« November 2007 | Main | January 2008 »

December 31, 2007

What Animal is This?

As 2007 draws to a conclusion, I make my final entry for the year, in the form of a challenge: Can anyone identify this critter?

I photographed it on the distinctive new foliage of a juvenile mahogany (Dysoxylum sp.) and it is about 2 mm long (cerci excluded).

For 2008, I wish our entire readership all the very best.

Posted by neil at 07:58 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

President of the Japan Whaling Association responds to Australia

On December 19, 2007 Australia's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Honourable Stephen Smith, issued a joint media release with the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Mr Peter Garrett.

The release states that "Australia strongly believes that there is no credible scientific justification for the hunting of whales and is opposed to all commercial and 'scientific' whaling" and notes that "the Australian Government will step up efforts to end this senseless and brutal practice, using a range of diplomatic, legal and monitoring and surveillance initiatives" that "the Government is giving serious consideration to a range of options for international legal action against Japan" and that "the Government will develop its own proposal for improving and modernising the IWC, which will include closing the loophole that allows for scientific whaling."

In the proper context of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) and the International Whaling Commission (IWC) these comments of the Government of Australia are provocative and absurd. The fact is that the ICRW is about properly managing the whaling industry by regulating catch quotas at levels so that whale stocks will not be diminished. The Convention is not about protecting all whales irrespective of their abundance.

Further, the fact that Australia was a whaling country when it agreed to and signed the ICRW and subsequently changed its position to an anti-whaling position following the closure of its industry in the 1970s does not change the Convention. If Australia can no longer agree to the Convention it should withdraw rather than subvert its purpose. Smith and Garrett can ignore these facts but they cannot change them.

Australia together with other anti-whaling members of the IWC have sacrificed the principles of science-based management and sustainable use that are the world standard (and supported by Australia in other international fora and for the management of their own resources) as a political expediency to satisfy the interests of non-government organizations.

This has made the IWC dysfunctional and threatens much-needed international cooperation required to properly manage and conserve all marine resources.

It is of considerable concern therefore that Australia's stepped up efforts to end commercial and scientific whaling will undermine the work of the current IWC Chairman (William Hogarth of the United States) to resolve the dysfunctional nature of the organization and return it to its proper functioning as a resource management organization.

Japan's whaling is not "senseless and brutal". Neither is it illegal in any way. The most recent review of Japan's research whaling program in the Antarctic by the IWC's Scientific Committee in December 2006 concluded that "the dataset provides a valuable resource to allow investigation of some aspects of the role of whales within the marine ecosystem and that this has the potential to make an important contribution to the Scientific Committee's work in this regard as well as the work of other relevant bodies such as the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources". The Scientific Committee also agreed to its earlier (1997) conclusion that the results from the research program "have the potential to improve management of minke whales in the Southern Hemisphere".

The suggestion of Smith and Garrett that somehow Japan's whale research program is a violation of international law and that Japan is not acting in accordance with its international treaty obligations is totally without foundation. Article VIII of the ICRW unequivocally provides the right of members of the IWC to kill whales for research purposes and further states that "the killing, taking, and treating of whales in accordance with the provisions of this Article shall be exempt from the operation of this Convention." Conversely, the fact that the Government of Australia has publicly stated that it no longer accepts the terms of the ICRW and yet continues to participate in the IWC is a self indictment that it has failed to meet its legal obligation to interpret and implement its treaty obligations in good faith.

Finally, Smith and Garrett note that "Australia values its extensive and mutually beneficial relationship with Japan" and that "as in any close relationship there are some issues on which we cannot agree". In the face of this disagreement on whaling, Australia's determination "to play a leading role in international efforts to stop Japan's whaling practices" is arrogant and an insult to Japanese people and their culture.

A more constructive approach with less media hype is needed.

Keiichi NAKAJIMA
President, Japan Whaling Association
28 December 2007

Posted by jennifer at 11:47 AM | Comments (62) | TrackBack

What Will Decide The US's Energy Future?

Such is the power of politics, driven by concerns about global warming, that according to the US-based online journal Grist, the tide has turned against coal and it is now officially “the enemy of the human race” with the states of California, Kansas, Florida and Washington denying permits or contracts for new coal-fired power stations.

It is also increasingly difficult for companies to undertake petroleum exploration in the US with production from existing fields not being replaced because potential new fields are off limits including off the coast of southern California, in Alaska and the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

US policy is, however, supporting an ethanol industry with the target of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels likely to result in the construction of about 300 new ethanol plants, about 75 new corn ethanol facilities and more than 210 for conversion of cellulosic materials.

While this might all sound impressive and perhaps like the demise of fossil fuels, it is not really because renewables represent such a tiny part of energy production in the US. Indeed according to the latest forecast from the Energy Information Administration, traditional fossil fuels (oil, coal and natural gas) will still meet 83 percent of total US primary energy supply requirements in 2030, down only slightly from 85 percent in 2006. Furthermore, US demand for petroleum, the main source for transportation fuels, is forecast to rise 0.8 percent a year, from 21 million barrels per day in 2008 to 25 million in 2030.

So the US will remain dependent on the Middle East including Iraq for its energy? And the US and Iraqi governments are trying to dramatically boost oil production with the World Socialist Website reporting that there are plans to increase oil production from 2.5 million barrels per day to at least three million by the end of 2008, and to six million within a decade.

Posted by jennifer at 10:58 AM | Comments (33) | TrackBack

December 30, 2007

Shark Attack Alert, Reminiscent of 1960s

Dear All,

In today's Age newspaper, "Fears of 'worst shark season' ever as seas heat up", see
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/fears-of-worst-shark-season-as-sea-heats-up/2007/12/29/1198778767755.html

Back in the 1960s I can recall shark attacks being rather common in Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay. Temperatures were lower then ...

Cheers,
John McLean

Posted by jennifer at 06:48 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

Happy New Year from Queensland’s Gold Coast

The surf is up at the Gold Coast with an intense low pressure system hovering off shore. The large swells and high tides mean that the car park has been closed at the Currumbin Surf Club – but you can still get a drink at the bar.

The locals say the wild weather is reminiscent of the 1960s and 1970s.

Currumbin Surf Life Saving Club, Sunday morning, December 30, 2007

With the rising sea levels it has made a casual walk along the beach treacherous in places.

There are serious surfers braving the high seas. This morning we watched four being pulled out each with a jet ski.

Yesterday I had to climb Cabarita point – or risk being washed away – not.

Jen in sarong with pink hat at Cabarita, Gold Coast, Australia, December 29, 2007

Anyway, best wishes to everyone for a happy New Year.

Posted by jennifer at 03:06 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

The Wet Season has well and truly arrived in the Daintree

The Cooper Valley has been dumped on with exceptional rainfall over the past few days. Since Boxing Day, over 700 mm has been recorded in our portion of the catchment.

Last night I was unable to collect three travellers that had booked onto the nocturnal tour because of flooding. Another two, one from Hamburg and the other from Switzerland were awe-struck by the deluge, but eventually I had to abandon the tour. Flooding, landslides and tree falls were commonplace throughout the area.

This is by far the most exciting time of the year for wildlife. A Giant Petilurid, Australia's largest dragonfly, took refuge from the downfall, in our bathroom. The infrequently seen onychophorans or peripatus are at their most conspicuous. Tree frogs descend from their upper-story concealment in their thousands and produce such a cacophony that it is virtually impossible to be heard.

