So Japan, Spain, and Italy supposedly owe $33 Billion in fines for failing to meet their promise to reduce "greenhouse gas" emissions.....already? They must be really happy about that. Do you think they will pay up? They're going to give this to the United Nations who will then give it to the developing nations? What a total farce. And it is all based on lies, lies and more lies.
Peter
Global Warming Lies Create a Climate of Crisis
By Alan Caruba
Japan, Spain, and Italy face as much as $33 billion in fines for having failed to meet their agreement to reduce so-called “greenhouse gas” emissions.
The United Nations conference in Bali, attended by some 15,000 participants and observers, is likely to make future generations conclude that ours was deranged to be discussing how humans could have any affect whatever on the climate. They will, in retrospect, agree that the global warming theory was a lie whose agenda was to retard anything that might extend and enhance life on earth.
The Protocol is based entirely on a lie that predicts dramatic and imminent global warming. Global warmers insist that carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced, but carbon dioxide does not cause climate change. Climatologists will tell you that any rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not precede, but follows warming cycles.
The science is well known, but hucksters like the odious Al Gore and those behind the original Kyoto Protocol, with the media as accessories, have created a climate of crisis.
It’s a very good thing that our Senate voted unanimously in 1997 against binding America to the United Nations Kyoto Protocol on Climate Control and that both the Clinton and Bush Administrations refused to act on the proposed limits. The reason for the Senate resolution was to avoid “serious harm to the economy of the United States.”
A November 30 Bloomberg News article by Kristian Rix and Mathew Carr reported that Japan, Spain, and Italy face as much as $33 billion in fines as the result of having failed to meet their agreement to reduce so-called “greenhouse gas” emissions. These three nations are deemed the “worst performers among 36 nations that agreed to curb carbon dioxide gases that cause climate change.”
Among the nations exempt from the Kyoto Protocol are China and India, which represent a combined two of the six billion people on planet Earth. The idea that limits on carbon dioxide emissions could be achieved without their participation is idiotic.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) plays a minor role in determining the Earth’s climate but at the same time plays an essential role in the maintenance of all of the Earth’s vegetation, whether it takes the form of crops, jungles, forests, or just someone’s front lawn. Without CO2 all animal life, including our own, dies because of its dependence on food crops.
The Earth’s atmosphere is composed of 78% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.038% carbon dioxide, and trace amounts of other gases, including water vapor. We call this “air” and humans depend on the oxygen content for life. At the same time all six billion of us individually exhale about two pounds of carbon dioxide every day. By contrast, Nature emits about 30 times more CO2 than humans. The oceans of the world absorb and release CO2 all the time. This is Nature’s balance that maintains all life, animal and vegetable, on earth.
Consider now how many schools, hospitals, bridges, roads, and other benefits to their citizens that $33 billion represents to Japan, Spain, and Italy. Such fines will be transferred to the coffers of the United Nations for having failed to curb CO2 emissions that are actually a benefit to the Earth!
An entirely bogus system of “carbon credits” has been created to transfer huge amounts of money from industrialized nations accused of producing too much CO2 to those nations that, for lack of development — failed economies — will garner funding as they “sell” their excess credits. The same system would allow various industries to sell the same worthless credits to those — primarily producers and users of energy — deemed to be major CO2 “polluters.”
Even though the U.S. Supreme Court has fallen prey to the lie that CO2 represents a form of “pollution” and should be regulated, the known science renders this decision an egregious juridical error
The Earth, over billions of years, has gone through cycles of warming and cooling that are well established. It has gone through periods when the CO2 content in the atmosphere was far higher than today. The latest cooling period is called the mini-ice age and lasted from around 1300 to 1850. The Earth has been warming naturally since then.
There is no dramatic warming occurring. Predictions of this are based on totally flawed computer models, none of which can begin to approximate the sheer chaos and complexity of the Earth’s weather system.
These computer models, put forth by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control, have been repeatedly revealed to be inaccurate to the point of deliberate deception. The constant assertion that there is a “consensus” among scientists that global warming is caused by humans is yet another part of the lie.
As the anti-capitalist forces meet in Bali, the rest of us must demand that we shall not be penalized and threatened by limits imposed on industries and agriculture around the world.
The people of the world must not submit to a lie of global warming that is intended to deprive them of the future benefits that energy use, improved transportation, technological innovations, and the expanded production of food portends.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alan Caruba is the author of Right Answers: Separating Fact from Fantasy. His weekly commentaries are posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center.
ACaruba@aol.com
http://www.anxietycenter.com/
Friday, December 14, 2007
More Doubt About Computer Climate Models
It is so easy to tweak the data that goes into a computer climate model in order to generate the desired results --everyone knows that. When the currently used models try to predict actual measured temperatures, they fail; so say the authors of this recent study. Making predictions of future climate change based on these inadequate models is not justified, not even close.
Peter
Science News
source:
New Study Increases Concerns About Climate Model Reliability
ScienceDaily (Dec. 12, 2007) — A new study comparing the composite output of 22 leading global climate models with actual climate data finds that the models do an unsatisfactory job of mimicking climate change in key portions of the atmosphere.
This research, published online in the Royal Meteorological Society's International Journal of Climatology, raises new concerns about the reliability of models used to forecast global warming.
"The usual discussion is whether the climate model forecasts of Earth's climate 100 years or so into the future are realistic," said the lead author, Dr. David H. Douglass from the University of Rochester. "Here we have something more fundamental: Can the models accurately explain the climate from the recent past? "It seems that the answer is no."
Scientists from Rochester, the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and the University of Virginia compared the climate change "forecasts" from the 22 most widely-cited global circulation models with tropical temperature data collected by surface, satellite and balloon sensors. The models predicted that the lower atmosphere should warm significantly more than it actually did.
"Models are very consistent in forecasting a significant difference between climate trends at the surface and in the troposphere, the layer of atmosphere between the surface and the stratosphere," said Dr. John Christy, director of UAH's Earth System Science Center. "The models forecast that the troposphere should be warming more than the surface and that this trend should be especially pronounced in the tropics.
"When we look at actual climate data, however, we do not see accelerated warming in the tropical troposphere. Instead, the lower and middle atmosphere are warming the same or less than the surface. For those layers of the atmosphere, the warming trend we see in the tropics is typically less than half of what the models forecast."
The 22 climate models used in this study are the same models used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), which recently shared a Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore.
The atmospheric temperature data were from two versions of data collected by sensors aboard NOAA satellites since late 1979, plus several sets of temperature data gathered twice a day at dozens of points in the tropics by thermometers carried into the atmosphere by helium balloons. The surface data were from three datasets.
After years of rigorous analysis and testing, the high degree of agreement between the various atmospheric data sets gives an equally high level of confidence in the basic accuracy of the climate data.
"The last 25 years constitute a period of more complete and accurate observations, and more realistic modeling efforts," said Dr. Fred Singer from the University of Virginia. "Nonetheless, the models are seen to disagree with the observations. We suggest, therefore, that projections of future climate based on these models should be viewed with much caution."
The findings of this study contrast strongly with those of a recent study that used 19 of the same climate models and similar climate datasets. That study concluded that any difference between model forecasts and atmospheric climate data is probably due to errors in the data.
"The question was, what would the models 'forecast' for upper air climate change over the past 25 years and how would that forecast compare to reality?" said Christy. "To answer that we needed climate model results that matched the actual surface temperature changes during that same time. If the models got the surface trend right but the tropospheric trend wrong, then we could pinpoint a potential problem in the models.
"As it turned out, the average of all of the climate models forecasts came out almost like the actual surface trend in the tropics. That meant we could do a very robust test of their reproduction of the lower atmosphere.
