Saturday, November 23, 2013

Links

One-Sided IPCC Alarmism Promotion Video Already Receiving Harsh Criticism…Scientists Purporting To Be Prophets
Richard Tol thinks the video appears “policy prescriptive”.
Marcel Crok: “not an attempt to present a neutral picture of the state of the science”
Werner Krauss: “This video tells a myth of power and superiority, and it only uses climate change to illustrate it.”
Eduardo Zorita: “I think the IPCC shoots itself in the foot..."
1922 Shock News : Higher CO2 Levels Needed To Feed The Human Race | Real Science
Ninety years ago, scientists actually did science.
House GOP: Last Laugh on “Carbon Pollution Rule”?
The proposed regulation would require new coal-fired power plants to install carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). And yet, under the Clean Air Act, EPA cannot require a technology that isn’t commercially viable.
Japan's solar dream shatters as projects fail - Yahoo News
TOKYO (Reuters) - The failure of solar developers to deliver on planned projects in Japan will cost the country's utilities close to $3.5 billion annually in additional coal and gas imports to generate power.
Hudson Bay freeze-up has not been a day later each year since 1981 | polarbearscience
Freeze-up for the last three years (2011, 2012, 2013) was normal

WaPo blogger Andrew Freedman on hyping role of climate change in extremes: "I'm prob guilty of it too from time to time"

Twitter / simondonner: @afreedma Some danger to hyping ...
@afreedma Some danger to hyping role of climate change in extremes; raised expectation for loss/damage, rather than sticking to financing
Twitter / afreedma: @simondonner enviro groups ...
@simondonner enviro groups have hyped that nonstop for past 2 yrs. I'm prob guilty of it too from time to time.

Links

Guilty plea in bird deaths at wind farms a first | UTSanDiego.com
WASHINGTON (AP) — A major U.S. power company has pleaded guilty to killing eagles and other birds at two Wyoming wind farms and agreed to pay $1 million as part of the first enforcement of environmental laws protecting birds against wind energy facilities.
GREENPEACE FIGHTS BACK… OR SOMETHING. — wireless77.com
if you have problems with the Russkis rig why didn’t you bring the case to the Seabed Disputes Chamber? Why didn’t you take legal action in the first place, instead of swarming onto the rig to set up a banner while videoing and photographing the whole thing?
It is actually a tough question to answer as the logical explanation is that Greenpeace wants publicity. Publicity brings in the bucks. Publicity, in a nutshell, is the life blood of Greenpeace.
Twitter / LFFriedman: Stern - "astonishing" to hear ...
Stern - "astonishing" to hear China say comittments apply only to developed countries. "I feel that I'm going into a time warp." #COP19

Friday, November 22, 2013

Warmist Alice Bows-Larkin believed AGW was "a big societal problem" *before* becoming a climate scientist

"We Have to Consume Less": Scientists Call For Radical Economic Overhaul to Avert Climate Crisis | Democracy Now!
ALICE BOWS-LARKIN: Well, I started off with a real interest in the stars, actually, so as in astronomy. And I decided to do a physics degree, because I was really interested in that. And then I felt that I—whilst that was very interesting and I really enjoyed the science, I wanted to try to apply my physics to something that was a bit more to do with, you know, some of the big societal problems. And so I ended up being a climate scientist.

Links

Western Herald – New York Times reporter lectured at WMU about media bias, used global warming as a case study
the predictions he made in a 2006 article about a drought occurring in the Middle East and the melting of the Arctic Ice, happened years later.
‘Delink business from global warming issues’ - The Economic Times
For the first time since the UN-led discussions started over climate issues in 1992, richer nations have recently shied away from their pledges to rein in emissions.
PJ Media » UN Climate Delegates Failing Everyone, Developed and Developing Alike
Yes, climate change and extreme weather events are a constant threat to human societies and nature alike. But the proper response is to prepare for these phenomena as best we can, while continuing to fund scientific research so that someday we may be able predict what, when, and where extreme events will happen. Stopping such phenomena from occurring, the main focus of today’s pointless and expensive UN FCCC meetings, is science fiction.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Links

