Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

[GAP]

right  . . .  but we have to make vewy, vewy, vewy scawy  . . .so maybe we should exaggerate, hyperventilate and go all hysterical and label it "Global Ice Age Will  Freeze Yer Ass Off"

Has a nice fund raising ring too it.  8)

Think Ice Cubes/Bags of Ice......incorporate a global cooling message into each cube, this will remind the masses on a consistant basis.....

 

[Haletown]

Think Ice Cubes/Bags of Ice......incorporate a global cooling message into each cube, this will remind the masses on a consistant basis.....

Excellent . . . .  an idea for an advertising campaign 


"Buy our Ice or the Planet Gets It"

 

[a_majoor]

Global cooling may be more of a threat than we might think (and unlike Global warming, the conswequences of global cooling include crop failure and lower crop yields, factors that may have caused civilizations to collapse in the past during other episodes of global cooling):

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming--Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html

Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years

By David Rose

Last updated at 5:38 AM on 29th January 2012

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

A painting, dated 1684, by Abraham Hondius depicts one of many frost fairs on the River Thames during the mini ice age

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.

Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.

We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24’ – which is why last week’s solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century.

Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still.

Hotter summers 'may kill 5,900 every year', warns first national risk assessment of climate change
Winter bites back: Britain braced for first cold snap of year as ice and snow transform countryside in scenes of breathtaking beauty
What are the mysterious blue balls that fell from the sky over Bournemouth?

According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is a  92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in the following decades will be as weak as, or weaker than, the ‘Dalton minimum’ of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe fell by 2C.

However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the ‘Maunder minimum’ (after astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the ‘Little Ice Age’ when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.

Yet, in its paper, the Met Office claimed that the consequences now would be negligible – because the impact of the sun on climate is far less than man-made carbon dioxide. Although the sun’s output is likely to decrease until 2100, ‘This would only cause a reduction in global temperatures of 0.08C.’ Peter Stott, one of the authors, said: ‘Our findings suggest  a reduction of solar activity to levels not seen in hundreds of years would be insufficient to offset the dominant influence of greenhouse gases.’

These findings are fiercely disputed by other solar experts.

‘World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’

He pointed out that, in claiming the effect of the solar minimum would be small, the Met Office was relying on the same computer models that are being undermined by the current pause in global-warming.

CO2 levels have continued to rise without interruption and, in 2007, the Met Office claimed that global warming was about to ‘come roaring back’. It said that between 2004 and 2014 there would be an overall increase of 0.3C. In 2009, it predicted that at least three of the years 2009 to 2014 would break the previous temperature record set in 1998.

So far there is no sign of any of this happening. But yesterday a Met Office spokesman insisted its models were still valid.

‘The ten-year projection remains groundbreaking science. The period for the original projection is not over yet,’ he said.

Dr Nicola Scafetta, of Duke University in North Carolina, is the author of several papers that argue the Met Office climate models show there should have been ‘steady warming from 2000 until now’.

‘If temperatures continue to stay flat or start to cool again, the divergence between the models and recorded data will eventually become so great that the whole scientific community will question the current theories,’ he said.

He believes that as the Met Office model attaches much greater significance to CO2 than to the sun, it was bound to conclude that there would not be cooling. ‘The real issue is whether the model itself is accurate,’ Dr Scafetta said. Meanwhile, one of America’s most eminent climate experts, Professor Judith Curry of the  Georgia Institute of Technology, said she found the Met Office’s confident prediction of a ‘negligible’ impact difficult to understand.

‘The responsible thing to do would be to accept the fact that the models may have severe shortcomings when it comes to the influence of the sun,’ said Professor Curry. As for the warming pause, she said that many scientists ‘are not surprised’.

She argued it is becoming evident that factors other than CO2 play an important role in rising or falling warmth, such as the 60-year water temperature cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

‘They have insufficiently been appreciated in terms of global climate,’ said Prof Curry. When both oceans were cold in the past, such as from 1940 to 1970, the climate cooled. The Pacific cycle ‘flipped’ back from warm to cold mode in 2008 and the Atlantic is also thought likely to flip in the next few years .

Pal Brekke, senior adviser at the Norwegian Space Centre, said some scientists found the importance of water cycles difficult to accept, because doing so means admitting that the oceans – not CO2 – caused much of the global warming between 1970 and 1997.

The same goes for the impact of the sun – which was highly active for much of the 20th Century.

‘Nature is about to carry out a very interesting experiment,’ he said. ‘Ten or 15 years from now, we will be able to determine much better whether the warming of the late 20th Century really was caused by man-made CO2, or by natural variability.’

Meanwhile, since the end of last year, world temperatures have fallen by more than half a degree, as the cold ‘La Nina’ effect has re-emerged in the South Pacific.

‘We’re now well into the second decade of the pause,’ said Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. ‘If we don’t see convincing evidence of global warming by 2015, it will start to become clear whether the models are bunk. And, if they are, the implications for some scientists could be very serious.’

 

[Furniture]

I can well imagine that there are many people working in the Met Office in the UK that don't believe the official line they are forced repeat, much like there are people who don't agree with the party line within EC. Like all employees though, they can't be publicly seen going against what the bosses tell the world.

