World Climate Report
Do a search on “Global Warming and Amazon Rainforest” and enjoy over 200,000 sites mostly proclaiming that “Amazon rainforest may become a desert” or “large portion of the rainforest will be lost” or you name it. Throw in the 200 indigenous cultures in the forest, add in some clever phrases like “lungs of the planet,” argue that the rainforest is being destroyed faster than anyone expected, and then claim “incalculable damages” all because of global warming. The cure for everything and anything is surely hidden in the rainforest of the Amazon, and the loss of that ecosystem could spell the end of us all.
Three recent papers appearing in leading scientific journals spell trouble for the alarmists’ claims about global warming and the precious and delicate Amazon rainforest.
The first paper appeared in Science magazine and was written by four scientists from the University of Arizona and Brazil’s University of Sao Paulo. Saleska et al. begin reminding us that “Large-scale numerical models that simulate the interactions between changing global climate and terrestrial vegetation predict substantial carbon loss from tropical ecosystems, including the drought-induced collapse of the Amazon forest and conversion to savanna.” They further explain that “Model-simulated forest collapse is a consequence not only of climate change-induced drought but also of amplification by the physiological response of the forest: Water-limited vegetation responds promptly to initial drought by reducing transpiration (and photosynthesis), which in turn exacerbates the drought by interrupting the supply of water that would otherwise contribute to the recycled component of precipitation. This physiological feedback mechanism should be observable as short-term reductions in transpiration and photosynthesis in response to drought under current climates.”
In 2005, Mother Nature conducted an experiment for us by producing a substantial drought in the Amazon; the drought peaked in intensity during July to September of that year with the hardest hit part of the Amazon occurring in the central and southwestern portions of Amazonia. Saleska et al. used satellite-based measurements and much to their surprise, they found that forest canopy “greenness” over the drought-stricken areas increased at a highly significant rate. They conclude that “These observations suggest that intact Amazon forests may be more resilient than many ecosystem models assume, at least in response to short-term climatic anomalies.”
Next up is an article in a recent issue of the Journal of Vegetation Science by seven scientists from Panama, Brazil, and California; the piece is entitled “Long-term variation in Amazon forest dynamics” and therefore must contain horrible news about the state of the rainforest, right? Wrong! Laurance and her team conducted five different surveys of the forest in a protected area 50 miles north of Manaus in the central Amazon; they made these measurements between 1981 and 2003. Getting right to the bottom line, they report that “Forest biomass also increased over time, with the basal area of trees in our plots, which correlate strongly with tree biomass, rising by 4% on average.” They then add “The suite of changes we observed - accelerating tree growth and forest dynamism, and rising biomass - largely accords with findings from other long-term, comparative studies of forest dynamics across the Amazon Basin.” They state “One of the most frequent explanations for such findings is that forest productivity is rising, possibly in response to increasing CO2 fertilization or some other regional or global driver(s), such as increasing irradiance or rainfall variability.” We are partial to the increasing CO2 explanation, and it is worth noting that the first sentence in the “Conclusions” section in their abstract clearly states “The increasing forest dynamics, growth, and basal area observed are broadly consistent with the CO2 fertilization hypothesis.”
Our third recent article was written by three scientists from Brazil and Germany and it appeared in Global Biogeochemical Cycles. Lapola et al. begin noting that “Tropical South America vegetation cover projections for the end of the century differ considerably depending on climate scenario and also on how physiological processes are considered in vegetation models.” To investigate the future of the vegetation of the Amazon, the team created a numerical “Potential Vegetation Model” that could be coupled with global climate models. As seen in their figure below (Figure 1), the vegetation model appears to accurately replicate the current vegetation in the region. When they simulated climate change in the future and they included the CO2 fertilization effect, the vegetation was largely unchanged. Without the CO2 fertilization effect, the rainforest all but disappears under their expected change in climate. And if the climate does not change much and the CO2 fertilization effect is realized, the rainforest expands considerably.
In their own words, Lapola et al. conclude “Biome projections for the end of the century in tropical South America are quite variable, depending not only on the climate scenario, but also on the effect of CO2 fertilization on photosynthesis.” Furthermore “Our simulations show that if, in the future, CO2 fertilization effect does not play any role in tropical ecosystems then there must be substantial biome shifts in the region, including substitution of the Amazonian forest by savanna.” If the CO2 fertilization does in fact occur (and 1,000s of experiments suggest it is occurring and will occur in the future), “most of Amazonia would remain the same.”
