Climate Change Dispatch

If you want to know about climate, ask the right questions

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:45:54 -0400

FORMER ABC chairman Maurice Newman claims ABC staff are biased and preach the global warming faith.

"A powerful group has captured the corporation, at least on climate change," he says. ABC managing director Mark Scott denied that last month, but I hope he heard his ABC hyping the Climate Commission's alarmist report this week.

Take ABC 24's interview with Climate Commissioner Will Steffen and retired admiral Chris Barrie. Host Virginia Trioli didn't ask why an admiral with no climate science qualifications was helping to launch its report.

Nor did she ask if Barrie was joking when he claimed there was an even chance no human would be left alive only 87 years from now if we didn't face "the climate change consequences and some other behaviours".

Tell Obama: There's No Climate Change To Fight

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:53:11 -0400

Apparently President Obama will announce yet another set of policies next month aimed at mitigating global warming. But why? The enemy he promises to fight simply doesn't exist.

News reports say that Obama will lay out his plans in July. The speculation is that his Environmental Protection Agency will issue, according to Bloomberg News, final rules that will "limit greenhouse-gas emissions from new power plants."

Politico quotes "top White House climate aide Heather Zichal" outlining four areas that "don't require any new laws or any new technologies."

It also reports that Zichal has said the administration will be "using the tools of the Clean Air Act to advance a broader climate agenda."

Any Global Warming Since 1978? Two Climate Experts Debate This

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:51:15 -0400

Monthly mean temps Source - WikimediaHave global temperatures warmed, cooled or flattened? If so, by how much, since when, and how can we know? I have posed these questions to two highly credentialed climate scientists who have different views on this topic. Texas State Climatologist Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon, a Regents Professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, will present a view that global temperatures have seen an upward trend since the late 1970s. Former director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service and University of Virginia Professor Emeritus Dr. S. Fred Singer will present an argument that there is no convincing evidence of warming since that time.

John Nielsen-Gammon:

What would it mean to say that global temperatures are rising? Global temperature anomaly measures how much global temperatures differ relative to a reference period, and the anomoly here often changes erratically from year to year. Some years are warmer than the previous one, some are colder. Underneath that year-to-year variation, though, is a longer-term time-varying trend. Standard global time series show an upward trend from about 1910 to about 1940, a weak positive or negative trend from about 1940 to about 1975, and an upward trend since then.

Climate Commission’s dupe: “one in two chance” of no humans by 2100

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:43:38 -0400

Retired admiral Chris Barrie is disturbingly prone to alarmism. He tells the ABC he’s read a book, Lord Rees’ Our Final Hour, which he says warned we’d be wiped out if we didn’t face “the climate change consequences and some other behaviours that are not so good”:

There’s a one in two chance that by 2100 there’ll be no human beings left on this planet. The planet will exist, but it’s just that my granddaughter won’t be part of it. And I think that’s a pretty alarming statistic, probability, one in two chance if we don’t correct out behaviours.

Referring to the Climate Commission’s report he “assisted” in launching, Barrie adds:

If anybody reads through this report and gets to the alarming conclusion that if we don’t correct our behaviour by the end of the decade, that is in seven years time, then our future looks pretty bleak.

The pathologising of climate scepticism

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:35:38 -0400

As the influence of environmental thinking has increased its hold over the political establishment, the failure to win the public support that might create the basis for decisive action to save the planet has also increasingly been blamed on climate sceptics operating on the internet. On this view, bloggers have thwarted international and domestic action to prevent climate change. Accordingly, the nature of the blogosphere and the workings of the minds of climate sceptics have become the focus of academic research, just as the mechanics of the climate system have been the subject of climate scientists. But this attempt to form a pathological view of a complex debate says much more about the researchers than the objects of their study.

Why do I call them bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco crucifixes….?

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:28:45 -0400

I wonder what it will take before the world truly wakes up to the horror, the corruption, the expense, the pointlessness, the total wrongness-in-every-way of the wind industry. My guess – and it will happen – is the decapitation, by a rogue turbine blade, of an innocent passer-by.

Till then, though, we have photographs like this to send the mind boggling as to why anyone, anywhere can still be so purblind as to go on championing these bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco crucifixes. What's particularly interesting about this one is that it was taken in the constituency of one of wind power's most fervent and tireless advocates, Caroline Lucas MP.

Obama considers limiting plants' CO² emissions

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:22:56 -0400

The Obama administration is considering a sweeping initiative to address climate change, including the first limits on carbon dioxide from power plants, the country's biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The White House has yet to settle on specific measures, but "we're hearing that existing power plants are definitely in the mix," said a person with knowledge of the deliberations, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity. An announcement could come by mid-July.

British Government Drops Climate Change From G8 Agenda

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:47:12 -0400

In an article for the Wall Street Journal, David Cameron explains that the UK G8 Presidency will focus on achieving action on tax, trade and transparency: Today, our greatest challenge is to restore strong and sustainable growth to the world economy. --The Rt Hon David Cameron MP, 10 June 2013

The UK Prime Minister's Adviser for Europe and Global Issues Ivan Rogers has rejected moves from Germany and France to make the issue one of the meeting's key talking points. Officials from the two countries are said to be disappointed their suggestions were rebuffed. Instead, Rogers is insisting that trade, transparency and tax form the core of discussions scheduled to take place at Lough Erne, in Northern Ireland between June 17-18. --Ed King, The Guardian 26 March 2013

What Is Obama Up To on Keystone?

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:49:25 -0400

Obama can’t vote “present” on the Keystone pipeline forever, though he can probably string it out a while longer. He won’t want to punt it to the next president, though, because it might be a Republican who will approve it on Day One. Maybe Obama could just propose an alternate route through Guantanamo, since Gitmo is going to need a new use soon, right?

Last month I predicted:

What Obama may do is tentatively approve Keystone along with a major policy shift that will please environmentalists and subject Keystone to further and perhaps fatal delays. There is talk that the administration may expand the scope of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to require that proposed projects like Keystone document their impact on global warming in the permit approval process.

About two weeks ago the Obama administration quietly and without fanfare took a step that might accomplish the double game of “approving” Keystone subject to conditions that mean it cannot be built. Last week, the news dribbled out that the Obama administration, as a part of a seemingly minor rule-making about energy standards for microwave ovens, slipped in a recalculation of the “social cost of carbon” that could potentially tip the scales heavily against the Keystone pipeline—among other energy-intensive developments—in the course of the required cost-benefit analysis that subsequent rule-makings have to conduct.

Evidence Refutes Natural Climate Change Deniers: Alarmist Global Warming Myths Proven Bogus

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:42:50 -0400

Alarmists pushing the natural climate-change denial propaganda have been eviscerated by the overwhelming force of recent empirical evidence - surprise, surprise, the cascade of evidence has even forced the extreme-left NY Times and The Economist to admit their previous beliefs reporting of disastrous global warming myths was without scientific merit.

This plot of major temperature datasets from leading climate research agencies reveals multiple myth-busting facts - much to the chagrin of anti-CO2, global warming alarmists (RIGHT).

Before pursuing the myth-busting, a small explanation may help: this chart depicts the length of slight/flat global temperature trends, without the usual monthly datapoint variability plotted. In addition, the incessant growth of atmospheric CO2 levels is plotted.

Now on to those busted "global warming" myths. From this chart of empirical evidence, we can safely conclude the following: