Don't panic! Iceberg heads for Australia!

10 December, 2009 by

Fourth from the right

Fourth from the right

Maybe we can add it to the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House as a tourist attraction! Of course, it’s all caused by “global warming” – what else?

A giant iceberg double the size of Sydney Harbour is on a slow but steady collision course with Australia, scientists have said.

The mammoth chunk of ice, which measures 12 miles long and five miles wide, was spotted floating surprisingly close to the mainland by scientists at the Australian Antarctic Division (ADD).

Known as B17B, it is currently drifting 1,000 miles from Australia’s west coast and is moving gradually north with the ocean current and prevailing wind.

Dr Neal Young, a glaciologist working for the ADD, said that if the iceberg eventually reached Australia waters, it would crash into the continental shelf causing a magnitude three to to four tremor.

However, Dr Young said the iceberg was unlikely to hit the Australian mainland. If it continued on its path north, it would eventually break up into hundreds of smaller icebergs, he said.

“As the waters warm, the iceberg will thin out, so it is not going to get to Australia, the further north it goes, the more it break up,” he said.

The smaller icebergs created when the larger berg broke up could become shipping hazards if they float closer to shore.

Dr Young said an iceberg the size of B17B had not been seen so far north since the days when 19th century clipper ships plied the trade route between Britain and Australia.

“Icebergs do come from time to time and they can be very big, but it can be a long time before we spot one – so it’s really a once-in-a-lifetime sighting.”

…

Dr Young said sightings of large icebergs could become more frequent if sea temperatures rise through global warming.

Read it here.

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UN sweeps Climategate under the carpet

10 December, 2009 by

La la la - I can't hear you!

La la la - I can't hear you!

After initial reports that the UN would investigate the Climategate emails, it appears they have now backed down, and believe the only issue worth looking at is who was responsible for the leak/hack:

Speaking to an overflowing audience of scientists and media at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen, Rajendra Pachauri said the main issue was to find out who was behind the theft. ”One can only surmise that those who carried this out have obviously done it with very clear intention to influence the process in Copenhagen,’‘ he said.

Dr Pachauri, flanked by the senior members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, defended the integrity of the scientific findings on climate change, backed the scientists under attack at East Anglia and warned the IPCC’s next report was likely to show grimmer news. [Oh please, tell me something I don’t know – Ed]

Last week he told the BBC the UN’s science body would ”look into” the matter of the stolen emails.

But he told reporters in Copenhagen he had meant the IPCC would examine the affair to see whether the organisation needed to learn any lessons from it.

He insisted the only formal investigations into the emails were being done by the university and the British police. (source)

The IPCC and Pachauri don’t even want to hear. Fingers in ears. Move along. Nothing to see here. But aren’t we just about to spend trillions of dollars based on their recommendations? Ludicrous.

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UK Met Office Madness: 10 years to "save the world"

10 December, 2009 by

Hysterical

Hysterical

When I was growing up in the UK, the Met Office was the centre of cool-headed, scientific thinking. As a kid I used to listen to the Shipping Forecast and plot synoptic charts from the observations. So much has changed. The Met Office is now the centre for hysterical climate alarmism, devoid of any scientific impartiality, it is now just a political mouthpiece, as evidenced by its latest rant:

The world has just ten years to bring greenhouse gas emissions under control before the damage they cause become irreversible, the Met Office has warned.

Should nations fail to tackle the issue, giant mirrors in space, artificial trees and other so called “geo-engineering solutions” will be the only way to prevent disastrous overheating of the planet, the researchers warned.

More than 190 countries are gathered in Copenhagen for UN climate change talks aimed at keeping global temperature rise below 3.6F (2C).

Pollution [pollution? – Ed] from cars and factories will have to be declining at a rate of five per cent a year by 2020, the Met Office said.

World emissions are currently growing at around three per cent per annum and it will take massive investment in renewable energy, electric cars, nuclear and other green technologies to stop the growth.

