Full speed for an alarmism week

7 December, 2009 by

Nice Bristols

Nice Bristols*

The other thing that we should expect in the next 11 days is full on climate hysteria, with apocalyptic predictions, everything “happening faster, bigger, badder than we thought”. But now we can take it all with a pinch of salt, since in this post-CRU world, we give our climate scientists even less leeway than they had before. The latest scare is that the climate is “more sensitive than previously thought” to CO2, so we need even deeper, harsher, bigger and badder cuts.

From our “The Science is Settled” department:

In the long term, the Earth’s temperature may be 30-50 per cent more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide than has previously been estimated, reports a new study published in Nature Geoscience this week.

The results show that components of the Earth’s climate system that vary over long timescales – such as land-ice and vegetation – have an important effect on this temperature sensitivity, but these factors are often neglected in current climate models.

Dr Dan Lunt, from the University of Bristol, and colleagues compared results from a global climate model to temperature reconstructions of the Earth’s environment three million years ago when global temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations were relatively high. The temperature reconstructions were derived using data from three-million-year-old sediments on the ocean floor.

Lunt said, “We found that, given the concentrations of carbon dioxide prevailing three million years ago, the model originally predicted a significantly smaller temperature increase than that indicated by the reconstructions. This led us to review what was missing from the model.”

But, but, but… our models are perfect, aren’t they? They must be – the planet is about to spend trillions of dollars based on their output. But not to worry. Results of climate research never say “it’s not as bad as we thought” or “we may have overestimated this.” What are the chances of every piece of research always saying it’s worse? And of course, the inevitable call to action:

Alan Haywood, a co-author on the study from the University of Leeds, said “If we want to avoid dangerous climate change, this high sensitivity of the Earth to carbon dioxide should be taken into account when defining targets for the long-term stabilisation of atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations”.

This is all about feedbacks of course. The actual warming effect of a doubling of CO2 is virtually nothing, but the models rely on fudge factors in the feedbacks in order to make the models fit what has already happened in the past. However, because this leads to huge positive feedbacks, temperature projections go through the roof for a modest increase in CO2. The fact is that no climate scientist understands the feedbacks, because there are still thousands of unknowns or unquantifiables (despite Kevin Rudd and Gordon Brown telling us all “the science is settled”), which means the models don’t either, and the results are close to worthless.

Read it here.

*Cockney rhyming slang: Bristol Cities – t*tties.

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Two hours to Copenhagen

7 December, 2009 by

Roaring trade until 18 December

Roaring trade until 18 December

OK, I can’t put it off any longer. Yes, the biggest climate gab-fest in the history of the planet is set to kick off in a little under two hours. All the delegates have arrived in Copenhagen, checked in to their seedy little hotels, and have been issued maps to the Red Light district. After the daily tedium of climate change negotiations, we can be sure the local ladies of the night will do a roaring trade!

So what’s the point of all this? There won’t be any binding treaty, as that was chucked in the dumpster a couple of weeks ago, so it will be an expression of wishes at best.

China and India are only prepared to reduce “carbon intensity” which is emissions per unit of GDP, so their emissions will still increase rapidly, just a little bit more slowly than otherwise (because, let’s be honest, China and India are far more interested in economic growth than worrying about fixing a non-problem). The UK has already passed crippling laws that call for an 80% absolute reduction in emissions by 2050 – good luck with that. The US has the Waxman-Markey bill stalled by the Senate, and nothing much else apart from Obama’s platitudes.

And then of course there’s us Aussies, who have made headline news around the world by becoming the first country to see a leader of a major political party elected precisely because he is a sceptic. Go Aussie!

So what can we really expect? There will be a great deal of pontificating from the usual suspects: Pachauri, Obama, De Boer, Rudd, Brown etc etc. There will no doubt be stirring speeches about the fact that we have only [2] [5] [10] [20] [50] years to save the planet (insert appropriate figure). There will be acres of news coverage from Fairfax, which will try spin every announcement into something positive and encouraging. Unfortunately, however, there will almost certainly be no deal, and if we’re lucky, the whole thing may descend into farce and recrimination.

