Climate Change Study Of Scientific Consensus

[Guest Sundancefisher]

UK May Experience More Cold Winters

 

ScienceDaily (Apr. 22, 2010) — New research from the University of Reading suggests the UK may experience more cold winters in future when the Sun is at a lower level of activity.

 

 

The amount of radiation emitted by the Sun varies naturally over time and over centuries. The scientists measured the magnetic field emanating from the Sun into space to quantify solar activity.

 

Using records of temperatures dating back to 1659, the study established a connection between lower solar activity and severe winters.

 

Between 1650 and 1700 there was a prolonged episode of low solar activity which coincided with more severe winters in the UK and continental Europe.

 

Mike Lockwood, Professor of Space Environment Physics in the Department of Metererology at the University, said: "The UK has experienced relatively mild winters in recent decades, but not this year. Also this year, the Sun fell to an activity level not seen for a century.

 

"The results relate to a seasonal (winter) and regional (Central England) temperature change and not a global effect. However the work does show how regional or local measurements can show a solar effect and highlights how important it is to avoid trying to make deductions about the global climate from what is seen in just one part of the world."

 

The paper published in IOP Publishing's Environmental Research Letters, says the cold weather trends during lower solar activity are consistent with solar influence on blocking events in the Eastern Atlantic. Blocking occurs when the warm jet stream from the west on its way to Northern Europe is blocked allowing north-easterly winds to arrive from the Arctic. Blocking episodes can persist for several weeks, leading to extended cold periods in winter.

 

Professor Lockwood says the trends do not guarantee colder winters but they do suggest that colder winters will become more frequent. He said: "If we look at the last period of very low solar activity at the end of the 17th Century, we find the coldest winter on record in1684 but, for example, the very next year, when solar activity was still low, saw the third warmest winter in the entire 350-year record. The results do show however that there are a greater number of cold UK winters when solar activity is low."

 

The University of Reading worked in partnership with the Science and Technology Facilities Council Space Science and Technology Department at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, and the Max-Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany.

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/...00422095549.htm

 

 

[Guest Sundancefisher]

Soil Microbes Produce Less Atmospheric CO2 Than Expected With Climate Warming

 

ScienceDaily (Apr. 27, 2010) — The physiology of microbes living underground could determine the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from soil on a warmer Earth, according to a study recently published online in Nature Geoscience.

 

Researchers at UC Irvine, Colorado State University and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies found that as global temperatures increase, microbes in soil become less efficient over time at converting carbon in soil into carbon dioxide, a key contributor to climate warming.

 

Microbes, in the form of bacteria and fungi, use carbon for energy to breathe, or respire, and to grow in size and in number. A model developed by the researchers shows microbes exhaling carbon dioxide furiously for a short period of time in a warmer environment, leaving less carbon to grow on. As warmer temperatures are maintained, the less efficient use of carbon by the microbes causes them to decrease in number, eventually resulting in less carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere.

 

"Microbes aren't the destructive agents of global warming that scientists had previously believed," said Steven Allison, assistant professor of ecology & evolutionary biology at UCI and lead author on the study. "Microbes function like humans: They take in carbon-based fuel and breathe out carbon dioxide. They are the engines that drive carbon cycling in soil. In a balanced environment, plants store carbon in the soil and microbes use that carbon to grow. The microbes then produce enzymes that convert soil carbon into atmospheric carbon dioxide."

 

The study, "Soil-Carbon Response to Warming Dependent on Microbial Physiology," contradicts the results of older models that assume microbes will continue to spew ever-increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the climate continues to warm. The new simulations suggest that if microbial efficiency declines in a warmer world, carbon dioxide emissions will fall back to pre-warming levels, a pattern seen in field experiments. But if microbes manage to adapt to the warmth -- for instance, through increased enzyme activity -- emissions could intensify.

 

"When we developed a model based on the actual biology of soil microbes, we found that soil carbon may not be lost to the atmosphere as the climate warms," said Matthew Wallenstein of the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University. "Conventional ecosystem models that didn't include enzymes did not make the same predictions."

 

Mark Bradford, assistant professor of terrestrial ecosystem ecology at Yale, said there is intense debate in the scientific community over whether the loss of soil carbon will contribute to global warming. "The challenge we have in predicting this is that the microbial processes causing this loss are poorly understood," he said. "More research in this area will help reduce uncertainties in climate prediction."

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/...00420225712.htm

 

[Guest Sundancefisher]

Through the Looking Glass: Scientists Peer Into Antarctica's Past to See Our Future Climate

ScienceDaily (Apr. 29, 2010)

 

The poles control much of our global climate. Giant ice sheets in Antarctica behave like mirrors, reflecting the sun's energy and moderating the world's temperatures. The waxing and waning of these ice sheets contribute to changes in sea level and affect ocean circulation, which regulates our climate by transporting heat around the planet.

 

Despite their present-day cold temperatures, the poles were not always covered with ice. New climate records recovered from Antarctica during the recent Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) "Wilkes Land Glacial History" Expedition show that approximately 53 million years ago, Antarctica was a warm, sub-tropical environment. During this same period, known as the "greenhouse" or "hothouse" world, atmospheric CO2 levels exceeded those of today by ten times.

 

Then suddenly, Antarctica's lush environment transitioned into its modern icy realm. In only 400,000 years -- a mere blink of an eye in geologic time -- concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide decreased. Global temperatures dropped. Ice sheets developed. Antarctica became ice-bound.

 

How did this change happen so abruptly and how stable can we expect ice sheets to be in the future?

 

To answer these questions, an international team of scientists participating in the Wilkes Land Glacial History Expedition spent two months aboard the scientific research vessel JOIDES Resolution in early 2010, drilling geological samples from the seafloor near the coast of Antarctica. Despite negotiating icebergs, near gale-force winds, snow, and fog, they managed to recover approximately 2,000 meters (over one mile) of sediment core.

 

"These sediments are essential to our research because they preserve the history of the Antarctic ice sheet," observed Dr. Carlota Escutia of the Research Council of Spain CSIC-University of Granada, who led the expedition, along with co-chief scientist Dr. Henk Brinkhuis of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "We can read these sediments like a history book," Brinkhuis explained. "And this book goes back 53 million years, giving us an unprecedented record of how ice sheets form and interact with changes in the climate and the ocean."

 

Wilkes Land is the region of Antarctica that lies due south of Australia, and is believed to be one of the more climate-sensitive regions of the polar continent. The new core samples collected during IODP's Wilkes Land expedition are unique because they provide the world's first direct record of waxing and waning of ice in this region of Antarctica.

