the real cost of green

Hang onto your wallets, the IPCC is about to take the global warming swindle to the next level...

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- The costs of cutting greenhouse gases and who will pay for doing it are likely to be the key issues at a major U.N.-backed climate change meeting of scientists and diplomats in the Thai capital this week, participants said Sunday.

Note the reference to scientists above although the topic of determining "who will pay" is purely political. The CNN article quoted above contains all the usual fear-mongering about the dire consequences of not taking action to stop global warming. We've heard it all before.

But then there's this one little paragraph which gives away the IPCC's real agenda:

Developing countries are likely to demand that richer countries help them adapt to warming global temperatures, which are expected to cause widespread flooding, droughts and rising sea levels.

They're not asking, they're demanding! Those scientists from developing countries! How can we here in the evil, greenhouse gas spewing rich countries ever have the nerve to say no? It's not enough that reducing greenhouse gas emissions will have disastrous effects on our own economies; in the noble crusade against climate change we soon will be expected to foot the bill for adaptation by "developing countries".

I wonder exactly how the dictatorial governments of all those 3rd world developing countries really intend to spend the billions of $$$ in aid money they will soon be extorting demanding from us? Will it be used to help their citizens? Or will it all go to support dictators and government elites like the billions of dollars of previous foreign aid money?

Now that the Goracle, Kooky Suzuki, Citizen Dion & company have managed to convince most people that they need to feel deeply, deeply guilty for causing global warming, the IPCC is about to swoop, to cash in on that guilt and begin the process of extorting $ billions more from us.

This is just more proof that Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations. Unfortunately, none of our political leaders any longer has the guts to say so.

Source

Be prepared, be very prepared

I have always thought that it is extremely strange that all statistical analysis done on temperatures in the scientific literature as only been done on maximum and minimum temperatures. This despite the billions of dollars that are spent in the area.

Surely, someone would have a proper scientific analysis of time based temperature? Unfortunetley, this has not been the case.

We have proven before the importance of such scientific study, suggest that minimum temperatures might not represent the average temperature overnight, but might represent the temperature just before sunrise, and hence be highly influenced by the sun - precisely what maximum temperatures are influenced by.

But nothing compares to the analysis that you will see on this blog over the next week. The statistical analysis that you will see shortly is a world first, and will prove beyond doubt that analysis of minimum temperatures is completely useless if one is trying to approximate overnight temperatures.

We will also show you that rate of increase of minimum temperatures as a relation to overnight temperatures has been over exaggerated by as much as 1 degree increase (celcius) per 100 years - more than the shown increase in minimum temperature over the past century. Which alone suggests that temperatures have not increased overnight over the past 100 years despite increases in minimum temperatures.

Our analysis will show that looking at minimum temperatures only is highly dangerous, and only analysis into time based temperature should be undertaken.

As previously said, over the next week, we will give you ground breaking analysis that has never been done before and will astonish even the most loyal critic.

Stay tuned, and be prepared, be very prepared.

Cape Borda - Kangaroo Island

Located on the very picturesque kangaroo island just outside Adelaide, Cape Borda will share some statistical analysis of it's own.

However, the data at the place is hardly complete. Whilst maximum and minimum temperatures go back to 1925, no measurements were taken from 1938 to 1960, so it makes sense that we just look at 1960 onwards. As far as time related data goes - no data for Midnight times, and with the exception of 9am and 3pm (which go back to 1960), all other time related temperatures are only 15 years old.

So data is haphazard here, but we will still look at it nevertheless.

Maximum temperature analysis shows a significant increase in temperature (t=5.8,p<0.01), and this increase also goes with minimum temperatures (t=2.6,p<0.05). It follows on that temperatures at 3pm have significantly increased (t=4.5,p<0.01),however temperatures at 9am have not (t=0.7,p=0.5). Not surprisingly, temperature anomalies at 3pm were significantly higher than at 9am (p<0.01).

There's not a lot we can say about these temperatures, only that it's increasing during the day and at night, but not at 9am. The increase in temperatures at 3pm (and maximum) are very substantial, and are possibly the greatest we have seen to date.

Our analysis for the next stations in south-eastern South Australia will provide some very interesting analysis I am sure.

IPCC AR4 WG1: full text

Lubos says it all:

The climate panel's working group I has just published the full report:

• IPCC WG1 full text

A preliminary version of the same document has been available via JunkScience and the structure of the final document seems almost identical. You may read the first reactions of Steve McIntyre.

Officially, we have had the summary for policymakers (SPM) only - until now. You may see that the long document contains a lot of serious albeit boring science and data. Concerned members of the IPCC have however (mis)interpreted the results in catchy ways in their summary. Journalists are even more concerned and their presentation is much closer to nutcases like Al Gore than the boring content of the IPCC report. This multi-level hysterization and cherry-picking is a primary mechanism fuelling this whole global idiocy.

Comments about the IPCC working group II summary for policymakers, originally posted on April 6th

Recall that the U.N. climate panel (IPCC) has three parts:

• WG1: physical processes
• WG2: impact on life and societies
• WG3: how to cool down Earth :-) ... next week, they will recommend nuclear power and GM crops

Buy your personal CO2 box today!
(Thanks to the creator written in the corner of the ad.)

WG1 is composed of scientists led by government bureaucrats and political activists: these three subgroups are far from disjoint. Their list includes every scientist who has been in contact with them but hasn't yet threatened them with a lawsuit - which is what e.g. Prof Paul Reiter had to do before he was removed from the list of the corrupt scientists. Their pre-determined task is to "prove" that most of the recent climate change is man-made, despite any scientific evidence that shows the opposite. Their fourth report, IPCC AR4, will be released on April 29th (officially May).



It is necessary for WG1 to prove what they're asked to prove, otherwise it would become clear that the very existence of the groups WG2, WG3 is a gigantic fraud - much like the existence of a large WG1, after all.

In the same way, it is necessary for WG2 to prove that the exaggerated yet modest warming "predicted" by WG1 will have extremely bad consequences. If they failed to prove it, it would become clear that the very existence of WG3 - and to a large extent WG2 - is a huge fraud. The political framework is given and scientists are only expected to make it look convincing by inserting scientific jargon and cherry-picked data into the big gaps in the whole orthodoxy. That's a classic example of intellectual prostitution.

WG2 doesn't even pretend to be based on natural science. Just like WG1 that provided us with a demo (summary for policymakers) although many people apparently think that WG1 has already released a report, WG2 only offers us the table of contents, press conferences, and their

• IPCC WG2 summary for policymakers.

You can also see a webcast of this conference: a black window together with a screenshot that allows you to safely remove zero types of hardware.

