By Lewis Page, The Register
Scepticism regarding the need for immediate and massive action against carbon emissions is a sickness of societies and individuals which needs to be “treated”, according to an Oregon-based professor of “sociology and environmental studies”. Professor Kari Norgaard compares the struggle against climate scepticism to that against racism and slavery in the US South.
Prof Norgaard holds a B.S. in biology and a master’s and PhD in sociology.
“Over the past ten years I have published and taught in the areas of environmental sociology, gender and environment, race and environment, climate change, sociology of culture, social movements and sociology of emotions,” she says.
The good prof is in London at the moment for the “Planet Under Pressure” conference, where she presented a paper on Wednesday dealing with how best to do away with the evil of scepticism and get the human race to focus all its efforts on saving the planet.
According to an Oregon uni statement announcing the paper:
Resistance at individual and societal levels must be recognized and treated ...
“This kind of cultural resistance to very significant social threat is something that we would expect in any society facing a massive threat,” [Norgaard] said.
The discussion, she said, is comparable to what happened with challenges to racism or slavery in the U.S. South.
Professor Norgaard considers that fuzzy-studies academics such as herself must stand shoulder to shoulder with the actual real climate scientists who know some maths in an effort to change society and individuals for their own good. It’s not a new idea: trick-cyclists in Blighty and the US have lately called for a “science of communicating science” rather reminiscent of Isaac Asimov’s science-fictional “Psychohistory” discipline, able to predict and alter the behaviour of large populations*.
At least some climate physicists and such might reasonably consider this to be just the sort of help they really don’t need in convincing ordinary folk that their recommendations ought to be taken seriously. ®
Bootnote
*Admittedly Psychohistory only worked on huge galactic civilisations, and then only if the people being manipulated for their own good were unaware that the science of Psychohistory existed - neither of which are the case here.
By Alan Caruba
On Saturday, 8:30 PM local time, everyone will be invited to turn off all their electrical devices and presumably sit in the dark. According to the World Wildlife Fund, Earth Hour is intended to “encourage American cities to prepare for the costly impacts of climate-related extreme weather and reduce their carbon footprint.”
Earth Hour is an example of the enormous funding available to the Greens and of their continued assault on the world’s population to encourage and maintain its message that the Earth is imperiled by mankind’s activities, i.e., the use of energy. Earth Hour is a huge piece of international propaganda. Millions of dollars and man-hours have been expended to get the lights turned off from the Eiffel Tower to the Empire State Building, the Leaning Tower of Pisa to Australia’s Opera House.
You may have noticed there is no longer any reference to “global warming.” That’s because a growing percentage of Americans have concluded that global warming is a hoax. The same charlatans behind Earth Hour and the forthcoming Earth Day on April 22nd have mostly abandoned any reference to global warming and are now lying to you about “climate change” and, soon enough, will shift their message to “sustainability.”
On December 21, 2012, you will find the same people who have drunk deeply of the global warming Kool-Aid sitting on mountaintops waiting for the end of the world as predicted by a Mayan calendar. You will not find any Mayans there because that civilization is long gone.
More recently, Pastor Harold Camping predicted the end of the world in 1994 and then revised his prediction to May 21, 2011. People have been predicting the end of the world for a very long time. They have all been wrong.
Earth Hour fits into this pattern, but its insidious purpose to maintain the same levels of anxiety and fear that has driven the environmental movement since it began in earnest back in the 1970s when it was predicting an ice age would arrive. A decade later they switched gears and began predicting global warming, projecting the end over periods of time from a decade to fifty years or so.
Global warming - a dramatic rise in the Earth’s temperatures - did not occur for two reasons; (1) it was a hoax based on computer models created by charlatans and, (2) largely due to a natural cooling cycle that set in around 1998 as the Sun’s sunspot activity began its own natural cycle in which fewer such magnetic storms occurred. Scientists have long known that a reduction of sunspots has always been accompanied by cooling on Earth.
The Green’s claim that a build-up of carbon dioxide (CO2) would plunge the Earth into a period of warming is the greatest lie of the modern era. The Earth has had periods in which the level of CO2 was much higher. Vital to all life on Earth, CO2 is to all vegetation what oxygen is to all animal life.