 

Combined, the cores tell the story of Antarctica's transition from an ice-free, warm, greenhouse world to an ice-covered, cold, dry "icehouse" world. Sediments and microfossils preserved within the cores document the onset of cooling and the development of the first Antarctic glaciers and the growth and recession of Antarctica's ice sheets. Cores from one site resemble tree rings -- unprecedented alternating bands of light and dark sediment preserve seasonal variability of the last deglaciation that began some 10,000 years ago.

 

Understanding the behavior of Antarctica's ice sheets plays a fundamental role in our ability to build robust, effective global climate models, which are used to predict future climate. "These models rely on constraints imposed by data from the field," the co-chiefs pointed out. "Measurements of parameters such as age, temperature, and carbon dioxide concentration provide invaluable inputs that help increase the accuracy of these models. The more we can constrain the models, the better they'll perform -- and the better we can predict ice sheet behavior."

 

What's next? The science team now embarks on a multi-year process of on-shore analyses to further investigate the Wilkes Land cores. Age-dating and chemistry studies among other analyses are expected to resolve changes in Antarctica's climate over unprecedented short timescales (50-20,000 years). Data collected from the Wilkes Land expedition will complement previous research from drilling operations conducted elsewhere in the Antarctic over the last 40 years. Together, this research will provide important age constraints for models of Antarctic ice sheet development and evolution, thereby forming the basis for models of future ice sheet behavior and polar climatic change.

 

IODP is an international marine research program dedicated to advancing scientific understanding of the Earth through drilling, coring, and monitoring the sub-seafloor. The JOIDES Resolution is a drilling vessel managed by the U.S. Implementing Organization of IODP (USIO), and funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). Together, Texas A&M University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, and the Consortium for Ocean Leadership comprise the USIO.

 

IODP is supported by two lead agencies, NSF in the U.S. and Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. Additional program support comes from the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD), the Australian-New Zealand IODP Consortium (ANZIC), India's Ministry of Earth Sciences, the People's Republic of China (Ministry of Science and Technology), and the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources.

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/...00429132753.htm

[Guest Sundancefisher]

Study Gives Green Light to Plants’ Role in Global Warming

ScienceDaily (Apr. 29, 2010)

 

Plants remain an effective way of tackling global warming despite emitting small amounts of an important greenhouse gas, a study has shown.

 

Research led by the University of Edinburgh suggests that plant leaves account for less than one per cent of the Earth's emissions of methane -which is considered to be about 25 times more effective than carbon dioxide at global warming.

 

The results contrast with a previous scientific study which had suggested that plants were responsible for producing large amounts of the greenhouse gas.

 

The findings confirm that trees are a useful way of offsetting greenhouse gas emissions, as their output of small amounts of methane is far outweighed by their capacity to store carbon from the atmosphere in their leaves, wood and bark.

 

To reach their conclusions, scientists created artificial leaves made from plant pectin and measured the methane produced when the leaves were exposed to sunlight.

 

They combined their results with satellite data on the leaf coverage of the Earth's surface, ozone in the atmosphere, cloud cover, temperature, and information on sunshine levels to help work out the amount of methane produced by all plants on Earth.

 

Their results refine previous studies that had indicated that the quantity of methane produced by plants might have been much higher. Future research will examine methane production from parts of plants other than leaves, and the amount of methane given off by different species of plants in different regions of the Earth.

 

Dr Andy McLeod, of the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences, said: "Our results show that plant leaves do give rise to some methane, but only a very small amount -- this is a welcome result as it allays fears that forestry and agriculture were contributing unduly to global warming."

 

The research, carried out in collaboration with the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research and was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and Forest Research.

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/...00429111021.htm

 

[Guest Sundancefisher]

Melting Sea Ice Major Cause of Warming in Arctic, New Study Reveals

ScienceDaily (Apr. 28, 2010) — Melting sea ice has been shown to be a major cause of warming in the Arctic according to a University of Melbourne, Australia study.

 

Findings published in Nature reveal the rapid melting of sea ice has dramatically increased the levels of warming in the region in the last two decades.

 

Lead author Dr James Screen of the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne says the increased Arctic warming was due to a positive feedback between sea ice melting and atmospheric warming.

 

"The sea ice acts like a shiny lid on the Arctic Ocean. When it is heated, it reflects most of the incoming sunlight back into space. When the sea ice melts, more heat is absorbed by the water. The warmer water then heats the atmosphere above it. "

 

"What we found is this feedback system has warmed the atmosphere at a faster rate than it would otherwise," he says.

 

Using the latest observational data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting, Dr Screen was able to uncover a distinctive pattern of warming, highly consistent with the loss of sea ice.

 

"In the study, we investigated at what level in the atmosphere the warming was occurring. What stood out was how highly concentrated the warming was in the lower atmosphere than anywhere else. I was then able to make the link between the warming pattern and the melting of the sea ice."

 

The findings question previous thought that warmer air transported from lower latitudes toward the pole, or changes in cloud cover, are the primary causes of enhanced Arctic warming.

 

Dr Screen says prior to this latest data set being available there was a lot of contrasting information and inconclusive data.

 

"This current data has provided a fuller picture of what is happening in the region," he says.

 

Over the past 20 years the Arctic has experienced the fastest warming of any region on the planet. Researchers around the globe have been trying to find out why.

 

Researchers say warming has been partly caused by increasing human greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, the Arctic sea ice has been declining dramatically. In summer 2007 the Arctic had the lowest sea ice cover on record. Since then levels have recovered a little but the long-term trend is still one of decreasing ice.

 

Professor Ian Simmonds, of the University's School of Earth Sciences and coauthor on the paper says the findings are significant.

 

"It was previously thought that loss of sea ice could cause further warming. Now we have confirmation this is already happening."

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/...00428142324.htm

 

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This feedback loop makes intuitive sense. Water absorbs heat and warms faster than ice.

[CTownTBoyz]

Climate change science sound: researchers

Last Updated: Thursday, May 6, 2010 | 4:07 PM ET Comments264Recommend102CBC News

The journal Science has published a letter defending the integrity of climate science, signed by 255 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

 

"We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular," the letter reads.

 

The letter, signed by leading scientists, including 11 Nobel laureates, confirms that the conclusions of climate science — that human behaviour is changing the planet's climate — are based on the work of thousands of scientists.

 

"There is compelling, comprehensive and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend," the letter says.

 

In particular, the letter says, the evidence shows that, "the planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere," and "most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities."

 

"A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact."

 

The letter was signed by scientists from 53 different disciplines, from environmental science to geophysics, to microbial biology.

 

"Society has two choices: we can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act in the public interest to reduce the threat of global climate change quickly and substantively," the letter reads.

 

The letter comes in response to growing political pressure on climate scientists, particularly in the wake of the release of more than 1,000 emails stolen from the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit.

