Climate change causing new El Nino weather pattern to form known as ‘Modoki’. Global warming has caused a new El Nino weather pattern to form in the Pacific known as ‘Modoki’ that could cause havoc across the world, according to scientists.

El Nino occurs every two to seven years when the surface ocean waters of the Eastern Pacific are unusually warm. The tongue-shaped recurring patch of warm water can make wind patterns over the ocean change, causing cyclones. However new studies suggest El Nino is gradually being replaced by a phenomenon in the centre of the Pacific known as “Modoki” - a Japanese word meaning “similar but different”.

This weather pattern is characterised by a horseshoe-shaped region of warm ocean flanked by unusually cool waters and causes storms in the same way as El Nino. The study in Nature predicts that while El Nino becomes less frequent, Modoki is likely to be occurring five times more often by the end of the century because of climate change.

What effect this will have on global climate is unclear, but one outcome could be worsening droughts in India and Australia. It could also cause more severe hurricanes in the Caribbean and US, since El Nino is known to hamper the development of tropical cyclones. The changing ocean events may even have an impact on the UK and northern Europe, as there is a link between strong El Ninos and heavier than normal spring rainfall over central Europe and southern regions of the UK.

The study comes as new research showed ice sheets in the polar regions are disappearing faster than expected. Previously scientists had assumed that glaciers on the Antarctic and Greenland were static because every year the flow of ice into the sea is replaced by snowfall inland. However a study of satellite data by the British Antarctic Survey found that glaciers in Greenland and most of West Antarctica are flowing at such a rate into the sea that the ice inland is not being replaced and therefore the glacier is thinning.

The new information suggests that sea level rises could be much higher than previously thought because of the increased flow of ice into the sea, putting low-lying cities like London at risk. Read more on this latest hoax here.

It’s always interesting to see what will set off my friend Chris Horner. He’s upset that, in a Volokh post about a March Treasury Department memo Horner obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, I made the claim that the revenue estimates for auctioning off carbon permits are not an accurate estimate of the cost of the Waxman-Markey bill. This doesn’t mean that Waxman-Markey is a good idea. (It’s not.) It doesn’t mean Waxman-Markey will be cheap. (It won’t be.) It simply means that a March estimate of revenue from the Administration’s preferred approach to climate policy is not an accurate representation of the consumer costs of the bill that passed the House. I stand by that assessment.

To me what is more interesting about the Treasury document (and a better focus for Horner’s ire) is that the administration redacted portions of the memo which would have provided more direct - and presumably much larger - cost estimates for capping carbon emissions.  Further, withholding this information was likely illegal under FOIA, and unquestionably contrary to the administration’s stated policy on FOIA compliance.  The Obama administration likes to claim that dramatic carbon emissions can be achieved at negligible cost.  If so, then they should have nothing to hide. Of course they do have something to hide - namely the reality that climate control ain’t cheap. On that, I think Horner and I would agree. See more here.

The Truth about the Treasury Trove
By Chris Horner, Planet Gore
The greens have responded with, so far as my experience has it, unprecedented fury and bile to my FOIA request exposing the Department of the Treasury’s internal discussion of how the administration, like the rest of us, expect cap-and-trade to chase away manufacturing jobs - particularly in key industries like steel, chemicals, and cement - and to double the entire existing burden of environmental regulation on what’s left of the U.S. economy (after shaving a full 1 percent off of GDP).

What has most riled them - indicating what it is that most frightens them - is the internal assessment that the Obama administration expects to raise between $100-200 billion in revenues per year from the taxpayer from selling CO2 ration coupons. Oddly, that’s up to three times as much as the administration publicly asserted in February it expected to raise from 100 percent auctioning of ration coupons, and which they said they still expect it to raise, as of three weeks ago (p. 33) - well after the March memo was written citing that inconvenient $100-200 billion. So much for having abandoned their position of auctioning, which it turns out is still the administration position.

In response, the greens have tossed out any number of distractions, like claiming that we are ignoring “CBO data” (sic); by which they mean a remarkably cherry-picked CBO estimate of the cost in the cheapest year of the Waxman-Markey bill, a bill not referenced in Treasury’s outed expectation. That projection is of course not “data,” but it is a distraction - but with so little of the data being helpful to their side, I understand their need to fudge.

First, the fact that the administration redacted what were embarassing cost assessments and other characterizations tells you quite a lot about the administration’s claims that there’s nothing new in these documents (the administration has no legal right to redact allegedly “pre-decisional” language when they have no legal authority to make decisions on a matter, incidentally, as we expect a court to agree). But let me say this as plainly as I can, at risk of House censure: With the help of a remarkably incurious media, Big Green’s claims about what we revealed include not just stretches but brazen, outright fabrications.

