From CSIRO and “increased CO2 has benefits” department:
Satellite data shows the per cent amount that foliage cover has changed around the world from 1982 to 2010. Click here for a full-sized and detailed image.
Increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) have helped boost green foliage across the world’s arid regions over the past 30 years through a process called CO2 fertilisation, according to CSIRO research.
In findings based on satellite observations, CSIRO, in collaboration with the Australian National University (ANU), found that this CO2 fertilisation correlated with an 11 per cent increase in foliage cover from 1982-2010 across parts of the arid areas studied in Australia, North America, the Middle East and Africa, according to CSIRO research scientist, Dr Randall Donohue.
“In Australia, our native vegetation is superbly adapted to surviving in arid environments and it consequently uses water very efficiently,” Dr Donohue said. “Australian vegetation seems quite sensitive to CO2 fertilisation.
The fertilisation effect occurs where elevated CO2 enables a leaf during photosynthesis, the process by which green plants convert sunlight into sugar, to extract more carbon from the air or lose less water to the air, or both.
This, along with the vast extents of arid landscapes, means Australia featured prominently in our results.”
“While a CO2 effect on foliage response has long been speculated, until now it has been difficult to demonstrate,” according to Dr Donohue.
“Our work was able to tease-out the CO2 fertilisation effect by using mathematical modelling together with satellite data adjusted to take out the observed effects of other influences such as precipitation, air temperature, the amount of light, and land-use changes.”
The fertilisation effect occurs where elevated CO2 enables a leaf during photosynthesis, the process by which green plants convert sunlight into sugar, to extract more carbon from the air or lose less water to the air, or both.
If elevated CO2 causes the water use of individual leaves to drop, plants in arid environments will respond by increasing their total numbers of leaves. These changes in leaf cover can be detected by satellite, particularly in deserts and savannas where the cover is less complete than in wet locations, according to Dr Donohue.
“On the face of it, elevated CO2 boosting the foliage in dry country is good news and could assist forestry and agriculture in such areas; however there will be secondary effects that are likely to influence water availability, the carbon cycle, fire regimes and biodiversity, for example,” Dr Donohue said.
“Ongoing research is required if we are to fully comprehend the potential extent and severity of such secondary effects.”
This study was published in the US Geophysical Research Letters journal and was funded by CSIRO’s Sustainable Agriculture Flagship, Water for a Healthy Country Flagship, the Australian Research Council and Land & Water Australia.
ICECAP NOTE: See how this corroborates this analysis about the 2012 drought and crops.
Source: Wash Post
by Charles Krauthammer
The economy stagnates. Syria burns . Scandals lap at his feet. China and Russia mock him , even as a “29-year-old hacker” revealed his nation’s spy secrets to the world. How does President Obama respond? With a grandiloquent speech on climate change .
Climate change? It lies at the very bottom of a list of Americans’ concerns (last of 21 - Pew poll).
Which means that Obama’s declaration of unilateral American war on global warming, whatever the cost and it will be heavy is either highly visionary or hopelessly solipsistic. You decide:
Global temperatures have been flat for 16 years - a curious time to unveil a grand, hugely costly, socially disruptive anti-warming program.
Now, this inconvenient finding is not dispositive. It does’t mean there is no global warming. But it is something that the very complex global warming models that Obama naively claims represent settled science have trouble explaining. It therefore highlights the president’s presumption in dismissing skeptics as flat-earth know-nothings.
On the contrary. It’s flat-earthers like Obama who refuse to acknowledge the problematic nature of contradictory data. It’s flat-earthers like Obama who cite a recent Alaskan heat wave ‘ a freak event in one place at one time - as presumptive evidence of planetary climate change. It’s flat-earthers like Obama who cite perennial phenomena such as droughts as cosmic retribution for environmental sinfulness.
For the sake of argument, nonetheless, let’s concede that global warming is precisely what Obama thinks it is. Then answer this: What in God’s name is his massive new regulatory and spending program which begins with a war on coal and ends with billions in more subsidies for new Solyndras going to do about it?
