Recent Posts


Southern Ocean back in business as a carbon sink (models were wrong)

The Southern Ocean absorbs 40% of the global oceanic uptake in CO2. For most of the last ten years researchers thought it was weaker, or at “saturation” point and not able to absorb more CO2. Instead, it looks like it has been absorbing more again and by the year 2010 was back up to full power. This means there was a lot more natural variation than scientists (and their models) thought.The GCM’s are meant to be able to predict the oceans.

Back in 2007, New Scientist broadcast that the slowdown has “far reaching implications”, things were worse than the IPCC’s projections. Things were 20 years ahead of the IPCC’s schedule and it was “scary”. Instead the IPCC was 20 years behind real life, and the models were as bad as the skeptic projected. Will New Scientist tell the world?

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Your air conditioner is causing Syrians to emigrate

Your air conditioner is causing people to emigrate — possibly because they want one too. But other researchers see the chain like this: Air conditioners, cars and heaters increase global CO2 emissions by 4%, which makes no difference to the Global Drought Severity Index in the last 60 years, nor to global temperatures in the last 18 years, but may possibly, maybe, have made one drought a bit drier (while making others a bit wetter). People living in a country where other people want to burn them alive, crucify them and cut their heads off, decide that they can live with the medieval barbarity, but not with the water shortage. Meanwhile other unrelated people in other countries get urges to throw away passports and join in the rush.

Oddly, the countries people most want to get to are the ones that produce the most CO2.

Time Magazine

Even as Europe wrestles over how to absorb the migrant tide, experts warn that the flood is likely to get worse as climate change becomes a driving factor.

More than 10,000 migrants and refugees traveled to Western Europe via Hungary over the weekend, fleeing conflict-ravaged and impoverished homelands in the […]

Flashback: IPCC official admits UN climate meetings redistribute wealth in one of the “largest economic conferences since WWII”

Time to revisit the revealing quote from Ottmar Edenhoffer, IPCC leader in November 2010. He candidly said that climate policy was about redistributing wealth and has almost nothing to do with the environment. He also admitted countries who don’t sign up will be better off (so much for all the talk about creating green jobs). To give some sense of the scale of wealth transfer he described the up and coming UNFCCC Cancun meeting as “not a climate conference” but “one of the largest economic conferences since WWII”.

In 2010, ten thousand people went to Cancun. On November 30th, 50,000 people are expected to attend Paris COP21.

h/t to Egor the one. Image assembled by Cyrus Manz.

h/t to Egor the one. The creator: Cyrus Manz.

Ottmar Edenhofer is co-chair of the IPCC Working Group III. He did this interview in German in the lead up to Cancun, 2010 and GWPF translated it.

“Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. […]

Oxfam running climate propaganda into classrooms

Oxfam have produced a political program that reaches into Australian, UK, and New Zealand schools under the guise of “climate science”. There are petitions for children to send to the PM. Law abiding corporations are called “polluting vested interests”. Kids are now advising the government on energy policy and economic direction, and NGOs, which are partly funded by Big-Government, are effectively telling kids to vote for Big-Government. Anyone spot the conflict of interest?

Tony Thomas has been reading up on Oxfam Australia, and lays out their most “activist” messages below. According to Oxfam, it reaches some 100,000 children in Australian schools. In the UK over 2,000 schools in England and 550 in Scotland are part of the “Global Learning Program” and English schools get “up to £500 of e-credits” which schools can use to pay for CPD”. CPD for those of us non-UK types is “Continuing Professional Development”. Perhaps the English readers can tell us a bit more, but it sounds like Oxfam and Big-Gov-UK are working hand-in-hand.

Oxfam has a “whole school approach” which means in-school and after-school activities, as well as teacher training and curriculum development. It’s “holistic”, which means it […]

The new Emma Thompson (BBC approved) apocalyptic global temperature trend

The best of BBC science reporting. Actress cum climate scientist, Emma Thompson, predicts that Arctic drilling will cause 4 degrees of global temperature rise by 2030, 15 years hence. The BBC reporter, Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis, trained with the best of BBC science and journalism, lets it pass.