Consider Politico, and how the greens talked a reporter (the same reporter whom they talked into saying that Al Gore signed Kyoto) into repeating, with the accuracy we are coming to expect, their new mantra that auctioning the ration coupons is “a long-ago-scrapped proposal made by the Obama administration.” Ahem. Not “long-ago-scrapped.” The accurate phrase is “House-passed.”

No one who has read Waxman-Markey - a subset of people I know better than to expect includes reporters “reporting” on it - can honestly claim to believe that the bill scrapped auctioning, if not 100 percent, then the vast majority of these “allowances.” It mandates it.

It’s right there, buried in the 1,400-page bill, Title VII, Subtitle B, Sections 701 through 729 and Subtitle B, Part H. It ends up selling three-fourths of the things (with the rest politically allocated to groups not required to have them and with no use for them other than to sell ‘em to less politically favored saps who are required to have them). How can they miss that?

What this tells us is the folly of claiming that the House bill makes Treasury’s assumption of auctioning many or most allowances irrelevant. The allowances that this bill does still give away in a few years are given away to entities for resale, not to the productive sector who actually will need the things. That means that, for all intents and purposes, by giving none away to the people and businesses required to have them, Waxman-Markey is de facto auctioning 100 percent of them. For anyone familiar with the scheme to say that auctioning is “long-ago-scrapped” is a fabrication intended to deceive.

In the same publication, we see a lie wrapped in an even bigger whopper intended to distract, in the form of a claim that Treasury’s internal assessment is irrelevant. For example, Politico’s Ben Smith quoted this bit of stammering incoherence from the League of Conservation Voters: Specifically, the original White House plan had 100% of emissions permits being distributed by auction; the plan that passed has just 15%. “Can you say ‘irrelevant analysis’? It would be like pricing the health care bills currently in front of Congress based on a single-payer system,” [an LCV spokesman] writes.

But as we see, his implication that the House bill only requires auctioning of 15 percent is flagrantly untrue.

What an actual journalist might do is note how the teaser “only 15 percent auctioned!” (which explodes to 100 percent), gives meaning to Friends of the Earth’s description of the scheme as “subprime carbon.” But that wouldn’t help the agenda’s chances now, would it? Now, what about the claim that giving away the ration coupons changes the cost, the cost being what the greens are up in arms over?

Not a bit. At least, if you believe Obama’s economic team. As you can see below, even OMB director Peter Orszag-led CBO recently noted the taxpayer pays either way, it’s just that they give corporate buddies much of the loot for a while as part of the deal. But it isn’t even disputed in relevant quarters that it doesn’t matter who gets the money - 85 percent to special interests and 15 percent to the government; or 100 percent to the government - it still comes out of the taxpayer’s pocket.

Under a cap-and-trade program, firms would not ultimately bear most of the costs of the allowances but instead would pass them along to their customers in the form of higher prices. Such price increases would stem from the restriction on emissions and would occur regardless of whether the government sold emission allowances or gave them away. The supposedly controlling Waxman-Markey effort merely gave most of these allowances away to GE and Duke Energy and Chicago’s Exelon, as examples, for a few years to buy political support.

One might not think that the fact that Waxman-Markey handed over billions, during the introductory decade, to those rent-seeking industry who spent so much on making the scheme happen - would be something that the greens would draw attention to. But that is precisely what they have done by insisting that the House bill really doesn’t immediately auction allowances...much. But that’s the trouble with lying in the first place. It’s out there. See more about it here. 

The greens have responded with, so far as my experience has it, unprecedented fury and bile to my FOIA request exposing the Department of the Treasury’s internal discussion of how the administration, like the rest of us, expect cap-and-trade to chase away manufacturing jobs - particularly in key industries like steel, chemicals, and cement - and to double the entire existing burden of environmental regulation on what’s left of the U.S. economy (after shaving a full 1 percent off of GDP).

What has most riled them - indicating what it is that most frightens them - is the internal assessment that the Obama administration expects to raise between $100-200 billion in revenues per year from the taxpayer from selling CO2 ration coupons. Oddly, that’s up to three times as much as the administration publicly asserted in February it expected to raise from 100 percent auctioning of ration coupons, and which they said they still expect it to raise, as of three weeks ago (p. 33) - well after the March memo was written citing that inconvenient $100-200 billion. So much for having abandoned their position of auctioning, which it turns out is still the administration position.

In response, the greens have tossed out any number of distractions, like claiming that we are ignoring “CBO data” (sic); by which they mean a remarkably cherry-picked CBO estimate of the cost in the cheapest year of the Waxman-Markey bill, a bill not referenced in Treasury’s outed expectation. That projection is of course not “data,” but it is a distraction - but with so little of the data being helpful to their side, I understand their need to fudge.