Figure 1. (a) Natural vegetation reference map; (b) potential vegetation simulated by the Potential Vegetation Model under 1961-1990 climate; (c) predicted vegetation with climate change and CO2 fertilization; (d) predicted vegetation with climate change and no CO2 fertilization (white grid points denote nonconsensus); and (e) 1961-1990 climate and atmospheric CO2 of 730 ppm (from Lapola et al., 2009). Enlarged here.
These three as well as many other recent articles lead us to the conclusion that the Amazon rainforest is doing fine when it comes to the climate, and it will probably be even better off in the future thanks to elevated levels of atmospheric CO2. Alarmists’ claims to the contrary are not supported by observations in the forest or the modeling studies that include the effects of higher levels of CO2.
References:
Lapola, D.M., M.D. Oyama, and C.A. Nobre. 2009. Exploring the range of climate biome projections for tropical South America: The role of CO2 fertilization and seasonality. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 23, GB3003, doi:10.1029/2008GB003357.
Laurance, S.G.W., W.F. Laurance, H.E.M. Nascimento, A. Andrade, P.M. Fearnside, E.R.G. Rebello, and R. Condit. 2009. Long-term variation in Amazon forest dynamics. Journal of Vegetation Science, 20, 323–333.
Saleska, S.R., K. Didan, A.R. Huete, H.R. da Rocha. 2007. Amazon forests green-up during 2005 drought. Science, 318, 612.
See report here.
Thomas J. Pyle, President of the Institute for Energy Research
At a time when the economy is reeling and national unemployment hovers just under 10%, the President and Congressional leaders are ignoring the wishes of the American people; seemingly working overtime to drive up energy costs and send jobs overseas by punishing our own energy industry. The President’s insistence on maintaining a ban on deepwater exploration and drilling for oil and gas along with the de facto ban on near shore activity is wreaking havoc on the Gulf Coast’s economy and could easily impact national energy prices this winter.
This week, Congress holds hearings to discuss what is widely seen as a politically-motivated moratorium on deepwater drilling. The President is fully aware that an extended drilling ban would cost thousands of jobs; energy officials within Obama’s own administration have predicted that an extended drilling ban would reduce domestic oil production by 82,000 barrels per day in 2011. The Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association states that nearly 80% of the oil produced in the Gulf comes from wells in the deeper waters. They estimate that the costs of the exploration suspension range between $8.25 million and $16.5 million per day in rig costs; $1 million per day in costs for support boats; and $165 million to $330 million per month in lost wages for all 33 deepwater rigs.
Several left-leaning media outlets recently reported that few jobs have actually disappeared in the wake of the Gulf spill, but those reports are either naive or are deliberately hiding the fact that many energy companies are waiting in costly limbo - hoping that a moratorium will be lifted so they can get back to work. Time is running out for many of these companies that are now forced to look at drilling locations overseas where they can take their rigs and employees for fulltime work. Already two of the 33 deepwater oil rigs have moved to Egypt and the Congo where they are able to explore for oil and natural gas.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) has stipulated that the ongoing economic devastation of the spill may be surpassed by the impacts of the moratorium. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) recently stated that “the result of this Administration’s decision will still be a substantial loss of jobs - jobs that may not return to the Gulf for years.”
The expansive disconnect between voters and their elected representatives is particularly noticeable with respect to energy policy. A recent Rasmussen poll revealed that 61% of those surveyed rank finding new sources of energy as more important than reducing the amount of energy Americans now consume. Survey after survey indicates that Americans overwhelmingly support domestic energy development, from oil or natural gas. However, this Administration and its Congressional allies remain convinced that making domestic energy more expensive and harder to produce is what’s best for American families.
The assault on affordable energy derived from oil, natural gas and coal is evident throughout recent policy proposals; “cap-and-trade” legislation still lurking in the Senate; the offshore drilling moratorium; higher taxes on oil production and a variety of new regulations readied by unelected bureaucrats at the EPA, just to name a few.
Americans value our domestic energy industry, despite politicized attempts to demonize the hard working men and women who labor - and yes, risk their lives - to deliver the energy we need to fuel our cars and cool and heat our homes. With unemployment already hovering over nine percent, the country can hardly afford the Obama administration’s moratorium on offshore drilling, which advances the Administration’s political ideology at the expense of good-paying American jobs. Once the President understands this, he should lift the drilling moratorium and take steps to strengthen our domestic energy industry, not punish it.
