Hansen’s former boss is a global warming sceptic!

In case you haven’t read it elsewhere, here is a copy of an item on the website of the US Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works. It speaks for itself and is chock-a-block full of interesting references and links.

James Hansen’s Former NASA Supervisor Declares Himself a Skeptic – Says Hansen ‘Embarrassed NASA’

January 27, 2009

Posted By Marc Morano – 6:08 PM ET – Marc_Morano@EPW.Senate.Gov

  James Hansen’s Former NASA Supervisor Declares Himself a Skeptic 

Says Hansen ‘Embarrassed NASA’ & ‘Was Never Muzzled’ 

Gore Faces Scientific Blowback  

Also See: Gore’s Inconvenient Astronaut: NASA Moonwalker Defies Gore’s Claim That Climate Skeptics Believe Moon Landing was ‘Staged’   

Washington DC: NASA warming scientist James Hansen, one of former Vice-President Al Gore’s closest allies in the promotion of man-made global warming fears, is being publicly rebuked by his former supervisor at NASA.

 

Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist, Dr. John S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen, NASA’s vocal man-made global warming fear soothsayer, has now publicly declared himself a skeptic and declared that Hansen “embarrassed NASA” with his alarming climate claims and said Hansen was “was never muzzled.”  Theon joins the rapidly growing ranks of international scientists abandoning the promotion of man-made global warming fears. [See: U.S. Senate Minority Report Update: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims & See Prominent Scientist Fired By Gore Says Warming Alarm ‘Mistaken’  &  Gore laments global warming efforts: ‘I’ve failed badly’ – Washington Post – November 11, 2008  ]

 

“I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man made,” Theon wrote to the Minority Office at the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 15, 2009. “I was, in effect, Hansen’s supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results,” Theon, the former Chief of the Climate Processes Research Program at NASA Headquarters and former Chief of the Atmospheric Dynamics & Radiation Branch explained.

 

“Hansen was never muzzled even though he violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind’s effect on it). Hansen thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress,” Theon wrote.  [Note: NASA scientist James Hansen has created worldwide media frenzy with his dire climate warning, his call for trials against those who dissent against man-made global warming fear, and his claims that he was allegedly muzzled by the Bush administration despite doing 1,400 on-the-job media interviews! – See: Don’t Panic Over Predictions of Climate Doom – Get the Facts on James Hansen  – UK Register: Veteran climate scientist says ‘lock up the oil men’ – June 23, 2008 & UK Guardian: NASA scientist calls for putting oil firm chiefs on trial for ‘high crimes against humanity’ for spreading doubt about man-made global warming – June 23, 2008 ]  

 

Theon declared “climate models are useless.” “My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit,” Theon explained. “Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy,” he added.

 

“As Chief of several of NASA Headquarters’ programs (1982-94), an SES position, I was responsible for all weather and climate research in the entire agency, including the  research work by James Hansen, Roy Spencer, Joanne Simpson, and several hundred other scientists at NASA field centers, in academia, and in the private sector who worked on climate research,” Theon wrote of his career. “This required a thorough understanding of the state of the science. I have kept up with climate science since retiring by reading books and journal articles,” Theon added. (LINK) Theon also co-authored the book “Advances in Remote Sensing Retrieval Methods.” [Note: Theon joins many current and former NASA scientists in dissenting from man-made climate fears. A small sampling includes: Aerospace engineer and physicist Dr. Michael Griffin, the former  top administrator of NASA, Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, Geophysicist Dr. Phil Chapman, an astronautical engineer and former NASA astronaut, Award-Winning NASA Astronaut/Geologist and Moonwalker Jack Schmitt, Award-winning NASA Astronaut and Physicist Walter Cunningham of NASA’s Apollo 7, Chemist and Nuclear Engineer Robert DeFayette was formerly with NASA’s Plum Brook Reactor, Hungarian Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA’s Ames Research Center, Climatologist Dr. John Christy, Climatologist Dr. Roy W. Spencer, Atmospheric Scientist Ross Hays of NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility]

 

 Gore faces a much different scientific climate in 2009 than the one he faced in 2006 when his film “An Inconvenient Truth” was released. According to satellite data, the Earth has cooled since Gore’s film was released,  Antarctic sea ice extent has grown to record levels, sea level rise has slowed, ocean temperatures have failed to warm, and more and more scientists have publicly declared their dissent from man-made climate fears as peer-reviewed studies continue to man-made counter warming fears. [See: Peer-Reviewed Study challenges ‘notion that human emissions are responsible for global warming’ & New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears ]

“Vice President Gore and the other promoters of man-made climate fears endless claims that the “debate is over” appear to be ignoring scientific reality,” Senator James Inhofe, Ranking Member of the Environment & Public Works Committee.