First, the fact that the administration redacted what were embarassing cost assessments and other characterizations tells you quite a lot about the administration’s claims that there’s nothing new in these documents (the administration has no legal right to redact allegedly “pre-decisional” language when they have no legal authority to make decisions on a matter, incidentally, as we expect a court to agree). But let me say this as plainly as I can, at risk of House censure: With the help of a remarkably incurious media, Big Green’s claims about what we revealed include not just stretches but brazen, outright fabrications.

Consider Politico, and how the greens talked a reporter (the same reporter whom they talked into saying that Al Gore signed Kyoto) into repeating, with the accuracy we are coming to expect, their new mantra that auctioning the ration coupons is “a long-ago-scrapped proposal made by the Obama administration.” Ahem. Not “long-ago-scrapped.” The accurate phrase is “House-passed.”

No one who has read Waxman-Markey - a subset of people I know better than to expect includes reporters “reporting” on it - can honestly claim to believe that the bill scrapped auctioning, if not 100 percent, then the vast majority of these “allowances.” It mandates it.

It’s right there, buried in the 1,400-page bill, Title VII, Subtitle B, Sections 701 through 729 and Subtitle B, Part H. It ends up selling three-fourths of the things (with the rest politically allocated to groups not required to have them and with no use for them other than to sell ‘em to less politically favored saps who are required to have them). How can they miss that?

What this tells us is the folly of claiming that the House bill makes Treasury’s assumption of auctioning many or most allowances irrelevant. The allowances that this bill does still give away in a few years are given away to entities for resale, not to the productive sector who actually will need the things. That means that, for all intents and purposes, by giving none away to the people and businesses required to have them, Waxman-Markey is de facto auctioning 100 percent of them. For anyone familiar with the scheme to say that auctioning is “long-ago-scrapped” is a fabrication intended to deceive.

In the same publication, we see a lie wrapped in an even bigger whopper intended to distract, in the form of a claim that Treasury’s internal assessment is irrelevant. For example, Politico’s Ben Smith quoted this bit of stammering incoherence from the League of Conservation Voters: Specifically, the original White House plan had 100% of emissions permits being distributed by auction; the plan that passed has just 15%. “Can you say ‘irrelevant analysis’? It would be like pricing the health care bills currently in front of Congress based on a single-payer system,” [an LCV spokesman] writes.

But as we see, his implication that the House bill only requires auctioning of 15 percent is flagrantly untrue.

What an actual journalist might do is note how the teaser “only 15 percent auctioned!” (which explodes to 100 percent), gives meaning to Friends of the Earth’s description of the scheme as “subprime carbon.” But that wouldn’t help the agenda’s chances now, would it? Now, what about the claim that giving away the ration coupons changes the cost, the cost being what the greens are up in arms over?

Not a bit. At least, if you believe Obama’s economic team. As you can see below, even OMB director Peter Orszag-led CBO recently noted the taxpayer pays either way, it’s just that they give corporate buddies much of the loot for a while as part of the deal. But it isn’t even disputed in relevant quarters that it doesn’t matter who gets the money - 85 percent to special interests and 15 percent to the government; or 100 percent to the government - it still comes out of the taxpayer’s pocket.

Under a cap-and-trade program, firms would not ultimately bear most of the costs of the allowances but instead would pass them along to their customers in the form of higher prices. Such price increases would stem from the restriction on emissions and would occur regardless of whether the government sold emission allowances or gave them away. The supposedly controlling Waxman-Markey effort merely gave most of these allowances away to GE and Duke Energy and Chicago’s Exelon, as examples, for a few years to buy political support.

One might not think that the fact that Waxman-Markey handed over billions, during the introductory decade, to those rent-seeking industry who spent so much on making the scheme happen - would be something that the greens would draw attention to. But that is precisely what they have done by insisting that the House bill really doesn’t immediately auction allowances...much. But that’s the trouble with lying in the first place. It’s out there. See more about it here. 

A common expression of human caution, often attributed to Rupert Murdoch, is that in matters of potentially dangerous human-caused global warming we should “give Earth the benefit of the doubt”.

Such a statement reveals profound misunderstanding of the real climatic risks faced by our societies, not least because it assumes that global warming is more dangerous, or more to be feared, than is global cooling. In reality, the converse is true. “Giving Earth the benefit of the doubt” is often further expressed as a desire to implement the “precautionary principle”.

This sociological, and not scientific, construct was rejected as a policy tool by the prestigious UK House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology as long ago as 2006. They commented that

In our view, the terms “precautionary principle” and “precautionary approach” in isolation from clarification have been the subject of such confusion and different interpretations as to be devalued and of little practical help, particularly in public debate, and added that we can confirm our initial view that the term “precautionary principle” should not be used, and recommend that it cease to be included in policy guidance.

