News & Commentary February 8, 2010

 

Disclosing the Real Risks on Climate Change

We are not weighing in on the climate debate. We are not opining on whether the world’s climate is changing, at what pace or due to what causes, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Shapiro insisted on announcing the SEC’s new “interpretive guidance” on climate change.

The Commission’s two Republican members objected that the Obama Administration was using the Commission to promote its global warming and renewable energy agenda (along with the EPA, NASA, Defense and Interior Departments and others). It’s true, but irrelevant.

Environmentalists and “ethical investing” groups had pressured the Commission for years to require corporate disclosure on climate matters. Now, as the SEC steps in, the Copenhagen treaty negotiations have collapsed in disarray. Cap-and-trade has bogged down over senators’ fears of further damage to the economy and their reelection chances. The Environmental Protection Agency has decreed that plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide is a “dangerous pollutant,” because senators are increasingly reluctant to micromanage the economy, companies and families, but the regs are likely to go nowhere. (Paul Driessen, Townhall)

 

Top British scientist says UN panel is losing credibility

A LEADING British government scientist has warned the United Nations’ climate panel to tackle its blunders or lose all credibility.

Robert Watson, chief scientist at Defra, the environment ministry, who chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002, was speaking after more potential inaccuracies emerged in the IPCC’s 2007 benchmark report on global warming.

The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.

This weekend Professor Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC’s climate impacts team, told The Sunday Times that he could find nothing in the report to support the claim. The revelation follows the IPCC’s retraction of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035.

The African claims could be even more embarrassing for the IPCC because they appear not only in its report on climate change impacts but, unlike the glaciers claim, are also repeated in its Synthesis Report.

This report is the IPCC’s most politically sensitive publication, distilling its most important science into a form accessible to politicians and policy makers. Its lead authors include Pachauri himself. (Sunday Times)

Watson is, of course, no better angel, having been prevaricator-in-chief for the IPCC before Pachauri. The IPCC had no credibility with Watson as co-chair either.

 

And now for Africagate

Following an investigation by this blog (and with the story also told in The Sunday Times), another major "mistake" in the IPCC's benchmark Fourth Assessment Report has emerged.

Similar in effect to the erroneous "2035" claim – the year the IPCC claimed that Himalayan glaciers were going to melt – in this instance we find that the IPCC has wrongly claimed that in some African countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020.

At best, this is a wild exaggeration, unsupported by any scientific research, referenced only to a report produced by a Canadian advocacy group, written by an obscure Moroccan academic who specialises in carbon trading, citing references which do not support his claims.

Unlike the glacier claim, which was confined to a section of the technical Working Group II report, this "50 percent by 2020" claim forms part of the key Synthesis Report, the production of which was the personal responsibility of the chair of the IPCC, Dr R K Pachauri. It has been repeated by him in many public fora. He, therefore, bears a personal responsibility for the error.

In this lengthy post, we examine the nature and background of this latest debacle, which is now under investigation by IPCC scientists and officials. (Richard North, EU Referendum)

 

New errors in IPCC climate change report

The United Nations panel on climate change is facing fresh criticism today as The Sunday Telegraph reveals new factual errors and poor sources of evidence in its influential report to government leaders. (TDT)

 

There, there Charlie, have another organic chocolate thin: Prince Charles On Climate Change: Global Warming Sceptics Are All Liars

PRINCE Charles rejected mounting evidence that climate change is a myth and insisted there is overwhelming proof of global warming today.

In his first riposte to the furore over claims that scientists have covered up research casting doubt on the greenhouse effect,  voiced his dismay and alarm at those who question the science behind climate change.

The heir to the throne raised the controversy in a speech in Manchester, where he launched a new initiative, called Start, to provide the public with advice on how to lead more environmentally sustainable lives.

Charles, who has campaigned on global warming for more than 20 years, said: “I have watched with growing dismay and alarm the glee with which the sceptics have leapt upon the recent news stories that question the science that climate change is man-made and suggesting it is nothing more than a myth. (Daily Express)

 

Climategate: Mad Sunday

I mean “Mad” in a good way. This was the day when so many wheels came off Al Gore’s AGW gravy train and flew off in so many different directions, it was all but impossible to keep track of them. (James Delingpole, TDT)

 

Climate alarmists out in the cold

As the wheels keep falling off the climate alarmist bandwagon, it's suddenly become fashionable to be a sceptic. Out of the woodwork have crawled all sorts of fair-weather friends.

But where were they when the going was tough, when we were being hammered as Holocaust deniers, planet wreckers, in the pay of the "Big Polluters", bad parents, pariahs, equivalent to murderers? It was pure McCarthyism.

But now, even the most aggressive alarmists have gone quiet or softened their rhetoric and people who sat on the fence have morphed into wise owls.

They still think it's acceptable to mock touring British sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton's protruding eyes, a distressing symptom of his thyroid disease, in an effort to marginalise him as a lunatic, rather than address his criticisms. But, when even the British left-leaning, warmist-friendly Guardian newspaper has begun to investigate the fraud involved in "sexing up" climate change science, it's clear the collapse of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's credibility and the holes in the case for catastrophic man-made climate change can no longer be ignored.

We are witnessing an outbreak of neo-open-mindedness and face-saving from people who brooked no nuance. (Miranda Devine, SMH)

 

If you're going to do good science, release the computer code too

Programs do more and more scientific work - but you need to be able to check them as well as the original data, as the recent row over climate change documentation shows ( Darrel Ince, The Guardian)

 

Seismic shifts in opinions

A new BBC poll shows a major shift in public opinion in the UK since just last November. Look at the swing. Of the 41% of people who then said the cause of climate change was “well established,” more than 1 in 4  have switched sides. These people made up the major base of the active support, yet they are now questioning the assumption that man-made gases are driving the change.

Only 26% of people think “climate change is happening, and is now established as largely man-made”; on the other hand, 25% are so skeptical, they don’t believe climate change is happening at all. More » (Jo Nova)

 

Dear Geoffrey Lean, let me explain why we're so cross…

My colleague Geoffrey Lean is upset by the vitriol he attracts on the internet. I feel for him. Though I have never met Geoffrey colleagues tells me he’s a delightful fellow who means very well. I’m sure he does and, though our views on AGW are very different, I take no more pleasure in seeing him taken to pieces by Telegraph-reading sceptics than I do from all the charming emails I get from George Monbiot groupies calling me something beginning with “C”. (And it’s shorter than “Climate change denier”).

But there appears to be something Geoffrey doesn’t understand and I’d like to take this opportunity to explain. This misconception is implicit in his headline: “We need to cool this climate row.” What it implies is that somewhere in the AGW debate is a sensible, moderate, middle ground and that if we can only approach this business in the spirit of a sort of Tony-Blair-style Third-Way triangulation, everything can be solved and we can all live happily ever after. No it can’t and we won’t. ( James Delingpole, TDT)

 

Robin McKie v Benny Peiser

Has the science of climate change been undermined by email leaks and the IPCC's glacier error? ( Robin McKie and Benny Peiser, The Observer)

 

Stotty's Corner

Who’s for the Chop?

Monday, 8 February 2010

George Grossmith as Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner, in the first performance of ‘The Mikado or, The Town of Titipu’, at the Savoy Theatre, London, 1885.

Oh dear! As global warming fanaticism wanes in the Town of Titipu, Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner, is on the warpath for likely customers. So, who then has Ko-Ko in mind for the chop? Here is his famous list:

"As someday it may happen that a...

Read more... (Philip Stott, The Clamour of the Times)

 

Blows upon a Bruise

Sunday, 7 February 2010

“When sorrows come, they come not single spies/But in battalions” [Claudius, ‘Hamlet’, Act IV, Scene V]

This Sunday may prove to be one of the more important in the collapse of the Global Warming Grand Narrative, newspaper after newspaper striking blow upon blow as the already bruised science, economics and politics totter before a near-perfect storm. I thought it might thus be useful to place on...

Read more... (Philip Stott, The Clamour of the Times)

 

Why The Observer is Wrong

Sunday, 7 February 2010

Today, The Observer hosts a vitriolic ‘Debate’ [pp.28 - 29] between its long-standing Science Editor, Robin McKie, and Dr. Benny Peiser, Director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). The fact that this newspaper is now holding a debate is in itself indicative of the media change with respect to ‘global warming’, and I congratulate Dr. Peiser on being willing to enter the lion’s den....

Read more... (Philip Stott, The Clamour of the Times)

 

Lawrence Solomon: IPCC: Beyond the Himalayas

Climategate is one of many known IPCC failings

By Lawrence Solomon

Two years ago, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was the world’s most celebrated organization, guardian of the world against the peril of climate change and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for “its outstanding scientific work!”