A U.S. Senate Minority Report released in December 2008 details over 650 international scientists who are dissenting from man-made global warming fears promoted by the UN and yourself. Many of the scientists profiled are former UN IPCC scientists and former believers in man-made climate change that have reversed their views in recent years. The report continues to grow almost daily. We have just received a request from an Italian scientist, and a Czech scientist to join the 650 dissenting scientists report. A chemist from the U.S. Naval Academy is about to be added, and more Japanese scientists are dissenting. Finally, many more meteorologists will be added and another former UN IPCC scientist is about to be included. These scientists are openly rebelling against the climate orthodoxy promoted by Gore and the UN IPCC.

The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists’ equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears. Reports from the conference found that Skeptical scientists overwhelmed the meeting, with  ‘2/3 of presenters and question-askers hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC’ ( See full reports here & here ]  In addition, a 2008 canvass of more than 51,000 Canadian scientists revealed 68% disagree that global warming science is “settled.”   A November 25, 2008, article in Politico noted that a “growing accumulation” of science is challenging warming fears, and added that the “science behind global warming may still be too shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation.”  More evidence that the global warming fear machine is breaking down. Russian scientists “rejected the very idea that carbon dioxide may be responsible for global warming”. An American Physical Society editor conceded that a “considerable presence” of scientific skeptics exists.  An International team of scientists countered the UN IPCC, declaring: “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate”.  India Issued a report challenging global warming fears.  International Scientists demanded the UN IPCC “be called to account and cease its deceptive practices.”  

The scientists and peer-reviewed studies countering climate claims are the key reason that the U.S. public has grown ever more skeptical of man-made climate doom predictions. [See: Global warming ranks dead last, 20 out of 20 in new Pew survey. Pew Survey:   & Survey finds majority of U.S. Voters – ‘51% — now believe that humans are not the predominant cause of climate change’ – January 20, 2009 – Rasmussen Reports ]  

 

 The chorus of skeptical scientific voices grow louder in 2008 as a steady stream of peer-reviewed studies, analyses, real world data and inconvenient developments challenged the UN’s and former Vice President Al Gore’s claims that the “science is settled” and there is a “consensus.”

On a range of issues, 2008 proved to be challenging for the promoters of man-made climate fears.  Promoters of anthropogenic warming fears endured the following: Global temperatures failing to warm; Peer-reviewed studies predicting a continued lack of warming;  a failed attempt to revive the discredited “Hockey Stick”; inconvenient developments and studies regarding rising CO2; the Spotless Sun; Clouds; Antarctica; the Arctic; Greenland’s ice; Mount Kilimanjaro; Global sea ice; Causes of Hurricanes; Extreme Storms; Extinctions; Floods; Droughts; Ocean Acidification; Polar Bears; Extreme weather deaths; Frogs; lack of atmospheric dust; Malaria; the failure of oceans to warm and rise as predicted.    

What can I say, but “Wow!”?

Population control and climate change

Some AGW alarmists suggest that the human population will be “culled” by global warming. Other extremist “environmentalists” suggest a more proactive approach to reducing the human population. Being a tad fond of life personally, and being one of those people that believe people are special (with responsibilities which go with that “specialness”), I inwardly cringe at such suggestions.

However, the reality is that this world cannot support an infinite human population. The number of human beings needs to cap sometime.

So, do we just not think about something so horrible? I mean, its not like its going to happen in our lifetimes?

Or, do we listen to global warming alarmists and resile ourselves to doom, like Dr James Lovelock?

James Lovelock in the interview published in  One Last Chance to Save Mankind says:

Do you think we will survive?

I’m an optimistic pessimist. I think it’s wrong to assume we’ll survive 2 °C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4 °C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happened before: between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2000 people left. It’s happening again.

I don’t think humans react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what’s coming up. Kyoto was 11 years ago. Virtually nothing’s been done except endless talk and meetings.

I don’t think we can react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what’s coming up

It’s a depressing outlook.

Not necessarily. I don’t think 9 billion is better than 1 billion. I see humans as rather like the first photosynthesisers, which when they first appeared on the planet caused enormous damage by releasing oxygen – a nasty, poisonous gas. It took a long time, but it turned out in the end to be of enormous benefit. I look on humans in much the same light. For the first time in its 3.5 billion years of existence, the planet has an intelligent, communicating species that can consider the whole system and even do things about it. They are not yet bright enough, they have still to evolve quite a way, but they could become a very positive contributor to planetary welfare.