In any case, in order to take precautions, you have to know what you are taking them against. Some computer models (General Circulation Models; deterministic) project that the global temperature in ten years time will be warmer than today’s. Other computer models (statistical; based upon projection of past climate patterns) project that global temperature will be cooler ten years hence. The reality is, therefore, that no scientist can tell you with confidence whether the temperature in 2020, let alone 2100, will be warmer or cooler than today’s.

The only sensible precaution that you can take in such a situation is to plan for a continuation of the present climate trend, and recognize and plan also for reasonable bounds of future climate variability. As the temperature trend for ten years now has been one of cooling, since the unusually warm El Nino year of 1998, this requires a precautionary response to cooling rather than warming.

In either case, it is not soppy, feel-good precaution that is required to protect our citizens and environment, but hard-nosed and effective prudence. The current commission of enquiry into the Victorian bushfires makes it quite plain that Australian governments’ preparation for, and response to, natural climatic disasters is inadequate. Undoubtedly, one of the reasons for this is that the self-same governments have been distracted by the hysterical fuss created by the Greens, and other similarly self-interested groups, about entirely hypothetical and yet-to-be-measured human-caused global warming?

It is certain that natural climate change will continue in the future as it has in the past - including warmings, coolings and step events. In face of this, it is clearly most prudent to adopt a climate policy of preparation for, and adaptation to, climate change as and when it occurs.

Adaptive planning for future climate events and change, then, should be tailored to provide responses to the known rates, magnitudes and risks of natural change. Once in place, these same plans will provide an adequate response to human-caused global warming or cooling should either emerge in measurable quantity at some future date.

Instead, the current Labor government remains hell-bent on introducing an unnecessary, expensive and ineffectual carbon dioxide taxation scheme, in the futile hope that the measures involved will have an effect on future climate. It is no surprise, and a credit to our parliament, that the Senate has rejected this bill once, for the estimate of the first-up extra direct costs it will engender is about $3,000/family/yr. The “benefit” - get this! - is a theoretical reduction of temperature of no more than one-ten-thousandth of a degree in 2100. Nonetheless, a tremendous danger remains that political wheeling-and-dealing will result in the emissions trading bill squeaking through the Senate on its planned reintroduction in November.

Why is it that the Liberal-National coalition partners cannot comprehend the disastrous economic and social impact that such a scheme is going to have on Australian society, and work together towards implementing a cost-effective climate adaptation policy that would truly be in the best interest of all Australians? If Barnaby Joyce can lead the way so effectively, why can’t his coalition partners follow? If such a monstrously socially damaging and environmentally ineffectual measure as the government’s carbon dioxide taxation bill becomes law, it will stand for decades as an indictment of all the parliamentarians who voted for it.

In which event, be sure to remember their names, for nothing is more certain than that you are going to want to exercise retribution thereafter. See more here.

For more than a quarter century controversy has embroiled the scientific community over whether carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas formed from burning fossil fuels, is causing increased global temperatures with catastrophic consequences. This is also called anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Many supporters of AGW are adamant in their views and refuse to acknowledge the existence of scientists or the science that refutes their views. Some advocates could be described as self-assured, arrogant, and using unflattering terms to describe those who disagree with them.

The possible threat of AGW spawned research funds from the United States government to study climate science. An excellent paper by Joanne Nova titled ”Climate Money” traces the way money was spent from 1989 to 2008 in the amount of $79 billion. Research supporting AGW was able to generate more money; so the financing system fed upon itself. If initial research proved AGW did not exist, future funding would have ceased. Yet to be reported, the United States economic stimulus funds for 2009 will allocate billions of dollars spent in anticipation of AGW.

Advocates of AGW have had much media attention so many have become household names. Five names are Dr. John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology; Dr. James Hansen, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies; Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore, former United States Senator and Vice President; Nobel Prize Winner Paul Krugman; and journalist Ellen Goodman.

Doctor Holdren co-authored a book Ecoscience:  Population, Resources, Environment in 1977 with Paul and Anne Ehrlich. This book describes means of population control of forced abortions, sterilizations, babies seized from single or teen mothers, etc. During Dr. Holdren’s confirmation hearing before the United States Senate in 2009, it was pointed out he had predicted in 1986 one billions deaths due to AGW by 2020. The question today about Dr. Holdren’s prediction is whether one hundred million will die annually for the next decade or will one billion die during 2019.

Dr. Hansen is a strong advocate for AGW testifying to this effect before the United States Senate in 1988. Recently, Dr. Hansen called for CEOs of fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for “high crimes against humanity and nature.” He testified in the defense of six British conservationists who vandalized a new coal power plant under construction.

