More than 30 Victorians died in last week’s heat in one of the great scandals of green politics.  About 20 more people died in South Australia, but neither state government is telling yet how precisely the victims died, saying they are awaiting coroners’ reports. But already warming extremists such as Prof Clive Hamilton are excusing these same governments—which almost certainly contributed to at least some of these deaths. “Australians are already dying from climate change,” shouted this professor of public ethics at the Australian National University, and author of Scorcher. But Hamilton is utterly wrong.

Fact: Cold, not heat, is what really kills people, as we see now in Britain. Fact: A warming world would save countless lives, not cost them. And fact: Those who died last week were in less danger from global warming than from the deadly incompetence of green governments trying to “stop” it. You think that sounds extreme?

Then consult the unambiguous evidence that damns the governments of both Victoria and South Australia. We already know a heatwave can kill the very frail, if they aren’t protected. In 1939, for instance, 438 people died in the Black Friday heat, not including the 71 Victorians killed by the fires. The temperatures back then were higher than those in Victoria and South Australia last week, but the heat this time hung around for longer. Yet despite our much greater population today, no more than 50 people died from heat, a fraction of the 1939 toll.

What changed? Mostly our ability now to stay cool - most obviously through airconditioning. Airconditioning saves not just sweat, but lives. But what do we now see? South Australia’s Government actually asked people to avoid using airconditioners last week, citing environmental reasons. In Victoria, Deputy Premier Rob Hulls had earlier asked people to likewise avoid using airconditioners unless necessary. The Age even campaigned against them, asking readers to toughen up.

But far deadlier than this jihad against airconditioners was that the power in both states last week crashed. On the first day of Melbourne’s heat wave, tens of thousands of homes - some with sick people - lost power because our grid cannot cope with cities grown so big and rich that many of us use airconditioners. And the next day 500,000 more homes went black when the cable carrying extra power from Tasmania was switched off. Sure, it had been designed to operate until temperatures reached 45C in Melbourne, but not (for some reason) if they reached just 35C in Tasmania.

Hamilton might argue that this is simply the mounting death toll we must expect when 20th century cities meet 21st century warming. Let’s ignore the obvious reply - that in fact the globe has cooled since 2002, although, true, it may soon warm again. Let’s look instead at Britain, now having its coldest winter in 13 years. So vulnerable are the elderly to cold that a World Health Organisation report last year estimated that 40,000 Britons died every winter, and these “excess winter deaths are related to poor housing conditions - insufficient insulation, ineffective heating systems and fuel poverty”. That’s right: 40,000 Britons die each year in the cold, often because they’re too poor for warming. Compare that to the just 50 Australians who may have died in the worst heatwave in a century. The British Facility of Public Health even says it expects 8000 Britons to die for each degree that the cold dips below the winter average. And this winter is so severe that the National Pensioners Convention has warned that one in 12 old people may perish. What’s true of England is true everywhere. The British Medical Journal in 2000 reported a study by scientists in Britain, Italy, Holland and France who found that “all regions showed more annual cold-related mortality than heat-related mortality”. They concluded: “Our data suggest that any increases in mortality due to increased temperatures would be outweighed by much larger short-term declines in cold related mortalities.”

Understand, Clive? Rising temperatures will actually save lives. Indeed, University of London researchers calculated in the Southern Medical Journal that in Britain, at least, a big warming over the next 50 years “would increase heat-related deaths in Britain by about 2000 but reduce cold-related deaths by about 20,000”. So let’s agree on the evidence: cold is the real killer, and airconditioning saves us in summer, just as central heating can save the frail in winter. So how mad are our governments? The Rudd Government will next year impose an emissions trading scheme that will “save” the planet by making power for your heaters and coolers more expensive. Victoria is even trialing a smart-meter so it can cut power use on hot days by making your electricity so expensive that you’d have to pay $170 a day to run ducted airconditioning. And all this to “save” a planet from a warming that could save hundreds of thousands of lives. We’re “dying from climate change”, Clive? Dying for it, more likely. Read post here.

If an increased frequency of extreme temperature records are an indicator of a warming trend… as I have quoted that several times from those who advocate the theory of man-made global warming1 ... then take a look at the decadal frequency of those statewide monthly records in the animation below.

See full size animation here

As explained in previous posts, each state can have only 12 statewide, monthly records for the 13 decades tracked here… hence, they are “all-time” records for a state for a month.

Range goes from 0 [white] to 8 [dark red]. Indiana had the highest frequency of records in one decade with 8 still standing from the 1930s. See the table below for the actual count by decade. Old records are replaced if tied or surpassed by subsequent readings.

See larger image here.

The 1930s experienced the highest number of maximum extreme temperatures for which records have not been tied or surpassed subsequently. While the late 1990s did have a very brief hot period associated with El Nino, the 1990s were a rather ordinary period for extreme temperatures in the contiguous 48 states.

I have excluded Alaska and Hawaii from this animation because they are distinct and separate climate zones. For the record, however, Alaska’s decade of most frequent high temperature records was the 1970s with 4. Hawaii’s decade of most records was the 1910s. Those data are included in the table below.

