The Institution of Mechanical Engineers, that austere body founded in 1847 by railway pioneer George Stephenson, and whose other famous presidents included Robert Stephenson, Joseph Whitworth and Robert Napier, has sold out to climate alarmism, reports the UK Financial Times.

Tim Fox, head of environment and climate change at the IMechE, said: “Yes, we need to mitigate [greenhouse gas emissions], but the evidence shows this isn’t working alone.”
…
The IMechE identified sea level rises, and an increase in droughts, floods and storms as the main worries arising from global warming. Various measures can be put in place to counteract these effects, ranging from seawalls in some areas to abandoning tracts of land to the sea, and designing transport networks to be more resilient.

Another previously impartial scientific organisation bites the dust.

Read it here.

UPDATE: Piers Corbyn slams the report, calling it “alarmist, self-serving nonsense”. See here.

A crop of alarmist reports in The Age, The Herald Sun and The Sydney Morning Herald today, just to brighten up your Sunday morning. Starting with The Herald Sun which runs the clichéd old headline “Climate change could be even worse than predicted, expert warns” – yawn.

Without decisive action to slow global warming, higher temperatures could ignite tropical forests and thaw the Arctic tundra, potentially releasing billions of tons of carbon dioxide that has been stored for thousands of years. [Funny how higher temperatures in previous eras never did this – Ed]

That could raise temperatures even more and create “a vicious cycle that could spiral out of control by the end of the century“. [Ditto]

“We don’t want to cross a critical threshold where this massive release of carbon starts to run on autopilot,” said Field, a professor of biology and of environmental earth system science at Stanford University.
…
Mr Field is co-chair of the group charged with assessing the impacts of climate change on social, economic and natural systems for the IPCC’s fifth assessment due in 2014. [Great! Another report we won’t have to bother reading – Ed]

No such critical threshold has ever been demonstrated to exist. And Professor Field doesn’t seem to know much about English, either:

“Tropical forests are essentially inflammable,” Mr Field said. “You couldn’t get a fire to burn there if you tried.”

I think you mean “non-flammable”, but hey, it’s an easy mistake, even for a professor…

Moving on to The Moonbat Herald, under the headline “It will only get worse as climate changes”:

Research by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO has found that bushfire seasons will start earlier, end slightly later and become more intense in coming decades.
…
An author of the report, Kevin Hennessy from the CSIRO, told the Herald yesterday: “There does seem to be a human element to bushfire risk. In terms of human contribution it is clear that most of the global warming since about 1950 is likely due to increases in greenhouse gases. Higher temperatures clearly increase the risk of bushfires.”

“Clear” that something is “likely”? Don’t forget, there has been no global warming since 2001, and more warming in the first half of the 20th century than in the second.

Professor Mark Adams, dean of the faculty of agriculture at the University of Sydney, said higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had increased the risk of bushfires and added to the likelihood that their intensity would also increase.

Simple as that – it’s all too easy. The article then quotes Bob Brown, which I won’t repeat here, as it is likely to put readers off their breakfasts… The Age next, in an editorial:

We have long known that the Victorian bush is prone to fire, but the latest event raises the question about what can be done to prevent deaths in an era of drought and climate change.

Every era is an era of climate change – climate changes, that’s what it does. Get used to it and adapt.

There is speculation that the conditions of Black Saturday will occur more frequently in the future — that we have had a taste of what climate change will bring — which means that we need a tough reassessment of how to live safely and responsibly in Victoria.

And finally, a “pick a loved icon and put a gun to its head” item:

Penguins nesting off Argentina’s coast are starving because changing ocean patterns have forced their mates to swim 40 kilometres further than they did a decade ago to find food, researchers said on Thursday.
…
Overfishing, pollution and climate change have contributed to the loss of fish stocks near the Punta Tombo animal preserve about 1600 kilometres south of Buenos Aires, Boersma said.

I’d guess (overfishing + pollution) = 99%, climate change = 1%, but it’s just a guess…

Read it here, here, here and here.

The Carteret Islands are sinking due to their nature as an unstable atoll and the tectonic influences near the junction of the Australasian and Indian plates, but that doesn’t stop the ABC from branding the inhabitants “climate change refugees” – since when has climate change affected the movement of the earth’s crust?

Rising sea levels [falling land levels] means the atolls which make up the Carteret Island group are regularly affected by saltwater flooding, which is destroying fresh water reserves and food gardens, which sustain an estimated 1400 people. But by the end of the year many of them are likely to be amongst the world’s first climate refugees [actually, just “refugees”], as the autonomous Bougainville government wants to begin resettling them on mainland Bougainville.

But if it had been a simple case of a sinking island, it wouldn’t be newsworthy, would it?

Climate nonsense.

Read it here.