"Instead of averaging the model forecasts to get a result whose surface trends match reality, the earlier study looked at the widely scattered range of results from all of the model runs combined. Many of the models had surface trends that were quite different from the actual trend," Christy said. "Nonetheless, that study concluded that since both the surface and upper atmosphere trends were somewhere in that broad range of model results, any disagreement between the climate data and the models was probably due to faulty data.
"We think our experiment is more robust and provides more meaningful results."
Adapted from materials provided by Wiley-Blackwell.
Peter
Science News
source:
New Study Increases Concerns About Climate Model Reliability
ScienceDaily (Dec. 12, 2007) — A new study comparing the composite output of 22 leading global climate models with actual climate data finds that the models do an unsatisfactory job of mimicking climate change in key portions of the atmosphere.
This research, published online in the Royal Meteorological Society's International Journal of Climatology, raises new concerns about the reliability of models used to forecast global warming.
"The usual discussion is whether the climate model forecasts of Earth's climate 100 years or so into the future are realistic," said the lead author, Dr. David H. Douglass from the University of Rochester. "Here we have something more fundamental: Can the models accurately explain the climate from the recent past? "It seems that the answer is no."
Scientists from Rochester, the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and the University of Virginia compared the climate change "forecasts" from the 22 most widely-cited global circulation models with tropical temperature data collected by surface, satellite and balloon sensors. The models predicted that the lower atmosphere should warm significantly more than it actually did.
"Models are very consistent in forecasting a significant difference between climate trends at the surface and in the troposphere, the layer of atmosphere between the surface and the stratosphere," said Dr. John Christy, director of UAH's Earth System Science Center. "The models forecast that the troposphere should be warming more than the surface and that this trend should be especially pronounced in the tropics.
"When we look at actual climate data, however, we do not see accelerated warming in the tropical troposphere. Instead, the lower and middle atmosphere are warming the same or less than the surface. For those layers of the atmosphere, the warming trend we see in the tropics is typically less than half of what the models forecast."
The 22 climate models used in this study are the same models used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), which recently shared a Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore.
The atmospheric temperature data were from two versions of data collected by sensors aboard NOAA satellites since late 1979, plus several sets of temperature data gathered twice a day at dozens of points in the tropics by thermometers carried into the atmosphere by helium balloons. The surface data were from three datasets.
After years of rigorous analysis and testing, the high degree of agreement between the various atmospheric data sets gives an equally high level of confidence in the basic accuracy of the climate data.
"The last 25 years constitute a period of more complete and accurate observations, and more realistic modeling efforts," said Dr. Fred Singer from the University of Virginia. "Nonetheless, the models are seen to disagree with the observations. We suggest, therefore, that projections of future climate based on these models should be viewed with much caution."
The findings of this study contrast strongly with those of a recent study that used 19 of the same climate models and similar climate datasets. That study concluded that any difference between model forecasts and atmospheric climate data is probably due to errors in the data.
"The question was, what would the models 'forecast' for upper air climate change over the past 25 years and how would that forecast compare to reality?" said Christy. "To answer that we needed climate model results that matched the actual surface temperature changes during that same time. If the models got the surface trend right but the tropospheric trend wrong, then we could pinpoint a potential problem in the models.
"As it turned out, the average of all of the climate models forecasts came out almost like the actual surface trend in the tropics. That meant we could do a very robust test of their reproduction of the lower atmosphere.
"Instead of averaging the model forecasts to get a result whose surface trends match reality, the earlier study looked at the widely scattered range of results from all of the model runs combined. Many of the models had surface trends that were quite different from the actual trend," Christy said. "Nonetheless, that study concluded that since both the surface and upper atmosphere trends were somewhere in that broad range of model results, any disagreement between the climate data and the models was probably due to faulty data.
"We think our experiment is more robust and provides more meaningful results."
Adapted from materials provided by Wiley-Blackwell.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Pope Benedict Condemns Global Warming Scare-Mongering Based On Dubious Ideology
Some times there is conflict between religion and science. The belief in man-caused global warming and climate change has been called the "new religion", or like a religion for the blind faith in global warming as preached by Al Gore that transcends common sense and rational scientific observation. With that in mind, it is a surprise to me that Pope Benedict has just come out with a statement basically supporting global warming skeptics. I'd say the Pope has got it just right. He must have some very sensible and educated advisers.
Peter
source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=501316&in_page_id=1811&ito=1490
The Pope condemns the climate change prophets
By SIMON CALDWELL -
Attack: Pope Benedict criticised climate-change prophets of doomPope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.
The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.
The German-born Pontiff said that while some concerns may be valid it was vital that the international community based its policies on science rather than the dogma of the environmentalist movement.
His remarks will be made in his annual message for World Peace Day on January 1, but they were released as delegates from all over the world convened on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali for UN climate change talks.
The 80-year-old Pope said the world needed to care for the environment but not to the point where the welfare of animals and plants was given a greater priority than that of mankind.
"Humanity today is rightly concerned about the ecological balance of tomorrow," he said in the message entitled "The Human Family, A Community of Peace".
"It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions, and above all with the aim of reaching agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances.
"If the protection of the environment involves costs, they should be justly distributed, taking due account of the different levels of development of various countries and the need for solidarity with future generations.
"Prudence does not mean failing to accept responsibilities and postponing decisions; it means being committed to making joint decisions after pondering responsibly the road to be taken."
Efforts to protect the environment should seek "agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances", the Pope said.
He added that to further the cause of world peace it was sensible for nations to "choose the path of dialogue rather than the path of unilateral decisions" in how to cooperate responsibly on conserving the planet.
The Pope's message is traditionally sent to heads of government and international organisations.
His remarks reveal that while the Pope acknowledges that problems may be associated with unbridled development and climate change, he believes the case against global warming to be over-hyped.
A broad consensus is developing among the world's scientific community over the evils of climate change.
But there is also an intransigent body of scientific opinion which continues to insist that industrial emissions are not to blame for the phenomenon.
Such scientists point out that fluctuations in the earth's temperature are normal and can often be caused by waves of heat generated by the sun. Other critics of environmentalism have compared the movement to a burgeoning industry in its own right.
In the spring, the Vatican hosted a conference on climate change that was welcomed by environmentalists.
But senior cardinals close to the Vatican have since expressed doubts about a movement which has been likened by critics to be just as dogmatic in its assumptions as any religion.
In October, the Australian Cardinal George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, caused an outcry when he noted that the atmospheric temperature of Mars had risen by 0.5 degrees celsius.
"The industrial-military complex up on Mars can't be blamed for that," he said in a criticism of Australian scientists who had claimed that carbon emissions would force temperatures on earth to rise by almost five degrees by 2070 unless drastic solutions were enforced.
Peter
source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=501316&in_page_id=1811&ito=1490
The Pope condemns the climate change prophets
By SIMON CALDWELL -
Attack: Pope Benedict criticised climate-change prophets of doomPope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.
The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.
The German-born Pontiff said that while some concerns may be valid it was vital that the international community based its policies on science rather than the dogma of the environmentalist movement.
His remarks will be made in his annual message for World Peace Day on January 1, but they were released as delegates from all over the world convened on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali for UN climate change talks.
The 80-year-old Pope said the world needed to care for the environment but not to the point where the welfare of animals and plants was given a greater priority than that of mankind.
"Humanity today is rightly concerned about the ecological balance of tomorrow," he said in the message entitled "The Human Family, A Community of Peace".
"It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions, and above all with the aim of reaching agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances.
"If the protection of the environment involves costs, they should be justly distributed, taking due account of the different levels of development of various countries and the need for solidarity with future generations.
"Prudence does not mean failing to accept responsibilities and postponing decisions; it means being committed to making joint decisions after pondering responsibly the road to be taken."