 

[a_majoor]

Well this is real science and it is really frightening:

http://metanoodle.blogspot.com/2012/01/coming-ice-age-will-that-be-venti-or.html

The coming ice age: Will that be Venti or Grande?
It's going to get a lot colder.  "Global Warming" and "Cooling trend since 1998" are blips.  The real story has been known for decades.  Here's the Venti chart.  Look at the 100,000 year cycles and the temperature cliff we are falling off.  (1986).


Global Temperature


Below is the Grande chart in 10,000 year steps. Greenland shows rhythmic 10C degree swings on a fine time scale with the last uptick about 9000 years ago when the glaciers that had been covering Canada had mostly disappeared.  Back then the Haida were migrating on foot from the Prince Rupert area to Haida Gwai.  Think about it.  Obama had the gall to talk about causing seas to fall.  The IPCC has the arrogance to elevate our puny presence above the sun, the seas and the currents of magma far below our feet.  It's like a primitivist belief in magic that our incantations cause the rain to fall, the crops to grow and pestilence to disappear.  The next ice age is about to start.

How do they know this stuff?  A little bit of the water vapour in the air is formed with heavy hydrogen, a rather rare but naturally-occurring form of hydrogen. (They collect it and use it for cooling some nuclear reactors). The amount of heavy hydrogen being formed in the atmosphere goes up and down with the temperature of the air.  A core drilled down over 11,000 feet in Greenland went through ancient layers of ice.  Testing that ice to see what percent included heavy hydrogen produced the graph.

 

[a_majoor]

Interesting history lesson; look at the "solutions" offered, then look at the date. The more things change....

http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2012/01/31/the-coming-of-the-new-ice-age-end-of-the-global-warming-era/?print=1

The Coming of the New Ice Age: End of the Global Warming Era?

Posted By Zombie On January 31, 2012 @ 11:19 am In Uncategorized | 144 Comments

I just finished reading a terrifying new book about climate change. I learned this:

• Climate change is happening faster than we realize and it will have catastrophic consequences for mankind.
• There’s very little we can do to stop it at this late stage, but we might be able to save ourselves if we immediately take these necessary and drastic steps:

    - Increase our reliance on alternative energy sources and stop using so much oil and other carbon-based fuels;
    - Adopt energy-efficient practices in all aspects of our lives, however inconvenient;
    - Impose punitive taxes on inefficient or polluting activities to discourage them;
    - Funnel large sums of money from developed nations like the U.S. to Third World nations;
    - In general embrace all environmental causes.

You of course recognize these as the solutions most often recommended to ameliorate the looming crisis of Global Warming. But there’s a little glitch in my narrative. Because although the book I read was indeed about climate change, it wasn’t about Global Warming at all; it was instead about “The Coming of the New Ice Age,” and it isn’t exactly “new” — it was published in 1977.

The Solution Remains the Same

As many other pundits and analysts have pointed out, in the mid-to-late 1970s we endured a massive “climate change scare” that was the exact opposite of the one we’re enduring now. Back then, the media and activists trumpeted the arrival of a new ice age, with the specter of ice sheets and glaciers covering half the northern hemisphere, and brutal winters in the remaining ice-free zones.

The fact that the media and popular culture and academia have veered from one panic-inducing disaster scenario to another one which completely contradicts the first one is funny enough in its own right. But reading The Weather Conspiracy: The Coming of the New Ice Age opened my eyes to an even more significant aspect of this serial crisis-mongering:

    The “solutions” prescribed to solve both Global Warming and the looming Ice Age are exactly the same.

In both cases, proponents of the theory-du-jour say that in order to stave off disaster, we must reverse the march of civilization, stop our profligate use of carbon-based fuels, cede power and money from the First World to the Third World, and wherever possible revert to a Luddite pre-industrial lifestyle.

I realized: The solution (commit civilizational suicide) always remains the same; all that differs are the wildly divergent purported “crises” proffered up to justify the imposition of the solution.

Seen from this angle, the entire Climate Change field should be more properly reframed thus:

    In order to weaken and eventually destroy the existing industrialized nations, we must devise an ecological “crisis” so severe that only voluntary economic suicide can solve it; and if this first crisis doesn’t materialize as planned, then devise another, and another, even if they flatly contradict our previous claims.

I had long suspected that this is the most accurate characterization of Climate Changeology; but reading The New Ice Age clinched it for me. The true purpose of climate change disaster-mongering is to permanently cripple the First World, and to elevate the Third World, in order to create a planet with no economic inequality. The goal remains constant; the supposed imminent catastrophes justifying it come and go as needed.

Below, I’ll present scanned pages from the book so you can see for yourself.