The 1990s were only particularly hot, as reflected in these records, in New England and Idaho. These selective areas were far more restricted than the geographically widespread heat of the 1930s.

This animation goes to the heart of my arguments regarding global warming as it is reflected in U.S. temperature data.

The trendline used by those claiming a long term warming begins in a very cool climate period. Consequently, any trend from that point will be upward. The late 1990s were an aberration and not indicative of the general climate oscillations presented in these records. Frequency data is shown in the table below.

There is virtually no correlation between increased atmospheric CO2 and extreme high temperatures… at least for the continental United States which is where most of the man-made CO2 is supposed to have originated. I challenge those who claim global warming is real to:

Do a similar analysis for the 1880 - 2008 period for the rest of the world… insofar as any reliable data may exist.

Re-examine the notion that the 1880s is a reasonable starting point for establishing a meaningful trend because it appears to have been abnormally cool.
The data above are in direct conflict with those warming claims as it pertains to the U.S. over 13 decades.

Many others have questioned the failure of global warming computer models to fit past data, database “adjustments” to bias the temperature trend upward, and the impact of poorly sited weather stations as they relate to global warming claims, so it is not necessary to go over those issues here.

See larger image here.
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1 [An example] “These new peaks do not in themselves prove global warming, say scientists - but global warming makes them much more likely. “As you get a warming trend in temperatures, which is what we are observing, the risk of exceeding extreme temperatures increases dramatically,” said Peter Stott of the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research.” [quoted in The Independent; 19 July 2006]

here

Summary for PolicyMakers

Carbon credits are a form of fiat currency, yet as calls for carbon trading grow, ironically, another fiat currency collapses - destroying life savings, wiping out jobs, and taking down historic institutions overnight. Fiat money has a long history of failure, corruption and fraud. The inevitable booms, busts and inflation act as an invisible tax, transferring wealth from people who work and save to speculators, middle men, and crooks. The US dollar - sovereign issue of a great capitalist, democratic nation - is on life support. So far at least eight hundred billion dollars has been created from thin air to stop the banking system from crashing.

Meanwhile, global warming alarmists are asking us to create another fiat currency, this time based on hot air. Large multinational conglomerates are already pouring billions into exchanges and derivatives in anticipation of carbon trading. There are ‘options’ to buy credits in the future. There’s no longer any evidence that carbon matters much to our climate; and in the unlikely event that carbon might matter, the benefits of trading carbon don’t add up. If the US adopted Obama’s strict 80% reduction in emissions tomorrow, thus transforming the main energy source used by Americans since Columbus, the
savings in carbon merely delay the claimed warmer-Armageddon by six years.

Currencies based on nothing are powerful tools that have reshaped civilizations. But they draw out the darkest elements of human nature. We open this Pandora’s Box with trepidation. Is the risk worth the benefit?

As far as the currency goes, once or twice a century our monetary system breaks. To get an idea of the scale of the current crisis look at the Federal Reserve Bank graph of the monetary base. It’s a graph to take your breath away. This is the real hockey stick graph.

Larger image here.

Any new tax lets bankers, lawyers, politicians, con men and crooks slice more money from the people who are building, making, healing or teaching. The potential new renewable technologies sound great, but restoring vision to blind children only costs 27 pounds per child, so $100 million spent on a wind farm could have been used to rescue 151,000 blind children. Suddenly when a windfarm has a human cost, it doesn’t appear so attractive. Whatever we spend our money on is where we spend our brain power, our skill, our sweat - since it’s always at the expense of something else, we ought spend it wisely.

The US position as THE global hegemon is under a cloud, and parties are claiming that power is shifting as we speak.With the US economy based on a precipice, and no evidence left that atmospheric carbon matters, now is not the time to dump the energy source the nation was built on and tax everything that moves. Using a fiat currency system to control a harmless natural gas is like using a combine harvester to prune the roses. It might get the job done, but there’s a risk you’ll lose the house. Read this full excellent analysis here.

One of the claims about “global climate change” is that it will affect the normal ranges of flora and fauna of our planet. Well, with a very cold northern hemisphere this winter, that seems to happening. A bird not seen (as a mature adult) in Massachusetts since the 1800’s , an Ivory Gull, normally an inhabitant of arctic areas, has been spotted. Here are the details from the Plymouth, MA Patriot-Ledger. - Anthony

GULL-LOVER’S TRAVELS: Birdwatchers flock to Plymouth to spot rare specimen
PLYMOUTH — Jan 28th, 2009

The temperatures were in the single digits, but not low enough to keep the gawkers away. A celebrity was in town, behind the East Bay Grille, a visitor not seen in these parts in decades, if not longer. But these weren’t paparazzi, and this wasn’t a Hollywood star. Rather, they were avid birdwatchers - about 20 in all - braving the frigid air as they scanned the bay and the edges of the breakwater with binoculars and spotting scopes.

And they would be rewarded, catching a glimpse of a glimpse of a rare, fully mature ivory gull. A birdwatcher reported seeing one in Plymouth last week, and another was spotted at Eastern Point Lighthouse in Gloucester. From Sunday through Tuesday, the avian visitor was a regular in Plymouth, much to the delight of birdwatchers, who came from near and far in hopes of adding the extremely rare bird to their life list.