Real doomsday stuff!

OK, those are two ideas that don’t really appeal to me. Is there a third, or fourth … answer?

Let’s try this one on for size – eliminate world poverty.

Yep, that’s all, that’s not much to aim for.

Isn’t it? And how would that work anyway, you say?

Ever noticed that it is the developing nations which have large families ie higher birth rates? And, if there are no devasting wars, droughts or famines for other reasons, that their populations are growing? Compare that to developed countries who rely on immigration for population growth, even with greater longevity.

Where there are high mortality rates, family sizes are larger so that parents have a greater chance of having enough surviving children to care for the parents when the parents are elderly. In relatively prosperous countries people are not as concerned with survival, and find other things to do than create and raise children. (I can provide references if anyone wants them – I am trying not to be too soap boxish.)

Therefore, eliminate poverty and the feeling of threat for survival, and birth rates drop – dramatically. If people in all countries felt reasonably prosperous, every country would have low birth rates. Natural and painless population cap.

Personally I would rather have my share of the billions of dollars of tax money, which is currently being thrown at global warming ,go towards a united global effort to eliminate poverty. With the amount of money being wasted on the global warming scaremongering, eliminating world poverty would be achievable.

By the way – the Millenium Development Goals are another United Nations project. Ever heard of them?

Professor Will Alexander says he has proven AGW is not the main player in climate change

Now you have to admit this story has WOW factor.

I have copied it straight off An Honest Climate Debate’s website. Just click the website name and that will take you there. He has heaps of other very interesting stuff on his website.

The reason I have copied this in full is because the contributor asked for his story to be broadcast as widely as possible. I am helping to oblige his request because I have questions. (Yes, I am sceptical. An occupational hazard!) I am hoping the wide range of readers that drift hrough this website will be kind enough to answer them.

Is he comparing apples with apples? ie change to anthropogenic global warming to change in solar influenced warming?

Do these arguments hold water scientifically?

SOLAR INFLUENCE UNDERESTIMATED

Professor Will Alexander

By Professor Will Alexander

Via Email, January 26, 2009

Until now the climate alarmists exploited their untouchable status within the shelter of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism. This has come to an end.

Our studies confirm that variations in received solar energy and not atmospheric discharges by burning fossil fuels are far and away the dominant cause of climate variability.

We can demonstrate beyond doubt that reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will not have the slightest effect on South Africa’s climate now or in the future.

Please distribute the attached memo widely.

 

Memo 07/09

Climate change – solar influence underestimated

Monday 26 January 2009

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT

The scientific advisers to the South African Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism have created the impression that climate change is one of the greatest threats to our planet and to our people.

This statement is totally false and misleading.

As shown in this memo, during the past five years the range of received solar energy was 28 units compared with a range of only 1.6 units resulting from human activities.

Reducing undesirable emissions arising from burning fossil fuels will not have any measurable effect on climatic processes.

This conclusion is confirmed by comprehensive studies of our extensive hydro-climatic database during the past 30 years. These studies demonstrated the unequivocal linkage with variations in solar activity and complete lack of evidence of the effects of human activities.

The Minister is urged to appoint an independent, multi-disciplinary commission of enquiry to advise him before he commits South Africa to undertake costly and fruitless measures that can only damage our economy at a time of a global economic recession and rising unemployment.

The Minister is further informed that South Africa has now entered a period when severe subcontinental droughts can be expected. The basis for this prediction has been denied by his advisers.

I must also record that the Minister’s advisers are well aware of our studies but have rejected my frequent suggestions that we meet to discuss our differences on this nationally important issue.

Midrand Summit

The Midrand Summit is only four weeks away. The South African authorities are about to make some irreversible decisions that will affect the future prosperity of our nation and its citizens. There will be no benefits — just penalties.

This might be in order if we were facing a national emergency but we are not. There is no enemy at our gates. The threats are entirely imaginary as this memo demonstrates.

I am reminded of Adolf Hitler’s infamous statement that the bigger the lie the more believable it will be. I also recall Winston Churchill’s rallying cry that we will fight them on the beaches, we will fight them on the landing grounds, —- we will never surrender.

Am I exaggerating? Here is yet another example of a big lie perpetrated by climate alarmists. It goes to the very heart of the issue.

I received several responses to my request for one-page contributions that challenge the underlying science of climate change. I have attached a one-page comment from Fred Bailey in the UK. Here is some background to his comments.

Everybody accepts that solar energy received on earth drives the earth’s climate. It must follow that changes in the received energy will result in corresponding changes in climate. It is also elementary knowledge that the magnitude of the received energy will depend on the earth’s distance from the sun.

