UK scientist "hid flaws in Chinese weather data"

3 February, 2010 by

In the poo again

This report comes from the Sydney Morning Herald, amazingly, but it includes its standard disclaimer on this kind of story:

“The allegations do not undermine the large body of evidence for human-made global warming.”

No, of course they don’t. Nothing ever does in Fairfax-land, does it? But still, the story is another nail in the IPCC’s credibility:

A BRITISH climate scientist at the centre of the hacked emails controversy has been accused of trying to hide flaws in Chinese weather data used in a scientific paper on the effect of cities on global warming.

The 1990 paper, which also included temperature records from Australia, was cited in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as evidence that urbanisation only made a small contribution to rising temperatures.

The Guardian investigated more than 2000 emails hacked [leaked – Ed] last year from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, many of them sent by Professor Jones, its director.

It reported that Professor Jones had withheld information about the 50 years of Chinese data when faced with freedom-of-information requests by climate sceptics.

They wanted to know the location of 84 Chinese weather stations used by Professor Jones and his colleague, Wei-Chyung Wang, of the University of Albany, to argue that rising temperatures in China were due to climate change, not expanding cities. When Professor Jones released the information, no location was given for the stations that were supposed to be in the countryside.

An investigation by Professor Wang’s university cleared him of any wrongdoing, but the emails reveal Professor Jones’s colleagues in the unit were concerned by his reliance on the Chinese data.

The controversy could lead to a review of the influential paper, published in Nature, which had four other authors, including Dr Michael Coughlan, head of the National Climate Centre at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

You have to ask, if the case for global warming is so strong and the science is so settled, why is such conduct necessary? It’s a simple question.

Read it here.

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Comment: Abbott's uncomfortable climate policy

3 February, 2010 by

Abbott v Rudd

Well, the Coalition have finally revealed their climate policy, and it looks as uneasy as one would expect. At least it’s not a massive new tax a la ETS, but the gestures towards cutting carbon dioxide (well done to TA for making this small but important point) are really just that. TA looked uncomfortable on The 7.30 Report last night, defending a policy that you know he doesn’t really believe in, and Kerry O’Brien succeeded in exposing that conflict.

The problem is that, deep down, TA is a true sceptic [Bravo for that – Ed]. He knows that the climate science is corrupted and that the projections for dangerous global warming are mostly hype. However, he doesn’t believe he can say this in the current political climate – which is probably right. Not doing anything would give Labor and the Greens a field day – branding the Opposition “deniers”, “flat earthers” and every other warmist ad hominem known to man. It would also go down very badly with the public at the moment, who have been so utterly brainwashed by the government and a media in its pocket that they still believe global warming needs action. This is despite everything that has happened since Climategate in November, and the disaster of Copenhagen in December.

This, however, is starting to change. The Australian continues to print sceptical articles, and even the Fairfax press have begun doing the same. The barrage of stories exposing incompetence and manipulation or suppression of data in the IPCC reports continues unabated. The IPCC has been exposed, not as a body of scientific impartiality, but of extremist environmental advocacy.

In time, the weight of evidence against the “consensus” will eventually percolate through to the public, despite the media’s increasingly unsuccessful attempts at its suppression. Eventually (and I hope it happens before the election), the collective public penny will drop, and there will be a unanimous cry of “We’ve been conned.”

So TA should bide his time and continue with his “interim” policy, until the political climate and public opinion can accept what should be the proper Coalition position: that climate change is a non-problem.

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Tony Abbott unveils Coalition climate change policy

2 February, 2010 by

From the ABC:

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has placed a $1 billion emissions reduction fund at the heart of the Coalition’s new $3.2b climate change policy.

Announcing the policy today, Mr Abbott said the Coalition would use the fund and its policy to invest in direct measures to help the public, industry and farmers cut emissions.

Those measures would include planting 20 million trees, a $1,000 solar panel rebate and soil carbon storage.

Mr Abbott said the plan would be simpler, cheaper and more effective than the Government’s emissions trading scheme and would deliver the same 5 per cent cut in emissions by 2020.

“Our policy will deliver the same emissions reductions as the Government’s, but without the Government’s great big new tax,” he said.

The policy would be funded from the Budget over the forward estimates but Mr Abbott is yet to explain where the Coalition would find the savings to pay for it.