The scenario we’re in reminds me of the classic Twilight Zone episode called “The Midnight Sun”: At first we see the characters sweltering in increasingly unbearable heat as the Earth, knocked out of its orbit, slowly plummets into the sun. Just as they are all about to burn to death, in typical Twilight Zone fashion, the lead character wakes up — she had in fact merely been having a fever dream about the world getting hotter; in reality, the Earth had been knocked away from the sun, and they’re all going to freeze to death. Ha ha — gotcha! Just as in the narratives spun by the climate change catastrophists, the Earth is doomed either way, even though the disaster scenario flips from one extreme to its exact opposite. Hot, cold, whatever; one way or the other, Mother Nature will wreak revenge on us for our hubris!

Ice Ages Are Making a Comeback

Turns out my choice of reading material (discovered recently at a rummage sale for 25¢, in case you’re curious) was fortuitous, as climate change — and ice ages — are suddenly back in the headlines this past week. And the news is not good for the crisis-mongers.

First we learned that the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is actually helping us stave off the next inevitable ice age by a few years. Yes, you read that right: the “runaway global warming” scenario is now off the table; a new ice age is coming for sure, and whatever human warming effects there may be will only make our descent into the deep freeze a little more comfy.

Then, in a different breakthrough, leading scientists announced the discovery of a heretofore undetected type of molecule in the atmosphere which spurs cloud formation and negates global warming effects. Thanks to something called “Criegee biradicals,” the more we pollute, the more clouds form, and the cooler the planet becomes. Thus, the cumulative effect on the climate due to mankind’s activity: zilch. So for the second time in a week, the entire Anthropogenic Global Warming theory was fatally undermined.

But wait! We’re not done. Next up: A study out of Harvard proving that warming and cooling cycles are caused by orbital wobble and precession of the poles; and that the only reason the next ice age hasn’t arrived quite on schedule yet is due to our beneficial increase in carbon dioxide. Yes, that’s right: more data showing that another ice age is inevitable sooner or later.

A third nail in AGW’s coffin in less than a week? Why wasn’t this front page news?

But brace yourself — because those nails in the coffin were just the opening act. The next bit of news was the real blockbuster, a stake through AGW’s heart:

Now we learn that the world has not warmed at all for the last 15 years, and that the entire recent “global warming” hubbub was totally imaginary. Furthermore, the recent cooling is so significant that we may be headed for — you guessed it — a “mini ice age.”

Still not enough for you? The coup de grace came from our own USDA, which released a new “Plant Hardiness Zone Map” indicating that the mild global warming spike of a few years ago was actually good for plant growth and biodiversity. In other words: Even if we do experience warming, it makes the world a nicer place.

And that was just one week’s news. I wonder what next week will bring?

Now, you’d think that this devastating barrage of body blows would basically bring an end to the whole Global Warming “controversy.”

But no. Because, you see, true believers are nearly impervious to facts. In the midst of all this, the AGW activists and bullies continued their relentless quest to reshape the world’s economic landscape, as if they still had the upper hand. They even launched a witch hunt against “denier” weathermen, threatening to get any TV meteorologists fired unless they present global warming propaganda during their forecasts. Meanwhile, Al Gore continued on his decade-long tirade, declaring that “civilization is at risk” if the presidential candidates don’t cave into his demands immediately. And if you check the Web sites of any number of climate change nonprofits and organizations, they’re all still in hysterical crisis mode about the coming calamity. To them, you see, news stories like the ones we saw this week may come and go, but Global Warming is forever!

Something’s Gotta Give

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” as William Butler Yeats once wrote. This disconnect between reality and hysteria can’t last forever. As impervious as Global Warmists may be to facts, they’re highly sensitive to their social environment. Eventually, as the general public loses interest in humoring the hysterics, whose status is rapidly dropping from “cutting-edge hipsters” to “embarrassing kooks,” the Alarmists will go into a huddle and emerge with a new crisis scenario so horrifying and immediate that something must be done NOW! And that something, as we learned above, will be the exact same something prescribed to solve the previous crisis.

We already saw the first half of this transition just a short time ago. For years, the crisis peddlers threw all their weight behind the phrase “Global Warming” to describe the looming disaster. But in recent years as data crept in casting some doubt on their prognostications, the phrase “Global Warming” was inconspicuously discarded and replaced with the more flexible “Climate Change.” Voilà! No matter what the weather did, it could be chalked up to “climate change,” because hey, change could go either way, right?

Needless to say, however innocuous “climate change” may have sounded, the activists said Trust us, it’s way worse than mere “global warming,” so the drastic solutions we proposed earlier are still required.

But the ever-growing mountain of evidence pointing to an eventual (naturally occurring) ice age phase in the distant future may trigger yet another huddle among the climate change crowd. Perhaps after a suitable wait, banking on everyone’s short memory, they’ll re-emerge from the huddle this time dropping “Climate Change” for something ice-age themed, like “Accelerated Glaciation,” or perhaps “Man-Made Chill Factor.”

And you can guarantee that they’ll have a solution for this new crisis; and it will be the exact same solution they announced for climate change, and for global warming before that, and yes, for the looming ice age they worried about the previous time back in the ’70s: De-industrialize the First World, end civilization as we know it, and cede power to “the global south,” i.e. the Third World.

The Evidence

To prepare you for this eventuality, I hereby present scans from The Weather Conspiracy: The Coming of the New Ice Age, published in 1977 and written by “The Impact Team,” a coalition of authors from various fields.

