Global warming 'truth'

In Today's Toronto Sun, Salim Mansur asks Is there global warming 'truth':

Gore insists the causal connection between human activity and global warming is proven by consensus, and there are many scientists who agree.

But there is another body of scientific opinion that questions such consensus, and it views proposals for cutting back carbon emission as too heavy-handed and will do more damage to the economy of countries like Canada than the expected good.

I recall a neat story about Albert Einstein when asked how he felt that some 200 German scientists assembled by the Nazi regime had declared his science was bad. Einstein replied that all it took was one scientist to prove him wrong.

Mixing politics and science, like oil and water.

Ponder the Maunder

It is truly amazing the clarity and insight that a high school student can bring to the anthropogenic global warming debate when allowed to look at the science alone, and ignore the politics. I present to you the work of high school student Kristen Byrnes of Portland Maine.

Welcome to Ponder the Maunder, an extra credit assignment for Honors Earth Science, Portland High School, by Kristen Byrnes of Portland Maine.

This report is a comprehensive look at the global warming issue without financial or political bias. It uses the most updated information provided by scientists and researchers and interjects common sense, an important component missing from the global warming debate.

h/t: Luboš Motl who writes:

As far as I can say, the content of the website is at least comparable in quality, quantity, and sanity to the content of RealClimate.ORG even though the latter source is written by 11 people who have sucked millions of taxpayers' dollars in several countries.

OK. You will want to set aside some time so you can thoroughly explore this amazing website of Kristen's high school science project. You won't regret it.

So not a leader

The current leader of the Liberal Party of Canada demonstrated once again why he is so not a leader.

"We're ready ... we're ready ... we're ready," shouted Stéphane Dion at a Liberal pep rally yesterday, as members of his caucus gave a limp chorus of "Dion, Dion, Dion."

This was curious, since a senior Liberal had just confided: "We’re so not ready."

I'm glad that Emperor Dion is enjoying his new clothes.

Most ridiculous item of the day

Today's item comes from actor John Travolta on global warming solutions:

"I'm wondering if we need to think about other planets and dome cities.

Newsflash John: it's warming on Mars too!

Travolta owns not one, but five private jets and it is estimated that last year he personally accounted for a whopping 800 tonnes of carbon emissions. Despite his outspoken concern for global warming, Travolta realizes the obvious:

"I'm probably not the best candidate to ask about global warming because I fly jets."

Right. And you're just another celebrity who should stick to acting.

Source.

Get your Carbon Offsets now

Wow. 10 carbon units for only a buck! Get yours now!

via Grouchy Old Cripple with a hat tip to Love Global Warming.

The path from global consensus to snake oil

Roger Pielke, Jr. writes:

At least one IPCC lead author appears to be trying to cash in on concern over climate change. With the help of several University of Arizona faculty members, including one prominent IPCC contributor, a company called Climate Appraisal, LLC is selling address specific climate predictions looking out as far as the next 100 years. Call me a skeptic or a cynic but I'm pretty sure that the science of climate change hasn't advanced to the point of providing such place-specific information. In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest that if such information were credible and available, it'd already be in the IPCC. The path from global consensus to snake oil seems pretty short.

Source: Prometheus

An interview with Michael Crichton

Seven questions and seven answers from Michael Crichton.
h/t: SDA.

Reviewing the IPCC

Steve McIntyre relates an interesting tale of his attempts to access supporting data while acting as an expert reviewer for the IPCC AR4:

One of the most important IPCC representations is the supposedly tremendous quality control of its review process. I’ve mentioned in passing on a number of occasions that, when I sought to obtain supporting data for then unpublished articles, IPCC threatened to expel me as a reviewer.

I’ve had a few requests to recount my experience with trying to get data from IPCC for unpublished studies. So here’s a short summary of my correspondence with IPCC.

Be sure to read the comments too.

Wanted: opinions of Albertans on climate change

Here is a climate change survey sponsored by the government of Alberta.

The Government of Alberta is taking steps to renew its climate change action plan. As part of this process, Albertans are encouraged to complete the following questionnaire to provide input and direction for the new plan.

It's a lengthy questionnaire. But somehow I have a feeling that the results won't disappear like they did with the Kooky Suzuki poll that went terribly wrong.

Please submit your response by April 25, 2007.

The new morality of Global Warming Alarmists

In this article at The American Thinker, Tim Thorstenson asks "Why Did Global Warming Become a Moral Matter?"

As a scientist, I find the current strategy of the global warming crusade to be fascinating. Particularly because I am a scientist, I also find it insulting. Everyone should find it very disturbing.

I am referring to the fact that the global warming issue is now regarded as a "moral" matter by its advocates. None other than The High Priest of Global Warming (Al Gore) has decreed it as such.

Thorstenson explains why the global warming alarmists want desperately to make this a moral matter and not a scientific one.

Journal Reviews

Here's a couple of interesting journal reviews by the folks at CO2 Science.

First, this one by Jones, P.D. and Briffa, K.R. (2006). Unusual climate in northwest Europe during the period 1730 to 1745 based on instrumental and documentary data in Natural Climatic Variability in Northwest Europe.

Heat waves and cold spells. It makes little difference to climate alarmists, who say all such aberrations are due to CO2-induced global warming, as anything out of the ordinary is fodder for their catastrophe mill: it is bad, and it is a result of human activity. The new study of Jones and Briffa (2006), however, shows just how short-sighted such unfounded claims can be.

And then there's Russell, J.M. and Johnson, T.C. (2007) 20th-Century Global Warming and Central African Climate:

they conclude that "the patterns and variability of twentieth-century rainfall in central Africa have been unusually conducive to human welfare in the context of the past 1400 years," which is but one more example of the important fact that for most people in most places, the global warming of the past century has been a significant positive development.

Republican would kill Global Warming Bill

From Environment and Energy Daily, Senator Pete Domenici pledges to 'kill' warming bill absent China, India accord

A key Senate Republican vowed yesterday to block global warming legislation if emerging industrial nations do not make similar commitments.

"My concerns are long enough that I would kill a bill if we haven't taken some giant stride in the direction of getting China and/or India to join with this," Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) said in an interview yesterday.

Source.

150 Years of Global Warming / Cooling

Noel Sheppard provides us with "a list of New York Times articles dating back to 1855 addressing the global warming and cooling that has been happening on this planet for the past 150 years".

As you review the following, try to keep in mind just how sure global warming alarmists like soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore are that the current trend in climate change is a “a true planetary emergency” that must be dealt with soon to avoid an imminent cataclysm:

h/t: Newsbeat 1.

Milloy: an embarrassing abdication of congressional responsibility

Steven Milloy on Al Gore’s Congressional Lovefest

Ultimately, Gore’s exposure to tough questioning was extremely limited while the committee chairs allowed ample time for meaningless pleasantries and redundant fawning. Given what’s at stake in the global warming debate, the hearings were an embarrassing abdication of congressional responsibility.

Nevertheless, there were several noteworthy instances reflecting poorly on Gore’s credibility, concern for the public’s welfare and scientific argument.

Quote of the day

He's an actor, a former U.S Senator from Tennessee (Al Gore's home state) and a potential 2008 Presidential candidate. He's Fred Thompson and he filled in on the Paul Harvey radio show the other day.

He's quoted by the National Review Online:

"Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. Now scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming: Martian warming. It seems scientists have noticed recently that quite a few planets in our solar system seem to be heating up a bit, including Pluto.