 

Letter calls for end of 'McCarthy-like threats'

Critics of climate science said the emails showed that researchers had been fudging data and suppressing findings that did not agree with the conclusion that climate change is occurring and is the result of human activity.

 

The incident was dubbed "climategate" by various commentators.

 

The letter called "for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them."

 

In April, an independent panel of experts recommended by the Royal Society found that the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia did not engage in "scientific malpractice."

 

The panel did not analyze whether the researchers' conclusions were correct but investigated the scientific process at the research unit and found "absolutely no evidence of any impropriety."

 

 

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/05...l#ixzz0nHD9c3iS

 

[CTownTBoyz]

 

From Nasa

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/cli...ow/?src=eoa-ann

 

If Earth has warmed and cooled throughout history, what makes scientists think that humans are causing global warming now?

 

May 4, 2010

 

The first piece of evidence that the warming over the past few decades isn’t part of a natural cycle is how fast the change is happening. The biggest temperature swings our planet has experienced in the past million years are the ice ages. Based on a combination of paleoclimate data and models, scientists estimate that when ice ages have ended in the past, it has taken about 5,000 years for the planet to warm between 4 and 7 degrees Celsius. In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed about 0.7 degrees Celsius, which is roughly eight times faster than previous warming.

The second reason that scientists think the current warming is not from natural influences is that, over the past century, scientists from all over the world have been collecting data on natural factors that influence climate—things like changes in the Sun’s brightness, major volcanic eruptions, and cycles such as El Niño and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. These observations have failed to show any long-term changes that could fully account for the recent, rapid warming of Earth’s temperature.

Reconstructions of global temperature that include greenhouse gas increases and other human influences (red line, based on many models) closely match measured temperatures (dashed line). Those that only include natural influences (blue line, based on many models) show a slight cooling, which has not occurred. The ability of models to generate reasonable histories of global temperature is verified by their response to four 20th-century volcanic eruptions: each eruption caused brief cooling that appeared in observed as well as modeled records. (Graph adapted from Hegerl and Zwiers et al., 2007.)

 

Finally, scientists know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that it is released into the air when coal and other fossil fuels burn. Paleoclimate data show that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are higher than they have been in the past 800,000 years. There is no plausible explanation for why such high levels of carbon dioxide would not cause the planet to warm.

Air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice preserve an 800,000-year record of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, which naturally varied from about 180 to about 280 parts per million. Once humans began burning large quantities of coal and oil in the 19th century, concentrations rose to 315 parts per million by 1958 (when direct measurements of carbon dioxide in the Antarctic atmosphere began) to 380 parts per million in 2007. (NASA graph by Robert Simmon, based on data from Keeling et al., 2008.)

 

References

Hegerl, G. C., Zwiers, F. W., Braconnot, P., Gillett, N. P., Luo, Y., Orsini, J. A., Nicholls, N., et al. (2007). Chapter 9: Understanding and attributing climate change. In Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [solomon, S., Qin, D., Manning, M., Chen, Z., Marquis, M., Averyt, K.B. , Tignor, M., and Miller, H.L. (eds.)] Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Jansen, E., Overpeck, J., Briffa, K.R. , Duplessy, J.-C , Joos, F., Masson-Delmotte, V., Olgao, D., et al. (2007). Chapter 6: Paleoclimate. In Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [solomon, S., Qin, D., Manning, M., Chen, Z., Marquis, M., Averyt, K.B. , Tignor, M., and Miller, H.L. (eds.)] Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lean, J. L., & Rind, D. H. (2008). How natural and anthropogenic influences alter global and regional surface temperatures: 1889 to 2006. Geophysical Research Letters, 35(18).

Lockwood, M., & Fröhlich, C. (2008). Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature. II. Different reconstructions of the total solar irradiance variation and dependence on response time scale. Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 464(2094), 1367-1385.

Lüthi, D., Le Floch, M., Bereiter, B., Blunier, T., Barnola, J., Siegenthaler, U., Raynaud, D., et al. (2008). High-resolution carbon dioxide concentration record 650,000–800,000 years before present. Nature, 453(7193), 379-382. [Download 800,000-Year CO2 Data]

Steele, L. P., Krummel, P. B., & Langenfelds, R. L. (2007). Atmospheric CO2 concentrations from sites in the CSIRO Atmospheric Research GASLAB air sampling network (August 2007 version). In Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change, Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, US Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, TN, USA.

[Guest Sundancefisher]

Why can't we just see a plain, simple, black and white answer to what is it that people are expected to do, pay, cost, give up, change behavior etc. in order to meet the requirements of the average response scientists wish people to do to "combat" this perceived issue. There is constant rhetoric but never anything other than whining about this industry...or that industry.

 

Enough with the hypothetical studies...the lack of proof...the altering of data. If their is something simple we can do...spit it out. Problem is these groups want us to blindly go down a path without understanding where it will lead...where it will stop...

 

That is scary power that scientists have tried to politicize. Scientists should never cross over into politics and ideology. You can't believe them after that happens. Now assuming we can make changes...what are they? When will the global warming side give a standard average person breakdown as to what we need to do to change on an individual basis?

 

That would help my decision tremendously.

 

Cheers

 

Sun

 

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Academics urge radical new approach to climate change

 

Tuesday, 11 May 2010 4:23 UK

By Richard Black

Environment correspondent, BBC News

 

CO2 should not be the prime target of climate policy, the report argues A major change of approach is needed if society is to restrain climate change, according to a report from a self-styled "eclectic" group of academics.

 

The UN process has failed, they argue, and a global approach concentrating on CO2 cuts will never work.

 

They urge instead the use of carbon tax revenue to develop technologies that can supply clean energy to everyone.

 

Their so-called Hartwell Paper is criticised by others who say the UN process has curbed carbon emissions.

 

The paper is named after Hartwell House, the Buckinghamshire mansion, hotel and spa where the group of 14 academics from Europe, North America and Japan gathered in February to develop their ideas.

 

Its central message is that climate change can be ameliorated best by pursuing "politically attractive and relentlessly pragmatic" options that also curb emissions.

 

These options include bringing a reliable electricity supply to the estimated 1.5 billion people in the world without it using efficient, low-carbon technologies.

 

"The raising up of human dignity is the central driver of the Hartwell Paper, replacing the preoccupation with human sinfulness that has failed and will continue to fail to deliver progress," said lead author Prof Gwyn Prins.

 

Prof Prins is director of the Mackinder Programme for the Study of Long Wave Events at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an adviser to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK charity chaired by Lord Lawson that aims "to help restore balance and trust in the climate debate".

 

Short-term fixes

 

The paper says that the outcome of December's UN climate summit, plus the "ClimateGate" affair and inaccuracies within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 report, means "the legitimacy of the institutions of climate policy and science are no longer assured".