Posted by neil at 09:38 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 28, 2007

Newmont Wins Civil Suit in Jakarta, Rick Ness Retires

The mining thread at this blog has been dominated by the Buyat Bay saga; the alleged deliberate pollution of the bay, fishing village and its fringing coral reef in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, by US mining giant Newmont and in particular its Indonesian boss Richard Ness.

I attended the verdict in the criminal trial of Mr Ness earlier this year. He was acquitted of all charges.

National environment group WALHI brought a civil suit against Newmont about a month before that verdict was due to be handed down. On Tuesday December 18, 2007 the South Jakarta District Court of Indonesia cleared Newmont of any environmental wrongdoing at Buyat Bay, dismissing the civil suit. A spokesperson for Newmont commented that, “We hope this second exoneration by yet another Indonesian court will put to rest - once and for all - the hoax that Buyat Bay is polluted.”

An opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal included comment that, “Accusations against business folks these days get a lot more publicity than acquittals do, so we thought we'd let you know about a victory for a U.S. mining company facing bogus charges that it was responsible for killing poor villagers in Indonesia. The case was promoted by environmentalists and hyped with a 2,600-word page-one article in the New York Times in 2004.”

The same week Newmont was cleared in Jakarta, Rick Ness announced his retirement. My best wishes to Rick and Nova for life after Newmont.

You can read more about the Buyat Bay Saga at his son Eric's website: http://www.richardness.org.

Posted by jennifer at 10:18 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Monaro Farmer Seeks Compensation for Carbon Sink

In the Federal Court of Australia in Sydney on Thursday 20th December 2007, the Court rejected the Commonwealth's application to strike out a Statement of Claim entered into the Court by Monaro District farmer Mr Peter Spencer.

Mr Spencer has claimed that Intergovernmental Agreements between the Commonwealth and the States and Territories, along with the International Treaty the Kyoto Protocol that was signed in April 1998 that set Greenhouse Emissions Targets that Australia have to meet by 2012, bind both the Commonwealth and State together.

The Carbon Sink developed on his property by the State banning Land Clearing has expropriated Mr Spencers property and prohibited the lawful use of his land for Agricultural purpose and no payments for sequestration and storing Carbon has been negotiated, this acquisition was not on "Just Terms" as the Commonwealth Constitution provides for just compensation for the acquisition of property.

Counsel representing Mr Spencer in proceedings, Mr Peter E King said after the hearing, "This is the first occasion in Australia's legal history that it has been found there was an "arguable case" against the Commonwealth on behalf of farming interests that the Kyoto Protocol may give rise to Property Rights".

Mr Spencer said "I am delighted that my case will be heard and it vindicates my beliefs, farmers have as much right as coal - miners to recognition under the Climate Change Convention".

-----------------------
** This is the text of a media release from The Commonwealth Property Protection Association made on the 21 December 2007.

Posted by jennifer at 06:51 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

Privet Hawk Moth

Not all is bad! We can rejoice in the grandeur of nature … in a multitude of expressions.

The Privet Hawk Moth, for example,

blends magnificently with its environment.

Happy New Year to you all. Hope to see you in the ancient rainforests of the Daintree, or in the not too distant future, at www.ccwild.com/wiki

Your's,

Neil

Posted by neil at 05:13 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

More Broken Panes in the Greenhouse

Apologies for my lack of blogging activity of late - I've had a busy Christmas period on both the work and home fronts. Some friends even managed to hold a pre-Chrsitmas BBQ on 22nd December - no, not a result of global warming in the UK, just a cool, pleasant evening and the heat from the BBQ itself.

Despite science historian Naomi Oreskes’s claim, repeated ad nauseum by greenhouse industry beneficiaries that there are few or no peer reviewed papers that dispute the still undefined ‘consensus’ on anthropogenic global climate change, such papers have not been hard to find during 2007. Some of the more recent papers containing inconvenient results, that I haven’t previously blogged, are briefly described below:

Surface:troposphere warming

According to climate models of enhanced greenhouse warming, the tropical troposphere should warm more than the surface. Recent publications have contradictory results despite using essentially the same data. The latest paper on this subject, by Douglass et al, suggests that model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere.

Interestingly, a poster presented by Penner and Andronova at the recent AGU meeting, entitled ‘Tropical atmosphere radiative budget 1985-2005’ seems to reconcile the differences between surface and troposheric warming, supporting the Douglass et al data, without necessarily disproving enhanced greenhouse warming.

Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit attended the conference and the following is extracted from his write-up:

"the tropical atmosphere has absorbed less energy and the Earth’s surface has gained energy which is consistent with the temperature increase in the tropics;

the tropical atmosphere has recently become less reflective and more absorbing while the Earth’s surface gained radiative energy; thus, the tropical atmosphere had recently become more transparent to the incoming radiation and there is an overall brightening of the Earth’s system;

none of the IPCC AR4 models simulates the overall brightening of the Earth system. The majority of the models show a loss of radiative energy by the tropical energy in the post-Pinatubo period, suggesting that the models have still not properly captured the feedbacks between temperature change and clouds."

Of course, there are also unresolved issues regarding a potential warm bias in the surface temperature data.

Climate sensitivity to CO2

A new paper by Chylek et al entitled:

Limits on climate sensitivity derived from recent satellite and surface observations

The climate sensitivity of 0.29 to 0.48 K/Wm-2 translates to warming between 1.1 and 1.8 deg C for doubling of CO2, supporting values close to the lower end of the IPCC range of 2 to 4.5 deg C. - Petr Chylek

Hurricanes

HURRICANES HAVE NOT INCREASED IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC

By William M. Briggs, Statistician

My paper on this subject will finally appear in the Journal of Climate soon. Download it here.

The gist is that the evidence shows that hurricanes have not increased in either number of intensity in the North Atlantic. I've only used data through 2006; which is to say, not this year's. But if I were to, then, since the number and intensity of storms this past year were nothing special, the evidence would be even more conclusive that not much is going on.

Now, I did find that there were some changes in certain characteristics of North Atlantic storms. There is some evidence that the probability that strong (what are called Category 4 or 5) storms evolving from ordinary hurricanes has increased. But, there has also been an increase in storms not reaching hurricane level. Which is to say, that the only clear signal is that there has been an increase in the variability of intensity of tropical cyclones.

Of course, I do not say why this increase has happened. Well, I suggest why it has: changes in instrumentation quality and frequency since the late 1960s (which is when satellites first went up, allowing us to finally observe better). This is in line with what others, like Chris Landsea at the Hurricane Center, have found.

I also have done the same set of models of global hurricanes. I found the same thing. I'm scheduled to give a talk on this at the American Meteorological Society's annual meeting in January 2008 in New Orleans. That paper is here.

In another paper, Vecchi and Soden find natural climate variations have bigger effect on hurricane activity than global warming:

Vecchi, G.A. and B.J. Soden. 2007. Effect of remote sea surface temperature change on tropical cyclone potential intensity. Nature, 450, 1066-1071.

Posted by Paul at 03:29 AM | Comments (100) | TrackBack

December 27, 2007

List of Climate Change Skeptics Continues to Grow (Part 2)

Just before Christmas I posted a note from Marc Morano with a list of 400 or so climate change skeptics. I also noted that just two years ago Ian Lowe, head of the Australian Conservation Foundation, published a book wrongly claiming that there were only five climate change skeptics in the whole world, while Al Gore in his award winning documentary wrongly claimed all skeptics were in the pay of big oil.

Now Marc Morano has sent me an update including a few more names to add to the list of 400, and more information on a name already on the list. Like the initial 400, these are scientists who have been quoted in 2007 as skeptical of the idea that the global warming over the last century is significant and/or has been primarily driven by man-made carbon dioxide emissions. Like me, most of people on the list do not believe we currently have a climate crisis.