Thomas J. Pyle is President of the Institute for Energy Research.
Read more here. Read here where polls show the majority of Americans oppose increasing energy taxes on industry believing it will cost even more jobs.
By Leo Hickman, UK Guardian
Climate change gender divide explored by US sociologist
Just when you thought the climate debate couldn’t get any more divisive, along comes an academic paper which looks into the “effects of gender on climate change knowledge and concern in the American public”. The headline conclusion? “Women exhibit slightly higher levels of both than do their male counterparts.”
Aaron M McCright, an associate professor at Michigan State University’s Department of Sociology whose paper is published in the September issue of the journal Population and Environment, examined eight years of data from Gallup’s annual environment poll and found that “women tend to believe the scientific consensus on global warming more than men”. However, he also discovered that his findings reinforced past research which suggests women lack confidence in their science comprehension.
“Men still claim they have a better understanding of global warming than women, even though women’s beliefs align much more closely with the scientific consensus,” he said. McCright added that the gender divide is likely to be explained by “gender socialisation”: boys learn that masculinity emphasises detachment, control and mastery, whereas girls develop traits of attachment, empathy and care. It’s these latter qualities which McCright believes makes women more likely to “feel concern about the potential dire consequences of global warming”.
After analysing the Gallup data, he found:
Women express more concern about climate change than men do. A greater percentage of women than men worry about global warming a great deal (35% to 29%), believe global warming will threaten their way of life during their lifetime (37% to 28%), and believe the seriousness of global warming is underestimated in the news (35% to 28%).
The conclusions of the paper are interesting given just how “male” the climate debate can appear at times. Female voices in this arena are noteworthy, in part, because they are so rare. I suppose it could also be noted that the climate debate is dominated by white, middle-class English-speakers (I dare not look in the mirror at this point), but such thoughts are probably best left explored by an academic with ample time and hard data before them.
One extra pause for thought in McCright’s paper is provided in the final paragraph:
Perhaps, as some suggest (e.g., Smith 2001), gender is not as important for explaining environmental concern as is a feminist orientation. Somma and Tolleson-Rinehart (1997) find that individuals - both women and men - who support feminist goals express greater environmental concern. Thus, future research should prioritise the use of more refined measures of gender and perhaps examine individuals’ beliefs about feminism.
This being the Guardian, we welcome all genders and orientations, so please feel free to debate this subject without prejudice.
See post here.
By Paul Driessen
We will eradicate malaria by 2010, stricken families were promised a few years ago. Well, 2010 is nearly gone and, instead of eradication, we have more malaria than before...and a new target date: 2015.
Unless malaria control policies change, that date too will come and go. Billions will still be at risk of getting malaria. Hundreds of millions will continue getting the disease. Millions will die or become permanently brain-damaged. And poverty and misery will continue ravaging Third World communities.
For years, malaria strategies have been dominated by insecticide-treated bed nets, Artemisia-based drugs, improved diagnostics and hospitals, educational campaigns, and a search for vaccines against highly complex plasmodium parasites. All are vital, but not nearly enough.
Notably absent in all too many programs has been vector control - larvacides, insecticides and repellants, to break the malaria victim-to-mosquito-to-healthy-human transmission cycle, by reducing mosquito populations and keeping the flying killers away from people. Dr. William Gorgas employed these methods to slash malaria and yellow fever rates during construction of the Panama Canal a century ago.
They are just as essential today. But well-funded environmental pressure groups vilify, attack and stymie their use, callously causing needless suffering and tragedy. They especially target the use of DDT. Spraying the walls and eaves of houses once or twice a year with this powerful spatial repellant keeps 80-90% of mosquitoes from even entering a home; irritates any that do enter, so they don’t bite; and kills any that land. DDT is a long-lasting mosquito net over entire households. No other chemical, at any price, can do this. And no one (certainly not any eco pressure group) is working to develop one.
This miracle chemical had helped prevent typhus and malaria during and after World War II, and completely eradicate malaria in the United States, Canada and Europe. It was then enlisted in an effort to rid the entire world of malaria. After initial successes, DDT ran into an unexpected roadblock in 1969.