But he says the Coalition’s policy is vastly cheaper than the ETS, which he says will cost $40b over the same period.

“It’s careful, it’s costed, and it’s capped,” Mr Abbott said. (source)

And Tony Abbott has used his first question time as Opposition leader to goad Kevin Rudd into a debate on climate change, which Rudd continues to shy away from:

Mr Abbott, who earlier released the coalition’s long-awaited climate change policy, opened question time by directly challenging the prime minister.

“When I first challenged the prime minister to a public debate on climate change, he refused, saying the coalition had no policy,” he told parliament.

“Well, we have a policy which is simpler cheaper and clearer than the government’s.

“Does the prime minister have the guts to have a nationally-televised debate about climate change?” (source)

Answer: NO. And to finish off, Rudd comes out with his usual evasive nonsense:

Mr Rudd said the opposition had some simple questions to answer: Did it understand the science behind climate change, how did it propose to tackle it, and was it fair dinkum?

“Was it fair dinkum?” Oh per-lease. And I think the Opposition understands the science (or now should we say, the lack of science) better than you do, clearly.

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SMH spins Paul Sheehan's article to discredit Monckton

2 February, 2010 by

More spin than a launderette

Yesterday, Paul Sheehan came up with a great article listing ten “anti-anti-commandments” and Lord Monckton’s “verbal bombs”. Here is an example:

1. The pin-up species of global warming, the polar bear, is increasing in number, not decreasing.

Polar bear numbers have surged since hunting was largely banned in the 1970s. When Tim Flannery predicted that polar bears would be extinct within 25 years, he was challenged by Dr. Mitchell Taylor, the polar bear expert for the Canadian federal territory of Nunavut, which covers most of the polar bear’s Canadian habitat.

Mitchell wrote in 2006: “Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present… it is just silly to predict the demise of polar bears in 25 years based on media-assisted hysteria.”

A counter perspective: Last year, at the latest meeting of the world’s peak polar bear study group, the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group, scientists reported that eight of the 19 sub-populations of polar bears were declining, compared with five declining populations in 2005. Of the other 11 sub-populations, three were stable, one was increasing, and there was insufficient data to describe a trend in the remaining seven.

Polar bear populations rebounded dramatically after over-hunting was restricted in the 1970s, but the threat posed to polar bears now is completely different – a loss of the sea ice habitat that is essential to their survival.

Lord Monckton’s Sydney bomb-toss: “There are five times as many polar bears now than there were 40 years ago.”

But strangely, today, the article has been rewritten, with the “consensus view” getting the last word as a rebuttal to Monckton’s points:

1. The pin-up species of global warming, the polar bear, is increasing in number, not decreasing.

Viscount Christopher Monckton, the world’s leading provocateur against the arguments of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said during his current visit to Australia: “There are five times as many polar bears now than there were 40 years ago.”

The counter-punch: Last year, at the latest meeting of the world’s peak polar bear study group, the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group, scientists reported that eight of the 19 sub-populations of polar bears were declining, compared with five declining populations in 2005. Of the other 11 sub-populations, three were stable, one was increasing, and there was insufficient data to describe a trend in the remaining seven.

Polar bear populations rebounded dramatically after over-hunting was restricted in the 1970s, but the threat posed to polar bears now is completely different – a loss of the sea ice habitat that is essential to their survival.

The other nine points are the same. And there’s a strange note at the end as well, palming off the original article, which appeared in the Herald to The National Times:

Note: All the claims and retorts were published by The National Times yesterday in a companion piece to my column on Lord Monckton’s visit to Australia.

Very peculiar. Seems that those at the Sydney Moonbat Herald couldn’t “bear” to see their precious arguments destroyed by Christopher Monckton, so they’ve rejigged the article as a rebuttal to Monckton and made sure the warmist view gets the last word in each case… Hardly surprising, however, and just shows the lengths the warm-mongering media will go to to stop the truth getting out.

Read the two versions here (at the SMH) and here.

Filed Under: Climate

Climate Nonsense from Penny Wong

2 February, 2010 by

My denial is this big

I think The Australian is publishing this for a laugh, to syphon off what little credibility the Rudd government’s climate plan still has left before the latest ETS vote. And really, who gives a monkey’s what the Wong-bot thinks? Her memory card is stuck in pre-Copenhagen, pre-Climategate, pre-Amazongate, pre-Glaciergate, pre-Tony Abbott mode, and predictably enough she regurgitates all the old, tired arguments, all of them now hollow. But she starts with what must be the most hilarious understatement of the decade:

COPENHAGEN did not deliver the perfect agreement.