Today, the IPCC stands among the world’s most infamous organizations, its reputation in tatters, unable to respond to a growing chorus of critics because the critics now include many of its once-fiercest champions, among them its own scientists, and because its chairman and chief spokesman, India’s Rajendra Pachauri, is himself thoroughly disgraced. “The IPCC needs to regain credibility. Is that going to happen with Pachauri?,” asks John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK, “I don’t think so.”

What caused a fall from grace so sudden that IPCC’s insiders now demand Pachauri’s ouster, and that leads the Indian government to set up an “Indian IPCC” as a national alternative to the IPCC, declaring that it “cannot rely” any longer on the organization that its own representative heads? (Financial Post)

 

Terence Corcoran: If the IPCC were Toyota

By Terence Corcoran

At the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the various governing pooh-bahs of the organization–its chairs, vice-chairs and co-chairs – appear to have decided not to follow the advice that damage control experts and other gurus of corporate social responsibility have been handing out to poor old Toyota Motors. As anybody following the news knows, Toyota management has been grappling with alleged problems with unintended acceleration on various models and the braking system on its new Prius. What should Toyota do? The advice from the corporate lovelorn crowd: Come clean, get all the bad news out, confess to all mistakes past and present, don’t hide the facts, be honest, take the recall hit, don’t pretend there are no problems, apologize, grovel and then create some massive phony campaign promoting safety and good corporate citizenship.

To the extent Toyota has been following this advice, it has clearly not been working all that well. In fact, Toyota’s troubles mounted when it spoke honestly of its struggles in finding a cause and solution to the acceleration problem. Maybe Toyota could learn a few things from the IPCC. The wheels are practically falling off the climate change organization, with fresh evidence of faulty science, false advertising and flawed procedures being revealed almost daily. Even worse, the records show that the IPCC has a long history of scientific crashes, data manufacturing and out-of-control spins.

Clearly the IPCC is not taking any instruction from the corporate goodness community. For example, it took the IPCC more than two months to officially acknowledge its false claim that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. Rather than rush to come clean on the mistake, the IPCC dragged its feet for weeks, calling it “voodoo” science, before issuing a self-congratulatory statement. “It has...recently come to our attention that a paragraph in the 938-page Working Group II contribution to the underlying assessment refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly.” That’s a little like Toyota saying it actually copied its brake system from an old Lada and nobody checked to see if it worked. (Financial Post)

 

The Great Unraveling

Professional global warming alarmists better think about looking for new jobs. It looks like they're in for a long, cold winter — and a frigid spring and summer as well.

Those who've been spreading global-warming fears must be waking up each morning and asking themselves: What's going to happen today? A new revelation about the corruption of climate science has become almost a daily event. (IBD)

 

The great global warming collapse

As the science scandals keep coming, the air has gone out of the climate-change movement. (Margaret Wente, Globe and Mail)

 

The IPCC's problems have been compounded by its imperious attitude

The publication of false claims by the IPCC has been compounded by its imperious attitude, says the professor of climate change Mike Hulme. From SciDev.net, part of the Guardian Environment Network

 

Climate change research bungle

The research institute run by the head of the UN’s climate body has handed out a series of environmental awards to companies that have given it financial support, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose. (TDT)

 

China And The “Deniers”: Why Climate Change Issues Are Problematic for the Chinese

In the wake of Climategate, Chinese climate researchers have been looking for a way forward. For the past few years, the Chinese government has been supportive of the “consensus” western position on climate change. Wanting very much to be liked and accepted internationally, China went along with the climate change predictions being put forward by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They publicly agreed with the potential dangers posed by climate change while all along making it clear that they would not accept any mandatory limits on their carbon dioxide emissions. (Michael Economides and Xina Xie, Energy Tribune)

 

Chinese media impressed by Fred Singer

Tom Nelson mentions an article in Pajamas Media about an article in China Daily.

Its author, Ms Li Xing, attended the Copenhagen summit and was impressed by Fred Singer. So was I, when I met him in Berlin (and before). He showed her lots of data and she wanted to know the opinion of the other side - the "IPCC side". What can they say about these issues?

Imagine the scenery in the Danish capital. She had clearly heard a lot of details, understanding many of them, while being confused about some others. A lot of stuff to discuss. The "IPCC types" would only tell her:

"Warming in the climate system is unequivocal".

You have heard the holy word. Global warming is real (and that surely means man-made). Amen.

It must be strikingly obvious to her - and anyone else - that all details or verifications are just unwelcome to those folks because they don't support the primary thesis of the AGW orthodoxy. This quasi-religious thrives on fear and ignorance. Knowledge is chasing it out of the holes.

Almost all AGW believers react in the same way. They never want to analyze any detailed questions. They never want to penetrate deeply enough into them. What they care about is the key religious commandment about AGW. They just think that the holy greatness of the AGW God will impress you and intimidate you much like it has apparently done with them. Too bad, it only works for irrational (or corrupt) people like themselves.

Pajamas Media ask the subtle question whether the U.S. is really a more free and democratic country than China if the journalist from the official Chinese media actually had the freedom to go to the conference, to talk to both sides, and to form and publish her opinion.

Yes, I do think that China is less democratic and free when you look at all issues that are important for human lives. But the AGW debate is clearly an example where the situation is different. The U.S. mainstream media really seem to be the worst ones in the world when it comes to the recent climatological scandals. An unusual cartel between the media, politicians, scientific institutions, and certain big business groups effectively transformed America into a totalitarian country - fortunately when we talk about this single issue only.

The Chinese journalist used some old Chinese wisdom to predict that the number and depth of recent scandals we have seen is enough for the IPCC to perish.

AfricaGate

Just one link to AfricaGate. It's becoming hard to follow all the scandals. Just a partial list:

ClimateGate
GlacierGate
TeriGate
AmazonGate
DisasterGate
HollandGate
AfricaGate

Almost each of them is composed out of thousands of scandalous files or documents or pages.

We're lucky that they haven't begun to approve the cap-and-trade bills yet because if they had, there would be lots of BillGates to remember, too. :-) (The Reference Frame)

 

U.N. climate panel reviews Dutch sea level glitch

OSLO - The U.N.'s panel of climate experts said on Friday it was reviewing whether it wrongly said that more than half of the Netherlands is below sea level in a new glitch after exaggerating the thaw of Himalayan glaciers. (Reuters)

 

IPCC bases claim of 1.3 billion agricultural workers on news article, changes title

It is now clear that the IPCC has made several factual errors in their Fourth Assessment Report. The Himalayan glaciers will not melt by 2035, and more than half of the Netherlands are not below sea level. I may have found another error. If it is not an error, it is certainly some very sloppy work. (Climate Quotes)

 

No One Believes Us, Admit Global Warming Scientists

BRITONS are not convinced that mankind has caused global warming, three leading climate scientists admitted yesterday. (Daily Express)

That's true but only because there's a complete lack of evidence to support the hysterical claims made.

 

The Sindy at its funniest: Think-tanks take oil money and use it to fund climate deniers - ExxonMobil cash supported concerted campaign to undermine case for man-made warming

An orchestrated campaign is being waged against climate change science to undermine public acceptance of man-made global warming, environment experts claimed last night.

The attack against scientists supportive of the idea of man-made climate change has grown in ferocity since the leak of thousands of documents on the subject from the University of East Anglia (UEA) on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit last December.

Free-market, anti-climate change think-tanks such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in the US and the International Policy Network in the UK have received grants totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the multinational energy company ExxonMobil. Both organisations have funded international seminars pulling together climate change deniers from across the globe. (Jonathan Owen and Paul Bignell, The Independent)

Uh-huh... a relative few pennies to skeptics is sufficient to overwhelm the multibillion dollar orchestrated international climate cartel? Says a lot about the strength of the relative cases then. Funny too that they run a picture of Stephen McIntyre, great image of a self-funded skeptic but not the least supportive of their case for big oil (or anyone else) funding a campaign to undermine climate "science". The liberated e-mails also show how climate hysterics were farming oil company grants and funding and yet still The Sindy is trying to claim big oil conspiracy against poor honest used car salesmen climate scientists.

Full disclosure: I have a financial relationship with oil companies -- I pay every time my wife fuels up at the pump (although not personally, I walk and train about everywhere I need to go now that the kids don't need me to move them around -- the advantage of where I live in Queensland -- I guess my GoCard fares also support big coal since our electric trains are juiced by coal-fired electrickery).

 

Is climate change the new faith?