The first thing that scientists should do is therefore to determine the magnitude of changes in the earth-to-sun distance and then calculate the corresponding changes in received energy. This is what Fred Bailey did. His results are attached. More details of the methods that he used are provided in his book Textbook of gravity, sunspots and climate. Details of the linkage with the earth’s climate are given in our five-authored, refereed paper Linkages between solar activity, climate predictability and water resource development. (Alexander, Bailey, Bredenkamp, van der Merwe and Willemse, in the Journal of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering, June 2007.)

In the attached note Fred Bailey demonstrates that wattage changes in the range of 30 Wm^-2 have been taking place over millions of years. Compare this with the IPCC’s figures below.

The IPCC’s big lie

Climate alarmists have gone to great lengths to discredit the influence of variations in solar activity on climatic variations. They are forced to do this in order to establish their claims of exclusive human causality of undesirable climatic fluctuations. This is how they propagated their big lie. The emphases are mine. Note in particular that the IPCC’s variations are determined from proxy and satellite observations and not direct calculations. Why did they not carry out direct calculations based on the variations in the earth-to-sun distance? The answer is obvious.

IPCC third assessment report, 2001, working group 1, section C6.

Radiative forcing of the climate system due to solar irradiance change is estimated to be 0.3 ± -0.2Wm^-2 for the period 1750 to the present. Most of the change is estimated to have occurred during the first half of the 20th century. The fundamental source of all energy in the earth’s climate system is radiation from the sun. Therefore, variation in solar output is a radiative forcing agent. The absolute value of the spectrally integrated total solar irradiance (TSI) incident on the earth is not known to better than about 4Wm^-2, but satellite observations since the late 1970s show relative variations over the past two solar 11-year activity cycles of about 0.1%, which is equivalent to a variation in radiative forcing of about 0.2 Wm^-2 . Variations over longer periods may have been larger, but the techniques used to reconstruct historical values of TSI from proxy observations (e.g.sunspots) have not been adequately verified.

IPCC fourth assessment report, 2007, working group 1, section 2.2.

There is a very high confidence that the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming, with a radiative forcing of +1.6 [+0.6 to +2.4] Wm^-2.

In comparison, changes in solar irradiance since 1750 are estimated to have caused a small radiative forcing of about +0.12 [+0.06 to + 0.30] Wm^-2, which is less than half the estimate given in the third assessment report.

Figure 2.4 of the report provides the following radiative forcing components.

Long-lived greenhouse gasses: 2.14

Ozone: 0.30

Stratospheric water vapour: 0.07

Surface albedo: -0.1

Total aerosol: -1.2

Linear contrails: 0.01

Solar irradiance: 0.12

Total net anthropogenic: 1.6

However, Fred Bailey calculated that for the past five years the range was equal to 28 Wm^-2 compared with the IPCC’s estimate of the anthropogenic component of 1.6 Wm^-2 !

The solar influence is therefore 17.5 times greater than the human influence. No wonder the IPCC cooked the books.

For the past 30 years I have repeatedly demonstrated that there is NO evidence in the hydro-climatological data of human-caused abnormalities against the background of the undeniable evidence of the influence of variations in solar activity.

Midrand Summit

The IPCC’s fourth assessment report will be discussed at the Midrand Summit. It will be very interesting to hear how the presenter treats this problem. Will he quote the overwhelming ignorance of the vast majority of climate alarmists? How will he account for undeniable linkage with the hydroclimatological processes described in our joint paper?

Drought alert

For the past two years I have repeatedly drawn attention to the probable occurrence of severe global droughts from 2009 to 2016. This warning is described in detail in my article The likelihood of a global drought in 2009 – 2016 <click here to read>, published in Civil Engineering in June 2008.

There are already signs of a developing drought in parts of South Africa. Other parts of Africa are in the grip of a drought but confirmation is difficult. Argentina is also currently experiencing a severe drought. The country faces a potential loss of revenue from agricultural production of US$4.4 billion.

My prediction is based on the observed, regular and therefore predictable, periodicity in the hydrometeorological data. The existence of this periodicity is denied by climate alarmists.

Soon it will be far too late to take any action to avoid the consequences, particularly to the rural and farming communities as well as the water supply authorities.

 

[Fred Bailey’s comments are attached.]

(I wish I could figure out how to make the lettering larger in this software – my apologies.)

See – I told you it was interesting.

Now – what do YOU think?

