Climate & Climate Change

“Six scientists from some of the leading scientific institutions in the United States have issued what amounts to an unambiguous warning to the world: civilisation itself is threatened by global warming.

They also implicitly criticise the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for underestimating the scale of sea-level rises this century as a result of melting glaciers and polar ice sheets.

Instead of sea levels rising by about 40 centimetres, as the IPCC predicts in one of its computer forecasts, the true rise might be as great as several metres by 2100. That is why, they say, planet Earth today is in “imminent peril”…

Read the complete article entitled ‘The Earth Today Stands in Imminent Peril’ by Steve Connor: http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2675747.ece

The piece finishes with comment that “a feasible strategy for planetary rescue almost surely requires a means of extracting [greenhouse gases] from the air.”

“Alfred Wong of the University of California, Los Angeles, at last week’s meeting of the American Geophysical Union, in Acapulco, … reckons the problem is not so much that CO2 is being thrown away, but that it is not being thrown far enough. According to his calculations, a little helping hand would turn the Earth’s magnetic field into a conveyor belt that would vent the gas into outer space, whence it would never return…

Read the compete article from The Economist entitled ‘Stairway to Heaven’ here: http://www.economist.com/research/articlesbysubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=348924&story_id=9253976

“With understandable reluctance, Prime Minister Howard recently donned the political hair-shirt of a carbon trading system. On the very same day, NASA chief Michael Griffin commented in a USA radio interview that “I am not sure that it is fair to say that (global warming) is a problem that we must wrestle with”.

NASA, of course, is an agency that knows a thing or two about climate change. As Griffin added: “We study global climate change, that is in our authorization, we think we do it rather well. I’m proud of that, but NASA is not an agency chartered to, quote, battle climate change”. Such a clear statement that science accomplishment should carry primacy over policy advice is both welcome and overdue, and especially so given that most Australian science agencies conflate these two things.

Nonetheless, there is something worrying about one of Dr Griffin’s other statements, which said that “I have no doubt …. that a trend of global warming exists”. Griffin seems here to be referring to HUMAN-CAUSED global warming, but irrespective of that his opinion is unsupported by the evidence.

The salient facts are these. First, the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the IPCC show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this 8 year-long temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 ppm (4%) in atmospheric CO2.

Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, show little if any global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17%). (Note that the global warming trends of between 1 and 2 deg. C/century many people quote based on satellite temperature measurements have NOT been corrected for these non-greenhouse factors).

Third, there are strong indications from solar studies that earth’s current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades. This cooling, which may already have started, could prove to be of damaging magnitude.

How then is it possible for Dr Griffin to assert so boldly that human-caused global warming is happening right now? Well, he is in good company for similar statements have been made recently by several western heads of state at the G8 summit meeting. For instance, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who possesses a PhD in Physics, asserts that climate change (i.e. global warming) “is also essentially caused by humankind”. And US President George Bush in turn implies a human causation for warming when he says that “America and other nations will set a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases”.

In actual fact, there is every doubt whether any global warming at all is occurring at the moment, let alone human (or carbon dioxide) caused warming. For leading politicians to be asserting to the contrary indicates that something is very wrong with their chain of scientific advice, for they are clearly being deceived. That this should be the case is an international political scandal of high order which, in turn, raises the question of where their advice is coming from.

In Australia, the advice trail leads from government agencies such as CSIRO and the Australian Greenhouse Office through to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations. As leading economist David Henderson has pointed out, it is extremely dangerous for an unelected and unaccountable body like the IPCC to have a monopoly on climate policy advice to governments. And even more so because, at heart, the IPCC is a political and not a scientific agency.

Australia does not ask the World Bank to set its annual budget, and neither should it allow the notoriously alarmist IPCC to set its climate policy.

It is past time for those who have deceived governments and misled the public regarding dangerous human-caused global warming to be called to account. Aided by hysterical posturing by green NGOs, their actions have led to the cornering of Australia’s government on the issue, and the likely implementation of futile emission policies that will impose direct extra costs on every household and enterprise in Australia to no identifiable benefit.

Senior Kansas geologist Lee Gerhard commented that NASA administrator “Griffin’s statement focuses on the hubris that affects much of public policy (on global warming). It is great to know that someone out there besides geologists understands that humans do not dominate earth’s dynamic systems”. Not only do humans not dominate earth’s current temperature trend, but the likelihood is that further large sums of public money are shortly going to be committed to, theoretically, combat warming when cooling is the more likely short-term climatic eventuality.