The United States has already radically cut carbon dioxide emissions more than any country on earth since 2006, according to the International Energy Agency. Emissions today are back down to 1992 levels.
And yet, at the same time, global emissions have gone up. That’s because - surprise! - we don’t control the energy use of the other 96 percent of humankind.
At the heart of Obama’s program are EPA regulations that will make it impossible to open any new coal plant and will systematically shut down existing plants. “Politically, the White House is hesitant to say they’re having a war on coal,” explained one of Obama’s climate advisers. ‘On the other hand, a war on coal is exactly what’s needed.”
Net effect: tens of thousands of jobs killed, entire states impoverished. This at a time of chronically and crushingly high unemployment, slow growth, jittery markets and deep economic uncertainty.
But that’s not the worst of it. This massive self-sacrifice might be worthwhile if it did actually stop global warming and save the planet. What makes the whole idea nuts is that it won’t. This massive self-inflicted economic wound will have no effect on climate change.
The have-nots are rapidly industrializing. As we speak, China and India together are opening one new coal plant every week. We can kill U.S. coal and devastate coal country all we want, but the industrializing Third World will more than make up for it. The net effect of the Obama plan will simply be dismantling the U.S. coal industry for shipping abroad.
To think we will get these countries to cooperate is sheer fantasy. We’ve been negotiating climate treaties for 20 years and gotten exactly nowhere. China, India and the other rising and modernizing countries point out that the West had a 150-year industrial head start that made it rich. They are still poor. And now, just as they are beginning to get rich, we’re telling them to stop dead in their tracks?
Fat chance. Obama imagines he’s going to cajole China into a greenhouse-gas emissions reduction that will slow its economy, increase energy costs, derail industrialization and risk enormous social unrest. This from a president who couldn’t even get China to turn over one Edward Snowden to U.S. custody.
I’m not against a global pact to reduce CO2. Indeed, I favor it. But in the absence of one, and there is no chance of getting one in the foreseeable future, there is no point in America committing economic suicide to no effect on climate change, the reversing of which, after all, is the alleged point of the exercise.
For a president to propose this with such aggressive certainty is incomprehensible. It is the starkest of examples of belief that is impervious to evidence. And the word for that is faith, not science.
--------
Speaking of follies....here is another from Mayor Bloomberg. Little Napolean goes off his rocker once again:
NYC Mayor Bloomberg Pushes Mandatory Composting
Cheryl K. Chumley
Mayor Michael Bloomberg - the man who brought about the failed supersize soda ban and restrictions on trans fats in city restaurants - is pushing for a law forcing New York City residents to compost their food refuse.
Bloomberg’s proposal would encourage voluntary composting initially, and then make food composting mandatory by 2015-2016.
Another Consumer Mandate
Opponents decried yet another expansion of the nanny state and also worried about food composting expanding the city’s rat population.
“People seem to be able to recycle their paper and bottles without too much trouble, despite lots of outcry when it first started decades ago,” said Nicole Gelinas, a Searle Freedom Trust Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. “I think the point of the expanded voluntary pilot is to see if they can do this, too, or if it causes too many problems with improperly disposed waste - rats, etc.”
“Garbage sits around attracting rats no matter what. I’m not sure if it will attract more rats just by being in separately sealed containers,… but I guess we will find out,” said Gelinas.
Voluntary vs. Mandatory Composting
Gelinas called the proposal “fine on a voluntary basis” but only if residents and apartment owners can reach agreement on the issue.
During his State of the City address earlier this year, Bloomberg called food waste “New York City’s final recycling frontier.” His office is negotiating with a composting plant that can handle up to 100,000 tons of food waste per year, roughly 10 percent of the food waste that’s thrown into the garbage from the city’s dining tables.
Jeff Stier, the New York City-based director of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Risk Analysis Division, notes the city already has a voluntary composting program. He questions the need and desirability of a mandatory program.
Long List of Targets
Stier says Bloomberg’s proposal is just one more way for the mayor to implement a nanny state before his last months in office wrap up. Stier noted Bloomberg has put the force of city government into opposition to trans fats, salt, Styrofoam containers, soda, and other food substances and consumer products.
