Oops! Ice caps melting "twice as slowly"

7 September, 2010 by

Not "worser" than thought

Or half as quickly – woteva. Isn’t it odd that all the errors and dodgy sources in the IPCC report conspired to make the climate change problem bigger, badder, “worser” than previously thought? Wouldn’t you think that roughly half the errors would show it “worser”, and half would show it not “worser”? If you were cynical, you might even conclude that such dodgy sources and errors were included because, oh, I don’t know, the authors had some pre-conceived agenda to push? OK, sarcasm off. But today’s “inconvenient headline” (thanks to Paul at The Daily Bayonet), which comes from the UK Daily Mail, reports that things in the melting ice cap department aren’t quite as bad as previously believed:

The Greenland and West Antarctic ice caps are melting at half the speed previously predicted, it has been announced.

Scientists measured the change in the ice caps by analysing changes in Earth’s gravitational field using two satellites, which monitor the distribution of mass on Earth including ice and water.

When ice melts and joins the sea, this has a small, but detectable effect on the Earth’s gravitational field.

This finding has emerged from research by a joint US/Dutch team from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Delft University.

The average rise in sea levels as a result of the melting ice caps is also lower, the team discovered.

Previous estimates for the Greenland ice cap calculated that the ice was melting at a rate of 230 gigatonnes a year  – 230,000 billion kg. That would result in an average rise in global sea levels of around 0.75 mm a year.

For West Antarctica, the estimate was 132 gigatonnes a year. However, it now turns out that these results were not properly corrected for glacial isostatic adjustment.

This phenomenon relates to the rebounding of the Earth’s crust rebounds [sic] as a result of the melting of the massive ice caps from the last major Ice Age around 20,000 years ago.

These movements of the Earth’s crust have to be incorporated in the calculations, since these vertical movements change the Earth’s mass distribution and therefore also have an influence on the gravitational field.

Researchers have now succeeded in carrying out that correction far more accurately. (source)

Makes a change, dunnit? A bit of good news. Once again, it just goes to show how utterly nonsensical it is for anyone to say about climate change “the science is settled.”

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Election 2010: Decision expected today

7 September, 2010 by

From the ABC

After two and a half weeks of doubt, it appears likely that the three independent MPs will announce, at a press conference this afternoon, their decision on who should form the next government. Sadly, my money is on Labor, as most of the chatter coming from the independents has been in that direction. But as Terry McCrann points out, only the Coalition can guarantee getting legislation through the Senate – at least until mid next year.

Updates to follow during the day.

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Christopher Booker on the IPCC

6 September, 2010 by

Christopher Booker

For those of you who don’t know, Christopher Booker is a columnist in the UK Telegraph and with an irresistible combination of wit, clarity and a razor-sharp intellect, invariably talks nothing but absolute common sense. He is healthily sceptical of the AGW scaremongers (and has written books on the subject) and this week takes apart the crumbling edifice that is the IPCC:

When, some years ago, I began the research for my book The Real Global Warming Disaster, nothing surprised me more than discovering how widely the nature of the IPCC is misunderstood. It is invariably portrayed as a body representing the top scientists in the world, objectively weighing the complex forces that shape Earth’s climate. In reality, it’s nothing of the kind.

The men who set up the panel – led by its first chairman Bert Bolin, a Swedish meteorologist, and John Houghton, then head of the UK Met Office and first chairman of the IPCC’s scientific working group – were already believers in what they called “human-induced climate change”. The IPCC was, from the start, essentially a political pressure group, producing evidence to support the view that global warming was the most serious crisis facing the planet. This guided the selection of all the key scientists chosen to compile the IPCC’s findings (such as those involved in the Climategate affair). And this explains all the searching questions that have built up around its hugely influential reports ever since.

Read it here.

P.S. John McLean has written a superb exposé of the inherent bias of the IPCC: Climate Science Corrupted. Download the PDF (600KB) here – it is an eye-opening read.

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How did you hear about ACM?

4 September, 2010 by

The hit counter has gone off the scale today, but there isn’t the usual sign of a popular web site linking to me in my stats counter…

If you have been recommended to this site today, firstly WELCOME and I hope you enjoy your visit! But secondly, leave a comment: let me know how you found this site. It would be very interesting (and useful) for reference – thanks!

Drop by again soon…

Best wishes,

Simon

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Idiotic Comment of the Day: Fidel Castro

4 September, 2010 by

Adding to the planet's carbon emissions

Only the Sydney Morning Herald and AFP would bother report the incoherent ramblings of this loony ex-dictator, who now pontificates on climate change:

His Friday address again raised the specter [sic] of nuclear war, calling for “the disappearance of nuclear weapons,” but Castro also sounded the alarm over climate change, which he said “threatens human existence.” (source)

Of course, Castro knows all about the spectre of nuclear war, thanks to his welcoming of commie nukes onto Cuban soil in the 1960s, which was far more of a threat to human existence than climate change ever will be…

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Matt Ridley: climate panel must be purged

4 September, 2010 by

Matt Ridley (from rationaloptimist.com)

An excellent article from Matt Ridley in the Times, reproduced in The Australian:

THIS month, after a three-year investigation, Harvard University suspended a prominent professor of psychology for scandalously overinterpreting videos of monkey behaviour.

The incident has sent shock waves through science because it suggests a body of data is unreliable. The professor, Marc Hauser, is now a pariah in his field and his papers have been withdrawn. But the implications for society are not great; no policy had been based on his research.