The attitudes of Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore are well summarized by an article by John Dendahl”Nobel Peace Laureate Al Gore is a Threat to Peace”.  Nobel Prize Winner Gore made the statement years ago “the science is settled” on AGW.  MIT Professor Richard Lindzen wrote an article in the April 12, 2006 Wall Street Journal titled “Climate of Fear” In this article Prof. Lindzen wrote Senator Gore in 1992 tried to bully dissenting scientists to agree with his climate alarmism. Later Vice President Gore tried to enlist Ted Koppel in a witch hunt to discredit anti-alarmist scientists.

Nobel Prize Winner Paul Krugman wrote in the June 29, 2009 New York Times his feeling about the June 26, 2009 debate on the Waxman-Markey Bill - “And as I watched the deniers make their argument, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason-treason against the planet.”

Journalist and AGW expert Ellen Goodman wrote “Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers.” To illustrate uncivil behavior by AGW advocates is not confined to the United States; a June 16, 2009 meeting between Australian Senator James Fielding, Australian government AGW proponents, and four independent climate scientists is reported by Dr. David Evans.

Senator Fielding and four independent climate scientists met with the Minister for Climate Change Peggy Wong, Chief Climate Scientist Penny Sackett and Professor Will Steffen to discuss current science on AGW.  The government scientists were aloof, self-assured, and created an aura of intimidation. They made no eye contact or shook hands at the end of the meeting.

In another vein, President of the British Science Association, Lord Robert May of Oxford, addressed his association and said faith groups could lead in the policing of human behavior.  In a plea to enforce climate change, Lord May said, “How better it is if the punisher is an all-powerful, all-seeing diety.”

After WWI, a movement was started to promote accomplishments of German physicists which soon took on racial aspects because these accomplishments were restricted to Aryan or German physicists. Thousands joined this movement and notable members where Nobel Prize Winners Johannes Stark and Philipp Lenard. Naturally, Aryan Physics excluded the works of Jewish scientists; most famous being Albert Einstein. 

Many physicists, including Stark and Lenard, joined and became active members of the National Socialist Party. This provided a perfect match with National Socialists views on race. They saw that the works of Jewish scientists were stricken from textbooks, papers could not be published in scientific journals, research funds denied, and finally by the mid 1930s, employment with universities or research institutions terminated. Jewish science was ignored. Supporters of Aryan Physics could be described as self-assured, arrogant, and using unflattering names to describe Jewish scientists. This author strongly states this essay does not imply any connection of advocates for Aryan Physics to the atrocities committed by advocates of National Socialism.

Finally Aryan Physics fell apart because it was recognized the Secrets of the Universe could not be unlocked without use of Einstein’s Theories.  For the record, Nobel Prize Winner Stark was jailed for four years after WWII. A link between National Socialism and Conservatism movements was reported by German historian Uekoetter’s The Green and the Brown: a History of Conservatism in Nazi Germany published by Cambridge Press in 2006.  A detailed review of this book was written by William Walter Kay . Conservatism movements started in Germany in the late nineteenth century and found easy mixing with National Socialism with their members having memberships in their local groups and the National Socialist Party.  Millions of trees were planted in the name of Adolf Hitler.

The behavior of many AGW advocates is remarkably similar to that of supporters of Aryan Physics in 1930s Germany. They ignore entreaties of scientists who disagree with them. They attempt to stifle publications of research papers, obstruct funds for research that challenges AGW, and refuse public debate on the science of AGW.

It is ironic that scientists who question AGW are placed in a similar position as Jewish scientists in 1930s Germany.  Their fate is most certainly not as grim. Labelling those who question AGW as deniers implying they deny the Holocaust is immoral.

The mixing of science with forces (such as politics, religion, or advocacy groups) contrary to scientific principles of postulating theories and then using observations to prove or disprove theories have been around since the birth of human thought. Noteworthy is Galileo Galilei being found vehemently suspect of heresy and forced to recant his belief the sun was the center of the solar system instead of the earth in 1634.  This setback may have slowed development of astronomy; but did not seriously alter world’s history. 

Germany’s experience with Aryan Physics may have cost them, and indirectly Japan, greater harm from WWII. Without Jewish physicists, the Germans were years away from developing an atomic bomb. The scientist who fled Europe in the 1930s insured the United States would successfully develop an atomic bomb in time to force a conclusion to WWII.