It is estimated it would cost the world around 2.5 per cent of GDP or £150 for every person on the planet to make such massive cuts.

Jason Lowe, head of mitigation advice at the Met Office, said that if the world does not manage to turn the situation around in time then temperatures will rise by more than 2C “unless you can pull carbon dioxide out of the air or reflect sunlight back into space”.

Mr Lowe knows when he’s on to a good thing. If mitigation weren’t required, he’d be out of a job.

Read it here.

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Idiotic Comment of the Day: David Jones, BoM

10 December, 2009 by

ICOTD: Worthy winner

ICOTD: Worthy winner

Here’s the head of climate analysis at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, showing astonishing ignorance about what is happening in the climate:

“The decade 2000-2009 is very likely to be the warmest on record,” said World Meteorological Organisation secretary-general Michel Jarraud.

Head of climate analysis at the Bureau of Meteorology Dr David Jones said the data should silence climate sceptics.

“Clearly climate change hasn’t stopped, global warming hasn’t stopped,” he said. “The planet is continuing to warm – and it’s warming in our back yard.”

Shall we take it apart?

  1. First off, the climate is warming gently from the depth of the Little Ice Age, and therefore it is no surprise that temperatures this decade are warmer than last. This proves nothing about the influence of human emissions of CO2.
  2. The present warming is not unusual in magnitude or rate.
  3. “On record” means since 1850, ignoring the Holocene Climate Optiumum and the Medieval and Roman warm periods, all of which were warmer than present.
  4. Sceptics do not believe that climate change isn’t happening, but they question the extent of human influence. To claim that rising temperatures on their own will “silence sceptics” is laughable.
  5. Check the satellite records:

November 2009 temperature plot from UAH

November 2009 temperature plot from UAH

There has been no statistically significant warming since about 2001. It’s true that the fudged surface station data shows warming, most of which is man made (i.e. man made “adjustments”), but the satellite data isn’t open to such manipulation, and shows no warming.

Verdict: 0/10. Must try harder.

Read it here.

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Copenhagen: US gets tough on China

10 December, 2009 by

Stern by name, stern by nature

Stern by name, stern by nature

For all the sweet talking that has been going on over the past few months, when it comes to tough negotiations, the gloves are off, as Politiken.dk reports:

America’s Chief Negotiator Todd Stern says China must act, and rejects demands for more funding.

He may have just arrived and hardly had time to have a bath, but America’s chief negotiator at the COP15 talks has turned on a shower of rebuttal on China’s calls for the United States to do more.

“The United States accepts its historical role in greenhouse gas emissions, but it is wrong to talk about fault and debt. We want the strongest possible agreement in Copenhagen, but it cannot be a free round for China and the big developing countries,” Stern says.

Stern was reacting to statements by China’s Development Minister Xie Zenhua earlier today when he tentatively suggested that China would be prepared to consider a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in 2050, but only if the United States puts much more on the table than it has already done.

“I really hope that President Obama delivers when he comes to Copenhagen,” the Chinese minister said.

…

“Emissions are emissions. It’s pure mathematics. Anyone can see that we cannot achieve an adequate result if China is not part of it,” Stern says, going on to reject demands from China and other developing nations for more funds than the USD 10 billion the United Nations says is necessary in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

…

“And here, one cannot imagine that China is at the head of the queue to receive public dollars from the United States. There are many other countries with much greater needs,” Stern says.

Read it here.

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Copenhagen Day 3: "growing anger"

10 December, 2009 by

Day 3

Day 3

The leak of the Danish draft is having serious ramifications, with developing countries comparing developed countries backing the deal to “Nazi appeasers”:

POOR nations last night compared developed-nation backers of a controversial leaked Danish draft climate change agreement with Nazi appeasers before World War II, as growing anger at the Copenhagen conference forced a temporary suspension of the main talks.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong will land in the middle of the row when she arrives in Copenhagen today, after developing nations and environmental groups reacted with fury to the leaked document, developed by the Danish government in consultation with Kevin Rudd and other leaders.

