Ian Plimer: "Not one great climate change in the past has actually been driven by carbon dioxide."

13 November, 2009 by

Ian Plimer

Ian Plimer

Ian Plimer is in the UK at present, and The Telegraph has a short article about five tenets central to his view of climate change, although the article author does his best to ensure that the “consensus” view is represented as well:

  • The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has no effect on climate above 50 parts per million (ppm).
  • Extraterrestrial events like solar flares have driven major climate change episodes in the geological past.
  • Global warming should be welcomed because humans ‘thrive’ in a warmer planet.
  • Climate change scientists push global warming theory because it is good for their careers.
  • A belief in man-made climate change is a “fundamentalist religion.”

Read it all here.

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UPDATED: NZ Antarctic research "debunks sceptics", claims 1.5m sea level rise

12 November, 2009 by

It will be interesting to see what the sceptic community makes of this:

New Zealand scientists say massive ice shelves are protecting Antarctica from experiencing the same rapid decline in sea ice as the Arctic.

The research team says the discovery further debunks the claims of sceptics who have pointed to the continent’s growth as evidence against global warming.

The team was led by Otago University physics researcher Andrew Mahoney, who said the eight-month study focused on a topic scientists understood little about.

Dr Mahoney said findings would help climate scientists make predictions about the future.

National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research oceanographer Mike Williams said the research explained why Antarctic sea ice was not decreasing at a similar rate to that of the Arctic.

Figures from America’s National Snow and Ice Data Center show that Arctic sea ice shrank by about 4 per cent of 500,000 square kilometres each decade during the past 30 years. By contrast, Antarctic sea ice was not believed to have changed much in size and may have increased slightly.

However, Antarctic Research Centre director Tim Naish, who was not part of the research team, said the latest data issued in a report by Nasa indicated that the amount of Antarctic sea ice lost since 2003 could have doubled.

…

WHAT THE SCIENTISTS FOUND

  • Massive ice shelves make up half the Antarctic coastline
  • Cold water melts from these ice shelves
  • The melted water protects the ice sheets from the warming effects of climate change
  • This causes ice sheets to grow in winter, although they still melt in summer
  • This is why Antarctic sea ice has not declined as quickly as Arctic sea ice in response to global warming

Read it here.

UPDATE: Tim Naish is also in the news for predicting dramatic sea level rises:

Sea levels may rise an average of as much as 1.5m by 2100, the latest figures show.

The range indicated by several new studies is between 50cm and 150cm, said Dr Tim Naish, director of the Antarctic Research Centre at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand.

A glaciologist who was chief scientist on a major Antarctic drill-core project, Naish said the latest “range of plausible sea level rise” was based on observations to calculate how much water would come from polar ice sheets.

Read it here.

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From "The Science is Settled" Department

11 November, 2009 by

Hang on a minute – the debate’s over, you denier you. Science is settled. Move on, nothing to see here. That’s what the warmists want us to believe, but unfortunately, the reality is that the science is far from settled, and we know comparatively little about the immensely complex climate system and the factors that influence it.

Firstly from The Age, a tricky one for the alarmists: the Antarctic ice is melting (debatable, but let’s go with it), but the increased sea area is soaking up more CO2 from the atmosphere.

Scientists led by Lloyd Peck of the British Antarctic Survey said that atmospheric and ocean carbon is being gobbled up by microscopic marine plants called phytoplankton, which float near the surface.

After absorbing the carbon through the natural process of photosynthesis, the phytoplankton are eaten, or otherwise die and sink to the ocean floor.

The phenomenon, known as a carbon sink, has been spotted in areas of open water exposed by the recent, rapid melting of several ice shelves – vast floating plaques of ice attached to the shore of the Antarctic peninsula.

[Read more…]

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Enjoy the warmth while it lasts

2 November, 2009 by

Lawrence Solomon writes in the Financial Post:

Thank your lucky stars to be alive on Earth at this time. Our planet is usually in a deep freeze. The last million years have cycled through Ice Ages that last about 100,000 years each, with warmer slivers of about 10,000 years in between.

We are in-betweeners, and just barely — we live in (gasp!) year 10,000 or so after the end of the last ice age. But for our good fortune, we might have been born in the next Ice Age.

Our luck is even better than that. Those 10,000-year warm spells aren’t all cosy-warm. They include brutal Little Ice Ages such as the 500-year-long Little Ice Age that started about 600 years ago. Fortunately, we weren’t around during its fiercest periods when Finland lost one-third of its population, Iceland half, and most of Canada became uninhabitable — even the Inuit fled. While the cold spells within the 10,000 year warm spells aren’t as brutal as a Little Ice Age, they can nevertheless make us huddle in gloom, such as the period in history from about 400 AD to 900 AD, which we know as the Dark Ages. We’ve lucked out twice, escaping the cold spells within the warm spells, making us inbetweeners within the inbetween periods. How good is that?

Read it here. (h/t Climate Change Fraud)

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