Posts from — March 2008

The UN warned today that the world’s glaciers are melting at an alarming rate. Immediate action is needed to prevent ”millions if not billions of people” to suffer from acute water shortage. Something that would affect not only the availability of drinking water, but also agriculture, industry and power generation.

The culprit is of course the usual suspect - global warming – according to data from the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS), based at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. WGMS gets its data from nearly 30 glaciers in nine mountain ranges. In 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 the average melting rate more than doubled.

“The latest figures are part of what appears to be an accelerating trend with no apparent end in sight,” said Wilfried Haeberli, director of WGMS.

The only problem is that the majority of the glaciers included in the so-called Glacier Mass Balance Bulletin (GMBB) are found in Europe. In the 2002-2003 report (the latest available on the WGMS website), data from 85 glaciers are presented. 49 of those are located in Europe. Now how is that for a bias?

We do know that the “global” warming is generally only perceptible in the northern hemisphere and mostly in Europe. So Mr Haeberli, who are you trying to fool?

Read more about this in The Guardian or at AFP.

In today’s Standard Freeholder, a local Canadian publication, the editor blames the Modern Man for the cataclysm of Global Warming. His rhetoric brings to mind the famous quote of Albert Einstein about only two things being endless – the universe and human stupidity.

A small excerpt:

Global warming, if explained in laymen’s terms, is not all that difficult to understand. Geologists and their kin tell us that climate change in the distant past was brought about by natural events, volcanic eruptions on an unimaginable cataclysmic scale and/or similar explosions in outer space. Then came the Industrial Revolution. Not to be outdone by nature, modern man has been busy inventing a way to produce the same results, with less drama.

He has built billions upon billions of mini volcanoes around the world in the form of smoke stacks, chimneys and various other kinds of exhaust pipes, belching out much of the same pollutants as volcanoes into the earth’s atmosphere. He has even gone one step further by adding poisons and toxins previously unknown to nature and our environment. How difficult is that to understand? Some estimates tell us we have already wiped out close to half of all life forms on this planet in the process. That’s the legacy we are busy leaving our grandchildren.

I especially like the comparison between cars and volcanoes. Mr Editor seems to obtain his knowledge not from science, but rather science fiction. Calling carbon dioxide a pollutant does not exhibit much insight. And stating that we (the humans) have already wiped out close to half of all life forms on this planet is simply absurd.

UK’s former prime minister, Tony Blair, is joining a group of international experts on climate change in a bid to drive forward efforts to reduce global carbon emissions, UK media reports today. Mr Blair, who will be working pro bono, said his role in the effort is to try to ”guide it politically”.

What is it with all these political drop-outs going green? First Gore, now Blair. Guess we all know what Hillary will be up to after the elections.

Belgium’s heir to the throne, prince Philippe, attended yesterday the Globe 2008 conference in Vancouver, Canada, and demonstrated his impressive scientific knowledge.

He said, among other things, that to keep the CO2-levels steady would require a 50 to 85 percent cut in the emissions.

“This basically means that we will have to live in an almost carbon-free world.”

From The Vancouver Sun, March 12

Reuters UK tells us today that, according to a new report, climate change did not cause the devastating floods that hit northern England last August. They were an exceptional event that statistically might occur every 100 to 200 years and not part of any discernible trend, said Terry Marsh and Jamie Hannaford of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

“Long historical flood records show no compelling long term increase in flood magnitude,” Terry Marsh added.

One by one, they fall…

The Washington Post story on the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) shows just how persistently the media favors climate alarmism and how little interest they have in reporting any research that diverges from the alarmist orthodoxy. It is standard fare to sew doubt about the suspect’s credibility, but The Washington Post way of comparing the NIPCC report to the IPCC’s ditto of last year was most unfavorable.

After reminding readers that the IPCC and former U.S. vice-president Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for their work on climate change, the paper then added: “While the IPCC enlisted several hundred scientists from more than 100 countries to work over five years to produce its series of reports, the NIPCC document is the work of 23 authors from 15 nations, some of them not scientists.”

Hundreds of scientists may in some way have contributed to the IPCC’s report, but just 62 wrote the chapter said to “prove” that man is behind global warming. And just 52 people, many of them non-scientists, wrote the IPCC’s Summary.