1. Dr. Klaus P. Heiss formerly of Princeton University and Mathematica, and a space engineer who has worked with NASA, the US Atomic Energy Commission and the Office of Naval Research.

Heiss received the NASA Public Service award for unique contributions to the US Space Program and is a member of the International Astronautics Academy. Heiss dissented from what he termed the "alleged climate catastrophe" in 2007. "The 20th Century increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continuously. Man-made CO 2 grew exponentially; however, global temperatures fell between 1940 and 1975, during the time span
as the global industrial production almost exploded. Then [temperatures] rose strongly to 1990 and they have since stagnated, with the exception of El-Nino 1998 – at roughly the same level, although CO 2 emissions are still rising," Heiss wrote in a September 7, 2007 commentary titled "No Reason For Hysteria." "The entire atmospheric carbon dioxide, of which man-made CO 2 is only a fraction of, is not to blame for global warming," Klaus explained. "Carbon
dioxide is not responsible for the warming of the global climate over the last 150 years. But what then? For more than 90 percent are changes in the Earth-Sun relationship to the climate fluctuations. One is the sun's activities themselves, such as the recently discovered 22-year-cycles occur and sunspots," Heiss continued. "Looking at the
climate history of our planet, it is clear to see - and quite reassuring with regard to the possible consequences of global warming as predicted by the IPCC -- that we are now (more precisely, in the last two to three million years ago) in a very cold climate period. Any warming would give us only the best long-term climate of the last
560 million years back," he added. "Moreover, despite all the proposed measures and their enormous costs, most professional economic studies indicate that warmer times are generally better," he concluded.

2. Economist Dr. Arnold Kling, formerly of the Federal Reserve Board and Freddie Mac, expressed man-made climate skepticism in 2007. "I am worried about climate change. In one respect, I may be more worried than other people. I am worried because I have very little confidence that we know what is causing it," Kling wrote in a December 21, 2007 commentary. "One of my fears is that we could reduce carbon emissions
by some drastic amount, only to discover that--oops--it turns out that climate change is being caused by something else," Kling explained. "I am not a skeptic about the rise in average temperatures. Nor am I skeptical that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been increasing. However, I remain skeptical about the connection between the two," he wrote.

3. Meteorologist Thomas B. Gray is the former head of the Space Services branch at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and a researcher in NOAA's Space Environment Laboratory and
Environmental Research Laboratories. Gray also served as an aviation meteorologist for the United States Air Force. Gray asserted that "climate change is a natural occurrence" and dissented from the view
that mankind faces a "climate crisis" in 2007. "I was awarded by MS in meteorology from Florida State University and I became interested in pale climatology," Gray wrote to EPW on December 25, 2007. "Nothing
that is occurring in weather or in climate research at this time can be shown to be abnormal in the light of our knowledge of climate variations over geologic time," Gray explained. "I am sure that the concept of a 'Global Temperature' is nonsense," he added. "The claims of those convinced that AGW (anthropogenic global warming) is real and dangerous are not supported by reliable data," Gray concluded.

4. Physical chemist Dr. Peter Stilbs, who chairs the climate seminar Department of Physical Chemistry at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm has authored more than 165 scientific publications in refereed journals since 1970. Stilbs coordinated a meeting of international scientists and declared his skepticism about man-made climate fears. Stilbs wrote on December 21, 2006, "By the final panel discussion stage of the conference, there appeared to be wide agreement" about several key points regarding man-made climate fears. Stilbs announced that the scientists, concluded: "There is no strong evidence to prove significant human influence on climate on a global basis. The global cooling trend from 1940 to 1970 is inconsistent with models based on anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Actual claims put forward are that an observed global temperature increase of about 0.3 degrees C since 1970 exceeds what could be expected from natural variation. However, recent temperature data do not indicate any continued global warming since 1998." Stilbs also noted, "There is no
reliable evidence to support that the 20th century was the warmest in the last 1000 years. Previous claims based on the 'Mann hockey-stick curve' are by now totally discredited." Stilbs concluded by noting that the team of international scientists concluded: "There is no doubt that the science behind 'the climate issue' is far from settled. As so many cosmic effects are omitted from climate models, there is no credibility for arguments such as 'there is no other explanation' [than anthropogenic generation of carbon dioxide]. This must be remembered when making future political decisions related to these matters."

Stilbs also was one of the signatories of the December 13, 2007 letter critical of the UN IPCC's climate view.
"These [IPCC] Summaries are prepared by a relatively small core writing team with the final drafts approved line-by-line by ­government ­representatives. The great ­majority of IPCC contributors and ­reviewers, and the tens of thousands of other scientists who are qualified to comment on these matters, are not involved in the
preparation of these documents. The summaries therefore cannot properly be represented as a consensus view among experts," the letter Stilbs signed explained.

5. Geography professor Dr. Randy Cerveny of Arizona State University oversees the university's meteorology program and was named to a key post at the UN's World Meteorological Organization in 2007. Cerveny, who has written nearly 100 scientific papers and magazine articles, is in charge of developing a global weather archive for the UN. He was also a contributing author to the skeptical climate change book Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming, edited by climatologist Dr. Patrick Michaels. Cerveny rejected catastrophic fears of man-made climate change in 2007. "I don't think [global warming] is going to be catastrophic," Cerveny said according to a October 7, 2007 article. "Hopefully, our grandkids are going to have a
lot better weather information than we did, and they will be able to answer a lot of the questions we're just in the process of asking," Cerveny explained.

6. Paul C. Knappenberger, a senior researcher with New Hope Environmental Services, has published numerous peer-reviewed studies related to climate change, including a 2006 study questioning the linkage between global warming and severe hurricanes. Knappenberger also serves as administrator for the skeptical climate change website www.WorldClimateReport.com. The website's stated goal is to "point out the weaknesses and outright fallacies in the science that is being touted as 'proof' of disastrous warming." The website also describes itself as the "definitive and unimpeachable source for what [the journal] Nature now calls the 'mainstream skeptic' point of view, which is that climate change is a largely overblown issue and that the best expectation is modest change over the next 100 years."

7. Climatologist Dr. Robert Balling of Arizona State University, the former head of the university's Office of Climatology, has served as a climate consultant to the United Nations Environment Program, the World Climate Program, the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Balling, who has also served in the UN IPCC, would have preferred former Vice President Al Gore had won the presidency in 2000. He has authored several books on global warming, including "The Heated
Debate" and "The Satanic Gases." Balling expressed skepticism about man-made climate fears in 2007. "In my lifetime, this global-warming issue might fade away," Balling said in a November 11, 2007 interview
with the Arizona Republic. Noting the pressure he feels as a skeptical scientist, Balling explained, "Somehow I've been branded this horrible person who belongs in the depths of hell." He added, "There's just no
tolerance right now." The article explained, "Balling's research over the years has explored sun activity, pollution from volcanoes, the urban-heat-island effect and errors in past temperature models as possible causes of rising temperatures."

Marc Morano has also indicated that there is a whole new section on inconvenenient studies for promoters of man-made climate fears at the US senate website: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport

Posted by jennifer at 09:40 AM | Comments (53) | TrackBack

December 22, 2007

Marc Morano Isn't Going on Holidays: List of Climate Change Skeptics Grows

It is not so many years ago that Professor Ian Lowe published a book* explaining, "there is a great scientific tradition of scepticism, generally a good thing because it keeps us honest and forces us to justify our conclusions." But then he went on to claim that climate skeptics try to win their arguments, sometimes by actually lying, but more often by making statements that are factually correct but misleading. He also claimed global warming skeptics actually only number perhaps 5 while about 10,000 scientists "support the accepted view".

Al Gore in his award winning documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth' conceded there were probably more than 5 global warming skeptics but he said they were all in the pay of big oil.

This much maligned group, of which I am often accused of being a member, is increasingly fightening back claiming their membership is not only respectable but also large and growing. There was Professor Bob Carter who compiled the list of 100 or so signatures for a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister a year or so ago, then very recently Tom Harris collected signatures for a letter to the United Nations Secretary General in Bali. Now, the very hard working Marc Morano has a list with over 400 signatures and it is getting some coverage in the mainstream media.

Following is the original US Senate Report with the signatures:

U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007
Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called "consensus" on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore. The new report issued by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s office of the GOP Ranking Member details the views of the scientists, the overwhelming majority of whom spoke out in 2007. Read more here: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=f80a6386-802a-23ad-40c8-3c63dc2d02cb

Following is some of the media and commentary that has followed:

Hundreds of scientists reject global warming, Basing policy on carbon dioxide levels 'potentially disastrous economic folly' By Bob Unruh, WorldNetDaily.com
A new U.S. Senate report documents hundreds of prominent scientists – experts in dozens of fields of study worldwide – who say global warming and cooling is a cycle of nature and cannot legitimately be connected to man's activities. "Of course I believe in global warming, and in global cooling – all part of the natural climate changes that the Earth has experienced for billions of years, caused primarily by the cyclical variations in solar output," said research physicist John W. Brosnahan, who develops remote-sensing instruments for atmospheric science for clients including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.
Read more here: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59319

Report challenges global warming claims, WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- A report released by the ranking Republican member of a U.S. Senate environment committee refutes claims by Nobel laureate Al Gore on man-made climate change. In the report, more than 400 scientists expressed doubt over the claims made by Gore, a former U.S. vice president, and the United Nations that man-made climate change endangers the planet, The Washington Times reported Read more here: http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/12/21/report_challenges_global_warming_claims/7759/

"Many scientists from around the world have dubbed 2007 as the year man-made global warming fears “bite the dust”’, the introduction said. And there probably would be many more scientists making such statements, were it not for the fear of retaliation from those aboard the global-warming-is-caused-by-SUVs bandwagon, the report said. And it details some of this intimidation. Looks like man-made global warming theory is melting away faster than you can say Al Gore. A lot of reputations are now going to disappear along with it: all those who were part of the famous ‘consensus’ (not). Those people should never be taken seriously again. It’s over, guys. Reason, truth and real science are fighting back. Read more here http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/413976/good-news-earth-not-flat.thtml

400 Prominent Scientists Dispute Global Warming - Bunk, Climate change denial lives - though not nearly to the extent that Swiftboater Marc Morano would have you believe in his latest overstatement about "prominent scientists" who dispute man-made global warming. Morano's list of "over 400" alleged climate quibblers includes the usual deniers ... There is also a group of second-order "scientists," who are not scientists at all... Finally, Morano includes a group of legitimate scientists ... Read more here: http://www.desmogblog.com/400-prominent-scientists-dispute-global-warming-bunk

Scientists doubt climate change, By S.A. Miller - More than 400 scientists challenge claims by former Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations about the threat of man-made global warming, a new Senate minority report says.
The scientists — many of whom are current or former members of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Gore for publicizing a climate crisis — cast doubt on the "scientific consensus" that man-made global warming imperils the planet. "I protest vigorously the idea that the climate reacts like a home heating system to a changed setting of the thermostat: just turn the dial, and the desired temperature will soon be reached," Mr. Tennekes said in the report. Read more here: http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071221/NATION/844993096/1001

Comments in the report include:

• "Even if the concentration of 'greenhouse gases' double, man would not perceive the temperature impact."
Oleg Sorochtin of the Institute of Oceanology at the Russian Academy of Sciences

• "I find the Doomsday picture Al Gore is painting — a six-meter sea level rise, 15 times the [U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] number — entirely without merit. ... I protest vigorously the idea that the climate reacts like a home heating system to a changed setting of the thermostat: just turn the dial, and the desired temperature will soon be reached."
Atmospheric scientist Hendrik Tennekes, former research director at the Netherlands' Royal National Meteorological Institute

• "The hypothesis that solar variability and not human activity is warming the oceans goes a long way to explain the puzzling idea that the Earth's surface may be warming while the atmosphere is not. The [greenhouse-gas] hypothesis does not do this. ... The public is not well served by this constant drumbeat of false alarms fed by computer models manipulated by advocates."
David Wojick, expert reviewer for U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

• "The media is promoting an unprecedented hyping related to global warming. The media and many scientists are ignoring very important facts that point to a natural variation in the climate system as the cause of the recent global warming."
Chief Meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart of the MetSul Meteorologia Weather Center in Sao Leopoldo-Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

----------
* A big fix - Radical solutions for Australia's environmental crisis, Black Inc, 2005.

UPDATE 27th December 2007

The list has been updated, you can read Part 2 here: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002642.html

Posted by jennifer at 08:28 AM | Comments (115) | TrackBack

December 21, 2007

CSIRO Announcements to Be Consistent with New Australian Government’s Message

I've noticed that CSIRO often puts out so many press releases announcing each of its new environment-related projects and expected findings, that by the time the results are in, it’s old news. This perhaps reflects the type of research increasingly undertaken by CSIRO – research designed to confirm the popular consensus on environmental issues and model the distant future – and also the extent of the organisation’s investment in public relations. Now the new Australia Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, is likely to find out just how many press releases CSIRO puts out, with a new directive asking that CSIRO media releases be cleared by his office.

The new Secretary of the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Mark Paterson, has said the new directive is not about censorship or controlling the message, but rather “consistency in message”. More likely the government appreciates the power of the organisation and the extent to which CSIRO often uses the media and the intrigue of science to push its own political message.

Read more here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/21/2124888.htm

Posted by jennifer at 03:02 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack

December 20, 2007

Lots of Examples of Cold Weather in 2007

I am waiting for the official reports that will come out in January 2008 telling us how much hotter or colder this year has been relative to the long term average, but in the meantime the following opinion piece by David Deming, a geophysicist at the University of Oklahoma, is full of the anecdotal suggesting 2007 was 'the year of global cooling':

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071219/COMMENTARY/10575140

He concludes with the comment that, "If you think any of the preceding facts can falsify global warming, you're hopelessly naive. Nothing creates cognitive dissonance in the mind of a true believer. In 2005, a Canadian Greenpeace representative explained “global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter.”

I am keen to post something entitled 'Lots of Examples of Warm Weather in 2007' - post your examples as a comment below or write a short piece for publication as a new thread at this blog. You can email me at jennifermarohasy@jennifermarohasy.com

Posted by jennifer at 05:33 PM | Comments (50) | TrackBack

Of Kookaburras and Catbirds

According to our most outspoken local adherent to Al Gore, business owners within the Daintree Cape Tribulation rainforest community need to start taking some responsibility and planning for a very different future to what we are used to.

We cannot anticipate a never-ending tourism market into the foreseeable future – I suspect we have 5-years at the most, and perhaps as a community we need to start planning our futures.

The extremely rapid pace of change in the Arctic (and Greenland and Antarctica) are indicative of what is happening - these areas are described as the 'canaries in the coal mine'. Since 1999 - Cape Tribulation has had an almost doubling of rainfall - far more cloudiness … and this year, for the first time in recorded memory, currawongs have appeared on the lowlands.

