ICECAP

Sep 28, 2009

Video Producers’s Challenge - Google Launches Alarmist Site for Gore and Copenhagen By Asher Moses

Google is using its Google Earth mapping tool to simulate on a 3D map of the world the predicted effects of climate change until the year 2100. Using data provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the search giant created new layers for Google Earth showing the range of expected temperature and precipitation changes under different global emissions scenarios that could occur throughout the century.

The new tools were introduced in partnership with the Danish Government ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Convention in December. Known as the COP15, the meeting in Copenhagen is shaping up as the critical venue for forging a global deal to reduce carbon emissions.

Users can view the effects of climate change on their own country either by installing a plug-in into Google Earth or via a special web page. Initially only temperature and precipitation changes can be viewed but Google plans to add several new layers and videos in the coming weeks.

In a video tour introducing the new Google tools, climate change activist Al Gore showed some of these upcoming layers, which will let users view the ongoing effects of sea-level rises, polar ice-sheet melting and water shortages. Google will then add further layers highlighting what communities around the world are doing to adapt to their changing climates and reduce their carbon footprint.

The company is hoping that allowing people to visualise the impacts of climate change on a 3D map of the world will compel more people to speak up about the issue. “If we were not to dramatically reduce our emissions, the global average temperature is expected to rise as much as 4 or more degrees Celsius by the end of this century, and that would cause severe damage to natural systems and human health and wellbeing,” Gore says in the introductory video.

“In addition, the destabilisation and extensive melting of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets ... has increased dramatically since 1979 and could cause global sea levels to rise between four and 12 metres, with each metre causing roughly another 100 million refugees.”

Google is also forming a partnership with CNN to launch a new YouTube channel allowing punters to “raise your voice on climate change”. Submissions from the public will be run alongside celebrity climate change awareness clips from people including British actress Emma Thompson and the Crown Prince of Denmark. “These videos will be broadcast on screens around the conference in December and rated by viewers of the channel,” Benjamin Kott of Google’s green business operations said. “The top-rated contributions will be aired globally during the COP15 CNN/YouTube debate on December 15, and the top two submissions will win a trip to Copenhagen.” See more here.

See TV Meteorologist Brian Sussman’s fine piece in American Thinker, Gore and Google, Pants on Fire here.

Sep 27, 2009

“..tired of reading the stupidities which, like me, they know to be without proper scientific basis” Note to Financial Times by Annie Walker, London, UK

Sir, The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research finds that 20 per cent of the population are hardened sceptics about man-made global warming ("Public scepticism takes the steam out of debate”, September 22). Could it be that this is the top 20 per cent of the population who are able to read? The others simply believe any rubbish that they are told. I am a 70-year-old granny. I have actually read Ian Plimer’s book Heaven and Earth.

I have read David Archibald’s Solar Cycle 24 and I have read Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder’s The Chilling Stars.

These serious scientific books are trashed by the believers, but those of us who can read and have done GCE chemistry and physics can follow the science, and can make up our own minds.

I would have thought that most of the readers of the FT fall into the top 20 per cent of the population in levels of IQ. No wonder your readers are tired of reading the stupidities which, like me, they know to be without proper scientific basis.

-----------------------

The science and economics of global warming are not too complicated for the average person to consider and make up his or her own mind. We urge you to do that. Go here and view some of the articles linked under “What’s New” or “A Primer on Global Warming.” Or go here and read about the new report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), which comprehensively rebuts the claims of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Go here for the sources for the factual statements in the ads.

-----------------------

And from the Marshall Institute,

Read more here. Download the Cocktail Party Conversation Guide to Global Warming here.

-------------------------

We need your financial support! As a 501(c)(3) public charity, ICECAP accepts corporate, foundation and individual donations to fund its educational activities. We are planning a series of videos on climate change for use in the classroom and public education. All donations are kept confidential. If you have browsed our website or utilized our material in the past year, please consider making a financial contribution. We know most of us are feeling the financial stress thanks to government and institution mismanagement of the economy. It can only get worse unless we can get the message out and stop the downward spiral. See the donate button is on the left column.