The thing is that no matter what the IPCC and its defenders claim, The Washington Post and other outlets should report objectively. Meanwhile, the motives and sources of all skeptics are instantly suspected and ridiculed.

Here’s an example. Inspired by all the fantastic presentations given at the New York conference last week, I wrote a debate article and sent it to all the major daily papers in Sweden (which is where I live). While most of them ignored me, I got a polite answer from the most prestigious one (Svenska Dagbladet). The editor made it clear that there isn’t any space available and wished me luck somewhere else.

Of course, I recognized this as pure bullshit. There is always space available for breaking news. So I replied, equally politely.

It’s unfortunate that you turn down an article that questions today’s biggest issue on the environmental agenda. Unfortunately, I am well aware of your true motives. It’s not about lack of space, it is about good old censorship.

The answer came swiftly. And this time it was honest.

Dear Maggie,
You are fully entitled to your own opinions, even if they are contrary to most of the serious scientists in the world.

To think that humans do not affect the climate is extreme and I won’t publish such a view in this paper. It is simply not credible.

All the best,
Sune Olofson
Svenska Dagbladet

In other words, I have been labeled an extremist. But let me ask you, which is more extreme?

To think that the global warming is moderate and its consequences positive for humans as well as animal and plant life? That it is part of the Earth’s natural climate changes? That human activity does not have a significant effect on the climate and there is nothing to worry about?

Or is it perhaps more extreme to think that we are witnessing the greatest catastrophe ever, one that will claim millions of lives and forever change the face of the planet? That we must radically reduce our emissions through all kinds of imperative measures, thus risking stagnation of world economy? That we should use agricultural land for production of expensive and inefficient biofuels, which results in runaway prices on basic foodstuffs and aggravated hunger and starvation?

You be the judge.

If you follow the climate debate you have probably noticed a slight change. What was formerly referred to as “global warming” is now called “climate change”. Perhaps to safeguard the case against a sudden 180-degree swing. This year’s record cold winter has paralyzed many parts of the world despite the ever-growing amount of greenhouse gases billowing out from India and China.

Even though there is some uneasiness among the alarmists, they can’t just put down arms and acknowledge defeat. Too much money has already been invested. Too many jobs and reputations are on the line. So they add some wrinkles to the story and hope nobody will react. It’s like the story about the boiling frog. By making small gradual adjustments the alarmists hope change will be imperceptible.

Take for example John Tierney in The New York Times. It looks like someone at the NYT has finally caught on to the hoax but won’t admit it. So instead they try to gently slip in the truth.

A year ago, British meteorologists made headlines predicting that the buildup of greenhouse gases would help make 2007 the hottest year on record. At year’s end, even though the British scientists reported the global temperature average was not a new record — it was actually lower than any year since 2001 — the BBC confidently proclaimed, “2007 Data Confirms Warming Trend.”

When the Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites, it was big news and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming. When the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest level ever recorded by satellites, it was pretty much ignored. A large part of Antarctica has been cooling recently, but most coverage of that continent has focused on one small part that has warmed.

Slow warming doesn’t make for memorable images on television or in people’s minds, so activists, journalists and scientists have looked to hurricanes, wild fires and starving polar bears instead.

All the faithful are of course a little worried. How can this super-cold winter happen? What is wrong with the climate change? Around the world, the modeling teams are sweating to adjust their calculations. At the same time other scientists, such as Ferenc Miskolczi, discover that “greenhouse warming” may be mathematically impossible. In short, the warming models assume that the atmosphere is infinitely thick. If on the other hand, you assume the atmosphere is about 100 km thick (about 65 miles) - which has the big advantage of being true - the greenhouse effect disappears! Oops, no more global warming.

What happens once this farce is finally exposed? Whose heads will roll?

Bob Spicer et al, from Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, who has examined fern leaves from Central Siberia, says that this today rather unfriendly place 65 million years ago was a lot like modern-day Florida, with lush ferns and lots of rain.

Climate models for the same area had indicated temperatures around zero degrees Celsius (32° F). But Bob Spencer and his colleagues doubt model temperatures match reality. In the age of dinos the world was so different that the models we use for today’s atmosphere cannot mimic it. Go figure. Who said computer models are more reliable than observations?

Read the whole story in New Scientist. Or ask a dinosaur.