Each scan below is taken from a page in The Weather Conspiracy: The Coming of the New Ice Age; click on any image to see the passage in context on the full page.

Under each passage I’ll make a few comments; but in general, the text speaks for itself.

Think of this as a warning from the past. Not a warning about looming ice ages, but rather a warning to ignore politically motivated disaster-mongers.


Put the words “Conspiracy” and “CIA” on a 1970s book cover, and you’ve got a guaranteed bestseller.


The thesis of the book is that ices ages are the long-term norm, punctuated by very brief warm spells; the one we’re in now is quickly coming to an end.


The ol’ “appeal to authority” trick was just as common back then as it is today: “Many climatologists believe that since the sixties the world has been slipping toward a new ice age.” When you combine “many climatologists” with “the CIA” you have pretty much an unimpeachable case.


The evidence — it is overwhelming.


Oh no! Here comes the ice! Doom!


Armadillos are the previous panic’s polar bears. One always needs a cutesy “charismatic megafauna” to symbolize any crisis.


Perhaps NBF (“Neo-Boreal Freeze”) will be the new AGW (“Anthropogenic Global Warming”).


“And this ice sheet only has to reach a thickness of twelve inches to make a major new ice age irreversible. It is believed that the process could take only seven or ten years.” My God, at that rate — we’ll be in a new ice age by 1984!


Massive disaster scenarios like this are par for the course in the climate change field. Even extreme outlying possibilities have to be taken into account in our preparations.


Almost every country in the world (with the exception of the hottest areas) will suffer either “Obliteration by ice sheet,” or “Extensive Glaciation,” or “Severe Drought,” or “Parts Glaciated; Parts Drought-stricken.”


Interestingly, the “Impact Team” also gives space to the other faction of climatologists — whom they dub the “hot-earth men,” a primitive term for “Global Warmists.” The hot-earth men are the mortal enemies of the “cool-earth men,” i.e. the ice age predictors, who are obviously more correct and who are therefore given the soapbox throughout the book. What we see here in 1977 is an interesting historical pivot point: The crisis-mongers needed an ecological disaster to hype, and at that moment in history there were two factions battling for the microphone, each trumpeting the exact opposite scenario: the “hot-earth men” and the “cool-earth men.” The media weighed the two views, decided that the cool-earth men had more evidence, more team members and a better argument, and so ran with the “new ice age” story. When that didn’t pan out, they later dumped the cool-earth men and embraced their rivals.


In the three snippets above we see the standard theory of that era: That man-made pollution causes more dust and aerosols in the atmosphere, which end up blocking sunlight and cause a cooling effect that outweighs any warming effect. Needless to say, in the current era, the sun-blocking aspect of pollution is pooh-poohed and the greenhouse effect championed.


In the passages above the authors give a full explanation of the “hot-earth men”‘s theory about potential global warming. They lay this out as a backup plan; just in case the ice age doesn’t arrive, they would still be able to claim they they predicted the opposite as well. Like a fortune-teller who tells you that you’ll make a fortune betting on the stock market, but there’s also a slim possibility that you’ll lose everything; whatever happens, she can say “I told you so!”


And here we get to to gist of the book: the “solution” to the crisis. The remaining scans spell out all the steps we need to take to survive the upcoming ice age, and — who could have guessed? — they’re the exact same steps we now need to take to survive global warming! And the same verbiage and terminology is used as well: Americans are “junkies” who are “addicted” to oil, and the evil corporations dupe us into extravagance. Et cetera, and so forth.


We’re running out of oil; the Europeans are so much more advanced and frugal than us; we’re going broke paying for our overuse of fossil fuels; you know the drill.


My God, solar power won’t solve our energy needs for another 20 years? That’s not until 1997! How can we survive until then?

On a more serious note, pay close attention to the sentence interrupted by this caption: the authors see the need for “legislation…specifying fuel selection and consumption.” This is the exact same wet dream of the Global Warming alarmists today.


Wait just a minute — you said this book was from 1977. But look: it refers to “Governor Jerry Brown of California.” He’s the governor right now, in 2012! So you must be lying — this must be a brand-new book!

“Now we must reduce our standard of living in small ways — lowered room temperatures, fewer gadgets, smaller cars — and in big ways — legislated home improvements, energy-use taxes, and staggered working hours.”

Sound familiar?


In order to stave off the next ice age, we must “add an ecology tax to each ton [of coal] extracted…to repair the damage done.” This is the precursor to today’s “carbon tax,” which as we all know is necessary to stave off global warming.

The remaining recommendations are partly in line with modern alarmists’ demands, but are not yet fully formed; the authors are still open to the idea of increased domestic oil production. Shocking!

The authors still need some schooling to catch up to the modern way of thinking: there is still some optimism amid the pessimism.

And so it begins: “the need for major coordinated international efforts to cope with climatic change.” Fast forward a few decades: Kyoto, Durban, the IPCC — [face palm].

“It is probable that only by supplying aid on an unparalleled scale can the rich nations of the world assist the poor…. America must address itself to a massive program of agricultural and economic assistance….”