"NASA says the Martian South Pole’s “ice cap” has been shrinking for three summers in a row. Maybe Mars got its fever from earth. If so, I guess Jupiter’s caught the same cold, because it’s warming up too, like Pluto.

"This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air-conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle.

"Silly, I know, but I wonder what all those planets, dwarf planets and moons in our SOLAR system have in common. Hmmmm. SOLAR system. Hmmmm. Solar? I wonder. Nah, I guess we shouldn’t even be talking about this. The science is absolutely decided. There’s a consensus.

"Ask Galileo."

Here's a link to the audio.

Czech Republic to appeal emissions cuts

via Business Week:

The Czech Republic said Monday it would appeal cuts the European Commission made to how much carbon dioxide it can release from 2008 to 2012, making it the second EU nation after Slovakia to threaten court action over the emissions plan.

The European Union's executive arm reduced the Czech yearly limit by 14.8 percent below what Prague had asked for... EU regulators made even deeper cuts to the Polish proposed maximum -- by more than a quarter -- but accepted France's proposed cap after Paris withdrew earlier plans for a higher limit.

(...) "I'll inform the government Wednesday and one of my proposals will be to lodge a suit against the Commission's decision," Trade Minister Martin Riman said in a statement.

Economic growth in both Poland and the Czech Republic is greater than in other parts of the EU, like France.

Luboš Motl sums it up on his blog:

The Czech Republic and perhaps Poland are planning to join Slovakia and sue the bastards in the EU who want to eco-terrorize the new members for whom the higher growth is necessary in order to catch up with the rest of Europe. Indeed, the recent growth in Czechia, Slovakia, and Poland was about twice the growth in the Western Europe and the Eurobureaucrats want to punish the new members for this growth.

The politics of the left. Punish the successful.

Global Warming? Science And History Say No

Francis T. Manns in todays' Post-Chronicle:

What is Global Warming? Throughout time the Earth's climate has varied. Since the base of the Pleistocene (1.8 M ya) there have been at least 30 glacial - interglacial cycles of 40,000 years to 100,000 years duration with interglacial periods warmer than now between them.

(...) Realistically, the planet is not warming in the dramatic manner the alarmists claim.

The sun heats the earth; cosmic radiation cools it. Do some scientific reading and let Al Gore’s PG rated scare dry up and blow away. He’s simply an irrelevant opportunistic manipulative politician. His only followers are sheep.

There's a link to Dr. Mann's excellent powerpoint presentation Global Warming and Science, also available under Good Stuff in my sidebar at right.

6th Graders debate Global Warming

At least one classroom in one school has taken a fair look at the global warming debate. The results are not surprising:

Humans don’t cause global warming, a jury of sixth graders at Trail Ridge Middle School concluded Thursday after hearing opposing arguments from their peers.

via the Longmont Daily Times-Call.

Beck's 138 year-long record of atmospheric CO2

A report by Ernst-Georg Beck, "180 YEARS OF ATMOSPHERIC CO2 GAS ANALYSIS BY CHEMICAL METHODS" published by Energy & Environment (Vol 18 No. 2 2007) compares 90,000 accurate chemical analyses of CO2 levels in the air recorded from 1812 through 1961. This record shows a remarkedly different trend compared to the literature of UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Here's a rather lengthy, but interesting excerpt:

ABSTRACT

More than 90,000 accurate chemical analyses of CO2 in air since 1812 are summarised. The historic chemical data reveal that changes in CO2 track changes in temperature, and therefore climate in contrast to the simple, monotonically increasing CO2 trend depicted in the post-1990 literature on climate-change. Since 1812, the CO2 concentration in northern hemispheric air has fluctuated exhibiting three high level maxima around 1825, 1857 and 1942 the latter showing more than 400 ppm.

Between 1857 and 1958, the Pettenkofer process was the standard analytical method for determining atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and usually achieved an accuracy better than 3%. These determinations were made by several scientists of Nobel Prize level distinction. Following Callendar (1938), modern climatologists have generally ignored the historic determinations of CO2, despite the techniques being standard text book procedures in several different disciplines. Chemical methods were discredited as unreliable choosing only few which fit the assumption of a climate CO2 connection.

THE CURRENT VIEWS ON CO2 AND CLIMATE CHANGE

The causes, development and future projection of climate change are summarized in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body that is responsible for advising governments. The four consecutive Assessment Reports of the IPCC - issued in 1992, 1995, 2001 and 2007 – follow closely the views of three influential scientists, Arrhenius, Callendar and Keeling on the importance of CO2 as a control on climate change. Quote from Keeling (1978, p. 1 [1]).

“The idea that CO2 from fossil fuel burning might accumulate in air and cause a warming of the lower atmosphere was speculated upon as early as the latter half of the nineteenth century (Arrhenius, 1903). At that time the use of fossil fuel was too slight to expect a rise in atmospheric CO2 to be detectable. The idea was again convincingly expressed by Callendar (1938, 1940) but still without solid evidence of a rise in CO2.”

Following this line of argument, the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (IPCC, 2001, chapter 3.1 [2]) contained the further explanation which makes it entirely explicit that direct measurements can only be relied on post 1957 and prior direct measurements can be disregarded in favour of indirect measurements made of air trapped in ice:

“The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen from close to 280 parts per million (ppm) in 1800, at first slowly and then progressively faster to a value of 367 ppm in 1999, echoing the increasing pace of global agricultural and industrial development. This is known from numerous, well-replicated measurements of the composition of air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice. Atmospheric CO2 concentration have been measured directly with high precision since 1957; these measurements agree with ice-core measurements, and show a continuation of the increasing trend up to the present.”

In 1958 C.D. Keeling, University of California, San Diego, USA, introduced a new technique for the accurate measurement of atmospheric CO2. Keeling used cryogenic condensation of air samples followed by NDIR spectroscopic analysis against a reference gas, using manometric calibration. Subsequently, this technique was adopted as an analytical standard for CO2 determination throughout the world, including by the World Meteorological Association (WMO) [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13].

CO2 measuring stations are distributed across the globe. Most, however, are located in coastal or island areas in order to obtain air without contamination from vegetation, organisms and industrial activity, i.e. to establish the so-called background level of CO2. In considering such measurements, account should be taken of the established fact that land-derived air flowing seawards looses about 10 ppm of its carbon dioxide to dissolution in the oceans, and even more in colder waters (Henrys Law).

THE ESTABLISHED CRITICAL VIEW ON HISTORICAL CO2 DATA

A major issue regarding the IPCC approach to linking climate and CO2 is the assumption that prior to the industrial revolution the level of atmospheric CO2 was in an equilibrium state of about 280 ppm, around which little or no variation occurred. This presumption of constancy and equilibrium is based upon a critical review of the older literature on atmospheric CO2 content by Callendar and Keeling. (See Table 1).

Between 1800 and 1961, more than 380 technical papers that were published on air gas analysis contained data on atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Callendar [16, 20, 24] Keeling and the IPCC did not provide a thorough evaluation of these papers and the standard chemical methods that they deployed. Rather, they discredited these techniques and data, and rejected most as faulty or highly inaccurate [20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27].

Though they acknowledge the concept of an ‘unpolluted background level’ for CO2, these authors only examined about 10% of the available literature, asserting from that that only 1% of all previous data could be viewed as accurate (Müntz [28, 29, 30], Reiset [31], Buch [32]).