Efforts to protect the environment should seek "agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances", the Pope said.
He added that to further the cause of world peace it was sensible for nations to "choose the path of dialogue rather than the path of unilateral decisions" in how to cooperate responsibly on conserving the planet.
The Pope's message is traditionally sent to heads of government and international organisations.
His remarks reveal that while the Pope acknowledges that problems may be associated with unbridled development and climate change, he believes the case against global warming to be over-hyped.
A broad consensus is developing among the world's scientific community over the evils of climate change.
But there is also an intransigent body of scientific opinion which continues to insist that industrial emissions are not to blame for the phenomenon.
Such scientists point out that fluctuations in the earth's temperature are normal and can often be caused by waves of heat generated by the sun. Other critics of environmentalism have compared the movement to a burgeoning industry in its own right.
In the spring, the Vatican hosted a conference on climate change that was welcomed by environmentalists.
But senior cardinals close to the Vatican have since expressed doubts about a movement which has been likened by critics to be just as dogmatic in its assumptions as any religion.
In October, the Australian Cardinal George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, caused an outcry when he noted that the atmospheric temperature of Mars had risen by 0.5 degrees celsius.
"The industrial-military complex up on Mars can't be blamed for that," he said in a criticism of Australian scientists who had claimed that carbon emissions would force temperatures on earth to rise by almost five degrees by 2070 unless drastic solutions were enforced.
A New Way For Governments To Stop Global Warming, Generate Revenue, And Control The People......
I propose that the following discussion is one reason why there is so much fear being spread about the dangers of global warming and what they call "climate change. There really is a desire to change how people live their lives. Forced population control is just the beginning. This sounds like some mad scientific fiction story; however there are many people who think this way. They use legitimate concerns about the environment as a smoke screen to fool people about their real agenda. Is this some paranoid conspiracy theory? I don't know, read and decide for yourselves.
Peter
source:
'Tax Parents for Children's Carbon Emissions'
By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International EditorDecember 10, 2007(CNSNews.com) -
Having babies is bad for the planet, and parents of more than two children should be charged a birth levy and annual tax to offset the "greenhouse gases" their child will be responsible for over his or her lifetime.
At the same time, those who use and prescribe contraceptives and sterilization procedures should earn tax relief for such greenhouse friendly services" that help to keep the population size down. These proposals, by an Australian academic, were published in the country's leading medical journal on Monday. They drew a sharp response from a pro-family group.
Australia has a population of around 21.2 million. It recorded 273,500 births over the year ending March 2007, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported last September. Although the total population increase (net migration and natural increase) was the highest to date, Australia's total fertility rate (the average number of babies born to women during the reproductive years of 15-44) has been dropping steadily for decades, from 3.5 in 1961 to 1.76 this year.
In 2004, former Prime Minister John Howard's government announced a drive to counter the declining birthrate, urging parents to aim for three children, and offering families a financial incentive that currently stands at around $3,670. But to Barry Walters, clinical associate professor of obstetric medicine at the University of Western Australia, that undermines the campaign to fight global warming. "Every newborn baby in Australia represents a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions for an average of 80 years, not simply by breathing, but by the profligate consumption of resources typical of our society," he wrote in an article published in the Medical Journal of Australia Monday."
Far from showering financial booty on new mothers and thereby rewarding greenhouse-unfriendly behavior, a 'Baby Levy' in the form of a carbon tax should apply, in line with the 'polluter pays' principle," he argued. Walters said Australian parents who have more than an agreed number of children -- he cited a population-limitation advocacy group as suggesting a ceiling of two -- should pay the cost of planting trees to offset the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) the additional children will produce. (Trees absorb CO2, which along with other greenhouse gases is often blamed for climate change.)
He calculated that a birth levy of around $4,380 (5,000 Australian dollars) would cover the cost of purchasing the land needed and planting the trees required to offset one lifetime's worth of CO2. An additional annual tax of $350-$700 would cover maintenance of the forest. Walters said medical practitioners had a responsibility to point out the environmental consequences of having children.
"By the same reasoning, contraceptives, intrauterine devices, diaphragms, condoms and sterilization procedures should attract carbon credits for the user and the prescriber that would offset their income taxes, and lead to rewards for family planning clinics and hospitals that provide such greenhouse-friendly services," he said. Walters implied that the controversial population-control policies in place in China and India should be emulated. "As citizens of this world, I believe we deserve no more population concessions than those in India and China."
'Enormous value of human capital'
Another Australian academic, writing in the Medical Journal of Australia in response to Walters' article, agreed with his arguments. "One must wonder why population control, which was such a popular topic during the 1970s, is spoken of today only in whispers," said Garry Egger, director of the Center for Health Promotion and Research in Sydney. "The debate needs to be reopened as part of a second ecological revolution," he said.
"Doctors, as opinion leaders in the community, must be at the forefront of this debate. "Australian Family Association spokeswoman Angela Conway said Walters arguments were "skewed and simplistic."He fails to isolate the real reasons why we are failing to manage our environment well," she said Monday. "He fails to recognize the enormous value of human capital to long economic and environmental sustainability. He fails to put an appropriate value on human family life to society."
Conway said traditional societies that value children were more likely to seek economic and ecological sustainability because they want to steward the environment for future generations. "Real solutions always come from human ingenuity and inventiveness," she said. "Children are the wellspring for society's human capital." "Perhaps the children the professor would ban will be the ones who would have planted the urban forests, and successfully integrated trees back into farming on a large scale," she said. "Perhaps these children will be the ones who might have creatively developed sustainable new technologies and systems. Perhaps they will be the ones to reject the economic and cultural systems that underpin the profligate consumption of the developed world."
Conway said she found it sad that Walters would see China's population control policies as appropriate for Australia. "Does he make this recommendation in ignorance of the terrible and large scale human rights abuses carried out under that policy over the last few decades?" she asked. Under population policies instituted in the 1970s, China restrict couples to one child, with exceptions for some ethnic minorities and in some parts of the country. The policy, which carries punitive fines for violators, has led to abuses including coercive abortions and forced sterilization, researchers say. In a society where boys are traditionally favored and valued for their future help to ageing parents, another result of the "one-child" policy is the abortion of unwanted baby girls, leading to a badly-skewed gender ratio. Attempts to reach Walters for comment were unsuccessful.
Peter
source:
'Tax Parents for Children's Carbon Emissions'
By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International EditorDecember 10, 2007(CNSNews.com) -
Having babies is bad for the planet, and parents of more than two children should be charged a birth levy and annual tax to offset the "greenhouse gases" their child will be responsible for over his or her lifetime.
At the same time, those who use and prescribe contraceptives and sterilization procedures should earn tax relief for such greenhouse friendly services" that help to keep the population size down. These proposals, by an Australian academic, were published in the country's leading medical journal on Monday. They drew a sharp response from a pro-family group.
Australia has a population of around 21.2 million. It recorded 273,500 births over the year ending March 2007, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported last September. Although the total population increase (net migration and natural increase) was the highest to date, Australia's total fertility rate (the average number of babies born to women during the reproductive years of 15-44) has been dropping steadily for decades, from 3.5 in 1961 to 1.76 this year.
In 2004, former Prime Minister John Howard's government announced a drive to counter the declining birthrate, urging parents to aim for three children, and offering families a financial incentive that currently stands at around $3,670. But to Barry Walters, clinical associate professor of obstetric medicine at the University of Western Australia, that undermines the campaign to fight global warming. "Every newborn baby in Australia represents a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions for an average of 80 years, not simply by breathing, but by the profligate consumption of resources typical of our society," he wrote in an article published in the Medical Journal of Australia Monday."
