Quadrant Online - Tom Quirk - All the World's a Playstation

The financial meltdown, partly driven by risk analysis of the unknown, should serve as a warning beacon to those who believe that modelling the earth’s atmosphere over one hundred years is a believable and useful enterprise.
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The belief in climate modelling parallels the belief in financial risk modelling. The practitioners have been brought up to use computers as a primary tool for investigation. It has become so extreme that one lead IPCC author described the difference between model calculations and an actual measurement where the chance of the two overlapping was less than 5 per cent as “[measurements] consistent with model simulations, just larger than model average”! So now calculations verify measurements, where in classic science it used to be the other way round.

The financial disaster and its enabling by risk analysis should be a wake-up call to our policy makers. Even within the IPCC there are hints. Dr Kevin Trenberth, another lead IPCC author stated: “None of the models used by the IPCC are initialised to the observed state, and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate.”

Reread the last sentence of the Merton and Black Nobel Prize press release and look at what followed. Then think about Al Gore, his Nobel Prize and what may follow. What more need one say!

Denver Weather Examiner: President Obama warns of ‘cataclysmic hurricanes’ despite evidence to the contrary

With his ill-advised and untrue statement, the president continued an unfortunate trend of politicians issuing dire predictions about climate change with no basis in reality. The end result simply serves to polarize his opponents and those who do not agree with the global warming theory. The outlandish claims turn the public off and they are quickly learning to ignore any discussion of the issue – from either side.

Chris de Freitas : We need to be listening to science - Science - NZ Herald News

In the light of the latest evidence, a new question is being asked: What is the basis for the claim that carbon dioxide is a major driver of global climate?

If it turns out that there is no basis, or that the evidence for it is weak, a new and perhaps more important question arises: Are carbon dioxide emissions unwelcome?

It's a well-known fact that carbon dioxide is food for plants, and that at current concentrations they are carbon dioxide-starved. Increased carbon dioxide has a pronounced fertiliser effect on plant growth. Plants convert the carbon dioxide into food and fuel. It keeps our forests and pastures healthy.

No one knows for sure what the future holds, but there are some good clues as to what's going on. It hinges on growing evidence that natural influences on climate are in fact stronger than any man-made greenhouse effect.

It may be premature to discard our anxiety over the threat of possible human-caused global warming, but this anxiety should not be based on ignorance of what science can tell us.

* Chris de Freitas is a climate scientist at the University of Auckland.

Antarctic Ice Increasing by Ed Ring - EcoWorld

An excellent analysis posted on April 17th, 2009 by Ron de Haan entitled “The Antarctic Wilkins Ice Shelf Collapse: Media recycles photos and storylines from previous years,” documents how the Wilkins Ice Shelf has been reported by the mainstream media to be ominously collapsing every year now since 1999. Haan also provides satellite photography back as far as 1993 showing the end-of-summer thaws and mid-winter maximums for the Wilkins Ice Shelf. Not much has changed over the past 15 years. Thank goodness for the blogosphere to help us accurately assess the cryosphere!