THE CHALLENGE OF THE MAIN STREAM VIEW ON THE HISTORICAL DATA

During my own review of the literature, I observed that the evaluation of Reiset’s and Müntz’s work by Callendar and Keeling was erroneous. This made me investigate carefully the criteria that were used by these and other authors to accept or to reject such historical data.

The data accepted by Callendar and Keeling had to be sufficiently low to be consistent with the greenhouse hypothesis of climate change controlled by rising CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning. Callendar rejected nearly all data before 1870 because of “relatively crude instrumentation” and reported only twelve suitable data sets in 20th century as known to him [20] out of 99 made available by Stepanova 1952 [18]. The intent of these authors was to identify CO2 determinations that were made using pure unpolluted air, in order to assess the true background level of CO2. Callendar set out the criteria that he used to judge whether older determinations were “allowable” in his 1958 paper [20] which presents only data that fell within 10% of a longer yearly average estimated for the region, and also rejected all measurements, however accurate, that were “measurements intended for special purposes, such as biological, soil air, atmospheric pollution”.

Next I cite the conclusion of the analysis of 19th centuries CO2 data by Keeling back in 1986 (From/Keeling 1986, pp. 101–103 [23]):

“Our original goal was to find, if possible, a seasonal cycle in the nineteenth century atmospheric CO2 data in agreement with modern observations by applying the air mass criteria of Callendar (1940a) to screen out contaminated data. This goal we have demonstrated to be unachievable.

We find, after screening out suspicious data on the basis of air mass, that none of the five data sets of Callendar show the seasonal cycle which Callendar found in combination.

Brown and Escombe (1905b) investigated atmospheric carbon dioxide only as a slide line to botanical studies. They provide minimal information on methodology and weather conditions. A few of their data seem abnormally low. Their sampling was sporadic over a four year period at a site poorly chosen to study CO2, albeit convenient to their botanical laboratory. Their results are of interest mainly because they used an apparatus similar to Reiset’s which had been carefully tested by an independent method.”

“In conclusion, the measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide carried out by Reiset (1882) from 1872 to 1880 on the coast of northern France appear to be valid. They indicate a mean annual concentration, with respect to dry air, of 292.4 ±1.2 ppm. Comparisons with other possibly valid contemporary data suggest that these data are not biased by more than 10 ppm. It is thus unlikely that the CO2 concentration was less than 282 ppm in the late nineteenth century, and was probably close to 292 ppm.”

There was no verification or falsification of results and methods used by other authors, especially those published in the 20th century (e.g. Lundegardh [35, 36], Duerst [37], Kreutz[38], Misra [39], Scholander [40]), with exception of Buch 1935 [32], lying on the “fuel line” (Callendar 1958 [20]).

According to Callendar, Keeling and the IPCC, CO2 variations to be observed in air were due diurnal, and seasonal cycles, or to glacial/ interglacial fluctuations. Natural concentrations are assumed to have been in equilibrium until mankind disturbed the natural situation. In this way, any long term observations that might display decadal to centennial natural variations in atmospheric CO2 are ruled out a priori by Callendar and Keeling.

As I discuss further below, these criticisms by Callendar and Keeling, and the selective way in which they discarded previous data, are not able to be justified. Their most egregious error was perhaps the dismissal of all data which showed variations from their presupposed average. That said, it is of course the case that some of the older data has to be viewed as less reliable for technical, analytical reasons, as also indicated below.

CRITICAL SURVEY OF THE CHEMICAL METHODS APPLIED IN THE PAST

In this paper, I have assembled a 138 year-long record of yearly atmospheric CO2 levels, extracted from more then 180 technical papers published between 1812 and 1961. The latter year marked the end of the era of classical chemical analysis.

The compilation of data was selective. Nearly all of the air sample measurements that I used were originally obtained from rural areas or the periphery of towns, under comparable conditions of a height of approx. 2 m above ground at a site distant from potential industrial or military contamination. Evaluation of the chemical methods used reveals systematically high accuracy, with a maximum 3% error reducing to 1% for the data of Henrik Lundegardh (1920–26), a pioneer of plant physiology and ecology [34, 35, 36].

[...]

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

During the late 20th century, the hypothesis that the ongoing rise of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is a result of fossil fuel burning became the dominant paradigm. To establish this paradigm, and increasingly since then, historical measurements indicating fluctuating CO2 levels between 300 and more than 400 ppmv have been neglected.

A re-evaluation has been undertaken of the historical literature on atmospheric CO2 levels since the introduction of reliable chemical measuring techniques in the early to middle 19th century. More than 90,000 individual determinations of CO2 levels are reported between 1812 and 1961. The great majority of these determinations were made by skilled investigators using well established laboratory analytical techniques. Data from 138 sources and locations have been combined to produce a yearly average atmospheric CO2 curve for the northern hemisphere.

The historical data that I have considered to be reliable can, of course, be challenged on the grounds that they represent local measurements only, and are therefore not representative on a global scale. Strong evidence that this is not the case, and that the composite historical CO2 curve is globally meaningful, comes from the correspondence between the curve and other global phenomena, including both sunspot cycles and the moon phases, the latter presented here probably first time in literature and the average global temperature statistic. Furthermore, that the historical data are reliable in themselves is supported by the credible seasonal, monthly and daily variations that they display, the pattern of which corresponds with modern measurements. It is indeed surprising that the quality and accuracy of these historic CO2 measurements has escaped the attention of other researchers.

How to interpret the monthly variation of CO2 (see Fig. 5, 7, 9 and modern measurements e.g. Mauna Loa), which indicates a coincidence with the lunar phases, is another question to be dealt within a paper in preparation.

Modern greenhouse hypothesis is based on the work of G.S. Callendar and C.D. Keeling, following S. Arrhenius, as latterly popularized by the IPCC. Review of available literature raise the question if these authors have systematically discarded a large number of valid technical papers and older atmospheric CO2 determinations because they did not fit their hypothesis? Obviously they use only a few carefully selected values from the older literature, invariably choosing results that are consistent with the hypothesis of an induced rise of CO2 in air caused by the burning of fossil fuel. Evidence for lacking evaluation of methods results from the finding that as accurate selected results show systematic errors in the order of at least 20 ppm [28, 29, 30, 31, 57, 73]. Most authors and sources have summarised the historical CO2 determinations by chemical methods incorrectly and promulgated the unjustifiable view that historical methods of analysis were unreliable and produced poor quality results [2, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 65, 74, 95].

Here is a link to a review of Beck's report.

See also:
Greenie Watch: Real History of Carbon Dioxide Levels
An Englishman's Castle: Ernst-Georg Beck's paper 180 Years accurate CO2 Gas analysis of Air by Chemical Methods

Bitten by the IPCC

From yesterday's Financial Post, Lawrence Solomon on global warming, mosquitos, the risks of malaria and the practices of the IPCC:

First and foremost, Prof. [Paul] Reiter believes, the IPCC is a creature of government that meets governmental needs and abides by governmental strictures, and does so without public scrutiny. In contrast, studies conducted under the more open auspices of the U.S. government's Global Climate Change Research program, for example, are entirely in the public domain.

Even the peer-review process -- ordinarily designed to ensure rigorous science -- has mutated to meet IPCC needs. In professional science, the names of peer reviewers are kept confidential to encourage independent criticism, free of recrimination, while the deliberations of the authors being critiqued are made public.