Subscribing to AGW may produce a large global impact if nations decide to alter means of energy production because of a perceived belief in catastrophic events due to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.  The proposal to reduce the world’s production of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels in 2050 to fifty percent of the level of 1990 will have negligible impact on global warming or any other climate change. Great economic damage will be done to the earth’s inhabitants with energy shortages and vastly higher energy costs. Undeveloped nations will be doomed to maintaining the same lifestyles as years in the past. All will suffer except those who trade in energy credits and produce alternative energy sources. 

Much has been written about the science of climate change and the influence of carbon dioxide. A recent 2009 book Climate Change Reconsidered--The Report of the Nongovernmental Panel on Climate Change contains numerous references as current as 2009.  The futility of trying to restructure the United States energy production from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources by 2050 is well described by Donn Dears 2009 book Carbon Folly .

A vast amount of material is available to support the thesis of a similarity between militant advocates of Aryan Physics and AGW. Internet reference were given for this essay and those willing to check these references and use available links can have months of reading.

’Shipping transits prove nothing concerning increase or decline of sea ice’

The media is once again hyping “unprecedented” claims about the Arctic. The UK Independent paper went absolutely gaga in a silly front page headline about the Arctic which screamed: “A Triumph for Man, A Disaster for Mankind.” The September 12, 2009 article in the paper claimed: “Two ships are finishing the first commercial navigation of the fabled Northwest Passage. It is an epic moment—but also a vivid sign of climate change in the Arctic.”

The dissenting website Climate Resistance mocked the UK Independent article, calling it a “Tipping Point for the Climate Porn Industry.” “Headlines don’t get much more alarmist than this,” Climate Resistance wrote on September 13, 2009. Read more here.

AP’s Seth Borenstein wrote on September 11, 2009 that the Arctic just saw for “the first time a Western shipping company successfully transit the Northeast Passage.” Borenstein reported “researchers said the ability to navigate the route showed climate change.” Borenstein and co-author Matt Moore quoted Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. Claiming “The Arctic is becoming a blue ocean.” “We are seeing an expression of climate change here,” Serreze added.

Andrew Revkin of the New York Times touted the ships alleged feat as well. “For hundreds of years, mariners have dreamed of an Arctic shortcut that would allow them to speed trade between Asia and the West. Two German ships are poised to complete that transit for the first time, aided by the retreat of Arctic ice that scientists have linked to global warming,” Revkin and NYT co-author Andrew E. Kramer wrote on September 10, 2009.

So is this Arctic trek really the shocking and “unprecedented” feat that the media is claiming?

‘False spin’

The reaction has been swift to point out the sheer desperation of the media’s claims about this Arctic trek. UN IPCC Atmospheric Scientist Richard Courtney rejected AP’s Seth Borenstein’s “spin.” Borenstein puts a false spin by reporting, ‘It’s certainly part of the overall decline of sea ice that we’ve been seeing.’ Well, No! It is not,” Courtney told Climate Depot.

“The [shipping] transits prove nothing concerning increase or decline of sea ice. In fact the transits have become possible because satellite observation of ice cover has become available in recent years. Indeed, the AP article itself reports: Niels Stolberg, the president of Beluga, which is based in the German city of Bremen, called it the first time a Western shipping company successfully transited the Northeast Passage. ‘To transit the Northeast Passage so well and professionally without incident on the premiere is the result of our extremely accurate preparation as well as the outstanding team work between our attentive captains, our reliable meteorologists and our engaged crew,’ Stolberg said.”

“So, these two transits prove that ships can now plan their route through the ice when the ice cover is at summer minimum because the position of the ice is known. Such planning was not possible prior to the satellite era,” Courtney explained. “And a claim that the achievement was due to ‘decline of sea ice’ is an insult to the company, Beluga, that achieved the transits,” Courtney added. [Editor’s Note: In addition, far from being a global warming inspired “disaster for mankind,” what many news outlets ignored, including the reliably woeful Borenstein, was that the ships themselves were “ice-hardened” to deal with ice. Borenstein waited until the 17th paragraph to note the vessels were accompanied by two additional ice breaker ships. Revkin gave the most balanced view of the ships journey, noting, “The pair of ice-hardened, 12,700-ton ships, the Beluga Fraternity and Beluga Foresight, were accompanied for most of the trip so far by one or two Russian nuclear icebreakers as a precaution..."]

UK Lord Christopher Monckton, former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, challenged the media claims as well. “The extent of summer-minimum sea ice, which fell to a 30-year minimum in 2007, recovered somewhat in 2008 and has recovered still further this year, coming close to the ten-year mean. And it bears repeating that, even if the entire Arctic ice-cap were to melt for a few weeks each summer, sea level would not rise by so much as a millimeter,” Monckton told Climate Depot. “Finally, the 2007 reduction in summer sea ice cannot have been caused by ‘global warming’, because there has been no statistically-significant ‘global warming’ for 15 years, and, by the late summer of 2007, there had been rapid and statistically-significant global cooling for six years,” Monckton added.

