Climate sense from Miranda Devine

24 January, 2011 by

© SMH

Climate sense

In her inimitable style, Miranda Devine exposes the lunacy of the green policies that are putting lives at risk:

Eco-catastrophists always cite the precautionary principle: if they are right and we don’t reduce CO2 emissions, we face Armageddon. If they are wrong, all it costs is dollars.

But when money is allocated and attention prioritised to making contingency plans for vague hypothetical scenarios in the distant future, real priorities are neglected and real risks overlooked.

When leaders proclaim climate change as the greatest moral challenge, the entire machinery of government becomes preoccupied with the busy work of solving an imaginary problem. It is then easily blindsided by a real emergency.

This all-too-human phenomenon of selective attention is depicted in the famous psychology experiment with a gorilla. Volunteers have to watch a video showing a group of people passing a ball and count the number of times the ball changes hands. Most people concentrate so hard on the ball they don’t notice the big gorilla that walks through the middle of the screen.

We have been so busy fretting about carbon dioxide that we have neglected the real challenge — how to adapt and protect ourselves from natural disasters. (source)

And on a similar subject, Marc at ABC News Watch shows just how “unprecedented” the current floods really are:

Of note are the following headlines from the Sydney Morning Herald February-March 1893: “Trememdous downpour in Toowoomba” “Terrible Floods in Queensland“, “Floods in the Tweed District“, “Flood in the Clarence“, “Floods expected in the Hunter“, “Grafton Flooded“, “The flood in the Richmond“, “Another terrible flood in Brisbane“, “Lismore Flooded“,  “A flood at Bowral“, “Heavy Flood at Bega“, “Great Flood at Branxton“, “Disastrous Flood at Maitland“, “Great Floods in New Zealand“.

There’s waaaay more… here.

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Green Climate Monster to cause "more natural disasters": expert

23 January, 2011 by

Blamed for more extreme weather

Look, he actually says global warming and greenhouse gases (which he refers to as if they are just two sides of the same coin, rather than totally independent phenomena) but readers of this blog know better. The Green Climate Monster causes all these natural disasters and severe weather events, but people haven’t woken up to the fact yet. Give it time.

An expert says Australia will see a higher incidence of extreme weather events like the flooding in Queensland.

Global Change Professor Peter Grace from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) says greenhouse gases and global warning are contributing factors, whether people want to accept it or not.

He says it will not happen tomorrow, but it will happen in years to come and people will come to know major flooding. [Like they “came to know” the severe flooding in 1893 and 1974, before the global warming scare was more than a twinkle in Bert Bolin’s eye – Ed]

“We will have an increased frequency of quite major events similar to what we had, particularly the flooding event in south-east Queensland,” he said. [I mean, has he actually looked at the flood records for SEQ? – Ed] (source)

Perhaps Professor Grace could let us know what climate signal or weather phenomena would demonstrate that the Green Climate Monster wasn’t to blame…

We can’t stop the Green Climate Monster – he will just keep on doing whatever he wants. All we can do is adapt and prepare for it – and look at history to remind ourselves (we have very short memories) that nothing that’s happened in the last few weeks, tragic though it is, can possibly be regarded as unprecedented, even just taking into account our tiny record of 150 years, let alone in any longer timescale.

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Cosmic rays "contribute 40% to global warming"

22 January, 2011 by

Cosmic ray shower

From The Science is Settled Department. This is what happens when you decide on a pre-conceived politically-motivated conclusion (that man-made CO2 is solely to blame for climate change) and then set up an entire bureaucracy (the IPCC) to build a scientific case to support it. You only look at matters that will support your case, and you shut your eyes to anything that might challenge that case – and the result is not science at all.

So it’s little wonder that independent researchers who have no political axe to grind are constantly making discoveries about the climate that the consensus boys don’t want to hear. Like this:

A key belief of climate science theology — that a reduction in carbon emissions will take care of the bulk of global warming — has been questioned in a scientific paper released by the Environment Ministry on Monday.

Physicist and the former ISRO chairman, U.R. Rao, has calculated that cosmic rays — which, unlike carbon emissions, cannot be controlled by human activity — have a much larger impact on climate change than The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims.