It is true that currawongs Strepera graculina made an unexpected appearance this year. Top-knot pigeons were also much more abundant and remained within the area far longer than expected. And Kookaburras Dacelo novaeguineae have been frequenting the cleared areas in the Cooper Valley. However, this atypical representation is more likely due to the abundance of natural resources in the Daintree rainforest, relative to those areas south that were so severely damaged by Cyclone Larry in March of last year.

As I photographed this individual, a spotted catbird Ailuroedus melanotis did its utmost to evict the intruder, calling incessantly and finally dropping vegetation from above. The catbird has two nestlings nearby and I wondered if the Kookaburra’s notorious nest-thievery was familiar to the catbird.

Posted by neil at 03:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Rainforest Katydids

Katydids grow incrementally, from the exoskeletal confines of one instar to the next. They emerge from a hanging position on warm, still, humid nights and rely on a very limited variation of climatic tolerances. They will not survive the moult if it rains too heavily. Colouring and hardening takes several hours to complete.

This (unidentified) individual is capable of flight. It is a powerful, predatory katydid, as indicated by its size and the tibial spurs on its forelegs (in the close-up below).

Posted by neil at 09:57 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

December 19, 2007

How Many Koalas Burnt Alive on Kangaroo Island?

Bushfires have been burning out of control on Kangaroo Island, off the southern coast of Australia, not far from the city of Adelaide. The island is known for its wildlife in particular its very large population of koalas.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image on December 12, 2007. Red outlines mark areas where the satellite sensor detected scorching conditions associated with wildfires.

The bushfires in Flinders Chase National Park had burnt 11,000 hectares (about 27,000 acres) on December 12, and fires the previous week more than 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) of the island.

So, how many koalas have been burnt so far?

The image and information on the fires was sourced from the NASA Earth Observatory newsletter: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17860

Posted by jennifer at 06:43 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack

Liberalism after the [Australian] Howard Government

The latest IPA Review is now out and many of the articles from this issue are part of a feature 'What next: Liberalism after the Howard Governmet' and can be downloaded from the IPA's website.

The feature includes a longish piece by me entitled 'John Howard, Environmentalist'.

I beginning by suggesting that the story of John Howard the environmentalist is a story of deference to professed expertise and include reference to his various 'achievements' in this area including the banning of broad-scale tree clearing in western Queensland, the banning of fishing over large areas of the Great Barrier Reef, the EPBC legislation, and the $10 billion national water plan. This plan included the buy back of many more gigalitres than ever proposed by the then Labor opposition.

I conclude by suggesting that John Howard will, nevertheless, probably be remembered as simply the Prime Minister who refused to ratify Kyoto and 'save the world from global warming'. I suggest part of his government's problem was that they never had their own plan or ideas for the environment.

Before commenting you may want to read the piece at http://ipa.org.au/publications/publisting_detail.asp?pubid=731

Posted by jennifer at 05:59 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack

December 18, 2007

Sending Warships May Breach Antarctic Treaty: A Note from Ann Novek

Dear Jennifer,

Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd and many Australians have urged the new Rudd government to send the Navy to the country’s self proclaimed Antarctic territory , which is not recognised by other nations and which include a Whale Sanctuary to stop Japanese whaling.

The Austraslian Prime Minister will decide this week, whether to send the Navy and the long range aircraft or not to gather evidence for a case in the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

Japan’s Fisheries Agency is confident of a victory with the Minister stating in an ABC radio interview : "We will not tolerate any moves to obstruct our research whaling program, which is approved under an international treaty. In light of these treaties, denying international whaling authorised by the international community is unacceptable."

Australian international law specialist, Don Rothwell warned that naval patrols would breach the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which deemed Antarctica to be a demilitarised zone, and possibly spark an international incident.

Greenpeace urges Forum Island Country governments party to CITES to make a formal protest about Japan’s killing of humpbacks under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) claiming “The Japanese government is breaching this international treaty on trade in endangered species with their plans to import humpback whale meat into Japan.”

According to the same report in www.scoop.co.nz, "The CITES Secretariat has the power to pressure Japan to not kill any humpbacks through issuing a written caution to Japan; sending public notification through the Secretariat to all Parties of the issue; notifying Japan that it is in non-compliance and request a compliance action plan, and finally recommend a suspension of trade with Japan in CITES listed species.”

Cheers,
Ann
In Sweden

Posted by jennifer at 09:25 AM | Comments (100) | TrackBack

December 16, 2007

UN Climate Change Conference Ends

Rachmat Witoelar, Indonesia's Environment Minister, closed the United Nation's Climate Change Conference in Bali yesterday with comment that,

"We have a Roadmap!

I am delighted to say that we have finally achieved the breakthrough the world has been waiting for: the Bali Roadmap!

Distinguished delegates,

The decisions we have taken in Bali together create the world’s road map to a secure climate future. The governments assembled here have responded decisively in the face of new scientific evidence and significant advances in our thinking to collectively envision, and chart, a new climate-secure course for humanity.

The Bali Roadmap consists of a number of forward-looking decisions adopted today. These decisions represent various tracks that are essential to reaching a secure climate future.

At this meeting we have launched a new negotiation process, designed to tackle climate change, with the aim of completing this by 2009.

We have also addressed the AWG negotiations, setting a 2009 deadline, firmly launched the Adaptation Fund, and defined the scope and content of the Art. 9 review of the Kyoto Protocol - all of these on the Kyoto track. Similarly we have charted a course forward on reducing emissions from deforestation and on technology transfer, including an exciting new strategic programme."

For information on these initiatives and the rest of the speech by Mr Witoelar, please click here: http://unfccc.int/meetings/cop_13/items/4049.php

Posted by jennifer at 07:01 PM | Comments (65) | TrackBack

December 15, 2007

Happy Christmas

Paul has gone off to his wife’s Christmas party for the weekend, the infamous TV soapy ‘Neighbors’ has finished for the year in Australia, and I’ve started receiving e-cards including this one from Haldun:

“As the year 007 is coming to an end, I wish you and all your bloggers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Thanks for managing such an informative and enjoyable blog.”

And John wrote: “I took the trouble of running a ruler over your Blog. The good people at “The Blog Readability Test”, reckons your J.M.Blog is high school reading level. Not bad, not bad at all, for a blog that is scientific but also PR, I reckon that’s a pretty good score. Here's the link, http://www.criticsrant.com/bb/reading_level.aspx

So, perhaps its time to relax a bit, enjoy this Christmas period and say thank you for reading and contributing to this little blog spot over the last year.

My mother, and a regular reader of this blog, sitting on the beach at Burleigh Heads in January 2007. This is where my family will be heading again for some of this Christmas period.

(And keep checking in to the blog, we aren't going away.)

Posted by jennifer at 08:45 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

How Many Scientists Really Subscribe to the IPCC Climate Crisis?

"It’s an assertion repeated by politicians and climate campaigners the world over – ‘2,500 scientists of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agree that humans are causing a climate crisis’.

"But it’s not true. And, for the first time ever, the public can now see the extent to which they have been misled. As lies go, it’s a whopper. Here’s the real situation...

Read more here: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/968

Posted by jennifer at 08:31 AM | Comments (91) | TrackBack

December 14, 2007

Something for the Weekend

I'm off to Reading in Berkshire for my wife's employer's annual Christmas party - so much to my wife's delight, I'll be well over 100 miles away from my laptop for most of the weekend. Meanwhile, here are a few bits and bobs:

Magma May Be Melting Greenland Ice

SAN FRANCISCO—Global warming may not be the only thing melting Greenland. Scientists have found at least one natural magma hotspot under the Arctic island that could be pitching in.