Just for interest…

Compare with 7 February…

(Images from the Bureau of Meteorology)

Anyone is entitled to plug the alarmist agenda in The Age, even war historians. When reading this, keep in mind that there has been no global warming since 2001:

ONE of the hardest things for Victorians to accept, is that these bushfires have signalled a new world order. Black Saturday confirmed the planet has now entered a new stage of its existence — the post global-warming period. If we are to survive as a species we need to use this benchmark to make essential changes.
…
Once [politicians] accept global warming is here, they can pioneer strategies banning forest settlements, enforcing clearing around houses and perfecting early warning systems and mandatory evacuation plans. It may be hard to accept very much reality but it would be irresponsible for our leaders not to redesign our future in light of global warming. Such vision would not only help residents but would honour those killed in action in these fires.

Historian Jonathan King’s most recent book was The Western Front Diaries, commemorating the 90th anniversary of the end of WWI.

Even assuming that “global warming” is taking place, I agree with one thing – adaptation is the key, not pointless emissions trading schemes.

Read it here.

Interviewing Chris Darwin, the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin, Martin Flanagan of The Age shoots the paper’s own alarmist editorial agenda in the foot:

I ask him what he thinks about last weekend’s bushfires. “I would have got toasted,” he says. “I would have stayed with my house.” Does he equate the fires with climate change? “It’s hard to tell from a single traumatic incident,” he says. “But interpreting a single event as a global phenomenon can be a big mistake.” It is not, he assures me, what Charles Darwin would have done.

That’s because Charles Darwin was a proper sceptical scientist, not like most of the “scientists” today, riding on a bandwagon of trillions of dollars of “climate change” research funding.

Better luck next time.

Read it here.

Remember Kevin Rudd, jetting off to Bali in the first blush of his term of office, to ratify the Kyoto Protocol? Remember that Howard was the great climate change denier who, like George W Bush, had refused to ratify it? Remember how the liberal media raved about the decision?

Well, far from being just a pointless political gesture (which it still is), it is also potentially a huge burden on Australia’s weakened economy. The Australian reports that the UN has imposed a new target on cutting greenhouse emissions – and if Australia fails to meet it, could cost the Government $870 million in carbon credits.

But putting aside the detailed forecasts, calculations and estimates, which will be disputed right through until the end of 2012, two indisputable facts emerge: there is a huge potential cost to business and taxpayers through the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and the global financial crisis has created uncertainty, even chaos, for emissions trading schemes and carbon markets across the world.

The global recession is changing all the estimates for economic growth, and therefore greenhouse gas emissions, for the short and medium terms.

In the face of all this change the Rudd Government, through the Climate Change Minister, is framing an emissions trading scheme that requires big investment to establish a workable price that will offset carbon emissions and eventually force them down.

Climate Madness in Kruddistan.

Read it here.

It certainly looks that way. One minute it’s a new enquiry, and the next it’s full steam ahead as planned. If it’s the latter, what’s the point of the former?

The Opposition, which has yet to finalise a position on the ETS, said the Government appeared confused about its own policies.

“They are either in complete disarray or they are trying to back out of it,” Opposition emissions trading spokesman Andrew Robb said.

“They have told us for three years an ETS is the central arm of their policy. Now we are having an inquiry into whether it still should be the central arm, and that inquiry is scheduled to report after we are supposed to have already legislated an ETS.”

Nationals leader Warren Truss said “the terms of reference released today for a new parliamentary inquiry into the economic impact of its ETS are a welcome sign that the Government is beginning to appreciate that its ETS is not likely to be effective and has huge economic ramifications for our country“.

Read it here.

As usual a great read.

[ACM blog owner falls off chair in shock at reading this article]. The Daily Telegraph is reporting that the Government’s emissions trading scheme has been put on hold and might not be introduced on schedule in 2010:

A parliamentary committee has been asked to inquire into the effectiveness of emissions trading as a means to reduce carbon pollution. [I can answer that: zero – Ed]

The inquiry committee will report “in the second half of 2009”.

Legislation for the Government’s already-announced carbon reduction scheme was expected about July.

However, this inquiry might put it off for another 12 months, depending on its outcome.

Emissions trading is the core mechanism of the proposed scheme, and it would increase costs to business and households.

“Maybe the Government has decided there is no appetite for the cost of an emissions trading scheme when the economy is in trouble,” a Liberal source said.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

Read it here.

UPDATE: The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Plans for emissions trading appear to be up in the air after the federal government called a fresh inquiry into the scheme. The surprise move has sparked speculation the government could delay, overhaul or ditch its main plan to tackle climate change.

Labor has promised to start emissions trading next year and has finished an intensive process to design the scheme.

Now it’s back to the drawing board.

Treasurer Wayne Swan has asked a parliamentary committee to investigate whether emissions trading is the best option for Australia after all. [It isn’t – Ed]

All we can hope is that they don’t come up with something worse.

But Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull said the government was having second thoughts.

“You can see the government is getting ready to abandon the emissions trading scheme,” Mr Turnbull told parliament.

“What’s going to happen if the house economics committee concludes that the emissions trading scheme is not an appropriate response, and it’s already been legislated for?”

The opposition’s spokesman on emissions trading, Andrew Robb, said the government appeared to be backing off on the emissions trading scheme.

“It seems to be they’re running around like headless chooks on this,” Mr Robb said.

Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce said Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had experienced an epiphany and realised emissions trading would force people out of work.

Read it here.