Coastal regions have experienced Japan's deadliest winter in more than two decades, with at least 102 deaths recorded by Tuesday, with many of the victims crushed by snow or falling from buildings while clearing snow from roofs.
Most of the dead have been elderly people. The death toll is the highest since 1983-1984, when 131 people died in snow-related incidents.
It's only going to get worse? Over that last few years, the west has not gotten as much snow as normal. But that has all but come to an end the last two years. Snow averages have been through the roof this year with every region in Colorado posting huge numbers...
CORPORATE PROFITS will plummet unless businesses take urgent steps to deal with the threats from climate change - that's the message from a new report by consultants Accenture.Specifically what threats? Specifically what urgent steps? Why, exactly, would profits "plummet"?
So global warming should be, on the whole, good for football, but Environment America can see only the bad. That’s SOP for environmentalists as well as other availability entrepreneurs like politicians and journalists. We in the media can turn just about any change into bad news. When housing prices go up, it’s a catastrophe because first-time home buyers can’t afford a decent place to live. When housing prices go down, it’s a catastrophe for homeowners. And no matter what the catastrophe, there will be politicians and activists with a solution that just happens to be the same as their agenda before the catastrophe, as demonstrated in the press release from Environment America.A related post is here, entitled "Leave the media manipulation to the pros".
Not until this afternoon did I place the debate in the context of global warming, and realized that not a single question had been asked on the topic. I could understand other people not paying attention, but I, out of all people? I spent the morning answering readers’ comments about the post I wrote yesterday on ‘Global Warming and the Press‘. The irony is simply too much.
The congressmen’s first letter this month, sent on Jan. 14, called the relatively new field of purchasing carbon offsets “good faith transactions,” saying there are “no proven safeguard(s)” to make sure offset companies, like the Chicago Climate Exchange that the House used, fulfill their promises.
“We don’t want carbon offsets to become the 21st century version of snake oil and patent medicine,” Barton and Shimkus wrote.
"Mr. bin Kyoto, suppose China stops using coal to power energy plants. Suppose the developing world abandons the use and development of fossil fuels. Won't millions of people in the poorest countries die as a result? Why do you only talk about shortened life spans people might suffer due to climate change, never about the certain deaths we know will occur if the developing world never . . . uh . . . develops."
"Why, infidel? Because that's complex thinking and we prefer mindless simplicity. So what if a few billion people die? People are a major source of man-made global warming - except for me, of course."
There's a real possibility that big-name journalists will break ranks and pursue their next Pulitzer Prize by exposing the lack of scientific consensus on CO2 as a planet-heating pollutant.
...at some of the events Thursday, some organizers said they were having trouble just persuading students to pay attention.
Attendance was sparse at tables set up outside UCLA's student union that featured organic cotton T-shirts, laptops set up to calculate carbon footprints and free granola samples.
But inside the building at a session about the economy of global warming, about 50 people listened to a panel of professors and analysts discuss tradable carbon permits and the federal Energy Star power efficiency program.
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To most students, environmental activism is a good cause, but they are too intimidated or unmotivated to join, Riley said. Several students said they had no idea what the bottle display was about and were too preoccupied to find out.
"Our school has stuff like this happening every day, and it's overwhelming when everyone's pretending that they're saving the world," said Camila Alvarez, a freshman and film major.
My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models.Freeman Dyson talks about global warming and carbon dioxide in these two videos:
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The fundamental reason why carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is critically important to biology is that there is so little of it. A field of corn growing in full sunlight in the middle of the day uses up all the carbon dioxide within a meter of the ground in about five minutes. If the air were not constantly stirred by convection currents and winds, the corn would stop growing. About a tenth of all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is converted into biomass every summer and given back to the atmosphere every fall. That is why the effects of fossil-fuel burning cannot be separated from the effects of plant growth and decay. There are five reservoirs of carbon that are biologically accessible on a short time-scale, not counting the carbonate rocks and the deep ocean which are only accessible on a time-scale of thousands of years. The five accessible reservoirs are the atmosphere, the land plants, the topsoil in which land plants grow, the surface layer of the ocean in which ocean plants grow, and our proved reserves of fossil fuels. The atmosphere is the smallest reservoir and the fossil fuels are the largest, but all five reservoirs are of comparable size. They all interact strongly with one another. To understand any of them, it is necessary to understand all of them.
As an example of the way different reservoirs of carbon dioxide may interact with each other, consider the atmosphere and the topsoil. Greenhouse experiments show that many plants growing in an atmosphere enriched with carbon dioxide react by increasing their root-to-shoot ratio. This means that the plants put more of their growth into roots and less into stems and leaves. A change in this direction is to be expected, because the plants have to maintain a balance between the leaves collecting carbon from the air and the roots collecting mineral nutrients from the soil. The enriched atmosphere tilts the balance so that the plants need less leaf-area and more root-area. Now consider what happens to the roots and shoots when the growing season is over, when the leaves fall and the plants die. The new-grown biomass decays and is eaten by fungi or microbes. Some of it returns to the atmosphere and some of it is converted into topsoil. On the average, more of the above-ground growth will return to the atmosphere and more of the below-ground growth will become topsoil. So the plants with increased root-to-shoot ratio will cause an increased transfer of carbon from the atmosphere into topsoil. If the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide due to fossil-fuel burning has caused an increase in the average root-to-shoot ratio of plants over large areas, then the possible effect on the top-soil reservoir will not be small. At present we have no way to measure or even to guess the size of this effect. The aggregate biomass of the topsoil of the planet is not a measurable quantity. But the fact that the topsoil is unmeasurable does not mean that it is unimportant.
At present we do not know whether the topsoil of the United States is increasing or decreasing. Over the rest of the world, because of large-scale deforestation and erosion, the topsoil reservoir is probably decreasing. We do not know whether intelligent land-management could increase the growth of the topsoil reservoir by four billion tons of carbon per year, the amount needed to stop the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. All that we can say for sure is that this is a theoretical possibility and ought to be seriously explored.