Fanatics must stop playing fast and loose with global warming data (Simon Hoggart, The Guardian)

 

How Met Office blocked questions on its own man's role in 'hockey stick' climate row

The Meteorological Office is blocking public scrutiny of the central role played by its top climate scientist in a highly controversial report by the beleaguered United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

Professor John Mitchell, the Met Office’s Director of Climate Science, shared responsibility for the most worrying headline in the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning IPCC report – that the Earth is now hotter than at any time in the past 1,300 years.

And he approved the inclusion in the report of the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph, showing centuries of level or declining temperatures until a steep 20th Century rise.
By the time the 2007 report was being written, the graph had been heavily criticised by climate sceptics who had shown it minimised the ‘medieval warm period’ around 1000AD, when the Vikings established farming settlements in Greenland.

In fact, according to some scientists, the planet was then as warm, or even warmer, than it is today. 

Early drafts of the report were fiercely contested by official IPCC reviewers, who cited other scientific papers stating that the 1,300-year claim and the graph were inaccurate. 
But the final version, approved by Prof Mitchell, the relevant chapter’s review editor, swept aside these concerns.

Now, the Met Office is refusing to disclose Prof Mitchell’s working papers and correspondence with his IPCC colleagues in response to requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act.

The block has been endorsed in writing by Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth – whose department has responsibility for the Met Office.

Documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveal that the Met Office’s stonewalling was part of a co-ordinated, legally questionable strategy by climate change academics linked with the IPCC to block access to outsiders. (Mail on Sunday)

 

House of Peers

As Jonah and I have written here previously, "climate change" is not only a scientific scandal but also a massive journalistic failure. While the "Canadian Journalism Project" continues to insist that dissenting from the orthodoxy is "irresponsible journalism", Matt Ridley at The Spectator acknowledges the reality:

Journalists are wont to moan that the slow death of newspapers will mean a disastrous loss of investigative reporting. The web is all very well, they say, but who will pay for the tenacious sniffing newshounds to flush out the real story? ‘Climategate’ proves the opposite to be true. It was amateur bloggers who scented the exaggerations, distortions and corruptions in the climate establishment; whereas newspaper reporters, even after the scandal broke, played poodle to their sources.

Mr Ridley credits various British, Canadian and American bloggers, and then makes this observation:

Notice that all of these sceptic bloggers are self-employed businessmen. Their strengths are networks and feedback: mistakes get quickly corrected; new leads are opened up; expertise is shared; links are made.

The correcting mechanisms of competitive businesses are largely alien to America's unreadable monodailies, which is why they'll be extinct long before the polar bear. As an example of what Matt Ridley's talking about, consider this piece designed to prop up the increasingly discredited IPCC from ABC Australia's Margot O'Neill. It's a simulacrum of reporting rather than the real thing. It has quotes from impressive sounding experts, but, as Mr Ridley put it above, she is playing "poodle to her sources": (Mark Steyn, NRO)

 

The question at the moment is: "What science?": Sir David King: IPCC runs against the spirit of science - The science of climate change appears to be under siege.

Following leaked emails from the University of East Anglia and evidence for sloppy referencing in the IPCC’s 2007 report, the work of thousands of remarkable scientists is now being questioned, not just by the public but also by other members of the scientific community. To understand the implications, it helps to consider how this parlous situation has arisen. ( David King, TDT)

 

Climate makes money move in mysterious ways

The British Government has been pouring millions of pounds into 'climate-related' projects all over the world, says Christopher Booker

In all the coverage lately given to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its embattled chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, one rather important part of the story has largely been missed. This is the way in which, in its obsession with climate change, different branches of the UK Government have in recent years been pouring hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money into a bewildering array of "climate-related" projects, often throwing a veil of mystery over how much is being paid, to whom and why. (TDT)

 

Where our money goes

Talking of "powerful vested interests", it is interesting to see how much we, the taxpayers, are and have been paying those dedicated public servants at the Met Office to study climate change.

Two entries in the DEFRA science database give some hint. The entry for 1990-2007 puts the sum at £146,275,582, while the next tranche for 2007-2012 stands at £72,536,724.

That is a cool £218,812,306, paid in addition to the basic overhead payments. And on top of that, there are many millions more paid for specific research projects - the total funding declared by DEFRA amounting to £243,620,197.

These sums, themselves, are a tiny proportion of the overall money extracted from our pockets, to pay for the government's obsession with global warming. The problem is that the payments are spread between so many different groups, and made by so many different departments, that it is very difficult to put an overall figure on it.

Of one thing, I am certain, however, the total – over term – runs to many billions. These sums here are just the tip of the iceberg. We could have bought our aircraft carriers, with change to spare, from the amount of money frittered away on climate change. (Richard North, EU Referendum)

 

£8BN BBC ECO-BIAS

STRIKING parallels between the BBC’s coverage of the global warming debate and the activities of its pension fund can be revealed today.

The corporation is under investigation after being inundated with complaints that its editorial coverage of climate change is biased in favour of those who say it is a man-made phenomenon.

The £8billion pension fund is likely to come under close scrutiny over its commitment to promote a low-carbon economy while struggling to reverse an estimated £2billion deficit.

Concerns are growing that BBC journalists and their bosses regard disputed scientific theory that climate change is caused by mankind as “mainstream” while huge sums of employees’ money is invested in companies whose success depends on the theory being widely accepted. (Daily Express)

 

Dr R.K. Pachauri: Indian climate chief endures attacks at home

Indian environmentalists have joined critics of Dr R.K. Pachauri, the head of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, accusing him of damaging the country's environment and protecting "polluter" corporations who fund his research institute. (TDT)

 

First stage of rehabilitation, the sympathy play? The leak was bad. Then came the death threats

PHOTOGRAPHS of Professor Phil Jones show a handsome, smiling, confident-looking man. Not chubby exactly, but in blooming good health. The man who meets me at the University of East Anglia (UEA) looks grey-skinned and gaunt, as if he has been kept in prison.

In a way, he has. Since November last year he has been a prisoner of public opprobrium and a target of such vilification that was he was almost persuaded to comply with the wishes of those who wanted him dead. (Sunday Times)

 

Penn State Probe into Mann's Wrongdoing a 'Total Whitewash'

Penn State's probe that mostly cleared climate change scientist Michael Mann for any wrongdoing doesn't begin to scratch the surface, say critics. ( Ed Barnes, FOXNews.com)

 

Phthrrp! Despite the sceptics, climate change must remain a priority

Public confidence will be inspired more by frankness about what science cannot explain ( The Observer)

Trying actually talking about "enhanced greenhouse effect" (the alleged risk) and mention we have no measures which suggest it might be in any way significant. Do you really think it "must remain a priority"?

 

Effort underway to suspend California's global-warming law

Conservatives propose an initiative that would delay curbs on greenhouse gas emissions until the state's unemployment rate drops to 5.5%, a level not seen since 2007. (Los Angeles Times)

 

Climate scepticism grows among Tories

Green policies have potential to be as divisive as Europe, leadership warned (The Observer)

 

How on earth can Rudd bet our economy on this?

Good God, yet more errors in the IPCC’s 2007 report. And to think Kevin Rudd has based his colossal plan to completely reengineer our economy on this deeply suspect document:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report is supposed to be the world’s most authoritative scientific account of the scale of global warming.  But this paper has discovered a series of new flaws in it including:

The publication of inaccurate data on the potential of wave power to produce electricity around the world, which was wrongly attributed to the website of a commercial wave-energy company.

Claims based on information in press releases and newsletters.

New examples of statements based on student dissertations, two of which were unpublished.

More claims which were based on reports produced by environmental pressure groups.

They are the latest in a series of damaging revelations about the IPCC’s most recent report, published in 2007.

Last month, the panel was forced to issue a humiliating retraction after it emerged statements about the melting of Himalayan glaciers were inaccurate.

Last weekend, this paper revealed that the panel had based claims about disappearing mountain ice on anecdotal evidence in a student’s dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine. And on Friday, it emerged that the IPCC’s panel had wrongly reported that more than half of the Netherlands was below sea level because it had failed to check information supplied by a Dutch government agency…

However, senior scientists are now expressing concern at the way the IPCC compiles its reports and have hit out at the panel’s use of so-called “grey literature” — evidence from sources that have not been subjected to scientific ­scrutiny.

And yet more evidence that the IPCC “sexed up” its report with gross exaggerations, hype and outright untruths:

...the IPCC has wrongly claimed that in some African countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020.

At best, this is a wild exaggeration, unsupported by any scientific research, referenced only to a report produced by a Canadian advocacy group, written by an obscure Moroccan academic who specialises in carbon trading, citing references which do not support his claims.

