Where the output of computer software is held in higher regard than observational data, where marketing spin is more important than fact and evidence, and where a trenchant defence of the notion of man-made global warming is seen as paramount… Read more here.
Opinion
Changes Announced to Australia’s Proposed Emissions Trading Scheme
SINCE Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister of Australia we have signed Kyoto and there has been a commitment to an Emissions Trading Scheme – what his government calls a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
It was to start next year, but according to a surprise announcement yesterday, the scheme has been delayed a year.
In announcing the delay the Prime Minister described it all as “hard” and “difficult” and “complex” policy made harder, more difficult and more complex as a consequence of the global financial crisis.
I am not sure the financial crisis makes this obviously complex financial intervention any more complex – but certainly less politically palatable.
When well known geologist and climate skeptic, Bob Carter, reported on his presentation to a parliamentary committee considering the proposed legislation just two weeks ago he wrote:
“The committee mostly needs help with fashioning politically feasible solutions to the incredible mess that they now find themselves in.”
Yesterday’s announcement that the scheme will now be delayed, and significantly changed with a fixed price period and an increasing in the target for emissions reduction to 25 percent by 2020, suggests the government is grappling with the issue of what Professor Carter described as fashioning feasible solutions.
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Defining the Greens (Part 7)
GREENPEACE is a large global corporation broadly committed to ‘saving the environment’. Greenpeace is currently focused on influencing the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit in December on the basis that this represents “the best chance we have of reversing current emissions trends in time to prevent the climate chaos that we are hurtling towards”.
Greenpeace has called on governments gathering in Copenhagen for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to agree to legally binding emissions reduction obligations for industrialised countries, as a group, of at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. But Greenpeace demands that this be achieved with the exclusion of what it deems unsustainable technologies in particular nuclear energy.
Swine Flu and ‘Factory Farming’
The first known case of the current swine flu pandemic occurred amid a highly unusual outbreak of contagious respiratory ailments near a large factory hog farm in Mexico; and the public-health community had been warning for years that hog farms posed just such a threat. Read more here.
Obama’s Hurricane Warning
During a town hall meeting prior to his primetime press conference Wednesday, President Obama offered a dire global weather forecast to mark his 100th day in office. Read more here.
The Work of Ferenc Miskolczi (Part 1)
OUR understanding of the natural world does not progress through the straight forward accumulation of facts because most scientists tend to gravitate to the established popular consensus also known as the established paradigm. Thomas Kuhn describes the development of scientific paradigms as comprising three stages: prescience, normal science and revolutionary science when there is a crisis in the current consensus. When it comes to the science of climate change, we are probably already in the revolution state. In particular there is growing concern that some of the physics underpinning the IPCC climate models may be flawed. The work of Ferenc Miskolczi is a case in point.
Some years ago this Hungarian physicist, then working for NASA, discovered a flaw in an equation used in the current climate models discovered a flaw in how those constructing the IPCC climate models deal with the issue of the atmosphere’s boundary conditions. In order to progress this research Dr Miskolczi eventually resigned from NASA claiming his supervisors at NASA tried to suppress discussion and publication of his findings which have since been published in IDŐJÁRÁS, The Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service.
In essence Dr Miskolczi showed that the solution to a differential equation for the greenhouse effect developed in 1922 by Arthur Milne, and central to the current paradigm, wrongly assumed an infinitely thick atmosphere. In re-solving this equation a new term and also a new law of physics have been proposed setting an upper limit to the greenhouse effect. Dr Miskolczi’s theory indicates that any warming from elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide will eventually be offset by a change in atmospheric moisture content.
The idea that water vapour is a negative rather than positive feedback is consistent with the findings of other climate scientists undertaking independent research that is also challenging the current paradigm, for example the work of Dr Roy Spencer.
The importance of the hydrological cycle including water vapour and cloud cover, and how their impacts on the global energy budget should be modelled, have been issues for other climate scientists critical of the current paradigm including Roy Spencer from the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and Henrik Svensmark from the Danish National Space Centre.
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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.