Also now available some items that will gore your alarmist friends (part of the proceeds go to support Icecap) SOME NEW ITEMS:

See full size display here.

And “My carbon footprints are bigger than yours and plants love me for it” items here and here

See sister sites:

Science and Public Policy Institute here.

Intellicast Dr. Dewpoint Library here.

RedNeck Engineer Energy and Innovation here.

Weather/Climate and Health here.

The Weather Wiz here.

Sep 26, 2009

The UNEP Climate Change Science Compendium 2009 uses the following graph from Wikipedia By Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit

The UNEP CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE COMPENDIUM 2009 on page 5 uses the following graph from Wikipedia (not the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report):

CO2 concentration and mean global temperature during the past millennium. CO2 levels (blue line, lefthand axis) are given in parts per million, temperatures (red line, right-hand axis) in degrees Celsius. Source: Hanno 2009 Page 5

Hanno is the pseudonym for a Wikipedia contributor. The graphic itself compares CO2 levels from Mauna Loa and Law Dome ice core to a splice of the HAdCRU temperature index and the Jones and Mann 2004 reconstruction (dominated by Graybill bristlecone chronology).

The latter splice is, of course, the splice that Mann has informed us is never done by responsible climate scientists, further informing us that the allegation that such splices are done is disinformation by fossil fuel companies.

“No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, “grafted the thermometer record onto” any reconstrution. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation websites) appearing in this forum.”

Sep 22, 2009

Carbon offsets lose 20% of their value in the last week at CCX By Anthony Watts, Watts Up With That

It appears that the carbon offset market is dying in the USA. You may recall the WUWT story from 9/9/09 on the Chicago Climate Exchange trading price dropping to 25 cents per metric ton. See

Market Confidence Low: Carbon Credits now worth 25 cents, were at $7 in 2008

See larger image here.

Last Friday, 9/11/09 appears to be the day when the current drop started. It appears there was a big selloff on 9/11, when investors got wind of a major suspension by the UN before it hit the press. On Sept 11th, there were 292,500 transactions (largest in over a month) and the price fell from the previous day closing price of 25 cents. Since then, the price has dropped to 20 cents per metric ton for all Carbon Financial Instruments (CFI) except for the 2010 issues, losing 20% of their value. Trading volume has also dropped to a trickle with only 200 transactions Friday.

The Sunday Times has the story:

The legitimacy of the $100 billion (60 billion pounds) carbon-trading market has been called into question after the world’s largest auditor of clean-energy projects was suspended by United Nations inspectors.

No wonder carbon offsets are falling to 20 cents a ton. Coal is still much more valuable at 40-50 dollars a ton.

A look at the CCX external advisory board roster is telling. The board includes long term enviro activist Ed Begley Jr. who appears in the movie Not Evil Just Wrong which will be launched in October - get your DVD and see more here.

-----------------------

Go here for the sources for the factual statements in the ads.

-----------------------

And from the Marshall Institute,

Read more here. Download the Cocktail Party Conversation Guide to Global Warming here.

-------------------------

Also now available some items that will gore your alarmist friends (part of the proceeds go to support Icecap) SOME NEW ITEMS:

See full size display here.

And “My carbon footprints are bigger than yours and plants love me for it” items here and here

See sister sites:

Science and Public Policy Institute here.

Intellicast Dr. Dewpoint Library here.

RedNeck Engineer Energy and Innovation here.

Weather/Climate and Health here.

The Weather Wiz here.

Sep 15, 2009

“..all the flu pandemics in the last 100 years originated in periods of negative PDO and cooling…” Eugenio Hackbart, METSUL

Our chief meteorologist at MetSul Weather Center Eugenio Hackbart wrote an article, in Portuguese, to the ABC Sunday newspaper that was published on August 28th, calling the attention of the readers to the fact that all the flu pandemics in the last 100 years originated in periods of negative PDO and cooling trend in the world. There were the following pandemics:

Spanish Flu: 1918-1920
Asian Flu: 1957-1958
Hong Kong Flu: 1968-1969
Swine Flu: 2009-

Note that the coldest period of the PDO in the 20th century - 1946 to 1976 - recorded two flu pandemics. Also note that currently we are under the longest streak of months of negatives values for the PDO since late 60’s, exactly when there was the last pandemic prior to the current one. It is very interesting to plot in the PDO graphic the years the flu pandemics originated. MetSul understands that, if climate in fact plays a role, more frequent La Nina events (cold years) and not El Nino episodes have a role to favor flu pandemics.