“I would ask the United States, we ask for your leadership,” he said. “But if for some reason you’re not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way.”His name is Kevin Conrad. From an article here:
Mr. Conrad, 39, was born in the United States to Papuan parents but grew up in Wewak on New Guinea’s northern coast. He studied finance at top American universities, worked in investment banking and lives with his family in the New York City area. Besides representing New Guinea in climate talks, he runs the Rainforest Coalition, a group formed by tropical countries seeking compensation for the benefits of not cutting their forests.Let's say that the world's population starts to slowly figure out that carbon dioxide is not, in fact, going to kill us all. I wonder if it will then be more difficult to convince people to pay Conrad's coalition for not cutting down trees?
The persistent and dramatic decline in the snowpack of the mountains of the West is caused primarily by human-induced global warming and not the result of natural variability of weather patterns in the region, researchers reported today.I submitted this comment:
If the decline of the snowpack is so "persistent", how do you explain the massive accumulations of snow this year in many western states? Aspen broke an all-time record for December snowfall; Steamboat has received 24.5 feet of snow so far this season; stories of avalanches and collapsed buildings are all over the net.Some supporting links are here, here, and here.
The only people who are challenging whether global warming is real and caused by humans are “contrarian scientists” bought and paid for by companies like Exxon Mobil, she charged.Hassol is frustrated by poll results like these:
While about 84 percent of Americans think global warming is probably happening, 56 percent “still think there’s a substantial scientific disagreement” about it, according to a 2007 poll by ABC/Washington Post/Stanford University. Only about 40 percent of respondents felt global warming is “caused mostly by things people do.”
In fact, it's very possible for large regions of the globe to get cooler while the average for the whole planet goes up as heat gets distributed differently.Yep, and it's also very possible for large regions of the globe to get cooler while the average for the whole planet goes down.
...international surveys of climate scientists from 27 countries in 1996 and 2003 found growing skepticism over the accuracy of climate models. Of more than 1,060 respondents, only 35 percent agreed with the statement, "Climate models can accurately predict future climates," whereas 47 percent disagreed.A related link is here, entitled "Study: UN Global Warming Forecast Violates Accepted Principles".
DALLAS, Feb. 1 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Predictions of melting ice caps, catastrophic sea level rise and severe floods and droughts are the result of a United Nation's report that violates nearly half of accepted forecasting principles, according to a new study published by the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA). Consequently, the UN report is an unreliable tool for determining future public policy.
"These dire predictions are not the result of scientific forecasting," said J. Scott Armstrong, an internationally known expert in forecasting methods from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania who co-authored the NCPA study. "Rather, they are opinions derived from a political process."
Government figures said that snow had destroyed crops on 3,000 square miles of land. Wholesalers in Beijing reported that supplies of some foodstuffs were down to a fifth of normal levels. In areas directly affected by the snow, such as the central industrial cities of Wuhan and Changsha, food prices have reportedly already doubled.
Several dozen fans, however, responded by flinging their green shirts onto the court when the Blue Devils trailed at halftime.2. The same night, students were camped outside in preparation for the UNC game March 8. From an article entitled "Bitter tenters brave K-ville cold":
...the cold temperature has drawn more negative sentiment from bitter tenters wanting the feeling to return to their fingers.
"Most of the nights you can't even have your hands outside of your pockets," freshman Matt Graham said. "How are you going to play beer pong and put your hands in water?"
"January tornadoes and more heat records is something you would expect in a warming climate," said Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at Weather Underground, a popular meteorology Web site.
But many scientists aren't ready to say the weather has turned more extreme because the planet is warming.
"There is a lot of natural variability in our weather systems," Masters said. "Climate change is only just now barely beginning to be evident in the observations. That's why there is so much controversy."
Lessig pointed to the example of global warming to show how the influence of money — for instance, that of oil companies — leads to “screwy public policy.”So what's Lessig suggesting here? Is he saying that Al Gore's side is without money, and therefore the alarmists don't have access or influence?
“It’s not about bribes,” Lessig said. “It’s about access and influence and ignoring the side without the money.”
After the debate, however, the skeptics' team climbed to 46 percent while the alarmists dropped to 42 percent. The difference changed from +27 (serious warming) before the debate to -4 (no serious warming) after the debate. Skeptics have also won the online vote, 55 percent vs 42 percent with 3 percent undecided.Alarmists like Schmidt and Al Gore are absolutely terrified of public debate on climate because, deep down, they know they'll lose.
Beijing : The heavy snow that hit China's central and southern regions over the past three weeks has caused economic loss of about 53.9 billion yuan ($7.5 billion), the Ministry of Civil Affairs said Friday.
The worst snow in five decades has so far killed 60 and forced more than one million people to relocate. More than 200,000 houses were destroyed and another 800,000 were damaged in heavy snow, said Zou Ming, deputy director of the ministry's disaster-relief department.
I seriously heard one of the speakers say that “all of the world’s problems - hunger, war, disease - pale in comparison to global warming.”
In an introduction of Gore, Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics, called the former Democratic presidential nominee a "Baptist prophet" and appeared to criticize the Southern Baptist Convention for its failure to commend Gore for his achievements. He also presented Gore with a "Baptist of the Year Award."
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"We have with us today a Baptist prophet who is so unacceptable that the Baptist establishment in his hometown of Nashville neither acknowledged his winning the Nobel Peace Prize nor honored with coverage his notable Nobel lecture," Parham said. "Prophets are unacceptable because their truth is inconvenient."
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Gore, citing Luke 12:54-57 for scriptural support, argued that it is dishonest for anyone to claim that global warming is merely a theory rather than a scientific fact.
"The evidence is there," he said. "The signal is on the mountain. The trumpet has blown. The scientists are screaming from the rooftops. The ice is melting. The land is parched. The seas are rising. The storms are getting stronger. Why do we not judge what is right?
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Gore said some Baptist spokesmen deny the reality of global warming because they are locked in a coalition with rich and powerful people who take advantage of the poor for economic profit.
The committee's Chair, Deputy-Mayor David Hay, moved to delete all the climate change action goals from the current 2007-08 financial year objectives of the Auckland City Council's Chief Executive, David Rankin. This motion was supported by his Citizens and Ratepayers (C&R) colleagues with Councillor Northey casting the sole vote against.
This decision was a key part of a series of motions that Councillor Richard Northey sees as demonstrating a quaint rejection of the role New Zealand local authorities should play in meeting the challenges of the 21st Century. David Hay and his C&R colleagues also resolved abruptly to end the work of previous Mayor Dick Hubbard's Mayoral Taskforce on Sustainability and all its work on sustainability initiatives. Also put on hold was the previously approved appointment of an Eco Adviser whose role was to ensure sustainability and energy efficiency in the Council's activities and decisions.
Councillor Richard Northey says, "I was very concerned that Councillors David Hay and Doug Armstrong had expressed skepticism that climate change caused by human actions was occurring at all. Their constantly reiterated opinion looks increasingly silly as worldwide consensus around the science and seriousness of climate change projections has firmed up.
...John Bullard, the former New Bedford mayor, told students and faculty how the state and region are fighting climate change.We're not all as gullible as you are, John.
Bullard’s own version of “An Inconvenient Truth” — he was trained by Al Gore himself on how to present it — drew a crowd even in the middle of the day, when most classes are held.
“This isn’t about saving the planet,” Bullard said while walking across the front of the library browsing area. “It’s about saving us.”
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“It would be nice to have leadership from the White House on this, but if not, you have to look for leadership where you can find it,” Bullard said. “I’m surprised there’s not more anger around this injustice.”
Gore, a Baptist, religiously spiced up his presentation by sprinkling in quotes from the Bible about caring for the Earth or heeding warnings about coming disasters.
Melting ice caps, growing levels of carbon in the atmosphere and the increasing intensity of tropical storms all are signs something is wrong, Gore said, and Christians must join others to act in averting possible catastrophe.
After the speech, Allen pointed to the disaster spawned by Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the Gulf Coast. "Now we are asking: Is there any way we can diminish the future Katrinas?" he said.
Bob and Jan Moore of Venice, Fla., believe being caretakers of the Earth, which is God's creation, is a Christian responsibility.
And they will apply evangelical witnessing about it to folks back home in Florida, they said.
"For the ones who choose to ignore it, it is our job to bug them until they get on board," Jan Moore said.
Gore told the crowd, "We who are Baptists are not going to countenance heaping contempt on God's creation."
The Met office issued severe weather warnings across the whole of the country for the next two days, predicting blizzards, and drifting or heavy snow for much of the country.Met Office officials are rumored to be engaged in a desperate search for both virgins and volcanoes.
Disruption to travel and power networks is likely, with northern areas likely to see up to eight inches of snow, and southern areas up to one or two inches.
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Met office scientists have also warned that Britain is set for at least 25 years of extreme weather thanks to global warming. Wayne Elliot of the Met Office said: “On a global scale we can expect stronger hurricanes and heavier rainfall, more violent storms, stronger winds and more flooding.
“Because of human activity, we expect more active and energetic weather systems in the UK in the future.”
“None of the almost 1,900 previously listed species were occupying their entire geographic range at the time of listing, yet the polar bear is readily found throughout the Arctic,” Stevens said in testimony submitted to EPW. “None of the previously listed species had rising populations at the time of listing, yet the global population of polar bears has been steadily increasing for 40 years. 2 This proposed listing is unique because it is based on mathematical models as opposed to biological observations,” Stevens explained. […] Perhaps the most ironic aspect of the proposed listing is the potential for it to undermine the ESA - our nation’s most celebrated tool for species conservation. Models of climate change predict that global biodiversity may decline by 35 percent by 2050.7 Does this mean that we should list, in addition to the polar bear, the multitude of species that are currently abundant but may decline as a result of a changing climate? This is an unwarranted expansion in the interpretation of the ESA which could open the door for potential abuse of this law, to the detriment of species that would be affected by a weakened ESA and deviates from my original intent when I voted for this Act. [..] But with the listing of the polar bear as threatened, the ESA would be used as a tool to curtail or eliminate the use of fossil fuels – not a goal of the ESA.
Kirsten Zickfeld,1* John C. Fyfe,2 Michael Eby,1 Andrew J. Weaver1
We disagree with the conclusion of Le Quéré et al. (Reports, 22 June 2007, p. 1735) that poleward intensifying winds could continue to weaken the Southern Ocean sink in the future. We argue that altered winds, along with rising atmospheric carbon dioxide, will likely increase the efficiency of this sink in the 21st century.
R.K. Pachauri, chairman of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that shared the Nobel Peace Prize last year, said climate change was a reflection of the fact that we have not been able to grow and develop sustainably.Note that you produce CO2 "pollution" when you breathe.
'I would like suggest to our policy makers please think of all actions and forms of consumption that impose a load on society and pollute it and tax them. This includes our road space. The pollutants must pay for defiling the environment,' he said.
The immediate benefits of consumptive lifestyle are leading us to a direction that can cause problems, Pachauri added.
Right-wing Czech President Vaclav Klaus slammed the EU's sweeping new measures to fight climate change as a "tragic mistake" in an interview with a German newspaper on Thursday.
"I believe that our government and others will stand up against these bureaucratic ideas," Klaus told the Handelsblatt business daily.
"This package is without doubt a tragic mistake, a misunderstanding of nature and an unnecessary limitation of human activity," the outspoken Eurosceptic leader added.
"For me it is almost a tragedy."
Klaus has previously compared German Chancellor Angela Merkel's pro-environmental platform to Soviet-era centralised planning and described evidence of global warming as bogus.
He said the measures presented by the European Commission would threaten economic growth and limit personal freedom.
But then, in an attempt to debunk the historic significance of the Northwest Passage becoming fully navigable for a brief period last summer, the report points to past instances of sailors making it through the Northwest Passage, starting with Roald Amundsen in 1905. Well, it’s true that Amundsen got through, but he went in a small boat with a shallow draft, took a circuitous route through relatively southerly channels, and required 28 months (and two winters stuck in the ice) to complete the journey. That’s not comparable to the ice-free shipping route being discussed today.Excerpt from my comment here:
Actually, American media coverage of the “Northwest Passage” issue has been pretty abysmal.
