Tree ring proxies are shithouse

8 August, 2011 by

Wider tree rings this year!

No wonder they had to “hide the decline”. It appears that trees are a proxy for just about everything, except ancient temperatures. Rings from a particular tree are more likely to tell you whether:

  1. it was wetter there;
  2. there was more CO2 in the atmosphere;
  3. the local bear population decided to use it as a shithouse.

And now it appears that trees actually grow less in warmer temperatures:

They found that a 2C (3.6F) increase resulted in the average maximum height of trees shrinking by 11%, while a 2C decrease in the nation’s average temperature saw a 13% increase in the predicted maximum height of trees. (source)

So I think we can consign tree rings and the whole dodgy discipline of dendrochronology to the dustbin of climatological history.

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Attempts to control atmospheric CO2 are futile

8 August, 2011 by

From Jo Nova

Futile for so many reasons, practical and political. Grinding developed economies to a halt is an entirely unrealistic aim. China and India will press on with industrialisation in order to raise their populations out of a miserable life of poverty. Much of the developed world has its eyes firmly fixed on the forthcoming GFC Mark II, and when the going gets tough, touchy-feely environmentalism gives way to hard-nosed reality. Without anything else, this simple list demonstrates why adaptation is infinitely preferable to attempts at mitigation.

And now another nail in the coffin, as respected climatologist Murry Salby claims that natural drivers have a far greater effect on CO2 levels than anthropogenic sources, and if anthropogenic source have little effect, then reducing them by means of carbon taxes will in all probability achieve nothing for CO2 concentration, much less the climate:

Carbon dioxide is emitted by human activities as well as a host of natural processes. The satellite record, in concert with instrumental observations, is now long enough to have collected a population of climate perturbations, wherein the Earth-atmosphere system was disturbed from equilibrium. Introduced naturally, those perturbations reveal that net global emission of CO2 (combined from all sources, human and natural) is controlled by properties of the general circulation – properties internal to the climate system that regulate emission from natural sources. The strong dependence on internal properties indicates that emission of CO2 from natural sources, which accounts for 96 per cent of its overall emission, plays a major role in observed changes of CO2. Independent of human emission, this contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide is only marginally predictable and not controllable.

The podcast of Prof Salby’s talk is here. A paper on this topic is apparently being prepared for publication.

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The Sunday Age launches "The Climate Agenda"

7 August, 2011 by

Set the agenda

This could be interesting. The Sunday Age (part of the Fairfax press, and one of the true believers in man-made global warming) has launched a new initiative entitled “The Climate Agenda”:

What are you confused about in the climate debate? What do you want investigated? Are you furious about the proposed carbon tax, or curious about the role renewable energy will play in Australia?

We are using the website OurSay.org to gather our ideas. Oursay is a Melbourne-based group committed to enabling more people to be involved in public debate. Using it is easy: Go to sundayage.oursay.org to post a question you want answered, or vote on other peoples questions. Voting ends on September 2. (source)

I’m not sure what the SA is hoping to achieve by this, and whether they truly take any notice of the questions people ask, and given the anger surrounding the carbon tax, it might not be pretty. But bearing in mind the urban-green readership of Fairfax, I don’t think they need worry, looking at one of the early questions:

“We need action on climate change. Why can’t the government communicate the issue properly? The government has wasted millions of dollars of advertising on an awful communication strategy but still can’t gain popular support. Why is this?”

Yawn. It will, however, be interesting to check back on 2 September to see what the final ten questions are.

P.S. I couldn’t resist: Read my question and you can register and vote as well.

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Flannery fears "Norway-style attack"

6 August, 2011 by

Offensive

Because as we all know, anybody who dares question the ridiculous predictions of the Official Government Climate Prophet is only a whisker away from buying a machine gun and killing dozens of innocent people.

Desperate to regain what little is left of his credibility after it emerged this week that he owns a waterfront property, having previously warned of drastic sea level rises, Flannery makes deeply offensive remarks tarring all “conservatives” with the brush of Norwegian madman Anders Breivik.

As The Australian reports:

While his place was, he admitted, “very close to the water”, the issue was how far it was above the water — something Professor Flannery would not reveal because, he said, it could help identify the location and subject him to a Norway-style attack by conservatives.

There really is no limit to the depths alarmists will go to protect their own interests and smear those who dare question them.

Read it here.

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Labor climate change glossary

5 August, 2011 by

Cut out 'n' keep!

Fed up with the spin? Confused by the lies? You need ACM’s handy cut-out-n-keep glossary.

Here are a selection of Labor’s climate buzzwords and phrases translated into English for the rest of us:

  • Carbon: carbon dioxide
  • Pollution: environmentally beneficial
  • 500 biggest polluters: 500 most productive industries
  • A carbon tax will help tackle climate change: I failed Kindergarten science
  • Green jobs: unemployment
  • There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead: Bob Brown leads the government
  • Greens: Marxists
  • Hottest decade on record: hottest decade in the last 3 hundred-millionths of the planet’s lifespan
  • Unprecedented: I have the memory of a goldfish
  • Wind power: an oxymoron
  • The science is settled: shut up
  • The debate is over: shut up
  • Bob Brown: a watermelon
  • Consensus: don’t mention the science
  • Climate change is a moral issue: don’t mention the science
  • Green economy: the Stone Age
  • We must invest in clean technologies: I own shares in the companies that manufacture them
  • The Central Coast is most at risk from rising sea levels: Tanya Plibersek has lost her marbles
  • China is taking action on climate: Greece is a paragon of economic integrity
  • We must respect the science (© M Turnbull): we must respect the science that fits our ideology
  • 80% cuts in emissions by 2050: the lunatics have taken over the asylum
  • Deniers: the Government
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