Viv Forbes, the Carbon Sense Coalition

The UN IPCC and others with a vested interest in the global warming scare have not bothered to check what sea level evidence says about global temperature changes.

Sea levels are very sensitive to temperature changes, and the oceanic indicators are currently reading “steady”.

So are all other thermometers.

Apart from bubbles of heat surrounding big cities, the thermometers and satellites of the world have not shown a warming trend for 17 years. This is in spite of some inspired fiddling with the records by those whose jobs, research grants and reputations depend on their ability to generate alarming forecasts of destructive global warming.

To explain this absence of warming on Earth’s surface, the warmists now claim that “the missing heat is hiding in the deep oceans”.

This sounds like a water-tight alibi, hard to disprove because of our inability to measure “average ocean temperature” directly.

However, the ocean itself is a huge thermometer - all we have to do is to read the gauges.

Most liquids expand when heated, and this property is used in traditional thermometers. They have a glass reservoir filled with liquid (usually mercury) and a graduated scale to measure any thermal expansion of that liquid.

Oceans have the essentials of a global thermometer - the huge ocean basins are the reservoir, sea water acts like the mercury, and tide gauges on the shoreline (or satellites) measure changes in sea water volume.

Two factors, both dependent on global temperature, are the main causes of any general rise in sea levels – how much ice has melted from land-based ice sheets like Greenland and Antarctica; and the expansion of sea water volume as ocean temperature rises.

Therefore changes in average sea levels are sensitive and accurate indicators of changes in average global temperature.

There are of course some locations where tectonic movements mean that the land is rising or falling relative to the sea, but these areas are easily identified and should be ignored in determining actual changes in sea levels.

Historically, sea levels (and global temperatures) rose steeply as the great ice sheets and glaciers melted as Earth emerged from the last ice age. Sea levels rose by 130 metres in just 10,000 years but they have been relatively stable for the last 7,000 years.

The sea level thermometer was higher than today during the Roman Warm Era, and lower than today when the Little Ice Age ended about 160 years ago. There has been no unusual spurt in recent years, proving conclusively that there is no significant extra heat going into the deep oceans, and no global warming hiding there.

By Meteorologist Art Horn

Well they’re at it again. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded yet another in what seems to be an endless number of climate doom conferences. This time it was held in Warsaw. Poland. Perhaps the IPCC’s name should be changed to the IPCD (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Doom).

The conference claimed to have some significant achievements such as the $280 million dollars pledged by the combined United States, United Kingdom and Norway to help stop deforestation. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) is the UN’s program to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from deforestation. I kid you not, the program is actually called REDD, remember? like hammer and sickle? You can’t make this stuff up! The UN IPCC is using the threat of climate change caused by increasing carbon dioxide emission to coerce money from those who they believe are responsible for global warming. They are attempting to make policies that, if fully implemented, will serve to extort vast sums of money from developed nations.

The reason I make this claim is based on what leading members of the IPCC have said in the past. For example, three years ago in November of 2010, Ottmar Edenhofer, co-chair of the IPCC working group three said “the climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the second world war.” Gee, and all the while I though this was about stopping global warming, silly me!

Actually this was not news at the time. One of the most significant demands of the 2009 Copenhagen climate change conference was that “Developed counties promise to fund actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the inevitable effects of climate change in developing countries.” The key part of this statement is “Developed countries...adapt to the inevitable effects of climate change in developing countries.” By “adapt” they are saying pay up. The statement goes on the say “Developed countries promise to provide US$30 billion for the period 2010-2012 and to mobilize long term finance of a further US$100 billion a year by 2020 from a variety of sources.” That should get your attention.

In the 2010 interview, Ottmar Edenhofer was describing what the IPCC ‘s goal is. Since the assumed effects of climate change will be most severe on developing nations and since climate change has and is being caused by developed nations the UN IPCC demands that $100 billion dollars a year be provided (extorted) from developed nations.

In order to extort money from someone or some company or nation the extorting party must have the means to force payment. In the case of the mob they would extort a certain amount of money from a business for a promise of “protection” from other gangsters. If you decline the protection you end up sleeping with the fishes...dead. The UN IPCC is attempting to use climate guilt to extort payment.

The IPCC issues big reports at lavish meetings attended by thousands of people each year. The purpose is to impress everyone. They have concluded with 95% confidence that the developed nations are responsible for global warming. This climate change will have severe impacts especially on developing nations. Since these developing nations can’t use fossil fuels to lift their people out of poverty, it is the developed nations responsibility to pay reparations to them for the wrong they have done. If the leaders of the developed nations are gullible enough to believe this claim they will (and are) in favor of making these payments.

Now, as a way to implement the extortion of money from the developed nations, the UN IPCC is proposing a new strategy. Instead of paying for global warming over the long haul, they want their money now. The idea is to have a legal document ratified by the members of the conference to make the United States and all other developed nations pay for storm damage. No matter where a storm does damage and no matter what the cost the United States and other developed nations would foot the bill. Who would determine what storm was caused by climate change and which ones don’t qualify? take a wild guess!

Connie Hedegaard, EU commissioner for climate action said “We cannot have a system where there will be automatic compensation whenever server weather events happen in one place or another around the planet.” She’s right! Such a ruling would be a disaster for the United States and others. Any nation could demand payment for virtually any weather event deemed caused by “climate change.” Such a proposal could only be made by those looking for free money. That is exactly what the UN and all of these developing nations are looking for. It’s not about saving the world from global warming, it’s about taking money from those that have earned it and giving it to those that have not.