Since 1905, according to the BBC, about 110 boats have been through the Northwest Passage (four of them in 2007). Thirty of the 110 were recreational boats.
The Northwest Passage was successfully navigated in 1906, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1944, 1957, 1969, 1977, 1984, 1988, and 2000 (and probably in other years as well).
Supporting links here and here.
It is not often that residents of Mumbai get an opportunity to wear their woollies or show off their pashmina shawls. Mumbai’s winter is a bit of a joke, over before it begins, with little more to show than a nip in the air for a few days. But this year has been different, very different.
Not only here, but all over India, even the world, winter is showing an unusually sharp bite this time round. In Mumbai, plunging temperatures have been at the lowest in nearly 40 years.
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Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It erroneously led many to believe that henceforward there would be no winters to speak of. To disprove it as it were, winter has struck back with vengeance.
Is this a freak winter, or an early sign of an impending ice age? Though influential scientific opinion favours the theory of rising temperatures due to greenhouse gas emissions of the reckless lifestyle of the last century and more, there is a scientific minority putting forward the thesis that it is time for an ice age to return — warm interludes usually last for about 10,000 to 15,000 years.
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Whatever the truth and implications of the big questions and big answers, we are left to cope with the cold that creates unbearable conditions, especially for the poor. The authorities are usually unprepared to deal with the plight of the poor, especially the homeless because there are no night-shelters, and the idea of a soup kitchen is almost non-existent.
"Initiation of glacial conditions may be triggered by surprisingly rapid climate changes," reads one display. "Therefore, the minor global-cooling trend of recent decades ... is being carefully watched and studied."
Global-cooling trend?
Explains the next display: "the period 1890-1945 A.D. was abnormally warm, and there have been signs of cooling in the last few decades."
In a long, and interesting speech, he [Bill Clinton] characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: "We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren."
Arguing that global warming is a serious anthropogenic problem is Dr. George Somero, the David & Lucile Packard Professor in Marine Sciences at the Hopkins Marine Station. Arguing for the skeptics is Dr. Roy Spencer, recipient of NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and principle research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Several environmental scientists at Stanford refused to take part in this exchange, explaining that “there aren’t two sides to climate change.”Excerpt from Spencer:
Scientific ‘consensus’ is only resorted to when uncertainty exists.
The annual average for the Southern Hemisphere in 2007 was the lowest since 1996. November and December temperatures were the coolest since 1992.
The annual average for the Northern Hemisphere remained at the 2002-2006 level. A very warm start to the year offset the cooling late in the year.
"Most biofuels now appear to be worse for the climate than oil," said Friends of the Earth Europe's Sonja Meister.(Via JunkScience blog)
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The Belgian steel workers were equally blunt. "You could call this the first carbon dioxide industrial action," said Fabrice Jacquemart, a spokesman for the FGTB union. "There is something utterly absurd about a policy that creates more unemployment in Europe."
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...In Britain, the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph, the Sun, the Daily Express and the Evening Standard all gave prominence to a report by the Open Europe think tank that the EU's drive for renewable energy would cost the average family about $1,500 a year. Others noted the warning from the Greens that the biofuels policy would make things even worse for the world's poorest people in the developing world.
One of the worst snowstorms to hit China since the government began keeping records in 1950 has wreaked havoc throughout the country. At least two dozen people have died in accidents and 827,000 people have been displaced. Heavy snowfall has caused gridlock at train stations and airports, just two weeks before the Chinese New Year begins and hundreds of millions of Chinese return home for the holidays.
The weather is already taking its toll on the Chinese economy. So far the snowstorms have cost $3 billion in damages, according to the Civil Affairs Ministry. The heavy snow, sleet, and freezing rain have created transportation bottlenecks for travelers as well as for shipments of coal, vital to fueling China's power plants. Over the weekend a power outage forced authorities to cancel trains from Beijing to the southern metropolis of Guangzhou, stranding 600,000 passengers at the Guangzhou train station. Guangdong province has halted train ticket sales from Jan. 27 to Feb. 6, and bad weather has forced 19 airports across China to shut down. On Jan. 28, the Shanghai stock exchange plunged 7.2%, hitting a five-month low, on worries about the economic impact of the freeze. Shares did not recover much Jan. 29, rising less than 1%.
SACRAMENTO – Climate change would be added to the list of topics included in future California science textbooks, under a bill approved Wednesday by the state Senate.
The legislation was sent to the Assembly on a 26-13 vote over the objections of Republicans. They said global warming should not be taught as scientific fact because there is still debate over whether human activities or a natural weather cycle are most to blame.
Lisa McNeilly starts work as the campus’s first director of sustainability on Wednesday, Jan. 30. The position, reporting to Vice Chancellor for Administration Nathan Brostrom, will (in the words of Chancellor Birgeneau) “better coordinate the many initiatives currently under way to reduce the long-term environmental impact of campus operations.”
McNeilly is charged with creating and managing a campus Office of Sustainability, a key step, says Brostrom, toward “achieving the campus’s long-term sustainability goals, fostering a culture of sustainability at the organizational and individual levels, and integrating sustainability into the classroom.”
Our recommendation to those elected officials tempted by the offer: enjoy a great weekend in Manhattan at Heartland's expense and don't waste your time on tobacco-science lectures - you are highly unlikely to hear any real science there.Nothing's going well for these guys--their hockey stick has been thoroughly debunked, they lost a high-profile NPR debate, we've had no warming since 1998, we've had widespread bitter cold this winter, their surface temperature measurements have been exposed as massively flawed, the American public is increasingly scoffing at their alarmism, etc etc.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Global warming could cost the world up to $20 trillion over two decades for cleaner energy sources and do the most harm to people who can least afford to adapt, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warns in a new report.Note this gem:
In his report, Ban warned that global warming would probably affect women more than men. ``The challenge of climate change is unlikely to be gender-neutral, as it increases the risk to the most vulnerable and less empowered social groups,'' he said.