In fact, the contribution of decreasing cosmic ray activity to climate change is almost 40 per cent, argues Dr. Rao in a paper which has been accepted for publication in Current Science, the preeminent Indian science journal. The IPCC model, on the other hand, says that the contribution of carbon emissions is over 90 per cent.

‘Cosmic ray impact ignored’

Releasing Dr. Rao’s findings as a discussion paper on Thursday, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh noted that “the impact of cosmic ray intensity on climate change has thus far been largely ignored by the mainstream scientific consensus.” He added that the “unidimensional focus” on carbon emissions by most Western countries put additional pressure on countries like India in international climate negotiations.

The continuing increase in solar activity has caused a 9 per cent decrease in cosmic ray intensity over the last 150 years, which results in less cloud cover, which in turn results in less albedo radiation being reflected back to the space, causing an increase in the Earth’s surface temperature. (source)

Expect to see this story reported widely on the ABC and in Fairfax…

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Was the Brisbane flood avoidable?

22 January, 2011 by

Spillway at Wivenhoe

The Australian publishes an article analysing the events surrounding the releases from the Wivenhoe Dam (previously reported here at ACM) and its possible effect on the Brisbane flood. The inquiry will certainly have its work cut out::

For reasons that are now highly controversial, in the early hours of Thursday, January 13, Australia’s third-largest city was devastated by a major flood in the Brisbane River. Thousands of homes and businesses were severely damaged; priceless possessions including artefacts and photographs of incalculable sentimental value were destroyed; and a multi-billion-dollar bill was inflicted on the River City. Large swaths of a spectacular city were submerged as the sun shone.

At first it was put down to the wrath of Mother Nature. The video footage of vehicles and people being swept down large streets in Toowoomba (700m above sea level on the Great Dividing Range) by a raging torrent of dirty-brown floodwater after a freak downpour on January 10 was powerful. There were remarkable images of families safe on the roofs of their houses surrounded by floodwater in the Lockyer Valley, below Toowoomba and west of Brisbane (and outside the Wivenhoe catchment).

But, as engineers and hydrologists model increasing amounts of data from the Bureau of Meteorology and SEQWater on the performance of the dam – its inflows from the vast catchment, its releases during crucial periods, the changes in river heights and flow rates, and the manual that the operators are instructed to follow – a very different picture emerges.

The picture being painted before the start of a commission of inquiry, headed by Supreme Court judge Cate Holmes, is that the Brisbane River flood was largely the product of water released from the dam.

These calculations, yet to be tested by SEQWater, show that the urgent release from the dam of huge volumes at unprecedented rates of flow of up to 7500 cubic metres per second, when the operators were gravely concerned late on January 11 that the dam’s rising levels could trigger a collapse of the system, produced most of the flood in the Brisbane River. (source)

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Gillard: addicted to tax and spend

21 January, 2011 by

Old fashioned socialist

We all appreciate that those who have suffered from the floods in Queensland and Victoria deserve financial help from the federal government to help them rebuild their lives and their homes. However, why is it that Julia Gillard’s immediate reaction is to consider a one-off “levy” (translation: tax) rather than the many alternatives? Tax ‘n’ spend is good old fashioned socialism, of course, which Julia with her crypto-communist past would be well aware of.

How about one of these instead:

  • postpone or abandon the pointless National Broadband Network, which will be out of date before it’s even completed. By the time our “state of the art” network is operational, having dug up every street in Australia to lay fibre cables, the rest of the world will have moved on to n-th generation wireless at a fraction of the cost;
  • postpone or abandon the pointless price on carbon, which will do nothing for the climate, nothing to “encouragize” China or India to cut their emissions, and will add massive costs to businesses trying to rebuild and huge increases for those struggling to pay their energy bills;
  • abandon the political posturing about returning the budget to surplus by the artificial deadline Labor itself has set. Vanity is the only thing preventing flexibility here;
  • stop wasting money on rubbish policies like cash-for-clunkers or the Pink Batts fiasco;
  • cut rafts of other wasteful government spending;
  • [readers are invited to fill in the blanks – Ed]

Of course, the federal government should contribute to this tragedy, but not via yet another slug on the poor Australian public.