-----------------------

Go here for the sources for the factual statements in the ads.

-----------------------

And from the Marshall Institute,

Read more here. Download the Cocktail Party Conversation Guide to Global Warming here.

-------------------------

Also now available some items that will gore your alarmist friends (part of the proceeds go to support Icecap) SOME NEW ITEMS:

See full size display here.

And “My carbon footprints are bigger than yours and plants love me for it” items here and here

Sep 10, 2009

Several Important New Postings at SPPI New Postings at SPPI

Science Czar John Holdren Is Unsure About Placing People Who Fund ‘Climate Change Denial’ on Trial by Michael Egnor here.
In case you were wondering about that radicalism of Global Warming Climate Change fundamentalists, the President’s new science czar John Holdren made some recent assertions that should put your doubts to rest.

Sen. Stabenow: “Global Warming’ Causes More Hurricanes and Tornados” here.
Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich), in an interview with the Detroit News in mid-August 2009, said: “Climate change is very real.” She endorsed cap and trade’s massive tax increase on Michigan industry, saying it would not lead to an increase in manufacturing costs or energy prices. “Global warming creates volatility,” said Senator Stabenow. “I feel it when I’m flying. The storms are more volatile. We are paying the price in more hurricanes and tornadoes.”
Every part of Senator Stabenow’s statement is misleading at best, false at worst. Her statement that “global warming” creates “volatility”, which she feels when she is flying, is entirely without scientific foundation, for the simple reason that there has been no statistically-significant “global warming” for 15 years. Indeed, there has been rapid and statistically-significant global cooling for almost eight years. So the “volatility+ which she feels when flying - no doubt usually at the taxpayer’s expense - cannot be caused by “global warming”, because there has not been any.

Answering Three Simple Questions by Willie Soon and David R. Legates here.
We wonder why it is so difficult for straight answers to be given to a few simple and direct questions. The regular scientific obfuscation that occurs regarding global warming issues is surely a major reason for the confusion that exists on the issue amongst public and politicians alike.

Climate Depot’s Inconvenient Rebuttal to ‘National Security’ Climate Argument by Marc Morano here.
Desperation time has arrived for the promoters of man-made global warming fears. As the science of man-made climate fears continues to collapse, new tactics are being contrived to try to drum up waning public support.

The Global Warming Science Machine: $79 Billion and Counting by Peter C. Glover and Michael Economides here.
Over the last two decades, US taxpayers have subsidized the American climate change industry to the tune of $79 billion. That’s the headline from Climate Money, a report published last month by the Science and Public Policy Institute.

Senator Kerry Misfires about Global Warming and National Security by Christopher Monckton here.
Senator John Kerry’s statement in early August 2009 about “global warming” before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which he chairs, was false in every particular, leading him to draw the incorrect conclusion that “global warming” was a threat to national security. The Senator got every fact wrong.

SPPI Monthly CO2 Report: August here. Includes excellent paper on oceans NOT warming.

Run Silent, Run Deep by Peter Hannaford here.
America’s “mainstream” media missed it, but April 17 was a red-letter day for its Deep Ecologists. Red letter because it was the day the Obama Administration declared that carbon dioxide and five other gases emitted by industry threaten “the health and welfare of current and future generations.” This opens the door to regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency to “cap” emissions. The Deep Ecologists see this as the path to their cherished dream of a less populous nation with greatly reduced industrial production. It will also lead to a poorer (they would call it “simpler") standard of living.

12 Facts About Global Climate Change That You Won’t Read in the Popular Press here.
What will it take for the media to let go of their biases and begin doing their job, reporting the truth?