It should be perceived as a futuristic song about people who would take to the streets and revolt and take back our freedom from the oppression of gas prices.
It is of course ironic that the first cuts are made to the Solar Terrestrial Physics field - as this is the major threat to the CO2 driven AGW thesis in that a viable counter-theory may be found as a by-product of monitoring / predicting solar behaviour.
RCMP in Fort St. John, British Columbia say a 72-year-old man found dead Sunday was frozen solid next to the steps of a local hotel. Temperatures in the area were about minus 30 at the time.
But Coun Anne Brown, cabinet member for resources at LCC, said the decision was part of the council's climate change programme.
She added: "I'm hoping that people will accept that while this might not be something that is nice for them, we are doing it for the best possible motives."
Those who thought the concern about climate change was a hoax look progressively sillier as the consensus around the science and seriousness of the projections becomes rock solid.Don't they have access to the internet in New Zealand?
Energy Secretary Samuel P. Bodman told Illinois lawmakers yesterday that the Bush administration may drop its support for FutureGen, a flagship $1.5 billion coal-fired power plant to be built in the state with cutting edge carbon capture and sequestration technology that would allow the plant to store its greenhouse gasses underground rather than releasing them into the atmosphere—the first plant of its kind. Other reports indicate that the Bush administration may decide to revamp the project rather than cut it entirely.
DUBAI, 30 January 2008 (IRIN) - Well over half the roughly 5,000 people made homeless by an earthquake which struck southern Kyrgyzstan on 1 January are still living in tents and trying to survive harsh wintry conditions, aid officials say.
"It is extremely cold, particularly in mountain villages where the temperature drops to minus 20. All affected people want to get back to their houses or start reconstructing them as soon as possible [but] they cannot do it now because it is too cold," Aigul Atakanova, head of the disaster management department of the Kyrgyz Red Crescent Society (KRCS), told IRIN from the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, on 30 January.
Lohmann is a member of the Durban Group, of Durban, South Africa, which has called the current carbon trading system a pointless and harmful process that benefits some industries but has no effect on reducing global warming.
The lines between human activity-caused global warming and natural causes for climate change are blurrier than generally accepted, according to a speech by glaciologist and geographer Robert Gorman at the Ecomuseum last Thursday night.
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He said that scientists are still figuring out the relationship between climate change and decadal oscillations. "It's not really well understood," he added. Despite this, some media mistakenly report the effects of decadal oscillations as caused by climate change.
For example, though a recent report by CBC suggested that a huge ice fracture in the Arctic's Beaufort Sea area may be attributed to climate change, Gorman dismissed the claim. "I see this every year," he said.
He called the too-easy explanations of news media or even former vice-presidential candidate Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth as "hollywoodization" of climate change.
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Surprisingly, very few hands went up in when Gorman asked his listeners whether they thought that climate change was the result of human activity.
Officials at Haleakala National Park on Maui have closed the road to the summit because of snow, ice and high winds.
"Before the assembled press horde, Patriot superstar Tom Brady, a.k.a. the best quarterback ever, urged people to be more responsible. But he wasn’t just talking about sports stars. He urged everyone to go see Al Gore’s tedious opus, "An Inconvenient Truth," because "it really is the truth." He then bragged about/confessed to driving a hybrid."
Listing the bears is so controversial because, in many experts’ minds, the polar bear simply doesn’t seem to be threatened. “At this time, the bears are as numerous as they’ve always been across their range,” says Matt Cronin, a professor of animal genetics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. This is unusual for a species considered for listing under the Endangered Species Act. One U.S. study, for example, showed that animals listed as “threatened” had a median population size of 4,000 — a far cry from the estimated 25,000 bears on the planet.The post includes a link to this article, entitled "Peter Walsh: Labor should ditch greenies".
Anyone who knows anything - including the authors associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - concedes their models are imprecise, even if they have not been designed to prop up favoured or predetermined conclusions. But Ian Castles and David Henderson's exposure of the fanciful economic statistics incorporated in IPCC models suggests they have been fiddled. If your case is immaculate, why feed lies into it?
New information is leading to a controversial shift in thinking on the impact of global warming on ocean circulation, partly due to the work of a UA researcher.
The scientific community has long believed that as global warming continues and large amounts of freshwater ice melt into the ocean, the ocean's circulation will slow.
This would have a catastrophic impact on the environment as vividly, if somewhat overdramatically, portrayed in the film "The Day After Tomorrow."
But a paper published last week in Nature magazine, the result of several studies of past and possible future weather, says that in fact the very opposite is true and ocean circulation will become stronger as the icecaps melt.
I see no need to present a complete account of the interview since you all can read it yourself on the above link, but a prime example of what to expect is [Spanish meteorologist and weather guy, José Antonio Maldonado's] views on Al Gore's Climate Change Crusade in Spain. Gore invited José to attend one of his conventions in Seville, but José declined because neither he, nor any other of those invited, had any say or input during the conference ... Gore wants ten a year, free of charge, but Gore himself is to receive 200,000 euros per gig! In other words old Al is set to make about $2.5 million a year in Spain alone just for presenting fabrication fairy work that no one has a right to contradict.
Another thing that displeased José was that Al the Global Guru flies everywhere in a private jet, and his Nobhell Puss award is something he can't quite figure out, "I can't figure out how this man could have earned the NPP."...
These efforts, along the lines of using more environmentally friendly light bulbs to make incremental changes, are certainly commendable. What’s not as commendable, however, is when such efforts undermine students’ experiences at college or lessen the value of the services for which their tuition dollars pay. At Stanford University, for example, an effort to install low-pressure shower heads resulted in a backlash from students in one dorm.
We sympathize with these students, because we know the value of a hot, high-pressure shower in order to function for an early morning class. With the cost of tuition and on-campus housing so high, it’s reasonable to expect a quality experience.