James Lovelock wants to save the world by burying charcoal

New Scientist published an interview with Dr James Lovelock titled One last chance to save mankindon 23 January 2009. James Lovelock is the originator of the Gaia Theory. This theory has evolved over time and gaiatheory.org describes the theory as:

 The Gaia Theory posits that the organic and inorganic components of Planet Earth have evolved together as a single living, self-regulating system. It suggests that this living system has automatically controlled global temperature, atmospheric content, ocean salinity, and other factors, that maintains its own habitability. In a phrase, “life maintains conditions suitable for its own survival.”

Here are a few excerpts from the interview with James Lovelock. It is interesting that James Lovelock has a rather fatalistic view on global warming. He does, however, propose one action which has a chance of “saving the world”.

Your work on atmospheric chlorofluorocarbons led eventually to a global CFC ban that saved us from ozone-layer depletion. Do we have time to do a similar thing with carbon emissions to save ourselves from climate change?

Not a hope in hell. Most of the “green” stuff is verging on a gigantic scam. Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry wanted. It’s not going to do a damn thing about climate change, but it’ll make a lot of money for a lot of people and postpone the moment of reckoning. I am not against renewable energy, but to spoil all the decent countryside in the UK with wind farms is driving me mad. It’s absolutely unnecessary, and it takes 2500 square kilometres to produce a gigawatt – that’s an awful lot of countryside.

And later …

So are we doomed?

There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste – which contains carbon that the plants have spent the summer sequestering – into non-biodegradable charcoal, and burying it in the soil. Then you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull the CO₂ down quite fast.

Would it make enough of a difference?

Yes. The biosphere pumps out 550 gigatonnes of carbon yearly; we put in only 30 gigatonnes. Ninety-nine per cent of the carbon that is fixed by plants is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by consumers like bacteria, nematodes and worms. What we can do is cheat those consumers by getting farmers to burn their crop waste at very low oxygen levels to turn it into charcoal, which the farmer then ploughs into the field. A little CO₂is released but the bulk of it gets converted to carbon. You get a few per cent of biofuel as a by-product of the combustion process, which the farmer can sell. This scheme would need no subsidy: the farmer would make a profit. This is the one thing we can do that will make a difference, but I bet they won’t do it.

But still he is optomistic ….

Do you think we will survive?

I’m an optimistic pessimist. I think it’s wrong to assume we’ll survive 2 °C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4 °C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happened before: between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2000 people left. It’s happening again.

OK, so he is a global warming alarmist. I also think it safe to say he is not a creationist.

What alarms me is the extremes to which global warming alarmists propose we go in order to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide. Let’s think through the charcoal burying idea.

The idea is to lock the carbon into charcoal, and prevent microbes from consuming dead leaves etc and exhaling CO2 as a bi-product. So, we should starve off a few billion microbes, close to the bottom of the food chain, to replace the fossil fuels we burn with charcoal which we then bury?

Just how much biological waste do they propose turning into charcoal? What will the effect on the food chain be? What about soil quality and fertility?

There must be a better answer than this.

Bob Carter says facts debunk global warming alarmism

Professor Bob Carter has again been quoted in http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24934655-5017272,00.htmlon-line newspaper. His comments deserve more wide spread attention, so here it is in full:

Facts Debunk Global Warming Alarmism 

22 September 2009

THE National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that October in the US was marked by 63 record snowfalls and 115 lowest-ever temperatures.

Over the past few years, similar signs of colder than usual weather have been recorded all over the world, causing many people to question the still fashionable, but now long outdated, global warming alarmism. Yet individual weather events or spells, whether warmings or coolings, tell us nothing necessarily about true climate change.

Nonetheless, by coincidence, growing recognition of a threat of climatic cooling is correct, because since the turn of the 21st century all real world, long-term climate indicators have turned downwards. Global atmospheric temperature reached a peak in 1998, has not warmed since 1995 and, has been cooling since 2002. Some people, still under the thrall of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change’s disproved projections of warming, seem surprised by this cooling trend, even to the point of denying it. But why?

There are two fundamentally different ways in which computers can be used to project climate. The first is used by the modelling groups that provide climate projections to the IPCC. These groups deploy general circulation models, which use complex partial differential equations to describe the ocean-atmosphere climate system mathematically. When fed with appropriate initial data, these models can calculate possible future climate states. The models presume (wrongly) that we have a complete understanding of the climate system.

GCMs are subject to the well-known computer phenomenon of GIGO, which translates as “garbage in, God’s-truth out”.

Alternative computer projections of climate can be constructed using data on past climate change, by identifying mathematical (often rhythmic) patterns within them and projecting these patterns into the future. Such models are statistical and empirical, and make no presumptions about complete understanding; instead, they seek to recognise and project into the future the climate patterns that exist in real world data.