Warsaw Climate Talks Go Up in Smoke
Each carriage was organized by different environmental and left-wing groups, with two stewards appointed to each. While organizers had hoped for 500 passengers, more than 750 rode the climate justice train to Warsaw. Each carriage was adorned with banners, flags and posters proclaiming the politics of different groups
Record snowfall takes Canadian city by surprise
“Williams Lake has never seen more snow fall in a 24-hour period than it did last Friday between Nov. 15 and Nov. 16,” says this article in the Williams Lake Tribune.
The Reference Frame: Harvard's IOP: global warming is caused by Prius owners
How do they do it? They do so by creating "tokenism", a false impression that some societal problem is being wrestled with even though it is not. They should burn their Prii and allow the problem to be really solved.
Exclusive: Greenpeace Leader Kumi Naidoo's COP19 Walkout Message For Governments "Playing Political Poker" With Planet's Future | DeSmogBlog
Leading the front of the line of WWF International delegates was Tasneem Essop, of WWF South Africa. As she made her way out, she told DeSmogBlog she felt a combination of "anger and frustration". "Governments have come here with no strong mandate to fight climate change," she said.

A reminder to think for yourself: Remarkable 44-min audio of socialist Jim Jones convincing people to murder 300+ children, then kill themselves

File:Peoples Temple Cult Death Tape Q042.ogg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[44-min audio]
Jim Jones - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jones had first started building Jonestown, formally known as the "Peoples Temple Agricultural Project", several years before the New West article was published. Jonestown was promoted as a means to create both a "socialist paradise" and a "sanctuary" from the media scrutiny in San Francisco.[58] Jones purported to establish Jonestown as a benevolent model communist community stating, "I believe we’re the purest communists there are."

Stunning: IPCC's Agus Sari contradicts the IPCC on typhoons

Twitter / agussari
@tan123 there are more, and more intense, typhoons than previously experienced. Why?
Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: Coverage of Extreme Events in the IPCC AR5
“Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin”
...
“In summary, confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extratropical cyclones since 1900 is low”
Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: Are Typhoon Disasters Getting More Common?


My Jakarta: Agus Sari, Campaigner Against Climate Change - The Jakarta Globe
Ever since Agus Sari attended the Second World Climate Conference in 1989, he has been a fervent global advocate for the prevention of climate change. A member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he currently chairs the Working Group on Indonesia’s largest anti-emissions initiative.

Links

Canada Leads Race to Climate Disaster | DeSmog Canada
[Warmist Elizabeth May] "There is an election coming in 2015. We have to make climate change the key issue."
Polish 'Bad COP' feared after ministerial sacking | EurActiv
“It is pretty clear that the Poles have an interest in slowing things down,” one EU source told EurActiv. “They’ve even said so to us quite bluntly. It shows that their motives for hosting this conference were not to save the climate but rather to slow down the process of doing so.”

The Green MEP Bas Eickhout agreed, pointing to a general feeling that as chair of the COP19, Poland was steering the climate summit off the rails, with help from countries such as Australia, which have blocked discussions on loss and damage.

“What’s going on is ridiculous,” Eickhout said over a line from Warsaw. “On Monday, Poland hosted a coal summit. On Tuesday, Tusk opened a plenary promoting shale gas, a fossil fuel, and on Wednesday, he fires the COP president, who is also climate minister.”

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Probably just a coincidence: After Michael Bloomberg announces 50M anti-coal campaign, Bloomberg News smears coal as "the new tobacco"

2011: Bloomberg Donates $50 Million to Sierra Club Coal Campaign - NYTimes.com
WASHINGTON — Expressing frustration with the paralysis at the national and international levels on setting policies to combat climate change, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced on Thursday that he would donate $50 million to the Sierra Club’s campaign to shut down coal-fired power plants across the United States.
Coal Seen as New Tobacco Sparking Investor Backlash: Commodities - Bloomberg
“Maybe we’ve hit some kind of nerve in the debate,” Christine Torklep Meisingset, Storebrand’s head of sustainable investments in Oslo, said by telephone. “Hopefully, other investors will be acting along the same lines. There could be an interesting parallel to tobacco.”