“He’s done all sorts of thing to try to control what we eat,” he said. “He’s trying to control the containers that hold our food. And now he’s trying to control what we don’t eat, with compost.”
Once the program moved from voluntary to mandatory, it would impose fines on people who don’t comply.
Collateral Environmental Damage
Stier notes the trucks that will be necessary to collect the food waste will put more vehicles on New York City streets, consume more oil and gas, and emit more pollutants into the city’s air.
“There’s no way food scraps can be picked up from every home throughout the city without greatly increasing the number of trucks, traffic, and tyranny,” Stier explained.
Cheryl Chumley, ckchumley@aol.com, is a news writer with The Washington Times.
---------
Feds Give Wind Producers Free Pass to Kill Condors
By Karen Dove
Federal wildlife officials announced they will allow wind producers in California’s Tehachapi Mountains to kill endangered California condors without fear of prosecution. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the free pass will apply only when wind power companies inadvertently kill or harass the large and highly endangered birds, but such harassment and deaths are a foreseeable and unavoidable consequence of “green” wind power.
Recovering Condors at Risk
The California condor nearly went extinct in the 1970s and 1980s, with the number of wild birds bottoming out at 25 in 1975. Wild condor populations have rebounded to 150 today, but the species is still highly endangered.
Environmental Groups Outraged
Conservation and wildlife groups worry an expansion of wind power production in California condor habitat will reverse recent condor population gains and kill them as regularly as turbines kill protected golden eagles in California golden eagle habitat.
Environmental groups including the American Bird Conservancy, Center for Biological Diversity, and the Audubon Society immediately criticized Fish and Wildlife’s decision to give wind power companies a free pass to kill endangered condors.
“Allowing the legal killing of one of the imperiled birds in the United States threatens endangered species conservation efforts across the country,” Kelly Fuller, a coordinator with the American Bird Conservancy, said in a press statement.
“I can’t believe the federal government is putting so much money into a historic and costly effort to establish a stable population of condors, and at the same time is issuing permits to kill them. Ludicrous,” Kerncrest Audubon treasurer Daniel Burnett told the Los Angeles Times.
Documented Environmental Destruction
California wind farms already present a killing field for endangered and protected birds. According to Save the Eagles International, more than 1,000 birds of prey die each year at California’s Altamont Pass wind farm. Wind turbines are already the leading cause of death for golden eagles in the Golden State, and conservationists point out condors are larger and less agile than golden eagles, putting them in even greater danger from fast-spinning turbine blades.
Environmentalists have documented environmental damage already being caused by wind turbines in the Tehachapi Mountain area.
“All of this industrialization has taken its toll on the ecosystem. The nearby Pine Tree Wind project has one of the highest rates of golden eagle mortality per turbine in the country, and Next Era’s North Sky River Wind project killed its first golden eagle in January - within weeks of beginning operations,” reported the Mojave Desert Blog.
“The Alta East Wind project is expected to add to eagle mortality, although the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) admits that too little is known about the golden eagle population in the Mojave Desert to know if the deaths will result in the protected species’ decline,” the Mojave Desert Blog added.
Contradictory Policies
“The state of California allowing wind farms leeway in killing of condors and golden eagles flies in the face of reason,” said H. Sterling Burnett, senior fellow for the National Center for Policy Analysis.
Burnett pointed out the hypocrisy of giving California wind turbines a free pass to kill birds by the thousands while the California legislature imposes onerous restrictions on other activities with much more speculative and indirect impact on birds in the state.
The California Senate just passed a bill to make the ban on lead ammunition a statewide law, to protect the very same animals turbines endanger,” Burnett explained.
“In the eyes of California legislators and the Obama administration, oil refineries can be - and are - fined billions of dollars for offenses against protected wildlife, but it is OK to kill protected animals for the ‘cause’ of green energy,” Burnett noted. “This is indicative of the administration’s near-religious fervor for renewable energy despite the fact that the government has wasted billions of dollars on failed green energy companies.”
