Paul

The Indian Government has produced a climate report entitled: ‘National Action Plan on Climate Change.’ Section 1.4 deals with ‘Observed Changes in Climate and Weather Events in India’ and states that, “No firm link between the documented changes described below and warming due to anthropogenic climate change has yet been established:”

The report also made clear that India has no plans to cut back energy usage. “It is obvious that India needs to substantially increase its per capita energy consumption to provide a minimally acceptable level of wellbeing to its people. […] India is determined that its per capita greenhouse gas emissions will at no point exceed that of developed countries.”

US Senate EPW Committee: India Issues Report Challenging Global Warming Fears

PSYCHIATRISTS have detected the first case of “climate change delusion” – Writing in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of our Royal Children’s Hospital say this delusion was a “previously unreported phenomenon”. “A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood . . . He also . . . had visions of apocalyptic events.” …..”The patient had also developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of millions of people through exhaustion of water supplies.” But never mind the poor boy, who became too terrified even to drink. What’s scarier is that people in charge of our Government seem to suffer from this “climate change delusion”, too. […]So psychiatrists are treating a 17-year-old tipped over the edge by global warming fearmongers?

Here is Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday, with his own apocalyptic vision: “If we do not begin reducing the nation’s levels of carbon pollution, Australia’s economy will face more frequent and severe droughts, less water, reduced food production and devastation of areas such as the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu wetlands.”

And here is a senior Sydney Morning Herald journalist aghast at the horrors described in the report on global warming released on Friday by Rudd’s guru, Professor Ross Garnaut: “Australians must pay more for petrol, food and energy or ultimately face a rising death toll . . .”

Wow. Pay more for food or die. Is that Rudd’s next campaign slogan?

Continue reading Andrew Bolt’s Herald Sun blog: Doomed to a fatal delusion over climate change

The Australian media has been concentrating on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) of late. Today is the day that the draft (or should that be daft?) Garnaut Report on Climate Change is released.

ABC News: Garnaut urges emissions trading scheme ‘without delay’

A reminder of how insignificant Australian CO2 emissions and an ETS are:

There are two articles of interest from a climate point of view in this week’s Science magazine. The first is entitled: ‘Large and Rapid Melt-Induced Velocity Changes in the Ablation Zone of the Greenland Ice Sheet’ by R. S. W. van de Wal et al.

The Abstract states:

Continuous Global Positioning System observations reveal rapid and large ice velocity fluctuations in the western ablation zone of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Within days, ice velocity reacts to increased meltwater production and increases by a factor of 4. Such a response is much stronger and much faster than previously reported. Over a longer period of 17 years, annual ice velocities have decreased slightly, which suggests that the englacial hydraulic system adjusts constantly to the variable meltwater input, which results in a more or less constant ice flux over the years. The positive-feedback mechanism between melt rate and ice velocity appears to be a seasonal process that may have only a limited effect on the response of the ice sheet to climate warming over the next decades.

The report concludes:

Longer observational records with high temporal resolution in other ablation areas of the ice sheet are necessary to test the importance of the positive-feedback mechanism between melt rates and ice velocities. At present, we cannot conclude that this feedback is important. We do see a significant increase of the ablation rate (Fig. 2), which is likely related to climate warming, but it remains to be seen if this is likely to be amplified by increasing annual ice velocities.

Moving on to Perspectives, Oceans: Carbon Emissions and Acidification by Richard E. Zeebe et al:

Much of the scientific and public focus on anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions has been on climate impacts. Emission targets have been suggested based primarily on arguments for preventing climate from shifting significantly from its preindustrial state. However, recent studies underline a second major impact of carbon emissions: ocean acidification. Over the past 200 years, the oceans have taken up ~40% of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions. This uptake slows the rise in atmospheric CO2 considerably, thus alleviating climate change caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. But it also alters ocean chemistry, with potentially serious consequences for marine life.

The authors conclude:

To monitor and quantify future changes in ocean chemistry and biogeochemical fluxes, intensified global-ocean carbon dioxide surveys in combination with carbon-cycle modeling will be necessary. Awareness must be raised among the public and policy-makers of the effects of ocean acidification and the steps required to control it. Ocean chemistry changes, and not only climate effects, should be taken into consideration when determining CO2 emission targets; such consideration is likely to weigh in favor of lower emission targets.

Meanwhile, join the red dots between the dates of James Hansen’s testimony to Congress in June 1988 and June 2008 – see if you can spot a tipping point:

Figure lifted from Climate Audit.