In 2001, Russian geologist Sergey Kotov used the mathematics of chaos to analyse the atmospheric temperature record of the past 4000 years from a Greenland ice core. Based on the pattern he recognised in the data, Kotov extrapolated cooling from 2000 to about 2030, followed by warming to the end of the century and 300 years of cooling thereafter.

In 2003, Russian scientists Klyashtorin and Lyubushin analysed the global surface thermometer temperature record from 1860 to 2000, and identified a recurring 60-year cycle. This probably relates to the Pacific decadal oscillation, which can be caricatured as a large scale El Nino/La Nina climatic oscillation. The late 20thcentury warming represents the most recent warm half-cycle of the PDO, and it projects forwards as cooling of one-tenth of a degree or more to 2030.

In 2004, US scientist Craig Loehle used simple periodic models to analyse climate records over the past 1000 years of sea-surface temperature from a Caribbean marine core and cave air temperature from a South African stalactite. Without using data for the 20th century, six of his seven models showed a warming trend similar to that in the instrumental record over the past 150 years; and projecting forward the best fit model foreshadows cooling of between 0.7 and 1 degree Celsius during the next 20-40 years. In 2007, the 60-year climate cycle was identified again, by Chinese scientists Lin Zhen-Shan and Sun Xian, who used a novel multi-variate analysis of the 1881-2002 temperature records for China. They showed that temperature variation in China leads parallel variation in global temperature by five-10 years, and has been falling since 2001. They conclude “we see clearly that global and northern hemisphere temperature will drop on century scale in the next 20 years”.

Most recently, Italian scientist Adriano Mazzarella demonstrated statistical links between solar magnetic activity, the length of the Earth day (LOD), and northern hemisphere wind and ocean temperature patterns. He too confirmed the existence of a 60-year climate cycle, and described various correlations (some negative). Based on these correlations, Mazzarella concludes that provided “the observed past correlation between LOD and sea-surface temperature continues in the future, the identified 60-year cycle provides a possible decline in sea-surface temperature starting from 2005, and the recent data seem to support such a result”.

Thus, using several fundamentally different mathematical techniques and many different data sets, seven scientists all forecast that climatic cooling will occur during the first decades of the 21st century. Temperature records confirm that cooling is under way, the length and intensity of which remains unknown.

Yet in spite of this, governments across the world – egged on by irrational, deep Green lobbying – have for years been using their financial muscle and other powers of persuasion to introduce carbon dioxide taxation systems. For example, the federal Labor government recently spent $13.9million on climate change advertising on prime time television and in national newspapers and magazines.

Similarly, the London-based Institute for Public Policy Research advised the British Government “ultimately, positive climate behaviours need to be approached in the same way as marketeers approach acts of buying and consuming … It amounts to treating climate-friendly activity as a brand that can be sold. This is, we believe, the route to mass behaviour change.”

Introduction of a carbon dioxide tax to prevent (imaginary) warming, euphemistically disguised as an emissions trading scheme, is a politician’s, ticket clipper’s and mafia chief’s dream. All will welcome a new source of income based on an invisible, colourless, odourless, tasteless and often unmeasurable gas. No commodity changes hands during its trading, and should carbon dioxide emissions actually decrease because of the existence of a carbon dioxide market (which is highly unlikely), the odds are that it will have no measurable effect on climate anyway. Nonetheless, the glistening pot of gold which beckons to be mined from the innocent public is proving nigh irresistible, and it is going to need a strong taxpayer revolt to stop it in Australia.

The present global financial crisis should be inducing politicians not to squander money on non-solutions to non-problems. Yet to support their plans for emissions taxation Western governments, including ours, are still propagating scientifically juvenile greenhouse propaganda underpinned only by circumstantial evidence and GCM computer gamesmanship.

Perhaps a reassessment will finally occur when two-metre thick ice develops again on Father Thames at London Bridge, or when cooling causes massive crop failure in the world’s granary belts.

Bob Carter is an adjunct professor of geology at James Cook University.

Check it out yourself at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24934655-5017272,00.html

Professor Carter’s JCU biography is at http://www.jcu.edu.au/ees/staff/adjunct/JCUDEV_014954.html and his personal page is at http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/

Coalition joins the climate change fight – but without an ETS?

The Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull, is quoted by The Australian as giving a speech which attacks the Australian Government’s unbalanced focus on an emissions trading scheme as a means of addressing man’s influence on the climate. Instead Mr Turnbull states that a Coalition Government would focus on replacing old technology with new.

“An ETS is not an end to itself,” Mr Turnbull will argue. “It’s only part of the solution – one tool in the climate policy tool box and, in fact, no solution at all without new energy sources and new low-emissions technology.”