"The IPCC turns this on its head," Prof. Reiter explains. "The peer reviewers have to give their names to the authors, but the deliberations of the authors are strictly confidential." In effect, the science is spun, disagreements purged, and results predetermined.

"The Intergovernmental Panel is precisely that -- it is a panel among governments. Any scientist who participates in this process expecting the strictures of science to reign must beware, lest he be stung."

h/t: Just Right

Tories reach magic 40% in new poll

Forty is the percentage of the popular vote that is generally considered to the point at which a party can win a majority in a federal election in Canada.

TTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harpers' Conservatives have surged to 40% in popular opinion and entered majority government territory, a new poll says.

The poll, conducted exclusively by Ipsos-Reid for CanWest News Service and Global Television after the Harper government delivered its new budget, shows the Tories have opened up an 11-point lead nationally over Stephane Dion's Liberals...

Grit support plunged to 29% from 34% in a survey conducted a week earlier.

Moreover, the poll indicates the Conservatives have opened up a 10-point lead (43% to 33%) over the Liberals in Ontario, the crown jewel of Canadian politics with 106 seats. They also are locked in a virtual tie with them in Quebec, 26%-25% for the Liberals. Quebec has 75 federal seats.

"The compelling part of this is that they have actually tied the Grits in Quebec, and they've got a 10-point lead on them in Ontario. With that 10-point lead, they can clean up." Mr. Bricker said.

Source, previous.

Gore gets cool reception

In Toronto:

Al Gore received a rock star's welcome last month when he delivered an address at the University of Toronto, but the former American vice president and climate crusader didn't receive a greeting quite as warm when he visited the city again Thursday.

Protesters chanted outside the Four Seasons Hotel on Avenue Road where Gore was speaking at the 2007 Top Employers Summit.

via CityNews

Beck on Gore

From a recent show, CNN's Glenn Beck talks with Don Easterbrook and Patrick Michaels about climate change, the United Nations, the New York Times and Al Gore.


See also this video where Beck talks about the NY Times exposing Gore's exaggerations.

Is an election in the wind?

Just because the opposition Bloc Québécois say they will support the budget of Canada's Conservative minority government, one shouldn't assume that the odds of a spring election are low. The opposition Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois are all true worshipers of Kyotology and appear to be intolerable to anything short of a full commitment by the government to meet Kyoto's greenhouse gas emissions targets.

Here's a news article with a quote from Environment Minister John Baird:

"I am prepared to face the electorate," Baird told reporters, referring to a number of government plans, including fighting climate change.

The opposition parties have proposed scores of amendments to the Conservatives' Clean Air Act – amendments that would put into law the Kyoto Protocol's emission targets, which the government says are unachievable.

For their part, Stephen Harper's Conservatives appear to be standing firm, essentially calling the opposition's collective bluff. And why wouldn't they? They have been steadily improving in the polls ever since the Liberals selected their current leader. The most recent polls come very close to putting them into majority government territory.

Mr. Baird is essentially saying to the opposition "Go ahead, make my day".

All it will take to avoid an election is for one of Dion, Layton or Duceppe to blink and come out in support of the Clean Air Act. Will any one of them have the sense to do so?

If not, looks like we're heading for a spring election.

Quote of the day

Considering the current state of fear-mongering and climate change hysteria, I thought this statement was very appropriate.

"These kids sure are going to be pissed when they grow up and the world is still here."

via Les Enfants Terrible

States of Fear: Science or Politics?

I read Michael Crichton's novel State of Fear when it was first released a couple of years ago. It's such an eye-opening look at the environmental movement that I've been meaning to post a review of it, even though it's not a new release.

Now comes word of this new DVD release:

At one time, both the pseudoscientific geocentric notion of the universe (that the Earth lies at the center of the solar system) and eugenics (the racial theory to “purify” the human race) were widely accepted by leaders in science, politics, journalism, and business.

Such theories were pushed by powerful interest groups that possessed highly politicized agendas driving government policies and public opinion, until ultimately both theories were disproved. Is environmental debate today, including global warming, bio-technology, and other issues, based on science or politics? Are popular accounts of such issues rooted in science or phantom risks? Are government policies focusing on the trivial while ignoring the real, and in the process wasting limited resources, crippling human innovation to address true dangers, and inviting tyranny?

In discussing not just environmental issues but the increasing politicization of science itself, best-selling author Michael Crichton examines the intersection of media, politics, and science, inspiring viewers to challenge old assumptions and to search beneath the surface of issues as they seek to discover the truth.

Scientists Bruce Ames (U.C. Berkeley), Sallie Baliunas (Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), William Gray (Colorado State U.), and Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor show how scientific debates have been politicized by appealing to the fears of an uninformed public.

Here's a clip from the DVD:



h/t: GWH

The Pledge

that Al Gore refused to sign.

"As a believer:

• that human-caused global warming is a moral, ethical, and spiritual issue affecting our survival;
• that home energy use is a key component of overall energy use;
• that reducing my fossil fuel-based home energy usage will lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions; and
• that leaders on moral issues should lead by example;

I pledge to consume no more energy for use in my residence than the average American household by March 21, 2008."

Be sure to follow the link above and read the full article. There's more info on insider trading at Molten Metal Technology, Inc. (MMTI) back in 1996 when the Goracle was merely Vice President involving another well known "environmentalist", Canadian Maurice Strong.

Yet MMTI's stock soared to $35 a share mainly on the basis of Gore's glowing support. But by March 1996, DoE officials decided to end the subsidies. Between March and October that year, Strong and eight other officers of MMTI dumped over $15 million in personal shares at $31 per, knowing full well that the government handouts were to end. As soon as Wall Street also figured that out, after MMTI issued an October 20th Sunday press release revealing for the first time the loss of DoE funding, MMTI's stock crashed the next day, eventually plummeting to 13 cents a share, prompting investor lawsuits.

(see my earlier post Blood and Gore). There's more...

This was not a first for Strong. In 1981 Strong headed Denver oil promoter AZL Resources. AZL paid $5 million to settle a lawsuit that he had falsely inflated the price of AZL stock, again cashing in. However, in the end, Strong made out like a bandit. AZL also owned a number of western ranches and when AZL merged with the Tosco oil refining company in 1983, Tosco sold Strong the 160,000-acre Baca Ranch in southern Colorado for a pittance.

There's lots more on how Gore and Strong are still associated as big players in the carbon offsets shell game. Read all of Another Oscar Performance from Al Gore by Michael Donnelly.

Update: here's the video of Gore refusing to make the Pledge. h/t: SDA.

Update 2: It's not easy being green

Doomsday Called Off

Here is a video from a surprising source. It's called Doomsday Called Off written and directed by Lars Oxfeldt Mortensen and was aired in Canada in June, 2006. Here's Part 1.

Click here for Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.

Senator Inhofe at today's EPW Hearing

see also epw.senate.gov/minority

Update: Link to text of Sen. Inhofe's statement.

Gore: AGW is a Planetary Emergency

Former VP and global warming crusader Al Gore called man made global warming a "planetary emergency" during testimony today.

Gore said lawmakers should pass legislation that would halt carbon dioxide emissions at current levels, and require a 90 percent cut in pollution by 2050. He called for a moratorium on construction of any new coal-fired power plants that can't capture and store their greenhouse gas emissions and a tax on carbon emissions.

