By Shafiq Alam, AFP

New data shows that Bangladesh’s landmass is increasing, contradicting forecasts that the South Asian nation will be under the waves by the end of the century, experts say. Scientists from the Dhaka-based Center for Environment and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) have studied 32 years of satellite images and say Bangladesh’s landmass has increased by 20 square kilometres (eight square miles) annually. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has predicted that impoverished Bangladesh, criss-crossed by a network of more than 200 rivers, will lose 17 percent of its land by 2050 because of rising sea levels due to global warming.The Nobel Peace Prize-winning panel says 20 million Bangladeshis will become environmental refugees by 2050 and the country will lose some 30 percent of its food production. Director of the US-based NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, professor James Hansen, paints an even grimmer picture, predicting the entire country could be under water by the end of the century.

Satellite images dating back to 1973 and old maps earlier than that show some 1,000 square kilometres of land have risen from the sea,” Sarker said."A rise in sea level will offset this and slow the gains made by new territories, but there will still be an increase in land. We think that in the next 50 years we may get another 1,000 square kilometres of land."Mahfuzur Rahman, head of Bangladesh Water Development Board’s Coastal Study and Survey Department, has also been analysing the buildup of land on the coast. ."The land Bangladesh has lost so far has been caused by river erosion, which has always happened in this country. Natural accretion due to sedimentation and dams have more than compensated this loss,” Rahman said. Bangladesh, a country of 140 million people, has built a series of dykes to prevent flooding."If we build more dams using superior technology, we may be able to reclaim 4,000 to 5,000 square kilometres in the near future.” Read more here.

For the second time, the FalseClimate propaganda blog, founded by two co-authors of the now-discredited “hockey-stick” graph by which the UN’s climate panel tried unsuccessfully to abolish the mediaeval warm period, has launched a malevolent, scientifically-illiterate, and unscientifically-ad-hominem attack on a publication by me. My 8000-word pape, Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered, was published in Physics and Society in July 2008, after a request from the editors that I should submit a paper setting out the methods by which the UN had overstated the likely warming in response to doubling the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

One Schmidt attempted a regrettably hasty rebuttal on the FalseClimate blog. I should not normally have considered Schmidt’s blog worthy of a response. However, a memberof the public emailed me recently to say that she had first realized that Schmidt and the rest of the small clique of financially and politically linked scientists and politicians driving the climate scare had no credible scientific basis for their apocalyptic claims when she saw the ease with which I had been able compellingly to rebut Schmidt’s earlier attempt to undermine the science in what I had published.

It is regrettable that Schmidt neither has his blogs scientifically reviewed as thoroughly as my paper was, nor allows those with whom (however unscientifically or erroneously) he disagrees to post up comments correcting his numerous and all-too-often-elementary mistakes. Therefore I am grateful to the Science and Public Policy Institute for having given me this opportunity to correct the many errors in Schmidt’s attempted rebuttal of my paper. As for his numerous ad hominem remarks, a particularly disfiguring feature of this lavishly-funded but discredited blog, they serve merely to reinforce the impression that the blog is politically and not scientifically motivated. Here is one example:

Schmidt: “And, of course, he ignores the evidence that the temperature changes are in fact rather uncertain, and may well be much more in accord with the models than he thinks.”

M of B: “Again, Schmidt directly misrepresents what I wrote. I specifically cited a recent paper that hadused tropospheric wind strengths as a proxy for direct temperature measurements. However, it is a long-established principle of science, known as Occam’s Razor, that essentia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem: one should not look for more complex methods when a more direct method is to hand. The direct method of establishing temperatures in the mid-troposphere is to measure them using radiosondes or satellites. All of the radiosonde records going back 50 years, and all of the satellite records going back 30 years, establish that the differential between rates of warming in the tropical mid-troposphere and surface is minuscule: in short, that the tropical mid-troposphere “hot-spot” predicted by all of the computer models relied upon so heavily and so unwisely by the UN is in reality altogether absent. Wind strengths are an indirect method and, accordingly, inherently less reliable than direct measurements. Of course, even the direct measurements are subject to considerable uncertainties: but the uncertainties in the indirect proxies for direct measurement are manifestly greater still. The conclusions of the IPCC are themselves subject to uncertainties so great that its conclusion that it was 90% certain that humankind had caused most of the warming of the past half century cannot have been justified.”

Read the full response here.

VESTED interests have hijacked the climate debate, and taken Australia’s future hostage. The ransom they demand? Simple agreement or, at the very least, compliance. Voices of dissent face derision. Legitimate questions are met with ridicule. But with many of the squabbling forces of power in this country now apparently united in their enthusiasm for an emissions trading scheme, it is more important than ever that we go back and examine the basis of their campaigns. It has been an article of faith for many years that humans are gradually destroying the environment, and are specifically responsible for global warming via man-made carbon emissions. On Monday, The Australian published results of a poll showing 96 per cent of the population believes climate change is wholly or partly caused by humans.