Carbon cost of Christmas dinner (yawn!)

A carbon footprint equivalent to 6,000 car journeys around the world will be produced by the UK tucking into Christmas dinner, researchers say (yawn again!)

And a yawn for Oz:

Xmas trees 'not immune to climate change'

The survey of 1000 Australians revealed more than half would take environmental concerns into account when choosing presents for their loved ones.

Do the Rich Owe the Poor Climate Change Reparations?

In one scenario, Americans would pay the equivalent of a $780 per person luxury tax annually, which amounts to sending $212 billion per year in climate reparations to poor countries to aid their development and help them adapt to climate change. In this scenario, the total climate reparations that the rich must transfer annually is over $600 billion. This contrasts with a new report commissioned by the U.N. Development Program that only demands $86 billion per year to avoid "adaptation apartheid."

Max Mayfield: 'No One Forced Me to Say Anything'

Former Hurricane Center Director Contradicts Democrats' Political Pressure Claims

The former director of the National Hurricane Center says political pressure did not cause him to change his congressional testimony to downplay the link between global warming and hurricanes, contradicting the findings of a Democratic led investigation released Monday.

"I can truthfully say that no one told me at any time what to say in regard to possible impacts of climate change on tropical cyclones," said Max Mayfield in an e-mail to ABC News.

Fiinally, for those wishing to critique the Douglass et al paper:

Welcome to the International Journal of Climatology manuscript submission and peer review website

Have a hysterical weekend!

Regards,

Paul Biggs

Posted by Paul at 06:05 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Open Letter to Bali: Give Up Futile Attempts to Combat Climate Change

Climate Rationalists have assembled an open letter to the Bali climate conference. Signatories include Bob Carter and Lord Lawson of Blaby.

The letter begins:

Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations

Dec. 13, 2007

His Excellency Ban Ki-Moon

Secretary-General, United Nations

New York, N.Y.

Dear Mr. Secretary-General,

Re: UN climate conference taking the World in entirely the wrong direction

It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages. Geological, archaeological, oral and written histories all attest to the dramatic challenges posed to past societies from unanticipated changes in temperature, precipitation, winds and other climatic variables. We therefore need to equip nations to become resilient to the full range of these natural phenomena by promoting economic growth and wealth generation.

The letter is published in the Canadian National Post here. The signatories are here, and there is an editorial here.

Accomplishments of selected signatories of
the open letter to the U.N. Secretary General

The study of climate change in relation to public policy encompasses many areas of research and scholarship; most are well represented amongst the signatories to the letter to His Excellency Ban Ki-Moon.

The press release that accompanies the publication of the letter contains the following statement:

“The signatories to the letter include many distinguished professional persons who have occupied leading positions in national and international science organizations, government organizations and universities, and have been elected as fellows of distinguished scientific academies or awarded prestigious science prizes.”

In no particular order, here are some examples of the accomplishments of selected signatories to the letter

AWARDS & POSITIONS

President, World Federation of Scientists - ZICHICHI
Director of a national research funding agency (The Australian Research Council) – AITKIN
Director General of a comprehensive national research agency (The New Zealand DSIR) – KEAR
Chairman of the U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation - JAWOROWSKI
Laureate of the UNEP Global 500 environmental program – BRYSON
Director of the Australian National Secretariat for the Ocean Drilling Program – CARTER
Director of a national weather observing agency (US Satellite Weather Service) – SINGER
Director of the Australian National Climate Centre – KININMONTH
Director of Research, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service - TENNEKES
Director of the French (CNRS) Laboratory of Climatology - LEROUX
Director, Institute of Environmental Science (Carlton University) – MICHEL
Head of the Forecasting Centre, Norwegian Meteorological Institute - MOENE
University Pro-Vice-Chancellor – ENDERSBEE
State Geologist (Kansas) – GERHARD
Director of Russian Institute for Economic Analysis, Advisor to President Putin – ILLARIANOV
UK Chancellor of the Exchequer (Thatcher government) – LORD LAWSON
Dep. Secretary of the Treasury (Australia) - MOORE
President of the WMO Commission for Climatology - MAUNDER
Recipient of the Donner Prize (best book on Canadian Public Policy) - MCKITRICK
Recipient of Meisinger and Charney Awards (American Meteorological Society) – LINDZEN
Recipient of Mills Medal in Cloud Physics of the Royal Meteorological Society – AUSTIN
Recipient of Petr Beckmann Award for "courage and achievement in the defense of scientific truth” – IDSO
Recipient of Chapman Medal (Royal Astronomical Society of London) - AKASOFU
Recipient of the Max Planck Medal – DYSON
Recipient of the Percy Nicholls Award recognizing notable scientific achievement – ESSENHIGH
Editor of an environmental journal (Energy & Environment) – BOEHMER-CHRISTIANSEN
Editor of a biological journal (American Midland Naturalist) – EVANS
Editorial Board member (Climate Research) - KHANDEKAR
IPCC expert reviewers – GRAY, COURTNEY
Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science – LINDZEN
Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand – AUSTIN, CARTER
Fellow of the Geological Society of America – EASTERBROOK
Fellow of the American Geophysical Union – AKOSOFU
Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society – WEGMAN
Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science - PALTRIDGE
Hon. Member of the Royal Geological Society of the Netherlands – VAN LOON

ACADEMIC CREDENTIALS

Professor of Environmental Sciences - SINGER
Professor of Climatology – BALL, MALBERG, LEROUX
Professor of Meteorology – GRAY, W., BRYSON, LINDZEN
Professor of Atmospheric Science – LUPO, PALTRIDGE, ROPER
Professor of Oceanography – O’BRIEN
Professor of Quaternary Geology – KARLEN, TOM VAN LOON
Professor of Geology – VAN LOON, PLIMER, CARTER, EASTERBROOK, OLLIER, PATTERSON
Professor of Sedimentology - PRATT
Professor Marine Geology – WINTERHALTER
Professor of Isotope Geology – CLARK, PRIEM
Professor of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics - MORNER
Professor Chemistry – KAUFFMAN, STILBS
Professor of Physics – HAYDEN, ANDRESEN, AKOSOFU, ANDRESEN, AUSTIN, DYSON, ZICHICHI
Professor of Mathematical & Theoretical Physics – GERLICH
Professor of Applied Mathematics – ESSEX
Professor of Statistics - WEGMAN
Professor of Economics – MILNE
Professor Geotechnology - KROONENBERG
Professor for Innovation and Technology Management – WILKSCH
Professor of Energy Conversion – ESSENHIGH, KOUFFELD
Professor of Engineering – MACALIK, ALEXANDER, ENDERSBEE
Professor of Public Health Engineering – KOP
Professor of Chemical Engineering - THOENES

Distinguished Emeritus Professors – 24 in total

Posted by Paul at 03:24 AM | Comments (57) | TrackBack

December 13, 2007

New Australian Prime Minister Wrong to Fast Track Kyoto Ratification?

Australia has ratified the Kyoto Protocol. This was Kevin Rudd’s first official act as the new Australian Prime Minister.

But according to an international law expert, Donald Rothwell, without domestic legislation in place the new government could be in breach of its international legal obligations.

According to the Professor, the normal method for ratifying treaties is not a speedy process but rather involves the preparation of a national impact analysis, then a parliamentary inquiry and enacting new domestic laws.

No national impact analysis had been undertaken on Kyoto – but we have ratified nevertheless.

-----------------------
Thanks to Ian Mott for the story.

Posted by jennifer at 08:14 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

The Siberian Flying Squirrel

Hi Jennifer,

The Siberian flying squirrel in Finland and Estonia are an inhabitant of the Palaearctic taiga. It can not fly like a bat , but it can glide up to 75 metres.