While Democrats were receptive of Gore's message, he wasn't without his critics...

"You're not just off a little, you're totally wrong," said Texas Rep. Joe Barton, the leading Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, as he challenged Gore's conclusion that carbon dioxide emissions cause rising global temperatures. Barton and Gore's exchange grew testy at one point—Barton demanding that Gore get to the point and Gore responding that he would like time to answer without being interrupted.

"Global warming science is uneven and evolving," Barton said.

Not to mention that Gore's testimony violated the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee’s hearing rules.

Gore first demanded to be granted an unprecedented 30 minute opening statement to the Senate EPW Committee for Wednesday’s (March 21) global warming hearing scheduled for 2:30 pm ET.

The GOP minority on the EPW committee agreed to the 30 minute opening statement.

But then Gore demanded a waiver of the EPW committee’s 48 hour rule that requires all witnesses before EPW to submit their testimony in advance. The GOP minority on the EPW committee then agreed to waive the 48 hour rule in favor of allowing Gore to submit his testimony 24 hours before the hearing.

But in a breaking news development on Capitol Hill -- the former Vice President has violated the new 24 hour deadline extension by failing to submit his testimony – even with the new time extension granted to Gore.

As of 8pm ET Tuesday evening, the testimony still has not been received by EPW, a clear violation of committee rules.

The word on Capitol Hill says not to expect Gore’s testimony to the Senate EPW committee until Wednesday (March 21) -- the day of the hearing.

It appears that Gore does not believe the same rules apply to him that apply to every other Senate EPW witness.

The question looms on Capitol Hill: Is Gore delaying the submission of his testimony until the very last moment because he fears it will give members of the EPW committee time to scrutinize it for accuracy?

Emphasis added. More links about Gore's testimony via Drudge:

GORE SWEARS: 'Crisis threatens the survival of our civilization'...
**Dire warnings...
Dem Rep.: 'You are a prophet'...
GOP: GORE REFUSES TO TAKE PERSONAL ENERGY ETHICS PLEDGE...
BOXER: YOU HAVE GIVEN US HOPE...
Katie Couric: Gore makes triumphant return, scientific consensus is clear...
'THE PLANET HAS A FEVER'

The global-warmers were bound to attack, but why are they so feeble?

Director Martin Durkin responds to the critics of his documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle:

On March 8, Channel 4 broadcast my programme. Since then, supporters of the theory of man-made global warming have published frothing criticism. I am attacked for using an "old" graph depicting temperature over the past 1,000 years. They say I should have used a "new" graph - one used by Al Gore, known as the "hockey stick", because it looks like one.

But the hockey stick has been utterly discredited. The computer programme used to generate it was found to produce hockey-stick shapes even when fed random data (I refer readers to the work of McIntyre & McKitrick and to the Wegman Report, all available on the internet). Other than the discredited hockey stick, the graph used by us (and published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is the standard, accepted record of temperature in this period.

A critic claims that one of the graphs cited by us, illustrating the extraordinarily close correlation between solar variation and temperature change, has since been "corrected". It most certainly has not. The graph was produced by Prof Eigil Friis-Christensen, the head of the Danish National Space Centre, who says it still stands. But if the global-warmers don't like that graph, there are plenty of others that say the same thing.

No one any longer seriously disputes the link between solar activity and temperature in earth's climate history. I urge readers to look up on the net: Veizer, Geoscience Canada, 2005; and Soon, Geophysical Research Letters, 2005.

[links added]

...more

Hansen's testimony

James Hansen testified at a hearing before the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

A NASA scientist who said the Bush administration muzzled him because of his belief in global warming yesterday acknowledged to Congress that he'd done more than 1,400 on-the-job interviews in recent years.

James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who argues global warming could be catastrophic, said NASA staffers denied his request to do a National Public Radio interview because they didn't want his message to get out.

But Republicans told him the hundreds of other interviews he did belie his broad claim he was being silenced.

"We have over 1,400 opportunities that you've availed yourself to, and yet you call it, you know, being stifled," said Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican.

Mr. Hansen responded: "For the sake of the taxpayers, they should be availed of my expertise. I shouldn't be required to parrot some company line."

Source: the Washington Times. 1,400 to 1 and Hansen claims he was "muzzled". Turns out that his supervisor chose someone else to do the NPR interview. This guy must have an ego as big as a solar flare.

Here is part of a very interesting opening statement to yesterday's hearing by Committee member, Thomas M. Davis III (Rep-VA) - with emphasis added:

Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. testified at our last hearing that the Bush Administration probably hasn’t done itself any favors with what he termed “hyper-controlling strategies for the management of information.” I would probably agree. Yet it remains the prerogative of the Bush Administration—as with every Administration before it and, likely, after it—to establish policies to ensure that whatever is coming out of Federal agencies is consistent and coordinated. Submitting to those rules is a fact of life for every Federal employee.

I was concerned when Dr. Pielke said “[m]any scientists are increasingly engaging in political advocacy” and that “some issues of science have become increasingly partisan as some politicians sense that there is political gain to be found on issues like stem cells, teaching of evolution and climate change.” I hope we keep this observation in mind during our hearings and this investigation into allegations of silencing and editing by the Bush Administration and Mr. Cooney.

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today, and I especially look forward to hearing from NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen. Dr. Hansen, we recognize you are a preeminent climate change scientist and one of the leading researchers on the issues. We value your contribution to the scientific understanding on global climate change. I want to hear about your experiences with the politicization of science. However, I also plan to discuss with you your own efforts to politicize science.

You are a career NASA employee, but it seems that these days most of your speeches and testifying are done as “a private citizen.” But, because of your notoriety, I don’t know if it is possible to separate you from NASA. It seems to me that everything you say gets imputed back to NASA—whether it’s in the US or the foreign press. Even so, you continue to willfully violate NASA media policies even going so far as to say that you “ignored the restrictions.” You complain the Bush Administration is silencing you, but you are the most frequently quoted climate scientist on Earth.

You are known for embracing alarmist viewpoints, and you have embraced the idea that exaggeration is okay to get the public’s attention. But, two climate researchers from the Royal Meteorological Society from the United Kingdom just this week said that this “catastrophism” and “Hollywoodization” of weather and climate create the real confusion in the public’s minds. You seem to forget that when you speak, regardless of your disclaimers, you are speaking for NASA.

And, you also have not shied away from the political realm. You publicly endorsed Senator John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential election. Three years earlier you received a $250,000 unrestricted cash prize from Teresa Heinz Kerry on behalf of the Heinz Foundation. You have spent the better of this decade consistently and publicly criticizing the Bush Administration’s climate change policies. But, at the same time, you are an advocate for campaign finance reform and make a point of condemning other scientists’ affiliations with “special interests.”

I guess I am a little confused. Are you a scientist, or are you a politician? Because when I put together your political advocacy and—I hate to say it but—the partisanship of that advocacy, I am inclined to think you are the one who is politicizing science.

Lomborg: Kyoto feels good, but ineffective

In Global warming's dirty secret in today's National Post, Bjorn Lomborg comments on the EU's new global warming agreement to cut greenhouse gases 20% by 2020 and refers to these efforts as an ineffective but "feel good approach" to climate change...

This seems to be why we focus on feel good approaches like the Kyoto Protocol, whose fundamental problem has always been that it is simultaneously impossibly ambitious, environmentally inconsequential and inordinately expensive. It required such big reductions that only a few countries could live up to it.