Unlike the glacier claim, which was confined to a section of the technical Working Group II report, this “50 percent by 2020? claim forms part of the key Synthesis Report, the production of which was the personal responsibility of the chair of the IPCC, Dr R K Pachauri. It has been repeated by him in many public fora.

What a fiasco. And for this we must have a huge green tax on everything, and shut down our sources of cheap power. To risk so much on such disintegrating evidence is grotesquely irresponsible. (Andrew Bolt)

 

Poor fool. Turnbull ready to cross the floor over emissions

A DEFIANT Malcolm Turnbull has confirmed he will cross the floor when a vote is held on the emissions trading scheme this week, pitting him squarely against Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.

Mr Turnbull denied he was under pressure from frontbenchers to tone down his outspoken support for the scheme, as reported by a newspaper yesterday. Instead, he launched into a passionate defence of the scheme that cost him the Liberal leadership last year, warning action on climate change could not come without a price.

''There has to be cost. By putting a price on carbon, it allows the market to work out the cheapest way of costing emissions,'' Mr Turnbull said.

''The final question is this: 'Are we serious about cutting emissions?' If the answer is yes, the cheapest and most effective way to do that is a market-based mechanism.'' (SMH)

Actually Mal, the answer is "no, not a bit".

 

Academics urge Rudd govt to dump ETS

A coalition of academics who doubt the science on the causes of climate change has called on the Rudd government to dump plans for an emissions trading scheme and consider alternatives.

Their call comes as a Nielsen poll, published in Fairfax newspapers on Monday, shows Australians prefer the federal coalition's climate action policy.

Of those polled, 45 per cent favoured the opposition's direct action emissions fund over the 39 per cent who backed Labor's carbon pollution reduction scheme.

The Australian Climate Science Coalition believes the government is losing the political high ground on global warming.

"The debacle in Copenhagen demonstrated the futility of Australia adopting a go-it-alone strategy," executive director Max Rheese said in a statement.

Public faith in the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had been shaken following revelations about some of its information-gathering processes, he said. (AAP)

 

Even when they know it's rubbish they push the hysteria: Rudd missed opportunity to dump failed emissions scheme - Cap and trade emission plans are fundamentally flawed.

KEVIN Rudd is not showing much political or environmental nous by sticking with his Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme to reduce carbon emissions.

Its big initial political virtue - its diabolical complexity - became a huge political liability when the federal opposition switched from principled support for the CPRS under Malcolm Turnbull to unprincipled opposition under Tony Abbott.

What makes it worse for Rudd is that ''cap and trade'' emission plans are fundamentally flawed and the Australian variant is worse than most. The failure to get a legally binding agreement to reduce emissions at Copenhagen was the final setback to emission trading schemes being an effective means of reducing global greenhouse gases.

This is not an excuse to do nothing. Britain's Met Office says the world is on a path towards a potential increase in global temperatures of 4 degrees as early as 2060. If this occurs, only about half a billion people out of about 9 billion will survive, according to Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate change and adviser to the British government. (Kenneth Davidson, The Age)

 

Sod off Swampy! Homes forced into energy audits

ALL Australian homes will have to undergo a mandatory energy-efficiency assessment - costing up to $1500 per property - before they can be sold or rented under new laws to tackle carbon emissions.

The mandatory assessment - being drafted into law by the federal and state governments - will rate homes by an energy efficiency star system, similar to the ratings given to fridges and washing machines.

It will apply to all commercial properties from later this year and to all residential properties from May 2011.

A spokesman for State Energy Minister Pat Conlon said the ratings would inform prospective owners or tenants of a building's energy use, so they could factor it in to their buying or rental decision.

The spokesman said details of the "Mandatory Disclosure" scheme - including who would carry out the assessments and how much they would cost - were yet to be decided. (Sunday Mail)

 

The sea level has been rising and falling over the last 2,500 years

"Rising and falling sea levels over relatively short periods do not indicate long-term trends. An assessment of hundreds and thousands of years shows that what seems an irregular phenomenon today is in fact nothing new," explains Dr. Dorit Sivan, who supervised the research. (University of Haifa)

 

Recycling lower Arctic sea ice levels: Arctic climate changing faster than expected

WINNIPEG, Manitoba – Climate change is transforming the Arctic environment faster than expected and accelerating the disappearance of sea ice, scientists said on Friday in giving their early findings from the biggest-ever study of Canada's changing north.

The research project involved more than 370 scientists from 27 countries who collectively spent 15 months, starting in June 2007, aboard a research vessel above the Arctic Circle. It marked the first time a ship has stayed mobile in Canada's high Arctic for an entire winter. (Reuters)

 

Achingly bad: Arctic Melt To Cost Up To $24 Trillion By 2050: Report

WASHINGTON - Arctic ice melting could cost global agriculture, real estate and insurance anywhere from $2.4 trillion to $24 trillion by 2050 in damage from rising sea levels, floods and heat waves, according to a report released on Friday.

"Everybody around the world is going to bear these costs," said Eban Goodstein, a resource economist at Bard College in New York state who co-authored the report, called "Arctic Treasure, Global Assets Melting Away."

He said the report, reviewed by more than a dozen scientists and economists and funded by the Pew Environment Group, an arm of the Pew Charitable Trusts, provides a first attempt to monetize the cost of the loss of one of the world's great weather makers.

"The Arctic is the planet's air conditioner and it's starting to break down," he said.

The loss of Arctic Sea ice and snow cover is already costing the world about $61 billion to $371 billion annually from costs associated with heat waves, flooding and other factors, the report said. (Reuters)

 

New study using satellite data: Alaskan glacier melt overestimated

From a press release provided by Centre national de la recherche scientifique in Paris, France:

Improved estimate of glacier decline in Alaska.

Glaciologists at the Laboratory for Space Studies in Geophysics and Oceanography (LEGOS – CNRS/CNES/IRD/Université Toulouse 3) and their US and Canadian colleagues (1) have shown that previous studies have largely overestimated mass loss from Alaskan glaciers over the past 40 years. Recent data from the SPOT 5 and ASTER satellites have enabled researchers to extensively map mass loss in these glaciers, which contributed 0.12 mm/year to sea-level rise between 1962 and 2006, rather than 0.17 mm/year as previously estimated.

Mountain glaciers cover between 500 000 and 600 000 km² of the Earth’s surface (around the size of France), which is little compared to the area of the Greenland (1.6 million km²) and Antarctic (12.3 million km²) ice sheets. Despite their small size, mountain glaciers have played a major role in recent sea-level rise due to their rapid melting in response to global climate warming. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

 

Oh... Water At Core Of Climate Change Impacts: Experts

OSLO - The main impact of climate change will be on water supplies and the world needs to learn from past cooperation such as over the Indus or Mekong Rivers to help avert future conflicts, experts said on Sunday.

Desertification, flash floods, melting glaciers, heatwaves, cyclones or water-borne diseases such as cholera are among the impacts of global warming inextricably tied to water. And competition for supplies might cause conflicts.

"The main manifestations of rising temperatures...are about water," said Zafar Adeel, chair of UN-Water which coordinates work on water among 26 U.N. agencies. (Reuters)

We better produce more CO₂ then since one of the primary effects is greater water efficiency in photosynthesizing plants, making crops less thirsty and increasing catchment runoff to impoundments.

 

No, Prime Minister. That drought wasn’t man-made, either

Melbourne University alarmist David Karoly once claimed a rise in the Murray Darling Basin’s temperatures was “likely due to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human activity” and:

This is the first drought in Australia where the impact of human-induced global warming can be clearly observed.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd grabbed the scare and exploited it:

BRENDAN Nelson was yesterday accused of being “blissfully immune” to the effects of climate change after he said the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin was not linked to global warming…

In parliament yesterday, Kevin Rudd attacked Dr Nelson, accusing him of ignoring scientific facts.

“You need to get with the science on this,” the Prime Minister said. “Look at the technical report put together by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.”

But the latest evidence that Rudd and Karoly were wrong. In fact, there’s no evidence in the Murray Darling drought of man-made warming, says a new study in Geophysical Research Letters, this new study: (Andrew Bolt)

 

Why I Am A Global Warming Skeptic

The debate over anthropogenic global warming—a theory propounded by the UN IPCC—is often portrayed as an argument between deniers and true believers. The deniers supposedly claim that there is no global warming, man made or otherwise, and that the whole theory is a plot by left-wing agitators and closet socialists bent on world domination. The true believers, conversely, accept every claim of pending future disaster uttered by scientists and activists alike. As with most controversies both extreme positions are wrong and the truth lies somewhere in-between. As a scientist, I have studied the evidence and find the case for imminent, dangerous, human caused global warming unconvincing—here is why I am an AGW skeptic. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)

 

Understanding past and future climate

The notion that scientists understand how changes in Earth's orbit affect climate well enough for estimating long-term natural climate trends that underlie any anthropogenic climate change is challenged by findings published this week. The new research was conducted by a team led by Professor Eelco Rohling of the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science hosted at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.