Some of their statements

Even though the full document is rumored to have 1572 pages (what else it can be than just a worthless conglomerate of myths that hundreds of random people add to it?), we must rely on the summary and press conferences as reported by the media e.g. Bloomberg. The working group is informing us that species will go extinct even though it is pretty much known that higher temperatures have been historically increasing the diversity of species, especially mammals.

They feel certain that all infectious diseases will become extremely widespread although the correlations between the temperature and diseases are questionable, to say the least, while millions of people are dying today as opposed to a result of a hypothetical change in the future.

They are telling us that there will be many more storms even though rudimentary atmospheric physics implies that storminess should decrease because it is driven by the temperature difference between the equator and the poles and this difference is predicted to shrink because the polar warming should be faster.

They are also convinced that the droughts will spread although some of the newest scientific results indicate that rainfall in Saharan Africa could increase substantially within a few decades in the case that the warming trend continues and undo the natural devastation of that region.

They are telling us that the poor people may be the hardest hit ones. That's almost certainly the case but what they're not saying is that 99+ percent of their ability to cope not only with a hypothetical climate change but also with the status quo depends on their future wealth and on their access to technology - something that these comrades want to prevent.

To summarize, what WG2 is saying is mostly a shameful piece of crap but it is a politically correct piece of crap, and that's what really matters these days. The Whacko Gang #3 will release their "findings" how to cool down Earth later. A leading contaminator of science, Stephen Schneider who is known for his Schneider doctrine about the necessary compromise between the scientific integrity and fraud that every scientist must adopt in order to be effective, claims that the Bush administration was helping this bureaucratic tumor of professional parasites and liars to grow in 85% of cases.

Hotel Al

It’s a religion:

Visitors to the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa won’t find the Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer. Instead, on the bureau will be a copy of “An Inconvenient Truth,” former Vice President Al Gore’s book about global warming.

No Bibles?

thanks Tim

Crunching the IPCC's numbers

The following analysis was sent to me by an astute reader, who is also a geophysicist, who says that he prepared this:

"only using data that the IPCC agrees with; in particular the long term global temperature and CO2 concentrations back to 1856 which have been published by them in support of their AGW premise. (The IPCC has never disagreed with the lower troposphere temperatures from satellites they only have commented on the differences between the satellite data and the land based data.)

"The kicker is that when their own data is held up to physical reality it shows their entire premise to be wrong."

The emphasis and tables have been added by me. Here are the results of number crunching of the IPCC accepted data:

THREE YEARS AND THREE DATA POINTS

The year 1990 was selected as the reference year for the Kyoto Accord.
In 1990 human emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels was 21,230 megatonnes.
In 1990 atmospheric concentration of CO2 was 354.16ppmv (year average from Mauna Loa observatory). In 1990 the global temperature was 14.075 degrees C (year average from MSU satellite data for the lower troposphere referenced to 14 degrees C for a relative absolute temperature)

In 2003 the global temperature from this satellite data dropped from 14.317 degrees C of the previous year to 14.272 degrees C. The temperature dropped again in 2004, went up in 2005, and dropped again in 2006 representing a net cooling of 0.044 degrees C over the last four years indicating that global warming is likely over.

In 2003 human emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels was 25,030 megatonnes.
In 2003 atmospheric concentration of CO2 was 375.79ppmv.
In 2003 the global temperature was 14.272 degrees C.

The year 2006 is the last complete year for these data.
In 2006 human emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels was 29,330 megatonnes.
In 2006 atmospheric concentration of CO2 was 381.89ppmv.
In 2006 the global temperature was 14.272 degrees C.

I've added this table to place the numbers side by side for comparison:

YEAR	CO2 emissions	CO2 concentration	Global Temp
1990	21,230 Mtonnes	354.16 ppmv	14.075 C
2003	25,030 Mtonnes	375.79 ppmv	14.272 C
2006	29,330 Mtonnes	381.89 ppmv	14.272 C

Kyoto is based on the direct relationship between CO2 emissions and CO2 concentration.
From 1990 to 2003 emissions increased from 21,230 to 25,030 megatonnes or 292 megatonnes per year.
From 2003 to 2006 emissions increased from 25,030 to 29,330megatonnes or 1435 megatonnes per year.
This represents an increase in the rate of emissions of 491% (this alarming rate of increase was duly noted at the conference in Nairobi last year using 2001as the pivotal date and “over a four fold increase” stated.)

If there is a direct linear relationship between CO2 emissions and concentration then this same 491% increase should have taken place in the rate of atmospheric CO2 concentration increase.

From 1990 to 2003 the concentration of atmospheric CO2 increased from 254.16ppmv to 375.79ppmv or 1.66ppmv per year.
From 2003 to 2006 the concentration of atmospheric CO2 increased from 375.79ppmv to 381.89ppmv or 2.03ppmv per year.
This represents an increase in the rate of atmospheric CO2 concentration of only 22% yet the emissions rate increased by 491%.

Another table added:

PERIOD	CO2 Emissions rate increase		CO2 concentration rate increase
1990-2003	292 Mtonnes		1.66 ppmv
2003-2006	1,435 Mtonnes	+491%	2.03 ppmv	+22%

If emissions are increasing at a rate over 20 times greater than the increase in concentration then it is clear that human emissions are not primarily responsible for the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration and consequentially not primarily responsible for global warming for those who subscribe to the Greenhouse Gas hypothesis of global warming.

Since human emissions can be calculated in actual tonnage, simple algebra can show the relative contributions of CO2 to the atmospheric concentration from human and other sources.

In 2006 this equates to humans contributing 1435 megatonnes to the concentration increase and other sources presumably natural (such as out gassing of the oceans and volcanoes) contributing 4836 megatonnes.
This is a clear statement that human emissions are only contributing 29.7% of the atmospheric CO2 increase and therefore any statement that human emissions are the major cause of global warming is clearly false.

Another table added:

YEAR	CO2 Emissions from Humans	CO2 Emissions from other
2006	1,435 Mtonnes	4836 Mtonnes

The sharp increase in human emissions took place in 2001 as was pointed out by the IPCC. If the same calculation is done using the 5 years before and after 2001 the human emissions contribution to the atmospheric concentration is reduced to 27%, and if the natural emissions are increasing as would be suggested by out gassing theory this number would be reduced even further.

All of the predictions for a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere by 2050 or 2100 are based on emissions not actual measured atmospheric CO2 concentration.
The 2006 concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is 381.89ppmv and the increase from 2005 was 2.15ppmv with the rate increasing at 0.15ppmv/year each year.
In 2050, 44 years from now, the concentration will have increased by 101.2ppmv to 483.1ppmv which is far from a doubling of 760ppmv, and even in 2100 the concentration will only be 598.1ppmv.

Quite simply, the actual physical data indicates that even if we increase our emissions at our current alarming rates we will have met the concentration objectives of the Kyoto Accord by staying well under a doubling of atmospheric CO2 by 2100.

