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Global Warming

Call for public comment on NASA Climate Change Summary

If you are concerned over trillion of dollars of future “taxes” from climate policy and massive impact on the third world of high energy prices, Watts highlights a key opportunity for input by August 14th. NASA’s document currently claims climate change is due to anthropogenic causes and strongly advocates control. This parallels government policy on teaching evolution. DLH ————-

An important call for public comment on the NASA Climate Change Science Program

6 08 2008

Foreword: For all of my readers, I can’t stress enough how important Dr. Herman’s message is. Please consider his requests for public comments. Something that most people don’t know is that you do not need to be a citizen of the USA to submit a comment. Time is of the essence, as comments close on August 14th, and there will not be another opportunity. For other bloggers and website operators, this post can be duplicated verbatim, and I encourage you to do so. Thank you for your consideration. – Anthony Read More ›

No Smoking Hot Spot

I’ve been saying for a long time that the computer climate model predictions don’t match up to actual observations. The global warming hysterics have been in denial trying to find faults with the observations instead of admitting the plain truth that the models are flawed. Here’s an article by an Australian climate researcher that tells it like it is. Quite refreshing.

No smoking hot spot
David Evans | July 18, 2008
The Australian

I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.

FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I’ve been following the global warming debate closely for years.

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

Read More ›

PeerGate review scandal at American Physical Society

The American Physical Society alleged that Lord Monckton‘s paper Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered was not peer reviewed when Monckton in fact thoroughly revised his paper in response to APS peer review. Monckton immediately demanded retraction, accountability and an apology.

The Editor of the American Physical Society‘s Forum on Physics and Society launched a debate on global warming, inviting Lord Monckton to submit a paper for the opposition. After news that a major scientific organization was holding a debate on IPCC’s global warming, someone at the APS posted an indirect front page disclamation plus two very bold red disclamations in the Forum’s contents, and into the paper itself:
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Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered

The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley . . .”

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Alleging that a Peer of the Realm violated scientific peer review – when in fact Lord Monckton had spent substantial effort responding to the APS’s peer review – is just not done! As circulated by to CCNet, and as noted by Dennis T. Avery at ICECAP,Lord Monckton responded immediately, emphatically demanding redress and an apology as follows: Read More ›

So much for the “scientific consensus” regarding man-made global warming

As I recall, there’s another consensus in science…something in biology about how we got here… Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate Michael Asher (Blog) – July 16, 2008 9:35 PM The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming “incontrovertible.” In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,”There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC Read More ›

The Earth’s Thermostat

I wrote a longish reply to someone on an obscure forum about global warming and thought as long as I put the work into it I should reproduce it to a wider audience so here it is:

You didn’t figure out the shoe size/salary correlation. It’s a classic example in why correlation doesn’t equal causation.

On the face of it’s a strong correlation. The reason it’s strong is so many people with small shoes are children who don’t earn any salary at all.

Read More ›

Climate Change Delusion makes the DSM-IV

Psychiatrists in Australia have identified “Climate Change Delusion” as the latest mental disorder sure to make it into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). That’s the head shrinker’s bible if you don’t know.

Doomed to a fatal delusion over climate change

Andrew Bolt
July 09, 2008 12:00am
For The Herald Sun

PSYCHIATRISTS have detected the first case of “climate change delusion” – and they haven’t even yet got to Kevin Rudd and his global warming guru.

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.”

(So have Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery, Profit of Doom Al Gore and Sir Richard Brazen, but I digress.)

“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.

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?

Of course, we can laugh at this — and must — but the price for such folly may soon be your job, or at least your cash.

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That’s What Happens in a “Greenhouse.” Duh!

As DaveScott has pointed out in this space on several occasions, increased levels of atmospheric CO2 is, in at least some very important respects, a good thing.  Now Nature reports scientists are reaching the same conclusion here (sub required). Barley, beets (for those who like food that tastes like dirt) and wheat production increased by 10% when exposed to the year 2050 CO2 levels predicted by some climate models.

Does Naturalism Aid the Environment?

Cross posted at The Christian Watershed

One of the biggest issues trends in the West – especially in America – is for people to go ‘green’ in what they do. Whether it be from getting a hybrid vehicle, to eating organic foods, to just installing energy efficient light bulbs, it is not considered chic to be ‘green.’

Though I happen to believe this is just a trend (I believe American society, at least the younger generation as a whole, to be nihilistic, narcissistic, and ‘empty-selves,’ thus concern for something other than themselves won’t last long), it is a trend that is much needed in the current world. I think all can agree that humans in the last two centuries have done a horrible job being good stewards of the environment.