The notion that ‘man made’ CO2 portends disaster is false and is directed at forcing the reduction of the use of all “fossil fuels” for industrial and all other uses. It is the greatest scam ever perpetrated because the Greens use it to sell “carbon credits”, worthless pieces of paper that could be sold or traded in the same way as the “indulgences” that were sold as a way to buy a ticket into heaven.
I recommend that you read a short book that explains how and why the environmental movement is a huge scam and a hideous attack on mankind. “Roosters of the Apocalypse” by Rael Jean Isaac ($8.95) is published by The Heartland Institute and can be purchased from its website. In less time than it takes to watch “Dancing with the Stars”, you will learn everything you need to know about the global warming scam and all the ways you and everyone else are being robbed by the schemes tied to it, to “climate change”, and to “sustainability.”
Ms. Isaac tells the story of how, in today’s South Africa, the Xhosa tribe destroyed its economy in 1856. Based on a prophecy of a 15-year-old orphan girl, they killed an estimated half-million of their own cattle, ceased planting crops, and destroyed their grain stores. “By the end of 1857 between thirty and fifty thousand of them had starved to death - a third to a half of their population.”
Turning off all electricity during Earth Hour is no different from what the Xhosa tribe did and refusing to allow the drilling for oil and natural gas, or mining coal, all of which the United States has in sufficient abundance to make us energy independent and exporters of these energy reserves, is an act of national suicide; one that this international symbolism portends for any nation that abandons the energy that sustains economic growth and the welfare of millions.
The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Human activity, mostly in the past five thousand years that we call civilization, has not had a thing to do with its existence, but some humans are foolish creatures, easily spooked by prophecies that do not come true or claims that they are responsible for its existence and future. Some of them will turn off their electricity on Saturday.
ICSC
Doing the right things for the wrong reasons is a serious mistake
Ottawa, Canada, March 28, 2012: “Earth Hour is yet another symbol of how climate activists have hijacked the environmental movement,” said Tom Harris, executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) which is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. “Most people do not realize that, when they turn out their lights for sixty minutes on March 31, they are not supporting science-based environmental protection. Participants in Earth Hour are unwittingly helping prop up one of the most threatening scientific hoaxes in history - the idea that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from human activities are known to be causing dangerous global warming and other problematic climate change.”
ICSC chief science advisor, Professor Bob Carter of James Cook University in Queensland, Australia and author of the best selling book, “Climate: the Counter Consensus” explained, “Science has yet to provide unambiguous evidence that problematic, or even measurable, human-caused global warming is occurring. The hypothesis of dangerous man-made climate change is based solely on computerized models that have repeatedly failed in practice in the real world.”
New Zealand-based Terry Dunleavy, ICSC founding chairman and strategic advisor said, “It’s important not to waste energy, and to generate it as economically as possible in terms both of cost and depletion of natural resources. Those are the right reasons for mass gestures like Earth Hour. However, it is a mistake to promote such initiatives as ‘saving the planet’ by reducing emissions of CO2 when so many qualified scientists do not support the hypothesis that man-made CO2 can or does cause dangerous global warming. As the public come to realize that they have been misled about the reasons for Earth Hour, much of the incentive to engage in constructive behaviour will evaporate.”
In announcing his support for Earth Hour, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon asserted, “We do so [turning off lights] in solidarity with the men, women and children, 20% of all humankind, who live with no access to electricity.”
“If we are going to demonstrate solidarity with those who lack adequate energy supplies, then we need to really feel what they feel, not just turn off a few lights,” said ICSC energy issues advisor, Bryan Leyland of Auckland, New Zealand. “Earth Hour should be renamed Energy Hour and citizens encouraged to use as little energy as possible for 60 minutes so that they can get a sense of what societies without adequate power are actually like. For this is exactly where we are headed if governments continue to yield to climate activists and try to replace reliable, base load generation with expensive, intermittent and diffuse energy sources such as wind and solar power.”
“Climate campaigners will undoubtedly once again cite the public’s participation in Earth Hour as broad support for combating climate change,” predicted Professor Ole Humlum of the Institute of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Norway and author of the popular climate science Website http://www.climate4you.com/. “Some commentators have therefore suggested using as much energy as possible during the hour to demonstrate opposition to the climate scare. A more constructive approach would be to change the name and stated purpose of the program to one based on the realities of science and the world we actually live in. Energy Hour would stand the test of time. Earth Hour, based on misguided climate change fears, will not.”