The global temperature change as a function of human emissions is a further indication that the premise for Kyoto is wrong.
The global temperature increased from 1990 to 2003 from 14.075 to 14.272 degrees C or about 0.015 degrees C per year.
The global temperature was exactly the same in 2003 and 2006 indicating zero increase between those years.

Remarkably the zero increase in global temperature took place when the emissions were increasing at over 20 times the rate for the period that the temperature was increasing at 0.015 degrees C per year. By any scientific standard this would negate any possible correlation of human CO2 emissions with global temperature change.

In fact the temperature data over the last 150 years compared to the CO2 concentration data as presented by the IPCC prove that CO2 concentration itself cannot be correlated with global temperature changes.

A close inspection of the temperature graph will show that instead of a continuous temperature rise since the turn of the century there are two almost linear trends of global temperature increase separated by the well documented minor cooling that took place from about 1943 to 1975. The trend from 1975 to 2006 has a slope of about 0.02 degrees C per year. The earlier trend from about 1911 to 1943 also has the near identical slope of 0.02 degrees C per year.

The change in atmospheric CO2 concentration as presented by the IPCC shows an increase of less than 0.3ppmv per year from 1911 to 1943 but that rate increases by over 6 times to just under 2ppmv per year from 1975 to 2006.

PERIOD	Change in CO2 concentration per year	Change in Temperature per year
1911-1943	0.3ppmv	0.02 C
1975-2006	~2.0ppmv	0.02 C

If two concentration rate increases, one six times the other, produce the same rate of temperature increase there are only two possible conclusions; either there is no relationship between CO2 concentration and global temperature; or there is such a rapidly decreasing exponential relationship that it would take several doublings of CO2 concentration to achieve the same amount of temperature increase that occurred from 1975 to 2006.

(While the first conclusion that there is no relationship between CO2 changes and global temperatures is more likely, the second possible conclusion points to the likelihood that the parts of the 4.2micron band and the 13.5micron band that are unique CO2 infrared radiation capture are nearly saturated and additional CO2 concentration has progressively less an less effect in a decreasing exponential fashion.)

In Summary the actual physical data used by the IPCC clearly demonstrates that:

1. Human emissions are not the primary source for increased concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and in fact represent less than 30% of the contribution.
2. Human emissions cannot be responsible for global temperature changes.
3. Changes in concentration of atmospheric CO2 have virtually no effect on global temperature.

This simple demonstration of basic science using IPCC data begs the question why was this not done by the IPCC scientists who are all top scientists more than capable of recognizing these simple shortcomings of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis?

The short answer is that the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is not a scientific entity, but a political body. And it's politicians like Mr. Dion, Ms. May, Mr. Layton, Mr. Duceppe and now, sadly Mr. Baird who don't want to recognize these simple shortcomings of the global warming crusade.

Source

If only cars could run on hypocrisy

Outback south australia

Continuing on with south Australia, we head out bush to look at two stations in the middle of whoop whoop, namely, Yongala and Woomera Aerodrome.

whilst Woomera might seem outback, it has the largest military testing area in the world (around the same size as England), where all sorts of weapons and aerospace testing is done (including nuclear weapons in the past).

But onto the data. Maximum and minimum data go back as far as 1925, whilst time related temperatures go back to the mid 50s or 60s (with the exception of midnight which is only 15 years worth).

Analysis of maximum temperatures show a significant increase in temperatures (t=3.5,p<0.01), whilst minimum temperatures show no such increase (t=1.6,p=0.1).

A significant increase was found in temperatures at 3am (t=2.2,p<0.05), Noon (t=2.3,p<0.05), 3pm (t=2.8,p<0.01) and 6pm (t=2.03,p<0.05). No significant increase was found at the remaining times (6am: t=1,p=0.3; 9am: t=0.45,p=0.65; 9pm: t=1.9,p=0.06).

It is no surprise to see that when maximum temperatures increased, so to times at noon, 3pm and 6pm. The increase in temperature at 3am however is very surprising, especially when considering that times around this were insignificant.

So in outback south Australia, it seems as though we are only heating up during the day, moreso when the sun is at it's hottest. There was no significant change in rainfall since the start of the 20th century.

Use One Square

Using only one square of toilet paper will cool the world.

Carbon offset swindle

A Financial Times investigation has uncovered widespread failings in the new markets for greenhouse gases, suggesting some organisations are paying for emissions reductions that do not take place. (...)

The FT investigation found:

■ Widespread instances of people and organisations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions.

■ Industrial companies profiting from doing very little – or from gaining carbon credits on the basis of efficiency gains from which they have already benefited substantially.

■ Brokers providing services of questionable or no value.

■ A shortage of verification, making it difficult for buyers to assess the true value of carbon credits.

■ Companies and individuals being charged over the odds for the private purchase of European Union carbon permits that have plummeted in value because they do not result in emissions cuts.

The Andy Rover is ice-bound off Newfoundland's northeast coast as seen in this image made available by the Coast Guard.

A handful of sealing ships trapped in icy waters off the coast of Newfoundland were rescued on Saturday, but many more vessels remain in the north Atlantic as families anxiously await the return of their loved ones.

So far, 52 non-essential crew have been evacuated and at least five longliners have been completely abandoned amid concerns over dwindling food and fuel supplies.

Experienced sealers say it's not uncommon for ships to be stuck in the ice flows as they hunt for young seals, but this year's ice conditions are the worst they've seen in two decades.

Between 300 and 400 other seal hunters on more than 100 "longliner" boats were not so lucky. Most of them remain stuck in a freak build-up of pack ice – the worst anyone here can remember – that trapped them a week ago as they headed home.

There was a little light at the end of the frigid tunnel as a persistent northeasterly gale veered slowly to the southwesterly wind that will move the ice floes away. The temperature rose a few degrees, too, which will help.

Two of the Coast Guard's three icebreakers also got stuck earlier this week trying to carve a path for some of the stricken longliners to follow them to open water.

Ceduna

Enough of Western Australia, and onto south Australia. There are only 4 stations of worth in this area, and we will do each one individually as they are spaced out between each other a long way. Ceduna's temperature record isn't great but is good enough. Maximum and minimum temperatures go back to the end of the second world war, whilst time based temperatures start in the mid 50s, with the exception of Midnight, which contains only 16 years of data.

Analysis of maximum and minimum temperatures both show a significant increase (Max: t=3.3,p<0.01; Min: t=3.5,p<0.01).

Note that with maximum temperatures, before 1960 we had lower than normal temperatures and since then most years have been in the positive. The last 9 years have all been above par. Minimum temperatures show a similar pattern. But lets have a look at the time based temperatures.