As physician Rutledge Taylor chronicles in his pull-no-punches new film, “3 Billion and Counting,” Sierra Club, Audubon Society and Environmental Defense Fund enlisted DDT in their own campaign, to get it banned. They said the chemical posed unacceptable risks to people, wildlife and the environment - and used pseudo-scientific cancer and ecological horror stories, like those in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, to spook people, politicians and bureaucrats.
Along with Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, Pesticide Action Network and other eco activists, they portrayed themselves as white knight planetary guardians. Their true motives were far less virtuous. “If the environmentalists win on DDT,” EDF scientist Charles Wurster told the Seattle Times, “they will achieve a level of authority they have never had before.”
In short, the war on DDT was never about protecting people or birds. It was, and is, about power, control, money and ideology - regardless of the resultant human misery, disease and death. For the new Environmental Protection Agency, it was about power and politics. As the greens’ campaign to ban DDT intensified, EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus convened a scientific panel, which held six months of hearings, compiled 9,312 pages of studies and testimony, and concluded that DDT was safe and effective and should not be banned.
Nevertheless, without attending a single hour of hearings or reading a page of the report, Ruckelshaus banned US production and use of DDT in 1972 - at a time when over 80% of the chemical was being exported for disease control. He later said his decision had nothing to do with cancer. He had a political problem, he said, and he fixed it. How nice for malaria victims.
Carcinogenic? The International Agency for Research on Cancer lists DDT as “possibly carcinogenic” - right up there with coffee and pickles. Among products that “definitely” cause cancer, it includes birth control pills and ethanol. Mice fed DDT got 26% fewer cancers than control mice. Another study found that DDT actually cured malignant brain tumors in rabbits. Millions of war survivors were sprayed directly on their bodies, without any harmful effects.
Bird eggshells? The original Bitman DDT studies involved diets that were 80% deficient in calcium; when the birds were fed proper diets, there was no thinning. Audubon Society annual Christmas bird counts recorded that bald eagle populations rose from 197 in 1941 to 891 in 1960, while robins increased from 19,616 to 928,639 over the same period - when America’s DDT use was at its historic high.
Resistance? Mosquitoes have never become resistant to DDT’s life-saving repellency properties, but they are developing resistance to the pyrethroids used in agriculture - and bed nets.
Poisonous? People have tried to kill themselves with DDT - and failed. Its most common replacement, parathion, killed hundreds of people, who safety experts said were too used to handling DDT. But as Dr. Wurster once observed, it “only kills farm workers and most of them are Mexicans and Negroes.”
This modern, eco-style eugenics has since been broadened to the impoverished developing world, where DDT could reduce agony, brain damage, lost work hours, poverty and death - if it weren’t so frequently banished due to green ideologues like Wurster and the Club of Rome’s Alexander King, who worry more about over-population than human rights.
Thus the vicious cycle continues. Infected people are too sick to work, too poor to afford sprays or nets or get proper treatment. Ugandan activist Fiona Kobusingye lost her son, two sisters and four cousins to malaria. American expatriate Patrick O’Neal says every household in his Tanzanian village has lost at least one member of its extended family to malaria. On Sumba Island, Indonesia, one-third of all women have lost at least one child to malaria.
EDF and EPA lied. Millions of children died. How convenient, then, that UN Environment Program’s Nick Nutter can deadpan, “when someone here dies from malaria, they say God has taken them” - not baby-killing policies. How convenient that Al Gore can blame malaria on manmade global warming. This is environmental justice? The kind championed by President Obama and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson? Eco activist groups get billions. The world’s poor get disease and death. And EPA and the greens want to be put in charge of our energy, economy, jobs, living standards and lives.
How inconvenient for them when folks like Dr. Rutledge raise questions they really don’t want to address. No wonder Ruckelshaus, Pesticide Action Network, USAID and EPA refused to grant him interviews. Stephanie from Pesticide Action did want to know who was funding the film. But when Dr. Rutledge said he was, she ended the conversation, without mentioning who funds PAN. (The Richard and Rhoda Goldman Foundation, among others.) Three billion humans dead so far from malaria...and counting. And green ideologues work tirelessly to ensure that the callous, needless global death toll continues to rise.
See this film. Tell your friends about it. Bring it to your college, club and local theater. It will make your blood boil, and change your perspectives forever about DDT and the radical environmental movement.
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. He was an advisor to the Rutledge film and appears in it.
By Bill DiPucchio
Total equivalent area of Agricultural Land and Urban Surfaces (>55%) in the Continental U.S.