Bitterly cold weather and varying forms of precipitation left schools closed and confined many Chouf residents to their homes for the day. In the Higher Chouf, several roads were blocked by snow, including those in Barouk, Maaser and Ain Zhalta.
At least three people have died in the cold wave that has swept Lebanon for the last two weeks. Environmental expert Wilson Rizk told The Daily Star that the cold wave had resulted from two factors: global warming and air pollution.
"When carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are trapped in the atmosphere, this will lead to boosting global warming and contributing to climate change," Rizk said. "Therefore, the summer season witnesses high temperatures and drought, while low temperatures and storms prevail in winter."
Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) is the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and he began by describing himself as an advocate for an energy policy based on free markets. Barton talked about the science behind climate change, and how climate change is a naturally occurring phenomena. He stated that whatever we do regarding global warming - we need to make sure that Americans' lives remain relatively unaffected and that we maintain the standard of living we Americans currently enjoy.
...
Congressman Barton was soft-spoken but clear and precise. He defined his role on the Energy & Commerce Committee as to "be the adult;" a role that should be filled far more often then it is in Congress these days.
It is a shocking indictment of science as it is now presented by the media, (including some of the worlds leading national broadcast channels, like the ABC and the BBC) that pupils are forced to base their future hopes and fears on what are no more than a pack of computer driven scenarios. There is no scientific evidence that rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide will cause all the catastrophes they talk about.The poll results are here:
Even worse for in a recent survey 41% of children questioned said they were losing sleep due to the man-made global warming scare. Is that acceptable given the entire scare is based solely on politically funded computer models which can be programmed to suggest whatever politicians require?
Mind you those same politicians are so worried that the truth will out that they are doing everything in their power and a lot that isn’t, to erode the roots and the routes of democracy before their term of office comes to an end.
...
The poll this week asks: Do you believe that a Royal Commission should be established to investigate whether anthropogenic (man-made) global warming is a real threat and to quantify the benefits and costs to New Zealand of actively pursuing global warming reduction policies?
10% NOReader comments are here.
90% YES
Responses received: 1350
It is a shocking indictment of science as it is now presented by the media, (including some of the worlds leading national broadcast channels, like the ABC and the BBC) that pupils are forced to base their future hopes and fears on what are no more than a pack of computer driven scenarios. There is no scientific evidence that rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide will cause all the catastrophes they talk about.
Even worse for in a recent survey 41% of children questioned said they were losing sleep due to the man-made global warming scare. Is that acceptable given the entire scare is based solely on politically funded computer models which can be programmed to suggest whatever politicians require?
Mind you those same politicians are so worried that the truth will out that they are doing everything in their power and a lot that isn’t, to erode the roots and the routes of democracy before their term of office comes to an end.
The anti–global warming agenda is expensive, intrusive, and would lead to job loss and increased energy costs with little measurable effect on global climate — just as it already has in Europe. So let George W. Bush take the blame for it.
Dressed in their best January beachwear, several UNO students took the occasion of a single-digit morning to make a point about global warming.
Jumping around to keep warm, approximately a dozen students stood on the overpass at 60th and Dodge Tuesday morning trying to raise awareness about rising temperatures.
Jen Korell said, "We're going to have an event here on Friday and help start the conversation about global warming on college campuses but, um, I'm sorry, I've gotta get dressed."
Global warming
Klaus - He has been sceptical towards the global warming theory in a long time, as "global warming caused by people is a nonsensical fiction," he says.
Svejnar - The global warming problems must be taken seriously and should not be trivialised.
Spinal Tap’s auctioning its Global Warming guitar, tricked out with a laser-engraved image of Al Gore and Fahrenheit/Celsius temperatures scaling up the fingerboard. Played at the "Warmer than Hell" reunion performance at Live Earth, the ax approached $15,000 at last look.
There is just enough space to insert the caveat that it is possible that the senator/senators who drafted this Senate Report received financial encouragement from the Oil Lobby to downplay the UN IPCC-Al Gore Religion of Global Warming. In the US system of governance, that is how policies are made into law. Even our Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri claims the oil lobby is financing those questioning his Bio-Fuel Act.
But it is doubtful if the oil lobby has made similar approaches to the hundreds of scientists worldwide who did/do not worship at the man-made Global Warming altar. Speaking for myself, this contrarian view of global warming is additional encouragement for the search for alternative sources of energy other than oil.
Latest figures from Afghanistan’s National Disasters Management Authority (ANDMA) indicate that 503 people - mostly children and the elderly - have lost their lives due to cold weather and heavy snow since December 2007. The UN has confirmed at least 329 deaths in Herat, Badghis, Ghor and Farah provinces.
Some parts of Afghanistan are facing their harshest winter in 30 years, with temperatures falling to minus 25, aid agencies say.
In the federal election of Saturday, Nov. 24, the Labor opposition, led by centrist but progressive candidate Kevin Rudd, was swept into office on a platform of “new leadership for Australia’s future.” One of Rudd’s core election campaign platforms was to ratify Kyoto and to tackle climate change head-on.2. After the election, it now looks like Australia may tackle climate change head-on...sometime in the future.
Kerby-Miller talked to teachers, his principal, the superintendent and school board. All gave thumbs up to setting aside a half day on Jan. 31 to participate in the national [Focus the Nation] event.
Jenn Parkhouse from Norwich Friends of the Earth said: “From April, people will have no choice but to contribute to the destruction of forests, the eviction of small farmers and rising food prices which will mean more hunger.
“More and more people now realise the need for a strong movement to stop the destruction caused by the biofuel industry and the legislation which encourages it.”
"We've never seen such a cold weather lasting for such long a time," said Tang Shan, a man in his 70s in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. "The last time we had one here was over 50 years ago, and not this bad."
Mark Newgent of Baltimore has written extensively about the [Center for Climate Strategies] and the climate commission on the Red Maryland blog as well as on his personal blog. He said Maryland is getting a raw deal by “essentially farming out its policy discussions to an advocacy group.”
