UK Daily Express: 100 reasons why climate change is natural

15 December, 2009 by

Climate sense

Climate sense

Like its cousin, The Daily Mail, the Daily Express is rapidly becoming a beacon of sanity in the sea of alarmism and gullibility, and today presents Climate Change is Natural: 100 Reasons Why:

HERE are the 100 reasons, released in a dossier issued by the European Foundation, why climate change is natural and not man-made:

  1. There is “no real scientific proof” that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man’s activity.
  2. Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.
  3. Warmer periods of the Earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.
  4. After World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.
  5. Throughout the Earth’s history, temperatures have often been warmer than now and CO2 levels have often been higher – more than ten times as high.
  6. Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time.
  7. The 0.7C increase in the average global temperature over the last hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate trends.
  8. The IPCC theory is driven by just 60 scientists and favourable reviewers not the 4,000 usually cited.
  9. Leaked e-mails from British climate scientists – in a scandal known as “Climate-gate” – suggest that that has been manipulated to exaggerate global warming
  10. A large body of scientific research suggests that the sun is responsible for the greater share of climate change during the past hundred years.

And I particularly like number 95:

Australia has stated it wants to slash greenhouse emissions by up to 25 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, but the pledges were so unpopular that the country’s Senate has voted against the carbon trading Bill, and the Opposition’s Party leader has now been ousted by a climate change sceptic.

Go the Express! Read the remaining 90 here! (h/t Climate Realists)

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NSW electricity prices could rise 62% by 2013

15 December, 2009 by

Shocking price rises

Shocking price rises

And much of that increase would be due to the ETS (if it were implemented). Even the Energy Minister is shocked. Let’s hope it stays dead, then:

The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) said in a draft determination released in Sydney today the unprecedented fee increases would be needed to cope with higher network costs and a federal scheme to reduce carbon emissions.

IPART CEO Jim Cox said he had never seen price rises like the ones he now proposed.

“I think this is the biggest increase we have seen,” he said. “I don’t think this (price increases) is something that we particularly like.”

Under the proposal, consumers could be paying between $554 and $893 a year more for electricity by July 2013.

“The important point to note here is almost 90 per cent of the increases are due (to an) increase in network charges to pay for higher reliability standards, and also … the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), if indeed it is implemented,” he said.

If the CPRS is not introduced, consumers could still expect their annual power bills to jump by between $242 and $594 by 2013, IPART said.

But $594 is a damn sight less than $893, and the difference ($300) is thanks to the CPRS.

Read it here.

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Greenpeace deface Sydney Opera House

15 December, 2009 by

Throw away the key…

Throw away the key…

In the cause of global socialism and anti-capitalism. Remember, this hasn’t got anything to do with climate change (© Tony Blair):

Five environmental activists hung a banner on one of the sails of the Sydney Opera House today with the message: “Stop the politics, climate treaty now”.

A Herald photographer said the campaigners took down the banner as police escorted them down the sail.

The protest, which started about 8am, was timed to coincide with the global climate conference in Copenhagen.

“Australians have made it clear that we want strong action taken in Copenhagen,” Greenpeace chief executive Linda Selvey said in a statement.

“Greenpeace is taking this message to world leaders and demanding they come home with nothing less than a legally binding treaty that safeguards our future.”

As if Greenpeace represents the views of the Australian public! I don’t think so.

Read it here.

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UPDATED: When the going gets desperate…

15 December, 2009 by

Clearly stressed by so much climate spin…

Clearly stressed by so much climate spin…

… the desperate get going. In this case, Al Gore, who is wheeled out like some old relic to peddle more meaningless alarmism based on hopeless computer models to the gullible twits at Copenhagen:

Gore cited new scientific work at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, whose Arctic ice research is important for planning polar voyages by Navy submarines. The computer modeling there stresses the “volumetric,” looking not just at the surface extent of ice but its thickness as well.

“Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months will be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years,” Gore said. His office later said he meant nearly ice-free, because ice would be expected to survive in island channels and other locations. [“Some” of the models? So I guess “others” didn’t – guess which ones Al chooses – Ed]

Asked for comment, one U.S. government scientist questioned what he called this “aggressive” projection.

“It’s possible but not likely,” said Mark Serreze of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. “We’re sticking with 2030.”

Even the US government is embarrassed by Gore’s wild predictions. And anyway, what’s the big deal about Arctic ice anyway? If the planet is warming, there’ll be less ice – it doesn’t prove human causation. Gore sounds like Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun: “There’s a 50:50 chance of no ice in 5 years, but there’s only a 10% chance of that.”

Read it here.