-------------
The ICSC is a non-partisan group of scientists, economists and energy and policy experts who are working to promote better understanding of climate science and related policy worldwide. We aim to help create an environment in which a more rational, open discussion about climate issues emerges, thereby moving the debate away from implementation of costly and ineffectual “climate control” measures. Instead, ICSC encourages effective planning for, and adaptation to, inevitable natural climate variability, and continuing scientific research into the causes and impacts of climate change.
ICSC also focuses on publicizing the repercussions of misguided plans to “solve the climate crisis”. This includes, but is not limited to, “carbon” sequestration as well as the dangerous impacts of attempts to replace conventional energy supplies with wind turbines, solar power, most biofuels and other ineffective and expensive energy sources.
--------------
For more information about this announcement or ICSC in general, visit http://www.climatescienceinternational.org, or contact any of the following ICSC representatives:
In North America:
Tom Harris, B. Eng., M. Eng. (Mech. - thermofluids)
Executive Director, International Climate Science Coalition
P.O. Box 23013
Ottawa, Ontario K2A 4E2
Canada
Email.
Phone: 613-728-9200
ICSC Webpage
In Australia:
Professor Robert (Bob) M. Carter, PhD, Hon. FRSNZ
Chief Science Advisor, International Climate Science Coalition
Emeritus Fellow, Institute for Public Affairs, Melbourne
Marine Geophysical Laboratory
James Cook University
Townsville, Queensland, 4811
Australia
Email
Phone (mobile): +61-(0)419-701-139
Phone (evening): +61-(0)7-4775-1268
ICSC Webpage
In New Zealand:
Bryan Leyland, M.Sc., FIEE, FIMechE, FIPENZ, consulting engineer
Energy Issues Advisor, International Climate Science Coalition
Auckland 1022
New Zealand
Email
Phone: +64 9 940 7047; mobile: +64 21 978 996
ICSC Webpage
OR
Terry Dunleavy, MBE, JP
Founding Chairman and Strategic Advisor, International Climate Science Coalition
Hauraki, North Shore City 0622
New Zealand
Email
Phone: +64 9 4863859 - Mobile: +64 274836688
ICSC Webpage
In Europe:
Professor Ole Humlum, PhD
Science Advisory Board member, International Climate Science Coalition
Professor of Physical Geography, Department of Physical Geography
Institute of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
E-mail
Phone: +47 79 02 33 00 (department); +47 79 02 33 20 (direct). Fax: +47 79 02 33 01.
Webpage
LISA P JACKSON – US EPA ADMINISTRATOR: FULFILLING THE UN MISSION
by Dennis Ambler, UK researcher
THE THEORY
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress.
IN PRACTICE
The EPA is effectively no longer under the control of the US Congress; its allegiance is to the UN and implementation of the policies of Sustainable Development via Agenda 21. It has considerable involvement in the IPCC reports and claims the UN body as a peer reviewed authority, in pursuing ever more rigorous controls of “CO2 pollution”, to bring about the realization of “environmental governance”.
Whilst Lisa Jackson is currently the face on the box at the EPA, she is simply carrying out the tasks expected of her by the globalist movement in setting the scene for more international control, under the leadership of the United Nations.
Her recent speech at the National Council for Science and the Environment’s (NCSE) National Conference on Environment and Security, was straight from the UN Agenda 21 hymn sheet. The EPA cannot be considered in isolation from the UN and its mechanisms, because they are closely intertwined. Equally the actions of Lisa Jackson cannot be divorced from the history of the EPA, in particular the Clinton-Gore-Browner administration, which initiated or reinforced many of the policies now in contention.
Dr Gro Brundtland, the architect of Our Common Future¡¨ which became Agenda 21, the bible of Maurice Strong’s New World Order, was present at the NCSE conference, (why?) and received an admiring tribute from Lisa Jackson, who praised her years of work on global sustainable development.
Dr Brundtland is a former Vice President of Socialist International and at an SI Council Meeting in 1992, she highlighted the SI Agenda, whose similarities with Agenda 21 are all too apparent. There is more background to Agenda 21 and the Brundtland Report in the SPPI paper United Socialist Nations. This is a brief extract and shows the long history of the EPA involvement with the UN:
“In 1987, the Brundtland Report, headed by Gro Harlem Brundtland, former prime minister of Norway and former vice-president of the Socialist International, led to the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, which led to Agenda 21 and the Millennium Development Goals. The principal draftsman was Mr. Nitin Desai, UNCED’s deputy secretary-general and currently a “Distinguished Fellow” at Rajendra Pachauri’s TERI organisation. William D. Ruckelshaus, the first EPA Administrator, was a member of the Brundtland Commission with Maurice Strong.”