All of Midnight, 3am, 6am, 9am, Noon, 3pm, 6pm and 9pm show no significant increase or decrease in temperature (Mid: t=1.8,p=0.08; 3am: t=0.5,p=0.6; 6am: t=-0.4,p=0.7; 9am: t=0.2,p=0.8; Noon: t=1.4,p=0.16; 3pm: t=2,p=0.055; 6pm: t=0.8,p=0.4; 9pm: t=1.4,p=0.16).

So how can it be that we have found an increase in maximum and minimums but no increase in any time? well lets have a look at maximum first.

It must be noted that there was almost a significant increase in temperatures at 3pm, but just fell above the 5% mark. Increases - although non significant - and not as strong - also occurred at Noon and 6pm, so we can probably say that Ceduna has been heating up during the day especially at the heat of the day around 3pm. There is also the case that maximum temperature data has been recorded an extra 10-12 years before time based data. When looking at the maximum temperatures in the early days, they were all very much negative. When looking at maximum data as well as temperatures from 3pm we find that they are highly correlated (r squared = 90%), so if early temperatures were accurate, it is a reasonable assumption that temperatures at 3pm in the 40s and early 50s were also below average.

Minimum temperatures also show lower then average temperatures from the mid 50's and beforehand - a time where the temperatures at certain times of the day were not recorded. Hence the most logical reason for the increase in minimum temperatures, but no increase overnight. It must be noted however, that since 1955 no significant minimum temperature increase was found (t=1.6,p=0.2)

Kyoto will be disaster for Turkey

The economic costs of signing the Kyoto Protocol in its current form could result in as much as a 37 percent drop in Turkey's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which was $148 billion in 2006, reported a paper prepared by the state agency responsible for charting the progress and possible repercussions of projects.

According to the report presented by the State Planning Organization (DPT) to the Parliament commission investigating the matter, by signing the protocol Turkey would be willingly accepting responsibility to undertake certain measures and the repercussions of these measures could cost between 10 to 37 percent of the GDP.

The Kyoto Protocol would see Turkey decrease its carbon emission, while providing the opportunity to increase such emissions to countries like Greece, Norway, Australia and Portugal.

Global warming map sap hurricanes

Global warming could increase a climate phenomenon known as wind shear that inhibits Atlantic hurricanes, a potentially positive result of climate change, according to new research released on Tuesday.

East of Perth

It's been a while since we've analysed Australian data so lets ave a look at the area of east of perth that extends to Kalgoorlie - famous for it's mining, drinking and womenising.

There is no significant increase or decrease in maximum temperatures (t=-0.9, p=0.36), however a significant increase in minimum temperatures was found (t=4.4,p<0.01).

Despite this minimum temperature increase, no significant increases in temperature was found at midnight (t=0.5,p=0.6) or 3am (t=0.25,p=0.8). However, significant increases were found at 6am (t=2.3, p<0.05), 9am (t=3.3,p<0.01) and Noon (t=2.4,p<0.05). The reminder of the day so no significant increase in temperature (3pm: t=1,p=0.3; 6pm: t=-1,p=0.3; 9pm: t=0.8,p=0.4).

There is ample data for this region, dating back to 1943 with the exception of temperatures at 9pm which only go back 17 years. Hence we are finding an increase in temperature in the early hours of the day when the sun first makes its appearance.

When looking at adjoining times, we find no significant difference between temperatures at 3am and midnight (p=-0.4), however we do find significant differences between 6am and 3am (p<0.01) as well as between 9am and 6am (p<0.05). No differences in tempertaure were found between Noon and 9am (p=0.6), however we do find a significant decrease in temperature between 3pm and Noon (p<0.01) and between 6pm and 3pm (p<0.01).

Hence this tells me that in south eastern Western Australia, minimum temperatures are only increasing because of a sudden increase in temperature around the 6am and 9am mark. Whatever is happening at this time, the increase is so big that it offsets any increase later on in the day.

It is kind of obvious that this is the time in which the sun rises. Hence, it might sound strange, but an increase in minimum temperatures along with no increase in maximum temperatures might well have something to do with the strength of the sun in areas east of Perth.

Incidentally, no significant changes in rainfall was observed since 1910 in the area (t=0.6,p=0.55)

Electricity price hike

Electricity prices in NSW have gone up by 8% as previously said, but no surprises that victoria are not far behind. I just recieved a letter from AGL showing the price increase of 8% as well.

One again, no surprises why the increase.

Time magazine part IV

The new Time Magazine mentions not a lot about global warming, but it does have a flurry of letters into their inbox. I count 11 letters in fact, and all of them by one (which only got 4 lines) are praising the article and saying how good it was. Interestingly, there was none against - I wonder why. Here are some of the letters:

- Thankyou for including switching to vegetarianism as an excellent way to help save the environment...We vegetarians know that we are helping save not only the environment but animals as well

Saving animals? how?

- The biggest way to reduce carbon emissions wasn't listed: don't have more than two children.

How selfish it is of families with more than two children. Shame on them.

- There's another thing we can do to help. How about it we all cut down on greed, selfishness and impatience?

Here here! Such great specific solutions in detail for us all.

- You negleted one simple way to help curb emissions: don't drink bottled water...The feel food factor? A friend of mine figured that over the course of a year she saved almost $1000 - enough to take herself on an environmentally friendly vacation.

Where's she going on the vacation? I gather she is walking there? Heaven's above is she drives or takes a plane!

The fact that Time Magazine actually includes a "Feel good factor" and yet no-one blinks an eye at it, is true testimate that most people feel that useless steps that make you feel good that do absolutely nothing to decrease global temperatures are worth while doing.

Please

Time magazine part III

Ok I've decided to skip past all the great things anyone can do to save the world from warming up as given by Time magazine, but will tell you of a few doosies:

11. Wear Vintage Clothes
15. Move to a high rise building
16. Pay your bills on time
21. Coze up to your water heater
22. Skip the steak - go vegetarian
26. Plant a bamboo fence
27. Fly by plane in a straight line
29. Don't wear a tie and suit
31. Wear green eye shadow
34. Use a rake instead of a leaf blower
45. When driving, turn right instead of left

As you can see all the above are absurd useless things to do. Have a look through the list and determine if any of the steps will actually make a difference. Answer is that all of them will make extremely minimal differences.

But it's the point number 51 that I want to look at more closely. Lets see what it says:

there is an older path to reducing our impact on the planet that will feel familar to Evangelical Christians and Buddhists alike.

Excellent, I'm glad they brought up religion.

Live simply.

Ok, and what will that do?

Meditate.

Give me one good reason why meditation will make any significant difference at all to global temperatures. Just one.

Consume less.

This is sounding very anti-capitalist instead of anti-warming.

Think more.

Well everyone always thinks. I presume they mean thing more productively. Maybe I can close my eyes and just think hard about temperature decreases and it will work.

Get to know your neighbors.