In one of the more expensive ironies of history, the expenditure of more than US$50 billion dollars on research into global warming since 1990 has failed to demonstrate any human-caused climate trend, let alone a dangerous one. Yet that expenditure will pale into insignificance compared with the squandering of money that is going to accompany the introduction of a carbon trading or taxation system. The swingeing costs of thus expiating comfortable middle class angst are, of course, going to be imposed preferentially upon the poor and underprivileged.”

by Professor Bob Carter,
An environmental scientist who studies ancient climate change,
@ James Cook University.

This is the unedited version of a shorter piece published today in The Courier Mail: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21920043-27197,00.html

“Washington, D.C. – The National Center for Public Policy Research and the Project 21 black leadership network challenged senior Caterpillar, Inc. officials at the company’s stockholder meeting Wednesday, asking them to explain Caterpillar’s decision to join the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), which is lobbying for caps on carbon dioxide emissions.

“USCAP’s goal of achieving mandatory federal restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions would drive up the cost of energy and disproportionately harm low income people, Caterpillar’s customers, and shareholders.

“During the meeting’s question-and-answer session, Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli questioned Caterpillar executives about whether the company performed a complete cost-benefit analysis on the effects a cap-and-trade policy on carbon emissions would have on Caterpillar, its customers and America’s poor prior to the company joining the group, which lobbies for such policies.

“I asked the head of Caterpillar, James Owens, three different times if the company had done a cost-benefit analysis and he said ‘no,'” said Ms. Borelli. “He also said that he was not planning to do one in the future. Unfortunately, America will be paying for this incompetence in the form of rising energy costs.”

“Mr. Owens also acknowledged that he had received and read the coalition letter sent to him by over 70 national and state policy groups and representatives of mining, ranching, forestry, construction and agricultural industries, urging him to withdraw Caterpillar’s membership in USCAP. The coalition letter to Mr. Owens is available at www.nationalcenter.org/caterpillar_climate.pdf.

“The Congressional Budget Office reported in April that the restrictions sought by USCAP would especially harm the poorest fifth of the U.S. population. As a percentage of wages, the poorest quintile would pay nearly double the costs borne by the richest quintile for energy. In addition, the CBO study found that “current workers and investors in [energy] industries would experience costs in the form of lower wages, job losses, and reduced stock values” as a result of a cap-and-trade emissions policy.

“Tom Borelli, senior fellow with The National Center for Public Policy Research and portfolio manager for the Free Enterprise Action Fund, asked Mr. Owens if he had read the CBO report. Mr. Owens responded that he had not.

“Ms. Borelli also pointed out to Mr. Owens that Caterpillar’s involvement with USCAP had already lost the company at least one major customer, Murray Energy Corporation. Mr. Owens acknowledged this and said he was sorry about it.

“It’s outrageous that a CEO would harm his key customers without doing any due diligence to determine the impact on his customers and shareholders,” said Dr. Borelli. “This is why shareholders need to demand a debate regarding the impacts of cap-and-trade on their investment. Owens’ ignorance on the issue of cap-and-trade could open up his company to shareholder lawsuits.”

“After only ten minutes into a scheduled 30-minute question-and-answer session, Caterpillar executives abruptly ended the meeting.

“The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, non-profit educational foundation based in Washington, D.C. Project 21, a program supported by The National Center, has been a leading voice of the African-American community since 1992.”

End of Media Release.

“Mote and Georg Kaser, a glaciologist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, write in American Scientist that the decline in Kilimanjaro’s ice has been going on for more than a century and that most of it occurred before 1953, while evidence of atmospheric warming there before 1970 is inconclusive.

“They attribute the ice decline primarily to complex interacting factors, including the vertical shape of the ice’s edge, which allows it to shrink but not expand. They also cite decreased snowfall, which reduces ice buildup and determines how much energy the ice absorbs — because the whiteness of new snow reflects more sunlight, the lack of new snow allows the ice to absorb more of the sun’s energy.

“Unlike midlatitude glaciers, which are warmed and melted by surrounding air in the summer, the ice loss on Kilimanjaro is driven strictly by solar radiation…

Read more here: http://www.physorg.com/news100885146.html

And here: http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/06/12/climate.kilimanjaro.reut/index.html

And Real Climate had an article on tropical glacier retreat way back in May 2005:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/05/tropical-glacier-retreat

There was flooding and big surf along the New South Wales coast yesterday.

I drove down to Forster last night and thought I would check out the surf this morning. I watched one guy brave the very large waves. He caught a couple and then came in with his surfboard in two pieces – broken.

The storm should have started to fill up the dams north of Sydney.

What do they say about Australia? A land of drought and flooding rains. And we also have some good surf beaches!