Gillen D'Arcy Wood: Tambora cooling was very bad, so we should fear a little warming

Typhoon Haiyan: turning point in how West thinks about climate change?
Disasters in Southeast Asia have gone global before, as I learned in researching the eruption of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia in 1815. Mount Tambora's massive detonation, the largest in thousands of years, threw the global climate system into chaos. Crops failed from Indonesia to Ireland, and millions of desperate refugees poured into the cities. Famine-friendly diseases, typhus and cholera, spread like wildfire. In an ultimate measure of desperation, some parents killed their own children out of mercy (tales of post-Tambora filicide are told from Bali to China to Switzerland).

Even in the U.S., where a much-feared famine was largely averted, thousands of people fled the Tambora weather of freezing New England for the promised land of the frontier.
...
...The alternative -- a world of hundredfold Haiyans and exhausted human beings -- is too gruesome to contemplate.

Links

Articles: A Carbon Tax on Everything -- Really, Robert?
A tad blithe, Robert. Where's your cost-benefit analysis? How could you possibly arrive at one with so many imponderables, uncertainties (by your own admission), and doubts surrounding global warming (or climate change, or whatever the de jour tag is)? You wish to levy a carbon tax -- however "modest," though undetermined -- on virtually everything American society produces and consumes? Shamefully reckless.
Donald Sutherland hopes Hunger Games inspires real revolution - Yahoo Movies UK
"I hope that [young people] will take action because it's getting drastic in this country,” Sutherland told the Guardian. “Drone strikes. Corporate tax dodging. Racism. The Keystone oil pipeline. Denying food stamps to ‘starving Americans’. It's all going to pot. "It's not right. It's not right."

Links

U.N. Climate Meet: ‘It’s About Survival’ • Caribbean Life
WARSAW, Nov 13 2013 (IPS) - For the small island developing states of the Caribbean, there is nothing more important than the United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place here at the national stadium of Poland from Nov. 11-22.
140-bushel corn yield sets record for state - North Carolina
Many area farmers remember when a 50 to 60-bushel per acre yield was considered very good.
IEA chief economist: “definitely wrong” to highlight oil sands as “a major source of carbon dioxide emissions” - Oil Sands
But of course, facts won’t stop the activists’ crusade against Keystone XL because it has never been about facts: it’s always been about developing a movement around a symbol. As David Victor a climate-policy expert at the University of California told Nature, “As a serious strategy for dealing with climate, blocking Keystone is a waste of time. But as a strategy for arousing passion, it is dynamite.” Or as a Tom Steyer aide Kate Gordon told Rolling Stone, “The goal is as much about organizing young people around a thing. But you have to have a thing.”
Oil's Future Draws Blood and Gore in Investment Portfolios - Bloomberg
“The end is nigh” for global oil-demand growth, proclaimed a Citigroup report in March.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

I'm confused again: If the UN isn't using global warming to push massive economic changes, why do they keep publicly admitting that they're trying to do that?

Ban Ki-Moon Scolds Rich Countries Backtracking on Climate - Bloomberg
Some developed countries “that are supposed to be taking leadership are now backtracking,” Ban said at UN climate talks in Warsaw today. “That’s quite disappointing. We have to take urgent action.”

The comments were meant to goad envoys from almost 190 nations at the meeting to step up their efforts to cut fossil-fuel emissions blamed for damaging the atmosphere.
IISD RS @ Coverage of Selected Side Events at the Warsaw Climate Change Conference, Tuesday, 19 November 2013 - Day 8, Warsaw, Poland
UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner welcomed participants. COP 19 President Marcin Korolec highlighted the UN system as a catalyst in mobilizing sustainable development, outlining linkages between the post-2015 development agenda process and negotiations under the ADP. He highlighted the work to be done in the next week towards an ambitious global agreement that addresses the defining issue of our era and ensures it does not undercut sustainable development.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres said this has to be the development banks and the UN’s obsession, stressing the world is running out of time. She called for moving to a meaningful and technical draft agreement, calling for “just doing it.”
[Oct '13] Debunking the U.N. Climate-Change Conspiracy - NationalJournal.com
"Here's the simple truth. The U.N. does not do anything that its member countries don't want to do. Period. There is no such thing as the U.N. being a super-national authority imposing anything on governments. It just doesn't exist.
[Dec '12] UN Summit Fails to Enact “Complete Transformation” of the World
The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Doha, Qatar, concluded on Saturday, December 8, accomplishing somewhat less than “a complete transformation of the economic structure of the world,” a goal that conference chief Christiana Figueres had announced at the start of the global summit.