Update: The Times picks up Gore’s error, and as Marc Morano says, Gore is no longer getting a “free ride” from the media:

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.

“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.

The embarrassing error cast another shadow over the conference after the controversy over the hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, which appeared to suggest that scientists had manipulated data to strengthen their argument that human activities were causing global warming.

[…]

Perhaps Mr Gore had felt the need to gild the lily to buttress resolve. But his speech was roundly criticised by members of the climate science community. “This is an exaggeration that opens the science up to criticism from sceptics,” Professor Jim Overland, a leading oceanographer at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

[…]

Richard Lindzen, a climate scientist at the Massachusets Institute of Technology who does not believe that global warming is largely caused by man, said: “He’s just extrapolated from 2007, when there was a big retreat, and got zero.”

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Rudd ducks question on ETS cost… three times!

15 December, 2009 by

"You're dithpicable, Kev"

"You're dithpicable, Kev"

Thanks to Tony Abbott, the government actually has a fight on its hands to persuade the Australian people of the merits of the ETS. If Turnbull had been leader, this would have been waved through without a second thought. How stupid does that look now, eh, Malcolm?

KEVIN Rudd has refused to directly address Tony Abbott’s claim that Labor’s proposed carbon emissions trading system will cost average Australian families $1100 a year.

Instead, the Prime Minister has forecast a Coalition government’s response to climate change would wrap Australians in red tape by allowing Canberra bureaucrats to dictate individual behaviour. [Yeah, Kev, you’d know all about red tape. That’s what Labor does best, isn’t it – big government, red tape, regulation, interference in every aspect of our lives, and massive taxes, just like the ETS – Ed]

In a television interview yesterday, Mr Rudd was asked three times to respond to Mr Abbott’s $1100 claim, which has been at the centre of the Opposition Leader’s political attack since he won the Liberal leadership a fortnight ago.

Each time, he refused to address the figure.

Later yesterday, as Mr Rudd prepared to leave Australia for the UN-organised climate change conference in Copenhagen, Mr Abbott accused him of squirming on questions about his “great big new tax”.

Finally, finally, Rudd is on the ropes.

Read it here.

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The Daily Bayonet – Climategate Round-ups

15 December, 2009 by

Skewering the clueless

Skewering the clueless

Another instalment, with links to all the previous ones:

Don’t know how you do it, Paul!

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Copenhagen Day 8 – African nations walk out

15 December, 2009 by

Day 8

Day 8

It’s all going worse [better? – Ed] than we thought, as a bunch of African nations lead a 5-hour boycott of working groups and Nigeria warns that the talks are on “red alert”:

Sources at the marathon talks said Africa led a five-hour boycott of working groups, with the backing of the Group of 77 developing nations, and only returned after securing guarantees that the summit would not sideline talks about the future of the Kyoto Protocol.

The Kyoto Protocol ties rich countries – but not developing countries – that have ratified it to legally binding emissions curbs.

It also has an important mechanism enabling the transfer of clean-energy technology to poorer nations.

Yet it does not include the United States, which says the Protocol is unfair as the binding targets do not apply to developing giants that are already huge emitters of greenhouse gases.

Algeria, speaking at a press briefing on behalf of the 53-member African Union, demanded that there should be a special plenary session devoted to Kyoto.

“Otherwise we are going to lose everything,” Algeria’s chief negotiator Kemal Djemouia told reporters.

Asked about the state of negotiations, Nigeria’s pointman rang the alarm bell.

“It is ‘climate code red’ right now, we are in code red right now, we stand at the crossroads of either hope for Africa or hope dashed in ‘Hopenhagen’,” Victor Ayodeji Fodeke told AFP. (source)

And right on cue, there is the Point-Gun-At-Head-of-Cuddly-Creature moment, to add an emotional frisson to the proceedings:

Emotional blackmail

Emotional blackmail

Climate change threatens the survival of dozens of animal species from the emperor penguin to Australia’s koalas, according to a report released at the UN climate summit.

Australia’s iconic koala faces malnutrition and ultimate starvation as the nutritional quality of eucalyptus leaves declines as CO2 levels increase, said the study from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), an intergovernmental group.

Rising sea levels, ocean acidification and shrinking polar ice [all dodgy claims – Ed] are taking a heavy toll on species already struggling to cope with pollution and shrinking habitats, the report added.

“Humans are not the only ones whose fate is at stake here in Copenhagen – some of our favourite species are also taking the fall for our CO2 emissions,” said Wendy Foden, an IUCN researcher and co-author of the study. (source)

And there are yet more misrepresentations and spin about natural disasters. The UN grudgingly had to concede that natural disasters were the lowest for a decade, but Margareta Wahstrom, UN disaster risk wonk, quickly played the “climate change joker”:

The figures showed that weather related disasters accounts for 91.4 percent of all natural disasters recorded this year.

