Ban calls on world’s citizens to join UN in sending a message on climate change (2009-03-29)

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged people everywhere to join the United Nations and millions of citizens around the world in sending a message to government leaders to protect the planet by switching off their lights for an hour tomorrow night.
The UN will flip off the light switch at 8:30pm at its landmark Headquarters in New York to observe “Earth Hour” on 28 March to raise awareness of climate change and mobilize nations to reach agreement on a for a new agreement later this year in Copenhagen on a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol, whose first commitment period ends in 2012.

Set Phasers on Stun « Roy Spencer, Ph. D.

As those who have been following our work already know, our main conclusion is that climate sensitivity has been grossly overestimated due to a mix up between cause and effect when researchers have observed how global cloud cover varies with temperature.

To use my favorite example, when researchers have observed that global cloud cover decreases with warming, they have assumed that the warming caused the cloud cover to dissipate. This would be a positive feedback since such a response by clouds would let more sunlight in and enhance the warming.

But what they have ignored is the possibility that causation is actually working in the opposite direction: That the decrease in cloud cover caused the warming…not the other way around. And as shown by Spencer and Braswell (2008 J. Climate), this can mask the true existence of negative feedback.