Tag: global warming (Page 1 of 2)

Terrifying New Data on Sea Level Rise

May 14, 2018 / Augustus / 0 Comments

Terrifying to climate alarmists, that is.

Sea level has been rising for the last 20,000 years, since the start of the blessed global warming that brought us into the light, warmth and buzzing with life bio-diversity of the current inter-glacial period. The most rapid increases in sea level occurred between fifteen and eight thousand years ago. With minor fluctuations, the rate of sea level rise has been declining since then.

Sea level rise over the last 20,000 years

Despite a modest increase in global temperature over the last one hundred and fifty years, and a modest increase in atmospheric CO2 in the last seventy years, there has been no change in the rate of sea level rise.

Despite shrieks of terror from climate alarmists, there has been no change in the rate of sea level rise 1855 to the present.

Despite shrieks of terror from climate alarmists, there has been no change in the rate of sea level rise from 1855 to the present.

Climate Change is a Moral Issue

May 8, 2018 / Augustus / 0 Comments

Vain attempts to stop completely natural climate variation – aka global warming – kill millions of people in developing countries. 4.3 million people die every year from indoor pollution casued by burning wood and dung on open fires for cooking and heating. Yet greenies actively work to stop poorer nations developing the electricity supplies and other forms of cheap energy they take for granted.

“The grim irony of the pursuit of “green” energy is that it may be placing millions of people in poor countries at risk of living much shorter, unhealthier lives due to air pollution, according to a new report from The Global Warming Policy Foundation.”

The report, by eminent epidemiologist Mikko Paunio, says that international bodies and NGOs are trying to prevent poor countries from expanding their use of conventional fuels, have abandoned the so-called “energy ladder” — the gradual shift to cleaner types of fuel that underpinned the clean up of air quality in industrialised nations. As Dr Paunio explains, this will have devastating consequences:
“Indoor air pollution from domestic fires kills millions every year. But instead of helping poor people to climb the energy ladder and clean the air in their communities, the poorest people are being given gimmicks like cookstoves, which make little difference to air quality, and solar panels, which are little more than a joke.”

What is worse, the greens inside and outside the development community are blaming air pollution on power stations, industry and cars, as a way to prevent any shift to industrial power production. As Dr Paunio makes clear, most air pollution in poor countries is in fact caused by burning low-quality biofuels and coal in domestic stoves:
“Trying to blame power stations for indoor air pollution might make greens feel they are saving the planet, but the reality is that they are allowing millions of deaths from air pollution to continue. The body count is going to rival that of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century.”

And of course, the ones who shout loudest about the need for government and other people to “do something” about global warming are the ones who do least themselves.

Green Power, Black Death

April 15, 2018 / Augustus / 0 Comments

Paul Driessen pointed out years ago that green policies mean stopping developing nations from developing by depriving them of energy and clean water.

Viv Forbes lists the ways green policies also undermine the continuing growth of the West. Greens are not only traitors to the poor, they are traitors to the environment:

Greens hate individual freedom and private property. They dream of a centralised unelected global government, financed by taxes on developed nations and controlled by all the tentacles of the UN.

No longer is real pollution of our environment the main Green concern. The key slogan of the Green religion is “sustainable development”, with them defining what is sustainable.

Greens hate miners. They use nationalised parks, heritage areas, flora/fauna reserves, green bans, locked gates and land rights (for some) to close as much land as possible to explorers and miners – apparently resources should be locked away for some lucky distant future generation. And if some persistent explorer manages to prove a mineral deposit, greens will then strangle it in the approvals process using “death by delay”.

Greens hate farmers with their ploughs, fertilisers, crops and grazing animals. They want Aussie grazing land turned back to kangaroos and woody weeds. They plan to expel farmers and graziers from most land areas, with food produced in concentrated feedlots, factory farms, communal gardens and hydroponics.

Greens hate professional fishermen with their nets, lines and harpoons. Using the Great Barrier Reef as their poster-child, they plan to control the Coral Sea using marine parks, fishing quotas, bans and licences, leaving us to get seafood from foreign seas and factory fish farms.

Greens hate foresters and grass-farmers. They want every tree protected, even woody weeds taking over ancient treeless grasslands. Red meat and forest timber are “unsustainable”. Apparently they want us to live in houses made of recycled cardboard and plastic and eating fake steak and protein powder made from methane generated from decomposing rubbish dumps.

Greens despise the suburbs with their SUV’s, lawns, pools, rose gardens, manicured parks, ponies and golf courses. They prefer concentrated accommodation with people stacked-and-packed in high-rise cubic apartments, with state-controlled kindies in the basement, and with ring-roads of electric trams and driverless cars connecting apartments, schools, offices and shops.