Far from showering financial booty on new mothers and thereby rewarding greenhouse-unfriendly behavior, a 'Baby Levy' in the form of a carbon tax should apply, in line with the 'polluter pays' principle," he argued. Walters said Australian parents who have more than an agreed number of children -- he cited a population-limitation advocacy group as suggesting a ceiling of two -- should pay the cost of planting trees to offset the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) the additional children will produce. (Trees absorb CO2, which along with other greenhouse gases is often blamed for climate change.)
He calculated that a birth levy of around $4,380 (5,000 Australian dollars) would cover the cost of purchasing the land needed and planting the trees required to offset one lifetime's worth of CO2. An additional annual tax of $350-$700 would cover maintenance of the forest. Walters said medical practitioners had a responsibility to point out the environmental consequences of having children.
"By the same reasoning, contraceptives, intrauterine devices, diaphragms, condoms and sterilization procedures should attract carbon credits for the user and the prescriber that would offset their income taxes, and lead to rewards for family planning clinics and hospitals that provide such greenhouse-friendly services," he said. Walters implied that the controversial population-control policies in place in China and India should be emulated. "As citizens of this world, I believe we deserve no more population concessions than those in India and China."
'Enormous value of human capital'
Another Australian academic, writing in the Medical Journal of Australia in response to Walters' article, agreed with his arguments. "One must wonder why population control, which was such a popular topic during the 1970s, is spoken of today only in whispers," said Garry Egger, director of the Center for Health Promotion and Research in Sydney. "The debate needs to be reopened as part of a second ecological revolution," he said.
"Doctors, as opinion leaders in the community, must be at the forefront of this debate. "Australian Family Association spokeswoman Angela Conway said Walters arguments were "skewed and simplistic."He fails to isolate the real reasons why we are failing to manage our environment well," she said Monday. "He fails to recognize the enormous value of human capital to long economic and environmental sustainability. He fails to put an appropriate value on human family life to society."
Conway said traditional societies that value children were more likely to seek economic and ecological sustainability because they want to steward the environment for future generations. "Real solutions always come from human ingenuity and inventiveness," she said. "Children are the wellspring for society's human capital." "Perhaps the children the professor would ban will be the ones who would have planted the urban forests, and successfully integrated trees back into farming on a large scale," she said. "Perhaps these children will be the ones who might have creatively developed sustainable new technologies and systems. Perhaps they will be the ones to reject the economic and cultural systems that underpin the profligate consumption of the developed world."
Conway said she found it sad that Walters would see China's population control policies as appropriate for Australia. "Does he make this recommendation in ignorance of the terrible and large scale human rights abuses carried out under that policy over the last few decades?" she asked. Under population policies instituted in the 1970s, China restrict couples to one child, with exceptions for some ethnic minorities and in some parts of the country. The policy, which carries punitive fines for violators, has led to abuses including coercive abortions and forced sterilization, researchers say. In a society where boys are traditionally favored and valued for their future help to ageing parents, another result of the "one-child" policy is the abortion of unwanted baby girls, leading to a badly-skewed gender ratio. Attempts to reach Walters for comment were unsuccessful.
Al Gore (The Bore) Is An Embarrassment.........
Al Gore is a pathetic hypocrite and in all eventuality, the worst detriment to real environmental concerns as possible.
Peter
source:
Al Gore is criticised for lining his own pockets after £3,300-per-minute green speech
By NATHAN KAY -
Al Gore has come under fire for making personal gain from his mission to save the planet – after charging £3,300 a minute to deliver a poorly received speech.
The former American Vice-President was also accused of being "precious" at the London event, demanding his own VIP room and ejecting journalists, despite hopes the star-studded gathering would generate publicity for the fight against global warming.
Many of the audience at last month's Fortune Forum summit were restless as Mr Gore, who has won both a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar for his campaigning work this year, delivered the half-hour speech that netted him £100,000.
Read more...
'Polars bears on the brink? Don't you believe it'
The glittering fundraiser was held in The Royal Courts of Justice and attracted world leaders, entrepreneurs and celebrity activists including Bob Geldof, Darryl Hannah and Jerry Hall, who was there as "a Special Ambassador of The Alliance for a New Humanity". Guests had paid between £1,000 and £50,000 to attend.
But a source told The Mail on Sunday: "Many guests looked tired and began to talk among themselves during his speech. Heads began to twitch with tiredness.
"Al uses his position for great personal gain. He goes from event to event delivering a similar speech, earning a large fee, and a lot of the time he doesn't actually inform the audience.
"He refused to speak to journalists and security would usher away VIP guests and the Press.
"He was being very precious and demanded his own VIP room before the event, where he held his own exclusive reception.
"The other guests were cut off. It was very clear that many guests were disappointed by this."
Sroll down for more...
Even some of the charities benefitting from the event were unhappy with the actions of 59-year-old Mr Gore and his entourage, especially the way they treated invited guests.
Paul Hetherington, media relations manager for WaterAid, said: "Pictures couldn't be taken and people were being moved out of the main hall so they couldn't experience the event. It was very disruptive.
"We had to apologise to people who were invited. We wanted to say thank you for all the support that many people had given us, but some of them were asked to leave.
"Many guests were invited by the hosts, so why should the speaker have any control over these guests and removing the media? It defeated the object of trying to raise awareness of the cause."
A source added: "Al had two people working for him: a woman who was his assistant and a male security officer who enrolled the help of security guards at The Royal Courts of Justice in a military-style operation to guard Al Gore. They took over the show."
However, a spokesman for Mr Gore, who won his Oscar for the polemic documentary An Inconvenient Truth, told The Mail on Sunday: "Mr Gore donates a percentage of all of his speaking fees to the Alliance for Climate Protection.
"With regards to the media arrangements, some of Mr Gore's events are open to the media, some of them are not. As you know, he has many open events coming up, including the Nobel Peace Prize.
"Unfortunately, this event had more limited availability. I do apologise for that. He does do his best to speak to reporters as often as possible."
Fortune Forum, which was founded by socialite ex-model Renu Mehta last year with the aim of attracting wealthy philanthropists to large-scale social and environmental projects, declined to comment.
Peter
source:
Al Gore is criticised for lining his own pockets after £3,300-per-minute green speech
By NATHAN KAY -
Al Gore has come under fire for making personal gain from his mission to save the planet – after charging £3,300 a minute to deliver a poorly received speech.
The former American Vice-President was also accused of being "precious" at the London event, demanding his own VIP room and ejecting journalists, despite hopes the star-studded gathering would generate publicity for the fight against global warming.
Many of the audience at last month's Fortune Forum summit were restless as Mr Gore, who has won both a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar for his campaigning work this year, delivered the half-hour speech that netted him £100,000.
Read more...
'Polars bears on the brink? Don't you believe it'
The glittering fundraiser was held in The Royal Courts of Justice and attracted world leaders, entrepreneurs and celebrity activists including Bob Geldof, Darryl Hannah and Jerry Hall, who was there as "a Special Ambassador of The Alliance for a New Humanity". Guests had paid between £1,000 and £50,000 to attend.
But a source told The Mail on Sunday: "Many guests looked tired and began to talk among themselves during his speech. Heads began to twitch with tiredness.
"Al uses his position for great personal gain. He goes from event to event delivering a similar speech, earning a large fee, and a lot of the time he doesn't actually inform the audience.
"He refused to speak to journalists and security would usher away VIP guests and the Press.
"He was being very precious and demanded his own VIP room before the event, where he held his own exclusive reception.
"The other guests were cut off. It was very clear that many guests were disappointed by this."
Sroll down for more...
Even some of the charities benefitting from the event were unhappy with the actions of 59-year-old Mr Gore and his entourage, especially the way they treated invited guests.
Paul Hetherington, media relations manager for WaterAid, said: "Pictures couldn't be taken and people were being moved out of the main hall so they couldn't experience the event. It was very disruptive.