 

So, successfully tackling climate change initially means re-framing the issue.

 

In an article for the BBC's Green Room series, another of the authors, Mike Hulme, writes: "Climate change has been represented as a conventional environmental 'problem' that is capable of being 'solved'.

 

"It is neither of these. Yet this framing has locked the world into the rigid agenda that brought us to the dead end of Kyoto, with no evidence of any discernable acceleration of decarbonisation whatsoever."

 

The academics advocate concentrating first on short-term fixes for greenhouse gases or other warming agents, such as black carbon - particles emitted from the incomplete burning of fossil fuels, principally in diesel engines and wood stoves.

 

These particles warm the planet by several mechanisms, including darkening snow so it absorbs more solar energy.

 

Black carbon may be the second most important man-made warming agent after carbon dioxide.

 

As it remains in the atmosphere for a matter of weeks, some researchers have suggested that cleaning up its production could be the quickest way of curbing warming, as well as bringing health benefits to poor countries by reducing air pollution.

 

"To date, climate policy has focused on carbon dioxide primarily, and even to the exclusion of other human influences on the climate system," the report says.

 

"We believe this path to have been unwise... early action on a wider range of human influences on climate could be more swiftly productive."

 

However, they acknowledge that carbon emissions do in the end have to be constrained. To that end, they recommend implementing a hypothecated carbon tax in developed economies to fund development of low-carbon energy technologies.

 

The damaging effects of climate change in developing countries, meanwhile, would be tackled by having Western countries meet the internationally agreed target of contributing 0.7% of their GDP to overseas aid, rather than through specific and complex new climate adaptation funds.

 

"Just this one action alone would swamp the miserly amounts of money being offered under the Copenhagen Accord," said Prof Hulme.

 

Lobby group

 

The outcome of the Copenhagen climate summit - widely seen as a failure among academics and activists - has caused considerable soul-searching about alternative approaches.

 

But any move away from the negotiated process that puts CO2 at centre stage is regarded as anathema by many.

 

"The paper's focus away from CO2 is misguided, short-sighted and probably wrong," said Bill Hare from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

 

"If you take action on black carbon and do not reduce CO2 emissions then you may end up with more warming in the long term," he told BBC News.

 

"And in fact, the Kyoto Protocol is one of the few things that have worked, in that it's given momentum to low-carbon energy development - we wouldn't have had the explosion in wind power without it."

 

The Hartwell Paper initiative was supported by funding from the Japan Iron and Steel Federation, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, the US-based Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Fondation Hoffmann, Geneva.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_env...nt/10106362.stm

 

 

[Guest Sundancefisher]

I like studies where they look to facts and not totally computer modeling and/or assumptions that can be proved or disproved...

 

 

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/asia_pacific/10222679.stm

 

Low-lying Pacific islands 'growing not sinking'

Page last updated at 6:07 GMT, Thursday, 3 June 2010 7:07 UK

By Nick Bryant

BBC News, Sydney

 

 

The islands of Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Federated States of Micronesia are among those which have grown, because of coral debris and sediment.

 

The study, published in the magazine the New Scientist, predicts that the islands will still be there in 100 years' time.

 

However it is still unsure whether many of them will be inhabitable.

 

Prognosis 'incorrect'

 

In recent times, the inhabitants of many low-lying Pacific islands have come to fear their homelands being wiped off the map because of rising sea levels.

 

But this study of 27 islands over the last 60 years suggests that most have remained stable, while some have actually grown.

 

Using historical photographs and satellite imaging, the geologists found that 80% of the islands had either remained the same or got larger - in some cases, dramatically so.

 

They say it is due to the build-up of coral debris and sediment, and to land reclamation.

 

Associate Professor Paul Kench of Auckland University, who took part in the study, says the islands are not in immediate danger of extinction.

 

"That rather gloomy prognosis for these nations is incorrect," he said.

 

"We have now got the evidence to suggest that the physical foundation of these countries will still be there in 100 years, so they perhaps do not need to flee their country."

 

But although these islands might not be submerged under the waves in the short-term, it does not mean they will be inhabitable in the long-term, and the scientists believe further rises in sea levels pose a significant danger to the livelihoods of people living in Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Federated States of Micronesia.

 

One scientist in Kiribati said that people should not be lulled into thinking that inundation and coastal erosion were not a major threat.

 

[ladystrange]

im not reading 8 pages of this, but if i could have a wish list, it would be to have no snow after easter, i'm tired of it in may and june and to actually have a summer where the average temperature was 28-30 degrees with a whole lot less wind and not have summer show up for a week in july and a week in september

[Smitty]

Sundance:

 

How's that book coming along?

 

Smitty

[Guest Sundancefisher]

29 August 2010

 

UN climate change panel to face Himalaya error verdict

 

The IPCC came under fire after using the wrong date for Himalayan glacier melt An international committee reviewing the "processes and procedures" of the UN's climate science panel is set to report on Monday.

 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has faced mounting pressure over errors in its last major assessment of climate science in 2007.

 

The review was overseen by the Inter-Academy Council, which brings together bodies such as the UK's Royal Society.

 

The findings are to be unveiled at a news conference in New York.

 

The IPCC has admitted it made a mistake in its 2007 climate assessment in asserting that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.

 

Dr Pachauri has said he welcomes a "vigorous debate" on climate science But officials at the UN organisation said this error did not change the broad picture of man-made climate change.

 

In February, the IPCC suggested setting up an independent review, feeling that its 20-year-old rules and working practices perhaps needed an overhaul.

 

There was also a sense the UN body may have been ill-equipped to handle the unprecedented attention in the wake of "Himalayagate" and the release of e-mails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and the the University of East Anglia, in the UK.

 

Governments endorsed the idea, and in March UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon commissioned the review from the Inter-Academy Council (IAC), an international umbrella body for science academies.

 

The council established a a 12-member review panel, chaired by US economist Professor Harold Shapiro, a former adviser to two former US presidents, George H W Bush and Bill Clinton.

 

'Grey literature'

 

The IAC will deliver its report to Mr Ban and to IPCC chair Dr Rajendra Pachauri in New York on Monday. A source told BBC News that no advance copies of the report had been shown to UN officials.

 

The review will not address the state of knowledge in climate science, but will instead review processes at the UN body, including the use of non-peer reviewed sources, and quality control on data.

 

Continue reading the main story

Review's terms of reference

Analyse the IPCC process, including links with other UN agencies Review the use of non-peer reviewed sources, and quality control on data Assess how procedures handle "the full range of scientific views" Review how the IPCC communicates with the public and the media The use by the IPCC of so-called "grey literature" - that which has not been peer-reviewed or published in scientific journals - has been subjected to particular scrutiny, partly because this type of material was behind the glacier error.