It prefers old nest holes made by woodpeckers , but may also nest in bird boxes.

In Finland it is famous for it's conlict between squirrel conservationists and forestry.

It is listed in the Finnish Red Book and classified as endangered in Estonian Red Book.

Cheers,
Ann
Sweden

PS. Photos courtesy by Estonian Fund for Nature

Posted by jennifer at 07:35 AM | Comments (28) | TrackBack

December 12, 2007

In The Blue Mountains

I have been exploring the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.** There are some spectacular walks from Evans and Govett's Lookouts near Blackheath.

In the following photograph you can see vegetation black from the 2006-07 Lawsons Long Alley fire which burnt about 14,440 hectares of national park. There has been lots of rain recently and the undgrowth is recovering with many beautiful wildflowers.

View to Govett's Leap, December 5, 2007

Track between Govett and Evans Lookouts, December 9, 2007

----------------------------
** I've had limited access to the internet and so apologies to those who I have not returned emails. The sitution should improve with my new dialup connection.

Posted by jennifer at 07:21 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

December 11, 2007

Reality Arrives in Bali

Reality seems to be obstructing any meaningful deal in Bali - looks like another holiday, sorry, I mean conference, will be needed, somewhere else 'nice.'

In public, climate scientists and European politicians are generally optimistic that rising carbon dioxide levels and temperatures can be curbed. In private, some are less sanguine; but there has been a widespread unwritten code of optimism to avoid being accused of scaremongering or creating despair. Now, science advisors to two governments with claims to leadership in global climate politics, Germany and the UK, have told BBC News it is unlikely that levels of greenhouse gases can be kept low enough to avoid a projected temperature rise of 2C (3.6F).

Meanwhile, the UK still plans a huge airport expansion, there is not the slightest hint of a deal that would see rich nations pay poor nations to capture their emissions from coal and even Democrats in the US Congress want to postpone any tough action on emissions until after 2020. That may be why the scientists' mask of optimism is beginning to slip.
Roger Harrabin, BBC News, 10 December 2007

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has ruled out endorsing proposed short-term greenhouse gas emission targets of up to 40 per cent by 2020 but says that does not mean the Bali climate change conference will be a failure. Mr Rudd ruled out endorsing a draft proposal from conference organisers for drastic cuts to emission levels of between 25 and 40 per cent over the next 12 years for developed nations
The Age, 10 December 2007

Washington rejected stiff 2020 targets for greenhouse gas cuts by rich nations at U.N. talks in Bali on Monday as part of a "roadmap" to work out a new global pact to fight climate change by 2009. Other countries such as Japan are also opposed, fearing such stiff goals would choke economic growth.
Reuters, 10 December 2007

The head of Japan's biggest business lobby warned Monday that another set of 'irrational' greenhouse gas emission targets like those in the Kyoto Protocol would weaken Japan Inc's competitiveness. 'If irrational regulations of total emissions are set, as it was the case under the Kyoto Protocol, we cannot avoid a weakening of our international competitiveness,' said Fujio Mitarai, who is the head of the Japan Business Federation and also chairman of Canon Inc.
Forbes, 10 December 2007

Britain is responsible for hundreds of millions more tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions than official figures admit, according to a new report that undermines UK claims to lead the world on action against global warming. The analysis says pollution from aviation, shipping, overseas trade and tourism, which are not measured in the official figures, means that UK carbon consumption has risen significantly over the past decade, and that the government's claims to have tackled global warming are an "illusion".
David Adam, The Guardian, 10 December 2007

On ‘global warming’, the only thing in which Britain leads the world is in the illusion of its political rhetoric.
Philip Stott, 10 December 2007

Rio. Kyoto. Bali. [Hawaii]. That's environmental conferences for you. They always occur in sunlit places ending in vowels, and with a consonantal component of no more than 50%. They're never in vowel-light locations like Nitvinggen or Bblarrgh or Quivdansk, where summer lasts a few hours some time in June, and where the locals spend their long winters rummaging through their clothing of animal pelts, popping lice with gnarled, nutshell fingernails, and musing vowellessly. For, there is almost a defined UN Green Meridian, where conferences To Save The World must always be held.
Kevin Myers, Belfast Telegraph, 7 December 2007

Posted by Paul at 12:58 AM | Comments (102) | TrackBack

December 10, 2007

Baby tax needed to save the planet

If you thought global warming hysteria couldn't get any worse, think again:

A WEST Australian medical expert wants families to pay a $5000-plus "baby levy" at birth and an annual carbon tax of up to $800 a child.

Writing in today's Medical Journal of Australia, Associate Professor Barry Walters said every couple with more than two children should be taxed to pay for enough trees to offset the carbon emissions generated over each child's lifetime.

Baby tax needed to save planet, claims expert

Posted by Paul at 11:49 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

Native Title Deal

According to a report in today’s Cairns Post, the Federal Court of Australia has made a consent determination, handing over a major management role of 126,000 hectares in the Daintree, to the Eastern Kuku Yalanji native title holders.

The determination has resulted in a major reconfiguration of land ownership and management arrangements across a complex array of World Heritage tenures.

The report states that 33,300-hectares of state-owned land has been declared for the exclusive occupation and use of the native title-holders. 96,600-hectares has been recognised for non-exclusive rights, including rights to the water and to fish and hunt in the water, the right to camp, hunt, gather resources for personal (non-commercial) needs and to conduct ceremonies. 16,500-hectares of Aboriginal freehold land has also been declared for residential and economic development.

The determination took over thirteen years to finalise. A range of benefits, negotiated under the broader indigenous land use package, will include a greater role in managing parks and reserves and a veritable doubling of national park estate between Cooktown and Mossman.

Posted by neil at 04:32 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 09, 2007

Reading the Play - by Roger Underwood

The ability to “read the play” is a quality often ascribed to successful politicians, businessmen and sportsmen. The term refers to the ability to predict events and then to take an advantageous position in expectation of the prediction coming to fruition. In the sporting arena it is best seen in champion tennis players like Lew Hoad whose anticipation allowed him simply to “materialise behind an opponent’s ball” (Underwood, 2007), and modern Aboriginal footballers with their uncanny foreknowledge of the way an oblong ball is about to bounce.

I was thinking about prescience recently when reading a wonderful Russian memoir Last Boat to Astrakhan (Haupt, 1998). Robert Haupt was an Australian writer and traveller (he died just before this book was published) who spent five years in Russia between 1990 and 1996. Towards the end of this time he took a boat trip down the Volga River from Moscow to the ancient trading city of Astrakhan, where the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea. The boat trip provides the backdrop to the book’s observations on Russia and Russians.

I found it especially interesting because I have always been fascinated by Russian history, especially the history of the 20th century. The years covered by Haupt’s book coincided with the demise of the Soviet empire and the start of Russia’s troubled journey towards democracy. ‘The barriers to progress,’ Haupt observed, ‘were as they were when Gogol named them: roads and idiots’. Nikolai Gogol, the 19th century Russian novelist had asked “why does a people so blessed with intelligence remain in thrall to fools? Why has a country that spans one-sixth of the world’s land surface remained so short of roads? Do the idiots rule because the roads aren’t there, or is it the want of roads that put idiots in charge?”

Russian history (not unlike history elsewhere) is replete with examples of fools in charge, but in Russia the fools very often seemed to be notably dangerous and ruthless. Haupt touches on the failures of the Romanovs (who for almost 300 years presided over a country in which the bulk of the population were either serfs or Counts), but provides his best insights into the Bolshevik and Communist eras, as well as the tragic consequences for ordinary Russians of the collapse of the USSR.