Greens hate reliable grid power from coal, nuclear, oil, gas or hydro generators. Their “sustainable” option is part-time power from wind and solar with the inevitable blackouts and shortages needing more rules and rationing.

Greens lead the war on fracking and pipelines. The victims are energy consumers. The beneficiaries are Russian gas and Middle-east oil.

Greens think it is “sustainable” to uglify scenic hills with whining wind towers, power poles, transmission lines and access roads, and to clutter pleasant estuaries and shallow seas with more bird-slicing turbines. They think it is “sustainable” to keep smothering sunny flatlands under solar panels and filling the suburbs with extra power lines and batteries of toxic metals.

Greens think it is “sustainable” to clear forests for bio-mass to feed large wood-fired power stations, or for establishing biofuel plantations. They think it is “sustainable” to keep converting croplands from producing food for humans to producing ethanol for cars.

Greens hate free markets where prices are used to signal changing supply and demand. There is no room for fun, frills or luxuries in their “sustainable” world. They want to limit demand by imposing rationing on us wastrels – carbon ration cards, electricity rationing meters, water rationing, meat free days, diet cops and bans on fast foods and fizzy-drinks.

They also favour compulsory recycling of everything, no matter what that process costs in energy or resources. Surveillance cameras will keep watch on our “wasteful” habits.

None of this vast green religious agenda is compatible with individual freedom, constitutional rights or private property – and none of it makes any economic or climate sense.

Global Warming Causes Everything

June 26, 2012 / Augustus / 0 Comments

If you haven’t visited it lately, Dr John Brignell’s numberwatch site has a great list of everything so far blamed on global warming. Over six hundred links listing everything from AIDS to haggis to lampreys to feminised turtles to women cheating on vacation.

Of course, global warming hasn’t caused any of these things, because the world hasn’t warmed at all for the last fourteen years, and the total global increase in temperature over the last one hundred and fifty years (including ‘adjustments’) has been 0.8 degrees; nothing at all out of the ordinary, and a difference a normal person cannot even feel.

For more see Daren Jonescu in the American Thinker.

Same Old Bogeyman

February 11, 2011 / Augustus / 0 Comments

Ron Burgess at Business Spectator describes Australian uber-alarmist Flim Flannery as ‘Labor’s new bogeyman.

I am not sure in what sense Flannery or his message are new. He has been constantly, amusingly wrong, but at least he has been consistent.

Ron says he doubts that Australian politicians, even those most stridently in the AGW (warming) camp, really believe what they are employing Tim Flannery to tell us to believe.

After all, you can judge what people really believe by what they do. If politicians like Wong and Garrett and Gillard really believed that human activity was causing catastrophic global warming, they would stop doing climate warmy stuff like flying everywhere and living in huge houses, and they would be doing their best to convince everyone else to do the same. But they’re not.

There’s an opnion that despite what they say, leftist politicians don’t really believe this. After all there’s no evidence for AGW and never has been (not that reality is a major factor in leftist policy development). They only espouse global warming alarmism because it gives an opportunity for restrictions on industry, and greater government control over almost every aspect of the lives of ordinary citizens.

I disagree. I think that on this, Wong, Garrett, Gillard, Turnbull, etc really do believe what they say they believe. People’s actions are not always consistent with what they believe, even if those beliefs are deeply and sincerely held.

In the case of politicians, the need to get re-elected is pre-eminent. After all, having high ideals and believing the right things is important, but if you are not in power, you can’t change law or policy. So it’s better to stay in power and do what you can, even if you think that is not enough, than to be out of power and not be able to do anything.

Here is where Ron Burgess’ assessment of this appointment is spot on. He says Flannery’s real job is to ‘put the wind up Australians.’ For non Australian readers, that means to scare people.

On paper, the primary role of Tim Flannery’s new position is to ‘provide independent information for members of the community … on three areas in particular: firstly, the science of climate change and its impacts on this country…’

We all know he is not going to do that. Independent information on the science of climate change is the last thing Flannery is interested in. He has made huge amounts of money by ignoring climate science. What he is an expert in is scaring people. Good choice for a bogeyman.

Except that, as I noted above, his scary predictions have been consistently wrong.

The problem for the Labor government is that this fact, and this appointment, make it clear right from the beginning that there is no objectivity, no interest in a fair assessment of climate science, no commitment to truth.

People are not buying this. The bogeyman just isn’t scary anymore.

Update: Saturday – Andrew Bolt has a useful and extensive list of Flannery’s failed predictions, and the cost imposed on the community by those who believed them.