"We had to apologise to people who were invited. We wanted to say thank you for all the support that many people had given us, but some of them were asked to leave.
"Many guests were invited by the hosts, so why should the speaker have any control over these guests and removing the media? It defeated the object of trying to raise awareness of the cause."
A source added: "Al had two people working for him: a woman who was his assistant and a male security officer who enrolled the help of security guards at The Royal Courts of Justice in a military-style operation to guard Al Gore. They took over the show."
However, a spokesman for Mr Gore, who won his Oscar for the polemic documentary An Inconvenient Truth, told The Mail on Sunday: "Mr Gore donates a percentage of all of his speaking fees to the Alliance for Climate Protection.
"With regards to the media arrangements, some of Mr Gore's events are open to the media, some of them are not. As you know, he has many open events coming up, including the Nobel Peace Prize.
"Unfortunately, this event had more limited availability. I do apologise for that. He does do his best to speak to reporters as often as possible."
Fortune Forum, which was founded by socialite ex-model Renu Mehta last year with the aim of attracting wealthy philanthropists to large-scale social and environmental projects, declined to comment.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Global Forces of Nature Driving Earth's Climate.....Are Humans Involved?
The author of this review of an article questioning the role mankind is presumed to be playing in global warming and climate change, is in my opinion, far too timid. However, his review makes it clear that many highly reputable scientists are very doubtful that man is causing global warming and climate change. The debate is far from over. Meanwhile these silly politicians are in Bali arguing over who is going to control carbon dioxide emissions and how much.
Peter
source:
December 1, 2006
Are Humans Involved in Global Warming?
Filed under: Climate History, Temperature History —
A recent issue of Environmental Geology contains an article entitled “On global forces of nature driving the Earth’s climate. Are humans involved?” by two scientists at the University of Southern California. Before we examine the article, let’s get a few things on the table. First of all, the two authors (Khilyuk and Chilingar) are faculty members at what most would agree is a world-class academic institution. If their work was not up to the standards of the University of Southern California, they wouldn’t be there for long.
Second, Environmental Geology is an international multidisciplinary journal concerned with all aspects of interactions between humans, ecosystems, and the earth. It is published by Springer which is one of the leading academic publishing companies in the world. The editorial board of Environmental Geology includes 53 leading scientists from every corner of the planet; US institutions listed as primary affiliations of board members include the US Geological Survey, the University of New Orleans, the University of Missouri, the University of Kansas, the University of Oklahoma, Temple University, Wesleyan University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and so on.
The point is that Environmental Geology is a first-class journal, papers submitted to the journal are peer-reviewed by scientists at major institutions, and the journal is certainly not part of any industry-funded conspiracy to undermine actions on global warming. Submitting a paper to any journal in which you question whether humans are involved in global warming will assure a more stringent review than normal.
OK – what on earth is this paper all about? How in 2006 could credible scientists seriously question whether humans are involved in global warming? Recall that Khilyuk and Chilingar are writing for a professional journal in geology, not climatology, and it is only natural to expect geologists to look at trends in the context of very long periods of time. Their perspective on climate change would be quite naturally different from someone trained in looking at annual, decadal, or 100 year changes in climate.
The authors begin the article with the sentence “Identification and understanding of global forces of nature driving the Earth’s climate is crucial for developing adequate relationship between people and nature, and for developing and implementing a sound course of action aimed at survival and welfare of the human race.” Now who would argue with that statement?
From there, they review the literature on solar output variations and earth’s temperature and show that a “one percent increase in current solar radiation reaching the Earth’s body translates directly into approximately 0.86 K increase in the Earth’s global temperature.” They show that the earth’s orbit about the sun changes over long periods of time resulting in up to a 7.5 K (1 K = 1°C = 1.8°F) modulation of the earth’s temperature. They describe how outgassing alters the composition of the atmosphere over long periods thereby altering the temperature of the earth over by over 50 K. They finally review microbial activities at the interface of the lithosphere and atmosphere that also substantially alter the composition and temperature of the global atmosphere at geological time frames. Initially, the article seems fairly tame, but as one reads more, the article becomes quite controversial.
Khilyuk and Chilingar repeatedly quantify the effect of the various processes that alter global temperature and conclude “The scope and extent of these processes are 4–5 orders of magnitude greater than the corresponding anthropogenic impacts on the Earth’s climate (such as heating and emission of the greenhouse gases).” This seems fair enough given the geological time scales considered by the authors, but you can see where the global warming crowd would be getting more uncomfortable.
The authors place the recent warming into an interesting perspective noting “the global warming observed during the latest 150 years is just a short episode in the geologic history. The current global warming is most likely a combined effect of increased solar and tectonic activities and cannot be attributed to the increased anthropogenic impact on the atmosphere. Humans may be responsible for less than 0.01°C (of approximately 0.56°C (1°F) total average atmospheric heating during the last century)”. Holy cow, can you imagine the letters and e-mails they must have received in response to that conclusion? They even show that over the last 3,000 years, the earth has cooled, or if you look just at the last 1,000 years, the earth has been cooling as well (the earth was in the Medieval Warm Period 1,000 years ago).
Their conclusions with respect to potential policy will more than raise some eyebrows as well as they write “Any attempts to mitigate undesirable climatic changes using restrictive regulations are condemned to failure, because the global natural forces are at least 4–5 orders of magnitude greater than available human controls.” They show that the climatic effects of the Kyoto Protocol would be negligible, leading them to state “Thus, the Kyoto Protocol is a good example of how to achieve the minimum results with the maximum efforts (and sacrifices). Impact of available human controls will be negligible in comparison with the global forces of nature. Thus, the attempts to alter the occurring global climatic changes (and drastic measures prescribed by the Kyoto Protocol) have to be abandoned as meaningless and harmful.”
Our World Climate Reports uncover and present interesting results we find in the peer-reviewed professional scientific journals, and as we have seen over and over, there are many absolutely amazing papers published regularly in outstanding journals. The global warming crusade would denounce this paper as outrageous, but it survived rigorous peer-review, the editor elected to publish it, and like it or not, this paper is part of the serious science literature. Dismissing the paper is made more difficult given the affiliation of the authors and the prestige of the journal.
The debate on climate change is never boring, the debate is full of surprises, and anyone claiming the debate is over is simply dismissing a significant number of papers that appear regularly in the major journals.
Reference:
Khilyuk, L.F., and G. V. Chilingar. 2006. On global forces of nature driving the Earth’s climate. Are humans involved? Environmental Geology, 50, 899–910.
Peter
source:
December 1, 2006
Are Humans Involved in Global Warming?
Filed under: Climate History, Temperature History —
A recent issue of Environmental Geology contains an article entitled “On global forces of nature driving the Earth’s climate. Are humans involved?” by two scientists at the University of Southern California. Before we examine the article, let’s get a few things on the table. First of all, the two authors (Khilyuk and Chilingar) are faculty members at what most would agree is a world-class academic institution. If their work was not up to the standards of the University of Southern California, they wouldn’t be there for long.
Second, Environmental Geology is an international multidisciplinary journal concerned with all aspects of interactions between humans, ecosystems, and the earth. It is published by Springer which is one of the leading academic publishing companies in the world. The editorial board of Environmental Geology includes 53 leading scientists from every corner of the planet; US institutions listed as primary affiliations of board members include the US Geological Survey, the University of New Orleans, the University of Missouri, the University of Kansas, the University of Oklahoma, Temple University, Wesleyan University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and so on.
The point is that Environmental Geology is a first-class journal, papers submitted to the journal are peer-reviewed by scientists at major institutions, and the journal is certainly not part of any industry-funded conspiracy to undermine actions on global warming. Submitting a paper to any journal in which you question whether humans are involved in global warming will assure a more stringent review than normal.