In the battle over global warming, it is sometimes said that humans are too small to make a significant impact on global climate. However, surveys of land use and land cover changes over the last decade suggest that the amount of land altered by human activity is large enough to modify climate on a regional, continental, and even hemispheric scale.
In the U.S., as in most countries, the largest alterations have been made by agriculture. Nearly 54% of the continental U.S. is agricultural land. Though much smaller (about 1.5%), urban surfaces exert an influence proportionally greater than their size. Globally, 38% of the world’s land area is used for agriculture and about 0.5% consists of urban surfaces.
This is a conservative estimate which does not include surface modifications such as private, commercial, and municipal landscaping, deforestation, watersheds, surface mining, landfills, reservoirs, etc. When all such modifications are taken into consideration, global landscape changes approach 40%-50% of the total landmass.
These vast modifications to the land can significantly alter temperature, evaporation, cloud cover, precipitation, pressure fields, and wind over a region -and perhaps beyond. Unfortunately, their impact has been largely ignored by many in the climate community owing to a disproportionate emphasis on the role of CO2 in climate change.
Urban Heat Islands (UHI)
In a little known study published by NOAA in 2004, scientists used Landsat data, satellite observed nighttime lights, U.S. Census Bureau road vectors, and high resolution aerial photographs to create a map of Impervious Surface Area (ISA) for the continental U.S. ISA consists of human constructed surfaces including buildings, roads, parking lots, roofs, airports, etc.
In 2004 the total ISA was 112,610 km2 (+/- 12,725 km2) which is slightly smaller than the state of Ohio (116,534 km2) as shown on the map below.
In a 2007 study, another survey was undertaken by some of the same researchers to tabulate the global constructed surface area. Due to the size of the survey area, a lower resolution model was used which, as the lead author indicated to me in an email, probably underestimates ISA (e.g., for the continental U.S. the estimate of 83,337 km2 is 26% lower than the 2004 study).
The total ISA for the top 100 countries is 579,703 km2. China, the United States and India have the largest constructed surface area by far, totaling 252,284 km2. Assuming this estimate is 26% lower than the actual value, the world wide total would be closer to 783,330 km2 - an area slightly larger than Turkey (780,580 km2).
Impervious surfaces have a major impact on local and mesoscale climate by altering sensible and latent heat fluxes. According to recent studies, the rapid growth of urban areas may account for 50% of the warming in the U.S. since 1950 (Stone, 2009, see Fall 2009).
ISA also modifies watersheds by increasing the frequency and magnitude of surface runoff pulses and raising water temperatures. Nearly all runoff is removed from impervious surfaces by storm sewers, thus reducing available moisture. But higher water temperature increases the potential for evaporation of standing water.
A large UHI can actually establish its own circulation pattern when conditions are favorable. As dry warm air rises over the city, it is replaced by a cool, moist inflow from the surrounding countryside. This sets up a low level convergent flow which is favorable for cumulus formation and thunderstorm development downwind.
Convergence is enhanced by surface roughness. As air slows due to increased friction, the continued inflow causes mass to accumulate. Equilibrium is maintained as updrafts form to remove mass. Frictional drag also tends to divert air around the city which then converges again on the downwind side producing more lift.
Studies done in the St. Louis area during the 1970’s showed a 25% average increase in summer rainfall. This included a 58% increase in nocturnal rainfall. Deep convective activity from the increased heat fluxes resulted in a 45% increase in thunderstorm frequency and a 31% increase in hailstorms. Thunderstorms have been observed to persist and reform for hours downwind of large urban areas.
Since thunderstorms are a major mechanism for transporting heat and moisture deep into the troposphere, the cumulative impact of UHIs on regional and continental climate has yet to be determined. The upshot is that UHIs not only cause an increase in average temperature, but they may also have teleconnections to synoptic scale phenomena.
Read more on this and the effects of agreiculture in this detailed post here.
By Joanne Nova
Such is the pressure finally beginning to bear on the IPCC that Pachauri has been forced into the ridiculous position of trying to rescue credibility by contradicting most of their past PR campaign. He’s taken the extraordinary step of admitting they don’t have hard numbers, hey, but it’s all OK because the IPCC is really a government agency to make policy, not to write scientific reports “that don’t see the light of day”.
So he’s admitting that the IPCC was all about policy prescriptions all along? And the science was just fudged-up window dressing to provide an excuse? Well, who would have guessed.