‘Mustn’t laugh’

The eco-website Greenie Watch also ridiculed the media’s Arctic shipping claims. “Mustn’t laugh! Sailing through the Arctic is nothing new,” Greenie Watch noted on September 14, 2009. The Canadian Press reported “Renowned sailor finds ice-choked Northwest Passage ‘not so easy” to travel on September 12, 2009. The article reported: “Speaking from Alaska a few days after completing his trip through the passage, Philippe Poupon offered a gentle reality check to anyone who thinks climate change has turned Arctic waters into an ocean highway. ‘We found a lot of ice. We had to take care because the ice is still there and when you are on ice, wind, fog or the night, it could be very dangerous,’ Poupon said. ‘I don’t know if it’s normal conditions, but we had to push through,’ he added.”

Paging NYT’s Andrew Revkin

Maurizio Morabito’s of the website Omniclimate, has challenged NYT’s Andrew Revkin to answer a few basic questions about his article’s claims. “Andy Revkin at DotEarth’s ‘Welcome to Earth’s ‘New’ Ocean: The Arctic’ has not yet found time to reply to my question as outlined below,” Morabito wrote on September 14, 2009. Morabito’s question to Revkin is as follows: “In Tom Nelson’s blog there is a link at Answer.com where several sources (including Wikipedia) repeat information about the Northeast Passage (Northern Sea Route) progressively becoming more and more easy to navigate during the last few centuries, of several expeditions going all the way decades ago, of commercial exploitation from 1877. Would Mr. Revkin be so kind as to comment, and perhaps clarify what he and/or Lawson W Brigham exactly meant with ‘this is, indeed, a first’. - thank you in advance.”

See also comments by Dr. Gary Sharp:

I just received my September 2009 OCEANOGRAPHY magazine - that has a remarkably well documented article - pp14-225, describing the First circumnavigation of the Americas - in 1970 - by Canadians aboard the CS Hudson - the BIO team made a long voyage from Halifax, through the NW passage - then southward to Tahiti, then Chile, South Shetland Island in Antarctica, then into the So Atlantic via Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires, than home to Halifax - pp226-235 - Lots of Pix.

Climate change’s complex links with insect-borne disease need solid research - not alarmism that distracts from other crucial factors.

To get the most from science for development, research agendas must both respond to social needs and offer good science.

Researching the relationship between insect-borne disease and climate change clearly meets a social need.

Diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and Rift Valley fever - transmitted by insect vectors - are endemic in many parts of the developing world and kill millions of people each year. So any research that provides better options for tackling them, or better understanding of the likely changes because of climate change, will be valuable. But fulfilling the second condition is more tricky.

There is clearly a link between insect-borne diseases and climate. Variables such as temperature and rainfall influence vector and parasite development and lifecycles, as well as feeding rates - and therefore disease transmission rates. But a whole host of non-climate factors also influence disease transmission, from living conditions and irrigation practices to drug resistance, health infrastructure and urbanisation.

So we mustn’t go overboard, reading too much into the role of climate change at the expense of research into other triggers of these major diseases.

Myths, models - and more evidence

This week we put these issues under the spotlight in a series of articles. These explore the evidence for (and against) the notion that climate change will worsen the burden of insect-borne disease, highlights gaps in our knowledge, and provides advice to policymakers.

A background article summarises the key issues, including how changing rainfall and temperature may affect vectors and pathogens; strategic priorities for tackling a potential crisis; and how far climate change has been scientifically proven to affect the spread of disease (see Climate change and insect-borne disease: Facts and figures).

How well models can predict these effects is a particularly thorny issue in the debate, given both the myriad ways that weather can influence disease transmission and the uncertainty attached to climate models themselves (see Climate complexities stoke disease controversies).

The solution, according to Jonathan Cox, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is to forget predictive modelling for the moment and focus on research with a better chance of improving disease control - investigating how to strengthen national surveillance systems to detect outbreaks as early as possible (see Better surveillance key to malaria early warning systems).

This need for better surveillance is echoed by Ulisses Confalonieri from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Brazil. He also calls for measures to make people less vulnerable to infection through, for example, better sanitation, housing and education. Regardless of climate change, these measures are crucial to tackling insect-borne disease in the developing world, he says (see Tackling insect-borne disease whatever the weather).

Meanwhile, Jai P. Narain, from the WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia, argues more research is the need of the hour. He warns that climate change is already affecting the spread of insect-borne diseases, such as malaria, in South-East Asia - through an increase in natural disasters such as cyclones and floods. But the relationship between climate change, disasters and disease remains little understood. If policymakers are to respond wisely, they need more information, he urges (see Climate change brings natural disasters and disease).