Obviously, we’ve reached a tipping point — in journalistic standards. If a Nobel Prize winning physicist said that “warming may be natural”, BBC journalists are trained to point out he is not a climate scientist. But if an actress predicts Armageddon, the nation needs to know.

Perhaps Arctic drilling will unleash global magma?

165 years of global warming is about to hit escape velocity

At least one climate scientist is not going to let nonsense be broadcast without protest. Where are the others?

David Rose, Daily Mail

One of Britain’s top climate scientists has launched a blistering attack on actress Emma Thompson and the BBC, accusing them of ‘scaremongering’ over the speed of global warming – and risking a worsening of the refugee crisis. Richard Betts, head of climate impacts research at the Met Office and a professor at Exeter University, launched his attack on Twitter about […]

Headlines contradictory. Pressure intense. Meetings in Bonn, NY, Lima. It’s Paris Paris Paris

The agenda is relentless

Look at the list of meetings being held (below) — last week, officials were in Bonn, “clarifying the options”, and they have another five-day session in October. On top of that ministers from 60 nations will meet for “this Sunday and Monday”. On Sept 27 a luncheon in New York has been added onto the UN General Assembly (is that the emergency meeting Ban Ki Moon called last week, or something else as well?). After that foreign ministers are meeting in Lima. This is global wheeling and dealing with big power and money at stake. (If only the UN cared as much about poverty and disease, imagine what they could do?).

The global headlines are a perfect PR mix of contradiction

This weekend in the media the road to Paris is described both as stalled at a frustrating “snails pace” and with “hints of progress“. It’s a stalemate, which also is “starting to take shape“. The UN bureaucrats would be happy with that. If headlines were too confident everyone relaxes, gets bored and moves on, and if headlines are dire, everyone gives up. The name of the PR game is to keep the spectators focused. It […]

Mapping hot deep columns of molten rock in the top 3000km thick layer

One for the geologists. It took twenty years, so this was the slowest “CT” scan ever done. They used seismic waves from Earthquakes and “numerical simulations” (and we know what they are). But possibly these models are not worthless. Apparently these blobs of hot rock under the Pacific and Africa are 5,000 km across, and may have been there for 250 million years. In any case, the full press release is below. There’s no mention of heat that might be coming up from this big ball of magma and how that might influence ocean currents, or whether it even changes on a timescale that matters (Hey we have one “CT” scan. We can’t get a trend from that. I just wonder… — Jo

..

CT scan of Earth links deep mantle plumes with volcanic hotspots

[Science Daily] Scans prove that plumes of hot rock anchored at core-mantle boundary rise to form island chains

University of California, Berkeley, seismologists have produced for the first time a sharp, three-dimensional scan of Earth’s interior that conclusively connects plumes of hot rock rising through the mantle with surface hotspots that generate volcanic island chains like Hawaii, Samoa and Iceland.

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Weekend Unthreaded

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News: 2.6 trillion lost trees found — whole world owes carbon credits to whole world

Yale scientist’s big new advance is to find the 2,600 billion trees humankind had not known about. Before now, 82% of the Earth’s trees were not counted, unknown, missing. This increases the tally of known trees by 7.5-fold. Phew. They reckon there are now 3.04 trillion trees, or roughly 422 trees per person.

They also estimate that humans have deforested exactly 46% of the trees on the planet in the last 12,000 years. (How fortunate that tree density estimates and satellite records are still available from 10,000 BC.) Presumably, the human deforestation factor is around 46% plus or minus 100%. Pick a number. Spin the wheel.

The idea was dumb enough to be produced by Yale and published in Nature.

Seeing the forest and the trees, all three trillion of them

A new Yale-led study estimates that there are more than 3 trillion trees on Earth, about seven and a half times more than some previous estimates. But the total number of trees has plummeted by roughly 46 percent since the start of human civilization, the study estimates.