All these well-meaning (if misguided) wannabe critter-savers are being discouraged or are misdirecting their efforts because no one has explained the difference between reality and PlayStation® climatology. We do not know and probably never will know what the climate will be in 30 years time. All we really know is that there is an equal chance next year will be either warmer or cooler. We have no evidence of accelerating sea level rise. We have no knowledge of impending disaster or temperature-related catastrophe. What a waste of everyone’s time and effort.
I don't think Congress cared one bit where the $89,000 was spent. They were spending $89,000 for the tag "carbon neutral" -- for the name itself. If the money was [quietly] dumped in a storm sewer or if it the sum had been broken down into $100 bills and used to light the after-dinner cigars at the latest Sierra Club meeting, it wouldn't matter to Congress one bit. They were buying an $89,000 fig leaf.
Even though many in our fair state believe global warming is a scam concocted by a cabal of Hollywood liberals who want to steal our cars and force us to eat muesli, there are still a few Georgians who persist in their efforts to educate the public.
Reason: Rock and roll has always been viewed as an instrument of rebellion. Yet it seems that performers are increasingly establishment in their views, and unapologetic about inflicting their politics on their audiences. They’ve gone from saying “Don’t trust anyone over 30” and “Down with the man” to defending Social Security and pushing for national health care. What do you think about that?
Loder: I don’t remember Elvis Presley telling us what to do about global warming. Nobody should ever expect millionaire celebrities to save the world. I don’t know if you remember the Time magazine that had Bono on the cover and asked, “Can Bono Save the World?” Well, the answer is no.
All these people seem to have an opinion. I find it boring myself, but if you’re 15 years old, you might find it rousing. I have no need for it.
All the articles that we carried in the past in Hardnews merely corroborated the impending doom caused by greenhouse affect. They were no help.
...
As I probed deeper on the net I found a running battle between those who believed “science was settled” on the issue of climate change and there was an urgent need for governments to act — and the “deniers”, who thought otherwise.
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What is really obfuscating this important issue is politics. All those who hate Bush and his oil politics have come together to push hard for policies that reduce global warming, without really knowing whether the rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases temperature. A recent CPM statement on climate change is an example of their desire to climb the global warming band wagon. What would be interesting is to watch if this present winter extends longer than in the past, forcing the geriatric political leadership to hang on to its woollens. Would they still talk of global warming or change their tune?
I think that the notion of an anthropocene is arbitrary, its beginning is ill-defined, its justification is not really based on geology, and one could invent even newer, more recent eras associated with another kind of human progress.
Note that according to the classification above, we already live in Phanerozoic as well as Cenosoic as well as Neogene as well as Quaternary as well as Holocene. Holocene, the shortest period, approximately coincides with the existence of oldest civilizations as we know them. Do you really want to add Anthropocene to the list?
I don't see too many qualitative geological events that occurred in the last 200 years but that would distinguish us from the ancient Greeks or Romans. Honestly speaking, I consider myself to be much closer to some old people in Greece or the Roman Empire than most politically correct loons who live in the "Anthropocene".
Will we also have to add Microprocessorocene, Multiculturalismocene, or something else? Please stop this insanity. Create new mountains. If you can't do it, please wait until Mother Nature does it for you. Then you can start a new era. ;-)
The EU's plans for "renewables" do not include nuclear energy. Worse, they take no account of the back-up needed for when the wind is not blowing - which would require Britain to have 33Gw of capacity constantly available from conventional power stations.
The same drawbacks apply to the huge increase in onshore turbines, covering thousands of square miles of countryside. They are only made viable by the vast hidden subsidies that wind energy receives, through our electricity bills. These make power from turbines (including the cost of back-up) between two and three times more expensive than that from conventional sources.
This is crazy enough, but the EU's policy on biofuels is even more so. The costs - up to £50 billion by 2020 - would, as the EU's own scientific experts have just advised, "outweigh the benefits". To grow the crops needed to meet the target would require all the farmland the EU currently uses to grow food, at a time when world food prices are soaring. Even Friends of the Earth have called on the EU to abandon its obsession with biofuels. Yet the Commission presses on regardless.
Q: So how does the Republican Party handle an issue like environmentalism without turning into Al Gore Lite?I think people become climate alarmists for varying reasons, but I think Frum is talking about people like Bill McKibben.
A: Two ways: The first is the Republican Party has a history that most people don't know. Of the major pieces of environmental legislation passed since 1970, almost all of them were passed under Republican presidents -- The Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the 1990 Clean Air Act, which put an end to the acid rain problem, effectively. These are Republican accomplishments: Talk about them. People think of the Democrats as the party that owns the environmental issue because it talks about the environmental issue even though it doesn't do much about it. You need to remind people of what you've done, because the voters don't see it as their job to remember your achievements, they see it as the party's job to remind them of its achievements.
The second thing is that it is precisely because we are not Al Gore fanatics that this issue is powerful for us. That is to say that we can offer Americans a message that says, "Look, we take this issue seriously, too. But we're not going to go overboard. We're going to do what's necessary, not more." For us, it is purely an issue of good sense, whereas for Gore, it's a substitute for religion. Or, to put it even more bluntly, "Look, Gore-type environmentalists have been wanting to take your car away for 60 years for whatever reason they can find. If it wasn't global warming, it would be something else. This is what they have always wanted to do. They have wanted to take away your car. They don't like suburbs. They want to stop the trend of American life. We are not trying to achieve anything other than a cleaner environment. That's it. We have a more limited and more rational agenda than they do."
The gang over at DailyKos are upset that Marc Morano, Senate Republican Communications Director for the Environment and Public Works Committee is . . . communicating with the public.
Back in 2000 when the global warming folks were getting into high gear to further their theory, Dr. S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist and Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, paused to pen a commentary for The Wall Street Journal.
Responding to The New York Times fantasy of a melting North Pole, Dr. Singer asked, “Do we believe theoretical models of the atmosphere or the atmosphere itself?”
Some of the money went to farmers in North Dakota, for tilling practices that keep carbon buried in the soil. But some farmers were already doing this, for other reasons, before the House paid a cent.