You've got to be kidding? If getting to know your neighbors will decrease global temperatures then we are all doomed. Is this seriously for real?

Borrow when you need to and lend when asked.

Ok, I am starting to realise that this is not about reducing global temperatures at all, but rather certain people telling others how they should live their lives.

E.F. Schumacher praised that philosophy this way in Small Is Beautiful: "Amazingly small means leading to extraordinarily satisfying results.

Yep, my thoughts are confirmed. You see this post is the main reason why any critic would be, in fact, critical. For many, protesting about global warming and the effects that man have on it, is not about reducing the global temperature but is rather a way to get people to consume less, live a simple life like we did 100 years ago and cripple the American economy. It is a purely anti-capitalist movement. A movement, which as described by Time itself, a religious endevour.

Picture of the day

IPCC pulls numbers out of thin air

Sinclair Davidson and Alex Robson of the Australian Financial Review agree with me that there is no statistical significance to prove that humans are the cause of increased temperatures.

Tim Labert, in his rebuttal of their article also concludes that

A larger data set means that smaller effects will be statistically significant, so it is possibly that an effect could be statistically significant but so small that it is not practically significant. Furthermore, if a test does not achieve a specified confidence level, it does not falsify the hypothesis -- all you can say is that there is insufficient data to draw a conclusion.

So thanks Lambert in saying that we don't have enough data to draw a conclusion. Unfortunately as proven by me previously, we do, and the result is still insignificant.

10 signs that you're a Moral Idiot

whilst they are all good, number 8 has the most relevance here:

8. You believe we should sign the Kyoto Protocol. Hmmm, you say, why is there a moral aspect to this? If you disagree with me then aren't I just an idiot and not a moral idiot? Good question, I'm glad you asked. A fully implemented Kyoto Protocol (the US and Australia sign, China and India etc are exempt) would cost the world $20 trillion and save 0.1C by 2050 and, if you're wondering, there's not much argument on those figures from either side of the political spectrum. The moral aspect comes into play in that it is completely immoral to spend such a massive sum of money on a completely symbolic project when millions of people in the world currently don't have access to clean drinking water, don't get enough to eat, suffer from diseases that were eradicated in the West decades ago (malaria, polio, cholera etc), live in totalitarian African regimes and have an average life expectancy of about 35. When the environmentalist Bjorn Lomberg gathered representatives from countries affected by these issues and created the Copenhagen Consensus Centre they came out with a report ranking the priority that aid money should be spent (in their case they assigned a hypothetical $50 billion). The first of the climate change issues, the Kyoto Protocol, ranked 27th on their list of 40. If you want to hamstring the US economy (the greatest provider of humanitarian aid on the planet) and transfer money to China and Russia through carbon trading schemes (which is their net effect) while we have a here and now crisis in Africa then your values are inverted and you're a Moral Idiot.

An Inconvenient Truth ... or Convenient Fiction?

Steven Hayward is the main man behind this lecture/documentary

Part 1 and Part 2 here.

Act Now!.....with caution

Dr Bryson Bates, director of the CSIRO Climate Program, tells us that

Climate change is real and the time to act is short. Adaptation to climate change is as important as the mitigation of greenhouse gases.

however as slattsnews tells us, the CSIRO's brochure disclamer says that

The projections are based on results from computer models
that involve simplifications of real physical processes that
are not fully understood. Accordingly, no responsibility will
be accepted by CSIRO for the accuracy of the projections
inferred from this brochure or for any person’s
interpretations, deductions, conclusions or actions in
reliance on this information.

Climate model responses are most uncertain in how they represent
feedback effects, particularly those dealing with
changes to cloud regimes, biological effects and
ocean-atmosphere interactions. The coarse spatial
resolution of climate models also remains a limitation
on their ability to simulate the details of regional
climate change. Future climate change will also be
influenced by other, largely unpredictable, factors
such as changes in solar radiation, volcanic eruptions
and chaotic variations within the climate system
itself. Rapid climate change, or a step-like climate
response to the enhanced greenhouse effect, is
possible but its likelihood cannot be defined. Because
changes outside the ranges given here cannot be
ruled out, these projections should be considered
with caution.

so ACT NOW! (with caution) on very misunderstood simplified models, that will all change with a bit of solar radiation or some volcanic eruption somewhere.

It's Not Pretty Being Green

THE LATEST CRAZE in architecture, after fizzled experiments in Modernism, Post Modernism, Brutalism, Deconstructionism, and Post-Brutal-Deconstructed-Neo-Modernism, is a genuflection to environmentalism called "Green Building" or "Sustainable Architecture." For the most part, building "Green" means cloaking an intrinsically inefficient high rise building in an ecological hair shirt that makes owners feel good and tenants feel miserable.

The latest example of Green Building has risen in San Francisco, where the city by the Bay has ripped apart one of the grittier parts of its foggy utopia to construct what is surely the most ridiculous building of our still young century: the poetically-named Federal Building.

A unique combination of crackpot environmentalism and elaborate ugliness, the Federal Building will finally opens its doors (or flaps, or airlocks, or orifices, or something) later this month and it will boast a number of odd design "features." For instance, the Federal Building is an office tower tall enough to disrupt the city's skyline, yet its elevators only stop on every third floor--the better to conserve energy.

And after trudging up and down the stairs on a blazing summer afternoon the unfortunate tenants soak in their own sweat because the building has no air conditioning . . . again to save energy.

Who could have conceived of such a thing?

ANIMALS FORCED INLAND

As Tim Blair reports:

Alaskan sea otters are starving! Why? Because there’s too much ice:

An unbudging sheath of sea ice has blocked off the waters where the Alaska Peninsula’s sea otters forage, forcing the starving animals inland on a search for food and making them easy prey for wolves and humans.

Some otters have waddled or slid on their bellies for several miles onto the tundra near Port Heiden, where they have been attacked by dogs, killed for their pelts or have died of malnourishment ...

Similar freeze-outs have been documented since the early 1970s.

Poor little guys; if only that ice could be melted somehow.

Rudd's hot air

As given by Andrew Bolt,

Kevin Rudd, like so many global warming alarmists, is better at talking about cutting emissions than actually doing it.

His policy is uncompromising:

Our policy is 60 per cent (cuts in emissions) by 2050

But when it comes to making any cuts himself:

JOURNALIST: Have you got solar power at your house?

RUDD: We’ve actually had the solar technicians in to look at our house and one of the problems – I was actually discussing this with Phil before – is the way our house is positioned on the side of a hill in Brissy, we’re actually facing the wrong way. We’re still getting more consultants in to see what can be done but we’re in a perfect position, given Brisbane’s weather, to be as cool as possible, lots of trees and all the rest of it, but we’re not in a perfect position when it comes to installing solar. So, we’re going to get some more solar technicians in.