"Understanding how climate has responded to past change should help reveal how human activities may have affected, or will affect, Earth's climate. One approach for this is to study past interglacials, the warm periods between glacial periods within an ice age," said Rohling.

He continued: "Note that we have here focused on the long-term natural climate trends that are related to changes in Earth's orbit around the Sun. Our study is therefore relevant to the long-term climate future, and not so much for the next decades or century."

The team, which included scientists from the Universities of Tuebingen (Germany) and Bristol, compared the current warm interglacial period with one 400,000 years ago (marine isotope stage 11, or MIS-11).

Many aspects of the Earth-Sun orbital configuration during MIS-11 were similar to those of the current interglacial. For this reason, MIS-11 is often considered as a potential analogue for future climate development in the absence of human influence.

Previous studies had used the analogy to suggest that the current interglacial should have ended 2-2.5 thousand years ago. So why has it remained so warm?

According to the'anthropogenic hypothesis', long-term climate impacts of man's deforestation activities and early methane and carbon dioxide emissions have artificially held us in warm interglacial conditions, which have persisted since the end of the Pleistocene, about 11 400 years ago.

To address this issue, the researchers used a new high-resolution record of sea levels, which reflect ice volume. This record, which is continuous through both interglacials, is based on the 'Red Sea method' developed by Rohling.

Water passes between the Red Sea and the open ocean only through the shallow Strait of Bab-el-Mandab, which narrows as sea levels drop, reducing water exchange. Evaporation within the Red Sea increases its salinity, or saltiness, and changes the relative abundance of stable oxygen isotopes.

By analysing oxygen isotope ratios in tiny marine creatures called foraminiferans preserved in sediments that were deposited at the bottom of the Red Sea, the scientists reconstructed past sea levels, which were corroborated by comparison with the fossilised remains of coral reefs.

The researchers found that the current interglacial has indeed lasted some 2.0 ± .5 millennia longer than predicted by the currently dominant theory for the way in which orbital changes control the ice-age cycles. This theory is based on the intensity of solar radiation reaching the Earth at latitude 65 degrees North on 21 June, the northern hemisphere Summer solstice.

But the anomaly vanished when the researchers considered a rival theory, which looks at the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth the same latitude during the summer months. Under this theory, sea levels could remain high for another two thousand years or so, even without greenhouse warming.

"Future research should more precisely narrow down the influence of orbital changes on climate," said Rohling: "This is crucial for a better understanding of underlying natural climate trends over long, millennial timescales. And that is essential for a better understanding of any potential long-term impacts on climate due to man's activities." (National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (UK))

 

New paper: Interglacials, Milankovitch Cycles and Carbon Dioxide

The latest submission to arXiv:physics.ao-ph by Gerald E. Marsh

Summary:

It has been shown above that low altitude cloud cover closely follows cosmic ray flux; that the galactic cosmic ray flux has the periodicities of the glacial/interglacial cycles; that a decrease in galactic cosmic ray flux was coincident with Termination II [the warming that initiated the Eemian, the last interglacial] ; and that the most likely initiator for Termination II was a consequent decrease in Earth’s albedo.
The temperature of past interglacials was higher than today most likely as a consequence of a lower global albedo due to a decrease in galactic cosmic ray flux reaching the Earth’s atmosphere. In addition, the galactic cosmic ray intensity exhibits a 100 kyr periodicity over the last 200 kyr that is in phase with the glacial terminations of this period. Carbon dioxide appears to play a very limited role in setting interglacial temperature.

Download Paper Here (DMR)

 

The Story of Cap and Trade

A very insightful film on carbon trade, where the idea came from and what’s the problem with it by Annie Leonard. Not surprisingly a very controversial issue, too as a lot of money, power, and “hey, I am right” is at stake.

YouTube – The Story of Cap & Trade.

And a video reply by howtheworldworks

(Florian Kaefer)

 

Energy Myths versus Reality

by Tom Tanton (Guest Blogger)
February 5, 2010

In the face of a changing fiscal and political environment, Congress and various states are belatedly rethinking their far-flung  efforts to restructure and regulate the nation’s energy markets. The opportunity is to change course and base their actions on facts, not emotion–and slow down and even reverse governmental largesse. The global warming scare has been cut down to size, after all, and the problems of politically dependent energies are more evident than ever.

Too many legislators and interventionists cling to basic energy myths, however. Here are five major ones.

Myth: Foreign Oil Provides Most of Our Energy

According to the U.S. Department of Energy and the Energy Information Administration, oil represents less than 40% of our energy use. A full two-thirds of that oil comes from North America, primarily Canada, not the Middle East.

A related myth is that alternative energy sources will reduce the use of petroleum. Such sources may first reduce domestic production, but they will not appreciably affect production in unstable regions.

Renewable technologies are subject to import and price security concerns as well. And the equipment for 65% of the wind installations in the U.S. in the past five years have come from foreign sources, including China. Moreoever, rare earth metal ores such as lanthanum and neodymium are vital to electric car batteries and some renewable energy are concentrated in China, for example, and Beijing favors export restrictions.

Myth: Renewables Will Replace Conventional Energy Sources

A correlated and persistent myth is that increasing wind- and solar-generated electricity will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and thus boost our energy security. Less than 1% of our electricity is generated using petroleum, so any renewable generation will have no appreciable effect on petroleum demand. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

 

Our Wrong-Headed Approach to Utilizing Alternative Energy Sources

First, do the science to determine if it works. Then support it with public funds if necessary and not the other way around.

I just had an interesting correspondence with the editor of an energy publication. Here’s a story that should put it into perspective. Tell me if I’m crazy.

Let’s say some investors and developers step forward with a reportedly new type of commercial grade electrical power. They named it “Zephyr Integrated Power” (ZIP). Since these people are clever types, they spent a lot of time and money on the marketing aspect of ZIP. (They knew that this was necessary to be able to break into the system — and they want on the grid in a big way.)

So they tell us that ZIP is “free, clean, and green.” Sounds good!

Oh yes, for good measure they also add that implementing ZIP will create oodles of jobs.

So the basic question is this: exactly what do we do before we allow these people and their new product on the electric grid?

We wouldn’t be so gullible to just take their word for ZIP’s purported benefits, would we?

At the current time, the disturbing answer is yes, that is exactly what we do! (John Droz, Jr., PJM)

 

Corn and Coal: The Cornerstones of Obama’s Energy Policies

It’s hard to believe, but the Obama administration’s energy policies just keep getting further and further removed from reality. On Wednesday, the administration’s fantasies centered on corn and coal, with the EPA taking the lead on corn while the White House led the way on coal. [Read More] (Robert Bryce, Energy Tribune)

 

Controversial? No. Patently stupid? See:  End tax breaks for polluters to cut budget deficit, thinktank urges - Green Alliance says £12bn could be saved by ending support for high-carbon industries such as aviation and building fewer roads

Ministers could save £12bn of public spending over four years by clamping down on tax breaks and support for polluting oil exploration, cement, aluminium and transport, according to a report from green campaigners this week.

With all three major parties committed to cutting the projected £178bn budget deficit, and to a low-carbon economy, a report by the high-level Green Alliance thinktank argues that many spending cuts could achieve both ends. Perhaps the most controversial suggestion is to halve the £10bn national and regional roads spending budget. ( Juliette Jowit, The Guardian)

 

The Quiet Energy Revolution

How ironic that during the ‘drill, baby, drill’ demonstrations as gasoline prices spiked in 2007 and 2008, a silent revolution with natural gas was already underway that will make those concerns largely irrelevant. (Max Schulz, The American)

 

Realizing the Energy Potential of Methane Hydrate for the United States

Natural gas, composed mostly of methane, is the cleanest of all the fossil fuels, emitting 25-50% less carbon dioxide than either oil or coal for each unit of energy produced. In recent years, natural gas supplied approximately 20-25% of all energy consumed in the United States. Methane hydrate is a potentially enormous and as yet untapped source of methane. The Department of Energy's Methane Hydrate Research and Development Program has been tasked since 2000 to implement and coordinate a national methane hydrate research effort to stimulate the development of knowledge and technology necessary for commercial production of methane from methane hydrate in a safe and environmentally responsible way.

