Australia "must do more to curb emissions"

24 May, 2010 by

No climate crisis, no Climate Institute

Vested Interests Alert as an organisation that owes its very existence to the climate change “crisis” urges Australia to do more to tackle climate change (in order to ensure its own survival). Can’t exactly imagine the Climate Institute saying, nah, nothing to worry about, can you, when it’s main purpose is to “drive innovative and effective climate change solutions” (see here):

A new report commissioned by The Climate Institute says Australia’s carbon pollution will continue to soar without price signals to make companies take responsibility for their emissions.

The environmental organisation has also launched a partnership with a range of prominent businesses to tackle climate change.

Climate Institute chief executive John Connor says the report shows Australia is being left behind the rest of the world in developing renewable energies.

Mr Connor says a move to amend the renewable energy target will only go so far in addressing the problem.

“While amendments to the renewable energy target will help restructure our polluting power sector and drive billions of dollars of investments in new technologies and skills, Australia’s pollution will continue to soar unless we get extra policies that make companies responsible for their pollution,” he said.

Mr Connor says the nation’s major political parties are holding back investment.

A more blatant example of cynical self-preservation is difficult to imagine. Read it here.

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2010 could be "hottest year on record"

24 May, 2010 by

Throw some more snags on the barbie, mate

So screams the headline in The Times, conveniently forgetting to mention that “on record” means since about 1880, but “hottest year since 1880” doesn’t sound anywhere near as scary. But anyway, it’s a great opportunity to wheel out über-alarmist James Hansen:

CLIMATE scientists have warned that 2010 could turn out to be the warmest year in recorded history [since 1880].

They have collated global surface temperature measurements showing that the world has experienced near-record highs between January and April.

Researchers working independently at the Met Office and Nasa are soon to publish data that reveal the trend is likely to continue for the rest of the year. [Hmm, that’s odd, given that El Niño is fading fast, we’re heading towards La Niña conditions, and sea surface temperatures are heading south rapidly, but if the models say that then it must be true, surely?]

James Hansen [round of applause please], director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss), a world centre for climate monitoring, said: “Global temperatures, averaged over the past 12 months, were the warmest for 130 years. [Big freaking deal]

“December to February was also the second-warmest of any such period [since 1880].”

Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said: “It was a cold winter in Europe but, globally, January to March was one of the seven warmest starts to the year on record [since 1880].

“This year has more than a 50% chance of being the warmest on record [since 1880].”

None of this proves anything about a link to man-made emissions. The planet is recovering from the Little Ice Age, so is it any wonder that this decade is warmer than last? And there’s been a strong El Niño, so is it any wonder that the start of this year is warmer than the end of last? Not really. At least there’s a bit of sanity at the end:

John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, was cautious about predicting record temperatures for 2010, pointing out that the global datasets for temperature had flaws that could lead to rises being overstated [that’s a polite way of saying “they’re fudged” – Ed]. He said: “Be wary of climate forecasts — Mother Nature always seems to have a trick up her sleeve.”

Yeah, remember her, James Hansen? Mother Nature?

Read it here.

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Transperth advert calls CO2 "poisonous"

23 May, 2010 by

This is the level or ignorance we have reached, where Transperth, the government department in Western Australia responsible for public transport, broadcasts a television advert that refers to “poisonous CO2”. In the few hundred parts per million it is in the atmosphere, it is completely harmless, and (cue junior school biology lesson) is essential for life on earth. But hey, don’t let the facts get in the way of a scary story.

Idiotic.

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UN: Biodiversity crisis worse than climate change

23 May, 2010 by

Hysteria Co., Inc.

As I predicted here, the UN can see what it thought was its free ticket to global government (climate change) disappearing before its very eyes, so it is now on the lookout for another cause through which to regulate, tax and generally interfere in the lives of ordinary people – and here it is:

The economic case for global action to stop the destruction of the natural world is even more powerful than the argument for tackling climate change, a major report for the United Nations will declare this summer.

The Stern report on climate change, which was prepared for the UK Treasury and published in 2007, famously claimed that the cost of limiting climate change would be around 1%-2% of annual global wealth, but the longer-term economic benefits would be 5-20 times that figure.

The UN’s biodiversity report – dubbed the Stern for Nature – is expected to say that the value of saving “natural goods and services”, such as pollination, medicines, fertile soils, clean air and water, will be even higher – between 10 and 100 times the cost of saving the habitats and species which provide them.

Read it here.

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Alarmists still desperate to link malaria to climate change

23 May, 2010 by

Annoying little insect … and a mosquito

And the latest attempt is likely to be by none other than (drum roll please) Professor Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann:

Many researchers have predicted that rising temperatures will cause malaria to expand its range and intensify in its current strongholds. But unlike usual models, which aim to predict how climate change will affect malaria in the future, researchers looked at how warming affected the disease throughout the last century.

They used a recent epidemiological map of the global distribution of the major malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, and compared this with historical data on malaria’s prevalence in the 1900s.

The researchers — whose work was published in Nature yesterday (20 May) — found that despite global warming, the prevalence of malaria decreased, which they attribute to disease and mosquito control programmes.