Hidden beside Pachauri’s declaration that he’s happy about the IAC report, he let slip a corker of a line:
Times of India asks: Anything in the UN probe report you completely or partly disagree with?
“They have talked about quantifying uncertainties. To some extent, we are doing that, though not perfectly. But the issue is that in some cases, you really don’t have a quantitative base by which you can attach a probability or a level of uncertainty that defines things in quantitative terms. And there, let’s not take away the importance of expert judgment. And that is something the report has missed or at least not pointed out.”
So if you can’t quantify uncertainties (like is climate sensitivity say 0.5 degrees or 6.5 degrees, and with what probabilities) just go with your best guess, call it expert opinion (especially if you only pick and pay the “right” experts) and say that there is a 90% certainty, even if there are no numbers you can add up to get that.
Then after all these years of saying the IPCC is a scientific body, now that they’re exposed as being unscientific, suddenly the excuse is that really they’re policy driven. Watch how far away from science Pachauri is trying to position the IPCC:
Times of India: Stifling politics out of science, does that make it devoid of its real social purpose?
“Let’s face it, we are an intergovernmental body and our strength and acceptability of what we produce is largely because we are owned by governments.” (And here was me thinking their strength was their “2500 scientists” and their rigorous review?)
“If that was not the case, then we would be like any other scientific body that maybe producing first-rate reports but don’t see the light of the day because they don’t matter in policy-making. Now clearly, if it’s an inter-governmental body and we want governments’ ownership of what we produce, obviously they will give us guidance of what direction to follow, what are the questions they want answered. Unfortunately, people have completely missed the original resolution by which IPCC was set up. It clearly says that our assessment should include realistic response strategies. If that is not an assessment of policies, then what does it represent? And I am afraid, we have been, in my view, defensive in coming out with a whole range of policies and I am not saying we prescribe policy A or B or C but on the basis of science, we are looking at realistic response strategies.
But that is exactly what this committee has recommended that we get out of - policy prescriptions. It is for this reason that I brought out that this what is written in the IPCC mandate. This is a misperception on the part of some people in the scientific community. And I hope I can correct it.”
The IPCC can’t be both the last word on impartially declaring the science AND the last word declaring the policy. Either the search for truth runs this agency or the need to push policy does, they can’t answer to both without a conflict.
He’s declaring that their first priority is NOT to figure out exactly what drives our climate.
Read more: I am happy that truth has come out: Pachauri - India - The Times of India
By Alan Caruba
It’s rare to come across a newspaper editorial in which virtually every assertion is false, but is absurdly titled ”Face Facts.”
Since 1988 the movement behind the global warming fraud has labored long and hard to mislead the citizens of the world to believe what is surely the greatest “science” hoax ever perpetrated.
However, when the leak of emails between the handful of climate scientists who conjured up the deliberately misleading data the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) used hit the Internet, the November 2009 event was quickly dubbed “Climategate.” In one exchange, they worried over the fact that, since the late 1990s, the Earth was demonstrably getting cooler.
It is hard to believe that any journalist could not know about Climategate or the subsequent failure of the IPCC’s Copenhagen climate conference that even the President attended as the entire hoax came unraveled.
“The wildfires in Russia, the floods in Pakistan and the record heat this summer in New Jersey have one thing in common: They are exactly the kind of symptoms scientists predicted we’d experience as global warming occurs.”
Only there is no global warming. The Earth has been in a decade-old cooling cycle.
Which scientists are being cited? What kind of scientists? The current IPCC Chairman, Rajendra Pachauri began his career in an Indian diesel-locomotive factory. The Wall Street Journal pointed out that, “As an academic, he staunchly defended his country’s right to burn coal.”
And what do isolated natural events that occur in a brief time span have to do with alleged climate trends that can only be measured in centuries? Did the editorial writer ever hear of the Medieval Warm Period or of the Little Ice Age that followed it? Both were spread over centuries, not a single summer.
“Glaciers that have been stable for centuries are now melting at an alarming rate.” No, they’re not. Indeed, many are melting less as the result of the current cooling cycle. The cooling is due to lower solar activity; the result of a significant reduction in solar storms that are commonly called sunspots. This is the stuff they teach in Meteorology 101.