OK – what on earth is this paper all about? How in 2006 could credible scientists seriously question whether humans are involved in global warming? Recall that Khilyuk and Chilingar are writing for a professional journal in geology, not climatology, and it is only natural to expect geologists to look at trends in the context of very long periods of time. Their perspective on climate change would be quite naturally different from someone trained in looking at annual, decadal, or 100 year changes in climate.
The authors begin the article with the sentence “Identification and understanding of global forces of nature driving the Earth’s climate is crucial for developing adequate relationship between people and nature, and for developing and implementing a sound course of action aimed at survival and welfare of the human race.” Now who would argue with that statement?
From there, they review the literature on solar output variations and earth’s temperature and show that a “one percent increase in current solar radiation reaching the Earth’s body translates directly into approximately 0.86 K increase in the Earth’s global temperature.” They show that the earth’s orbit about the sun changes over long periods of time resulting in up to a 7.5 K (1 K = 1°C = 1.8°F) modulation of the earth’s temperature. They describe how outgassing alters the composition of the atmosphere over long periods thereby altering the temperature of the earth over by over 50 K. They finally review microbial activities at the interface of the lithosphere and atmosphere that also substantially alter the composition and temperature of the global atmosphere at geological time frames. Initially, the article seems fairly tame, but as one reads more, the article becomes quite controversial.
Khilyuk and Chilingar repeatedly quantify the effect of the various processes that alter global temperature and conclude “The scope and extent of these processes are 4–5 orders of magnitude greater than the corresponding anthropogenic impacts on the Earth’s climate (such as heating and emission of the greenhouse gases).” This seems fair enough given the geological time scales considered by the authors, but you can see where the global warming crowd would be getting more uncomfortable.
The authors place the recent warming into an interesting perspective noting “the global warming observed during the latest 150 years is just a short episode in the geologic history. The current global warming is most likely a combined effect of increased solar and tectonic activities and cannot be attributed to the increased anthropogenic impact on the atmosphere. Humans may be responsible for less than 0.01°C (of approximately 0.56°C (1°F) total average atmospheric heating during the last century)”. Holy cow, can you imagine the letters and e-mails they must have received in response to that conclusion? They even show that over the last 3,000 years, the earth has cooled, or if you look just at the last 1,000 years, the earth has been cooling as well (the earth was in the Medieval Warm Period 1,000 years ago).
Their conclusions with respect to potential policy will more than raise some eyebrows as well as they write “Any attempts to mitigate undesirable climatic changes using restrictive regulations are condemned to failure, because the global natural forces are at least 4–5 orders of magnitude greater than available human controls.” They show that the climatic effects of the Kyoto Protocol would be negligible, leading them to state “Thus, the Kyoto Protocol is a good example of how to achieve the minimum results with the maximum efforts (and sacrifices). Impact of available human controls will be negligible in comparison with the global forces of nature. Thus, the attempts to alter the occurring global climatic changes (and drastic measures prescribed by the Kyoto Protocol) have to be abandoned as meaningless and harmful.”
Our World Climate Reports uncover and present interesting results we find in the peer-reviewed professional scientific journals, and as we have seen over and over, there are many absolutely amazing papers published regularly in outstanding journals. The global warming crusade would denounce this paper as outrageous, but it survived rigorous peer-review, the editor elected to publish it, and like it or not, this paper is part of the serious science literature. Dismissing the paper is made more difficult given the affiliation of the authors and the prestige of the journal.
The debate on climate change is never boring, the debate is full of surprises, and anyone claiming the debate is over is simply dismissing a significant number of papers that appear regularly in the major journals.
Reference:
Khilyuk, L.F., and G. V. Chilingar. 2006. On global forces of nature driving the Earth’s climate. Are humans involved? Environmental Geology, 50, 899–910.
Noted Climate Scientist Dismisses Importance of CO2 In Climate Change....And More
I have posted articles about and by Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. on this blog previously. He is speaking out again here about some of the key issues involved in the global warming/climate change debate. Most importantly, he rejects the notion that atmospheric CO2 is the primary driver of climate change. He is very critical of the United Nation's IPCC. He thinks the current computer climate models are inadequate to predict future climate changes and should NOT be used to make policy decisions. Please read the article for more information.
Also note that these views are from a highly respected climate scientist, and Professor (now retired) and affiliated with two major universities.
Peter
source: http://www.ecoworld.com/home/articles2.cfm?tid=445
Beyond Global
Warming
NOTED CLIMATE SCIENTIST ROGER PIELKE SR. REJECTS THE NOTION THAT ELEVATED CO2 LEVELS ARE THE SOLE CULPRITS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
by Ed Ring
Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr."Scientific rigor has been sacrificed,and poor policy and political decisions will inevitably follow."
Roger Pielke Sr. is a retired professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, and a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Since July 2005 he has written and maintained Climate Science, a blog that serves as a scientific forum for dialogue and commentary on climate issues. With William R. Cotton, he is the co-author of Human Impacts on Weather and Climate (Cambridge University Press, 2007). And over the past summer he co-hosted a conference entitled "Land Use and Climate Change," in Boulder, Colorado. While Dr. Pielke rejects being characterized as a "global warming skeptic," his work is unwaveringly critical of the current conventional wisdom regarding climate change and what to do about it. EcoWorld Editor Ed Ring recently caught up with Dr. Pielke, who had the following to say on the topic:
EcoWorld: How would you say that current conventional wisdom regarding climate change has gotten it wrong?
Pielke: In terms of climate change and variability on the regional and local scale, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report on surface and tropospheric temperature trends, and the U.S. National Assessment [of Climate Change] have overstated the role of the radiative effect of the anthropogenic increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in relation to a diversity of other human climate- forcing mechanisms. Indeed, many research studies incorrectly oversimplify climate change by characterizing it as being dominated by the radiative effect of human-added CO2. But while prudence suggests that we work to minimize our disturbance of the climate system (since we don't fully understand it), by focusing on just one subset of forcing mechanisms, we end up seriously misleading policymakers as to the most effective way of dealing with our social and environmental vulnerability in the context of the entire spectrum of environmental risks and other threats we face today.
EcoWorld: What about experts' predictions of rising sea levels, extreme weather, melting polar ice caps, and so on?
Pielke: Global and regional climate models have not demonstrated themselves to be skillful predictors of regional and local climate change and variability over multidecadal time scales. For example, in the case of sea ice, the models are consistent with the decrease in Arctic sea ice in recent years, but they cannot explain the multiyear increase in Antarctic sea ice (including a record level this year). With respect to extreme weather, a much more important issue than how greenhouse gases are altering our climate is society's greatly increased vulnerability to extreme weather events - a direct result not of changes in weather but of increased settlement by expanding human populations into low-lying coastal regions, floodplains, and marginal arid land.
EcoWorld: But what about the northern icecap shrinking this September to possibly its smallest size in history (exposing more than 1 million square miles of open water) or the comments of Robert Correll, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, regarding recent observations in Greenland ("We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea")? Is something new and alarming happening?
Pielke: These examples represent selected observations that promote the view that human-input carbon dioxide is dominating climate change. However, the climate is - and always will be - changing. Thus, although human activity certainly affects the way in which climate varies and changes, actual global observations present a much more complex picture than that represented by the two examples listed above. For example, Antarctic sea ice reached a record maximum coverage in 2007, and the globally averaged lower atmosphere has not warmed in the last nine years (and, in fact, is cooler than it was in 1998). In addition, there are regions of the world where glaciers are advancing (such as New Zealand, parts of the Himalayas, and Norway). However, this information - which conflicts with the projections of the multi-decadal global climate models and the 2007 IPCC report - has been almost completely ignored by policymakers and the media.