Using a combination of satellite imagery, forest inventories, and supercomputer technologies, the international team of researchers […]

The David Suzuki school of irrational thought on the climate – if only he knew what science was?

“What data?” David Suzuki on Q&A 2013

It’s a science debate, and Suzuki pops up again, as he does periodically, with innuendo, namecalling and feets of logic. (He’s reasoning with both feet.) He’s not even offering well researched ad hom attacks. They’re not only irrelevant and unscientific, they’re wrong too.

On June 18, Suzuki told us that irrational attacks diminished the debate. On Sept 1, Suzuki is firing fallacies, no data, no research, no reasoning.

David Suzuki, National Observer: Deniers are all over the map; climate realists all over the world

He laments that political leaders are not gullibly swept away (as he is) by baseless rumours, ad hominem attacks and articles in The Guardian. I can’t think why myself, but Suzuki explains, with his science guru hat on, that there is an”enormous” amount of fossil fuel funding, which is also secretive and unrevealed. I guess he’s putting his psychic powers to the test. Who needs evidence or sources anymore?

Suzuki really unleashes his full fantasy ad hom. Fossil fuels are funding practically every player in the US, UK and Canada: Heartland, GWPF, ICSC. Even the unfunded, volunteer run, Watts Up is an “industry funded website” – I bet […]

An emergency meeting for 40 world leaders to do climate deals? The real “Paris” negotiation?

Give us our junkets, and forgive us our flights. We’re here to save the world.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon just announced plans to invite 40 world leaders to a “closed shop” climate meeting in just four weeks time. How often does that happen?

UN summons leaders to closed-door climate change meeting Financial Review

Frustrated by slow progress in global climate talks, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to invite around 40 world leaders including President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to a closed- door meeting next month.

The meeting will take place in New York on September 27, a day ahead of the UN general assembly, said three people with knowledge of the matter. Ban also plans to invite French President Francois Hollande, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, as well as Chinese leaders, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because they’re not authorised to speak to the media.

The bonanza of money and power on offer in Paris is so large that nothing will be left to chance. The industry is worth $1.5 trillion a year already. Laws about energy use cut across every […]

Shaking the foundation of medical research: Half of failed peer reviewed papers “spun” as success

Was that a half-truth or a lie by omission? Trick question…

Malcolm Kendrick reports on a new study that he says should “shake the foundations of medical research” but laments that it almost certainly won’t.

In the year 2000, the US National Heart Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) insisted that all researchers register their “primary aim” and then later their “primary outcome” with clinicaltrials.gov. This one small change in the way medical studies were reported transformed the “success” rates in peer reviewed papers. Before 2000, fully 57% of studies found the success they said they were testing for, but after that, their success rate fell to to a dismal 8%. When people didn’t have to declare what their aim was, they could fish through their results to find some positive, perhaps tangential association, and report that as if they had been investigating that effect all along. The negative results became invisible. If a diet, drug or treatment showed no benefit at all, or turned up bad results, nobody had to know.

The world of peer reviewed climate research: like a universe of dark matter

It’s not like climate science suffers from unpublished “negative results” — no, it’s more […]

Renewables subsidies are slashed in UK. Solar, Wind, Hydro industry “shocked”

Renewable power is always as “cheap as coal” except when subsidies are slashed, then it’s “the end”, “terrible”, and “fragile”.

If only renewable power could actually compete with coal.

Greenclick tells us the UK solar industry is “reeling” in “shock and anger” as the UK conservative government cuts the renewables feed-in tariff there by as much as 86%. Even for the hydro industry (about the only renewable industry that can survive on its own), the news could spell the “end”.

Joss Blamire, Senior Policy Manager at Scottish Renewables, which represents more than 300 green energy businesses, said: “The proposals in the Comprehensive Feed-in Tariff Review are, quite simply, terrible news for homeowners, businesses, communities and those local authorities which have plans in place to develop renewable energy schemes.