Washington, D.C. - Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, today announced at an EPW hearing his intentions to put a stop to President Obama’s new electricity tax that would have a devastating impact on American consumers at a time when gas prices are skyrocketing.
The announcement follows news reports that the Obama-EPA will roll out its global warming regulations for new power plants today. These regulations are the fundamental part of President Obama’s war on affordable energy, and as Politico noted, they “promise to change the way the U.S. gets its power.”
“It is hard to believe that the Obama-EPA is announcing a massive energy tax today on American families at a time when they are already reeling from skyrocketing gas prices,” Senator Inhofe said. “So much for President Obama’s claims to be for an ‘all-of-the-above’ approach - these regulations are designed specifically to kill coal in American electricity generation, which will significantly raise energy prices on American families. This plan is the most devastating installment in the Obama administration’s war on affordable energy: it achieves their cap-and-trade agenda through regulation instead of legislation. Today, Americans can be certain that the President is going forward to fulfill his campaign promise that under his plan of a cap-and-trade system electricity prices would ‘necessarily skyrocket.’
“Remember these greenhouse gas regulations are all economic pain for no environmental gain. Their sole purpose is aimed supposedly at stopping global warming, yet even the administrator of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, has admitted these regulations will have no impact on the climate. Why at a time when energy prices are skyrocketing is the administration working to impose tax increases that have no benefit?
“Today, as the Obama administration rolls out its immense energy tax, I am announcing my intent to kill this proposal by bringing it to a vote before the US Senate through a resolution under the Congressional Review Act (CRA). We were successful in stopping their job-killing agenda through legislation when we defeated cap-and-trade, now our fight is to stop them from forcing it on the American people through regulations. An overwhelming number of Senators have insisted they want to rein in the Obama-EPA; the CRA I will introduce will give them the opportunity to decide whether they will stand with President Obama and his destructive war on affordable energy, or their constituents back home, who will suffer the most from hundreds of thousands of lost jobs and the skyrocketing electricity and gas prices this agenda will impose on them.”
Paul Driessen
When President Obama took office, regular gasoline cost $1.85 a gallon. Now it’s hit $4.00 per gallon in many cities, and some analysts predict it could reach $5.00 or more this summer.
Filling your tank could soon slam you for $75-$90.
Winter was warm. Our economy remains weak. People are driving less, in cars that get better mileage, even with mandatory 10% low-mileage ethanol. Gasoline is plentiful. Misinformed politicians and pundits say prices should be falling. Our pain at the pump is due to greedy speculators, they claim, and greedier oil companies that are exporting oil and refined products.
Their explanation is superficially plausible - but wrong.
Energy Information Administration (EIA) data show that 76% of what we pay for gasoline is determined by world crude oil prices; 12% is federal and state taxes; 6% is refining; and 6% is marketing and distribution. The price that refiners pay for crude is set by global markets.
World prices are driven by supply and demand, and unstable global politics. That means today’s prices are significantly affected by expectations and fears about tomorrow. A major factor is Asia’s growing appetite for oil - coupled with America’s refusal to produce more of its own petroleum. Prices are also whipsawed by uncertainty over potential supply disruptions, due to drilling accidents and warfare in Nigeria; disputes over Syria, Yemen and Israeli-Palestinian territories; erroneous reports of a pipeline explosion in Saudi Arabia; concern about attacks on Middle East oil pipelines and processing centers; and new Western sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program and the mullahs’ threats to close the Straits of Hormuz.
Moreover, oil is priced in US dollars, and the Federal Reserve’s easy money, low interest policies - combined with massive US indebtedness - have weakened the dollar’s value. It now costs refineries more dollars to buy a barrel of crude than it did three years ago.
Amid this uncertainty and unrest, speculators try to forecast future prices and price shocks, pay less today for crude oil that could cost more four weeks hence, and get the best possible price for clients who need reliable supplies. When they’re wrong, speculators end up buying high, selling low and losing money. Oil speculators play a vital role, just as they do in corn and other commodities futures markets.