To be specific, out of the 245 disasters in 2009, 224 were weather related, accounting for 55 million people out of 58 million people affected, 7000 out of 8900 of those killed, and 15 billion US dollars out of the 19 billion dollars in economic damages.

Because of more effective prediction and mitigation, the death and economic loss due to natural disasters are lower than previous years. Wahlstrom said it’s a good news for people and countries.

“However extreme weather disasters remain top of the list and will continue to affect more people in the future”, said Wahlstrom when talking about the increasing trend of weather related disasters and the background of climate change behind it. (source)

As we all know, there is no demonstrated link between climate change and increased storm activity. This is “Al Gore science”, but presented as hard fact. But who cares about the facts when we have to blackmail the planet into pointless action on climate change?

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Copenhagen: decision "delayed for six years"

14 December, 2009 by

Times Online

Times Online

From the Times Online:

The key decision on preventing catastrophic climate change will be delayed for up to six years if the Copenhagen summit delivers a compromise deal which ignores advice from the UN’s science body.

World leaders will not agree on the emissions cuts recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and are likely instead to commit to reviewing them in 2015 or 2016.

The delay will anger developing countries who, scientists say, will face the worst effects of climate change despite having contributed relatively little of the man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

A draft text published by the UN says that there should be a review in 2016, which could result in an “update of the long-term global goal for emissions reductions as well as of the adequacy of commitments and actions”.

The Times has learnt that negotiators from developed countries are planning to use the idea of a review to justify failing to agree the 25-40 per cent cut in the 1990 level of emissions by 2020, recommended by the IPCC.

Even the most ambitious provisional offers made by all the countries amount to a reduction of only 18 per cent.

In six years’ time, the science will have been blown out of the water by multiple CRU-style and Hockey Stick-type revelations, and we may have some sanity returning to the whole climate change debate.

Read it here.

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Tony Blair: Act now "even if science is wrong"

14 December, 2009 by

Fan of the precautionary principle

Fan of the precautionary principle

Tony Blair makes a stunning acknowledgement: that the science may not be “as certain as proponents suggest.” But that doesn’t stop him relying on the precautionary principle to urge a deal at Copenhagen:

“It is said that the science around climate change is not as certain as its proponents allege. It doesn’t need to be. What is beyond debate, however, is that there is a huge amount of scientific support for the view that the climate is changing and as a result of human activity,” he said.

“Therefore, even purely as a matter of precaution, given the seriousness of the consequences if such a view is correct, and the time it will take for action to take effect, we should act. Not to do so would be grossly irresponsible.”

So even though the science may be wrong, Copenhagen should press ahead regardless? In what other area of policy are the same criteria used? The “precaution” he advises will cost the developing world trillions of dollars, and set back standards of living decades. How about building underground bunkers for everyone on earth in case of an asteroid impact? Surely that’s just as deserving a cause – perhaps even more so given the number of unknown bodies in eccentric orbits? Or providing breathing apparatus in case there is a deadly viral mutation?

Funnily enough, it seems that TB is a fan of the precautionary principle – he just admitted he used it in relation to Saddam Hussein and WMD, and I can only begin to imagine the mess that admission will get him into… He should be more careful advocating it in future, especially when the costs of the precaution itself are huge.

Read it here.

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Indoctrination: Kids give PM climate lesson

14 December, 2009 by

Climate indoctrination

Climate indoctrination

Indoctrination Alert as children at an ACT school meet Kevin Rudd:

Canberra school children have urged Kevin Rudd to do all he can to stop climate change – including walk to work.

The prime minister met with youngsters from the O’Connor Cooperative School on Monday, hours before leaving for global climate change talks in Copenhagen.

They presented him with a book of suggestions to help stop rising greenhouse gas emissions harming the environment.

Some children called for massive cuts to carbon emissions, others the rollout of electric cars.

But Nicholas, seven, had a much simpler idea.

He encouraged people to walk to work, especially Mr Rudd, because he lives so close to Parliament House.

How can children of K-2 age call for “massive cuts to carbon emissions” unless the phrase had been provided to them by the teaching staff? Sorry to state the obvious, but the lefty enviro-loony teachers in Canberra clearly haven’t grasped it: seven year-olds should be taught how to read, write and do sums, not force fed political and environmental propaganda.

Thank your lucky stars your kids don’t go to school there.

Read it here (and the school’s website is here)

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