Or so you would think. But Matthew Thomas thinks differently. Matthew Thomas said that the study “plays down the potential importance of climate [change]”.

Who is Matthew Thomas? He is a researcher at… Penn State. Matthew Thomas is a researcher… at Penn State… who has just won a $1.8 million grant to study the influence of environmental temperature on transmission of vector-borne diseases. Think he has a dog in this hunt?

Ask his co-investigator on the project. Michael Mann…

Where do we ask for a refund?

Read it here.

And more from John O’Sullivan here.

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ABC: sea temperature alarmism

21 May, 2010 by

Nothing alarmist here

They can bore us with as much evidence of warming as they like – the point is, it still doesn’t make the link to human emissions. But Radio Australia hits pay dirt with John Lyman, an interviewee who gives them all the alarmism they need in a piece about sea temperatures:

JOHN LYMAN: We can see with that uncertainty that there has definitely been significant warming, that warming as a signal is six times larger than the uncertainty we measured.

TIMOTHY MCDONALD: John Lyman says oceanic warming is in the order of 0.16 of a degree Celsius. He says that might not sound like much but it’s actually very significant.

JOHN LYMAN: Five-hundred 100-watt light bulbs per person on earth burning continuously – that would be the trend we’ve seen over the last 16 years just being sucked up by the ocean.

But I like to think of it in units of bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and that would be over about 16 years two billion of those bombs. So it’s a heroic job the ocean does sucking up that signal at the top of the atmosphere. (source)

Gee, sounds scary. But now for some sanity from Dr Roy Spencer:

Being a believer in natural, internal cycles in the climate system, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that global-average SSTs will plunge over the next couple of months. Based upon past experience, it will take a month or two for our (UAH) tropospheric temperatures to then follow suit.

SSTs heading south as El Nino fades

Read it here.

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Daily Bayonet – GW Hoax Weekly Round-up

21 May, 2010 by

Skewering the clueless

As always, a great read!

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"Triple crown" of global cooling

20 May, 2010 by

In a decade or two?

Rather than pointless efforts to stop the almost non-existent problem of CO2 caused warming, we should probably be preparing for the opposite, since many scientists are pointing towards a future sharp decline in global temperature caused by the unfortunate coincidence of three factors:

  • the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) flipping into its cold phase;
  • very low solar activity; and
  • volcanic eruptions in the pipeline (Eyjafjallajokull’s very, very big brother, Katla, may be on the verge of a big eruption if history is to be believed)

As Roy Spencer argues in his book, The Great Global Warming Blunder, the PDO may have significant effects on cloud cover, which may in themselves be sufficient to explain virtually all of the late 20th century warming, without any discernible effect from anthropogenic CO2. Add this to the fact that the sun is in the deepest slumber since the Dalton Minimum, and Icelandic volcanoes are kicking off and you have a recipe for significant global cooling.

All conjecture of course, but probably far more likely than the dire predictions of the IPCC’s incomplete and flawed climate models. So time to get your thermals out…

Read it here. (h/t Climate Realists)

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Rudd in deep strife

20 May, 2010 by

Five major policy backflips and counting…

The Herald Sun lays bare the problems for Kevin Rudd. He has the inverse midas touch at the moment, everything he touches turns to dust. Even his attacks on Tony Abbott’s “gaffe” have backfired, with public opinion solidly behind Abbott:

FOR the past three weeks, opinion polls have shown, decidedly and emphatically, that the prime ministership of Kevin Rudd is in dramatic decline.

The figures have come back with one clear thread – Australia’s very brief and intense love affair with Rudd has come to a screaming halt.

God only knows what sort of meltdown the PM experienced as he opened his newspapers. Unlike John Howard, who faced his executioners with a brave face each time the polls were released in his last year of power, Rudd went missing in action.

Like a bad loser, Rudd hates facing failure. There were no hospital visits on those three dark days after these polls. No hard hats, no slapping the workers’ backs, no door-stops outside the local church. Dead silence from the man who turned Channel 7’s Sunrise into his own marketing weapon during the last election campaign.

By hiding, and sending Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan out to do his dirty work, Rudd told us even more about himself than if he had held dozens of press conferences.

His prime ministership was built on populism. But his backflips on the ETS, immigration policy and on the roof insulation scheme proved to many of us who voted for him that Rudd does not stand for much at all.

If there is one thing Australians can’t stand, it is a fake.

Is it too much to hope that Rudd will be a one-termer?

Read it here.

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Will Alexander: RIP climate change

20 May, 2010 by

South African UN scientist Will Alexander writes the death notice for “global warming” hysteria in his final memo:

CLIMATE CHANGE

may it

REST IN PEACE

1. Provably false assumption that human activities can influence global climate for which there is no scientifically believable evidence.

2. Provably false assumption that the increases in global temperatures are the cause of climatic changes. Multiyear variations in global climate are driven by variations in the receipt and poleward redistribution of solar energy via the atmospheric and oceanic processes, not temperature variations. This is high school physics.

3. Complete lack of numeracy skills and logical deductions by the climate change adherents.

4. Deliberate manipulation of climate change science to suit political objectives.

In memoriam

Read it here (PDF) h/t Climate Realists

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