On quick look at the Los Angeles skyline and we can see exactly what pollution can do. Global Warming aside, the fact does remain that Co2 emission is harmful for the environment and humans (look at asthma rates per capita in bigger cities as opposed to those in the country). This also doesn’t ignore the landfills that are constantly taking up space, the burning of fossil fuels, the toxic waste dumps that are harming land, and just random trash being strewn about on the sides of the road. Humans have done an absolutely horrible job at taking care of this world.

Should this environmental crisis surprise us though? Consumerism and humanism – focusing on ourselves and ignoring other species and even other humans – has left us blind to the effects of our desire for more. We are now left in desperate need for a solution, but can science help us? Read More ›

Trees regulate photosynthesis temperature – by design?

Leaves have been found to regulate temperature to “around 21.4° Celsius plus or minus 2.2 degrees,” during photosynthesis. That appears to me to be a design to increase or optimize photosynthesis.

ID Hypothesis: Trees, and other biotic systems regulate leaf temperature to increase or optimize photosynthesis. There will be temperature and/or humidity sensors and transpiration regulation systems to achieve this temperature control.
Corollary: Net primary productivity would be substantially lower without such temperature regulation.
Global Warming Impact: This finding may invalidate tree ring temperature proxies in extrapolating to past temperatures to evaluate climate change.
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Goldilocks tree leaves
by Susan Milius, June 11th, 2008,

Sweating in the heat or huddling in the cold keeps temperatures favorable
JUST RIGHTTree leaves can do plenty to keep their temperatures just right for photosynthesis. Read More ›

CNN article on Solar Power Sats

HT to Eric Anderson for the link.

How to harvest solar power? Beam it down from space!

By Lara Farrar
For CNN

Story Highlights

-Concept to beam solar power from satellites gains new global momentum

-Massive satellites would beam solar energy back to ground-based receivers

-Pentagon study says could be used for military operations, developing nations

Jyoti is the Hindi word for light. It’s something Pranav Mehta has never had to live without. And he is lucky. Near where he lives in Gujarat — one of the most prosperous states in India — thousands of rural villages lack electricity or struggle with an intermittent supply at best. Read More ›

Times: Forget Climate Change

Repeating what I’ve been saying for a long time – there are better ways to spend money than a preemptive strike on global warming. The UK Times publishes an article about one of those ways. Times Online May 30, 2008 Mark Henderson, Science Editor, Copenhagen ‘Forget climate change, we should spend on nutrition’ Malnutrition should be the world’s major priority for aid and development, a panel of eight leading economists, including five Nobel laureates, declared yesterday. The provision of supplements of vitamin A and zinc to children in developing countries, to prevent avoidable deficiencies that affect hundreds of millions of children, is the most cost-effective way of making the world a better place, the Copenhagen Consensus initiative has found. Three Read More ›

Freeman Dyson – Environmentalism: The New Secular Religion

Freeman Dyson (one of our greatest living thinkers IMO) talks about Global Warming in a New York book reviewThe Question of Global Warming . Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe Read More ›

Realism & Equity on Climate Change Policies

Before spending trillions of dollars trying to control climate change, shouldn’t we get a second opinion on both the science and policy options? S. Fred Singer, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science, U. Virginia & former director of the US Weather Satellite Service weighs in onThe Global Warming Debate. He reviews evidence against anthropogenic global warming detailed in the report Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate Summary for Policymakers of the Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change Singer notes:

My purpose here is to show that this concern is misplaced, that human activities are not influencing the global climate in a perceptible way, and that, in any case, very little can be done about global climate change. It is unstoppable; we should not even try to influence it. . . .I will also argue that –should it occur — a modest warming is on the whole beneficial. Read More ›

Timothy Ball: “Still just a theory”

Prominent climatologist Dr. Timothy Ball talks about the links between evolution and global warming controversies. HT to UD subscriber Frost for the link to the article. Environmental extremism must be put in its place in the climate debate By Dr. Tim Ball & Tom Harris Wednesday, January 9, 2008 Canada Free Press Many people are starting to realize that much of what they’ve been told about climate change by governments, the United Nations and crusading celebrities is simply wrong. Not surprisingly, the assertion that “the science is settled” in a field the public is coming to understand is both immature and quickly evolving, is triggering growing public skepticism. Alarmists respond by upping the ante, making even more extreme and nonsensical Read More ›