The document was aimed at paving the way for the US to sign a “comprehensive” global agreement outside the Kyoto Protocol, but has inflamed the wealth divide that has stalled world climate talks for years.

The draft contains most elements of a tough global deal, including: the ambitious goal of limiting warming to 2C; emission reduction requirements of developed and developing nations listed in schedules as proposed by Australia; and an immediate $10 billion a year for developing countries to adapt to climate change and reduce their own emissions over the next few years.

But it leaves blank the specific national emission-reduction commitments that are supposed to be finalised in the political horse-trading in Copenhagen over the next two weeks and does not specify the date by which the final legal agreement must be reached.

…

Sudanese negotiator Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, who speaks on behalf of the G77 group of developing nations, said the draft agreement was a new form of rich-country imperialism designed to divide poor nations and maintain the dominance of the developed world. (source)

There is also a split forming within developing countries about how to help the most vulnerable:

The small island states and poor African nations – the world’s most vulnerable to the worst effects of climate change – want any deal to contain stricter conditions than those agreed on in Kyoto in 1997.

The group includes the Cook Islands, Barbados and Fiji as well as the poor African nations of Sierra Leone and Senegal.

But their proposal for a tough new treaty is being resisted by China and India, whose leaders fear aggressive action could jeopardise economic growth. (source)

More from The Australian:

Tuvalu negotiator Ian Fry demanded the meeting consider creating a legally binding Copenhagen Protocol that would enforce developing nation emission reductions and run alongside the Kyoto Protocol’s demands on rich countries.

China, India and Saudi Arabia opposed the move because they don’t want to be legally bound to meet their emission reduction promises.

But they are left in a no-win position because they don’t like the idea backed by the US and other developed countries that a whole new agreement be formed, because they do want developed countries to continue to be bound by the Kyoto Protocol. (source)

Fun times!

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Alarmist scientist "receives death threats"

9 December, 2009 by

Not much sympathy here

Not much sympathy here

Hypocrisy Alert: Whilst it is deplorable that any scientist should receive death threats as a result of his or her views, it is interesting that the media have picked up so eagerly on this story. The sceptic scientists have been on the receiving end of all kinds of abuse, hatemail and worse for years, and yet no one in the media bats an eyelid, probably thinking secretly “they get what they deserve”. As soon as the boot’s on the other foot, it’s fawning sympathy and acres of copy:

An Australian born scientist at the centre of the East Anglia University email affair says he has received a number of death threats.

Dr Tom Wigley, a former director of the university’s Climatic Research Unit, has had several of his emails hacked and used by climate change sceptics to suggest that he and his colleagues have been distorting data about the evidence of global warming.

He is unable to reveal the details of the threats, as they are now being investigated by the FBI and UK police.

Dr Wigley told Eleanor Hall on The World Today that, while the threats are genuinely frightening, he is not surprised.

“This sort of thing has been going on at a much lower level for almost 20 years and there have been other outbursts of this sort of behaviour – criticism and abusive emails and things like that in the past,” he said.

“So this is a worse manifestation but it’s happened before so it’s not that surprising.“

And it all provides the perfect platform to wheel out the “move along, nothing to see here” line on the CRU emails:

He rejects suggestions that scientists have been exaggerating about the effects of climate change and says the emails were simply scientific questioning.

“We don’t base policy by what is said in personal emails from people who are just developing some sort of scientific story,” he said.

And unfortunately, this kind of story helps the scientists under scrutiny to take on the role of victim, and victim status is very useful in the propaganda battle to deflect the media away from the real story.

Read it here.

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Sick: Clive Hamilton rants on ABC Unleashed

9 December, 2009 by

Seriously deranged

Seriously deranged

As Andrew Bolt puts it, there is something seriously sick about this guy. I suppose we should be pleased in a way. When people run out of cogent arguments, they resort to this sort of hysterical emotional blackmail. Hamilton has obviously run out of arguments:

Hi there,

There’s something you need to know about your father.