“Hurricanes are becoming more severe as ocean temperatures rise.” You mean like the Category 4 Hurricane named Earl that in a matter of two or three days became a Category 1 and then fizzled out as a tropical storm? The hurricane named Katrina was an anomaly, a category 5, and they don’t occur that often. Consider the relatively tame hurricane seasons we’ve had since then.
“A rational person would look at this evidence and listen to the scientists who are warning of catastrophic impacts over the next few decades, such as coastal flooding and the collapse of rain-fed agriculture in many regions, especially Africa.”
It’s too bad the writer of this editorial didn’t display enough rationality to even question what the unnamed “scientists” were saying; much in the same way Al Gore has been telling everyone the same thing only to be revealed as a charlatan seeking to enrich himself from hoped-for climate legislation. The Chicago Exchange that sells “carbon credits” is close to failure as this bogus “market” collapses from the revelation that there is no global warming.
Scientists constantly challenge one another’s work. That is part of the scientific method. Journalists are supposed to exercise a healthy skepticism, but in the case of the scientists who did express skepticism, they were labeled “deniers” until the truth could no longer be hidden from the public.
“Republicans in Washington have killed any chance for climate change legislation, for now. Polls show that while most Americans believe climate change is occurring, most Republicans do not.” So, apparently, the climate is determined by one’s political affiliation. The polls show increasing doubt about global warming along with the trend that most Americans disapprove of the job President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress have done.
“The Environmental Protection Agency under Lisa Jackson is preparing to impose regulations on carbon emissions, as the Clean Air Act requires.”
Wrong again. The Clean Air Act does not include carbon dioxide, even though the Supreme Court mistakenly called it a “pollutant.” Carbon dioxide does not need to be regulated because it plays no role whatever as regards the planet’s climate and because it is a gas that is vital to all vegetation on Earth in the same fashion oxygen is vital to animal life. The editorial writer is a complete moron.
“As the world dawdles, this problem will grow worse, and the solution will have to be more drastic, more expensive and disruptive. For that, we will have climate-change skeptics to thank.” This editorial reeks of the same eco-lunacy that could be found in the Unabomber’s manifesto or the Internet declaration posted by the lunatic who took hostages in Maryland a week ago, threatening to kill them unless the Discovery channel gave him a show of his own.
The newspaper was completely within its rights to publish the repetition of the kind of alarmism contained in the editorial, but it also has an obligation to get its facts right.
It reminded me of a comment by my friend, Dr. Richard Lindzen. He is one of the world’s most respected climatologists, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor of Atmospheric Science.
“Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.”
The journalist H.L. Mencken had it right, “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”
tech-know.eu
Actual sea level rise measured by Maritime Safety Queensland = 0.0003m per year. Projecting over a century that would be 3 centimetres - just over an inch. MSQ is responsible for people’s lives and so highly unlikely to fudge numbers to obtain research grants.
The actual measured annual rate of sea level change (0.3 mm) is less than the error involved in measuring. It’s well below actual peak rates of natural sea level rises and falls experienced in the last 18,000 years. Such reporters of weather, climate and sea level on which people’s lives depend show there are no human induced changes occurring globally in climate as screamed by alarmists seeking political or financial gain. See more here.
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Tidal Reference Frame For Queensland
By G. J (John) Broadbent
Maritime Safety Queensland, Mineral House, George Street Brisbane 4001 Australia
Sea Level Rise Because the sea level rise is very low, averaging 0.0003 metres per annum for the Australian continent (Mitchell, 2002), the 15 to 19 years of readings available from Queensland tidal stations is not sufficient to calculate a reasonable estimate of sea level change. Accordingly an adjustment of 0.0003 metres per annum is made to the mean sea level within the tidal reference frame. The allowance is been calculated from the central date of the observation period at each station to the central date of the tidal datum epoch (31 December 2001).
In time, it is expected that there will a sufficiently long span of readings and that it will be possible to obtain a refined estimate of the sea level rise at individual stations. The sea level change observed at each place can be incorporated into future primary determinations in lieu of the Australia wide rise
incorporated at present.
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Internationally acclaimed sea level expert Nils-Axel Morner says there has never been any evidence for human induced sea level change
Dr. Nils-Axel Morner is the head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. He is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project. Dr. Morner has been studying the sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. He was interviewed by Gregory Murphy on June 6 for EIR. More here.
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Graphs of sea level from around the entire south Pacific shows stable sea level with natural variation. Data from the Sea Level Fine Resolution Acoustic Measuring Equipment (Seaframe).