Paul Reiter, a medical entomologist from the Institut Pasteur in France, contests whether climate change is causing a rise in malaria at all. He sets out to dispel three common ‘malaria myths’: that climate change is spreading the disease to higher latitudes; letting it climb to higher altitudes; and spreading it at alarming speed across Sub-Saharan Africa. These myths, he says, have arisen through the alarmism of climate change activists, rather than from historical or scientific fact (see The malaria myths of climate change).

Certainly, we need responsible communication in this area. Asefaw Getachew, senior technical advisor to the Malaria Control and Evaluation Partnership in Africa, offers tips to journalists struggling to make sense of the complexity and uncertainty in the scientific literature (see The challenge of reporting on climate change and health).

No short-cuts

It is clear that the scientific jury considering climate change’s impact on insect-borne disease is still out. But good science is crucial for good policy, so researchers must strive to get the science straight.

The task is urgent - but this must not lead to short-cuts. There is a delicate balance to be struck. If we don’t research and confirm climate change effects on insect-borne disease we risk missing a strong argument for politicians to tackle global warming.

But there is equal danger in over-emphasising climate change as the driving factor - for example, if it channels funds away from research into other key factors that help spread diseases.

The bottom line is clear. For health sectors to justify the large sums of money they will need if climate change does accelerate insect-borne disease, they must be able to convince governments that it is a high priority. To do that they will need solid scientific evidence of the links between the two.

BBC viewers were treated last week to the bizarre spectacle of Mr Ban Ki-moon standing on an Arctic ice-floe making a series of statements so laughable that it was hard to believe such a man can be Secretary-General of the UN. Thanks to global warming, he claimed, “100 billion tons” of polar ice are melting each year, so that within 30 years the Arctic could be “ice-free”. This was supported by a WWF claim that the ice is melting so fast that, by 2100, sea-levels could rise by 1.2 metres (four feet), which would lead to “floods affecting a quarter of the world”.

Everything about this oft-repeated item was propaganda of the silliest kind. Standing 700 miles from the Pole, as near as the stubbornly present ice would allow his ship to go, Mr Ban seemed unaware that, although some 10 million square kilometres (3.8 million square miles) of sea-ice melts each summer, each September the Arctic starts to freeze again. And the extent of the ice now is 500,000 sq km (190,000 sq m) greater than it was this time last year – which was, in turn, 500,000 sq km more than in September 2007, the lowest point recently recorded (see the Cryosphere Today website). By April, after months of darkness, it will be back up to 14 million sq km (5.4 million sq m) or more.  (below enlarged here)

Mr Ban seems equally unaware that, even if all that sea-ice were to melt, this would no more raise sea-levels than a cube of ice melting in a gin and tonic increases the volume of liquid in the glass. If he is relying for his “100 billion tons” on land ice melting in Antarctica and Greenland, he should note that much of their ice sheets are growing rather than shrinking. His “100 billion tons” is fantasy.

Similarly worthy of the Booker Prize for fiction was WWF’s claim that sea levels might rise by four feet (twice the most extreme guess by those UN computer models), let alone the ludicrous claim that this would flood “a quarter of the world”. But Mr Ban was indulging in this childish publicity stunt for the same reason the BBC, the Royal Society and others have lately been banging on about various mad schemes for “climate engineering”, such as putting up vast mirrors in space to keep out the sun’s rays or lining our motorways with artificial trees to suck deadly CO2 out of the air, to be taken away and buried in holes in the ground.

Why are they all going off their heads like this, in emulation of the “projector” that Gulliver met on his travels, in the Academy of Lagado, who had designed a scheme for extracting sunbeams from cucumbers? It is because they are desperately trying to whip up alarm over global warming before December’s planned “climate treaty” in Copenhagen, when all evidence suggests that they are not going to get the successor to the Kyoto Protocol they want.
The countries of the developing world, led by China, India, Russia and Brazil, continue to insist that, since global warming is all the fault of the already developed countries of the West, it is up to the West to cut its CO2 emissions by 80 per cent, while the rest of the world is allowed to catch up. Some, such as China, are prepared to make token emission cuts, but only so long as they are compensated by the West to the tune of trillions of pounds a year. As some of the gloomier warmists admit, Copenhagen looks to be a dead duck.

According to Government figures, however, we in Britain are already committed to spending, under the Climate Change Act, £18 billion every year between now and 2050 on this nonsense - daft light bulbs (see below), electricity blackouts and all. In other words, we are only beginning to see some of the nastier consequences of this crazy make-believe, based on nothing more substantial than the kind of gibberish we got last week from Mr “Light Bulb” Ban and the BBC.

See more here.