Haupt is also wryly humorous. For example he notes that the ugliness of Stalinist architecture is fortuitously counterbalanced by the inferiority of Stalinist concrete.

There is also a superb example of “reading the play”. Haupt recounts a conversation between the writer Andrei Sinyavski and a colleague at the Institute for World Literature in Moscow, some time in the early 1960s. Sinyavski believed his colleague was something of a liberal, and this encouraged him to speak freely. In Sinyavski’s words:

…one day I told him how hard I found it to live without freedom, and what a bad effect the lack of freedom had on Russia and Soviet culture. I argued that the Soviet State would not necessarily collapse if it lifted certain restrictions in the cultural sphere. If it allowed abstract art, if it published Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, and Anna Akhmatova’s Requiem, and so on. If anything a slight thaw would benefit Russian culture and the Soviet State!

‘Of course the State won’t founder because of such trifles’ said my colleague. ‘But you are forgetting the effect all this would have on Poland’.

‘What does Poland have to do with it,’ I asked, perplexed, ‘when the point is they should publish Pasternak in Moscow’.

‘If we ourselves, at the centre, allow a relaxation in the cultural sphere, then in Poland, where it’s freer than here, there will be an even greater drift towards freedom. If a thaw starts in Moscow, Poland will secede from the Eastern Bloc, from the Soviet Union.’

“So let Poland secede!” I said flippantly, “Let it live the way it wants!”

‘But after Poland, Czechoslovakia would secede, and after Czechoslovakia, the entire east bloc would break up.’

“So let it break up,” I said “Russia would be only better off”.

But my interlocutor saw further. “After the East Bloc, the Baltics would go – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia!”

‘So let them, what do we need these forcible annexations for anyway?’

“But after the Baltics, the Caucasus and the Ukraine would go! What do you want? An end to Russian power? For your Pasternak you would let all of Russia crumble, Russia which is now the greatest empire on earth?”

Thirty years before it occurred, Sinyavski’s colleague had read the fall of the dominos (the play) with uncanny accuracy, and he foretold the way in which the ultimate play (the collapse of the USSR) would unfold.

Haupt refers to the Soviet philosophy of cultural and intellectual repression as “the iron logic of empire”, and recounts how Sinyavski himself suffered from it, being sentenced in 1966 to seven years hard labour for publishing anti-Soviet writings abroad. Times had changed however. In the 1930s, the Communists would have got away with this, and no-one would have heard of Sinyavski ever again. In the 1970s Sinyavski became an international emblem of Breshnevian repression following the Krushchevian relaxation. To acute observers this reinforced the famous line of de Tocqueville that ‘there is no more dangerous moment for a repressive regime than the one at which it begins to reform itself’.

In Haupt’s view, and looking at it from the Soviet perspective, the most significant “error” made by the USSR was in not sending armoured divisions storming into Poland and crushing Solidarity as once they had stormed into Hungary and Czechoslovakia and crushed the embryo nationalist and socialist movements in those countries. Once Poland had been “allowed to get away with it” the house of cards started its inevitable collapse.

To me, one of the saddest stories in the book is about the Volga River itself. Once one of the world’s greatest and busiest commercial and domestic waterways, its management was progressively abandoned during the last years of the USSR. It has now become so silted up that ferries like the one on which Haupt travelled can no longer navigate its shallows, and the system of lights and markers has been allowed to decay beyond the point at which they are fixable.

Returning from Astrakhan on the voyage described in this book, the ferry finds itself on a stretch of river at night and with the navigation lights turned off. It takes the wrong channel and runs aground. The next day a tug is called to tow it off, but fails and the passengers are offloaded. Haupt sees this as a parable for the new Russian State: freed from communism, Russia has taken a dark stream, and has run aground. Tugs struggle to redress the calamity, while the Volga flows on……

Haupt is more of a historian and an observer than a “reader of the play” and he does not go on to predict the advent of the new Russia, with the ex-KGB Chief Vladimir Putin firmly in control of the government, the Mafia in control of commerce and the Chechins in revolt. But he does foreshadow the problems with environmental degradation, and the failure of the environmental managers, which may well turn out to be one of the greatest legacies of the Soviet era.

References:

Haupt, R (1998). Last Boat to Astakhan. Random House

Underwood P (2007) The Pros. (Manuscript)

Posted by neil at 01:16 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

December 08, 2007

Interview with Roger Pielke Sr

In terms of climate change and variability on the regional and local scale, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report on surface and tropospheric temperature trends, and the U.S. National Assessment [of Climate Change] have overstated the role of the radiative effect of the anthropogenic increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in relation to a diversity of other human climate- forcing mechanisms. Indeed, many research studies incorrectly oversimplify climate change by characterizing it as being dominated by the radiative effect of human-added CO2. But while prudence suggests that we work to minimize our disturbance of the climate system (since we don't fully understand it), by focusing on just one subset of forcing mechanisms, we end up seriously misleading policymakers as to the most effective way of dealing with our social and environmental vulnerability in the context of the entire spectrum of environmental risks and other threats we face today.

What is your criticism of the IPCC?

Mainly the fact that the same individuals who are doing primary research into humans' impact on the climate system are being permitted to lead the assessment of that research. Suppose a group of scientists introduced a drug they claimed could save many lives: There were side effects, of course, but the scientists claimed the drug's benefits far outweighed its risks. If the government then asked these same scientists to form an assessment committee to evaluate their claim (and the committee consisted of colleagues of the scientists who made the original claim as well as the drug's developers), an uproar would occur, and there would be protests. It would represent a clear conflict of interest. Yet this is what has happened with the IPCC process. To date, either few people recognize this conflict, or those that do choose to ignore it because the recommendations of the IPCC fit their policy and political agenda. In either case, scientific rigor has been sacrificed, and poor policy and political decisions will inevitably follow.

Read the entire interview at ECOworld

Posted by Paul at 12:43 AM | Comments (44) | TrackBack

December 07, 2007

La Nina the Drought-Breaker

No change in atmospheric CO2, but:

THE drought-breaking La Nina weather pattern has finally kicked in, bringing flooding rains along the eastern coast and filling the tributaries that feed into the dying Murray-Darling river system.

Forecasters are predicting a wet summer and autumn but remain unwilling, at least officially, to call the end of the worst drought in living memory. And they warn it would still take rains of "biblical proportions" to fill the dams of cities and towns.

Drought-breaker La Nina kicks in for wet summer

Posted by Paul at 07:43 PM | Comments (57) | TrackBack

IPCC Accused of Falsifying Sea Level Data

Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner is the head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. He is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project. Dr. Mörner has been studying the sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. He was interviewed by Gregory Murphy on June 6 for EIR.

"Then, in 2003, the same data set, which in their [IPCC's] publications, in their website, was a straight line - suddenly it changed, and showed a very strong line of uplift, 2.3 mm per year, the same as from the tide gauge. And that didn't look so nice. It looked as though they had recorded something; but they hadn't recorded anything. It was the original one which they had suddenly twisted up, because they entered a 'correction factor,' which they took from the tide gauge" in an area of Hong Kong that had been subsiding, or sinking.

Morner says that the claim that salt water invasion of a fresh water aquifer indicated a sea level rise ignores the more likely cause due to draining the aquifer for the pineapple industry.

Sea level in the Maldives actually fell during the 70's according to Morner, but the area is cited as evidence of a sea level rise. He accuses Australian global warming advocates of knocking down a tree on one island to attempt to prove sea levels were rising.<