Not perfect? It was a fiasco, a disaster, a laughing stock. Such is the denial (sorry to use that word, but hey, if the cap fits…) in Wong’s CPU that she cannot even admit to the most obvious facts! Then its time to wheel out the climate “records”:

Earlier this month, the Bureau of Meteorology released its 2009 annual climate statement. It found 2009 was the second hottest year in Australia on record and ended our hottest decade. In Australia, each decade since the 1940s has been warmer than the last.

This is not a flash in the pan. It continues the trend.

Globally, 14 of the 15 warmest years on record occurred between 1995 and 2009. As a continent that is already hot and dry, the implications for Australia are profound.

What can you expect from someone with only a primary school understanding of science, as Lord Monckton puts it? Do we really need to go through this again? Oh, OK then. “Record” means in the last 150 years. Big freaking deal. It doesn’t include any of the previous warm periods (of which there were many). And so what if each decade is warmer than the last? What would you expect? We’re coming out of a Little Ice Age. Duh. And even given that, the satellite record shows temperature stasis since 2001. What’s that, Penny? You’ve never heard of the satellite record? You prefer to rely on fudged data from surface stations such as GISS and GHCN? And then, even more denial:

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.

No it isn’t. The trend is precisely the opposite. The majority of those 30 countries cited are in the EU scheme, by the way. China and India may talk the talk, but they (bizarrely) put alleviating poverty and raising standards of living above pointless emissions trading schemes. And the chances of the US passing climate legislation are disappearing faster than the Amazon rainforest. And we know where the Australian ETS is heading…

We know we must put a limit on our emissions. Nothing at Copenhagen changes that fundamental fact. And the cheapest and most effective way to do that remains the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. John Howard knew it, Peter Costello knew it, Malcolm Turnbull knew it and the Rudd government knows it.

Yes, and times change Penny. Tony Abbott has realised this. You and Kevin Rudd (and Malcolm Turnbull) haven’t. With luck, your obsession with passing this pointless ETS will consign you and your dismal government, at the next election, to the rubbish bin of history, where it truly belongs.

Read it here.

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Climate Institute: Impact of ETS on food prices "minimal"

1 February, 2010 by

No we don't, we peddle self-serving propaganda

Gee, there’s a real surprise, ain’t it? An alarmist organisation whose sole existence is thanks to the overblown “climate crisis” comes up with a report that justifies its own existence and reassures everyone that the massive, unnecessary new tax will have far less of an effect on food prices than the evils of “global warming”. And as usual, the ABC fails to see the conflict and publishes it all unquestioningly, and timed perfectly to coincide with the return of parliament tomorrow, undermining the Coalition’s opposition to the ETS (of course, the ABC is stuffed to the gills with Lefties from Kerry O’Brien down [or is it up?], so any opportunity to bolster Rudd and Labor at the expense of the other parties is welcomed with open arms):

A new report has found failing to tackle climate change will have a greater impact on supermarket prices than an emissions trading scheme (ETS).

The report from independent [Ha ha! My aching sides – Ed] think-tank the Climate Institute found extreme weather events, caused by climate change, will lead to food price rises in the future.

The report says these increases will be far greater than the 1 per cent weekly price rise, or $1.30 a week, expected to flow from an ETS.

It predicts extreme weather events, like drought, will become more common as the Earth’s temperature rises. [Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. By the way, did I mention that’s wrong? – Ed

Climate Institute chief executive John Connor says tackling climate change, through an ETS, will save money in the long run.

“What this report shows is that food prices are far more at risk from extremes in the weather and the climate, extremes that will increase with climate change, than they are with any ETS or a system which puts a price on carbon pollution,” Mr Connor said.

And then we have the usual outright L-words:

He says climate change is already having an effect on supermarket prices.

“Climate change is not just about warmer weather, it’s about wilder weather,” he said.