Some countries, like the United States and Australia, chose to opt out of its stringent demands; others, like Canada, Japan and a raft of European states, pay lip service to its requirements but will essentially miss its targets. Yet, even if everyone had participated and continued to stick to Kyoto's ever more stringent commitments, it would have had virtually no environmental effect. The treaty's effect on temperature would be immeasurable by mid-century and only postpone warming by five years in 2100. Nonetheless, the cost would have been anything but trivial -- an estimated US$180-billion per year.

Emphasis added. As far as the new highly touted agreement for 2020 targets, Lomborg says,

But nobody sees fit to reveal the agreement's dirty little secret: it will do next to no good, and again at very high cost. According to one well-established and peer-reviewed model, the effect of the EU cutting emissions by 20% will postpone warming in 2100 by just two years, yet the cost will be about US$90- billion annually. It will be costly because Europe is a costly place to cut CO2, and it will be inconsequential because the EU will account for only about 6% of all emissions in the twenty-first century. So the new treaty will be an even less efficient use of our resources than the old Kyoto Protocol.

The fact that the "cure" being offered for the current climate change hysteria promises to be about as effective as screen doors on a submarine is just more proof that this is nothing more than a political agenda.

Michael Crichton on Environmentalism as a Religion

Michael Crichton speaks to students in this video recorded in 2005.

Nova Scotia says "NO" to The Great Global Warming Swindle

In posts last week at Officially Screwed and on this blog readers were asked to send an email to the Ministers of Education in the Provinces across Canada to request that they show the British Channel 4 movie, The Great Global Warming Swindle to all students who were shown Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth.

While I would like to thank Ann Blackwood, Director of English Program Services at the Nova Scotia Dept. of Education for her prompt reply, I am sad to report that The Great Global Warming Swindle won't be approved for viewing in schools in that province anytime soon.

Thank you for your email to Minister Karen Casey who has requested that I respond directly to the concern you express.

Those who are promoting the film, An Inconvenient Truth, have not followed Department of Education procedures requiring comprehensive evaluation of education media first for bias and then for curriculum relevance and other criteria specified by the Department.

Consequently, the Department of Education has not authorized use of the film as an educational resource and does not endorse decisions made at the school level to show this film to students during instructional time.

With reference to your request that students who have seen An Inconvenient Truth also be shown the British Channel 4 documentary entitled The Great Global Warning Swindle, the same requirements apply regarding evaluation procedures.

It is certainly a tenet of the Nova Scotia public school program that students be provided with opportunities to think critically and engage in disciplined inquiry. Learning experiences that help students understand the impact of media texts in their lives, consider diverse perspectives, and become critical viewers are an important component of the program.

For these reasons, it is my hope that school administrators and teachers in Nova Scotia themselves think critically and analytically about the media texts they select to support student learning and to influence students’ thinking.

Thank you for articulating the importance of ensuring that students have access to more than one perspective on the global warming debate.

Yours truly,

Ann Blackwood
Director
English Program Services
Department of Education
Halifax NS B3J 2S9

If you would like to send an email to all the Ministers of Education, here's an easy link that will open your mail client (you can edit the message before sending)

Update: I wish we had more young students like Andrew Marshall.

Krauthammer: Limosine Liberals

More on the modern day indulgences spotlighted at this year's "first-ever green" Academy Awards:

It turns out that the Academy neutralized the evening's "carbon footprint" by buying carbon credits. That means it sent money to a "carbon broker," who promised, after taking his cut, to reduce carbon emissions somewhere on the planet equivalent to what the stars spewed into the atmosphere while flying in on their private planes.

In other words, the rich reduce their carbon output by not one ounce. But drawing on the hundreds of millions of net worth in the Kodak Theatre, they pull out lunch money to buy ecological indulgences. The last time the selling of pardons was prevalent--in a predecessor religion to environmentalism called Christianity--Martin Luther lost his temper and launched the Reformation.

Brilliant analysis, as always, by Charles Krauthammer who describes offsets as "a way for the rich to export the real costs and sacrifices of pollution control to the poorer segments of humanity in the Third World" in this Time article, Limousine Liberal Hypocrisy:

GreenSeat, a Dutch carbon-trading outfit, buys offsets from a foundation that plants trees in Uganda's Mount Elgon National Park to soak up the carbon emissions of its rich Western patrons. Small problem: expanding the park encroaches on land traditionally used by local farmers. As a result, reports the New York Times, "villagers living along the boundary of the park have been beaten and shot at, and their livestock has been confiscated by armed park rangers." All this so that swimming pools can be heated and Maseratis driven with a clear conscience in the fattest parts of the world.

h/t: Les Enfants Terrible

Global Warming: CO2, SunSpots, or Politics?

A reader tip to an interesting article about a new eBook, Global Warming: CO2, SunSpots or Politics? (CD-ROM) by Phil N. Baldwin, Jr.

We are told global warming is absolutely true and due to the specific man-generated, 'greenhouse gas' carbon dioxide (CO₂). This gas is generated from the combustion of carbon sources such as wood, natural gas, propane, coal, oil and motor fuels. About 0.015% of the earth's atmospheric volume is CO₂ down from a historical high of ~0.30%. The greenhouse gas you don't hear about is water vapor/gas. It represents on average about 1% of the earth's atmospheric volume or ~67 times more volume than CO₂. A variation in the water vapor in the atmosphere of +1.5% of the 1% total (0.015%) [not unusual] would equal the total volume of the earth's CO₂. What is responsible for the water vapor in the atmosphere and the variations? The Sun is responsible, not man.

If global warming was due to an increase in CO₂ over the past 80 years then there should be a strong mathematical correlation between the change in CO₂ and the change in global temperature. There is a math term called the coefficient of determination (R²) that is used to measure and explain the change in one variable (CO₂) as related to impacts in a second variable (temperature). A value of 1.0 indicates a perfect explanation in the change in one variable as related or caused by the other. Usually in statistical math, high R² values of 0.90 or greater are desired to have high confidence in a cause and impact relationship. That said, between 1925 and the current period, the R² for CO₂'s impact on global temperature is ~0.21 or in effect no impact of significance. Then, what has a high correlationship with global temperature change?

The Sun is the source of nearly all the natural energy on earth with the earth's core nuclear reactions and resultant heat being a minor source. Sun activity, sun flares and sun spots, were initially monitored and measured in the 17th century with the use of Galileo's 1609 invention of the telescope. By the middle of the 18th century the methodology for measuring and recording flare and sun spot activity had been formalized by members of the Royal Danish Observatory. The first Solar Cycle was measured during the period 3/1755 to 6/1766. A Solar Cycle is when energetic sunspot activity is measured at or near zero observed sun spots; activity slowly rises to a peak level and retreats once again to zero. There have been 23 observed solar cycles to date. The Solar Cycle length is typically described as 11 years in duration. Actually, they have ranged from 9.7 to 12.2 years. The last cycle, #23, peaked in the Summer 2000; the next peak is expected about the Summer of 2011.

I have analyzed the sun spot data and devised a useful mathematical formula I call the Solar Cycle Power Index (SCPI). This is simply calculated as averaging the three highest monthly sun spot peaks and taking 80% of this value. Now, add up all monthly sun spot numbers in the cycle that equal or exceed that 80% of highest peaks number - this value is the SCPI.