“Our Green Carbon Initiative will ensure Australia is able to achieve greater reductions in carbon dioxide than those proposed by Mr Rudd, at relatively low cost and with enormous additional benefits to our own country’s environment.”

Hooray! At least part of the message is getting through to the politicians. Also, thank you to readers who have sent copies of my posts to politicians. Suddenly there is a risk-management focus on the climate change debate….

But Mr Turnbull will assert that action on climate change is not a matter of belief or non-belief in the science but a wise exercise in risk-management.

Clever political move Mr Turnbull. Most Australians ARE concerned with the environment. With our abundance of open space, Australians are probably more environmentally aware than other people.

However, Australians are not convinced that another socialist experiment is in anyone’s best interests. The US sub-prime mortgage market was one such experiment, and that triggered the current global economic crisis.

I posted on a risk management view of an ETS in Australia headed for economic strife, but still wants a an Emissions Trading Scheme?

Personally, I support moves to actually protect our environment and have lower human impact on the world we live in – regardless of whether man-made CO2 is causing global warming. (And I still have stuff to readnsay on that topic too!)

But why do they keep killing the whales? Questions from a six year old child

I have encouraged my son to ask questions. Sometimes I feel uncomfortable with the questions he asks. Tonight he saw a news item on TV about Japanese whaling. He asked some very interesting questions. As the saying goes – from the mouths of babes.

 

Child:  Look Mum, they’re killing a whale! Why are they doing that?

Mum: They say so that they can do research.

Child: What is research?

Mum: Research is studying something to learn about it.

Child: But why do they want to kill all of the whales in Antarctica?

Mum: They are not killing all of them, just some. The whales aren’t necessarily in Antarctica. The whales move north when it gets colder and have their babies in the warmer water. When the babies are stronger, they move back to Antarctica.

Child:  But that’s not fair! I don’t understand why they want to do that.

Mum:  Nor do I sweetheart.

Child: But why don’t the whales just swim away?

Mum: Because the ships are very fast. Also the whales don’t expect someone to shoot a harpoon at them.

Child: But I’ve never seen a real whale!

Mum: I’ll show you some one day. I like whales too.

Child: I know what they could do. They could catch them on a big hook, but they’d need a really strong line. Whales can breath air. So they could catch them like fish.

Mum: (Realising child has seen fishing shows where they always let the fish go gently.) And then let the whales go again?

Child: Yes, like fish.

Mum: That’s a good idea.

Child then proceeds to design and build a ship that catches whales, takes them inside to study them (because whales can breath air like people do), and then lowers them back into the sea in special boats to let them go again.

Don’t you wish the problems of the world could be solved that easily? Hmmm. Maybe they could.

These questions tugged at me because I have had the totally awesome experience of swimming with whales that happened to cross the path of the live aboard dive boat I was on. The dive boat tender dropped us as snorkellers in the path of the pod of whales and then retreated. Another swimmer and I were only metres apart and a baby whale swam right between us, checking us out and talking in whale song – under the watchful eye of his mother only about 10 metres away. The photo was taken by a friend – I didn’t have a waterproof camera on that trip.

I have read that only one or two tests that researchers want to do on whales can only be done on dead whales. In industry it is called destructive testing.

Coral bleaching and ocean acidification

Global warming alarmists make much of how there are greater expanses of corals bleaching and the oceans are becoming more acidic. Besides the fact that man is not causing the Earth to warm by CO2 emissions, it could be that there is nothing to worry about in these two events. One is a survival mechanism and the other is self limiting. 

 

Firstly, corals are meant to bleach. Corals get their colour from algae which live on them. Whenever there is a change in the local environment, one set of species of algae ups and leaves and a new set of species of algae which like the new environmental conditions soon takes its place. The period in between the different species of algae taking up residence is what makes the corals look white – coral bleaching.

 

This is a very strong adaptation mechanism and explains in part why corals have been around for so long even though the world climate has changed many times over the millennia.

 

Secondly, the oceans have become a little more acidic over the past few hundred or more years due to an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere. The ocean water absorbs a bit of the gases over the top of them. This is one of the ways that oxygen gets in the water so that fish can “breath”. If there is more or less of a certain gas in the air, more or less of that gas will be absorbed by the oceans.

 

However, there is a limit to how much of any gas can be absorbed by the oceans. When water is warmed, you can dissolve a greater concentration of solids in it. Try it with a cold glass of water and a warm glass of water and either sugar or salt.