But, as my late uncle always used to remind me, “You can’t polish a turd.”

Strap yourselves in for the ride. Let’s pray for snow (maximum forecast for Friday: 2˚C).

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Mad Malcolm loses it completely

7 December, 2009 by

Mad Malcolm and the Monk

Mad Malcolm and the Monk

How the Liberals ever thought that Turnbull could be Prime Minister. Now he’s showing his true colours, ranting and raving like a Latham clone, and threatening to vote with the government on the next ETS vote:

Former Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull has unleashed an attack on his successor Tony Abbott, describing his climate change position as “bullshit”.

In a strongly-worded blog entry posted this morning, Mr Turnbull personally attacks Mr Abbott for putting the party’s integrity on the line, saying Coalition climate change policy has descended into “farce”, because it does not have a policy.

He vows to cross the floor and vote for the Government’s emissions trading scheme and urges his colleagues to follow him.

…

“So any suggestion that you can dramatically cut emissions without any cost is, to use a favourite term of Mr Abbott, ‘bullshit.’ Moreover he knows it.

“It is not possible to criticise the new Coalition policy on climate change because it does not exist.”

Mr Turnbull goes on to describe those who backed Mr Abbott’s leadership as climate change sceptics. [Yes, and your point is? – Ed]

“As we are being blunt, the fact is that Tony and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human caused global warming.

“As Tony observed on one occasion ‘climate change is crap’, or if you consider his mentor, Senator Minchin, the world is not warming, it’s cooling and the climate change issue is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to deindustrialise the world.

It must be obvious to the public and the media by now that Turnbull is a dangerous megalomaniac who cannot bear the fact that Abbott’s policy on climate is actually more popular with the core Australian voter than his own. Tony Abbott, you have an enemy in your midst who will have to be neutralised in whatever way possible. If you’re trying to destroy the Liberal party and ensure they remain in opposition for a generation, Malc, you are going the right way about it.

VISIT TURNBULL’S BLOG POST AND LEAVE A COMMENT HERE. [Link dead – Web Archive HERE]

Read it here.

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Lemmings: 56 of world's moonbat media print the same editorial

7 December, 2009 by

Pious nonsense

Pious nonsense

Even The Age doesn’t fall for it, sensibly preferring to rely on its own views rather than cutting and pasting other editors’ nonsense. And nonsense it most certainly is, written by the most lefty and greeny of the world’s newspapers, the UK Guardian. Full of pious platitudes and vacuous statements, it is a painful read:

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record [“on record” being since about 1850, conveniently ignoring the MWP and the Roman warm period – Ed], the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage [Haven’t read the CRU emails yet, then? – Ed]. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries [yes, exactly, without any help from humans – Ed], has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

“Taming” the climate? Really? Good luck with that! And then there is the inevitable rush towards global socialism, and the accompanying scaling back of Western economies:

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions.

…

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

And in doing so, it will condemn billions of people in developing countries to a life of misery and poverty. Finally, the predictable, tired and hackneyed “green energy myth”:

But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.

As if renewables can replace fossil fuels in the next 20 or even 50 years! It’s nothing short of a joke. And the biggest joke of all is that all of this will be pointless. The effect of CO2 emissions on the climate is so small that all the trillions of dollars that will be wasted as a result of any Copenhagen Treaty will make not an iota of difference. Just like Kyoto made no difference either. The climate will do what the climate will do, and there ain’t nothing we can do about it.

Pious climate nonsense.

Read it here.

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Even the SMH says it's the government that's in denial

7 December, 2009 by

Painful reading

Painful reading

Paul Sheehan, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, has some painful home truths for Labor:

When Julia Gillard faced the media outside Federal Parliament in Canberra on Wednesday she looked shell-shocked. She then proceeded to give the most jittery, hollow, nonsensical performance of her career. It was pantomime of the lowest order.

”Today the climate change extremists and deniers in the Liberal Party have stopped this nation from taking decisive action on climate change,” the Deputy Prime Minister said, deadpan, into a thicket of cameras and recorders.

Extremists and deniers. In case anyone had missed the point, she repeated the phrase five times. ”Now [we] have been stopped by the Liberal Party extremists and the climate change deniers. This nation has been stopped from taking a major step in the nation’s interests by Liberal Party extremists and climate change deniers.”

This is clearly going to be the mantra the Rudd Government uses to describe anyone who opposes its pointless legislation on an emissions trading scheme.

Gillard used the terms ”denier” or ”denial” 11 times, pointed words because they carry the connotation of Holocaust denial. The last time that tactic was used in the national debate, after the release of the Bringing Them Home report, it exploded on those who used it.

So this is going to get interesting because the political ground has shifted in the past six months. It is now the Rudd Government that appears to be in a state of denial.

Read it here.

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Dream start for Abbott

7 December, 2009 by

From The Australian

From The Australian

A series of headlines to cheer the spirit. Rather than the disaster the media had hoped for, Tony Abbott appears to be galvanising Liberal support.

There were dire predictions that the Liberals could lose the seat of Higgins to the Greens — Labor did not run a candidate in either by-election — and that there would be a big swing in Bradfield against the Liberals because of Mr Abbott’s opposition to the ETS.

After counting continued yesterday, it appeared the Liberals would get a small swing towards them in both seats [of Bradfield and Higgins] on a two-party-preferred basis and possibly a small swing against them on primary votes.

The Newspoll survey, conducted from Friday to Sunday, exclusively for The Australian, showed a rise of four percentage points in the Liberals’ primary vote, taking the Coalition’s support to 38 per cent compared with the government’s unchanged 43 per cent.

The government still has an overwhelming two-party-preferred vote of 56 to 44 per cent, but Mr Abbott has improved on Mr Turnbull’s last position as preferred prime minister and won strong endorsement among Liberal voters.

Support for Mr Rudd as preferred prime minister fell five percentage points last weekend from 65 to 60 per cent and Mr Abbott started on 23 per cent, a rise of nine points compared with Mr Turnbull’s 14 per cent the previous weekend.

Mr Abbott’s standing as preferred prime minister is better than all Mr Turnbull’s polling against Mr Rudd since the controversy over the then Liberal leader’s use of a fake email from then Treasury official Godwin Grech to attack the Prime Minister.

Read it here.

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Rudd the autograph hunter

7 December, 2009 by

Please Mr Obama!

Please Mr Obama!

Look where Barack Obama is, and there you’ll find our lap-dog Prime Minister, hanging on to the One’s coat-tails. So it’s no surprise that Rudd has changed his Copenhagen plans in response to Obama’s change of plan.

KEVIN Rudd has shelved plans for an early dash to Copenhagen after US President Barack Obama said he was not going until the late stages of the climate change conference, in the hope of closing a deal.

The White House announced over the weekend that Mr Obama would push back his visit to the conference until its final day, putting him in a better position to help broker an agreement.

Mr Rudd, who had the RAAF on standby for a snap trip to Denmark, will now attend the late stages of the conference.

Yesterday, a spokeswoman for Mr Rudd confirmed the Prime Minister had considered travelling to Copenhagen early, but said by Friday night it had been resolved Mr Rudd would attend during the final stages of the talks along with more than 100 heads of government.

It’s a great look for Australia abroad, you have to admit…

Read it here.

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Rudd runs scared from climate debate

6 December, 2009 by

Denying the people a debate

Denying the people a debate

… with some half-baked excuse about the Opposition “not having a policy” – why on earth that would stop him debating the issue? Well, actually, I think we know the real reason, don’t we, readers?

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has dismissed a challenge for a series of public debates over climate change, saying the Federal Opposition needs to have a policy first.

Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says he wants to have the debates over the proposed emissions trading scheme before the Government reintroduces the legislation in February.

But Mr Rudd says Mr Abbott should instead focus his efforts on developing a Coalition policy.

“Mr Howard had a policy on climate change, Mr Turnbull had a policy on climate change – it was called an emissions trading scheme,” he said.

“Mr Abbott – the current leader of the Liberal Party – does not have any policy on climate change.

“I’d suggest the Leader of the Opposition calms down, puts in the hard yards and actually develops a policy.”