This section is amazingly prescient: “The United States government must level with its citizens and explain that all man’s reserves are finite. Given the Earth’s natural limitations, our current phenomenal rate of waste, inherent in our current consumption of both fossil fuels and food, must stop. … In addition, it is probable that taxes should be based on the horsepower and corresponding energy efficiency of automobiles. Energy prices must be raised to reflect America’s energy import bill and the scarcity value of fossil fuels.” As you remark to yourself that this sounds remarkably similar to our current government policy, remind yourself that this was proposed in 1977 to combat a looming ice age.


It’s incredible how the wet dreams of the crisis-mongers back then so closely resemble the wet dreams of today. A fast food tax, a big house tax, federal laws enforcing energy restrictions….

“Shower, Don’t Bathe.” Ah, the ’70s. Nostalgia!

This list could be taken almost verbatim from any number of modern-day global-warming alarmist groups.

Article printed from Zombie: http://pjmedia.com/zombie

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2012/01/31/the-coming-of-the-new-ice-age-end-of-the-global-warming-era/

 

[a_majoor]

When I visited the House of Lords’ minister, Lord Marland, at the Climate Change Department a couple of years ago, I asked him and the Department’s chief number-cruncher, Professor David Mackay (neither a climate scientist nor an economist, of course) to show me the Department’s calculations detailing just how much “global warming” that might otherwise occur this century would be prevented by the $30 billion per year that the Department was committed to spend between 2011 and 2050 – $1.2 trillion in all.

The response says everything you ever needed to know about the Global Warming/Climate Change scam:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/03/huhne-is-no-loss/

Huhne is no loss
Posted on February 3, 2012 by Anthony Watts
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

Today’s resignation of Chris Huhne, the UK Minister for Climate Change, offers the prospect of a belated return to sanity at the former Ministry of Agriculture in Whitehall. Huhne now faces prosecution for an alleged attempt to pervert the course of justice by asking his then wife to say that she was driving at the time when one of Britain’s thousands of speed cameras caught him going faster than the law allows.

Under Huhne, the Climate Change Department has been indistinguishable from a lunatic asylum. I first came across him – or, rather, didn’t come across him – when he and I were due to debate the climate at the annual jamboree of a massive hedge-fund in Spain three years ago. Huhne only found out that I was to be his opponent when he reached Heathrow Airport. He turned straight around and went back to London.

When I visited the House of Lords’ minister, Lord Marland, at the Climate Change Department a couple of years ago, I asked him and the Department’s chief number-cruncher, Professor David Mackay (neither a climate scientist nor an economist, of course) to show me the Department’s calculations detailing just how much “global warming” that might otherwise occur this century would be prevented by the $30 billion per year that the Department was committed to spend between 2011 and 2050 – $1.2 trillion in all.

There was a horrified silence. The birds stopped singing. The Minister adjusted his tie. The Permanent Secretary looked at his watch. Professor Mackay looked as though he wished the plush sofa into which he was disappearing would swallow him up entirely.


Eventually, in a very small voice, the Professor said, “Er, ah, mphm, that is, oof, arghh, we’ve never done any such calculation.” The biggest tax increase in human history had been based not upon a mature scientific assessment followed by a careful economic appraisal, but solely upon blind faith. I said as much. “Well,” said the Professor, “maybe we’ll get around to doing the calculations next October.”

They still haven’t done the calculations – or, rather, I suspect they have done them but have kept the results very quiet indeed. Here’s why.

The UK accounts for 1.5% of global business-as-usual CO2 emissions. At an officially-estimated cost of $1.2 trillion by 2050, or $834 billion after inter-temporal discounting at the minimum market rate of 5%, the Climate Change Act aims to eradicate 80% of these emissions. So just 1.2% of global emissions would be abated even if the policy were to succeed in full.

Business-as-usual CO2 concentration, as the average of all six IPCC emission scenarios, would be 514 ppmv in 2050. A full and successful reduction of UK emissions by 80% over that period would reduce that concentration to – wait for it – 512.5 ppmv. This dizzying reduction of 1.5 ppmv over 40 years would have the effect of abating 0.008 K of the 1.05 K of warming that the IPCC would otherwise have expected to see by 2050.

The UK policy’s mitigation cost-effectiveness – the cost of abating just 1 Kelvin of warming if every nation pursued the UK’s policy with the same cost-ineffectiveness – works out at $108 trillion per Kelvin abated.

The policy’s global abatement cost – the cost of abating all of the 1.05 K warming that would otherwise occur over the policy’s 40-year lifetime – would be $113 trillion, or $16,000 per head of the global population, or almost 7% of global GDP over the period.

To determine how much better it would be to do nothing than to try to abate that warming, it is necessary to agree on how much damage the warming might abate. The Stern Report on the economics of climate change produces some of the most extreme and exaggerated cost estimates, so we shall use it for the sake of being as fair as possible.