EcoWorld: What role have alterations in land use played in climate change?
Pielke: Changes in land use by humans and the resulting alterations in weather and hydrology are major drivers of long-term regional and global climate patterns - yet the 2007 IPCC Statement for Policymakers largely ignores their importance (despite extensive documentation in research literature). Along with the diverse influences of aerosols on climate, land use effects (caused, for example, by deforestation, desertification, and conversion of land to farming) may be at least as important in altering the weather as the changes in climate patterns associated with the radiative effect of carbon dioxide and other well-mixed greenhouse gases. Moreover, land use and land cover changes will continue to exert an important influence on the Earth's climate for the next century.
The reason for this is that even if the globally averaged surface temperature change over time ends up being close to zero in response to land use and land cover change and variability, the regional changes in surface temperature, precipitation, and other climate metrics could be as large as or larger than those that result from the anthropogenic increase of greenhouse gases. Moreover, people and ecosystems experience the effects of environmental change regionally, not as global averaged values. Thus, the issue of a "discernable human influence on global climate" misses the obvious, in that we have been altering climate by land use and land cover change ever since humans began large-scale alterations of the land surface.
EcoWorld: What were the main conclusions to come out of your recent conference focusing on the land use changes that affect the Earth's climate?
Pielke: This meeting reconfirmed the first order role of land management as a climate forcing mechanism. These findings supported the conclusions of the 2005 National Research Council report "Radiative Forcing of Climate Change: Expanding the Concept and Addressing Uncertainties," which identified land use change as having a major effect on climate. Unfortunately, the role of land surface processes was underreported in the body of the IPCC report and was essentially ignored in the IPCC Statement for Policymakers.
EcoWorld: Sticking with land use changes: Do you think that tropical forests create a thermostatic effect that moderates extreme weather? And following on that, do you think tropical deforestation could be as significant a driver in climate change as anthropogenic CO2?
Pielke: Tropical deforestation clearly has an effect on both regional and global climate that is at least as important as the radiative effect of adding CO2. When forests are removed, not only does the climate system lose the biodiversity and other benefits of that environment, the vegetation loses its ability to dynamically respond in ways that reduce extreme weather fluctuations. For example, when trees access deeper water through their roots, the resulting transpiration of water vapor into the atmosphere (making rain more likely) can help ameliorate dry conditions when the large-scale weather pattern is one of drought.
EcoWorld: What is your criticism of the IPCC?
Pielke: Mainly the fact that the same individuals who are doing primary research into humans' impact on the climate system are being permitted to lead the assessment of that research. Suppose a group of scientists introduced a drug they claimed could save many lives: There were side effects, of course, but the scientists claimed the drug's benefits far outweighed its risks. If the government then asked these same scientists to form an assessment committee to evaluate their claim (and the committee consisted of colleagues of the scientists who made the original claim as well as the drug's developers), an uproar would occur, and there would be protests. It would represent a clear conflict of interest. Yet this is what has happened with the IPCC process. To date, either few people recognize this conflict, or those that do choose to ignore it because the recommendations of the IPCC fit their policy and political agenda. In either case, scientific rigor has been sacrificed, and poor policy and political decisions will inevitably follow.
EcoWorld: How effective are current climate computer models in helping us understand global climate trends?
Pielke: Using global climate models to improve our understanding of how the system works represents a valuable application of such tools, but the term sensitivity study should be used to characterize these assessments. In sensitivity studies, a subset of the forcings and/or feedback of the climate system are perturbed to examine their response. Since the computer model of the climate system is incomplete (meaning it doesn't include all of the important feedbacks and forcings), what the IPCC is really doing is conducting a sensitivity study.
The IPCC reports, however, inaccurately present their assessment as a "projection" - one that's widely interpreted by policymakers and others as being able to skillfully forecast the future state of the climate system. But even one of the IPCC's leading authors, Kevin Trenberth, has gone on record reminding people of the limitations of the models used in its projections. Says Trenberth, "There are no predictions by IPCC & and there never have been." He further states, "None of the models used by IPCC are initialized to the observed state, and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate."
Indeed, says Trenberth, "The current projection method works to the extent it does because it utilizes differences from one time to another, and the main model bias and systematic errors are thereby subtracted out. This assumes linearity. It works for global forced variations, but it cannot work for many aspects of climate, especially those related to the water cycle."
Thus, as clarified even by one of the key IPCC contributors (who has a vested interest in the acceptance of the 2007 IPCC report), current climate models clearly cannot accurately model observed real-world changes in climate. Global model results projected out decades into the future should never be interpreted as skillful forecasts. Instead, they should be interpreted as sensitivity studies on limited variables. When authors of research papers use definitive words (such as "will occur") and display model output with specific time periods in the future, they are misleading policymakers and other people who use this information.
EcoWorld: What policies should be considered to deal with climate change? Is reducing CO2 emissions part of the solution?
Pielke: Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions can only serve as a useful "environmental currency" as long as it provides the benefits needed to reduce the risk to critical environmental and social resources. As such, it needs to be part of a win-win strategy that provides a diversity of benefits. With energy efficiency and energy independence, for example, everyone benefits. As the "currency" for these benefits, however, greenhouse gas emission reduction represents an unnecessarily blunt instrument if there are more effective ways to reduce the risks to societal and environmental resources. Moreover, greenhouse gas policies can produce serious unintended negative consequences such as an increase in carcinogenic emissions when biodiesel is used, or reductions in biodiversity and alterations in climate when land management practices convert large areas to biofuels.
Greenhouse gas emission reductions, relative to other environmental currencies, should be evaluated with respect to their ability to reduce risk to essential social and environmental resources. In this framework, greenhouse emission reductions are only useful if they provide real benefit to those resources. Thus, if a policy made for other reasons also happens to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, you clearly have a win-win situation. The current focus on using reductions in CO2 emissions as the primary currency for achieving benefits to society and the environment, however, clearly represents a very flawed approach.
Also note that these views are from a highly respected climate scientist, and Professor (now retired) and affiliated with two major universities.
Peter
source: http://www.ecoworld.com/home/articles2.cfm?tid=445
Beyond Global
Warming
NOTED CLIMATE SCIENTIST ROGER PIELKE SR. REJECTS THE NOTION THAT ELEVATED CO2 LEVELS ARE THE SOLE CULPRITS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
by Ed Ring
Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr."Scientific rigor has been sacrificed,and poor policy and political decisions will inevitably follow."Roger Pielke Sr. is a retired professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, and a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Since July 2005 he has written and maintained Climate Science, a blog that serves as a scientific forum for dialogue and commentary on climate issues. With William R. Cotton, he is the co-author of Human Impacts on Weather and Climate (Cambridge University Press, 2007). And over the past summer he co-hosted a conference entitled "Land Use and Climate Change," in Boulder, Colorado. While Dr. Pielke rejects being characterized as a "global warming skeptic," his work is unwaveringly critical of the current conventional wisdom regarding climate change and what to do about it. EcoWorld Editor Ed Ring recently caught up with Dr. Pielke, who had the following to say on the topic:
EcoWorld: How would you say that current conventional wisdom regarding climate change has gotten it wrong?
Pielke: In terms of climate change and variability on the regional and local scale, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report on surface and tropospheric temperature trends, and the U.S. National Assessment [of Climate Change] have overstated the role of the radiative effect of the anthropogenic increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in relation to a diversity of other human climate- forcing mechanisms. Indeed, many research studies incorrectly oversimplify climate change by characterizing it as being dominated by the radiative effect of human-added CO2. But while prudence suggests that we work to minimize our disturbance of the climate system (since we don't fully understand it), by focusing on just one subset of forcing mechanisms, we end up seriously misleading policymakers as to the most effective way of dealing with our social and environmental vulnerability in the context of the entire spectrum of environmental risks and other threats we face today.
