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Global Warming Archive

Sunday

13

June 2010

0

COMMENTS

IPCC Faked Consensus

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment

No big surprise here, just more evidence of the massive fraud the warm-mongers attempted to pull on the world:

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change misled the press and public into believing that thousands of scientists backed its claims on manmade global warming, according to Mike Hulme, a prominent climate scientist and IPCC insider.  The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was “only a few dozen experts,” he states in a paper for Progress in Physical Geography, co-authored with student Martin Mahony.

“Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous,” the paper states unambiguously, adding that they rendered “the IPCC vulnerable to outside criticism.”

Hulme, Professor of Climate Change in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia –  the university of Climategate fame — is the founding Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and one of the UK’s most prominent climate scientists. Among his many roles in the climate change establishment, Hulme was the IPCC’s co-ordinating Lead Author for its chapter on ‘Climate scenario development’ for its Third Assessment Report and a contributing author of several other chapters.

Sunday

28

February 2010

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COMMENTS

As Transparent As Mud

Written by , Posted in Waste & Government Reform

The Chamber of Commerce wanted to know what the White House Council on Environmental Quality was up to when it came to “climate change.”  So they filed a FOIA request.  Should be pretty straight forward, yes?  It’s not like there are any national security secrets involved.

But here is what they got in response from the most transparent government ever to grace these United States:

CEQ-FOIAHat-tip: The Foundry

Sunday

17

January 2010

1

COMMENTS

Not So Settled Science

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment

Remember this the next time they say that the IPCC reports on “settled” science:

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.

In court that’s called hearsay.  Why is the UN claiming that it’s “science?”

Monday

11

January 2010

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COMMENTS

Biomass Subsidies Backfire

Written by , Posted in Economics & the Economy, Free Markets

More unintended consequences from government interventionism in the market, via WaPo:

…In a matter of months, the Biomass Crop Assistance Program — a small provision tucked into the 2008 farm bill — has mushroomed into a half-a-billion dollar subsidy that is funneling taxpayer dollars to sawmills and lumber wholesalers, encouraging them to sell their waste to be converted into high-tech biofuels. In doing so, it is shutting off the supply of cheap timber byproducts to the nation’s composite wood manufacturers, who make panels for home entertainment centers and kitchen cabinets.While it remains unclear whether Congress or the Obama administration will push to revamp the program, even some businesses that should benefit from the subsidy are beginning to question its value.

“It’s not right. It’s not serving any purpose,” said Bob Jordan, president of Jordan Lumber & Supply in North Carolina, even while noting that he might be able to get twice as much money for his mill’s sawdust and shavings under the program.

“The best thing they could do is forget about it. All it’s doing is driving the price of wood up.”

Subsidies, by their very nature, distort markets.  While this specific outcome may or may have not been foreseeable, that there would have been some destruction by forcing a good to be used for a different purpose than the market generally allocates it should have been obvious.

But don’t count on government deciding to “forget about it,” despite the damaging evidence.  The deep-seated desire of some to save civilization by promoting “green technology” is based on a near-religious fanaticism in support of AGW.  If it hasn’t been shaken by ClimateGate and today’s global cooling, a little economics isn’t going to do it either.  The only hope is to vote them all out.

Wednesday

16

December 2009

0

COMMENTS

Copenhagen Boondoggle Proves It Ain’t About Science

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment

The Copenhagen talks aren’t about climate science.  They aren’t about carefully crafting policy to deal with scientifically calculated problems.  For one thing, we know that the science has been cynically manipulated to the point that the very scientific process itself has been forever undermined.

No, Copenhagen is not about science.  It’s about two things: power and ideology.

The violent protests taking place outside the conference probably look familiar to you. They should.  We’ve seen all this before.  It’s the same bunch who have been protesting since the 60’s – radical leftwing agitators who hate capitalism.  They’ve found a new home in the confines of ecoreligion, where they can again comfortably lob emotional attacks on the capitalist order.  These are ideologically minded radicals; brainwashed, capitalist-hating and know-nothing college youths; and other social malcontents.  They don’t have the first clue as to what the science does or does not say, nor do they care.  All they know is that the West is evil and capitalism has got to go.

Been there, done that. We’ve heard it all before.

They are quite clear in what they want.  Marching under the banner of “Climate Justice Action,” some of these leftwingers want redistribution as “reparations” for “ecological debt.”  They are demanding up to $45 trillion.  This is attempted confiscation and political revolution, not science.

gore-ap

Dance, puppets!

Inside the conference, it’s all about power.  These people don’t give a damn about the environment, climate change, or whatever buzz words they’re throwing out to the world at large.  Oh, sure, they’ve invited plenty of people who have been duped into believing such things, but those actually making the decisions aren’t there to save the planet or any such feel-good nonsense.  They’re there because the world order is suddenly up for negotiation.  Power is being redistributed, and everyone wants to maximize their acquisitions.