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World's media: 2010 "hottest year evah"!

21 January, 2011 by

Cooler than 2010, according to world's media

“Ever”? Really? What hotter than when the planets coalesced from a swirling disk of white hot stellar matter 4.5 billion years ago? Well no, of course not. But the media regularly make nonsensical statements like this because they haven’t a clue about history, or any concept of time.

What they mean is “since about 150 years ago.” The fact that 2010, like 1998, was a major El Niño year, and therefore tells us very little about what global temperatures are really doing, is of no consequence. It is likely that 2011, influenced as it will be by a strong La Niña, will be significantly cooler. But there will be wall-to-wall excuses for that – “just a blip”, “warming will resume faster than evah next year” – because a cooling blip is just a blip, whereas a warming blip is evidence of man-made global warming. Add that to a slow recovery from the depths of the Little Ice Age over the past 200 years means that it is almost inevitable that each decade will be warmer than that preceding it.

However, the media’s love of scare stories and the gullibility of the general public ensures that idiotic headlines like this go largely unchallenged.

Both the ABC and Fairfax (natch) fall into the trap of demonstrating their ignorance of any concept of history by copying the same headline from AFP:

Fairfax: 2010 warmest ever year, says UN weather agency

ABC: 2010 officially the hottest year ever

The articles go on to cover much the same ground (but always remember, the WMO is a body operating under the auspices of the UN, just like the IPCC, which, as any fule kno, is little more than a corrupt mouthpiece for a bunch of politically-motivated environmental activists):

The UN’s World Meteorological Organisation said Thursday that 2010 was the warmest year on record [at least they say “on record” here, but they don’t go on to explain that means 150 years, or 50 atoms across on the Age of Earth Ruler – Ed], confirming a “significant” long-term trend of global warming and producing exceptional weather variations.

The trend also helped to melt Arctic sea ice cover to a record low for December last month, the WMO said in a statement. [Nobody ever mentions the Antarctic of course, because that end of the planet isn’t playing ball – Ed]

Last year “ranked as the warmest year on record, together with 2005 and 1998,” the WMO added, confirming preliminary findings released at the global climate conference early December that were based on a 10-month period.

“The 2010 data confirm the Earth’s significant long-term warming trend,” WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said. “The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998.”

Which is like saying the 10 warmest days this year happened since the end of winter. Shock. It says nothing about the cause – we all know the cause (it’s the Green Climate Monster). But that doesn’t stop typical “cracked record” remarks from the Grantham Institute’s Bob Ward, wading in for no other purpose other than to bash sceptics (and alarmists are much better at bashing sceptics than they are at playing by the rules of science, like actually sharing their data and models for example):

“Self-proclaimed climate change ‘sceptics’ may still try to claim that global warming stopped in 1998, but they cannot explain away the fact that nine of the 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 2000,” said Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE).

“Self-proclaimed”? And what’s with the quotes around ‘sceptics’? Following that lead you’re a self-proclaimed ‘alarmist’ whose livelihood is funded by the climate scare, then? Actually most sceptics don’t claim warming stopped in 1998, I certainly don’t. 1998 is a poor year to choose because of the large El Niño spike, but I would suggest that temperatures (as measured by satellite, rather than the fudged and homogenised surface records) have been largely static since about 2002. But of course Phil Jones of CRU previously went as far as to say that there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995…

But it’s all meaningless. None of this says anything about the cause, and that’s really all we’re interested in.

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Daily Bayonet GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

21 January, 2011 by

Skewering the clueless

As always, a great read!

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MTR 1377 interview on YouTube

20 January, 2011 by

Last night’s interview with Luke Grant is now on ACM’s YouTube channel (link), and is also on the new ACM Media page (link).

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Introducing the Green Climate Monster

20 January, 2011 by

Just call me GCM!