While it remains almost universally popular (or perhaps just fashionable) to spout the mantra “trees are good, cars are bad” and all the similarly simplistic slogans of the green lobby and those they have seduced, the facts tell a different story. The next time someone tells you that humans are killing the environment and driving up temperatures, ask them to prove it, and demand they disprove the weighty data contradicting such claims. The same is true of the suggestion that nuclear power be considered part of our future energy mix. The population has been conditioned to equate this incredibly clean and efficient form of power generation with terrifying weapons of mass destruction, and horrific accidents, such as that at Chernobyl.

But any detailed scrutiny of scientific data shows that the environment is quite stable. There are even suggestions the world’s temperature has decreased in recent years. Any real climate change in the past century has been at a glacial pace (that is, the speed of a glacier that is not melting because of the globe’s supposedly soaring temperatures). Far greater periods of environmental change have been recorded in history without any human intervention. The Ice Ages, anybody?

Emissions trading will have an enormous effect on every Australian. And glib assurances of compensation for some are no substitute for well thought-out, responsible policies. Both the issues of an emissions-trading scheme and nuclear energy have been built up to instil and exploit fear in this society, largely based on flawed or questionable data and the promise of a warm-and-fuzzy sense of pride about doing something. The history of mankind has been marked by repeated cautions against accepting populist claims as truth and is littered with the corpses (both real and metaphoric) of those who failed to heed the advice. And it continues. We laugh today at those who once believed the world to be flat, but see no irony in the widespread acceptance now of equally spurious claims made in the name of science, as in the climate debate. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I do hope the issue can be subject to broad-ranging rational debate so that we do not fall as just another victim of history. The subject is too important for us not to ask questions. Read more here.

California public students will stick to reading, writing and arithmetic, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger decided as he vetoed a bill late Friday that would have required climate change be added to schools’ curriculum.The measure, sponsored by state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, also would have required future science textbooks to include climate change as a subject.In January, the state Senate approved the bill, SB 908, by a 26-13 vote. Only two Republicans supported the proposal.In his veto statement, Schwarzenegger said he supported education that spotlights the dangers of climate change. However, the Republican governor said he was opposed to educational mandates from Sacramento."I continue to believe that the state should refrain from being overly prescriptive in specific school curriculum, beyond establishing rigorous academic standards,” he said.

Schwarzenegger added that the state’s Integrated Waste Management Board’s Office of Education and Environment, along with California’s Environmental Protection Agency, are creating an environmental curriculum for K-12 students that includes climate change issues.

See story here.

Art Raiche, former Chief Research Scientist of the CSIRO, says the organisation’s fear-mongering over climate change can’t be trusted: “Sadly, over the last decade, CSIRO has transformed itself from a once-respected research institute into a highly centralised, government enterprise (oxymoron?), replete with intersecting layers of expensive management, focused on continual reorganisation.  Scientific independence has been lost.

For this reason CSIRO no longer attracts top young scientists except as an employer of last resort. It employs a much higher percentage of second and third rate people than was the case two decades ago.  In short, much of CSIRO can now be regarded as a sheltered workshop. As an example, consider the Garnaut Report, possibly the longest economic suicide note in Australia’s history.  It is based on the dire predictions of CSIRO’s modelling programs. 

Consider the assessment from Prof Freeman Dyson of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, one of the world’s most eminent physicists on these general circulation models upon which CSIRO’s predictions are based: 

“The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.”

In fact, more than 30,000 scientists also have a jaundiced view of these climate modelling programs and have petitioned the US government against actions to mitigate CO2 emissions?  But CSIRO ignores these reservations and continues its role in hopes that they prove that organisation’s relevance by scaring the populace. See full letter here.

Art Raiche worked for CSIRO for 35 years, the last 15 of which he held the rank of Chief Research Scientist.

I’ve seen lots of things on Penn & Teller’s Bull----!, television’s only investigative-journalism program run by comic magicians: Hidden-camera pranks where yuppie fools blather on about designer water that actually came from a garden hose. New Age health nuts allowing mollusks to crawl around on their faces to soak up the health benefits of slug slime. Naked people floating around in a zero-gravity chamber for a show on NASA. I don’t actually know what that one was supposed to prove, but Penn & Teller share my first rule of journalism, that naked is always good.

But one thing I haven’t seen is grim; the show is just too much fun for that. So when Thursday’s episode on environmentalism opened with a morose-looking Penn Jillette waving a magazine as he recited one ecotastrophe after another—drought in Africa, flooding in Pakistan and Japan, snowless winters in New England and Northern Europe—I snapped to attention. ‘’It says right here in Time magazine—the weather’s gone nuts and we humans are to blame!’’ Teller wailed. ``We have bleeped up the environment and now we’re going to pay for it!’’

