GERMANY gave the green light on Monday to a controversial plan with India to drop six tons of iron dust into the Antarctic Ocean. The experiment is the biggest trial ever of iron fertilization, a technology which could stop global warming at very little cost. Read more here. I have previously suggested that your concept of nature is almost certainly going to influence whether you support the idea. Read more here.
Former NASA Boss Declares Himself a Sceptic and Slams Climate Models
IT used to be common for global warming activists to claim that anyone who disagrees with them must be in the pay of “big oil” – remember Al Gore said this in his documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. More recently the accusation has been that anyone who disagrees with them doesn’t understand the science and therefore does not have an informed opinion.
Marc Morano, the communications director for the Republicans on the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, has made collecting and collating the names of dissenting scientists something of an obsession. Last December he launched an updated report in Washington claiming, “Over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe challenged man-made global warming claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former Vice President Al Gore.”
Yesterday Mr Morano added a particularly high profile scientist to this growing list, Dr John S. Theon. [1]
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Editor Removes Comment by Climate Sceptic (Part 2)
AUSTRALIA’s national broadcaster, the ABC, has a science unit dominated by a fellow called Robyn Williams. Mr Williams is an advocate for the campaign against global warming and has even suggested on air that sea levels could rise by 100 metres in the next century; the United Nation’s IPCC suggested at worst just 59cms. [1] Mr Williams is also on the public record indicating something verging on contempt for meteorologist and climate change sceptic Bill Kininmonth.[2]
It may be difficult for those journalists at the ABC who want to ensure the alternative perspective is put on contentious and highly politicised scientific issues like climate change, particularly given Mr Williams standing and very definite opinions.
On January 22, 2009, ABC reporter Nick Lucchinelli interviewed Bill Kininmonth for an alternative perspective on an article in ‘Nature’ suggesting Antarctica is warming. Lead author Eric Steig and biologist Barry Brook were also interviewed. That part of the interview with Mr Kininmonth was subsequently expunged from the transcript and podcast. [3] That is, at some point after the broadcast the comment from Mr Kininmonth was edited out of the interview. At first blush this has all the signs of ABC censorship in favour of the bias of the science unit.
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The Climate Change Safari Park: A Note from Bjorn Lomborg
BARACK Obama in his inaugural speech promised to “roll back the spectre of a warming planet.” In this context, it is worth contemplating a passage from his book ‘Dreams from My Father’. It reveals a lot about the way we view the world’s problems.
Obama is in Kenya and wants to go on a safari. His Kenyan sister Auma chides him for behaving like a neo-colonialist. “Why should all that land be set aside for tourists when it could be used for farming? These wazungu care more about one dead elephant than they do for a hundred black children.” Although he ends up going on safari, Obama has no answer to her question. That anecdote has parallels with the current preoccupation with global warming. Many people — including America’s new President — believe that global warming is the pre-eminent issue of our time, and that cutting CO2 emissions is one of the most virtuous things we can do.
To stretch the metaphor a little, this seems like building ever-larger safari parks instead of creating more farms to feed the hungry.
Make no mistake: global warming is real, and it is caused by manmade CO2 emissions. The problem is that even global, draconian, and hugely costly CO2 reductions will have virtually no impact on the temperature by mid-century. Instead of ineffective and costly cuts, we should focus much more of our good climate intentions on dramatic increases in R&D for zero-carbon energy, which would fix the climate towards mid-century at low cost. But, more importantly for most of the planet’s citizens, global warming simply exacerbates existing problems.
[Read more…] about The Climate Change Safari Park: A Note from Bjorn Lomborg
Leprechauns Cause Global Warming?
IT is always dangerous to use a proxy measure to make assumptions about a relationship. At popular blog The Blackboard, Zeke has used the Irish population as a proxy for the population of Leprechauns …given that Leprechauns are invisible thus cannot be counted accurately.
“After retrieving the historic population of Ireland from Wikipedia which, despite its obvious pro-AGW bias due to the efforts of that disreputable scallywag William Connelley, has good data on other subjects. I plotted Irish population and GISS temperature data from 1930 to present, and the results were astounding!”
Yes, the chart shows a good correlation between the proxy for the number of Leprechauns and global temperatures. But hey, correlation is not causation, so maybe Leprechauns don’t cause global warming.
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Click on the chart, for a larger view of the relationship.
Picture of the Leprechaun from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leprechaun
Story via Ian Beale.
Bond University Dismisses Climate Change Sceptic
IT is common for Australian academics to publicly express an opinion on climate change including in our newspapers; think Tim Flannery, Ian Lowe and more recently Barry Brook.
A couple of weeks ago Jon Jenkins, an Adjunct Professor at Bond University, had an opinion piece published by The Australian newspaper. [1]
The piece was critical of the accepted dogma on anthropogenic global warming with a focus on how global temperatures are recorded and ended with a comment on sustainable development:
“Science is only about certainty and facts. The real question is in acknowledging the end of fossil fuels within the next 200 years or so: how do we spend our research time and dollars?
Do we spend it on ideologically green-inspired publicity campaigns such as emissions-trading schemes based on the fraud of the IPCC, or do we spend it on basic science that could lead us to energy self-sufficiency based on some combination of solar, geothermal, nuclear and renewable sources? The alternative is to go back to the stone age.”
Interestingly Bond University has a new name for its business and IT faculties, The Faculty of Business, Technology & Sustainable Development, but apparently didn’t like Professor Jenkins’ very public opinion on the subject of sustainable development. For his opinion, Professor Jenkins received an official reprimand from the Bond University Registrar and then was informed last Friday that his adjunct status had been revoked.
No doubt he has contravened some rule or other at the University and no doubt this would have gone unnoticed if Professor Jenkins had a more popular opinion on these most politically charged subjects.
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Update: January 30, 2009
The university has now clarified its position:
“Dr Jenkins was a member of staff here for some considerable time and resigned to enter the NSW Parliament. Dr Jenkins was asked to keep an association with University as an adjunct but indicated in 2008 that serious health problems would probably prevent him taking an active role. As a result Dr Jenkins was removed from the adjunct staff in 2008.
An administrative oversight resulted in Dr Jenkins not being informed of this change in status.”
That is, an administrative oversight resulted in Dr Jenkins not being informed of his change in status until after he published the controversial opinion piece in The Australian newspaper.
Perhaps if the piece had been more politically correct his name could have just been added back onto the list?
I understand he has received an apology from the Vice Chancellor for the misunderstanding.
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Notes and Link
1. The Warmaholics’ Fantasy. The Australian January 6, 2009.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24876451-7583,00.html
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