Stern agrees with most sources that if there is 3 K warming this century (which the IPCC predicted at the time), it will cost 0-3% of global 21st-century GDP (actually, he says “now and forever”, but that is one exaggeration too many). However, the IPCC’s current central estimate is that the CO2 we emit between 2000 and 2100 will cause little more than 1.5 K of warming. So let us assume that this 1.5 K of CO2-driven warming will cost us 1.5% of global 21st-century GDP.

Yes, I know that anything less than 2 K will probably be beneficial, but we have to bear in mind the already-committed warming of 0.6 K that the IPCC says is already in the pipeline on account of our past sins of emission, and the warming from the non-CO2 greenhouse gases that is not addressed in the UK’s CO2-reduction policy.

However, Stern’s calculations are all based on an inter-temporal discount rate of just 1.4%, which is far lower than the minimum rate of return on capital, which is 5%. Correcting the Stern-based 1.5%-of-GDP cost of taking no action to allow for the minimum market discount rate brings that cost down to 0.3% of GDP.

Accordingly, the 6.85%-of-GDP cost of taking action to mitigate the warming would give an impressive action/inaction ratio of 22.8. Bottom line: it is almost 23 times more expensive to pursue the policies outlined in the Climate Change Act than to sit back, do nothing, enjoy the sunshine, and adapt in a focused way to the consequences of what little warming the IPCC predicts may occur.

Just one problem with this entire calculation. It depends upon the assumption that the $1.2 billion spent by Mr. Huhne’s former department  to 2050 would actually achieve an 80% reduction in Britain’s CO2 emissions. And that may not be a justifiable assumption. Real-world climate-mitigation policies are proving far more costly than government estimates.

The United Kingdom is no longer a democracy. We still have all the trappings, but in reality it no longer matters who we vote for. Five-sixths of our laws, including overall policies on environmental matters, are set by the unelected, unaccountable, unsackable Kommissars (that’s the official German name for our new and hated masters) of the failed European Union. For the seventeenth year in a row, the EU’s own court of auditors has declined to sign off the Kommissars’ annual accounts as a true and fair record of how they have squandered the $3 million an hour we pay them. It is these Kommissars who dictate that we must have carbon trading.

So let us compare the pie-in-the-sky cost estimates in the Climate Change Act with the actual, real-world cost of the EU’s four-times-collapsed carbon trading scam – er, scheme. The calculation is similar to that which we did for the UK alone.

Over the ten-year timeframe of the EU’s scheme, CO2 concentration will have risen to 413 ppmv, or 412.4 ppmv if the scheme is fully successful, abating 0.004 K of “global warming”. The cost of the scheme, according to Bjorn Lomborg, is 2.5 times the cost of the trades actually executed: call it $230 billion a year, or $2.1 trillion after 5% discounting over the ten years.

The mitigation cost-effectiveness of the EU scheme is $535 trillion per Kelvin abated; its global abatement cost over the period 2010-2020 is $117 trillion, or $17,000 per head of global population, or 22% of global GDP over the ten-year period. And that is 72 times more costly than the 0.3%-of-GDP cost of the climate-related damage that the policy is intended to forestall.

This, too, understates the true cost-ineffectiveness of trying to tax, trade, regulate, reduce or replace CO2. For the predicted rate of warming is not occurring. By many methods, the climate literature demonstrates that the models are over-predicting CO2-driven warming at least threefold. If so, then the true cost of the EU’s mad policy, of which Mr. Huhne and his party are such enthusiastic supporters, could be at least 200 times greater than the cost of climate-related damage from doing nothing at all.

Will Mr. Huhne’s successor get the sums done and scrap the Climate Change Act? Will the EU come to its senses? Don’t count on it. Gradually, though, reality is breaking through. Desubsidization of solar and even of fashionable wind energy has now begun in the UK, Denmark, Germany and Spain.

The sheer cost of these pointless, environment-wrecking “alternative” energy sources is so crippling that European governments, already near-bankrupted by their incompetent management of the mickey-mouse Euro, cannot any longer afford these self-indulgent indulgences. The removal of Mr. Huhne from the scene will at least take Britain one step nearer to sanity, scientific reality and economic common sense about climate change.

 

[Haletown]

"“breathtaking ­hypocrisy”


http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/2012/02/05/green-guru-flies-to-tahiti-to-lecture-on-global-warming-115875-23735649/

I am sure Gaia will forgive him because he believes he is doing good.

 

[a_majoor]

Trust the men from Oz to find the best way to pour mockery and scorn on climate alarmists:

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/cold_is_old/

COLD IS OLD
 
Tim Blair
Monday, February 13, 2012 at 06:04am

The hot new word for “cold” is “extreme”. To give an example:
Regions across Europe sustained another deluge of extreme weather over the weekend.
See how often you can work this hip and happening term into routine conversations! These may help get you started:

• “I’m going extreme turkey.”

• “She got extreme feet.”

• “In the extreme light of day …”

• “Stone Extreme Steve Austin.”

• “They gave me the extreme shoulder.”

• “The spy who came in from the extreme.”

• “Feed an extreme, starve a fever.”

• “For a hard earned thirst, you need a big extreme beer, and the best extreme beer is Vic, Victoria Bitter.”

So lets all raise an extreme one...

