The alarmist in chief is back on form in an interview for AFP, reported in the Brisbane Times, which clearly has no idea about Hansen’s well-known record for being a global warming fruitcake and massaging the GISS temperature record to fit his own agenda:

A half-dozen climate experts told AFP, ahead of international climate talks starting on Monday, that current rates of greenhouse gas emissions, if unchecked, would unleash devastating droughts, floods and huge increases in human misery by century’s end.

But the new studies, they say, indicate that human activity may be triggering powerful natural forces that would be nearly impossible to reverse and that could push temperatures up even further.
…
“The most recent IPCC report was prior to … the measurements of increasing mass loss from Greenland and Antarctica, which are disintegrating much faster than IPCC estimates,” said climatologist James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

Unlike the Arctic ice cap, which floats on water, the world’s two major ice sheets – up to 3km thick – sit on land.

Runaway sea level rises, Hansen said, would put huge coastal cities and agricultural deltas in Bangladesh, Egypt and southern China under water, and create hundreds of millions of refugees.

Were Greenland’s entire ice block to melt, it would lift the world’s sea levels by almost seven metres, while western Antarctica’s ice sheet holds enough water to add six metres.

Yawn. Next.

Read it here.

… published within 5 minutes of each other.

From the Melbourne Herald Sun at 5.08 am:

Climate change fight could create jobs

From the Newcastle Herald at 5.13 am:

Emission scheme casts shadow on jobs

It’s all so confusing…

Read it here and here.

“For ever” is a very long time in geological terms, yet the climate pseudo-scientists bandy it about as if it meant nothing. The moonbattish Canberra Times quotes Professor David Archer of Chicago University, who goes into full scaremonger mode:

”The climatic impacts of releasing fossil-fuel carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will last longer than Stonehenge, longer than time capsules, far longer than the age of human civilisation so far”.
…
In a paper to be published in the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, he says, ”The ocean is getting fed up with absorbing our CO2.” Surface waters which used to sop up the gas quite fast, are getting saturated with it turning acid in the process and, so, decreasing their uptake. They need to be replaced with fresh water from deep down, but this circulation ”takes centuries or a millennium”.

Global warming is expected to slow this down: the hotter the surface layer becomes, the longer the replenishment takes.

The paper says research shows this renewing process will not be enough to remove the vast amounts of carbon dioxide. Much will have to wait hundreds of thousands of years before being removed by another, much slower, process: the natural weathering of rocks, which incorporates the gas into other substances.

Two points:

• That would be the global warming that hasn’t happened since 2001, right?
• If the science is so settled, why is this all such a surprise?

Read it here.

The Government has backed down on setting a target for 2020 emissions reductions prior to the UN climate talks in Poznan.

The Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, yesterday defended the decision not to announce the target before she left for the talks in the Polish city of Poznan. She refused to comment on whether cabinet was divided over the target, which is expected to fall significantly below the level called for by European ministers, climate scientists and environmentalists who will attend the talks.
…
Under intense lobbying from business and on the advice of senior officials, the Government is discussing setting a range of targets to cut greenhouse emissions by 2020. The target is now expected to be cuts between 5 per cent and 15 per cent of emissions, based on 2000 levels. This is significantly below the cuts of 25 to 40 per cent being called for by the European Union and climate scientists.

The reality of the effect of an ETS on the economy appears to be permeating even into the thick skulls of our blinkered government.

Read it here.

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

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

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

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

Read it here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read it here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pure climate madness.

Read it here.

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

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

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

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

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

Read it here.

From Viv Forbes at Carbon Sense:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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