Basic chemistry dictates that a barrel of crude (42 gallons) cannot be converted entirely into gasoline. Depending on the type of crude, some 140 refineries across the USA transform each barrel into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, heating oil, asphalt, waxes, petrochemicals and other essential products.
This manufacturing process leaves them with excess diesel fuel, because American vehicles consume less diesel than refineries produce - due to air pollution laws that limit diesel use. US refineries export that excess diesel to Europe, which uses more diesel than gasoline, and Europeans ship their surplus gasoline to mostly East Coast consumers. US refineries also sell excess inventories of other manufactured products to overseas markets, but diesel is by far their principal export.
America exports $180 billion in finished products every month - $2.2 trillion annually in corn, wheat, cars, tractors, appliances, airplanes, pharmaceuticals and much more. Last year, for the first time since 1949, America was a net exporter of fuel and other petroleum products. Those exports injected $107 billion into our economy and sustained thousands of refinery and other jobs that otherwise might have been lost, as refineries also struggled in our stagnant economy.
Farm and factory jobs would evaporate if we made exporting their products illegal. Prohibiting fuel exports, and demanding that refineries manufacture only what we need here in the States, would have the same effects on our employment, economy and living standards.
The USA has 1.4 trillion barrels of technically recoverable conventional oil, the EIA and other experts estimate, and enormous additional supplies in shale and tight sand deposits. The best way to keep prices down is to produce more of this American oil, and import more from secure, friendly, nearby suppliers like Canada.
However, our government prohibits leasing and drilling on nearly 95% of the onshore and offshore lands it controls. It is dragging its feet on leases and permits for the remaining 5% and over-regulating production on private lands. It vetoed the Canada-to-US Keystone XL pipeline. It is imposing layers of costly and unnecessary new regulations on every aspect of energy production it does not simply reject.
We are losing billions of dollars in bonus, rent, royalty and tax receipts, killing countless jobs, and impairing Americans’ living standards, health and welfare.
“More exports mean more jobs,” President Obama said recently. “We need to strengthen American manufacturing. We need to invest in American-made energy and new skills for American workers.”
His words ring hollow. Above all, President Obama and his environmentalist and congressional allies want to end our “addiction” to oil, “fundamentally transform” America, and “invest” billions of dollars (borrowed from us and our children and grandchildren) subsidizing efforts to turn corn, switchgrass, algae and pond scum into fuel.
Generating billions of dollars and millions of real jobs by producing American oil and manufacturing American oil products doesn’t fit this agenda. Even though one of every ten jobs created in the last three years has been in oil and gas, when it comes to petroleum, Team Obama wants to punish success, and reward failures like Solyndra, Fisker and the Chevy Volt.
To paraphrase a recent White House jab at Republicans who want more drilling and fewer obstructionist regulations: Every time prices start to go up, President Obama heads down to the local pond or cornfield, makes sure a few cameras are following him, and starts acting like he can wave a magic wand, throw a few more billions around, and have cheap, eco-friendly biofuels forever.
Meanwhile, Energy Secretary Steven Chu has made it abundantly clear that he wants to “boost gasoline prices to European levels” - $8 to $10 per gallon! He’s already half way to his goal.
Those prices would certainly force Americans to drive less, and “hope” the hype about “changing” to algae-gas becomes reality in less than twenty or thirty years.
Meanwhile, skyrocketing fuel prices will certainly “boost” the cost of transporting people, raw materials, food and products by wheels, wings and waterways; manufacturing anything still made in America; and preserving jobs, family and business budgets, and dreams that depend on affordable energy.
Hunting for scapegoats won’t lower pump prices. Reality-based energy policies will.
__________
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.
The EU’s carbon agenda has launched a trade war that has China blocking purchases of Airbus’s troubled new jumbo jets; now word comes that the EU climate agenda is beginning to fall apart at home.
The European Union’s ambitious low carbon plan collapsed yesterday when Poland vetoed plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically after 2020. The move is the latest stage in the ignominious failure of EU carbon policy that has seen a grandiose carbon trading system bog down in a quagmire of scandal and price collapse. Europe will meet its current carbon reduction goals less because of any serious action than because the continent’s economic crisis brought on by the poorly constructed euro experiment has stalled economic growth.