And now we find he’s also driving the most planet-killing kind of car:

The Labor leader yesterday revealed his family car was a four-wheel drive Ford Territory.

The taxpayer-funded car chews up 12.8 litres of fuel in 100km of city driving and has one of the lowest environmental ratings of all government vehicles.

(This is, incidentally, the very same make of car chosen by that other green activist, Rod Quantock.)

Do the maths on Global Warming

In yesterday's National Post, Lorne Gunter effectively puts the math of man made CO2 and global warming into layman's terms :

Think of the atmosphere as 100 cases of 24 one-litre bottles of water -- 2,400 litres in all.

According to the global warming theory, rising levels of human-produced carbon dioxide are trapping more of the sun's reflected heat in the atmosphere and dangerously warming the planet.

But 99 of our cases would be nitrogen (78%) and oxygen (21%), neither of which are greenhouse gases. Only one case -- just 24 bottles out of 2,400 -- would contain greenhouse gases.

Of the bottles in the greenhouse gas case, 23 would be water vapour.

Water vapour is the most abundant greenhouse gas, yet scientists will admit they understand very little about its impact on global warming. (It may actually help cool the planet: As the earth heats up, water vapour may form into more clouds and reflect solar radiation before it reaches the surface. Maybe. We don't know.)

The very last bottle in that very last case would be carbon dioxide, one bottle out of 2,400.

Carbon dioxide makes up just 0.04% of the entire atmosphere, and most of that -- at least 95% -- is naturally occurring (decaying plants, forest fires, volcanoes, releases from the oceans).

At most, 5% of the carbon dioxide in the air comes from human sources such as power plants, cars, oilsands, etc.

So in our single bottle of carbon dioxide, just 50 ml is man-made carbon dioxide. Out of our model atmosphere of 2,400 litres of water, just about a shot glassful is carbon dioxide put their by humans. And of that miniscule amount, Canada's contribution is just 2% --about 1 ml.

So evil forests are causing the warming?

Forests on certain parts of the planet may actually warm the Earth, according to researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

According to the new study, forests in mid- to high-latitude locations – such as boreal forests of Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia -- may actually create a net warming. The study concludes that by the year 2100, these mid- and high-latitude forests may make some places up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than would have occurred if the forests did not exist.

The research, led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory atmospheric scientist Govindasamy Bala, appears in the April 9-13 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Forests affect climate in three different ways: they absorb the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and help keep the planet cool; they evaporate water to the atmosphere and increase cloudiness, which also helps keep the planet cool; and they are dark and absorb sunlight (the albedo effect), warming the Earth. Previous climate change mitigation strategies that promote planting trees have taken only the first effect into account.

"Our study shows that only tropical rainforests are strongly beneficial in helping slow down global warming," Bala said. "It is a win-win situation in the tropics because trees in the tropics, in addition to absorbing carbon dioxide, promote convective clouds that help to cool the planet. In other locations, the warming from the albedo effect either cancels or exceeds the net cooling from the other two effects."

"If we really want to do something about global warming," said JunkScience.com's Steve Milloy, "providing chainsaws to Canadians, Swedes and Russians would seem a better investment than economy-killing greenhouse gas emissions reductions."

The real value of the study, Milloy said, is that it illustrates how little we know about the global ecosystem and climate. "Imagine that folks in Congress are actually contemplating harming our economy by making energy more expensive and more scarce based on exceedingly limited knowledge about the ecosystem and climate," added Milloy.

"I only have one question," said Milloy. "How did this study make it out of the Global Warming Politburo? Is the Minister of Propaganda still on Spring Break?"

Leonardo's solutions not saluted

Roy spencer has a stab at Leonardo

Canadian Heat Waves Declining?

The world climate report reports from an article in the recent issue of Theoretical and Applied Climatology which suggests that heat waves in Canada are decreasing despite the increased temperature.

Canada's extreme temperatures have “shown no significant trend over the course of the 20th century (1900–1998) for the higher percentiles of daily summer maxima.”

The researchers of the previous study “concluded that the number of extreme hot days showed little change, in spite of the increase in mean annual temperature by 0.9°C between 1900 and 1998.”

The Aral Sea

Gore's fans paint the picture of fantastic global warming by claiming that

Rusting ships litter a desert where the Aral Sea used to be.

However, Luboš Motl is fuming:

The area of the lake shrunk to 40% and the volume to 20% of the original values and the Aral Sea dropped from the 4th lake to the 8th lake in the world. What do you think happens with salinity if you reduce the volume five-fold? Indeed, it increases almost five-fold, from 10 g/l to about 45 g/l. The concentration of all possible poisons jumps, too. The cancer rate around the lake thus increased ten times, together with tuberculosis. Fisherman and the rest of economy started to die, too.

In 1990, BBC called these changes the world's worst disaster

Let me nention that spending $200 million during a decade for something that was called the world's worst disaster in 1990 is pretty absurd in a world that wastes around $3,000 billion per decade on absurd and manifestly futile policies to "fight the climate change". Yes, global warming - I mean the religion - already swallows 15,000 times more than the world's worst catastrophe.

I urge all sane people with some common sense to realize the absurdity of this comparison.

PLANET DESTROYED TO SAVE PLANET

An interview with George Monbiot via Tim Blair:

MONBIOT: It is becoming morally unacceptable now to fly to go on holiday. The carbon emissions per passenger mile are roughly the same from a plane as they are in a car, but while in a car you might travel 10,000 miles in a year, in a plane you travel 10,000 miles in a day. So individually, by taking a flight, you are doing more damage than you could possibly do by any other means, and your luxury is depriving other people of their necessities.

NEWSWEEK: Have you given up flying?

MONBIOT: The only reason for which I will fly is to campaign on climate change.

Time magazine part II

As promised earlier, I am going to analyse Time Magazine's 51 Things We Can Do to Save the Environment. The first 10 here, the next lot soon.

1. Turn Food Into Fuel

In other words, use ethanol on busses for example. I don’t own a bus, but am happy to ride an ethanol bus, which by the way, costs the government and therefore us, plenty more times to run.

2. Get Blueprints For a Green House

Controlling heat, making sure that there are no leakages in the house so that cold air (or global warming hot air) can’t get in. This makes sense of course, and will also save money too.

3. Change Your Lightbulbs

I’ve already discussed how this feel good gesture (note it rates high on their feel-good scale and next to nothing on making a difference – at least here they are honest), makes not significant difference at all.

4. Light Up Your City

See point 3.

5. Pay the Carbon Tax

Ahh yes carbon tax. A great idea, however it doesn’t really reduce CO2 levels does it? And hey, it’s merely just shifting my problem onto someone else. But hey, I’m happy to pay carbon tax – why not?