Realizing the Energy Potential of Methane Hydrate for the United States evaluates the program's research projects and management processes since its congressional re-authorization in 2005, and presents recommendations for its future research and development initiatives. (NAP)

 

‘Green’ Wind, ‘Smart’ Grid–A Thought Experiment and a Policy Proposal for the Environmental Left

by John Droz Jr. (Guest Blogger)
February 6, 2010

Suppose you began this morning by learning that some investors and developers had stepped forward with a reportedly new type of commercial grade electrical power called “Zephyr Integrated Power” (ZIP). Being clever, they are spending a LOT of time and money marketing ZIP, knowing that this is their chance to break into the grid in a BIG way.

Their message– ZIP is “FREE, CLEAN, AND GREEN”–sounds great! Oh yes, and for good measure, ZIP will create oodles of jobs.

So the basic question is this: exactly what do we do before we allow these people and their new product on the electric grid?

We wouldn’t be so gullible to just take their word for it, would we? Yet this is exactly what we are doing today!

And there is more: our politicians are so enamored with ZIP that they tell these promoters that we will not only allow them on the grid, we will FORCE utilities to use ZIP. (Hmmm. Wouldn’t utilities WANT to use ZIP if it was so great?) How are utilities going to be forced to use ZIP? Lobbyists have sold our politicians a clever tool called the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to do just that.

Yet there is more. Despite the supposed benefits (which a free market would obviously jump on without government involvement), our wise government is going to offer the ZIP promoters billions of dollars of taxpayer money and ratepayer guarantees to support their product.

Remember, all this is without independent proof that ZIP has any real benefits…

Sadly, this astounding state of affairs is how our currently lobbyist-driven system operates.

Policy Proposal for the Environmental Left

The Left looks to government to do good things for the environment. My Pollyanna vision is that complex technical matters should be solved by science. So here is my (government-involved) proposal (with apologies to the libertarian bloggers and readers of MasterResource). It would go something like this… [Read more →] (MasterResource)

 

Driving and the Built Environment: The Effects of Compact Development on Motorized Travel, Energy Use, and CO2 Emissions -- Special Report 298

TRB Special Report 298: Driving and the Built Environment: Effects of Compact Development on Motorized Travel, Energy Use, and CO2 Emissions examines the relationship between land development patterns and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in the United States to assess whether petroleum use, and by extension greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, could be reduced by changes in the design of development patterns. The report estimates the contributions that changes in residential and mixed-use development patterns and transit investments could make in reducing VMT by 2030 and 2050, and the impact this could have in meeting future transportation-related GHG reduction goals. (NAP)

 

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Tea partier shares 'single greatest threat to America'

Climate alarmism dubbed bigger danger to nation than terrorism, nuclear weapons (Chelsea Schilling, WorldNetDaily)

 

Swine flu still out there, officials caution

WASHINGTON - H1N1 swine flu is still circulating around the world and still killing people, although it is on the decline everywhere, global health officials said on Friday.

The H1N1 strain is the dominant form of influenza globally, but some seasonal strains are starting to emerge in China and Africa, the World Health Organization reported.

The United States remains one of the hardest hit countries, but many Americans seem unconcerned and most have rejected the vaccine, according to a poll by the Harvard School of Public Health released on Friday.

"Many people believe the outbreak is over and I think it is too soon for us to have that complacency," Dr. Anne Schuchat of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters in a telephone briefing. "This pandemic isn't over yet."

The CDC said nine more children had been reported killed by H1N1 last week. It estimates that as many as 80 million Americans have been infected with swine flu and about 11,000 people have died. (Reuters)

 

Second wave of swine flu to hit

EXPERTS predict a second wave of swine flu will hit Australia as early as the end of this month.

Figures obtained by The Sun-Herald show that just one-fifth of NSW adults have been immunised against H1N1.

Robert Booy, an infectious disease expert at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, said there was evidence a second wave was coming and it was possible that it could be worse than the first round last year.

He referred to the H1N1 pandemic in 1918, widely known as the Spanish flu. ‘‘That’s the last time we had one and that one was definitely worse the second round.’’

Professor Booy said children returning to school after going on holiday in the northern hemisphere could speed up the rate of infection. (SMH)

 

A reality check on autism and vaccines

Many worried and angry parents of an autistic child believe that vaccines may cause the disease. But it's pure myth - disproved by numerous studies and now a final slap from a British journal disowning a report that started the dangerous nonsense.

Will these parents accept reality - and allow their children to receive shots against a dozen or more illnesses? And will fringe groups that play to fears of autism give up their indefensible claims?

The answers can't come soon enough for public health experts. Vaccination rates, while generally high, have shown dips partly because parents are citing the notion of vaccine dangers in skipping shots for their children. 

Smallpox and polio have been virtually eradicated thanks to vaccines. But whooping cough, pertussis and measles - all but stamped out years ago - can reappear via unvaccinated patients.

A law that allows parents to opt out of school-required shots has raised the worry level. This so-called exemption rate statewide is 2 percent, but it was 6.3 percent in Marin County and 5.8 percent in Sonoma County in 2008, according to the state Department of Health Services. Vaccine "denialism" has become a public health issue. (San Francisco Chronicle)

 

Oh... Autism Findings Retracted

Twelve years ago, the British Medical Journal linked the measles-mumps-rubella vaccination to autism. Now the Journal says that the study was compromised due to researcher Dr. Andrew Wakefield's reputed unethical and "callous disregard" for the children used in the study.

As a result, the Journal has retracted its claims. But does this necessarily indicate that the results are wrong? ( Raven Clabough, New American)

The so-called 'study' was always the worst kind of scaremongering rubbish -- it should never have been published and all involved should have had their license to practice medicine revoked immediately and permanently.

 

The autism-vaccine lie that won't die - The media trumpeted an irresponsible study, ensuring that its nasty legacy thrives

This week, Dr. Andrew Wakefield's now infamous study linking the MMR vaccine to autism was finally retracted by the prestigious Lancet medical journal. The move came days after medical officials in the United Kingdom found the doctor guilty of multiple ethics violations. For doctors, this is a victory -- but a bittersweet one.

As a pediatrician, I grapple daily with what Wakefield wrought: parents who are twisted in knots -- to the point of tears -- about whether to immunize their child. In the 12 years since the publication of Wakefield's study, 10 of his fellow co-authors have denounced him, and an unremitting series of revelations have exposed just how corrupt his motives and methods were. Most important, multiple studies verified there is no link between the MMR (or any other) vaccine and autism. Meanwhile, infectious diseases once confined to medical history have broken out in our communities. To say the retraction is criminally overdue is an understatement. (Salon)

 

MMR Vaccine Study: A Lesson for Us All

I tried to avoid blogging about this topic, since I've spent 12 years dealing with it (and I'm sick of it!). But since it is the lead medical story of the week...

The esteemed British medical journal, The Lancet, retracted a little case report they published 12 years ago.. This is a pretty historic event in the world of medicine. But, do you care? If you are a parent who has spent any time wondering about vaccine safety, you should.

This "little case report" tried to link the combination MMR vaccine to autism and it was the shot (literally) heard around the vaccine world. And, when I refer to it as "little", I am not kidding. Just 12 patients were researched regarding bowel problems and a possible association to autism. The 13 researchers (yes, there were more researchers than patients being studied) inferred that these children developed both intestinal problems and autism from receiving the combination Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine. They did not prove a link at all.

But, that did not really matter to the media who took the story and ran with it. This was the esteemed journal, The Lancet, after all, and their acceptance of the paper for publication made its findings important, right? Wrong. (Ari Brown, Child Health 411)

 

Our Chemophobia Conundrum

The false idea that our bodies have become ‘toxic waste dumps’ is not just wrong but counterproductive.

Chemophobia is not a new phenomenon in our culture. Since the 1960s, much of the public has been afraid of exposure to chemicals. This is not surprising considering environmental disaster stories about toxic waste dumps or the history of chemicals such as vinyl chloride, aniline dyes, thalidomide, dioxin, and PCBs.

Exposure to toxic, or possibly toxic, chemicals has been drastically reduced over the past several decades through regulations and new ways of handling chemicals by industry. And yet the chemophobia epidemic has gained new momentum with recent media coverage of the “chemical body burden crisis” on websites, print articles, and TV specials (such as CNN’s “Planet in Peril”). The reality is that behind all of the media hype about chemicals in our bodies, there is little scientifically meaningful substance. In other words, it is not a crisis at all. ( Seymour Garte, The American)

 

China threatens world health by unleashing waves of superbugs

China's reckless use of antibiotics in the health system and agricultural production is unleashing an explosion of drug resistant superbugs that endanger global health, according to leading scientists. (TDT)

 

One Bowl = 2 Servings. F.D.A. May Fix That.