 

A conflict of interest charge has also been levelled at Dr Pachauri over his business interests.

 

Speaking at the review's opening session, held in Amsterdam in May, Dr Pachauri admitted his organisation had been ill-prepared and ill-resourced to deal with the recent criticism it has received.

 

"We have to listen and learn all the time and evolve in a manner that meets the needs of society across the world," he told the review panel.

 

Critics have previously called on Dr Pachauri to resign, a step the IPCC chair has said he has no intention of making.

 

Referring to the Himalayas error at an IAC session in Montreal in June, former IPCC chair Professor Robert Watson told the committee: "To me the fundamental problem was that when the error was found it was handled in a totally and utterly atrocious manner."

 

He added: "The IPCC needs to find a mechanism so that if something needs to be corrected there is a rapid way to get a correction made."

 

The IAC was established in 2000 to assist in providing evidence-based advice to international bodies such as the United Nations and World Bank.

 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11126597

 

 

[Taco]

Oh fer christ's sake Sundance.......................

[Smitty]

I'm "reviving" this thread, might as well keep all my thoughts together.

 

So I am at Teacher's Convention last week, and one of the seminars available to us is called "The Role of Teachers in the Climate Change Debate". The speaker was a fellow by the name of Dr. Mark Jaccard (see the P.S. for bio, if you care).

 

Anyways, I found his presentation compelling. Did he try to sway me to one "side" of the argument? No, he did not. Did he try to prove human caused global warming? No, he did not.

 

What he did convince me of, or better yet, reinforce, is something I have believed/suspected all along:

 

This debate about human-caused global warming is largely irrelevant to the side you are on. I make this point from the point of view of mitigating risk. A point I think I made earlier in this thread, but bears reinforcing.

 

If the demographic scientists are correct, and the predictions, using fact based birth versus death rates are correct, we're going to be adding 2 billion more people to this planet between now and 2050.

 

Doesn't it behoove all of us to embrace policies that are based on minimizing our impact? Reducing our footprint? Would that not include policies regarding the emissions resulting from the burning of non-renewable fossil fuels? Are these questions I am asking - aren't they the mother of all no-brainers?

 

Simply for two reasons: (1) common sense, based on reducing waste and pollution as much as possible, leaving the planet in decent shape for future generations and (2) as a risk-mitigation strategy to address several "what-if" scenarios, not necessarily based on chicken-little, doomsday, sky-is-falling hysteria, but rather "uh, hey, several billion members of an intelligent species is kind of burning stuff, cutting forests, overfishing oceans, etc etc etc pick your trendy environmental "problem-of-the-day".

 

You see Dr. Jaccard woke me up a bit; because I believe his predictions are firmly based on a history we're doomed to repeat; that namely, humans will rarely change their behaviours that produce short term results (high standard of living) whether or not there are long term effects passed down to the next generation. We all know, politically, elections and results and polling are far too short of a time-line to expect much political leadership here.

 

Now I "only" teach "math" largely, but it got me thinking; is there enough environmentalism in our classrooms? Enough in the Social Studies and Science classes? Should we have more discussions with our kids along the lines of Jared Diamond's illuminating book "Collapse: the Fate of Human Societies".

 

You see, personally, I have come full circle; I was a passionate environmentalist in my early 20's, became somewhat dis-illusioned (stopped donating to CPAW, WWF, and Suzuki), and have reached the point where I became firmly in the "anti" camp in my 30's regarding this GW debate, because I felt the science was corrupt.

 

I don't care any longer about that. The fact that science can be corrupted can't become my excuse to be lazy. So, I think I will become more engaged, and say, tell me why we should not have a pricing system (still a free market type of guy) on any emissions - but particularly fossil fuels - that involve a cap and trade system, hard target reduction, and carbon tax?

 

Dr. Jaccard provided one answer to that, and its on the scarier side; because all countries are basically oriented to self-interest regionalism ("I don't care if my actions affect your standard of living") it will take a few catastrophes and a complete downward spiral to "wake" the planet up. In other words, we keep going along our merry burning and polluting ways until we experience "pain". A lot of "pain". I had and have no rebuttal to that. Do we really need to go to hell in handbasket to enact policies that are less impactful? Is that too sky-is-falling type attitude for most of us here? Really, we've started wars for less. Do we not think that the future will be any less conflicted given the scarcity-abundance imbalance of basic resources like food and water? How many of us have predicted in our social circles that the "next war" will be fought over water?

 

Part of me says "I guess I am just glad I live in Canada", and we'll still be one of the better-off countries, but holy crap: hang on, this ride is going to get bumpy in the next 4 decades. (Hell, just look at the riots based on food production of the last 5 years, never mind political unrest).

 

But in the meantime, I think I should step up my game a bit, try not to act so insulated, and find a way to get more kids in involved in their futures, especially when it comes to the health of their world.

 

Thoughts? [sundance, if you're going to reply, I would rather hear your thoughts on what it means to bring up children and their attitudes towards the environment, and the appropriateness of the discussion in the classroom, rather than 10 pages shooting down the science or 5 pages of why Dr. Mark Jaccard is full of it. That wasn't my point. Just sayin' ]

 

Smitty

 

From the GETCA website:

"Mark has been professor in the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, since 1986. His PhD is from the Energy Economics and Policy Institute at the University of Grenoble. Internationally, Mark is known for his work since the 1990's on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Nobel Peace Prize 2007), the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, and the Global Energy Assessment."

 

Also, the co-author of The Cost of Climate Policy (Sustainability and the Environment), Hot Air: Meeting Canada's Climate Change Challenge, Sustainable Fossil Fuels: The Unusual Suspect in the Quest for Clean and Enduring Energy.

[Guest Sundancefisher]

The one thing you can not argue with is emotion. You know that from trying to argue with your wife, upset child or hurt friend. Anytime to include emotion in a debate...you win...there is no arguing against how a person feels. What they feel is right for them.

 

This whole argument about we are doomed is solely based upon fear. Protecting yourself or your child against something that is not tangible yet filled with soul wrenching fear.

 

I felt strongly once as a 12 year old that we were doomed to die from a nuclear war. All signs pointed to it yet I had no proof...just a feeling...common sense and a change in world order prevailed. This is the same argument that global warming alarmists throw out there.

 

Therefore all I can say is pursuant to the doctrine that this particular guy preaches...he is 100% right and you are 100% right if you believe it.

 

However...my personal feelings are that common sense dictates that general eco friendly behavior can cost nothing yet have great benefits and somethings can be changed and make sense to change...minimizing our power consumption...making sure we recycle and reuse as much as possible and also trying to work as hard as we can in our jobs helps the "footprint". This should be taught in school...wastage is bad...conservation is good. However teaching CO2 world death is going to do nothing but freak kids out, confuse them and make them totally disbelieve science once the next "theory" of an ice age comes to bear.