Don’t believe me? Just look at the two sides. Where are the fault lines? The so-called developing nations want power redistributed to them, while the current powers seek desperately to defend the status quo.  The entire affair is best understood through the prism of realist foreign policy.  It’s power politics, plain and simple.

This might actually be good, as it reduces the chances of all sides settling on some economy destroying agreement that leaves none better off.  If they’re all indeed fighting to preserve or enhance their own power structures, we might just skate by without any freedom-reducing agreements to “save the planet” from imagined catastrophe.

Update: Confirmation that it’s not about science (via The Foundry):

Janos Pasztor—the Director of U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon’s Climate Change Support Team—was characterizing the nature of the talks between the rich and poor nations of the world when he said the following: “This is not a climate-change negotiation … It’s about something much more fundamental. It’s about economic strength.” The nations at the negotiation, he added, “just have to slug it out.”

Update II: Hugo Chavez gets wild applause for saying that capitalism is the “silent and terrible ghost in the room.”

Thursday

10

December 2009

0

COMMENTS

Tuesday

1

December 2009

0

COMMENTS

Baghdad Gibbs: Global Warming "Not In Dispute"

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment

Robert “Baghdad Bob” Gibbs chimes in on Climategate:

“[O]n the order of several thousand scientists have come to the conclusion that climate change is happening.  I don’t think that’s anything that is, quite frankly, among — most people — in dispute anymore.”

Here are 450 peer-reviewed papers questioning the indisputable consensus.

Robert-Gibbs-the-Info-OfficerThere are no infidels in Baghdad.  Global warming is not in dispute.

Monday

30

November 2009

0

COMMENTS

We’re All Gonna Die! Pt. 28

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment

Just in case you didn’t think I was serious about the propaganda push leading up to Copenhagen, we now get a new level of hysterics even for the chicken little crowd:

Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, believes only around 10 per cent of the planet’s population – around half a billion people – will survive if global temperatures rise by 4C.

Anderson’s warning comes just eight days before global leaders meet in Copenhagen for the most crucial talks on climate change reversal since the Rio summit in 1992. Current Met Office projections reveal that the lack of action in the intervening 17 years – in which emissions of climate changing gases such as carbon dioxide have soared – has set the world on a path towards potential 4C rises as early as 2060, and 6C rises by the end of the century.

Anderson, who advises the government on climate change, said the consequences were “terrifying”.

“For humanity it’s a matter of life or death,” he said. “We will not make all human beings extinct as a few people with the right sort of resources may put themselves in the right parts of the world and survive.

When I began the “we’re all gonna die!” series, it was at least somewhat of an exaggeration.  Now it’s just a plain ol’ factual description of what they alarmists are saying day in, day out.

Sunday

29

November 2009

0

COMMENTS

Climategate, Part II

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment

The next round of Climategate is upon us.  The Climategate emails exposed the unscientific behavior of those behind the so-called global warming consensus.  But the emails were only part of the story.  Also released was a wealth of data and computer programs, which require longer to analyze and digest.  Now they are starting to paint a similarly disturbing picture:

Since these documents are more technical than the emails, however, analysis has been slower in coming. And, as in the case of the emails, there’s unmistakable evidence of fudging and book-cooking, all designed to give the impression that the warming in the twentieth century is unprecedented. The evidence is all the more damning because of the expletive-laced complaints of programmers tasked with altering code to corral unruly, unreliable, and sometimes cherry-picked data in a pre-determined direction. At one point, a poor, exasperated programmer, “Harry,” bemoans “the hopeless state of our databases.” (See telling examples and good analysis of these code notes here, here, here, and here.)

Hiding and manipulating data and code are especially serious in climate science because, as Willis Eschenbach has pointed out, “unlike all other physical sciences, [climate science] does not study things—instead it studies averages . . . This is because climate by definition is the average of weather over a suitably long period of time (typically taken as a minimum of 30 years).” So without the background information, it’s almost impossible for other scientists to verify—or falsify—your results.

…We may just now be seeing the potential for this new way of transferring and analyzing information. In Memogate, remember, we were talking about a single one-page Word document. With Climategate, we’re dealing with thousands of detailed, often technical documents. They may even have been compiled internally at the CRU in response to a Freedom of Information request and were then leaked instead. So the revenge of the nerds could be especially brutal and prolonged. Already, insights and analyses are proliferating on the climate blogosphere so quickly that it’s becoming impossible for even the best consolidators to keep up.

On top of this comes the revelation that raw data used to construct the temperature record has been destroyed, and all the remains is the adjusted numbers.

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

Some manner of adjustment of the data is expected and part of the process, but without the raw data to compare it to, we can never verify the accuracy of the methodology used, or even whether it was a good faith effort to correct for other flaws or simply cynical manipulation of the data to achieve the desired result.  And on the cynical manipulation front, the evidence against the warmists is piling up.

Sunday

22

November 2009

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COMMENTS