Links

13 tips on building a coalition to tackle climate change | Global Development Professionals Network
We need to put power into the hands of existing leaders in the humanitarian, environmental, and science realms.
Global warming and business reporting – can business news organizations achieve less than zero? | John Abraham | Environment | theguardian.com
another nonsensical non-scientist – Donna Laframboise...Ms. Laframboise has a checkered past
Global Climate Change Negotiations | Azimuth
Radoslav S. Dimitrov is a professor at the Department of Political Science at Western University. What’s interesting is that he’s also been a delegate for the European Union at the UN climate change negotiations since 1990!
Hundreds Of German Industry Firms Face Bankruptcy, EU Energy Commissioner Warns | The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)
Hundreds of German industrial firms risk insolvency if the country does not fundamentally revise its renewable energy law (EEG) to avoid a probe by the European Union, European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said on Tuesday.

Canadian Elizabeth May goes to #COP19: Cold weather and jet lag and fasting and representing Afghanistan, oh my

In which I get a pink badge! – elizabethmaymp.ca – November 19, 2013
I started out early, memories of the appalling arrangements in Copenhagen left me not wanting to take any chances in a cold city. In Copenhagen at COP15, we had to line up and wait outside for hours (day after day) in the bitter cold. Just to be on the safe side, I got to the huge stadium in Warsaw, converted to a convention centre for COP19, at 7 am and only had to wait outside for a half an hour before security guards decided we should be allowed to wait inside where it was warm.
...
As previously arranged through email messages, I met with the Deputy Minister of the National Environmental Agency of Afghanistan and head of his country’s delegation, Ghulam Mohd Malikyar. He took me back to registration to request I be listed as a member of his delegation.
...
Today, I also pinned on one of the small red fabric circles worn by delegates to identify as fasting in solidarity with the head of the Philippines delegation.
...
As for me, between jet lag and fasting, and trying to concentrate and do my work, it’s been a long day.

Links

Global warming blamed for Midwest tornadoes, thunderstorms | The Daily Caller
“We’re causing this because there are more and more of these storms, because of the way that humanity is changing the world’s environment,” Sachs told MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “This kind of event will happen more frequently unless we change the way we run our energy system. This is what humanity is doing. This is very, very hard to come to grips with.”
Polar bear problems in N Hudson Bay not due to late freeze-up | polarbearscience
Bottom line: A “late freeze-up” for northwestern Hudson Bay occurs when ice formation is delayed until early December or beyond. Freeze-up was nowhere near “late” this year, nor was the ice “slow to freeze.” It wasn’t last year either.

Links

After Haiyan: how to act on scientific advice that's politically inconvenient? | Pielke Jr | theguardian.com
The IPCC, despite the fact that it has made some missteps in the past, is exactly the sort of institution for providing scientific advice to help evaluate conflicting and uncertain empirical claims. In the case of loss and damage from extreme events, the evidence is extremely strong. There is at present no evidentiary basis to support demands for reparations.
EPA’s “Public” Listening Session Turns Into Sierra Club Listening Session | Somewhat Reasonable
the Sierra Club had mobilized hundreds of activists, transported them via bus (I presume of the fossil-fuel powered kind), prepped their testimonies the night before, and completely dominated the morning speaker slots

Monday, November 18, 2013

Links

Lives of the Climate Bloggers (1) John L. Daly | Geoffchambers's Blog
So what had John Daly ever done to Phil Jones to make him rejoice over the news of his death?