Significant Error in the Global Surface Temperature Trend Analyses of NCDC by Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. here.
When I served on the committee that resulted in the CCSP (2006) report on reconciling the surface and tropospheric temperature trends, one of the issues I attempted to raise was a warm bias in the construction of long term surface temperature trends when near surface land minimum temperatures (and maximum temperatures when the atmospheric boundary layer remained stably stratified all day, such as in the high latitude winter) were used. This error will occur even for pristine observing sites. Tom Karl and his close associates suppressed this perspective as I document in: Pielke Sr., Roger A., 2005: Public Comment on CCSP Report “Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences”. 88 pp including appendices.

Astronomers: Sun’s Output may Decline by Marc Morano here.
A guest essay by Statistician Dr. Richard Mackey, who authored a 2007 peer-reviewed study which found that the solar system regulates the earth’s climate. The paper was published August 17, 2007 in the Journal of Coastal Research - Excerpt: “According to the findings reviewed in this paper, the variable output of the sun, the sun’s gravitational relationship between the earth (and the moon) and earth’s variable orbital relationship with the sun, regulate the earth’s climate. The processes by which the sun affects the earth show periodicities on many time scales; each process is stochastic and immensely complex.”

An All-Kidding-Aside Critique by Donna Laframboise here.
DeSmogBlog describes itself as “the world’s number one source for accurate, fact based information regarding Global Warming misinformation campaigns.” It takes the position that “An overwhelming majority of the world’s climate scientists agree that the globe is warming...and that the indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels is to blame.” (Einstein didn’t think majority opinion decided scientific disputes, but that’s another discussion.)

DeSmogBlog alleges that those who doubt global warming theory are part of a “a well-funded and highly organized public relations campaign” that is “trying to confuse the public, to forestall individual and political actions that might cut into exorbitant coal, oil and gas industry profits.” See also their spoof here.

------------------------

Go here for the sources for the factual statements in the ads.

-----------------------

And from the Marshall Institute,

Read more here. Download the Cocktail Party Conversation Guide to Global Warming here.

-------------------------

Also now available some items that will gore your alarmist friends (part of the proceeds go to support Icecap) SOME NEW ITEMS:

See full size display here.

And “My carbon footprints are bigger than yours and plants love me for it” items here and here

Sep 10, 2009

‘Contraception cheapest way to combat climate change’’ By Richard Pindar, UK Telegraph

Contraception is almost five times cheaper as a means of preventing climate change than conventional green technologies, according to research by the London School of Economics.

Every 4 UK pounds spent on family planning over the next four decades would reduce global CO2 emissions by more than a ton, whereas a minimum of 19 pounds would have to be spent on low-carbon technologies to achieve the same result, the research says.

The report, Fewer Emitter, Lower Emissions, Less Cost, concludes that family planning should be seen as one of the primary methods of emissions reduction. The UN estimates that 40 per cent of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended. If these basic family planning needs were met, 34 gigatons (billion tonnes) of CO2 would be saved - equivalent to nearly 6 times the annual emissions of the US and almost 60 times the UK’s annual total.

Roger Martin, chairman of the Optimum Population Trust at the LSE, said: “It’s always been obviously that total emissions depend on the number of emitters as well as their individual emissions - the carbon tonnage can’t shoot down as we want, while the population keeps shooting up.”

UN data suggests that meeting unmet need for family planning would reduce unintended births by 72 per cent, reducing projected world population in 2050 by half a billion to 8.64 million. The research is published on the day that the Government’s climate change advisers, the Climate Change Committee, warned households and industry that a planned 80 per cent reduction in emissions are likely to prove insufficient.

Also in the telegraph, another shake your head story

Astronomer devises giant sun shield to reverse global warming
Professor Roger Angel thinks he can diffract the power of the sun by placing trillions of lenses in space and creating a 100,000-square-mile sunshade.

Each lens will have a diffraction pattern etched onto it which will cause the sun’s rays to change direction.

He intends to use electromagnetic propulsion to get the lenses into space.

If work was started immediately Prof Angel thinks the sunshield could be operation by 2040. when the earth will be coming out of the upcoming mini ice age

He said: “Things that take a few decades are not that futuristic.” Researchers at the University of Victoria, Canada, have started experiments using computers to test the idea. Climate scientists are beginning to imagine options like the sunshield as a way of halting climate change.