Now the post 2020 picture is in near total disarray as EU law requires unanimous consent for new carbon targets to be set. Poland, which depends on coal for much of its energy production and has neither the money nor the desire to turn to Russian gas or oil, will not accept any European carbon policy that undermines its drive to raise local living standards.
Back in those halcyon times when the Davoisie were convinced that a global green carbon treaty was just around the corner, EU diplomats and journalists used to boast incessantly that climate activism was the centerpiece of a new and dynamic European diplomacy. Now both Europe and the climate agenda are in near-total disarray, and the EU has been unable to legislate for itself, much less for all mankind.
There are several lessons here. One is a healthy reminder that Europeans think they are very good at foreign policy but fail at it more often than not. Americans are often so concerned by our own regrettable shortcomings in this field that we assume that other people are better at it — but the historical record says otherwise. European powers have been misreading power realities and failing to adopt sustainable international strategies for more than a century. The climate kerfluffle is only the latest in a very long line of half baked initiatives and failures to come to grips with international realities.
This episode also reminds us that in spite of the many problems we have in the United States, we have a much, much better constitutional system than our European allies. Individual states, thankfully, do not have a veto over federal legislation; the last state to propound that theory was my native state of South Carolina back when Andrew Jackson was in the White House. Nullification died in the US, and the Europeans will never have a real union unless they can kill it over there. (They probably can’t for the very good reason that the European Union is a confederation of nations rather than a single people, but that is another story.)
A third lesson from this mess is that the global treaty process is the European Union process writ large. For the green dream of a global climate treaty to come into being under UN auspices, every country on earth must sign up. That includes Poland. It includes China and India, where governments know they face revolution if they give up the right to growth. It includes the United States, where two thirds of the Senate will vote for a complicated, third world-subsidizing climate pact when Hell freezes over and not before.
If the Europeans can’t agree on a climate plan, the prospect that the rest of the world can agree is less than zero. Every dime spent by climate activists on this goal was wasted. Every white paper on the subject was a folly. Every global conference was a grotesque and pointless boondoggle. Every pundit who supported this agenda was blowing smoke and every politician who endorsed it was either an idiot or a demagogue - or both.
This dog won’t hunt. This pig won’t fly. This horse can’t win. This parrot is dead.
None of this will stop green scam artists raising money from naive and goodhearted donors. It won’t stop bureaucrats who have a vested interest in eternal international processes and immortal, salary paying institutions devoid of all purpose or use. It won’t stop people who don’t understand the international system dreaming up new and equally unworkable unicorn catching devices. It won’t stop socialists, Malthusians and other anti-capitalist activists from using green rhetoric in attempts to whip up resistance to progress and change.
But maybe, just maybe, it will persuade a few more thoughtful and public spirited people who genuinely do care about the future of mankind that the environmental movement needs to rethink its approach from the ground up.
Andrew Bolt
I’ve already written about the deception in this piece by Anthony Sharwood, who falsely claims sceptics accuse alarmist scientist of saying it “would never rain again”.
The accusation is inherently preposterous. Never rain again? In fact, the accusation - and the truth - is that many warming alarmists claimed we’d get less rain, with some even tipping a “permanent drought” and empty dams. See the quotes here.
But I’ve since been sent even more quotes that suggest Sharwood was hoodwinked by the National Climate Centre - or that the NCC itself is incapable of proper research.
Enlarged
Let’s focus on the highlighted part of Sharwood’s defence of climate scientists:
Dr Karl Braganza of the National Climate Centre...says that any prediction whatsoever of higher or lower rainfall as a result of climate change is complete bunkum.
That’ll come as a surprise to those who promoted the straw man argument that the climate scientists all told us in the midst of the drought that it would never rain again.
In fact, the reputable scientists never said anything of the sort.
“I have trawled everything we put out to see if someone from one of our offices said anything like this, but no, we definitely never put out statements that it would never rain again,” says Dr Karl.
“The scientists at the BoM (Bureau of Meteorology)and CSIRO made continuous statements that the drought will end, and that [the dry spell in the 2000s] wasn’t permanent...”
Here’s all of that in a nutshell. No one reputable ever said it wouldn’t rain again. All they said is, it’s getting warmer and we don’t really know what comes next. Maybe it’s more rain. Maybe it’s less. We’re still working on that.
No predictions were made about future rainfall? Any predictions were “bunkum”? “We’re still working on that”?