 

Now...if you look at all studies to date...they all point to doom...if their predictions hold true. Thing is they are 99.9% predictions...which as climate goes for instance is 100% unpredictable. One recent study said the polar melting is 100% provable by the normal fluctuations of the Atlantic Oscillation current. Because the guy is pro warming...he covered his butt by saying that global warming will make it worse in the future. So what can you glean? Really nothing. We don't know if anthropomorphic global warming is occurring. The study length does not remove natural variations from the possible reasons. Past predictions on climate has not held true. Bias towards studies trying to disprove the theory is rampant. Honest research is compromised by...emotion.

 

So scientists make a ton of money...doing their jobs...feeding their families and trying their best to be employable. Good for them.

 

If you ask me...should we be environmental proper...not pollute etc. I 100% agree. If you ask me is CO2 a danger. I would say from what I have seen and read... No. There is no proof. So if you tell me what if we can reduce CO2 for a minor, minor impact on jobs, GDP and our overall economic health. I am all for it. If you say you, me, my kids are all going to have to make massive sacrifices to get there. I say...

 

Explain the sacrifices in minute detail and let me decide based upon the facts. Cause the facts are...temperature was a lot higher in the past then it is today...and go plenty higher before it reaches past highs. CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere was a lot higher in the past than it is now.

 

If this is super critical then all third world countries and China need to be attacked and taken over to prevent global demise due to CO2 pollution (or we take 10% tax hit and just give the money to third world countries every year without making them change anything...anyone think Indian Affairs?). They will not change and they are exponentially increasing their consumption. Starting tomorrow...gasoline prices should be increased to $4 a liter. All trucks and SUV's should be banned followed by minivans. Only 1 car per family unless a special tax is paid yearly. Extra tax on all vehicles. Mandatory $1000 a year household transit tax...regardless of transit usage although with it comes a free transit pass for all household members. Everyone should pay an extra $5000 a year in home heating tax so people wear more sweaters. All food and consumables from outside a 100KM radius should have a 20% tax. General taxes need to be increased by at least 35% to cover R&D on new energy sources. Most of the central prairie population needs to move to BC as winter heating is stupid. Only summer living will be allowed in the prairies to conserve power. All people living in the Arctic will be forced to move south. Solar power can only produce about 1% of North Americans power. Wind another 2%. Hydro...5%...with sacrifices to fisheries. All food transportation will be limited to winter where required for security reasons. Immigration will need to be halted as well as a 1 child per family rule to start reducing consumption but only where a couple is deemed worthy to procreate if they have not over expended their carbon credits. This is serious business...and we have to start being militant and start now. All carbonated beverages from pop, beer and alcohol needs to be halted.

 

Once these have been agreed to...we can seriously tackle the scary CO2 problem that paranoid fear mongers have convinced the media to agree with.

 

Seriously though...I mean it for all the tax increases etc. In order to combat...or in other words dramatically reduce our consumption...we need to make it cost prohibitive. Until then...no changes will occur in the world. COST PROHIBITIVE.

 

So in summary..you are 100% correct...you feel your life is threatened and you should trust your feelings. Do something about it and lead by example. If I were you I would set an example for your students. I would invest $10,000 in solar panel electricity generation on your roof via the Enmax project (don't do the match on the payout or economics...sell your car...but just do it for the environment...but don't look into the environmental cost of making the solar power system). Buy a few thousand dollars in carbon credits...and just throw them away to benefit the environment. Stop going on fishing trips outside the city...the carbon footprint is huge and there is no net benefit to humanity. Do a survey of your power consumption. Remove any and all electronic appliances that use residual power. That is my biggest beef...residual power. I heard once that 40% of North America's power consumption is residual power...your TV plugged in, microwave, stove, alarm clock, computer, lights etc.

 

Funniest thing about this whole discussion is those making the biggest stink about the dangers...blame oil companies 100% but have done nothing to changes their own consumption. Hypocrites than mean well but mostly a bunch of NIMBY's IMHO.

[Guest Sundancefisher]

OK...now I am a believer and scared of global warming. Earthquakes like the recent one in Japan is caused by global warming...Who would of thunk it.

 

http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/...5492/story.html

 

Sounds like earthquake researchers want a share of the global warming research money pie.

 

Does anyone pause and think about the one statement below..."about 12,000 years ago when the glaciers that covered most of Canada in an ice sheet several kilometres thick suddenly melted." What percentage of any changes today is natural...and damit...why did Calgary experience a winter 3.5 degrees below normal. To heck with oil royalties...I want my fair share of global warming!

 

MONTREAL — Severe earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and now Japan have experts around the world asking whether the world's tectonic plates are becoming more active — and what could be causing it.

 

Some scientists theorize that the sudden melting of glaciers due to man-made climate change is lightening the load on the Earth's surface, allowing its mantle to rebound upwards and causing plates to become unstuck.

 

These scientists point to the historical increase in volcanic and earthquake activity that occurred about 12,000 years ago when the glaciers that covered most of Canada in an ice sheet several kilometres thick suddenly melted.

 

The result was that most of Canada's crust lifted — and is still rising.

 

Scientists have discovered that the accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet over the last 10 years already is lifting the southeastern part of that island several millimetres every year.

 

The surface of the Earth is elastic. A heavy load such as a glacier will cause it to sink, pushing aside the liquid rock underneath.

 

The Greenland glacier is about three kilometres at its thickest and it is believed that its weight has depressed sections of the land under the glacier about one kilometre. In fact, the weight of the glacier is so great that significant portions of Greenland have been pushed well below sea level.

 

"There is certainly some literature that talks about the increased occurrence of volcanic eruptions and the removing of load from the crust by deglaciation," said Martin Sharp, a glaciologist at the University of Alberta. "It changes the stress load in the crust and maybe it opens up routes for lava to come to the surface.

 

"It is conceivable that there would be some increase in earthquake activity during periods of rapid changes on the Earth's crust."

 

Other scientists, however, believe that tectonic movements similar to the one that caused the Japanese quake are too deep in the Earth to be affected by the pressure releases caused by glacier melt.

 

These scientists theorize, however, that glacier melts could cause shallower quakes.

 

Andrew Hynes, a tectonics expert at McGill University, said the issue is not so much the load shift on the Earth's crust, but rather the increased fluid pressure in the fault that lubricates the rock, allowing the plate to slide.

 

"All earthquakes, except those produced by volcanic activity, are essentially the unsticking of faults," he said.

 

In other words, if you pump fluid into a fault, it can reduce the friction and allow the rock to slide.

 

Could the stress transfers and the added melt from glaciers inject more fluid into the rocks, creating earthquakes?

