Pachauri's flights stretch to the moon (and back)

6 February, 2010 by

Patchy old Pachy

Hypocrisy Alert: Don’t do as I do, do as I say, and that’s especially true of the IPCC which wants us all to dismantle our economies in order to “save the planet”. Except those edicts don’t apply to the IPCC head himself, old Pachy, as he clocks up half a million air miles in 19 months:

On his international missions, Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), called for radical action to stave off environmental disaster.

He urged people to eat less meat, pay aviation taxes and even ban giving iced water in restaurants. But in order to get his message across, the former railway engineer, who lives in Delhi, created an enormous carbon footprint of his own.

Dr Pachauri has been the chairman of the panel since 2002. Documents available on its website showed that in one 19-month period, he clocked up more than half a million miles in the air as he travelled the world on official business.

Between January 2007 and July 2008, he took more than 120 long-haul flights and 43 short-haul trips, taking in countries such as New Zealand, America and Fiji.

Dr Pachauri’s trips would have produced 121.1 tons of carbon dioxide, according to calculations by ClimateCare, a carbon offset provider.

It is estimated that the average Briton produces around 8.6 tons of carbon dioxide a year, while the average Indian produces just over one ton.

Nice work if you can get it.

Read it here.

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BBC: "More people are now doubters than firm believers."

6 February, 2010 by

At least in the UK, the media are beginning to cover the shonky science stories, and public opinion is reacting. As the BBC reports, public support for the alarmist cause is haemorrhaging fast:

The number of British people who are sceptical about climate change is rising, a poll for BBC News suggests.

The Populus poll of 1,001 adults found 25% did not think global warming was happening, a rise of 8% since a similar poll was conducted in November.

The percentage of respondents who said climate change was a reality had fallen from 83% in November to 75% this month.

And only 26% of those asked believed climate change was happening and “now established as largely man-made”.

The findings are based on interviews carried out on 3-4 February.

In November 2009, a similar poll by Populus – commissioned by the Times newspaper – showed that 41% agreed that climate change was happening and it was largely the result of human activities.

Dropping like a stone

“It is very unusual indeed to see such a dramatic shift in opinion in such a short period,” Populus managing director Michael Simmonds told BBC News.

“The British public are sceptical about man’s contribution to climate change – and becoming more so,” he added.

“More people are now doubters than firm believers.”

Whereas here in Australia, the ABC and Fairfax have been doing their very best to sweep it all under the carpet. Unfortunately, the carpet now has a massive bulge in the middle, which nobody can miss. Public opinion here will follow suit in due course, making Rudd and Wong’s blinkered, headlong charge towards an ETS even more ridiculous.

Read it here.

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Climate sense from Miranda Devine

6 February, 2010 by

© SMH

Climate sense

The latest article from the devine Miranda will have the SMH-reading intelligentsia choking on their organic muesli and skinny lattes, as she confronts them with the reality of the climate debate (something the Fairfax press has done so well to conceal):

As the wheels keep falling off the climate alarmist bandwagon, it’s suddenly become fashionable to be a sceptic. Out of the woodwork have crawled all sorts of fair-weather friends.

But where were they when the going was tough, when we were being hammered as Holocaust deniers, planet wreckers, in the pay of the “Big Polluters”, bad parents, pariahs, equivalent to murderers? It was pure McCarthyism.

But now, even the most aggressive alarmists have gone quiet or softened their rhetoric and people who sat on the fence have morphed into wise owls.

They still think it’s acceptable to mock touring British sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton’s protruding eyes, a distressing symptom of his thyroid disease, in an effort to marginalise him as a lunatic, rather than address his criticisms. But, when even the British left-leaning [“left-leaning”? Falling off the edge, more like – Ed], warmist-friendly Guardian newspaper has begun to investigate the fraud involved in “sexing up” climate change science, it’s clear the collapse of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s credibility and the holes in the case for catastrophic man-made climate change can no longer be ignored.

We are witnessing an outbreak of neo-open-mindedness and face-saving from people who brooked no nuance.

Read it here.

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Australia "out of step" with the rest of the world on emissions trading

6 February, 2010 by

Spinning like a launderette

Just four days ago, Penny Wong said this, in The Australian:

It is clear the global trend is towards greater action to combat climate change, not less.

