CO2

It's all a numbers game.

A Climate of Intolerance

An interesting article from the Times Online:

Facts, not emotion, should inform discussion of climate change

Few scientists or rational politicians doubt that global warming is a serious issue that poses long-term dangers to the planet. The scientific evidence that the world’s climate has changed and that this change is accelerating is convincing. But it is also beyond doubt that the world is in danger of being held captive by powerful lobby groups that have distorted data, made unjustified extrapolations and attempted to stifle debate on one of the most important issues of our time.

The warnings issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Brussels yesterday are a collection of worst-case scenarios. The report, approved by 130 governments and endorsed by 2,500 scientists (few of whom probably had any hand in writing it), makes scary reading. It predicts a catastrophic future for millions of humans and other species. Global warning will bring hunger, floods and water shortages. Greenhouse gases will change rainfall patterns, intensify tropical storms, accelerate the melting of Arctic ice and mountain glaciers. Africa faces starvation, coastal cities will be swamped and China will see the rapid advance of the desert.

Some of these dangers may well be real. But many are deliberate exaggerations, as the IPCC’s mandate was to highlight the dangers if global temperatures were to rise by up to 4C (7.2F). That assumption is far from proven. But it is enough for some environmental groups to speak of “an apocalyptic future”, a “nightmare vision” and a “humanitarian catastrophe”.

Every group is entitled to lobby hard for its cause. But to jump on a band-wagon and blame everything on climate change is neither good science nor sound lobbying.

Emphasis added. Read more...

Al's chickens coming home to roost

When he was booed, called a "liar" and a "villain" at Concordia University in Montreal last week, the Goracle must have been horrified that this wasn't the safe liberal venue he anticipated for his global warming sermon.

CNN's Glenn Beck discussed this with Chris Horner, who has the money quote, "Al Gore's been saying for nigh on five years, that we've got ten years to live. So pretty soon those chickens are going to come home to roost."


Video from YouTube.

Gray: Gore is a 'gross alarmist'

Another respected scientist has criticized Al Gore:

A top hurricane forecaster has called former US vice president Al Gore “a gross alarmist” for making his Oscar-winning documentary about global warming, 'An Inconvenient Truth'.

“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 disputed 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. Recently Philip Klotzbach, whom Gray mentored, has begun doing the bulk of the forecasting work.

Gray’s statements came the same day the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change approved a report that concluded the world would face dire consequences to food and water supplies, along with increased flooding and other dramatic weather events, unless nations adapted to climate change.

Rather than global warming, Gray believes a recent uptick in strong hurricanes is part of a multi-decade trend of alternating busy and slow periods related to ocean circulation patterns.

Source.

Update: John Hinderaker exposes the bias in the above article and the media's constant trick of misrepresenting the position of those who oppose the global warming theorists in Media Bias: How it works.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom

From New Zealand comes seven simple statements of truth which effectively counter the alarmism if the IPCC:

1. Over the past few thousand years, the climate in many parts of the world has been warmer and cooler than it is now. Civilisations and cultures flourished in the warmer periods.

2. A major driver of climate change is variability in solar effects, such as sunspot cycles, the sun's magnetic field and solar particles.

These may account in great part for climate change during the past century. Evidence suggests warming involving increased carbon dioxide exerts only a minor influence.

3. Since 1998, global temperature has not increased. Projection of solar cycles suggests that cooling could set in and continue to about 2030.

4. Most recent climate and weather events are not unusual; they occur regularly.

For example, in the 1930s the Arctic experienced higher temperatures and had less ice than now.

5. Stories of impending climate disaster are based almost entirely on global climate models.

Not one of these models has shown that it can reliably predict future climate.

6. The Kyoto Protocol, if fully implemented, would make no measurable difference to world temperatures.

The trillions of dollars that it will cost would be far better spent on solving known problems such as the provision of clean water, reducing air pollution and fighting malaria and Aids.

7. Climate is constantly changing and the future will include coolings, warmings, floods, droughts and storms.

The best policy is to make sure we have in place disaster response plans that can deal with weather extremes and can react adaptively to longer-term climate cooling and warming trends.

via: Global Warming Hysteria

Climate of fear

The IPCC Working Group II has raised the alarmism of global warming another notch:

The devastating effects of climate change will lead to species extinction, increased hunger, water shortages and massive floods and avalanches in Asia unless nations take action, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Source.

All of these predictions of disasters are based upon computer models which are unreliable to say the least and can be "tweeked" to give whatever outcome is desired - "let's turn up the disaster bias until we scare the citizens of the world into submission before the climate change gods."

It's fear-mongering taken to new heights.

Al Gore must be proud.


Update: here's the link to Working Group II Contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report

Quote for the day

We only understand 10 percent of the climate issue. That is not enough to wreck the world economy with Kyoto-like measures.

Henk Tennekes, former research director, Dutch Royal Meteorological Institute

Kyoto: It's like your RRSP

Kyoto goals are more strict than we've been told, experts say:

It's well known by Kyoto insiders that the target all federal parties talk about -- roughly a 26-per-cent cut in carbon emissions by 2012 -- is just the start. It would leave the country far behind its legal requirements.