6. Ditch the Mansion

Tell that to Al Gore. Quote: “Oversize houses aren't just architecturally offensive” Huh? Since when? I’ve been to plenty of large houses that are architecturally masterpieces. Since when have they been offensive? Seems to me that the author here doesn’t like rich people. With such a bias in mind, it is understandable why she is on the global warming parade. But hey, ok, I’ll sell my house, ditch the family holiday unit near the beach (it’s going to be under water soon anyway isn’t it?), and move into a small apartment. I’m cool for that.

7. Hang Up a Clothes Line

“You could make your own clothes with needle and thread using 100% organic cotton”

Nice idea. So no more clothes buying for me. I shall make all my clothes. I’m not sure what my boss will think when I rock up in a home made shirt and wrap around skirt, and I don’t really know how to make shoes. Surprisingly, their scale says that this makes no impact and doesn’t even make you feel good. Like seriously, what is the point of even mentioning this step? Oh, I understand, anti-capitalism. Lets all go back to the good ol’ days where we grew our own veggies, killed our own chicken and made our own clothes. What progression!

8. Give New Life to Your Old Fleece

Recycle your own clothes. But why? Because I make my own clothes now (7), the last thing I want to do is recycle them. Can’t I just keep them please?

9. Build a Skyscraper

Just checked my bank account, and because I’ve been paying stacks on carbon credits (5), I don’t quite have the money to build a skyscraper. I did however sell my mansion (6) so I have some money to spend. I have set aside a separate account for my new exciting job as a skyscraper builder.

10. Turn Up the Geothermal Heat

In other words, build a house that is environmentally friendly. Awesome idea. But I only recently bought a small apartment (6). Ok, I’ll sell it and make a new house from scratch. I really need to do a building course.

THEY CLING PRECARIOUSLY

Tim Blair comes up with a caption for a terrifying picture:

“Their habitat is drowning ... beautiful animals, literally being forced off the planet. They’re in trouble, got nowhere else to go.”

An inconvenient expert

As Andrew Bolt points out, Who are you going to believe - politician Al Gore or one of the world’s top hurricane forecasters?

A top hurricane forecaster called Al Gore “a gross alarmist” Friday for making an Oscar-winning documentary about global warming.

“He’s one of these guys that preaches the end of the world type of things. I think he’s doing a great disservice and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Dr. William Gray said ...

Gray, an emeritus professor at the atmospheric science department at Colorado State University, has long railed against the theory that heat-trapping gases generated by human activity are causing the world to warm.

Over the past 24 years, Gray, 77, has become known as America’s most reliable hurricane forecaster...

Larry King: Global Warming discussion

Climate change report is wrong: academic

The global scientific report blaming carbon emissions for climate change is based on misconceptions about the Earth's behaviour, says an Australian academic who believes global warming is not caused by mankind.

The respected Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released earlier this year said it was very likely climate change was the result of greenhouse gases produced by human activity.

Emeritus Professor Lance Endersbee has accused the scientific leaders of trying to stifle debate over the causes of climate change.

Professor Endersbee, a former dean of engineering and pro-vice chancellor at Monash University, says it is highly probable that increased electromagnetic radiation of the sun is behind global warming.

"The report reflects little understanding of the dynamic relation between the Earth, the Sun and the Cosmos.

Electricity price up - no surprises why

Electricity prices in New South Wales are set to rise by around 8 per cent a year under a draft determination by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART)...

IPART chief executive Jim Cox says the price increase is necessary to guarantee reliable supply and meet the costs of government renewable energy targets.

Universal Warming

A report from a journalist with gritted teeth:

Skeptics over global warming have jumped on news that Mars is heating up to back their skepticism that humans are causing global warming on Earth.

The research, coming from U.S. planetary scientists, suggests that Mars warmed by about 0.65C from the 1970s to the 1990s. This is similar to Earth’s 0.6C average temperature rise during the 20th century.

“It could be coincidental or it might be the needle in the haystack,” said climatologist William Kininmonth, former head of the National Climate Centre in Melbourne, Australia.

Kininmonth said that the research, which was published in the journal Nature, showed that there was enough natural climate variability to explain global warming on Earth.

Time Magazine's terrible biasness Part 1

Time’s most recent magazine is centered around global warming and 51 things you each of us can do to make a difference and help stem the obviously inevitable foreseeable global catastrophe. I took great pleasure in analyzing each of these 51 things and deciphering how much of a difference it will make. Interestingly, they have their own scale on these issues too. The have an impact, time horizon and feel good factor scale for each of the 51 steps. What is interesting is that they loudly applaud steps that make no impact whatsoever but feel good. More useless gestures. But nevertheless, before I delve into the steps, I want to analyse their prologue.


If droughts and wildfires, floods and crop failures, collapsing climate-sensitive species and the images of drowning polar bears didn't quiet most of the remaining global-warming doubters, the hurricane-driven destruction of New Orleans did.

Unfortunately no, I like many other people have not lost our case, no matter how biased and one sided this statement is. It makes it sound as though the critics have all finally lost their case after New Orleans, when there is ample evidence that global warming has no effect on hurricanes.

Dismissing a scientist's temperature chart is one thing. Dismissing the death of a major American city is something else entirely.

It seems now it's a moral issue, not a scientific one.

The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report on the state of planetary warming in February that was surprising only in its utter lack of hedging.


Damn, surely we are all going to fry and burn more than what the IPCC say?

Some lingering critics still found wiggle room in the U.N. panel's findings. "I think there is a healthy debate ongoing, even though the scientists who are in favor of doing something on greenhouse gases are in the majority," says Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin.

So it isn't a consensus then? I thought everyone was converted after Hurricane Katrina?

But when your last good position is to debate the difference between certain and extra certain, you're playing a losing hand.

How can one be more certain than certain? Perhaps the sentence should have said, debate the difference between most probable and certain, which you are obviously not always playing a losing hand.

"The science," says Christine Todd Whitman, former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (epa), "now is getting to the point where it's pretty hard to deny."

Ahh so it's still possible then?

Indeed it is.

Of course, I'm converted now.

Planting trees is great, but in some parts of the world, the light-absorbing color of the leaves causes them to retain heat and paradoxically increases warming.

Damn. Can we seriously cut these forests down. Evil forests.

Beneath the grass-roots action, larger tectonic plates are shifting.

Is this a subtle stab at blaiming earth quakes and tsunami's on global warming? I would hope not.

But alas, I'm looking forward to analysing each of the 51 steps so that we all won't fry. This is going to be fun indeed!

Bad Bad BBQ's

The government of Belgium's French-speaking region of Wallonia, which has a population of about 4 million, has approved a tax on barbequing, local media reported.

Experts said that between 50 and 100 grams of CO2, a so-called greenhouse gas, is emitted during barbequing. Beginning June 2007, residents of Wallonia will have to pay 20 euros for a grilling session.