“And the drought, cyclones, extreme weather events will increase over time. [That’s a big fat L-word – Ed]

“We’ve had that experience in Australia, of course. We’ve had the tripling of the price of bananas from Cyclone Larry. We’ve had the drought raise lamb prices around 60 per cent.” (source)

I get tired of writing this: there is no link between “global warming” and increased hurricanes, floods or other extreme weather. And there isn’t a climate scientist on the planet that would link Cyclone Larry with global warming. But who cares about the facts? Certainly not the Climate Institute, which is feathering its own nest, and certainly not the ABC which will publish any old rubbish as long as it fits its pre-conceived warm-mongering agenda.

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School Gate? IPCC claims based on "student essay"

31 January, 2010 by

Latest IPCC source?

What next? Will they find some 8 year-old’s science homework [Surely “religious education homework?” – Ed] buried in there somewhere, corners ripped from where the dog tried to eat it? Beyond parody, and revealed by the tireless work of the UK Sunday Telegraph which seems to have regained its proper compass:

The United Nations’ expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world’s mountain tops on a student’s dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

The revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to issue a humiliating apology earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global warming.

The IPCC’s remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of scientific evidence on climate change.

In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.

However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.

The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master’s degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.

The revelations, uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph, have raised fresh questions about the quality of the information contained in the report, which was published in 2007.

0/10 – Must try harder.

Read it here.

UPDATE: Baker’s Delight are on the same track with their latest advert – but they believed it to be fiction, of course:

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Abbott: 4 degree rise "not the greatest moral challenge"

31 January, 2010 by

Needs a new climate adviser

You have to wonder who is advising Tony Abbott on climate. This kind of comment plays straight into the warmists’ hands, especially as we wait for the Coalition’s climate policy, due on Tuesday:

It will deliver the same carbon pollution reduction as Labor’s emissions trading scheme but for a “comparatively modest cost”, he told a Young Liberals convention in Adelaide on Saturday.

Mr Abbott also mocked Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for declaring climate change was the greatest moral challenge of our time.

“It’s an important issue but even if dire predictions are right and average temperatures around the globe rise by four degrees over the century, it’s still not the ‘great moral challenge’ of our time – as Mr Rudd has described it on 14 occasions – let alone the ‘greatest’ moral challenge of our time – as Mr Rudd has described it at least four times,” Mr Abbott said.

“Adapting to changing rainfall patterns, for example, will be hard but it won’t supplant the threat of war, injustice, disease and want as the biggest problems with which humanity must grapple.”

And, naturally, here is the response:

The Climate Institute’s chief executive John Connor said it was reckless and ridiculous for Mr Abbott to be relaxed about a four-degree rise in global temperatures.

“He’s missed the link that such an increase will, in fact, lead to greater insecurity and instability around the world and particularly in our region.

“It will lead to very significant public health impacts and disease.”

And I’d have to agree that a 4 Celsius rise would probably have an enormous effect on the planet. Tony Abbott has tacitly admitted that the “dire projections” of the IPCC have some validity, whereas in reality the credibility of the alarmist science is disappearing faster than a Himalayan glacier. The point he should have made is that Rudd’s “great moral challenge” could not be based on flawed models and dodgy science.

Read it here.

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ABC's new climate expert: Osama Bin Laden

30 January, 2010 by

"And now for the weather…"

But hang on… he isn’t a climatologist, is he? Where are his peer-reviewed papers? Oh, wait, that doesn’t matter when it’s a warmist, does it? They only worry about that kind of thing when it’s a sceptic:

Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden has blamed industrial nations for global warming, and urged a boycott of the US dollar to end “slavery,” in an audio tape aired by Al-Jazeera television.

“All industrial nations, mainly the big ones, are responsible for the crisis of global warming,” bin Laden said in the message attributed to him by the pan-Arab news channel based in Doha.

In an unusual message possibly timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, he warned of the impact of global warming by saying that “discussing climate change is not an intellectual luxury, but a reality.”

“This is a message to the whole world about those who are causing climate change, whether deliberately or not, and what we should do about that,” he said.

The Al Qaeda leader then slammed the US administration under former president George W Bush for not signing the Kyoto protocol on combating climate change.

“Bush the son, and the (US) Congress before him, rejected this agreement, only to satisfy the big companies,” he said.

ABC: The Absolute BS Corporation.

Read it here.

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ABC: Geoengineering scoop?

29 January, 2010 by

Climate alarmism 24/7

“Paint roofs white to cool cities.”

Sorry, old news.

And again.

And again.

That’s “Your Their ABC” – right up to date with the breaking news…

Filed Under: Climate
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