Karen Dove (karendove@icloud.com) is a freelance writer in Bradenton, Florida.
---------
Maryland Wind Farm Threatens Bald Eagles
Cheryl Chumley
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials report a proposed wind energy project in Maryland would pose a “significant risk to eagles” and the developer should trim back its construction plans. The U.S. Navy has also expressed concern about the project, noting the turbines might skew nearby radar readings.
At Least 30 Eagles at Risk
U.S. Fish and Wildlife (FWS) biologists report at least 30 bald eagles nest within 10 miles of the proposed wind project. The proposed 60 turbines are too threatening to the eagles, and dozens could die each year, FWS wildlife officials say.
Also, the proposed Great Bay wind project in Somerset County is near enough the Patuxent River air base that Navy officials say the bounce-back from turbines will make it difficult to get accurate radar readings.
In response, Texas-based Pioneer Green Energy, which proposes to build the Great Bay wind project, is offering to cut back the number of turbines from 60 to 50.
“We are in the late stage development process of the project. For the past three years we have been studying the various aspects of project design,” said Pioneer Green Energy Vice President for Development Adam Cohen.
Cohen said he has also worked to minimize threats from “climate change and sea level rise on the Chesapeake Bay” and to “military operations in the area.”
High Costs for Minimal Power
But not all Marylanders are on board with the project.
Thomas Firey, a senior fellow with the Maryland Public Policy Institute and the author of an electricity primer for Maryland, says the project is rife with problems. Most notably, according to Firey, the project presents a questionable use of public funds to accomplish political, rather than practical or feasible, purposes.
“There are four different subsidies hidden in this,” Firey said, “and besides the explicit subsidy the legislature creates, it triggers others.”
Firey said for all the subsidies and preferential treatment, the project will generate “only a relatively small amount of electricity. It’s not going to have any effect on global warming....At best, [the project’s] meaningless. At worst, it puts Maryland residents on the hook for higher energy costs.”
Subsidies Make Situation Worse
Firey is not alone in expressing skepticism about the project. Jonathan Lesser, president of Continental Economics Inc., says wind power is not cost-efficient or economically feasible despite 35 years of subsidies. In addition, offshore wind developments are even more expensive than conventional wind projects, he says.
“Wind energy is not economic, ... [and] subsidies do not work,” Lesser said. “Subsidies may decrease prices in the short run, but they drive out investment in the long run and create uncertainty, which leads to higher prices than would prevail without subsidies.”
“That’s free-lunch economics” and it doesn’t work, Lesser said. “And offshore wind is at least twice as costly as onshore wind. Regulators have had to resort to forcing utilities to purchase it.”
Cheryl Chumley (ckchumley@aol.com) is a news writer with The Washington Times.
Quote of the Week:
“The influence of mankind on climate is trivially true and numerically insignificant.” Richard Lindzen
By Art Horn
The concept of an alternate universe is familiar to many people, especially those who read or view science fiction books or movies. An example of a storyline in an alternate universe would be the re-booting of the Star Trek franchise. In the production of the 2009 movie “Star Trek” JJ Abrams and company wanted to bring the Star Trek series back into the theaters but they wanted to do it in such a way that they could have the artistic freedom to craft stories that were not confined to the history of all the series and movies of the past several decades. The answer was to find a way to alter the “real” world and place the same characters, Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the others into a new “alternate reality” that in some ways mirrors the familiar, traditional world but in other ways is radically different. There are parallels to this concept today, not in the movies but in the White House.
If the producers of the next Star Trek movie want some ideas as to how to craft a bizarre story that exists in an alternate universe they need look no farther than our own president. On Tuesday, June 25th, 2013 president Obama unwittingly revealed that while he appears to live in our universe, he actually does not. Some of the statement and declarations made in his “Climate Action Plan” are so strange and so out of touch with the reality that you and I live in, I can only conclude that our president is from and lives in an alternate reality.