Other funds went to Iowa, where a power plant had been temporarily rejiggered to burn more cleanly. But that test project had ended more than a year before the money arrived.
The experts who will speak at the event represent a global community of scientists and policy analysts who question the theory of man-made climate change. They contend there is no consensus in the scientific community that human activity is the cause of global warming.
The following comments by Marc Morano appeared on the NYT climate blog -- as comment 264. As Marc says, their nitpicking really is pathetic. In true Green/Left style, they are reduced to "ad hominem" attacks rather than addressing any of the substantive issues involved. A true scientist would say "X is wrong because...". All these guys can say is "X does not meet with my personal approval". And even then they confine their attacks to just a few people in the report -- ignoring the large numbers whom they cannot find any grounds to attack. It is intellectual dishonesty of the highest order. They are pushing a barrow rather than being seekers after truth.
LAVISH subsidies and high electricity prices have turned Britain’s onshore wind farms into an extraordinary moneyspinner, with a single turbine capable of generating £500,000 of pure profit per year.(Via climate science):
According to new industry figures, a typical 2 megawatt (2MW) turbine can now generate power worth £200,000 on the wholesale markets - plus another £300,000 of subsidy from taxpayers.
This is how we are all being fleeced by the government and the wind farm industry under the guise of global warming.
Afghan officials today said that nearly 300 people including women and children are killed due to extreme cold wave conditions over the last 10 days.
The environment had largely disappeared from the forum's agenda. A few sessions examined, for example, whether biofuels are really beneficial, whether carbon trading works, and why nuclear energy is back in fashion.
Last year's hot topic had become a casualty of the forum's habit of trying to push new issues on to the global agenda.
Recommendation for anyone with a serious issue to address — stay the heck away from any mention of climate change for it will come back to bite you, sooner rather than later.
A Bay Area investment firm said today Apple Inc.'s board of directors which includes environmental champion Al Gore is apparently opposing shareholder proposals to become a more sustainable company.(Via ForzaMillan)
Given the chance, wouldn't believers want to publicly articulate their overwhelming scientific evidence and silence the naysayers or "deniers" once and for all?
The reason this hasn't happened is because the science is not settled. Man-caused global warming isn't scientific fact; it's an article of faith for the left -- the stuff of belief. In the realm of global warming, environmentalism has become a faith-based movement not unlike Christianity.
Snowdrifts are said to have got so deep that snowmobilers ventured dangerously close to overhead power lines. Food stores in Nunavut’s Kivalliq region were also left bare with no means of fresh supplies being delivered.---
When was the last time that avalanche deaths near Los Angeles were a major news item?
So I must ask, is Al Gore a liar or is he a genocidal monster who would see us all doomed for his political and fiscal gain? Not to be histrionic, but those are really the only two choices for his decade of silence –especially since he now claims that it already might be too late to save the planet. The guy either A. doesn’t believe it and is cashing in on the fear he is causing; or, B. he was willing to sacrifice mankind to hold and gain elective office and power.
Despite the publicity about the carbon emissions trading scheme and energy efficiency programmes, global warming was chosen by 9 per cent. Just 2.1 per cent of National supporters picked global warming in their choices, compared with 11 per cent of Labour's and, not surprisingly, 43 per cent of those who said they would vote for the Green Party.
Again I’m not saying that any of these details disprove GHG forcing. However Hansen specifically discussed the southeast US both in his article and emphasized it in his testimony and the actual results should be at least canvassed briefly before saying that Hansen is the new Nostradamus.
"The deniers somehow manage to get a very small number of such papers published, and then those who oppose greenhouse gas regulation or protection of the polar bear seize upon them and promote them and ignore the fact that virtually the entire scientific community disagrees with them," said Kassie Siegel, the climate program director for the Center for Biological Diversity.
I have few problems with folks, like the Williams administration and trustees, who make a big deal of global warming, carbon emissions and sustainability. Their holy trinities are for them to choose.
I have few problems with folks whose carbon emissions are not influenced by green shibboleths. If you want to fly all around the country or build a factory in China, then that’s your business. Although I could imagine scenarios in which externalities start to become important, the science seems too weak and the political possibilities too limited to worry about that just now. And, if it will make my friends at TNG happy, I am more than ready for massive carbon taxes as long as similarly-sized cuts are made elsewhere, thereby keeping federal revenue/spending at current levels.
My problem is with folks who do both, folks like the Williams administration. If you really believe that carbon emissions are a huge problem, then you should not be scheduling meetings in Boca that could just as easily take place in Williamstown. The hypocrisy is pathetic.
While I have tremendous regard for the effectiveness of the scientific method, I have very, very little respect for scientists. They are very, very far from the impartial devotees of scientody that they so love to portray themselves being. With a few notable exceptions, they are cowardly, contemptible herd animals more interested in jousting for a better position among the herd hierarchy than advancing the state of human knowledge.
There have never been more scientists accomplishing less of scientific value than at any point in the scientific era. As for global warming, scientists of the future will look back on it in much the same way scientists today view phrenology, even as they attempt to push their latest non-scientific nonsense on the rest of us.
Below is what passes for high-powered intellect among Australian Leftists. It is from the blog of the "Lowy Institute for International Policy" which seems to have high pretensions.
No mention of scientific facts is made but "feel" is given prominent mention. Once again it is nothing but ad hominem argument and abuse -- which is totally disreputable intellectually. I suspect in fact that our poor old Leftist did not have a clue about how to address the scientific issues involved and thought he could get away with bluff. I think that Frank Lowy, the magnate who founded the Lowy Institute, should be looking for more high-powered employees.
I follow the spurt of superciliousness below with a reply that DOES address the facts. I suppose it is something that they published the reply. The reply is by Alex Avery, son of skeptical author Dennis Avery, mentioned below. Alex is Director of Research at the Center for Global Food Issues, Hudson Institute. He hits the poor old Lowy lamebrains with an actual journal abstract -- almost unfair to such simpletons -- who probably would not even know which way up to hold an abstract, let alone being able to make anything out of it!
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