Yeah, that global warming is pretty bad. You know, Al Gore says—oops, never mind. Turns out Penn’s not reading from the infamous Time cover story of 2006 on global warming, the one headlined BE WORRIED. BE VERY WORRIED. No, this Time is from 1974, and the headline is, ANOTHER ICE AGE? And all those violent paroxysms of nature are the pernicious work of global cooling. Yes, back in the days of disco, the news media echoed with predictions of the world’s imminent demise from ice rather than fire. Newsweek warned that temperatures had already dropped ‘’a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average.’’ By 1985, Life declared, ``air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching the earth by one half.’’

A MAJOR COOLING WIDELY ACCEPTED TO BE INEVITABLE, agreed The New York Times, adding in an editorial: ‘’Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.’’ To be fair, this was nothing new at The Times. It had been predicting the world was on the verge of turning into a Popsicle since at least 1895—GEOLOGISTS THINK THE WORLD MAY BE FROZEN UP AGAIN, a headline said back then. Perhaps the editors figured that if they printed the story often enough, they were bound to get it right, if only because of the law of averages.

I sometimes find myself longing for the good old days of the Ice Age scare, because at least back then, dissent was possible. When Newsweek in 1975 proposed fighting off those inexorable glaciers by ‘’melting the arctic cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers,’’ it had the grace to concede that some scientists worried just a teensy bit that these solutions “might create problems far greater than they resolve.”

These days, deviating from the orthodoxy on global warming—not just questioning whether it exists, but how much of it is due to human activity, or if the results might be a little less ruinous than the Climate Cassandras predict—is almost enough to get you thrown in jail. And I mean that literally. James Hansen, the former Gore science advisor who’s been one of the foremost doomsayers on global warming, recently said that oil company executives who argue against him “should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.” Read much more here.

Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and other liberal leaders on Capitol Hill are gripped by cold-sweat terror. If they permit a vote on offshore drilling, they know they will lose when Blue Dogs and oil-patch Democrats defect to the GOP position of increasing domestic energy production. So the last failsafe is to shut down Congress.

Majority Leader Reid has decided that deliberation is too taxing for “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” This week he cut off serious energy amendments to his antispeculation bill. Then Senate Appropriations baron Robert Byrd abruptly canceled a bill markup planned for today where Republicans intended to press the issue. Mr. Byrd’s counterpart in the House, David Obey, is enforcing a similar lockdown. Speaker Pelosi says she won’t allow even a debate before Congress’s August recess begins in eight days.

She and Mr. Reid are cornered by substance. The upward pressure on oil prices is caused by rising world-wide consumption and limited growth in supplies. Yet at least 65% of America’s undiscovered, recoverable oil, and 40% of its natural gas, is hostage to the Congressional drilling moratorium.

The Democratic leadership is trying to smother any awareness of their responsibility for high prices. They are also trying to quash a revolt among Democrats who realize that the country is still dependent on fossil fuels, no matter how loudly quasimystical environmentalists like Al Gore claim otherwise.

The Free Enterprise Action Fund (Ticker: FEAOX) submitted the following letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requesting the SEC to warn publicly-owned companies against making false and misleading statements concerning global warming. Excerpts: We are writing on behalf of the Free Enterprise Action Fund ("FEAOX"), a publicly-traded mutual fund, to petition the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC" or “Commission") to issue interpretive guidance pursuant to the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 ("the Act") that would warn registrants against making potentially false and misleading statements pertaining to global warming and other environmental issues.

We believe the Commission should take action immediately to protect investors. Below are but a few examples of the sort of potentially false and misleading statements being made by registrants. The problematic nature of these statements is discussed in Section II.

Exelon Corp. issued a media release and placed full-page advertisements in major newspapers on July 15, 2008 stating, “The science is overwhelming—climate change is happening now and human activity is the primary cause.”

Lehman Brothers issued a report on climate change featuring the so-called “hockey stick” graph to support the notion that humans are causing global warming.

The General Electric Company issued a “Call for Action” to “slow, stop and even reverse the damage of greenhouse gasses.”

Toyota Motor Corp. states in a report, “When we drive a vehicle, it consumes fossil fuels and emits CO2, a major contributor to climate change.”

Goldman Sachs states in a 2007 report, “By now, the dynamics of global warming are widely known, and we find no reason to dispute the scientific assumptions.”

Caterpillar said in a public statement that, “We must take action now [to reduce carbon dioxide emissions] or risk serious harm to our planet.”

All these statements are potentially false and/or misleading as recent events show. A number of recent developments have tended to expose the above-mentioned registrant statements (and probably many others) as false and/or misleading. Based on the foregoing, we request that the Commission immediately inform and remind registrants that: False and/or misleading statements on material matters may violate the anti-fraud provision of the federal securities laws, Statements by registrants on global warming and other environmental issues could be considered material. There is considerable ongoing debate about the science of global warming and its impacts and; Statements to the effect that “the science is conclusive,” “the debate is over,” and that “human activities are definitely causing harmful global warming” should be avoided. See full letter here.