However Prof Martin Hoffert from New York University said: “What you have to be prepared for is that many of these experiments aren’t going to work - this is the way science and engineering progress. You build something, you try it, it doesn’t work, you try it again. This is sometimes called learning by doing. We’re not doing and therefore we’re not learning.”

One of the world’s leading environmental scientists warned this week that global warming is likely to accelerate at a much faster pace and cause more environmental damage than previously anticipated.

Professor Chris Field, a looney with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said that higher temperatures could ignite tropical forests and melt the Arctic tundra, releasing billions of tons of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

Sep 02, 2009

UPDATED: Washington Post: President’s ‘mistakes may cost the planet dearly’ By Marc Morano, Climate Depot

The Washington Post’s Andrew Freedman of paper’s “The Capital Weather Gang” (Icecap Note: my freshman Climatology class students knew more about climate than this bunch), has written a thorough commentary on why he believes the man-made global warming movement is failing politically and scientifically to convince the public and lawmakers of the seriousness of the issue. Freedman appears to lay the fault directly at the feet of President Obama, writing that Obama’s “mistakes may cost the planet dearly.” Freedman also cites Climate Depot (and the Heartland Institute) as having made a huge impact in shaping lawmakers and the public’s skeptical view of the latest climate science.

Freedman wrote in a September 1, 2009 Washington Post essay that the “influence of groups such as CFACT’s Climate Depot is only enhanced by White House’s low profile on climate science thus far.” Freedman lamented that Climate Depot has this impact “despite a lack of evidence to back up the claims of diminishing scientific concern.”

Freedman’s essay, titled Obama Needs to Give a Climate Speech - ASAP notes that President Obama needs to do [speak out] soon, before the debate slips farther away from him, and more years of inaction pass by. Freedman asserts that the “increasing climate change skepticism among the public is troubling” and that Obama has “neglected to use his bully pulpit to hammer a climate science message.” Freedman frets that President Obama must give a big global warming speech “before the debate slips farther away from him, and more years of inaction pass by.”

Climate Depot Responds - ‘Delay’ is Essential

The reality is—contrary to Freedman’s assertions—“delay” is essential so that politicians and the public can continue to absorb the latest scientific developments casting considerable doubt on the climate claims of UN and other fear promoters. The more educated people are, the more skeptical they become. The public gets it and now even Democratic lawmakers in Washington are having their moment of global warming policy clarity. Now is the time for a sober reexamination of man-made global warming claims. It is not the time to support a “scientifically meaningless” climate bill.

In the spirit of presenting the evidence. encouraging debate and serving as the critically needed ombudsman of the Fourth Estate, Climate Depot has reprinted almost in full Freedman’s commentary and conducted a point-by-point rebuttal. Freedman of the Washington Post is invited to respond to this Climate Depot Editorial and his comments will be published. Read the Climate Depot detailed point-by-point rebuttal here.

ICECAP UPDATE: Freedman attempted a feeble attack (took a butter knife to a gunfight) on Morano today accusing him of taking an anti-science and anti-journalism position and Morano slammed him back skillfully with fact filled replies to every issue raised here. Freedman like his near namesake Thomas Friedman at the New York Times proved himself clueless on this issue thinking that just because they stayed at a Holiday Inn Express they are qualified to take a strong stand on a subject they know so little about. And doing so without doing the kind of homework and investigative reporting that journalists should do and Morano does so well.

And Freedman doesn’t realize that Americans are taking an increasing anti-journalism position as so called journalists are proving to be biased and simple propaganda mouthpieces for the environmental and liberal agendas. The fact the magazines and newpapers are in such financial difficulty is testament to their failure to practice true journalism and report the real science and politics. The Freedman screeds the last two days tell you why the great newspapers of old will soon be history.

------------------------

Go here for the sources for the factual statements in the ads.

-----------------------

And from the Marshall Institute,

Read more here. Download the Cocktail Party Conversation Guide to Global Warming here.

-------------------------

Here are some items that will gore your alarmist friends (part of the proceeds go to support Icecap) SOME NEW ITEMS:

See full size display here.

And “My carbon footprints are bigger than yours and plants love me for it” items here and here

Page 28 of 46 pages « First < 26 27 28 29 30 > Last »