 

"It would only apply to earthquakes that are at shallow depths," he said. "But I wouldn't push it any further than that."

 

He added, however, that the decompression from melting glaciers could cause an increase in volcanic activity by releasing the liquid rock and its explosive potential.

 

At the same time, the number and severity of earthquakes appear to have increased over the last thirty years in tandem with accelerating glacial melt.

 

Some experts claim that jump can be explained by the increased number of seismograph stations — more than 8,000 now, up from 350 in 1931 — allowing scientists to pinpoint earthquakes that would otherwise have been missed.

 

But this does not explain the recent increase in major earthquakes, which are defined as above 6 on the Richter magnitude scale. Japan's earthquake was a 9.

 

Scientists have been tracking these powerful quakes for well over a century and it's unlikely that they have missed any during at least the last 60 years.

 

According to data from the U.S. Geological Survey there were 1,085 major earthquakes in the 1980s. This increased in the 1990s by about 50 per cent to 1,492 and to 1,611 from 2000 to 2009. Last year, and up to and including the Japanese quake, there were 247 major earthquakes.

 

There has been also a noticeable increase in the sort of extreme quakes that hit Japan. In the 1980s, there were four mega-quakes, six in the 1990s and 13 in the last decade. So far this decade we have had two. This increase, however, could be temporary.

 

Hynes said there is some evidence that one earthquake can snowball into another until the Earth's crust has adjusted to the new pressure transfers.

 

The coast of British Columbia sits on the Pacific fault line that curves around the southern coast of Alaska, travelling southwest to Japan.

 

Hynes said the upper plate of Vancouver Island is flexing like a bow. It's stuck and bending upward. Ultimately it will release itself and produce a major quake, he said.

 

Japan's big earthquake could change the tectonic stresses in the Pacific and possibly affect Vancouver.

 

"I'm afraid to say that Canada is by no means as careful about its building codes as Japan," Hynes said.

 

Montreal sits on a fault line that travels along the St. Lawrence River valley.

 

Hynes said the fault is smack in the middle of a tectonic plate, making it harder to understand the stresses.

 

wmarsden@montrealgazette.com

 

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/...l#ixzz1H5Q9k4vc

[mvdaog]

What you've both said is true. Me personally I've given up on the whole global warming issue - there is no chance, none at all, to convince the top CO2 contributing nations in the world to change their way of life to a degree which would stop the theory of warming that is out there right now. So it's a moot point. Like sundance said, it would require a minimum gas mileage rate for vehicles that would eliminate 95% of the cars on the road, it would require large cities to restrict electricity usage, it would require a ban on all useless materials that fill almost every mall and store in every city in the nation. No more disposable materials or non essential activities, basically. All of those things will not happen, UNTIL it is necessitated by nature. So it's not even worth discussing with people if it's 'true' or not.

 

What I've decided to focus on are things that are demonstrable, especially in my environment/region, and that have a reasonable chance of being affected by my actions. And to those things, I'm going all out and I'll preach it to whoever I can, especially younger people who are the future and will have to make harder concessions and decisions than we do. So, things like destructive logging practices, and advocating for more sustainable logging. Things like the use of plastic bags, plastic packaging, and water bottles which linger in the environment forever. Things like protecting regions of ecosystems to give them a chance to survive us. Things like fishing regulations to help fish survive us. Things like clean energy/emission policies to help purify our air and decrease the rates of asthma, cancer and other autoimmune diseases. Keeping harmful foreign chemicals out of water to keep our water and food safe to eat.

 

The whole consumption thing will take care of itself. It's sad but true - at some point a generation will have to deal with an energy supply that no longer meets the demand. And that will be that. If the global warming thing turns out to be true in the end, that will also take care of itself. But up until those end points, its unrealistic to think that humans will proactively do anything about it. If it's an unbelievable struggle to end slavery, end repressions, end torture, prevent wars in this world, its not even realistic to think we can get nations of lazy, comfortable humans to give up their way of life to one which would be more effort and less comfortable. Especially when our entire economy is based on waste. If we were to eliminate wasteful things from our economy we would need a totally different economic structure.

 

So I say focus on things that you can actually affect, and not waste time or energy on an issue that in my opinion is beyond our control if indeed true. Go to local civic meetings, go to local protests, start advocacy groups that can have an impact on political topics, support organizations that care about the things you feel matter, and besides that do your part to make the world better. The worst thing you can do is sit around like none of it matters. A lot of it does, and theres a lot we can actually do something about. And vote for people locally who you agree with. Be the change you want to see. Have the courage to change the things you can, the serenity to accept the things you can't, and the wisdom to know the difference between the two.

[Guest Sundancefisher]

11 of the last 12 months have been below average for temperature in Calgary...

 

Rex Murphy: Climate scientists make a mockery of the peer-review process

 

Rex Murphy Jun 18, 2011 – 8:00 AM ET | Last Updated: Jun 17, 2011 4:42 PM ET

 

One of the disturbing practices revealed by the great cache of emails out of the University of East Anglia — the so-called Climategate emails — was the attempted shortcutting or corruption of the oh-so precious peer-review process. The emails contained clear declarations of how the grand viziers of climate science would lean on journals and reporters to make sure certain critics did not get the validation, the laying on of peer-reviewed hands, so critical to full participation in the great climate debate. This was most succinctly expressed by the beautiful quote from Dr. Phil Jones of East Anglia that, “We will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what peer-review literature is.”

 

Much of what the world bizarrely allows to be called climate “science” is a closet-game, an in-group referring to and reinforcing its own members. The insiders keep out those seen as interlopers and critics, vilify dissenters and labour to maintain a proprietary hold on the entire vast subject. It has been described very precisely as a “climate-assessment oligarchy.” Less examined, or certainly less known to the general public, is how this in-group loops around itself. How the outside advocates buttress the inside scientists, and even — this is particularly noxious — how the outside advocates, the non-scientists, themselves become inside authorities.

Related

 

*

 

Lorne Gunter: The IPCC loses its last credibility

 

It’s the perfect propaganda circle. Advocates find themselves in government offices, or on panels appointed by politicians disposed towards the hyper-alarmism of global warming. On the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) boards and panels, like seeks out like. And when the IPCC issues one of its state-of-the-global-warming-world reports, legions of environmentalists, and their maddeningly sympathetic and uninquisitive friends in most of the press, shout out the latest dire warnings as if they were coming from the very mouth of Disinterested Science itself.

 

An early and particularly graphic illustration of this vicious circle came when the IPCC 2007 report warned that most the great Himalayan glaciers would melt by the year 2035. Not only was the claim of a massive melt the very height of ignorant nonsense — the sun would have to drop on the Earth to provoke a melt of this proportion — it was also plucked from a seven-year-old publication of the ever busy World Wildlife Federation (WWF). As the Times of London put it, the claim itself was “inherently ludicrous” culled from a “campaigning report” rather than “an academic paper,” was not “subject of any scientific review” and despite all these shortcomings became “a key source for the IPCC … [for] the section on the Himalayas.”