And on emissions trading, more than 30 countries already have an emissions trading scheme in operation and others, including the US, Japan and South Korea, are working towards implementing their own schemes. (see here)

At the time I questioned the figure she quoted, suggesting that most of those countries were in the EU scheme, but Christian Kerr does the digging and discovers that apart from the EU, there is just one, one, emissions trading scheme in operation, and that’s in New Zealand, and it’s only half working. So to say that the global trend is towards greater action was an outright L-word:

AUSTRALIA is looking increasingly isolated in the global community as Kevin Rudd presses on with his government’s emissions trading scheme.

US President Barack Obama admitted just two days ago he might have to abandon his proposal for emissions trading in favour of direct action in order to steer his carbon-cutting plans through the US Senate.

None of the world’s top five polluters — the US, China, Russia, India and Japan — has an ETS.

New Zealand is the only nation in the world with an operating emissions trading scheme, excluding those affiliated with or planning to link to the European Union’s ETS.

Most of New Zealand’s provisions have not yet come into effect, and the Labour-legislated scheme was significantly amended by the National Party-led government last September after fears about its impact on low-income households and primary industry.

And the article blows the lid off Penny’s misrepresentation of the numbers:

The Australian Department of Climate Change’s website tells the story on emissions trading. Of the 37 countries on its list of nations that have established or are proposing an ETS, 30 are linked to the EU scheme.

Opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt said the Prime Minister was “intentionally, deliberately and consistently” misrepresenting the European emissions trading scheme.

“In Europe, they’ve had a mock trading scheme which largely only provides incentives for people to reduce their emissions, with almost no penalty for firms which continue on their economic activity,” Mr Hunt said.

The Rudd government’s position on climate is looking increasingly lame and out of touch with reality, and secretly I would bet Kev would love to see the whole thing ditched – it will be a political disaster. But he cannot be seen to do that, having branded climate change “the greatest moral challenge of our generation”, so I think they will just let the Coalition defeat it in the Senate and hopefully move on to other things.

Read it here.

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How not to answer questions Part 94 – Penny Wong

5 February, 2010 by

Tony Jones puts Wong through the mincer, and Wong is all at sea, dodging, weaving, avoiding, fudging, obfuscating, spinning, and above all, never, repeat never, answering the question asked – everything the Ruddites do so well to hoodwink the poor unsuspecting public. One of those occasions where it is both horrific and compulsive viewing. As that famous quote from the brilliant UK political satire The Thick of It puts it, when Jeremy Paxman mauls the junior minister for social affairs, Ben Swain:

“It’s like watching a lion rape a sheep … but in a bad way.”

Not pleasant viewing…

Good on ya, Tony. We’ll make a sceptic of you yet!

Catch it here if you can stand it (h/t Andrew Bolt)

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India's Ramesh: "There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism"

5 February, 2010 by

Climate sense from Jairam Ramesh

India abandons the IPCC ship, which is listing heavily to starboard, taking on water, and heading for the bottom of the ocean. Rather than base climate policy on the discredited pronouncements of the IPCC, India has wisely decided to set up its own climate research bodies. Hello, hello, testing, testing – anyone listening to this in Canberra?? Nope. Eyes and ears firmly closed.

India has established its own body to monitor the effects of global warming because it “cannot rely” on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group headed by its own Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr R K Pachauri.

The Indian government’s move is a significant snub to both the IPCC and Dr Pachauri as he battles to defend his reputation following the revelation his most recent climate change report included false claims that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035. Scientists believe it could take more than 300 years for the glaciers to disappear.

The body and its chairman have faced growing criticism ever since as questions have been raised on the credibility of their work and the rigour with which climate change claims are assessed.

In India the false claims have heightened tensions between Dr Pachauri and the government, which had earlier questioned his glacial melting claims. In Autumn, its environment minister Mr Jairam Ramesh said while glacial melting in the Himalayas was a real concern, there was evidence that some were actually advancing in the face of global warming.

Dr Pachauri had dismissed challenges like these as based on “voodoo science”, but last night Mr Ramesh effectively marginalised the IPC chairman even further.

He announced the Indian government will established a separate National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology to monitor the effects of climate change on the world’s ‘third ice cap’, and an ‘Indian IPCC’ to use ‘climate science’ to assess the impact of global warming throughout the country.

“There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. [Yes, and the IPCC crossed it years ago – Ed] I am for climate science. I think people misused [the] IPCC report, [the] IPCC doesn’t do the original research which is one of the weaknesses … they just take published literature and then they derive assessments, so we had goof-ups on Amazon forest, glaciers, snow peaks.