In his Climate Action Plan the president states over and over again that we must reduce “carbon pollution.” In fact the phrase “carbon pollution” is mentioned 21 times. The term “carbon pollution” is an excellent example of what universe Obama lives in. In an alternate universe white can mean black, good can be bad, up can be down and so on. In Obama’s “reality” carbon is pollution. Carbon is a chemical element and is the fourth most abundant element in the universe. Who knew the universe is full of pollution! It is also present in all known life forms on earth. In the human body carbon is the second most abundant element by mass other than oxygen. We humans are carbon based life. In Obama’s alternate universe, all humans and all life forms are made of pollution. With the large amount of carbon in our bodies, if it were pollution, we would all be dead.
In the alternate universe that president Obama resides, what appears to be something in our reality is something very different in his. For instance, in his Climate Action Plan he states that carbon pollution from power plants, cars, trucks, trains, planes and everything that uses fossil fuels to make energy must be reduced. His reason for this is that the use of these fuels is changing the weather and ultimately the climate. Being that he is speaking to us from an alternate reality means he does not know that in our universe the term carbon pollution, translated into our reality, is actually carbon dioxide pollution. To many people the word carbon conjures up images of black chunks of coal, dirty and full of soot. The imagery of black carbon smoke filling the sky, fouling our water, covering the earth in a dark fog of unbreathable air and causing the seas to rise alarms and scares many people. This is all intentional.
What Obama is actually talking about, from his alternate universe point of view, is carbon dioxide gas, not black carbon. However, in his universe they are the same. Carbon dioxide is a gas, not a chunk of sooty coal. It has no color, no odor and is used by plants, trees and algae as food. The end result of this usage is to produce oxygen. The early plants that evolved in earth’s distant past produced enough oxygen by ingesting carbon dioxide to make our lives and all other living things possible. Life on earth, without carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, would cease to exist if it were eliminated. In Obama’s universe carbon dioxide means death, not life. Do you see what I’m getting at?
President Obama’s alternate universe is so different from our reality that life giving carbon dioxide is the same thing as mercury, arsenic and lead pollution. The very fact that the president insists that carbon (dioxide) is pollution is evidence that he has little concept of the reality you and I live in. Water vapor in the air causes most of the earth’s greenhouse effect. Will he next proclaim the water in the air is pollution? President Obama also appears to have no clue as to what is happening to the earth’s temperature. The president has stated that “temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago.” In the universe that you and I live in this is obviously not true and is frankly bizarre. There has been no acceleration of any temperature rise and in fact there has been no measured increase in global average surface temperature in at least 15 years and counting. and has clealy fallen since 2002 Apparently things look very different when you live in an alternate reality.
What is especially dangerous about being governed by someone who lives in an alternate reality is that he has the power to dictate what happens in our reality! The use of the word “dictate” is intentional since he has said “ If congress won’t act on climate change I will.” In our universe the founding fathers of the United States wrote the constitution to limit the power of any one branch of government so that the system has a number of checks and balances so that no branch of government becomes too powerful. In Obama’s alternate universe there is no congress or constitution, he is the sole power. Instead of going through congress he will use “executive orders” to bring his alternate universe view of climate change, and what needs to be done about it, to our reality.
In the land of the free and the home of the brave, capitalism has brought about the greatest economy the world has ever known, fueled by our ability to extract the vast natural resources at our disposal. In president Obama’s view from his alternate universe, this is bad and will destroy the earth. With his recent pronouncements it appears likely he will use executive power to impose a tax on everything that uses fossil fuels to increase the cost of using them and in doing so make them more and more expensive. His ultimate goal is to eliminate fossil fuel use.
In the universe you and I live in there is science. In science we have open discussions about theories. If a theory does not stand up to real world observations and experiments it is discarded and replaced with a new theory that must also go through the same evaluation. In Obama’s universe there is no science and no room for discussion. Speaking from is alternate universe pulpit on June 25th, 2013 Obama said “We don’t have time for a meeting of the flat earth society.” He went on to say “Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm.” He may be correct. The storm is coming but it is not the one he is talking about. It is the storm of economic upheaval and the destruction of industries brought about by his dictates that we must be worried about.