 

A scare report, seven years old, from the an environmental advocacy group, became the key document for a major report released under the authority of the IPCC, the world’s best and brightest global warming minds. Sir Isaac Newton would be so proud.

 

Now we have an even more telling illustration of this same sad, vicious circle. It was first reported on by Steven McIntyre on his blog, Climate Audit (and was run on the FP Comment page of Friday’s National Post). McIntyre revealed that the IPCC used a Greenpeace campaigner to write a key part of its report on renewable energy and to make the astonishing claim that “close to 80% of the world‘s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century if backed by the right enabling public policies.” He further revealed that the claim arose from a “joint publication of Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC).” And it turns out that while working for the IPCC, the Greenpeace campaigner approvingly cited a Greenpeace report that he himself was the lead author of. He peer-reviewed himself.

 

A report on renewables, by the Renewable Energy Council of Europe, and Greenpeace, peer-reviewd by the man who wrote it. All they need add is a citation from the Suzuki Foundation and an endorsement from Elizabeth May and “the science will be settled” forever.

 

This is not just letting the fox into the hen house. This is giving him the keys, passing him the barbeque sauce and pointing his way to the broiler. Or, as McIntyre put it in plainer terms: “A lead author of the IPCC report, and of the hyped 80% scenario, is Sven Teske of Greenpeace International, whose official contribution is essentially based on a Greenpeace report cooked up with Europe’s renewable energy industry.”

 

Kind people may put this down to pure sloppiness on the part of the IPCC. Coming after its disastrous handling of the Himalayan glacier melt, however, it looks to me more like deliberate mischief. The IPCC cannot be that stupid by chance. Why these stories, and others of comparable magnitude, have not worked their way into the consciousness of the world’s politicians despite such clear demonstrations of the IPCC’s ramshackle processes is a mystery. But thanks to Steve McIntyre and others of near-equal courage, standing firm against the rage and mockery of the alarmist warming establishment, at least some of the IPCC’s dubious and chillingly erroneous practices are revealed.

 

National Post

 

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/...eview-process/

 

[Harps]

Since when are Rex Murphy and Lorne Gunter (incoming president of Civitas - a society for conservative and libertarian academics, think-tankers, lobbyists and journalists) experts on scientific process let alone climate change?

 

And average temps in Calgary... Above average 1 month, dead on for 2, below for 10... doesn't mean much in 100 years of data... or 1000, or 10,000.

May 0.4 below average, Apr 2.5 below, Mar 4.3 below, Feb 3.5 below, Jan Right on Avg, Dec 0.8 below, Nov 1.6 below, Oct 2.4 above, Sep 1.5 below, Aug 0.4 below, July- right on average. In June with 13 days of data we are 1.7 days under the avg.

 

Plus... you increase arctic ice melting, push cold water down towards the tropics, change pacific+continental+arctic air masses and everything inland is F'd. More precip, more cloud, more storms.

Or not... the earth is a pretty complex system with a few billion too many pollutn' folks screwing it up.

We should be doing everything we can to minimize our footprints.

 

This gives me a headache...

[Guest Sundancefisher]

Since when are Rex Murphy and Lorne Gunter (incoming president of Civitas - a society for conservative and libertarian academics, think-tankers, lobbyists and journalists) experts on scientific process let alone climate change?

 

And average temps in Calgary... Above average 1 month, dead on for 2, below for 10... doesn't mean much in 100 years of data... or 1000, or 10,000.

May 0.4 below average, Apr 2.5 below, Mar 4.3 below, Feb 3.5 below, Jan Right on Avg, Dec 0.8 below, Nov 1.6 below, Oct 2.4 above, Sep 1.5 below, Aug 0.4 below, July- right on average. In June with 13 days of data we are 1.7 days under the avg.

 

Plus... you increase arctic ice melting, push cold water down towards the tropics, change pacific+continental+arctic air masses and everything inland is F'd. More precip, more cloud, more storms.

Or not... the earth is a pretty complex system with a few billion too many pollutn' folks screwing it up.

We should be doing everything we can to minimize our footprints.

 

This gives me a headache...

 

It is a headache for sure.

 

The Atlantic Oscillation current is what is causing the Arctic to warm...not man made global warming...just like it did back in Frobisher times.

 

More precipitation is caused by the El Nino and La Nina Pacific Ocean current fluctuations. More storms more this...talking about 1 year versus 10, 100, 1000 or 10,000. Thanks for understanding how a few years of IPCC data fudged as it is means anything in the global time clock. The 500 year temperature cycle is a cycle within a cycle with variability year after year.

 

Where once were were tropical...then under an ice age then out then in a little ice age then gradually warming since...now cooling... Scientists are starting to be a little more fair in their topics of discussion. Sun Spot cycle will make it cooler in Canada for the next 20 years...on average.

 

CO2 is not pollution Harps...without it...you starve.

[sirocco]

Sun, are you referring to the Arctic Oscillation (AO), or the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)? I am a bit confused.

[Guest Sundancefisher]

Sun, are you referring to the Arctic Oscillation (AO), or the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)? I am a bit confused.

 

NAO

 

There was a recent announcement of the results of a major study. In it they attributed a lot of the melt with the current...but then covered they funding a55 by stating this will make global warming worse for the Arctic.

 

To help with your confusion...please check this out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_oscillation

Cheers

 

Sun

[sirocco]

Do you have a link to the study?

[Guest Sundancefisher]

Do you have a link to the study?

 

I had...I will look. It is fairly recent...last 4 months or so.

 

http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/AO_NAO.htm

 

http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/sola/6...lEdition/1/_pdf

 

Hope this helps.

 

Cheers

 

Sun

 

P.S.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11903397

 

The IPCC also now understands there are natural forces at work that cool the Earth. They are just saying man has made the process a runaway...just based upon 30 years of data...that is also questions as to its fairness, repeatability and accuracy...as shown in doubt from the leaked emails. For instance...using select tree cores that match a theory while throwing the others out. Then destroying all data that the reports were based upon so that no peer review and study repeats could be done. Strikes most science minded people as odd.

[ironfly]

Sun, in all of the links you provided, I see no real reference to the cause of the oscillation, other than some vague mention of "natural variability". More importantly, your links state that a + trend since the seventies will cause colder conditions in North America, yet we've been experiencing the opposite. Maybe I just don't have the educational background to understand. Could you please explain?

 

Also, I'd like to point out that Wiki clearly states that there are no references or citations to a fairly prominent section of that entry.