Read it here.

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ABC labels Pachauri "leading global warming scientist"

5 February, 2010 by

Wrong again

As the IPCC desperately tries to paper over the cracks, the ABC promotes Pachauri:

The United Nations’ top climate official has backed leading global warming scientist Rajendra Pachauri, saying he should ignore calls to resign over errors in a key 2007 report. (source)

Pachauri isn’t a leading global warming scientist. He isn’t a global warming scientist at all. In fact, he isn’t even a scientist. He’s a railway engineer.

Your ABC – for when facts don’t matter.

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IPCC: sea level blunder angers Dutch environment minister

5 February, 2010 by

Only the purple is below sea level

Clog-gate? Windmill-gate? Edam-gate? Yet another error in IPCC AR4, this time relating to sea levels in Holland:

A United Nations report wrongly claimed that more than half of the Netherlands is currently below sea level.

In fact, just 20 percent of the country consists of polders that are pumped dry, and which are at risk of flooding if global warming causes rising sea levels. Dutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer has ordered a thorough investigation into the quality of the climate reports which she uses to base her policies on.

Climate-sceptic MPs were quick to react. Conservative MP Helma Neppérus and Richard de Mos from the right-wing Freedom Party want the minister to explain to parliament how these figures were used to decide on national climate policy. “This may invalidate all claims that the last decades were the hottest ever,” Mr De Mos said.

The incorrect figures which date back to 2007 were revealed on Wednesday by the weekly Vrij Nederland. The Dutch Environmental Assessment Agency told reporters that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) added together two figures supplied by the agency: the area of the Netherlands which is below sea-level and the area which is susceptible to flooding. In fact, these areas overlap, so the figures should not have been combined to produce the 55 percent quoted by the IPCC.

The discovery comes just a week after a prediction about glaciers in the Himalayas proved wrong. Rather than disappearing by 2035, as IPCC reports claim, the original research underlying the report predicted the mountain ice would last until 2350. (source)

The Dutch environment minister isn’t impressed:

Dutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer says she will no longer tolerate errors by climate researchers. She expressed her anger to Dutch researchers who presented their annual report on the state of the climate on Wednesday. (source)

Can you imagine Penny Wong having the guts to say the same? No, me neither, because she, like Rudd and Co, is blinded by dogma.

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Daily Bayonet GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

5 February, 2010 by

Skewering the clueless

As always, a great read!

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Pachauri: hopes sceptics "apply asbestos to their faces"

4 February, 2010 by

Nothing like a bit of asbestos for the complexion

To all those commentators calling for Pachauri’s resignation from the IPCC: please stop. The longer this loony remains in charge, the more damage will be done, and the less chance of it ever recovering. From a recent Financial Times interview:

FT: In recent weeks, many articles in the British media have questioned aspects of the IPCC reports and criticised your conduct personally as the chairman. Do you think there is an organised effort to demolish your reputation and the reputation of the IPCC?

RP: It doesn’t take a genius to arrive at the conclusion that apparently this is carefully orchestrated. These things are certainly not happening at random. The one unfortunate thing that has happened is the mistake that the IPCC made on the glaciers. We have acknowledged that; we have put that on our web site.

But there is absolutely nothing [else] but I would say [there are] nefarious designs behind people trying to attack me with lies, falsehoods [alleging] that I have business interests. I have clarified that in very precise terms. Once I did that, they shifted their focus on [to] my institute, which, may I say – with all humility but some degree of pride – is an institution that the world now looks up to and admires. We function under the laws of this country. We are looked up to by everybody in every section of society, including the highest levels of government not only over here, but in other parts of the world.

What they are indulging in is skulduggery of the worst kind. I’m reasonably sure that very soon people will realise the truth and they would also question the credentials of some of the people who are behind them.

And are you all sitting down for the best bit?

I don’t want to get down to a personal level [but I will anyway – Ed], but all you need to do is look at their backgrounds. They are people who deny the link between smoking and cancer; they are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder – I hope that they apply it to their faces every day – and people who say that the only way to deal with HIV/Aids is to screen the population on a regular basis and isolate those who are infected.

There is clearly a very obvious intent behind this whole thing. I’m certainly not going to be affected by it. I’m totally in the clear [Ha, ha, my aching sides – Ed]. I have absolutely nothing but indifference to what these people are doing.

Excellent work, mate. All I can say is “Keep it up”.

Read it here (subscription may be required) (h/t Tom Nelson)

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