I Want My Global Warming

January 29, 2011 / Augustus / 0 Comments

Four of New York’s seven worst ever recorded snow storms have occurred since 2003.

This January has been new York’s snowiest since records have been kept, breaking a record that goes back to 1925. January 26th also broke the 1871 record for the most snow to fall in one day.

Records for cold and snow are being broken across the northern hemisphere. In Korea, for example.

Last year saw record cold in the Southern hemisphere. In Australia and South America for example.

But that’s just weather. It doesn’t mean anything. No one could have predicted it.

Except that Piers Corbyn did. Based on science. Against the global warming establishment.

So did the Farmer’s Almanac. Based on science. Against the global warming establishment:

And it’s going to keep getting colder.

I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing

January 11, 2011 / Augustus / 0 Comments

He, he.

‘We can give billions of dollars to green energy research.’

‘And that will enable us to replace gasoline with sunbeams?’

‘Nothing lost in trying.’

‘Except the billions of dollars.’

‘That is taxpayer money. If we don’t take it from them, people will just waste it on their own families, instead of it being put to good use by liberals.’ …

‘We’ll start with America.’

‘Won’t that devastate the economy?’

‘Yes, but it will be worth it.’

‘Will that stop global warming?’

‘No. But think of the moral superiority we will gain… Also, being green is very trendy right now.’ …

‘So how would you disprove global warming?’

‘You can’t. That’s how you know it’s true.’

One gem after another!

Fixing Things That Ain’t Broke

October 13, 2010 / Augustus / 0 Comments

With solutions that don’t work.

I hope soon to comment on the Murray Darling proposals (costing billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs to ‘preserve’ something that never existed until fifty years ago) and SA’s proposed marine parks (costing some 1,000 jobs and approximately $1 billion in lost income from commercial and charter fishing to ‘protect’ fisheries which are under-utilised and not remotely in danger).

But for now, wind farms: Europe’s Ill Wind, a 25 minute video packed full of information.

If you only see, read or listen to one thing about wind farms, this should be it.

And excuse the sometimes shoddy camera work. Unlike global warming alarmists and alternative energy ridiculists, rational people don’t have access to vast sums of government money for high end production work. The facts are what count. Unless you’re a greenie, of course, but then you probably won’t watch it anyway.

Osama Bin Laden Worried

October 3, 2010 / Augustus / 1 Comment

And so he should be. But what is he worried about?

Climate change. Of course.

There are two possibilities here.

Either Osama is an ignorant bloodthirsty hypocritical loon, and he really does believe that anthropogenic climate change is a bigger threat to world peace than he is.

OK, it’s certainly possible.

Or he is an intelligent bloodthirsty hypocritical loon, who knows that spending billions on trying to change something that cannot be changed will weaken Western economies and distract Western governments from the real threat. Him and his borg buddies.

And as for this: “What we are facing… calls for generous souls and brave men to take serious and prompt action to provide relief for their Muslim brothers in Pakistan.”

It seems to have escaped his notice that it was Western governments who protected Muslims during the war in the Balkans, Western governments who saved Kuwait from Saddam Hussein, Western governments who came to the aid of Indonesia after the tsunami, Western governments who provide most of the support and aid for the Palestinian Authority, Western governments who are working, at a cost of billions of dollars and the lives of their own young men and women, to build safe and stable societies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Western governments who are providing most of the aid to flood affected regions of Pakistan.

It’s Freezing. Must Be Global Warming.

August 31, 2010 / Augustus / 0 Comments

Arctic Summer temperatures have been trending down since about 1960, so have temperatures in San Diego, cold snaps are killing all manner of things in South America, Antarctic sea ice is increasing, the southern hemisphere oceans seem to be getting colder, and it’s been flipping cold here in Australia.

I want my global warming now!

News flash: global warming causes carnivores to lose height and body mass. Oh, wait. That was 55 million years ago.

Undeniable Climate Change Denied

August 19, 2010 / Augustus / 0 Comments

A big group of scientists whose funding depends on continuing to scare people about climate change have produced a report saying climate change is scary.

This is news, apparently.

Older news is that Phil Jones still can’t find the data on which much of the warming warnings were based.

What Phil has admitted is:

There has been no statistically significant warming since 1995.
The world has been warmer before.
There was a period of warming from 1920 to 1940 which was not caused by human activity. And there have been lots of earlier periods of warming which were also entirely natural.

But Phil and the other scary scientists still insist the similar warming from 1975 to 1995 must, absolutely, really, have been caused by human activity and nothing else.