The single most important part of the protocol is a twist that's seldom mentioned in public: Canada's target is a five-year average, not a goal to reach by the end of the Kyoto period.

"We can't just hit the target once at the end of the period," said economics professor Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph. "If we are 100 megatonnes over in the first year, we have to be 100 megatonnes under the target another year to offset the first year."

Kyoto measures carbon emissions in megatonnes, or millions of tonnes.

Canada's average emissions over Kyoto's full 2008-2012 measuring period must be 26-per-cent below today's level.

The country hasn't made any reduction yet, and the Jan. 1 start of the Kyoto period is just 271 days away. Carbon emissions have risen steadily for years.

This means that by 2012, Canada must reach reduction levels far deeper than 26 per cent, so the average cut will be 26 per cent.

It's like your RRSP, Mr. McKitrick said. If you don't contribute in the early years, you'll have to contribute much more in the final years to compensate.

Meanwhile, A new poll finds most Canadians are in favour of Canada meeting its Kyoto targets -- just as long as it doesn't cost them anything.

Quote of the day

comes from Bob Murray, founder and CEO of Murray Energy Corporation. The subject was former Vice President and climate alarmist Al Gore:

"He is more dangerous than his global warming."

In today's New York Sun, Alicia Colon writes:

Unlike many heads of corporations who are taking their companies on that long green mile and caving in to the demands of environmental militants, Mr. Murray is fighting tooth and nail for what he says is, "the little guy that nobody cares about."

"Some wealthy elitists in our country," he told the audience, "who cannot tell fact from fiction, can afford an Olympian detachment from the impacts of draconian climate change policy. For them, the jobs and dreams destroyed as a result will be nothing more than statistics and the cares of other people. These consequences are abstractions to them, but they are not to me, as I can name many of the thousands of the American citizens whose lives will be destroyed by these elitists' ill-conceived ‘global goofiness' campaigns."

Source.

Climate Change Power List

The Financial Post published today what it calls a Climate Change Power List, naming the top 20 people who wield the most influence in Canada. The expected players are there, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper at #1, Kooky Suzuki at #2, the current leader of the Liberal Party of Canada at #4, Environment Minister John Baird at #7, and Financial Post editor and climate change skeptic Terence Corcoran at #20.

Here's what they had to say about Dr. Ross McKitrick, who was placed at #9:

Ross McKitrick, Economist, University of Guelph

Sphere of Influence: Climate-change skeptics
Objective: To challenge conventional scientific wisdom on global warming

Ross McKitrick is best-known for his critique of climatologist Michael Mann’s famous “hockey stick” graph, which purports to show how global temperatures have spiked in recent decades, after 1,000 years of relative stability. McKitrick argues that the graph — featured prominently in UN reports and the Al Gore documentary, An Inconvenient Truth — is based on faulty data. He says that global warming is not yet a scientific certainty.

A senior fellow at the Fraser Institute think-tank, McKitrick has been widely attacked because he is not a scientist. But he is also a frequent commentator in major media and has appeared before parliamentary committees.

His book Taken By Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming, co-authored with mathematician Christopher Essex, was runner-up for the 2002 Donner prize in public policy writing.

No savings from early DST

Well, this is no surprise.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The early onset of Daylight Savings Time in the United States this year may have been for naught.

The move to turn the clocks forward by an hour on March 11 rather than the usual early April date was mandated by the U.S. government as an energy-saving effort.

But other than forcing millions of drowsy American workers and school children into the dark, wintry weather three weeks early, the move appears to have had little impact on power usage.

IPCC AR4 full report leaked

When the IPCC released its Summary for Policymakers (SPM) report on climate change this February, it was widely under-reported in the media that release of the full Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), containing the scientific basis for the SPM, would be delayed until May. Many criticized the IPCC for releasing the SPM before the full report was completed, kind of like putting the cart before the horse.

With respect to editing of the full Fourth Assessment Report, the IPCC even admitted that:

"Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter."

Now details of the full 1,600 page IPCC AR4 report have been leaked - and despite the efforts of the policy wonks to make the full AR4 report conform with the SPM, there are some pretty significant discrepancies:

• Insufficient data on which to base predictions of extreme temperatures and precipitation.
  
• Predictions of sea level rise were greatly overstated in the SPM. Data suggest a global mean sea-level rise of 2 mm to 3 mm per year over the past several decades,
• The SPM gave limited consideration to aerosols, solar activity and land-use change for
  explaining 20th century climate changes,
• There is no support for the SPM's key conclusion that it is very likely that anthropogenic greenhouse-gas increases caused most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century,
  
• The SPM ignores contrary evidence in AR4 and alternate theories like cosmic radiation

Reaction to the leak has been slow in coming. British Prime Minister Tony Blair had this to say:

"We remain committed to solving global warming, but at the same time my government must, and will take a close look at the Fourth Assessment Report and if there are discrepancies with the Summary Report, we will decide what must be done."

Czech President Vaclav Klaus wasn't quite a diplomatic:

"This changes everything. The IPCC is a shambles."

In Canada, the current leader of the Liberal Party was unfazed by news of the leaked report:

"Canada must meet her commitment to Kyoto. I do not want to win an election on this, but I am ready. I am ready"

This is stunning news. You must read the full story from the Source.

Update: more reaction is coming in from interested parties...