Ivory gulls normally stay well above Newfoundland, living on Arctic ice where they follow whales and polar bears to feed on the scraps and carcasses they leave behind after making a kill. Until this year, the last report of a fully mature ivory gull in Massachusetts was in the 1800s. Three immature birds were seen in the 1940s.  In 1976, another immature bird had been spotted in Rockport.

Russell Graham of Dallas is flying in Friday for a three-day visit. He’s hoping the gull will still be in town when he arrives. “The ivory gull is one of a handful of birds that every birder dreams of seeing but almost no one has” he said. “This isn’t a dream that’s confined to North America. There is also an immature bird in France that is causing the same reaction there. There are a couple of places where you can go in the summer and expect to see one but they are distant and expensive - Svalbard on Spitsbergen, Norway and Pond Inlet on Baffin Island, Canada. “I never thought I would have the chance to see one and I can’t pass up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

If the gull is gone, Graham will consider a side trip to Nova Scotia, where two adult ivory gulls have been seen recently. “I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed,” he said. John Fox of Arlington, Va., and his friend Adam D’Onofrio of Petersburg drove more than eight hours on Sunday to see the gull.
“No bird this morning,” Fox said a day later, shaking his head. “We left Virginia at three in the morning yesterday and arrived here 20 minutes too late.”

On Sunday morning, hundreds of people got to observe and photograph the gull as it fed on a chicken carcass someone put out on one of the docks in the parking lot. The bird stayed until 11 a.m., then flew across the harbor. It was not seen again for the rest of the day. Read more here.

Heavy snow has been common since 1992/93 in the northeast up to southeast Canada. Boston had more snow in the period from 1992/93 to 2004/05 than any other dozen years in history (since the 1880s). Last Boston had 52 inches last year, already 49 inches this year with a January nearly 5 degrees colder than normal. January 2004 was even more brutal in fact the third coldest month in Boston ever - see the Nantucket ferry and ice breaker stuck in ice in the photo below that year (courtesy TKelley).

Larger here

The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax we citizens for our carbon footprints.  Only two details stand in the way, the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate.  The last two bitter winters have lead to a rise in public awareness that CO2 is not a pollutant and is not a significant greenhouse gas that is triggering runaway global warming.

How did we ever get to this point where bad science is driving big government we have to struggle so to stop it? The story begins with an Oceanographer named Roger Revelle.  He served with the Navy in World War II.  After the war he became the Director of the Scripps Oceanographic Institute in La Jolla in San Diego, California. Revelle saw the opportunity to obtain major funding from the Navy for doing measurements and research on the ocean around the Pacific Atolls where the US military was conducting atomic bomb tests.  He greatly expanded the Institute’s areas of interest and among others hired Hans Suess, a noted Chemist from the University of Chicago, who was very interested in the traces of carbon in the environment from the burning of fossil fuels.  Revelle tagged on to Suess studies and co-authored a paper with him in 1957.  The paper raises the possibility that the carbon dioxide might be creating a greenhouse effect and causing atmospheric warming.  It seems to be a plea for funding for more studies.  Funding, frankly, is where Revelle’s mind was most of the time.

Next Revelle hired a Geochemist named David Keeling to devise a way to measure the atmospheric content of Carbon dioxide.  In 1960 Keeling published his first paper showing the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and linking the increase to the burning of fossil fuels. These two research papers became the bedrock of the science of global warming, even though they offered no proof that carbon dioxide was in fact a greenhouse gas. In addition they failed to explain how this trace gas, only a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, could have any significant impact on temperatures.

Now let me take you back to the 1950s when this was going on.  Our cities were entrapped in a pall of pollution from the crude internal combustion engines that powered cars and trucks back then and from the uncontrolled emissions from power plants and factories.  Cars and factories and power plants were filling the air with all sorts of pollutants. There was a valid and serious concern about the health consequences of this pollution and a strong environmental movement was developing to demand action.  Government accepted this challenge and new environmental standards were set.  Scientists and engineers came to the rescue.  New reformulated fuels were developed for cars, as were new high tech, computer controlled engines and catalytic converters. By the mid seventies cars were no longer big time polluters, emitting only some carbon dioxide and water vapor from their tail pipes.  Likewise, new fuel processing and smoke stack scrubbers were added to industrial and power plants and their emissions were greatly reduced, as well.

But an environmental movement had been established and its funding and very existence depended on having a continuing crisis issue.  So the research papers from Scripps came at just the right moment.  And, with them came the birth of an issue; man-made global warming from the carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. Read much more about what followed including Revelle having strong second thoughts on the CO2 science here.

John concludes: And, I am totally convinced there is no scientific basis for any of it. Global Warming.  It is the hoax. It is bad science. It is a high jacking of public policy. It is no joke. It is the greatest scam in history.

Note: A reader noted that the story did not touch on Gore et al’s immoral attack on Singer and the recently deceased Revelle after the publication of the paper shown here.