When the changes in the SCPI values are plotted against mean global annual changes, the SCPI tracks very, very well with the global temperature changes. Further, the extraordinary warm period at the end of the 20th century and into the early 21st. century is best highlighted in terms of the SCPI. During Solar Cycles 1 through 11, the average SCPI was 1,502. For Cycles 12-23 the average SCPI value is 2,845, and when you look at just the recent cycles 20-23, the SCPI mean value jumps to 5,606 or 273% greater than cycles 1-11 ands 97% greater than the mean SCPI for cycles 12-23.

It is clear that man is not generating any global warming. Although man may continue to pollute the air and water but this does not indicate man is behind global warming. The only rational, databased, scientific-mathematically based conclusion to be drawn from the work covered in the e-book, "Global Warming: CO₂, SunSpots, or Politics?" is that global warming and cooling are caused by the Sun and can be tracked through the use of the Solar Cycle Power Index.

Source: Ilana Mercer at Free Market News Network.

Dr. Sallie Baliunas on Extreme Weather and Superstition in the Middle Ages

Martin Durkin interview

If you missed Charles Adler's interview of Martin Durkin, writer and director the U.K. Channel 4 documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle" on Friday, it's now online.

Adler and Durkin discuss the documentary, the controversy about what happened with Professor Carl Wunsch and whether global warming is caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

Listen here.

Top o' the mornin' to ye

Putting on the GREEN"May your glass be ever full. May the roof over your head be always strong. And may you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead."

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself." -Shaw

Dion has a plan

The current leader of the Liberal Party announced his plan today to take more of your money to bring in tough caps on greenhouse emissions by 2008. I particularly liked this quote:

In the past, Canada has been a leader in the fight against climate change, Dion said but has lost that standing under the current Conservative government.

"It is time for us to be a leader again," Dion said.

I suppose that Mr. Dion (and apparently CTV news) has forgotten the 13 years in which the Liberals were in power and did absolutely nothing except to sign & ratify the Kyoto Accord - no plan and no actions to reduce greenhouse gases - before their much deserved defeat in January, 2006. That was also a time when Citizen Dion was our do-nothing Minister of the Environment!

Anyway here's Dion's latest "plan" (with emphasis added):

Under Dion's plan, companies that fail to cut their emissions would pay $20 for every ton of carbon emissions over their target. The fines, which would rise to $30 by 2011, would go into a special account to finance green projects.

The companies that went beyond their targets would be able to sell the extra credits they earn to other firms, a proposal that Dion called a "carbon budget." (...)

Other features of the plan announced on Friday:

• Companies would be able to buy international credits through the Kyoto Protocol to offset up to 25 per cent of their excess emissions;

• The account that holds the fines paid by companies that exceed their targets would be managed by an independent agency;

• Companies could freely access the funds in the GIA to invest in green projects and initiatives at a rate of $10 per ton every year that would contribute to tangible reductions in GHG emissions;

• Firms could get money from the account to invest in green projects;

• Any funds that are not allocated to a project within two years of their deposit would be administered by an independent operating agency to be invested in other green projects and initiatives;

• At least 80 per cent of the funds would be invested in the province where the facility of the depositing firm is located.

OK. Let me get this straight. The Liberals want to set up a slush fund special account, which they would fund by fining companies and use the money to dole out to their friends to finance "green" projects.

Astronomical new levels of taxation (the fines) and a huge bureaucracy (independent agency) to administer the slush fund referred to as the GIA above. Don't know what that stands for, but it sure sounds a lot like Gaia, the "Earth God". And, must we ask, just who sets the targets which will determine which [Liberal friendly] companies will be able to exceed them and therefore be able to sell their lucrative credits?

Oh, and of course no Liberal plan would be complete without taking care of the need to transfer vast amounts of Canada's wealth offshore through the scam known as Kyoto!

It's a plan all right. But are we ready to trust the Liberals with something like this?

If you must, you can watch Citizen Dion introduce his "plan" in his own words [video link]. Or watch the Q&A from reporters [video link].

Update: Conservatives criticize Dion's plan.

“The Liberal environmental scheme is to introduce one of the largest corporate taxes in recent history, with no realistic expectation of achieving any real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,” said Mike Van Soelen, a spokesman for environment minister John Baird, who is currently taking part in international climate change discussions in Germany.

“The Liberals' proposal of an uncapped Investment Account is nothing but a carbon tax. They have tried to disguise their carbon tax in hidden language, but if it looks like a tax and smells like a tax, it's a tax,” said Mr. Van Soelen.

Alarmists vs. Skeptics

Here are a couple of posts that illustrate the difference in attitudes and tactics practiced by the opposing sides in the global warming "debate".

Amy Ridenour describes RealClimate's Touchy Censors. So much for free speech.

On the other hand, be sure to read Amy's post about her recent encounter in Washington, D.C. with Dr. Tim Ball (you won't believe who she thanks).

The Most Ridiculous Item(s) of the Day

There's two items for today.

#1. The Geritol solution

A private company is already carrying out this plan. Some scientists call it promising while others worry about the ecological fallout.

Planktos Inc. of Foster City, Calif., last week launched its ship, the Weatherbird II, on a trip to the Pacific Ocean to dump 50 tons of iron dust. The iron should grow plankton, part of an algae bloom that will drink up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Then there's #2, the Solar Umbrella

For far-out concepts, it's hard to beat Roger Angel's. Last fall, the University of Arizona astronomer proposed what he called a "sun shade." It would be a cloud of small Frisbee-like spaceships that go between Earth and the sun and act as an umbrella, reducing heat from the sun.

Somebody stop these people. Please. Before its too late.

My apologies to Bill O'Reilly for using his slogan (The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day). But at least, I acknowledged him.

Cooking the Figures

This is a story that really won't be news to some, but to many it might be. It's the classic case of thinking that the end justifies the means.

He knows what he wants his results to be. And the original numbers aren't giving him that data. So the agency he works for won't be able to persuade people to fight the war he wants to fight.

Well, that's not acceptable.

He starts with his software. There are certain procedures that are normal and accepted in his line of work. But if he makes just one little mistake, his program does a weird little recursion and if there's any data at all that shows the pattern he wants it to show, it will be magnified 139 times, so it far overshadows all the other data.

He can run it on random numbers and it gives him the shape he wants. Unfortunately, the real-world numbers aren't random -- they have a very different shape. All the numbers. Even his jimmied program won't give the results he wants.

All he needs is any data shaped the right way. And so he looks a little farther, and ... here it is. It looks, on the surface, like all the other data that he's been working with. Other researchers working in his field, just glancing at it, will assume it is, too.

But it isn't. Because the source that gathered this batch of data had some other key information that takes it all away. The numbers don't mean what they normally mean. In fact, this number set is absolutely false.

If you use these numbers along with all the other data, however, the clever little program will pick them up, magnify them radically, and voilá! The final report shows exactly the shape he needs the numbers to have.

The trouble is, these numbers are supposed to be doublechecked. Anybody who looks closely at his numbers and at his program will see what he's done. It's not hard to find, if you have the original data sets and can examine the program. He will be exposed as a fraud. It will do his cause more harm than good, if it's made public.

But he's not afraid. He knows how this works.

He doesn't show the program or the lists of his data sources to anybody.

To those of you familiar with this story, you find some familiar names: Mann, Santer, McIntyre. Those of you who don't recognize these names, go and read All In A Good Cause by Orson Scott Card.

h/t: SDA

Stretching the Truth

via Cox & Forkum [click image to enlarge]

A counter-greenhouse force?

Here is an interesting article that claims that decreasing levels of atmospheric methane could provide a counter greenhouse force greater than "than all our many human efforts to curtail anthropogenic CO2 emissions".

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has long predicted that earth's tropospheric methane (CH4) concentration would rise dramatically throughout the 21st century; see, for example, Ehhalt and Prather (2001). So entrenched a place did this dogma come to occupy in both the popular and scientific psyches, in fact, that when real-world data suddenly suggested otherwise, Simpson et al. (2002) continued to vehemently contend it was "premature to believe that the CH4 burden is ceasing to increase," even though their own data bore witness against them in demonstrating that such was in fact occurring, as we indicated in our Editorial of 8 Jan 2003. Newer findings, however, ultimately caused even them to recant (Simpson et al., 2006); and, now, Khalil et al. (2007) have essentially "put the nails in the coffin" of the idea that rising atmospheric CH4 concentrations pose any further global warming threat at all.

Figure 1. Global methane (CH4) concentration. Adapted from Khalil et al. (2007).

What was learned
In viewing the figure above, to which we have added the smooth green line, it is clear that the rate of methane increase in the atmosphere has dropped dramatically over time. As Khalil et al. describe it, "the trend has been decreasing for the last two decades until the present when it has reached near zero," and they go on to say that "it is questionable whether human activities can cause methane concentrations to increase greatly in the future."

What it means
Although some diehards are contending that the atmospheric methane concentration will start to increase again in the next few decades, it is equally valid (at least) to suggest that after reaching its apogee, the atmosphere's methane concentration will actually begin to drop. This has been our position all along; and if it proves to be correct, the decreasing trend in atmospheric CH4 concentration will begin to provide a counter-greenhouse force to that created by the rising atmospheric CO2 concentration. And if the decline in CH4 becomes substantial enough, it could well do more to decrease the potential for future global warming than all our many human efforts to curtail anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

Source: CO2 Science

Global Warming Debate

Debating the science. Crichton, Lindzen, Stott, Ekwurzel, Schmidt and Somerville. March 14, 2007. New York City. Really.

Update:The results of the debate are in:

Global warming is not a crisis
Intelligence² US audience confirms 46.22% to 42.22% in favor of the motion.

thanks to reader another_sean for the link.

Update (Mar 15, 2007): the debate transcript is here. (pdf)

The Carbon Offsets Swindle

Any investigator worthy of his/her salt will tell you to "follow the money". Here's two very good examples.

Canada Free Press has an article called Creators of Carbon Credit Scheme Cashing in on it which follows up on Al Gore's interesting connections to Maurice Strong and Molten Metal Technology, Inc of Massachusetts. See also my post on Blood and Gore.

Update: Rush Limbaugh takes notice. [audio] [more audio]

Doug Ross takes a look at the carbon offsets market and Al Gore's company Generation Investment Management and asks if this is all a $250 Billion scam?

Wanton profiteering appears to be at the very heart of "carbon offsets." Put simply, a wide range of respected scientists, environmentalists, researchers, agriculturalists, and activists believe that carbon offsets are a "scam", "fantasy", "fiction", "nonsense", "fraudulent" and worse. And they've been saying so since 2000 (...)

Ross offers up a number of examples of environmental groups calling the carbon offsets market as "fictitious" and even "fraudulent" and goes on to explore what he terms "The vested interests of the UN's IPCC Panel".

Solar energy portal Ecotopia reports that members of the IPCC "...had vested interests in reaching unrealistically and unjustifiably optimistic conclusions about the possibility of compensating for emissions with trees... [and] should have been automatically disqualified from serving on an intergovernmental panel charged with investigating impartially the feasibility and benefits of such 'offset' projects."

...the whole carbon offset boondoggle appears to be a "fraudulent market" of epic proportions. It has been denounced by scientists, environmentalists, academics, and researchers almost continuously since May of 2000.

That "market of epic proportions" approaches $250 billion, says Ross. There's lots more. Go read it.

The Great Global Warming Campaign

Here's a great idea for a very worthwhile campaign from Officially Screwed:

Calling all sane people!!

For all of you who are up for an equal perspective education, I have made it easy for you to email all the current education ministers in the nation and ask them to show the British Channel 4 movie, The Great Global Warming Swindle to all students that were shown Al Gore’s Convenient Lie.

This would give the students two perspectives of the global warming debate and let them see what both sides have to say. Considering the global warming debate is so controversial, this would be the right thing to do.

You can easily send this email with your own email program by clicking the link below.

I also encourage any other bloggers out there to include similar code on their website.

Email Education Ministers.

If you are interested, the following list outlines who is emailed via the link above.

British Columbia: Shirley Bond (Prince George-Mount Robson)
Alberta: Ron Liepert (Calgary West)
Saskatchewan: Pat Atkinson (Saskatoon Nutana)
Manitoba: Peter Bjornson (Gimli)
Ontario: Kathleen O. Wynne (Don Valley West)
Quebec: Jean-Marc Fournier (Chateauguay) (he was the last education minister before the election call
New Brunswick: Kelly Lamrock (Fredrickton-Fort Nashwaak)
Newfoundland and Labrador: Joan Burke (St. George’s-Stephenville East)
Prince Edward Island: Mildred A. Dover (Tracadie-Fort Augustus)
Nova Scotia: Karen Casey (Colchester North)
Yukon: Patrick Rouble (Southern Lakes)
Nunavut: Ed Picco (Iqualuit East)
Northwest Territories: Charles Dent (Frame Lake)

Let's put some pressure on our Education Ministers for a little balance in the classroom! Click that email link above - it's easy! Drop a note in the comments to let us know when you've sent your email.

Scientists tell Al to Cool it !

More scientists speaking out against Al Gore's climate alarmism. From the New York Times of all places:

But part of his scientific audience is uneasy. In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism.

“I don’t want to pick on Al Gore,” Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. “But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.”

with lots of quotes from scientists like Easterbrook, Richard Lindzen, Bjorn Lomborg, Benny Peiser, Robert Carter and Paul Reiter, this article makes for an interesting read.

Global Warming Expedition cancelled due to severe cold

A couple of explorers who had planned an expedition to the North Pole to highlight the effects of global warming to school groups had to abandon their mission when they encountered severe cold and frostbite!

The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment.

"Ann said losing toes and going forward at all costs was never part of the journey," said Ann Atwood, who helped organize the expedition.

Then there was the cold - quite a bit colder, Atwood said, then Bancroft and Arnesen had expected. One night they measured the temperature inside their tent at 58 degrees below zero, and outside temperatures were exceeding 100 below zero at times, Atwood said.

"My first reaction when they called to say there were calling it off was that they just sounded really, really cold," Atwood said.

The explorers had planned to call in regular updates to school groups by satellite phone, and had planned online posts with photographic evidence of global warming.

Ha! Well, better luck next time. Maybe the school kids will figure this one out. Oops, it seems like the severe cold was caused by... you guessed it - global warming!

They were experiencing temperatures that weren't expected with global warming," Atwood said. "But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability."

True believers. Their faith in the global warming gods is unshakable, even at -100 degrees.

h/t: Noel Sheppard