Seeking a new weapon in the fight against obesity, the Food and Drug Administration wants to encourage manufacturers to post vital nutritional information, including calorie counts, on the front of food packages.

The goal is to give people a jolt of reality before they reach for another handful of chips. But the urgency of the message could be muted by a longstanding problem: official serving sizes for many packaged foods are just too small. And that means the calorie counts that go with them are often misleading.

So to get ready for front-of-package nutrition labeling, the F.D.A. is now looking at bringing serving sizes for foods like chips, cookies, breakfast cereals and ice cream into line with how Americans really eat. Combined with more prominent labeling, the result could be a greater sense of public caution about unhealthy foods. (NYT)

Well, it'll be a bit more meaningful information, I guess. Whether it actually influences consumption is another matter entirely and I'm unimpressed by claims of "healthy and unhealthy" foods (unless they mean food that's really unwell, in which case I'd recommend against eating it).

 

Soda tax fizzles as support sours

The soft drink industry has worked to smother a proposal to tax sugared beverages, a plan advocates said would have reduced obesity and helped finance health care reform.

Only months ago, supporters of the soda tax saw it as an idea whose hour was near. The sheer magnitude of the medical cost of obesity added urgency to the issue: Being overweight is so widespread and so closely tied to diabetes, heart disease and other health problems that this generation of young people may be the first in the U.S. to live shorter lives than their parents.

But opponents questioned any link between sugary drinks and obesity, and expressed concern about a slippery slope of taxes on other products.

Proponents, meanwhile, thought a tax that drove down consumption while raising money for health care seemed like a natural with Democrats controlling Congress.

The White House has dismissed the idea, however, even after President Barack Obama had expressed interest last summer. A key congressional committee, though initially seeming receptive, ended up refusing to consider it. Several minority advocacy groups, including some committed to fighting obesity, lined up against the tax after years of receiving financial support from the industry.

First lady Michelle Obama, who consulted with fast-food and soft drink representatives on her new healthy eating initiative, scheduled for unveiling Tuesday, is expected to steer clear of taxes. (Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger, Tribune Newspapers)

 

Finally getting a bit of rational coverage: Quick summer sunbaths make for adequate vitamin D

NEW YORK - A few minutes a day of midday summer sun can raise most fair-skinned people's vitamin D levels to sufficient, but not optimal, levels, according to new research from the UK.

The skin's production of vitamin D upon exposure to ultraviolet B radiation in sunlight is the body's main source for the nutrient, which is scarce in most foods, Dr. Lesley E. Rhodes of Salford Royal NHS Foundation Hospital in Manchester and colleagues note in their report.

Vitamin D is required for healthy bones and muscles, the researchers add, and there's also evidence it may help reduce the risk of cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes and other diseases.

UK health authorities say "casual exposures to summer sunlight" will allow the body to produce adequate amounts of vitamin D. They also recommend limiting sun exposure beyond a brief amount of time.

To test whether such casual exposures would be enough, the researchers exposed 109 fair-skinned men and women to light equivalent to 13 minutes of midday summer sun three times a week for six weeks. Study participants wore shorts and T-shirts during their brief sun baths.

The study was done during the winter months, when people would be getting very little vitamin D from sunlight, to focus on the effects of the sun baths. All of the study participants had low vitamin D intakes, and none were taking vitamin D supplements.

Participants' average blood level of vitamin D rose from around 18 nanograms per milliliter to 28 nanograms per milliliter. Recent studies have suggested that 20 nanograms per milliliter and above is sufficient, while 32 nanograms per milliliter and above is "optimal."

Based on the results, the researchers predicted that with this amount of sun exposure, 90 percent of white adults in Manchester under the age of 65 would have sufficient vitamin D levels, while 26 percent would have optimal levels.

The findings don't apply to darker-skinned people, who need longer stretches of sun exposure because their skin color acts as a natural sunblock.

Depending on latitude, the average amount of sun exposure required for similar effects in North America would range from nine to 16 minutes, the researchers say.

"We propose that future public health messages could promote regular short exposures to midday summer sunlight, their duration limited to below the sunburn threshold," the researchers write. But people at high risk of skin cancer should avoid the sun, they add. "Oral supplements may be important in these individuals."

SOURCE: Journal of Investigative Dermatology, online January 14, 2010. (Reuters Health)

Bottom line for most people is: don't get burned; do get sun exposure -- it is really good for you, whatever your age.

 

Selling the Nation's Helium Reserve

Helium has long been the subject of public policy deliberation and management, largely because of its many strategic uses and its unusual source-it is a derived product of natural gas and its market has several anomalous characteristics. Shortly after sources of helium were discovered at the beginning of the last century, the U.S. government recognized helium's potential importance to the nation's interests and placed its production and availability under strict governmental control. In the 1960s, helium's strategic value in cold war efforts was reflected in policies that resulted in the accumulation of a large reserve of helium owned by the federal government. The latest manifestation of public policy is expressed in the Helium Privatization Act of 1996 (1996 12 Act), which directs that substantially all of the helium accumulated as a result of those earlier policies be sold off by 2015 at prices sufficient to repay the federal government for its outlays associated with the helium program.

The present volume assesses whether the interests of the United States have been well served by the 1996 Act and, in particular, whether selling off the helium reserve has had any adverse effect on U.S. scientific, technical, biomedical, and national security users of helium. (NAP)

 

Open up! It’s the Green Police

The carbon police will soon be knocking down your door:

ALL Australian homes will soon have to undergo a mandatory energy-efficiency assessment costing up to $1500 per property.

The assessment has to be done before any property can be sold or rented under new laws to tackle carbon emissions.

Didn’t Kevin Rudd once claim his great global warming policies would cost you only a dollar or two a week?

What’s the betting this scheme will prove every bit the rip-off disaster that this similar one of Rudd’s is now:

It was pitched as yet another federal government plan to help Australians tackle climate change - a free energy assessment for hundreds of thousands of homes and “green loans” for those who wanted them. Not only would it boost household energy efficiency, it would create jobs in the process.

But barely six months since its launch, the $175 million Green Loans program has become just the latest government green scheme to descend into farce, hot on the heels of the solar panel and insulation rebates.Thousands of people could be unemployed and thousands of dollars out of pocket after paying to be trained to work under a scheme that is likely to end more than two years early.

UPDATE

Queensland already has a similarly intrusive and largely useless law in place. Before you sell your house, you now have to fill in this form. Read it, and ask how migrants and the elderly would even understand the damn thing, let alone be able to afford for the check and the changes demanded. Example:

E12 No air-conditioning or
fixed evaporative air-conditioner or
___ out of ___ air-conditioners are energy efficient
(minimum 2.9 Energy Efficiency Ratio [EER])

(Andrew Bolt)

 

Long-term economic harm from gorebull warbling: Top End food bowl ruled out by Rudd government taskforce

NORTHERN Australia will never become an important food bowl to replace the drought-stricken Murray-Darling, despite massive irrigation plans and a billion litres of rain a year, a Rudd government taskforce has concluded.

The expert panel, comprising the Northern Australian Land and Water Taskforce, will today release a landmark report into economic opportunities for the northern parts of Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia that places new and strict limits on the region's potential for agricultural production.

There is some good news amid the gloomy outlook for Top End food production, with the report predicting that northern Australia's billion-dollar beef industry - in which cattle live on native grasses - will more than double production by 2030.

Committee member Stuart Blanch said yesterday: "Northern Australia can never be a food bowl for Southeast Asia or anywhere else because we just don't have enough water. But we can be world's best-practice environment managers and beef producers; there are thousands of indigenous jobs to be created."

Referring to a water study by the CSIRO, the taskforce concludes the growth of agricultural production in the north will be limited, despite rainfall of up to 2m a year in some areas. By 2030, there will be less water available in the north than there was in 2000, the taskforce predicts. (The Australian)

Not very imaginative, except the part about how little rain the region receives -- "a billion liters of rain" per square kilometer could be true if the region received a mere meter of annual rainfall (much of it receives far more) but there's a million square kilometers of irrigation viable farmland available, so that's one million, million cubic meters of rainfall and each meter cubed is 1,000 liters but what's a few orders of magnitude when you are government zealots?

Then there's imagined water shortage in an allegedly warmer world (weird hypothesis given that catastrophic enhanced greenhouse actually relies on dramatic water cycle enhancement). Other regions of Australia solved the problem of water seasonality on flood plains by the simple implementation of ring tanks and pumping to elevated impoundment.

What a farce. Andrew Bolt has more:

 

Have green bans killed the dream of a green North?

Has green faith destroyed a marvellous chance to grow Australia?