EcoWorld: What about experts' predictions of rising sea levels, extreme weather, melting polar ice caps, and so on?
Pielke: Global and regional climate models have not demonstrated themselves to be skillful predictors of regional and local climate change and variability over multidecadal time scales. For example, in the case of sea ice, the models are consistent with the decrease in Arctic sea ice in recent years, but they cannot explain the multiyear increase in Antarctic sea ice (including a record level this year). With respect to extreme weather, a much more important issue than how greenhouse gases are altering our climate is society's greatly increased vulnerability to extreme weather events - a direct result not of changes in weather but of increased settlement by expanding human populations into low-lying coastal regions, floodplains, and marginal arid land.
EcoWorld: But what about the northern icecap shrinking this September to possibly its smallest size in history (exposing more than 1 million square miles of open water) or the comments of Robert Correll, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, regarding recent observations in Greenland ("We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea")? Is something new and alarming happening?
Pielke: These examples represent selected observations that promote the view that human-input carbon dioxide is dominating climate change. However, the climate is - and always will be - changing. Thus, although human activity certainly affects the way in which climate varies and changes, actual global observations present a much more complex picture than that represented by the two examples listed above. For example, Antarctic sea ice reached a record maximum coverage in 2007, and the globally averaged lower atmosphere has not warmed in the last nine years (and, in fact, is cooler than it was in 1998). In addition, there are regions of the world where glaciers are advancing (such as New Zealand, parts of the Himalayas, and Norway). However, this information - which conflicts with the projections of the multi-decadal global climate models and the 2007 IPCC report - has been almost completely ignored by policymakers and the media.
Human Impacts on Weather andClimate, by Roger Pielke, Sr.,and William R. Cotton Cambridge University Press
EcoWorld: What role have alterations in land use played in climate change?
Pielke: Changes in land use by humans and the resulting alterations in weather and hydrology are major drivers of long-term regional and global climate patterns - yet the 2007 IPCC Statement for Policymakers largely ignores their importance (despite extensive documentation in research literature). Along with the diverse influences of aerosols on climate, land use effects (caused, for example, by deforestation, desertification, and conversion of land to farming) may be at least as important in altering the weather as the changes in climate patterns associated with the radiative effect of carbon dioxide and other well-mixed greenhouse gases. Moreover, land use and land cover changes will continue to exert an important influence on the Earth's climate for the next century.
The reason for this is that even if the globally averaged surface temperature change over time ends up being close to zero in response to land use and land cover change and variability, the regional changes in surface temperature, precipitation, and other climate metrics could be as large as or larger than those that result from the anthropogenic increase of greenhouse gases. Moreover, people and ecosystems experience the effects of environmental change regionally, not as global averaged values. Thus, the issue of a "discernable human influence on global climate" misses the obvious, in that we have been altering climate by land use and land cover change ever since humans began large-scale alterations of the land surface.
EcoWorld: What were the main conclusions to come out of your recent conference focusing on the land use changes that affect the Earth's climate?
Pielke: This meeting reconfirmed the first order role of land management as a climate forcing mechanism. These findings supported the conclusions of the 2005 National Research Council report "Radiative Forcing of Climate Change: Expanding the Concept and Addressing Uncertainties," which identified land use change as having a major effect on climate. Unfortunately, the role of land surface processes was underreported in the body of the IPCC report and was essentially ignored in the IPCC Statement for Policymakers.
EcoWorld: Sticking with land use changes: Do you think that tropical forests create a thermostatic effect that moderates extreme weather? And following on that, do you think tropical deforestation could be as significant a driver in climate change as anthropogenic CO2?
Pielke: Tropical deforestation clearly has an effect on both regional and global climate that is at least as important as the radiative effect of adding CO2. When forests are removed, not only does the climate system lose the biodiversity and other benefits of that environment, the vegetation loses its ability to dynamically respond in ways that reduce extreme weather fluctuations. For example, when trees access deeper water through their roots, the resulting transpiration of water vapor into the atmosphere (making rain more likely) can help ameliorate dry conditions when the large-scale weather pattern is one of drought.
EcoWorld: What is your criticism of the IPCC?
Pielke: Mainly the fact that the same individuals who are doing primary research into humans' impact on the climate system are being permitted to lead the assessment of that research. Suppose a group of scientists introduced a drug they claimed could save many lives: There were side effects, of course, but the scientists claimed the drug's benefits far outweighed its risks. If the government then asked these same scientists to form an assessment committee to evaluate their claim (and the committee consisted of colleagues of the scientists who made the original claim as well as the drug's developers), an uproar would occur, and there would be protests. It would represent a clear conflict of interest. Yet this is what has happened with the IPCC process. To date, either few people recognize this conflict, or those that do choose to ignore it because the recommendations of the IPCC fit their policy and political agenda. In either case, scientific rigor has been sacrificed, and poor policy and political decisions will inevitably follow.
EcoWorld: How effective are current climate computer models in helping us understand global climate trends?
Pielke: Using global climate models to improve our understanding of how the system works represents a valuable application of such tools, but the term sensitivity study should be used to characterize these assessments. In sensitivity studies, a subset of the forcings and/or feedback of the climate system are perturbed to examine their response. Since the computer model of the climate system is incomplete (meaning it doesn't include all of the important feedbacks and forcings), what the IPCC is really doing is conducting a sensitivity study.
The IPCC reports, however, inaccurately present their assessment as a "projection" - one that's widely interpreted by policymakers and others as being able to skillfully forecast the future state of the climate system. But even one of the IPCC's leading authors, Kevin Trenberth, has gone on record reminding people of the limitations of the models used in its projections. Says Trenberth, "There are no predictions by IPCC & and there never have been." He further states, "None of the models used by IPCC are initialized to the observed state, and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate."
Indeed, says Trenberth, "The current projection method works to the extent it does because it utilizes differences from one time to another, and the main model bias and systematic errors are thereby subtracted out. This assumes linearity. It works for global forced variations, but it cannot work for many aspects of climate, especially those related to the water cycle."
Thus, as clarified even by one of the key IPCC contributors (who has a vested interest in the acceptance of the 2007 IPCC report), current climate models clearly cannot accurately model observed real-world changes in climate. Global model results projected out decades into the future should never be interpreted as skillful forecasts. Instead, they should be interpreted as sensitivity studies on limited variables. When authors of research papers use definitive words (such as "will occur") and display model output with specific time periods in the future, they are misleading policymakers and other people who use this information.
EcoWorld: What policies should be considered to deal with climate change? Is reducing CO2 emissions part of the solution?
Pielke: Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions can only serve as a useful "environmental currency" as long as it provides the benefits needed to reduce the risk to critical environmental and social resources. As such, it needs to be part of a win-win strategy that provides a diversity of benefits. With energy efficiency and energy independence, for example, everyone benefits. As the "currency" for these benefits, however, greenhouse gas emission reduction represents an unnecessarily blunt instrument if there are more effective ways to reduce the risks to societal and environmental resources. Moreover, greenhouse gas policies can produce serious unintended negative consequences such as an increase in carcinogenic emissions when biodiesel is used, or reductions in biodiversity and alterations in climate when land management practices convert large areas to biofuels.
Greenhouse gas emission reductions, relative to other environmental currencies, should be evaluated with respect to their ability to reduce risk to essential social and environmental resources. In this framework, greenhouse emission reductions are only useful if they provide real benefit to those resources. Thus, if a policy made for other reasons also happens to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, you clearly have a win-win situation. The current focus on using reductions in CO2 emissions as the primary currency for achieving benefits to society and the environment, however, clearly represents a very flawed approach.
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