So please keep giving them billions of dollars or otherwise really horrible things will happen, like maybe Greenland being green again, and being able to grow grapes in Britain.

Right. Sure.

Climate Vox Pop

August 11, 2010 / Augustus / 1 Comment

I asked three random people (well it’s about as scientific as those polls in the Courier-Mail) some simple questions.

Do you believe the world is getting warmer as a result of human action? Two said yes, one no.

To the two who said yes: ‘What are we doing that is causing the world to get warmer?’

They both answered that we are making too much carbon dioxide, and this is trapping sunlight.

Next question: ‘If you had a box containg 10,000 air particles, how many of them would be carbon dioxide?’

One answer: Half?

The other answer: About 3,000?

My response. ‘Three.’

‘What, three thousand?’

‘Nope, three.’

‘You mean 300?’

Nope, three.’

‘That can’t be right.’

“Go and check it out.’

‘No that can’t be right.’

Ahh, the joyful bliss of ignorance.

Except that, in this case, and often, ignorance does not promote bliss, but uneccessary panic.

There is vastly more water vapour in the air than CO2, and water vapour is a more effective retainer of heat.

The minimal effect of that tiny amount of CO2 is simply swamped by other factors including water vapor.

The even more minimal additional amount of CO2 resulting from human activity causes so little change that it cannot even be measured.

Despite this, everywhere is getting hotter faster than everywhere else, and Mars is getting hotter fastest of all. And it’s all our fault. Except Mars.

Gol darn those irresponsible truck driving martians!

Of course, scientists keep saying we should stop panicking about climate because we can’t do anything about it anyway, and get on with solving real problems, but I still think those martians need to be taught a lesson.

Hottest Decade?

January 10, 2010 / Augustus / 1 Comment

It is certainly hot in South Australia – over 40 degrees on Kangaroo Island. Adelaide is even hotter – about 43 degrees.

One or two very hot spells in a season are not unusual, however. The hottest day I have ever lived through was 46 degrees in the early 80s, also in Adelaide.

Has the last decade been the hottest on record in Australia, as Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology says? I noted a couple of days ago that even it were, this is no reason to assume that human activity is responsible.

In fact, there is no correlation between human production of CO2 and changes in climate, but very strong correlation between solar activity and global temperature change.

I also noted that there have been no new temperature records, hot or cold, in the last decade.

Warwick Hughes has shown that in the case of Darwin and Alice Springs, the temperature data do not supprt the BOM’s claim.

There is also considerable doubt that the BOM has adequately taken into account the Urban Heat Island Effect.

These graphs, also from Warwick Hughes, demonstrate the IPCC orthodox warming of about 0.6 degrees in large Australian cities over the 20th century, but no warming at all in rural centres:

Australian Capital City Temperatures 1882 -1982

Australian Regional Temperatures 1882 -1982

Then there is the fact that data has been carefully ‘corrected’, almost always so that older temperatures are lowered, and more recent temperatures increased.

This graph from Watts Up With That shows adjusted data versus raw data for Darwin over the period 1880 to 2000:

Darwin Raw vs Adjusted Temperatures 1880 to 2000

Then there is the fact the even the warming alarmists at East Anglia CRU found the Australian temperature records so poor they are almost incomprehensible. A couple of quotes from the Climategate emails:

I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seem to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was. There are hundreds if not thousands of pairs of dummy stations, one with no WMO and one with, usually overlapping and with the same station name and very similar coordinates. I know it could be old and new stations, but why such large overlaps if that’s the case? Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight… So, we can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!

OH F%*# THIS. It’s Sunday evening, I’ve worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I’m hitting yet another problem that’s based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity, it’s just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they’re found.

Getting seriously fed up with the state of the Australian data. so many new stations have been introduced, so many false references.. so many changes that aren’t documented. Every time a cloud forms I’m presented with a bewildering selection of similar-sounding sites, some with references, some with WMO codes, and some with both. And if I look up the station metadata with one of the local references, chances are the WMO code will be wrong (another station will have it) and the lat/lon will be wrong too.

So how much confidence can we have in the BOM’s claim that this has been the hottest decade since records began?

Very little.

DSSO (Decadal Science Scare Oscillation) Winner

December 31, 2009 / Augustus / 3 Comments

After considering a number of possible candidates for the next major science scare, the UN today annouced the winner was the asteroid Apophis.

‘We’ve got as much funding, and as many free holidays, as we are likely to get from global warming,’ UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon announced today. ‘It’s time to move on.’

‘The asteroid Apophis meets all the criteria for the next DSSO. There is a slim chance it could cause major destruction, on a scale the world has never seen.’ He said.