Despite the attempt at matey banter, and patronising put downs of Tony Abbott, it is still transparent as a sheet of Glad Wrap, Kevin!

If you don’t turn up, you lose.

Read it here.

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UK Met Office to re-examine and release 160 years of data

6 December, 2009 by

Releasing data

Releasing data

Will this be the start of a flood of data releases from organisations desperate not to be tarred with the CRU brush, I wonder? How many fudge factors will they find in the Met Office code?

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.

The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.

The Met Office database is one of three main sources of temperature data analysis on which the UN’s main climate change science body relies for its assessment that global warming is a serious danger to the world. This assessment is the basis for next week’s climate change talks in Copenhagen aimed at cutting CO2 emissions.

But this paragraph is the most amazing, and, given my previous post, not at all surprising:

The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics. (source)

Yep, that’s right. Move along. Nothing to see here. Don’t want the sceptics looking at the data, they might find something wrong with it! Sadly for the oafish Gordon Brown, the Met Office has in fact gone one step further, and will release the data into the public arena:

The Met Office has announced plans to release, early next week, station temperature records for over one thousand of the stations that make up the global land surface temperature record.

…

This subset is not a new global temperature record and it does not replace the HadCRUT, NASA GISS and NCDC global temperature records, all of which have been fully peer reviewed. We are confident this subset will show that global average land temperatures have risen over the last 150 years. [Well of course it will. We all know temperatures have risen in that period. What it doesn’t prove is man-made warming – Ed]

This subset release will continue the policy of putting as much of the station temperature record as possible into the public domain.

We intend that as soon as possible we will also publish the specific computer code that aggregates the individual station temperatures into the global land temperature record.

As soon as we have all permissions in place we will release the remaining station records – around 5000 in total – that make up the full land temperature record. We are dependant on international approvals to enable this final step and cannot guarantee that we will get permission from all data owners. (source)

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UK PM Gordon Brown: "We know the science."

6 December, 2009 by

Dumb and dumber

Dumb and dumber

Gordon Brown isn’t the sharpest tool in the bag, but he’s resorting to ever more desperate hyperbole in the lead up to Copenhagen. And he clearly hasn’t read the CRU exchanges either:

BRITISH Prime Minister Gordon Brown has led a chorus of condemnation against ”flat-earth” climate change sceptics who have tried to derail the Copenhagen summit by casting doubt on the evidence for global warming.

Sceptics in the UK and US have moved to capitalise on a series of hacked emails from climate change scientists at the University of East Anglia, England, claiming they show attempts to hide information that does not support the case for human activity causing rising temperatures.

On the eve of the Copenhagen summit, Saudi Arabia and Republican members of the US Congress have used the emails to claim the need for urgent action to cut carbon emissions has been undermined.

But on Friday Mr Brown, UK Environment Secretary Ed Miliband, and Ed Markey, co-author of the US climate change bill, joined forces to condemn the sceptics.

”With only days to go before Copenhagen we mustn’t be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics,’‘ Mr Brown said. ”We know the science. We know what we must do. We must now act and close the 5 billion-tonne gap. That will seal the deal.”

According to the British Government adviser Sir Nicholas Stern, 10 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions must be taken out of the atmosphere by 2020. So far agreement is in place for only half that amount.

Mr Miliband gave his most damning assessment of the sceptics yet, describing them as ”dangerous and deceitful”. He said: ”The approach of the climate saboteurs is to misuse data and mislead people. The sceptics are playing politics with science in a dangerous and deceitful manner. The evidence is clear and the time we have to act is short. To abandon this process now would lead to misery and catastrophe for millions.”

All of this would be hilarious, if it weren’t so serious. Here we have the prime minister of the UK, who hasn’t a clue about the scientific method, calling those who correctly question scientific data “flat earthers” – and Ed Miliband calling them “deceitful”. It’s nothing short of astonishing, and rather ironic given the deceit clearly going on in the AGW science community.

The reality is that Brown and Miliband are gullible fools, who believe anything and everything the IPCC, and all its scientists, tell them.

Read it here.

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