Nothing. He disagree with him, that’s all.
The 3 firms that didn't pay the carbon tax | Business Spectator
Interest will accrue at 20 per cent per annum if they don’t.
Senate Dems urge Obama to approve Keystone XL pipeline | The Daily Caller

Links

November tornado outbreak in the quietest tornado year on record sign global cooling has begun
Last year November to April snow extent in the hemisphere was the highest on record. We started faster this year than last. 4 of the top 5 snowiest winters on record have occurred in the last 6 years. UKMO, NOAA, UCS all had predicted snow would be decreasing a decade ago due to warmer conditions. Temperatures have not warmed for 16 years and cooled since 2002 globally.
Warsaw—Day 6: Prepare Now for 4°C Rise - Truthdig
[Mark Maslin, professor of climatology at University College in London] “We are already planning for a 4°C world because that is where we are heading. I do not know of any scientists who do not believe that..."

Warmist Chris Huhne on trying to prevent bad weather by tweaking CO2: "There has never been a change in the capitalist economy as potentially disruptive"

Typhoon Haiyan must spur us on to slow climate change | Chris Huhne | Comment is free | The Guardian
There has never been a change in the capitalist economy as potentially disruptive or which is likely to be so hard fought by vested interests.
▶ Chris Huhne: speeding points situation got "out of hand" - YouTube
Published on Mar 11, 2013
Disgraced former energy minister Chris Huhne, who has been handed an eight month prison sentence for perverting the course of justice, says the situation got "out of hand".

Global warming follies in Calgary: Because of a snowstorm, only 50 of 300 expected protesters show up; emergency shelters fill as homeless scramble to escape the low temperatures

Anti-pipeline protesters gather in Calgary to decry climate change | Calgary
“We’re seeing the effects of global warming and we can’t keep denying it because obviously something is happening,” Chagnon said.
...
Originally about 300 people were slated to participate in the Calgary protest, but due to a snow storm only about 50 showed up.
Cold snap fills homeless shelters
The weekend’s cold snap stretched Calgary’s emergency shelters to capacity as the city’s homeless scrambled to escape the low temperatures and biting winds.

Links

THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: Big Ethanol Finally Loses
The political fuel is losing support as its costs and harm grow.
Snowfall blocks traffic in two Chinese provinces
Blizzards and snowstorms in the northeastern Chinese provinces of Heilongjiang and Jilin have forced closure of several highways.
The folly of corn ethanol | Climate Etc.
Lets lose the ‘urgent actions needed’ and take the time to develop a range of policy options and thoroughly investigate the possibilities for unintended consequences.
Human-polar bear conflicts: Stirling 1974 vs. Amstrup 2013 | polarbearscience
Blaming climate change exclusively for human-polar bear conflicts ignores a number of other influences

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Links

50th Daily Record in a Row for Antarctic Sea Ice Extent (and 104th in total) | sunshine hours
November 16th 2013 (Day 320) saw the 50th Daily Record for Antarctic Sea Ice Extent in a row! It was also the 104th daily record for 2013.
The Markets Think Al Gore's 'Settled' Global Warming Science Is Bunk - Forbes
as evidenced by the popularity of coastal property among warmists and non-warmists alike, the market says the ‘science’ predicting catastrophe is utter nonsense.
Blustery, snowy weather wreaking havoc on Calgary highways | Ice Age Now
At least 160 crashes had been reported by 11 a.m.
Utah- January Cooling At 63F / Century | sunshine hours
Did you know that January in Utah is cooling at 61F per Century since 1998? And many other months are cooling too.

For Jeff Sachs: Remember when warmists tried to sell some drought in 2012 as "The New Dust Bowl"? Nebraska corn yields in 2012 were 22 times 1934's yield

What Drought Did to Crop Yields in the 1930s
In 1934, Nebraska saw the driest year on record with only 14.5 inches of rainfall. The state's corn crop dropped even more to only 6.2 bushels per acre.
2012AllCornCountyYlds.pdf
[Nebraska State Average 142 Bushels per Acre]
As of July 19, even *unirrigated* 2012 Nebraska corn yields forecast was 19X 1934 Nebraska corn yields
median forecasted yields for rainfed corn are 118-130 bushels per acre