‘It will take billions of dollars in research funds, and several conferences, before we know whether this destruction is likely or or not. But the consequences of not acting are so dire, that even if the science is not proven, we owe it to our children and grandchildren to put the planet first, and give the world the benefit of the doubt.’

Anatoly Perminov told the Russian radio station Golos Rossii: “People’s lives are at stake. We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow us to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people.”

Mirrors, lights and even paint could change the way the object absorbed light and heat enough to shift its direction over 20 years or so. With less notice, mankind could be forced to take more drastic measures, such as setting off a massive explosion on or near the object to change its course.

Smoke and mirrors?

Same deal as climate change, then.

PS. Ban Ki Moon didn’t really say any of that. But he might as well have.

Consensus, Consensus, Consensus

December 15, 2009 / Augustus / 0 Comments

I said it three times, so it must be true.

Or it was true back in the seventies.

No matter how much they try to deny it now (just as in five years time they will all be denying they ever fell for the AGW scam) there seemed to be a consensus two decades ago that the world was cooling, it was all our fault, we only had a few years to take action to save the world.

Remember the DSSO? The Decadal Science Scare Oscillation?

Maurizio Morabito at the Spectator recounts the terrifying story of global cooling as follows:

The threat of a new ice age loomed so large in 1974 that American intelligence collated a report on the likely effects. Maurizio Morabito unearthed it

A high-priority government report warns of climate change that will lead to floods and starvation. ‘Leading climatologists’ speak of a ‘detrimental global climatic change’, threatening ‘the stability of most nations’. The scenario is eerily familiar although the document — never made public before — dates from 1974. But here’s the difference: it was written to respond to the threat of global cooling, not warming. And yes, it even mentions a ‘consensus’ among scientists.

‘A Study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems’, written by the CIA for ‘internal planning purposes’ in August 1974, goes a little way towards explaining why some people over a certain age experience a sense of déjà-vu when climate change is mentioned; in the mid-1970s there really was a lot of scientific discussion about global cooling. With the benefit of hindsight, reading it makes one feel wry and embarrassed. So many of the terms bandied about 35 years ago are still being employed by today’s fear-mongers, about the very opposite phenomenon.

It is as if climate scares had to follow a set pattern. Back in 1974 the usual disasters were projected: the ‘new climatic era’ was said to be bringing famine, starvation, refugee crises, floods, droughts, crop and monsoon failures, and all sorts of extreme weather phenomena. The Sahara would expand. World grain reserves, already at less than a month’s supply, would be depleted. A list of past civilisations brought down by ‘major and minor’ cooling episodes was given, which included the Indus, Hittites, Mycenaean, and the Mali empire of Africa. Any possible benefits to climate change were barely mentioned.

More parallels can be drawn. According to the CIA report, in 1974 climate science was developing ‘a successful climatic prediction model’, as indeed it still is. Government intervention had brought together eminent scientists who had previously been at odds with each other then had established a ‘scientific consensus’ on ‘global climate change’. The scientists claimed this pattern of cooling would cause ‘major economic problems around the world’. Dealing with this would, of course, require the creation of several new government agencies. The media at the time seized on all of this, just as it is doing now. Newsweek and the New York Times described the global cooling threat.

How is it that the parallels between that 1970s panic and today’s have been so little remarked upon? And it doesn’t stop there. There have even been recent attempts to label the ‘global cooling consensus’ a ‘myth’, most notably in a well-publicised article by Thomas C. Peterson, William M. Connolley, and John Fleck published by the American Meteorological Society in September 2008.

Well, plus ça change. It’s easy to miss what you do not look for. Mentions of a global cooling consensus appear as far back as 1961. I found the CIA report referred to in a 1976 newspaper article and was doubly amazed to discover it was available as a microfiche in the British Library.

So what would have prompted the CIA to compile such a dossier? The most likely explanation is what it describes as the loss of ‘a significant portion’ of the USSR’s winter wheat crop in 1972. The harvest was so poor that the CIA saw geopolitical ramifications. Its report says that ‘the politics of food’ is a complex business, which cannot be understood by ‘existing analytical tools’. So to address a political problem, they asked scientists to come up with a solution. Precisely the same thing is happening today. One might almost conclude that, in the world of climatology, theories are made to order.

Or is the problem with the general public, who cannot talk about climate except in doom-laden terms, and for whom the sky is the last animist god? This might be the most important lesson of the 1974 report on global cooling: that we need to grow up, separate climatology from fear, and recognise — much as it pains politicians and scientists — that our understanding of how climate changes remains in its infancy.