Your dad’s job is to try to stop the government making laws to reduce Australia’s carbon pollution. He is paid a lot of money to do that by big companies who do not want to own up to the fact that their pollution is changing the world’s climate in very harmful ways.

Because of their pollution, lots of people, mostly poor people, are likely to die. They will die from floods, from diseases like dengue fever, and from starvation when their crops won’t grow anymore.

The big companies are putting their profits before the lives of people. And your dad is helping them.

Your life is going to be worse too because of what your dad is doing when he goes to work each morning. By the time you are as old as your parents, Australia will be having a lot more heat waves, … blah blah blah. There’s loads more, but really, I will not sully the pages of this blog with such unadulterated bulls#!t.

If you do decide to read it (here), just check out the comments:

“disgraceful”, “appalling” “pathetic fear mongering”, “offensive piece of sludge”, “idiocy”, “deranged”, “condescending, prejudiced pap”, “Shameful. And shameless”, “anti-intellectual”, “self-indulgent rubbish.”

Just about sums it up. Nice work, Clive. Now go away, we never want to hear this sort of rantings again, thanks.

PS. You guys in Hamilton dodged a bullet – can you imagine this twit as your MP? Doesn’t bear thinking about.

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Web site: Copenhagen Climate Challenge

9 December, 2009 by

The antidote to COP15. Check it out at www.copenhagenclimatechallenge.org. There you will find an open letter to Ban Ki-Moon, signed by 141 scientists, challenging him, and the UN, to produce evidence of dangerous AGW:

Climate change science is in a period of ‘negative discovery’ – the more we learn about this exceptionally complex and rapidly evolving field the more we realize how little we know. Truly, the science is NOT settled.

Therefore, there is no sound reason to impose expensive and restrictive public policy decisions on the peoples of the Earth without first providing convincing evidence that human activities are causing dangerous climate change beyond that resulting from natural causes. Before any precipitate action is taken, we must have solid observational data demonstrating that recent changes in climate differ substantially from changes observed in the past and are well in excess of normal variations caused by solar cycles, ocean currents, changes in the Earth’s orbital parameters and other natural phenomena.

…

It is not the responsibility of ‘climate realist’ scientists to prove that dangerous human-caused climate change is not happening. Rather, it is those who propose that it is, and promote the allocation of massive investments to solve the supposed ‘problem’, who have the obligation to convincingly demonstrate that recent climate change is not of mostly natural origin and, if we do nothing, catastrophic change will ensue. To date, this they have utterly failed to do so.

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Climate claims fail science test

9 December, 2009 by

Climate sense

Climate sense

A must-read article in The Australian from Monash University professorial fellow in geosciences, Michael Asten. Again, it deals with the key factor in climate models: feedback. We know that the effect of a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will produce a negligible increase in temperature, but such increase may trigger “positive feedbacks” which will amplify the warming. Equally possible, however, is that the warming will trigger “negative feedbacks” which will work to counteract the warming.

Guess which one the IPCC chooses? Correct, but because the science on feedbacks is woefully incomplete, current climate model projections are next to useless. Two pieces of research seem to indicate that the feedbacks are no where near as strong as the IPCC models claim, leading to a huge overestimation of future warming:

Building on a methodology published 15 years ago in Nature, climatologist and NASA medallist John Christy and colleague David Douglass studied global temperature impacts of volcanic activity and ocean-atmospheric oscillations (the “El Nino” effect) and separated these from global temperature trends over the past 28 years.

The result of their analysis is a CO2-induced amplification factor close to one, which has implications clearly at odds with the earlier IPCC position.

The result was published this year in the peer-reviewed journal Energy and Environment and the paper has not yet been challenged in the scientific literature.

What this means is that the IPCC model for climate sensitivity is not supported by experimental observation on ancient ice ages and recent satellite data.

So are we justified in concluding that the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is not the only or major driver of current climate change? And if so, how should we re-shape our ETS legislation?

I don’t know the answer to these questions, but as Nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynman observed: “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”

Read it here.

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