 

The opposite happens with gases. When the water is cooler it can absorb more gas than when it is warmer. The reason for this opposite effect is due to the physical properties which make a substance a gas, a liquid or a solid – at a certain temperature. If the surrounding temperature drops hugely, CO2 will freeze into ice. At some temperature in between it will become a liquid. On the other hand even metal or rock will become liquid if you apply enough heat.

 

As you heat a liquid, it releases more of the gas that is absorbed in it. This explains why warm Coke or beer goes “flat”.

 

Therefore, there is a limit to how much CO2 can be absorbed in the oceans. It is possible that the oceans are at or close to the level of CO2 they can absorb at the current level of global temperature. If the Earth’s temperature rises a little more, it will be able to absorb less. Therefore the CO2 will stay in the atmosphere, rather than being dissolved in the water of the oceans.

 

This then means there will be a lid on the amount of acid that can be caused by CO2 being absorbed in the ocean water and reacting with other compounds and elements dissolved in the ocean water.

 

 The moral of the story – even if the world is warming by whatever mechanism, the coral reefs will adapt and the degree of ocean acidification will level out. That puts out the lights on two global warming alarms.

Carbon – the base of all life on this planet

If you are a science fiction fan, you will have heard humans referred to as carbon based life forms. In fact, all living creatures on Earth are based on carbon. Carbon is the basic element in our web of life.

Plants are made of carbon and water and assorted other molecules – from phytoplankton to massive trees. Fungi and algae are made of carbon. Animals from bacteria to whales are made of carbon.

Carbon is one of the elements in proteins. People and animals get energy from carbohydrates – which are made up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. People and animals store energy in their bodies in fat – again includes carbon.

People need energy to sustain life and a standard of living. Most energy sources used by man throughout history are based on either a carbohydrate – eg timber – or a hydrocarbon – eg oil, kerosene.

Carbon is taken in at the beginning of the food chain, and built upon as successive species consume the previous one. Where does it start? With plants of course. Plants use the process called photosynthesis to absorb energy from the sun, absorb water and carbon dioxide, and use the sun’s energy to create proteins and carbohydrates from these. Plants keep the carbon and some of the water, and transpire oxygen and water as their waste products.

Carbon dioxide is essential for plant life. If you want a farm animal to grow faster, you feed it more. If you want a plant to grow bigger or faster, you give it more carbon dioxide.

Plants are an essential part of our food chain, and of sustaining habitat for fish, birds and animals. No plants, no other life. Therefore carbon is an essential element of life.

Carbon is not a poison. It should not be treated as one.

Now THIS is evidence of environmental pollution – but by what?

Yesterday’s Courier Mail published a story Two headed fish larvae blamed on farm chemicals in the Noosa River

Brian Williams and Sophie Elsworth

January 12, 2009 11:00pm

CHEMICAL contamination from farm runoff has been blamed after millions of fish larvae in the Noosa River were found to have grown two heads.

 The disfigured larvae are thought to have been affected by one of two popular farm chemicals, either the insecticide endosulphan or the fungicide carbendazim.

Former NSW fisheries scientist and aquaculture veterinarian Matt Landos yesterday called on the Federal Government to ban the chemicals and urgently find replacements.

Dr Landos said about 90 per cent of larvae spawned at the Sunland Fish Hatchery from bass taken from the river were deformed and all died within 48 hours.

“It certainly looks like the fish have been exposed to something in the river,” Dr Landos said.

“I wouldn’t like to be having kids and living next to a place that uses these chemicals and I wouldn’t like to be drinking tank water where they are in use.”

Hatchery owner Gwen Gilson blames chemicals used by macadamia farmers near her Boreen Point business for the deformities.

“Some embryos split into two heads, some had two equal heads and a small tail and some had one big long head and a small tail coming out of the head,” she said.

Farmers nearby declined to comment.

Dr Landos said the chemicals were potentially human carcinogens and could have entered the river through any number of sources such as spraying or run-off even though there was no evidence of improper use.

Carbendazim had a history of causing embryonic defects and had been banned in the US, while endosulphan was banned in New Zealand.

“These chemicals mess up cell development,” he said. “There’s no other plausible explanation for what’s going on.”

Biosecurity Queensland chief Ron Glanville said an investigation into the claims started two years ago.

No evidence of chemicals used on an adjoining property were found in water, fish, fish eggs, chooks and horse samples.

“These things are notoriously hard to track down,” he said.

Dr Landos and Dr Glanville said there was no danger for people either swimming or eating fish from the Noosa River because if chemicals were in the water, levels would likely be exceedingly low.

The Federal Environment Department has been asked to investigate.

 

At least they didn’t blame this one on global warming!