The local authorities plan to monitor compliance with the new tax legislation from helicopters, whose thermal sensors will detect burning grills.

Scientists believe CO2 emissions are a major cause of global warming.

Nothing to be concerned about

Melbourne’s Bureau of Meteorology National Operations Centre manager Mike Bergin, discussing post-tsunami effects with the ABC’s Alison Caldwell, sets our minds at ease about rising sea levels:

MIKE BERGIN: At this stage we’re reasonably sure of height increases in the ocean of around 30 centimetres on the North Queensland coast. No doubt over the next couple of days we’ll, as reports come in, we’ll be able to get a better handle on that, but at the moment we’re confident that we saw a height rises around 30 centimetres.

ALISON CALDWELL: Which is nothing really to be too concerned about.

MIKE BERGIN: No, not a great deal.

(Via Tim Blair)

All you need is faith - believe

Jeremiah Magan, managing editor of California’s Fullerton College Hornet, believes seafloor earthquakes are a sign of global warming:

Despite the fact that Fullerton set record high temperatures for the month of March, people still have a hard time believing that global warming is real. The weather patterns are rapidly changing and becoming more extreme all over.

The tsunami in the South Pacific, Hurricane Katrina and the unseasonable heat in late winter and early spring are all signs that the weather is just going to continue changing.

The poor polar bears!

As Andrew Bolt points out:

Monica Attard recently told the truth behind the above picture.

Said Attard:


Those stranded polar bears on the shrinking Arctic ice - victims of global warming - certainly tugged at the heart-strings…

All used it as evidence of global warming and the imminent demise of the polar bear.

Except that the picture, snapped by Australian marine biology student Amanda Byrd two and a half years ago, was in fact taken during:


Summer, when every year the fringes of the Arctic ice cap melt regardless of the wider effects of global warming.

And, as experts told Attard, this was neither unusual nor evidence that the bears were in danger.

But that hadn’t stopped one notoriously inaccurate scaremonger from seizing on them for his own mischievous purposes:

"Their habitat is melting… beautiful animals, literally being forced off the planet,” Mr. Gore said, with the photo on the screen behind him. “They’re in trouble, got nowhere else to go.”

Audience members let out gasps of sympathy.

I don’t know whether this is an aberration or signals a desperately needed change in direction for Media Watch under its new executive producer, but I’m both astonished and grateful.

Crops better off with global warming

As the world climate report suggests, crops around the world will be better off with global warming, not worse, as many doomdayers and media outlets report.

They did an internet search of “Global Warming and Agriculture” and found more than 5,000,000 websites, and as they began sampling the sites, we encountered an overwhelming amount of bad news. They continue to say:

literally thousands of experiments have been conducted showing that agricultural plants benefit enormously in environments of higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide – they increase their rate of photosynthesis, increase water use efficiency, and increase yields. Furthermore, hundreds of experiments have shown that many agricultural plants benefit from higher temperatures, particularly higher temperatures at night. Believe it or not, most agricultural plants benefit from less frost! With all the gloom and doom about increased drought in the future, we note that all climate models predict increased precipitation on a global scale with little ability to predict changes in precipitation at local or even regional scales. Finally, can you name any important agricultural crop that has seen a reduction in yield per unit area over the past century? You cannot, because years of agricultural research have improved both the plants and the farming practices. Our guess is that the research in the future will produce even greater increases in yields, despite any changes that occur to the climate.

and of course have scientific evidence to back them up, quoting a recent article in the journal Climatic Change, entitled “Historical effects of temperature and precipitation on California crop yields.”

• “Wine grape yields were favored by years with warm nighttime temperatures in April and higher rainfall in June. Warm April temperatures reflect decreased risk of frost damage during the vulnerable post-budbreak spring growing period, when frosts can severely depress yields by damaging rapidly developing vegetative and cluster tissues”

• “Lettuce yields appear aided by warm days in April (up to about 23°C), as well as the October prior to harvest year.”

• “Table grape yields were increased with October rains in the year preceding harvest, and with warm nighttime July temperatures.”

• “Orange yields were most correlated with ppt [precipitation] in May and tmin [minimum temperatures] in December prior to and March of the harvest year.”

• “The strongest climatic response variable for cotton was a positive effect on yield for warmer May tmax [maximum temperatures]”

• “Tomato yields increased with warm April tmax, and with June tmax up to 32°C”

• “No significant relationships with climate were identified for pistachios yields”

Sydney's earth hour scam

On March 31st at 7.30pm, Sydney had an "earth hour" in which lights were turned off in for 60 minutes in order to save electricity and gain awareness to global warming.

Of course I don't have to do the sums to actually determine what a saving in temperature this would create. Oh no.

However, interestingly Tim Blair has reported fraud in the Age's analysis of earth hour, showing their over exposed picture of Sydney and what Sydney really should look like at night as shown below.



When really Sydney looks like this at night:



So why do we have to lie to prove a point? Isn't that an oxymoron?

But in new news, Sydney's Earth Hour could have actually caused an increase in electricity use as shown here

For me, I'm just suck and tired of these useless gestures.

Britain Plans To Cut Emissions By Cutting Down Trees

Britain hopes to slash carbon emissions by burning more home-grown wood under a new government plan announced on Wednesday. The Forestry Commission's Woodfuel Strategy for England aims to make 2 million tonnes a year more wood available for fuel by 2020 through better forest management and support. Burning this much wood, equal to about 3.6 million barrels of oil a year, should avoid an estimated 400,000 tonnes of carbon annually, biodiversity minister Barry Gardiner said. "Using wood instead of fossil fuels means that sustainably managed woodland can be a significant resource for a low-carbon economy," Gardiner said in a statement.

Wood production in England will have to increase by 60 percent to achieve the target and current wood supply chains are not capable of getting that much material to market, the Forestry Commission said in its report. The carbon released into the atmosphere by burning wood is partially absorbed by growing more trees, which means lowering emissions from the energy sector compared to coal, gas or oil.

Rather than importing other biofuels, which can come from environmentally-questionable sources, Britain should use its own woodland areas in an environmentally sustainable way, the plan's backers say. The Forestry Commission, which manages more than a million hectares of UK woodland, says more investment is needed to get the woodfuel market working more efficiently.

The government has set a domestic target to reduce carbon emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2010 and 60 percent by 2050 and the biggest contribution biomass can make to that goal is through heat generation, the Commission said. Unlike some European countries where communal heating systems are widely used, making the switch to biomass fairly cheap and easy, British homes are nearly all heated individually with gas, coal or oil. This is a major obstacle to the growth of biomass heating and support from government is needed to ensure dirty fossil fuel boilers are replaced with wood-burning ones quickly enough to establish effective supply chains, the Commission said. Currently, biomass provides 3 percent of UK energy needs.