Just happens to have the same initials as general circulation models – that’s pure coincidence of course. Anyway, I’d like to introduce this little fella to you (see photo). After many minutes of painstaking research, Australian Climate Madness has decreed that all unusual or severe weather events of whatever nature, anywhere in the world, are solely the mischievous work of the Green Climate Monster (he gets bored easily). The GCM is responsible for the shrinking Arctic ice sheet, the growing Antarctic Ice sheet, advancing glaciers, retreating glaciers, heatwaves, cold spells, mountains of snow, absence of snow, droughts, floods, hurricanes, absence of hurricanes, very windy days, calm days, sunny days, cloudy days, foggy days, El Niño and his twin sister, the seasons, thunderstorms, absence of thunderstorms, excess rainfall, less rainfall, extinction of frogs, discovery of new frogs, fewer polar bears, more polar bears, everything else listed at the Warmlist, and plenty more besides.

Now I know what you’re thinking. That’s totally ridiculous. Everyone knows that the GCM doesn’t exist, to which I would respond: disprove the existence of my little green friend. The GCM causes everything. Nothing you mention can possibly NOT be as a result of the GCM’s little games – he has a very commendable work ethic – I don’t know how he does it, to be honest. So any weather or climate phenomenon you care to mention results, either wholly or in part, from the wayward actions of the GCM.

To which you will inevitably respond: you’re crazy, Joe – check yourself into the local loony bin – you need serious medication, pal.

But simply replace my imaginary friend with “climate change” and that’s the situation we find ourselves in today. Climate change causes everything. Nothing can disprove climate change. Whatever happens, whether it be a long drought in Australia that “experts” thought would never end, to tragic floods in Queensland and Victoria, climate change is to blame – we know that because politicians, climate scientists and the mainstream media tell us.

The problem with this is that it becomes an unfalsifiable hypothesis, and therefore inherently unscientific. Ask a climate scientist what weather pattern or climate signal would show anthropogenic climate change were not happening, and they wouldn’t be able to give you an answer.

So you will see a lot of the Green Climate Monster in the future. Whenever, something is blamed on climate change, the GCM will pop up on this blog – because we know who’s really behind it, don’t we?

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UK madness: "greenest government ever"

20 January, 2011 by

William Hague the Younger

And they say it as if it’s something to be proud of! Personally, I wouldn’t be proud of associating myself with an anti-human Marxist ideology, which would demolish our hard-won Western standards of living, with everyone sitting in the dark because the reliable coal- and gas-fired power stations have been abandoned, and the windmills are standing becalmed – a monument to environmental stupidity, with people shivering in their homes, unable to afford to pay their energy bills.

And that isn’t just hyperbole, the UK has committed itself to cutting its emissions by some astronomical figure like 80% by 2050, so the lights going off is a real possibility.

But UK Foreign Minister William Hague, who I remember making a cringe-making speech at a Tory conference in the 1980s as a precocious teenager (see photo), and who is visiting Australia at the moment, thinks that being the greenest government ever is something to aspire to:

The most senior minister from the Conservative-led British coalition Government to visit Australia will today lay out his nation’s ambitious plan to combat climate change, as debate continues over whether global warming has contributed to devastating floods in several states. [Have to drop that in of course, this is the Canberra Times, after all – Ed]

Foreign Affairs Minister William Hague will deliver two speeches in Sydney where he will promote British Prime Minister David Cameron’s vision for his coalition administration to be the “greenest government ever”.

In contrast, the Federal Government’s policy is unclear and Prime Minister Julia Gillard is waiting for a committee to recommend whether to proceed with an emissions trading scheme or adopt a carbon tax.

That’s nonsense. The Federal government’s policy IS clear – a price on carbon during this parliament – and equally idiotic as the UK’s policy.

The communique issued after the talks said that both governments were committed to ”promoting swift action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” at home and overseas.

”Action on climate change is urgent and cannot wait for the signature of an international treaty,” it said. (source)

And it will do nothing for the climate. Pointless environmental tokenism at its worst.

UPDATE: Irony of ironies, the European carbon market (of which the UK is a part) has had to be suspended because of fears of yet another massive fraud (read here). Why can’t Julia and her hopeless Labor government see what’s coming? They don’t need a crystal ball, just look at the UK.

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