that sentence, as I’ve already got a number of questions, chief among them being this: what does John Kerry really think that 9-11 taught us? Not to count on the ocean to protect you from terrorists? Did he add that we shouldn't trust our magic beans to do the trick either? Don’t worry fellas, you can sleep better knowing that 9-11 had nothing to do with interventionist US foreign policy; apparently Poseidon took a day off.

If 9-11 has taught us anything, it should be that the government will use any crisis it can get its hands on to expand it’s power. This is exactly the reason why we should be so suspect of Kerry and his doomsday threats.

So why is the rhetoric at fever pitch regarding global warming anyway? Because it’s rapidly losing intellectual purchase, and if Kerry and his ilk can’t use this threat to control our economy then they’ll have to spend some time dreaming up the next boogeyman. I’ll leave you with Australian geologist Ian Plimer on issues that the scare-mongers leave out of their speeches:

That polar ice has been present on earth for less than 20 per cent of geological time; that extinctions of life are normal; that climate changes are cyclical and random; that the CO2 in the atmosphere — to which human activity contributes the tiniest fraction — is only 0.001 per cent of the total CO2 held in the oceans, surface rocks, air, soils and life; that CO2 is not a pollutant but a plant food; that the earth’s warmer periods — such as when the Romans grew grapes and citrus trees as far north as Hadrian’s Wall — were times of wealth and plenty.

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Political Panic Around The Globe

Philipines

Loren: Baffling summer rains may be a climate change manifestation

Senator Loren Legarda echoed today the supposition aired by the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, Astronomical Services Administration (PAG-ASA) on what may be the early onset of the rainy season this year.

"PAG-ASA says that global warming may be to blame for the heavy rains we are experiencing in summer season since middle of April," said Loren upon arrival at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport from Beijing, China.

"That statement may not be conclusive as admitted by PAG-ASA, but it may be an accurate one, considering that climate change is a result of global warming," said Loren, chair and founder of the environmental group Luntiang Pilipinas.

Global warming, in turn, is blamed on the ever-increasing greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

"The heavy rains baffle a lot of people, but they are just another manifestation of climate change in our country, said Loren, a laureate of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP)......





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Political Panic Around The Globe

We are introducing a new feature here at Skeptic's Corner-Political Panic around the globe. Our global leadership is bound and determined to screw......uh take care of us so it is important to note their panic..... uh concerns. We will attempt to track their righteous leadership.

Australia

'World has 6 years to act' on climate change

The Government's chief scientist wants the country to set the toughest possible targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, warning that action must begin now against climate change....

...."We also know that if we want to maintain that level of climate change which we could measure by the increase in global average temperature to 2 degrees then we have six years to reverse the trend from increasing CO2 emissions to decreasing CO2 emissions.

"It's not long, which is why we need to begin to act now."

Last week two scientists told a Senate inquiry that there was no evidence to suggest that global warming was caused by human activity.

But Professor Sackett says she is surprised a debate over the science of climate change still exists.

"There is no doubt the evidence is very clear that [climate change] is under way and it is also clear that the largest portion of that change is due to human action through deforestation and emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere," she said.

United States

Energy Secretary Offers Dire Global Warming Prediction

..Caribbean nations face "very, very scary" rises in sea level and intensifying hurricanes, and Florida, Louisiana and even northern California could be overrun with rising water levels due to global warming triggered by carbon-based greenhouse gases, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Saturday....

....So imagine a world 6 degrees warmer. It's not going to recognize geographical boundaries. It's not going to recognize anything. So agriculture regions today will be wiped out," Chu said.

"I think the Caribbean countries face rising oceans and they face increase in the severity of hurricanes. This is something that is very, very scary to all of us. The island states in the world represent -- I remember this number -- one-half of 1 percent of the carbon emissions in the world. And they will -- some of them will disappear," he added.

Chu said the United States would not be spared, either.....