In theory, if alternate universes exist, they are apparently operating independently of each other. In theory, if two universes come in contact with each other there could be severe consequences. President Obama seems determined to make that happen by pushing his alternate reality on all of us no matter what the real world data shows. To him the theory is reality, not the evidence. PDF
------
Donations button is working again. Please help.
--------
Meanwhile some sanity form NOAA.
From: NOAA/NWS/OST S&TI Climate Mission
Subject: Responding to recent notable climate science development
It has been brought to much attention that the observed global mean temperature rise has stagnated over the past 10-15 years. From O2R perspective, NWS/OST S&TI Climate Mission is looking for guidance from research advancement for improving strategic science planning. Here is an update on recent issues raised from notable development.
1. Global warming rate - not as model predicted
In a recent interview by Spiegel Online (6/20), Prof. Hans von Storch (Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg, Germany) pointed out that recent CO2 emissions had actually risen even more steeply than people feared. As a result, according to most climate models, the temperature should rise about 0.25 degree Celsius over the past 10 years. In fact, the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degree Celsius. This has brought some serious concerns. “If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models”, said Prof. von Storch.
2. Warming of deep ocean - an overlooked new aspect
Dr. Kevin Trenberth (NCAR) recently published a short article on Royal Meteorological Society entitled “Has Global Warming Stalled?” He explained that most (over 90%) of the energy imbalance induced by the greenhouse gas went into the ocean, which warmed not only the upper layers of the ocean but also the deep ocean; the latter was “not there throughout the record”. He emphasized “warming really means heating” that could be manifested in many ways, e.g. rising surface temperatures, melting Arctic sea ice, etc., among which the global sea level would be a better indicator that had kept marching up at a rate of over 30 cm per century since 1992. It came from both ice melting and ocean expansion due to warming, showing global warming continues unabated.
3. Cooling in near future - an alternative outlook
Dr. Habibullo I. Abdussamatov (Pulkovo Observatory, Russian Academy of Sciences), in his 2012 paper onApplied Physics Research, called attention to the change of sun activities. By analyzing the average annual balance of the thermal budget of the Earth-atmosphere system, of which temporal changes in the power of the longwave radiation emitted to space always lag behind changes in the power of absorbed solar radiation due to slow change of its enthalpy, he demonstrated a negative energy balance since 90’s, which will continue in the next a few solar 11-year cycles, and predicted the onset of a new “mini-ice age” commencing in 2014 and becoming most severe around 2055. It shows a potential near-term threat, which should be brought on NWS monitoring radar and taken into account properly in NOAA research as well as operation planning.
Nowadays in science policy discussions (AMS, 6/3-4; AGU, 6/25-26), global warming and climate service is still a hot topic. Most people understand the greenhouse effects of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. The real problem is the projection of future long-term climate, for which the greenhouse gas is only one of the players. The others and interactions among all players are far from well explored and understood, which should bring out concerns about reliability of current long-term climate projection products with good reasons for requesting more research. Prof. von Storch said it well: “Certainly the greatest mistake of climate researchers has been giving the impression that they are declaring the definitive truth. It’s not a bad thing to make mistakes and have to correct them. The only thing that was bad was acting beforehand as if we were infallible. By doing so, we have gambled away the most important asset we have as scientists: the public’s trust.”
References
Interview with Hans von Storch, SPIEGEL ONLINE, 20 June 2013.
Trenberth, K.: Has Global Warming Stalled? Royal Meteorological Society, 22 May 2013.
Abdussamatov, H.I., 2012: Bicentennial Decrease of the Total Solar Irradiance Leads to Unbalanced Thermal Budget of the Earth and the Little Ice Age. Applied Physics Research, 4, 178-184. .
Icecap Note: A fair and balanced assessment. I don’t buy ego driven Trenberths ‘Where’s Waldo’ game - the heat hiding in the deep oceans but encouraging to hear Von Storch showing some humility, and Abdussamatov we believe is on target.
But in Bonn, the Un delegates did not have a clue...you see they don’t study what is happening only use models to predict future. And it doesn’t matter as this quote shows:
“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.” Instead, climate change policy is about how “we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth.” UN IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer 2010