This week, after a four-month review, a committee of scientists concluded that the Nobel prizewinning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has “assigned high confidence to statements for which there is very little evidence, has failed to enforce its own guidelines, has been guilty of too little transparency, has ignored critical review comments and has had no policies on conflict of interest”.

Enormous and expensive policy changes have been based on the flawed work of these scientists. Yet there is apparently to be no investigation, blame, suspension or withdrawal of papers, just a gentle bureaucratic fattening of the organisation with new full-time posts.

IPCC reports are supposed to be the gold standard account of what is – and is not – known about global warming. The panel boasts that it uses only peer-reviewed scientific literature.

But its claims about mountain ice turned out to be anecdotes from a climbing magazine, its claims on the Amazon’s vulnerability to drought from a Brazilian pressure group’s website and 42 per cent of the references in one chapter proved to be to reports by Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund and other “grey” literature.

Read the rest here.

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UN hysteria: disasters "scream for action" on climate

3 September, 2010 by

Hysterical

More disgraceful hysteria and uncritical journalism. Just yesterday, James Lee was shot dead after taking hostages at the Discovery Channel, in an attempt to force them to comply with his eco-warrior agenda. Today on Watts Up With That, Thomas Fuller writes in an article entitled “Stop the Hysteria”:

The deluge of catastrophic predictions  regarding global warming and its consequences have reached almost everyone on  the planet, and perhaps unintentionally have replaced Cold War bomb scares as  the primary source of doomsaying.

The messages are well-thought out and prepared  by professional communicators, with disturbing and graphic images of a  post-apocalyptic scenario lifted from Mad Max, and with about as much connection  to reality.

In March of this year, a couple in Argentina shot their two children before  committing suicide over fears of global warming. On Wednesday, in Maryland, James Lee apparently committed ‘suicide by cop’  after taking three hostages in an attempt to force the Discovery Channel to  alter its programming to suit his fears over the environment.

At what point will we call to account those who have preached ‘the end of  the earth as we know it’ to countless people? How many people will be driven to  desperation by those who distort the science? (source)

Yet just hours later we have the ever-responsible Sydney Morning Herald regurgitating precisely the same hysteria from the UN, which doesn’t give a sh*t about people, only about securing its role as a world government by the climate change back door:

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres on Thursday warned that a string of weather calamities showed the deepening urgency to forge a breakthrough deal on global warming this year.

Speaking before some 40 countries were to address finance, an issue that has helped hamstring UN climate talks, Figueres said floods in Pakistan, fires in Russia and other weather disasters had been a shocking wakeup call.

“The news has been screaming that a future of intense, global climate disasters is not the future that we want,” Figueres, newly-appointed executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), told reporters.

“Science will show whether and how those events are related to climate change caused by humanity’s greenhouse-gas emissions, but the point is clear: We cannot afford to face escalating disasters of that kind.” (source)

Just read that last sentence: “science will show whether and how those events are” … etc etc. Which correctly states that there is no evidence whatsoever to link them to AGW. But that doesn’t stop the idiotic Figueres from her hysterical pronouncements. And the Moonbat Herald is happy to broadcast them to its gullible readers.

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Daily Bayonet GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

3 September, 2010 by

Skewering the clueless

As always, a great read!

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Green nightmare approaching for Australia

2 September, 2010 by

The nightmare begins…

With Andrew Wilkie backing Labor [who didn’t see that coming? He’s a former Green himself, which we all know is hard Left in drag] it looks like Julia will cling on to the power she so desperately craves, but at a potentially huge price. Paul Kelly correctly argues that a deal with the anti-business, anti-mining, anti-capitalist, anti-everything-that-isn’t-the-environment Greens will alienate the cautious electorate of middle Australia:

How will people, notably voters in NSW, Queensland and Western Australia, react at hearing that Gillard’s response to losing her governing majority at the election is to strike an alliance with the Greens and move even further to the Left?

This is strategic folly. At the tactical level it remains unclear whether this move is a masterstroke or omen of doom. Its aim is to prove Gillard’s commitment to the new politics of the hung parliament. Without doubt, this re-stamps the Labor brand. It is an alliance, not a coalition, as Tony Abbott claimed.

But for the first time, Labor and the Greens are governing partners. Their tentative embrace has an enduring justification – to defeat the Coalition. As Abbott said yesterday, the Greens had not been serious about negotiations with the Coalition.

The entire world knows this deal has only one objective: to build momentum to sway the independents into duplicating such an agreement and vote Labor into office. (source)

With the Greens pulling the levers of power, as we know they will, we will inevitably have an ETS or a carbon tax within the next parliament. We can only hope that the Labor brand is so damaged by their grubby deal with the Greens and the resulting lurch to the Left, that middle Australia will desert Labor in droves in 2013.

Here begins the Green nightmare for Australia.

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Discovery Channel gunman "inspired by Al Gore"

2 September, 2010 by

One snowflake short of a glacier…

One unhinged eco-warrior inspired by another, er, unhinged (and very rich) eco-warrior. James Lee, the gunman shot dead after taking hostages at the Discovery Channel’s headquarters, has Al Gore to thank for his sticky end:

Lee has a history of protesting Discovery’s programming, saying it has little to do with saving the planet. He was arrested outside the building in February 2008 after throwing thousands of dollars in the air.

At the time, Lee was identified as being from San Diego, listing his address as a local homeless shelter.

At his trial, he said he began working to save the planet after being laid off from his job in San Diego. He said he was inspired by Ishmael, a novel by environmentalist Daniel Quinn and by former Vice President Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

A real climate change victim, at last.

Read it here.

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