The barest research of statements by the Bureau of Meteorology or the CSIRO by Sharwood or Breganza would have revealed all that to be nonsense. Spokesmen of both warmist insitutions said exactly what Breganza denies. Examples:
The Sydney Morning Herald in 2008:
This drought may never break
IT MAY be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent, one of the nation’s most senior weather experts warned yesterday.
“Perhaps we should call it our new climate,” said the Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate analysis, David Jones....
“There is a debate in the climate community, after ...close to 12 years of drought, whether this is something permanent. Certainly, in terms of temperature, that seems to be our reality, and that there is no turning back....”
The Bureau of Meteorology’s Jones to the University of East Anglia in 2007:
Truth be know, climate change here is now running so rampant that we don’t need meteorological data to see it. Almost everyone of our cities is on the verge of running out of water and our largest irrigation system (the Murray Darling Basin is on the verge of collapse…
The Bureau of Meteorology’s Jones in The Age in 2008:
Should Victorians view this drought as climate change? This drought is now far beyond our historical experience. It is very difficult to make a case that this is just simply a run of bad luck driven by a natural cycle and that a return to more normal rainfall is inevitable, as some would hope.
Climate change caused by humans is now acting to make droughts more severe and increasingly likely… Regardless of the underlying cause, the drought provides Victorians with a snapshot of a hot and dry future that we all will collectively face.
The Age in 2009:
A three-year collaboration between the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO has confirmed what many scientists long suspected: that the 13-year drought is not just a natural dry stretch but a shift related to climate change…
‘“It’s reasonable to say that a lot of the current drought of the last 12 to 13 years is due to ongoing global warming,” said the bureau"s Bertrand Timbal.
“In the minds of a lot of people, the rainfall we had in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was a benchmark. A lot of our [water and agriculture] planning was done during that time. But we are just not going to have that sort of good rain again as long as the system is warming up."…
CSIRO in June 2010:
Climate model projections for the coming decades indicate an increased risk of below average rainfall for south-eastern Australia....The current rainfall decline is in part attributed to climate change, raising the possibility that the current dry conditions may persist, and possibly intensify, as has been the case in south-west Western Australia.
CSIRO press release in October 2010:
Senator Wong said the findings of CSIRO’s South-West Western Australia Sustainable Yields (SWSY) Project were sobering… The research, which will inform key water planning and management decisions for Perth and the entire south-west of the state, found the region could face a 24 per cent reduction in surface water yields by 2030 under a median future climate, according to CSIRO project leader, Dr Don McFarlane.
CSIRO newsletter in 2007:
Southern Australia will continue to experience a reduction in rainfall in winter and spring, the impact of which will be magnified by increased temperatures…
“Our results provide strong evidence that rising temperatures, hence increasing evaporation due to the enhanced greenhouse effect, impact on Australia’s water resources, in addition to any reduction in rainfall.”
What could partially offset this is an increase in summer rainfall in south east Australia
And if the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO really had no idea if global warming would bring less water or more, why did they not say so when politicians built hugely expensive desal plants in expection of less rainfall, or warned farmers to prepare for more droughts?
Fact is, they called it wrong. And warmist scientists and journalists don’t want you to know it.
Why?
Climatologist Stewart Franks has written to Breganza to ask if he’d known of some of these statements. We will try to let you know how he responds.
(Thanks to reader Bob.)
UPDATE
Associate Professor Stewart Franks on Tim Flannery and the experts who were so wrong about our drier future:
However, it turns out that it is not just Flannery that has been making incorrect statements – many supposed experts including prominent commentators from the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO have been making equally incorrect statements. In principle, these people should really know better....
The mistake that Tim Flannery, as well as the numerous expert commentators made, was that they confused climate variability for climate change. The future impact of climate change is very uncertain, but when one “wants to believe”, then it is all too easy to get sucked in and to get it spectacularly wrong.
Breganza has responded to Franks. I do not feel licensed to quote from it, but as I understand it, his argument is that the quotes I’ve produced don’t come from oficial documents but scientists speaking unofficially to journalists without context or the ability to correct errors.
I cannot say I’m impressed.
Nor are we across the great Pacific. Australia has their share of climate charlatans like Jones, Flannery, Karoly, Wong and others. We have our share here in the US too. Most every country does....why? Follow the money.