NORTHERN Australia will never become an important food bowl to replace the drought-stricken Murray-Darling, despite massive irrigation plans and a billion litres of rain a year, a Rudd government taskforce has concluded. The expert panel, comprising the Northern Australian Land and Water Taskforce, will today release a landmark report into economic opportunities for the northern parts of Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia that places new and strict limits on the region’s potential for agricultural production.

On the face of it, it seems strange that the hot and often wet north is ruled out for intensive agriculture, when other nations at the same latitude seem to be able to manage it.

But suspicion grows that what’s really holding back agriculture in the far North is not the dry season, but green philosophy - especially that advanced by the warmist CSIRO - when I read this:

Referring to a water study by the CSIRO, the taskforce concludes the growth of agricultural production in the north will be limited, despite rainfall of up to 2m a year in some areas. By 2030, there will be less water available in the north than there was in 2000, the taskforce predicts.

So already the task force is accepting the global warming predictions of the CSIRO, relying on regional climate models which studies have found worthless.

But it gets worse:

Though the north receives about a billion litres of rain a year, equivalent to eight-and-a-half times the annual runoff in the Murray-Darling Basin or 2000 times the capacity of Sydney Harbour, about 20 per cent of it enters the rivers and streams and about 15 per cent recharges groundwater resources. The remaining 65 per cent enters the soil and is absorbed by plants.

“Despite these huge volumes of water, the north can be described as being water-limited,” the report states. The taskforce says this paradox arises because there is almost no rain for the remaining six months.

Easy fixed. So build a dam, right? But no:

The CSIRO water study, presented to the taskforce last year, found there was not enough water to irrigate large swaths of land in the north without doing major damage to the rivers and the surrounding environment. The report rules out more dams on environmental grounds...

Rivers before people. We’ve been there before, down in water-restricted Melbourne. Queenslanders, too.

The CSIRO also says dams in that area will be hard to build - but where there’s no will there’s always no way.

UPDATE

The membership of this taskforce strongly suggests it has indeed a green, anti-development agenda, and the CSIRO, too. Yes, there are a few presumably pro-business representatives, but most of the 14 are either from Aboriginal land rights and “development” groups, or have ties to green and pro-warming bodies. Examples:

Dr Stuart Blanch is the Coordinator of the Environment Centre of the Northern Territory (and)...was formerly the Manager of Northern Landscapes for the World Wildlife Fund Australia and previously worked on national water policy and restoring the Murray-Darling Basin with the Inland Rivers Network and Australian Conservation Foundation.

Dr Rosemary Hill is the Vice-President of the Australian Conservation Foundation and a Senior Scientist at CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems. Dr Hill has been an active conservationist for 25 years …

Dr Andrew Johnson is Group Executive - Environment at the CSIRO and ...is also a member of various advisory Boards of organisations responsible for environmental management in Australia. Previously Dr Johnson ... (was) Chief CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems Division.

(Warmist campaigner) Professor Bob Wasson ... was previously Director of the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies in the Institute of Advance Studies at the Australian National University…

UPDATE 2

It gets worse. The CSIRO has persuaded the taskforce to trust its global warming models more than the rain gauges outside its Darwin office.

Yes, the CSIRO admit it’s actually been raining more heavily in this past decade of alleged warming:

In recent years (1996 to 2007), rainfall intensity (rainfall per rainy day) has increased slightly across the north compared to the past (1930 to 2007)....

But, honest, the models insist warming must instead make things drier:

The future will be warmer; rainfall may be more intense; some areas may receive slightly less rainfall. The near future (around 2030) is expected to be warmer, with less rainfall than in recent years (1996 to 2007) but about the same as in the historical past (1930 to 2007). As a result, it should be drier than recent years.

And here’s one reason why the CSIRO can’t find rivers to dam:

Seventeen rivers (six in the Northern North-East Coast Drainage Division and 11 in the Gulf of Carpentaria drainage division) are either declared, proposed or potential wild rivers. This imposes management rules that constrain future development on, or near, these rivers.

Or: there are no rivers to dam because we’ll soon slap green bans on the ones that would be perfect. Again, we know this game in Victoria, where the Labor Government turned a dam reservation into a national park - and then declared the river a “wild river”, too, just to make sure no dam would be built on the best site in the state.

UPDATE 3

Reader Charles is the first of several readers to point out an error worse than the kind that had the media pillory Barnaby Joyce:

Even the most basic numbers in this are hugely wrong. “One billion litres per year”??? The actual amount is more than ONE THOUSAND TRILLION litres (one metre of rain over one million square kilometres). Wrong by a factor of one million or more, which I think is extreme even by the standards of environmental (so-called) reportage in this country.

UPDATE 4

Dissent among the taskforce members. The National Farmers Federation emails:

NFF President David Crombie, who is a member of the Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce, is in Canberra today and keen to comment on the release of the report. He has a very positive view of agriculture’s expansion in northern Australia. The report takes a cautious approach due to a lack of research. However, the NFF believes that just underscores the need for more research so the potential in the north can be unlocked.

UPDATE 5

Stuart Blanch makes the green agenda of his taskforce explicit:

One task force member, NT Environment Centre coordinator Dr Stuart Blanch, thinks even 60,000 hectares (of agriculture in the North) is too much....

“I think their estimates of 40,000 to 60,000 [hectares] of more irrigation are way too high and I don’t think locals want it in the north, nor do I think there is enough water for that amount of irrigation without doing major damage to our tourism, our Indigenous culture, our fishing and our river health."…

Blanch says he is disappointed the taskforce’s report was not unequivocal in banning the construction of dams.

“I don’t think anyone on a task force really wants to see our great rivers like the Daly or the Fitzroy Dam [dammed], but I do regret that we were not able to get stronger more explicit language in the report saying there should be no dams,” he said.

(Andrew Bolt)

 

Forests Flourish On Human CO2

Forests and their soils are one of our planet's major sinks of biologically active carbon and contain the majority of Earth’s terrestrial carbon stock. Some climate change alarmists have said that the world's forest are in danger from the effects of climate change. Recent studies have shown increases in plant growth across many forest types. Now, a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that the increase in forest biomass is due to rising CO₂ levels and warmer weather—in other words, trees love global warming whether human caused or natural.

That there has been a resurgence in forest growth over the past century in North America, Europe and parts of Asia has been widely reported but the source of this growth spurt has remained uncertain. For example, growth could be caused by normal recovery from unknown disturbances. Without knowing the history of a forest, it is impossible to clearly know why the treas are growing faster. Using a unique dataset of tree biomass collected over the past 22 years, collected from 55 temperate forest plots with known land-use histories, researchers found that recent biomass accumulation greatly exceeded the expected growth caused by natural recovery. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)

 

Desperately seeking relevance: Loss Of Species Hits Economy; New U.N. Goals Needed

OSLO - Losses of animal and plant species are an increasing economic threat and the world needs new goals for protecting nature after failing to achieve a 2010 U.N. target of slowing extinctions, experts said Friday.

Losses of biodiversity "have increasingly dangerous consequences for human well-being, even survival for some societies," according to a summary of a 90-nation U.N. backed conference in Norway from February 1-5.

The United Nations says that the world is facing the worst extinction crisis since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago, driven by a rising human population and spinoffs such as pollution, expanding cities and global warming. (Reuters)

Gorebull warbling is imploding: what are they going to terrorize the populace with now?

 

USDA ends livestock tracking program

Washington, D.C. - The Obama administration is killing a national livestock tracking program that never got off the ground amid widespread complaints by farmers and ranchers.

Instead, all cattle, hogs and poultry that cross state lines sometime during their life - which includes much of Iowa's hog production and more than a million beef cattle yearly - would be required to participate in some type of state tracking program.

Livestock that spend their entire lives in a single state, even if their meat is distributed elsewhere, would be exempt, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Friday that after holding a series of public hearings on the issue, it was "apparent that a new strategy for animal disease traceability is needed." (Des Moines Register)

 

The Elitism and Racism of “Local Food” and the Edible Schoolyard

“Eat local” is the latest intellectual fad on the Left Coast. These “locavores,” as adherents like to call themselves, want you to eat only food grown near where you live — say, within 100 miles of your home. The goal, in theory, is to foster “sustainable agriculture,” to lower the carbon footprint of your food (which generally travels thousands of miles from farm to kitchen table), and consequently get that warm-and-fuzzy back-to-the-earth type feeling.

Oh, did I mention that the locavore movement is most popular in California?

This little detail is significant because California is just about the only state in the entire union that has the climate and the soil to grow such a wide variety of produce that it could even theoretically support its current population with “locally grown” food. (PJM)

 

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