 

[Haletown]

DeSmugBlog gets p-owned.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/18/top-ten-things-heartland-institute-will-do-with-6-4-million-in-funding/

And they are about get a big law suit as well.

Wonderful news

 

[Haletown]

because the expert's models say global warming is real . . .

 

[armyvern]

...

So lets all raise an extreme one...

Hmmmm, somehow, "I'm an extreme-hearted bitch" just isn't cutting it for me.  :'(

 

[Sythen]

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/world/archives/2012/02/20120220-194840.html

OTTAWA -- A top climate scientist is shoving a stick into the gears of the global-warming machine, saying Alberta's oilsands are not to blame - coal is.

Dr. Andrew Weaver, a professor at the University of Victoria, B.C., and a lead author on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says Alberta's oilsands actually produce only a tiny bubble of greenhouse gases.

More on link.

 

[a_majoor]

Hmmmm, somehow, "I'm an extreme-hearted *****" just isn't cutting it for me.  :'(

Wow, that's extreme, Vern   

 

[Haletown]

FakeGate, Act3 Scene 1  Gleick 'Fesses Up.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/20/statement-by-the-heartland-institute-on-gleick-confession/

This dude is so in deep doo-doo . .  he's the big promoter of Ethics for the Warmongers.

Ethics, ya right . . .  for Thee but necessarily for Me.



And the spinners over at DeSmogBlog are nailing him to the "Whistleblower" cross.

The lawyers are going to have a blast  with this one.

 

[Haletown]

Brilliant.

"Is the fight against global warming alarmism hopeless?
February 26th, 2012

NOTE: The following light-hearted and playful editorial was whipped up after seeing a new Washington Post editorial on their Post(-Normal)Opinions page entitled Is the fight against global warming hopeless? I took the text of that article (which I encourage you to read first) and added some creative modifications. Only a few of the sentences were left intact, which are their creations, not my own…although I doubt the WaPo editorial board will agree with the context I have used them in. Snicker.

Is the fight against global warming alarmism hopeless?

IS THE FIGHT against global warming alarmism hopeless? It can seem so. The long-term threat to humanity comes from fears that carbon dioxide, which is necessary for life on Earth to exist, will lead to damaging energy policies which kill perhaps millions of poor people around the world each year. Fortunately, after decades of effort, only about one-tenth of America’s energy mix comes from renewable sources that don’t produce life-enhancing carbon dioxide, and which are so expensive they reduce prosperity for all.

But two policies could allow inefficient, wealth-destroying carbon-free technologies to try to catch up to their less expensive competitors. One is aimed at greenhouse substances that clear out of the atmosphere after a few years, months or even days (as if the climate system really cares than much about them). Cutting back the emission of soot and ozone gases such as methane (sic) could reduce the world’s warming by an unmeasureable amount over the next few decades. Adding hydrofluorocarbons — another class of short-lived pollutants — to the list wouldn’t really help to delay the approach of temperature thresholds beyond which global warming could be catastrophic, since those thresholds are entirely in the realm of fanciful theories anyway.

Alarmists believe that reducing these emissions is relatively cheap, especially when the benefits to health are factored in — but at the exclusion of the dangers to health of the reduced prosperity which would also result. For example, primitive cooking stoves in developing countries produce much of the world’s soot; alarmists think using more efficient ones would prevent perhaps millions of deaths from respiratory illness, as if poverty can be alleviated by giving poor people a solar cooker.

Methane, meanwhile, is the primary component of natural gas — a commodity that pipeline or coal-mine operators could sell if they kept it from escaping into the atmosphere. Researchers have curiously concluded that global crop yields would rise…a speculative and even hypocritical claim considering the known benefits to photosynthesis of adding more CO2 to the atmosphere from fossil fuel burning.

Coordinating an effective international effort to cut funding to long-lived climate alarmism enforcers will be the hardest task. Science institutions worldwide have spoken out on the need to address global warming, despite no scientist really knowing how much of past warming (which ended ten years ago) is natural versus manmade, and despite those institutions knowing virtually nothing about the underlying science.

Climate alarmists will waste more than just American money. Regulators in the developing world push to enforce stronger air-pollution rules, which expands the role of government and provides job security for bureaucrats, while ignoring the downside of diverting too much of the taxpayers’ money away from other, more worthy goals.

Since many of the health benefits of fossil fuels have been taken for granted by people, politicians are too eager to cut carbon dioxide emissions, without realizing there are very good reasons that we use carbon-based fuels.

One development that promises to provide abundant energy without the meddling of environmental activists — America’s natural gas boom — faces a challenge of a very different sort: the environmentalists themselves. Innovative drilling techniques have made huge amounts of fuel deep below Americans’ feet retrievable at low cost. Most of it is methane, a greenhouse gas that produces only about half the carbon as coal after combustion. Environmentalists should be cheering: Cheap gas transported for the most part in existing pipelines can start the United States on a wealth-enhancing path with minimal added cost.

That path will be followed naturally, based upon market forces and the ever-present consumer demand for energy. This might well eventually steer us away from fossil fuels, if only because they will gradually be depleted and so their price will by necessity rise.

There is reason for hope – but not for complacency – over the coming years that the ill-conceived policy fantasies of climate alarmists can be fended off so that the poor of the world have a chance to prosper, with continuing access to our most abundant end least expensive energy sources – carbon-based fuels.

This editorial represents the views of Dr. Roy W. Spencer as a professional climate scientist and semi-professional economist wannabe, as determined through debate among the various voices in his head."


http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/02/is-the-fight-against-global-warming-alarmism-hopeless/

 

[Haletown]

Exactly . . . .  Judith gets it.

"Climate science has claimed for 30 years that it affects the safety of hundreds of millions of people, or perhaps the whole planet. If it gets it wrong, equally, millions may suffer from high energy costs, hunger due to biofuels, and lost opportunity from misdirected funds, notwithstanding the projected benefits from as yet impractical renewable energy.
Yet, we have allowed it to dictate global policy and form a trillion dollar green industrial complex - all without applying a single quality system, without a single performance standard for climate models, without a single test laboratory result and without a single national independent auditor or regulator. It all lives only in the well known inbred, fad-driven world of peer review."

What's a $trillion dollars . . .  wouldn't buy much cancer research or hospital care or pave a few roads . . .  because to to the Warmistas, Global Warming doesn't have an opportunity cost.

http://oilprice.com/The-Environment/Global-Warming/The-IPCC-May-Have-Outlived-its-Usefulness-An-Interview-with-Judith-Curry.html

 

[Redeye]

I love the infographic here. The fact that people still spout the drivel that is 90% of this thread is pretty simply taken down by good old fashioned common sense here:

http://grist.org/list/infographic-the-idea-of-a-climate-change-hoax-makes-no-sense/

 

[TheHead]

You can't beat this science. Now that's the Roy Spencer that we all know and love.  Plus he's a proponent of "intelligent" design.

"We believe Earth and its ecosystems — created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence — are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth's climate system is no exception."


http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2011/07/30/is-roy-spencer-a-credible-voice-on-global-warming-research/

Is Roy Spencer A Credible Voice On Global Warming Research?

You may have heard about new research by Dr. Roy Spencer that purports to blow a devastating hole in the theory that carbon dioxide causes global warming. Spencer’s interpretation of his statistical analysis of satellite data proposes that clouds, not increase in carbon dioxide, have led to global warming.

Is the research credible? Not according to most climatologists. They note that Spencer’s research fails even to provide data about the statistical significance of the patterns he identifies. Statistical significance indicates the degree of reliability of statistics in an analysis. Without knowing the statistical significance of an analysis, a reader can’t know how trustworthy the research is.

Roy Spencer’s new research seems to have a confused trail of cause and effect. Increased cloud cover can indeed contribute to increase in atmospheric temperature, but that cloud cover is itself part of a feedback loop that results from an initial temperature increase caused by carbon dioxide. Spencer’s analysis can’t explain where the original increase in cloud cover came from to cause temperature increase in the first place, except to say that “chaos” was to blame.

Roy Spencer has spent years advancing theories that don’t hold up to scrutiny, based on slipshod reasoning. He’s started anti-environmentalist political web sites, and spread previously debunked antienvironmentalist conspiracy theories.

Spencer seems to determine the validity of scientific idea by seeing how well they fit with the religious ideas of Christian Bible. Spencer belongs to an organization that promotes a “Biblical view of stewardship to the critical issues of environment and development.”

Roy Spencer is also a Creationist, writing incorrectly that, “The fossil record, our only source of the history of life on Earth, is almost (if not totally) devoid of transitional forms of life that would connect the supposed evolution of amphibians to reptiles, reptiles to birds, etc.”

All this is a description of Roy Spencer’s professional record of reliability to date, which is alarmingly poor. Of course, Spencer could reform himself and come up with valid research in the future, and so Spencer’s scientific research should not be rejected by other scientists simply because of Spencer’s history of inaccuracy and dishonesty. However, we in the general public should practice extreme skepticism when we’re told that a new study by Spencer successfully contradicts the mountain of evidence that global warming is real and is caused mainly by human activities, such as the industrial emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

 

[Haletown]

I love the infographic here. The fact that people still spout the drivel that is 90% of this thread is pretty simply taken down by good old fashioned common sense here:

http://grist.org/list/infographic-the-idea-of-a-climate-change-hoax-makes-no-sense/

Leave it to Grist to provide the perfect summary of the Warmonger Eco-Greenie-Gaia religious dogma. 

Meanwhile, the AGW theory continues to implode as reality imposes itself, as the predictions of warming don't happen, as the High Priests of AGW feel it necessary to commit criminal acts to try and maintain their seat on the Fame & Gravy train, as the efforts to promote AGW fall on ever  more deaf ears as the vast majority of people now couldn't care less about the the repeated fear mongering coming out of the AGW propaganda mills like desmugblog et al.

It is over, the Warmongers have lost.  What is happening now is just the twitching in the AGW corpse that looks like it is still alive.

Probably just some CO2 gas deep in the bowels of the beast.