“The levels of reduction in support announced today will severely curtail development of small-scale onshore wind and solar projects and endanger jobs and investments across the country.

“The cuts could also spell the end for much of the hydro industry, which has enjoyed a recent renaissance but relies more heavily on Government support because of the length of time taken to develop projects and the sector’s […]

Former NOAA Meteorologist tells of years of censorship to hide the effect of “natural cycles”

Pierre Gosselin has a great post: Former NOAA Meteorologist Says Employees “Were Cautioned Not To Talk About Natural Cycles”.

David Dilley, NOAA Meteorologist, tells how for 15 years work on man-made climate change was pushed while work on natural cycles was actively suppressed. Grants connecting climate change to a man-made crisis were advertised, while the word went around to heads of departments that even mentioning natural cycles would threaten the flow of government funds. Speeches about natural cycles were mysteriously canceled at the last minute with bizarre excuses.

But jobs are on the line, so only retired workers can really speak, and no one can name names.

We can corroborate David Dilley’s remarks. Indeed, he is probably just one of many skeptics hidden in the ranks of NOAA. Way back in 2007, David Evans got an email from a different insider within NOAA, around the time he started talking publicly about the missing hotspot. The insider said, remarkably: “As a Meteorologist working for [snip, name of division] it has been clear to me, as well as every single other scientist I know at NOAA, that man can not be the primary cause of global warming and that the predictions of […]

International bullying, unfair “targeted” punishment suggested by The Royal Society over climate change

How low is too low? Do we want to live in a world where groups of countries gang up on non-compliant countries by randomly picking a target nation, and punishing it until it gives in? Perhaps you’d prefer a world where voters or evidence matter and where our leaders persuade each other with rational argument? Me too.

“Divide and conquer” is as old as witchdoctors

Warwick University and the Royal Society published game theory “research” which argues that it might be useful to (unethically) single out a few countries randomly that are not performing “up to climate expectations”. The researchers admit that the whole approach depends on the players being irrational.

“In the mathematical model,” said Dr Johnson, “the mechanism works best if the players are somewhat irrational. It seems a reasonable assumption that this might apply to the international community.”

No matter how they dress it up, it’s just bullying by one bunch of countries to pick on one single other one until it acquiesces. Then the next wave begins with different targets, gradually picking off one state at a time. It fails if the non-compliant states get coordinated and treat any unfair attack on one member […]

Another carbon credit fraud – $2b. The faked fixed unfree market feeds crooks and makes no difference to emissions.

More news of how the faked fixed unfree market in carbon credits feeds the people who are inclined to cheat, and may have actually increased emissions by 600 million tonnes as well (not that that matters). Around $2 billion dollars may have been wasted, but it’s worse than wasted; the money does not just evaporate. Rewarding cheating takes money from honest players of society and feeds the corrupt sector. Free markets are a powerful tool, but good tools can be used in stupid ways. And so it is with a market trying to sell units of an atmospheric-absence-of-a-gas that no one really wants or has a use for.

The only people calling for a free market in carbon are the people who don’t know what a free market is. Sometimes a free market is just a dumb idea — like when trying to run a global market in a ubiquitous gas molecule that is intrinsic to life on Earth and oceanic chemistry. Worse, we think we might do it in countries with weak law and order, and high rates of corruption. Even sillier than that, we’re trying to sell units that depend on intentions — was that a sincere new […]

#TalkAboutIt: Climate change sceptics versus the scientists (correcting ABC mistakes, strawmen, and misleading lines)

#TalkAboutIt: Climate change sceptics versus the scientists, By Clara Tran and staff

Busy slaying strawmen instead of real debate?

What a facade. The ABC says its skeptics versus “the scientists” except there are no skeptics present. In typical Newspeak the ABC says “#TalkAboutIt”, but it’s a conversation with themselves. They invent “DorothyDixer” strawman questions for their own team to bravely kill.