To paraphrase Apollo Astronaut Walt Cunningham “You can’t reason with someone who believes in man made global warming because reason has nothing to do with how they arrived at their belief.” The real reason behind man made global warming is to extort money from the developed world. The extortionist is the United Nations. Its troops on the ground to achieve this is the IPCC.PDF

Robert Bryce, Energy Tribune Tribute

Michael J. Economides, an international authority on petroleum engineering, died late Saturday evening while onboard a jetliner bound for Santiago, Chile. He was 64.

A voluble and colorful character, the fact that Economides perished while traveling the globe is hardly surprising. Over the course of his career, he did technical or managerial work in more than 70 countries. He was constantly on the move, working as a professor, speaker, and consultant. He authored or co-authored more than a dozen books as well as more than 300 journal papers and articles on a myriad of subjects related to oil and gas production, including hydraulic fracturing, and reservoir engineering. As the founder and editor-in-chief of Energy Tribune, a Houston-based online publication, he also wrote dozens of articles on the geopolitics of energy.

His career in the energy sector included jobs at Celanese Chemical Company as a process engineer, Shell Oil as a reservoir engineer, and the University of Alaska as an assistant professor of petroleum engineering. In the 1980s, he worked for Dowell Schlumberger. In the early 1990s, he taught petroleum engineering at Leoben Mining University in Leoben, Austria. In the mid-1990s, he was the founding director and chief scientist of the Global Petroleum Research Institute at Texas A&M University. In 1998, he became a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Houston, a position he held until his death. As a consultant, he worked for some of the biggest energy companies on earth, including Chevron, Shell, and Petrobras. He spent a great deal of time working in both Russia and China.

Economides loved to antagonize the Green Left. He was a frequent and vocal critic of the pundits who promote global warming. For his effort, he was named to the “climate denier list,” a badge he gladly embraced. He even offered a cash prize on multiple occasions to anyone who could definitively prove that humans were causing climate change. He loved to write about Iran, Russia, and Venezuela, and their leaders. He called the leaders of those three countries the “axis of energy militants.”

Now to the particulars: Economides was born on September 6, 1949, in Famagusta, Cyprus. He arrived in the US on July 20, 1969 to attend the University of Kansas on a Fulbright Scholarship. He earned a BS and MS in chemical engineering from the University of Kansas and went on to get a PhD in petroleum engineering from Stanford University in 1984. He became a US citizen in 1982.

Michael married Christine Ehlig in 1976 in Lawrence, Kansas. Christine is a distinguished petroleum engineer in her own right. Like her husband, she received an MS in chemical engineering from the University of Kansas. And like him, she earned a PhD in petroleum engineering at Stanford, but she got hers in 1979, five years earlier than he did. Christine Ehlig-Economides now teaches at Texas A&M University, where she holds the Albert B. Stevens endowed chair in petroleum engineering.

Economides is survived by his wife, Christine, as well as his brothers, Dimitris, of Rhodes, Greece; Charalampous, of Athens, Greece; and Andreas, of Nicosia, Cyprus. He is also survived by two sons, John and Alexander. John lives in San Francisco, California, and Alexander lives in Houston, Texas with his wife Elisabeth.

No date has been set for a memorial service. As I’m writing this on Sunday evening, Economides’ body remains in Chile and it’s not clear when it will be returned to the US.

I worked with Economides from 2006 to 2010 at Energy Tribune. I was attracted to him by his sense of humor and by his technical knowledge. I first heard his name in about 2004, when he was quoted in a newspaper article as saying something to the effect of “not even the cows would believe that.” In 2006, when he told me he wanted to go into publishing, I warned him that he could make a small fortune in publishing, but only if he started with a big one. We went forward despite the costs.

During my years working at Energy Tribune as the publication’s managing editor, it became obvious that Economides knew more about oil and gas production and oilfield technology than anyone I’d ever met. He could talk about nearly any subject on energy, do so at length, and explain the mathematics behind it. He was constantly working, constantly traveling. And while those discussions were often illuminating, I will also say that frankly, Michael Economides could also be one of the biggest bullshit artists I’ve ever met; he always had a boast, a joke, or a funny story. After delivering one or more of those in rapid succession, he’d tilt his head back, and his entire body would shake with laughter.

And then, he’d offer an excuse in his familiar accent - “leeesen” he would say, or, “I am beezy” - as to why he couldn’t talk any longer. He had to do a speech, a lecture, or catch a plane to somewhere and he had to leave immediately.

Being around Economides could be great fun. It could also be maddening. But it was never boring and seldom quiet.

I last spoke to him about six weeks ago. I was traveling through the Houston airport when my mobile phone rang. I recognized the voice immediately. Economides was on fire (a common occurrence) to write a book about the energy politics in Israel. He and Christine had been doing some work for an energy company working in Israel and he thought the book was a great idea. (Again, a common occurrence.) I agreed that Israel’s new-found wealth of offshore natural gas was an interesting development. But I went on to explain that I was busy finishing my own book and that we should discuss the Israel idea further when I had more time. We never had that opportunity.

See more.

Icecap Note: Michael was a speaker at my suggestion at one of the first ICCC Climate Conferences. He and my daughter, Donna, working on her doctorate in Russian Energy/Politics co-authored the book From Soviet to Putin and Back. He was a brilliant man and always on the go. I never knew which country he was calling from.  He was an expert in Energy and a well informed skeptic.  We will miss him.