If the ABC really wanted their listeners to discuss skeptical views, they would invite skeptics to make them — but interviews are a thing of the past (back in the days when the ABC was an institution of repute). The fake debate is the only kind that professors like Matthew England can win.

This is why the ABC fails so dismally to dint skeptical numbers in Australia. If they want to convince skeptics of their point of view then they have to deal with actual skeptical arguments, but they are too afraid to air them. Consequently they sideline themselves out of the national debate, relegated to the propaganda wars.

Correcting the ABC:

Skeptical Scientists versus The Unskeptical

The ABC offers arguments allegedly made by climate skeptics, all of them minor and of little consequence (short version first, more […]

George Soros buys bargain coal shares with big coal reserves

George Soros has poured money into promoting “climate change” politics through his foundations, working to demonize coal, but the man himself is now buying coal stocks. Analysts are asking if he is buying in to shut them down, or to pick up a bargain and take the profits. (There must also be options where he gets control to turn them into mixed energy renewables/coal plays.) But in the end he’s 85, and worth $24 billion. He has an 11 billion dollar stock portfolio and he’s spent less than $3 million on coal. It’s hard to believe the profits would be worth the bad press. Though Steve Milloy points out those companies own rights to 11 billion tons of coal reserves.

Coal used to supply 50% of US electricity, now it’s 40%. Peabody Energy Shares used to trade at $90, but now trade at $1.

Fox News

Soros, whose Climate Policy Initiative think tank recently urged the world to stop using fossil fuels in general and coal in particular, snapped up 1 million shares of Peabody Energy and half a million shares of Arch Coal, giving him significant stakes in what’s left of the U.S. coal industry.

9 out […]

Hottest July in 4000 years? Not even the hottest July since *2014* according to satellites

NOAA has a press release out being picked up around the world. For example, the DailyMail, UK, is saying July was the hottest month since records began in 1880 as heatwaves swept the Earth’s countries and oceans. Other silly tabloids have headlines about this being the hottest July in 4,000 years, as if we have even the remotest idea what the average July global temperature was in the days of Plato.

Better data shows July this year is the hottest since way back in… 2014. It’s not 4,000 years, not 135 years, it’s the hottest July since the last one. We only have 30 years of good climate data: the satellites tell us the pause is real, and last month’s summer temperatures is not a record anything. According to the UAH and RSS global satellites, lower troposphere averages for July 2014 were 0.30C and 0.34C, compared to July 2015 of 0.28C. Even, June 2015 was hotter (UAH, 0.35C; RSS, 0.39C). July 2015 is not even the hottest month since June.

But some journalists will believe anything. Anthony Sharman, sports journalist, News.com, Australia, thinks we know the global temperature of the July that Jesus was born. Who’s a gullible journalist then? […]

Carbon accounting error reduces China’s emissions tally by twice Australia’s entire output

Welcome to carbon accounting games. Which other global “free” market is based on a ubiquitous molecule made by life on Earth, and produced in massive quantities in places where it’s almost impossible to even measure accurately? The largest non-human and human players don’t play (they don’t pay). Massive quantities go missing from the accounts, while other countries are expected to turn their economies upside down to cut one tenth as much.

Shu Liu et al estimate China’s output of CO2 was 14% lower in 2013 than other estimates.[1] They estimate China emitted 2.5 Gt of “carbon” in 2013. Australia produces around 0.1 Gt a year.* So China’s “reduction” was 2 – 3 times what Australia produces every year. There is no other market in the world where so much hard money changes hands based on soft guesses about a product that no one wants, and is hard to even measure.

Frank Jotzo, ANU, reveals how irrelevant actual CO2 emissions are — it’s “good news” that doesn’t make any difference:

Frank Jotzo, the director of the Center for Climate Economics and Policy at the Australian National University in Canberra, said it was “good news” that Chinese coal was yielding […]