The Inconvenient Truth....about.... :: Twin Peaks Gazette Message Board

Talk about climate change everywhere.

It's become a religion.

But no one seems too concerned about the truth.

The fact is there is no truth.

There is no unified scientific view about whether or not there is even such a thing as climate change.

And then on the question of greenhouse gas emissions, there is no unified scholarship on whether that produces climate change, even if such change were a reality.

Indeed there is a body of respected scholarship which argues that if there is such a thing as climate change, it is inspired by solar factors, not greenhouse gases.

Well now I see that the leading hurricane forecaster in the United States, would he know anything about climate - he said at the weekend that global ocean currents, not human produced carbon dioxide, were responsible for global warming.

The fellow's name is William Gray.

He's a Colorado State University researcher.

And he said the earth may begin to cool on its own in five to ten years.

Now you might recall all that stuff by Sir Nicholas Stern.

The economic effects of climate change.

And now to continue the religious climate change revival, Kevin Rudd is going to have an inquiry headed by an academic to calculate the economic cost to Australia of action versus inaction in relation to climate change.

Now you'll recall that's exactly what this fellow Sir Nicholas Stern did for Tony Blair, which prompted one of the world's leading environmental economists, Dr Richard Tol of Hamburg and Carnegie Mellon Universities to say "If a student of mine were to hand in this report (the Stern report) as a Master's thesis, perhaps if I were in a good mood I'd give him a D for diligence. But more likely I'd give him an F for fail."

Now this is now what Kevin Rudd's banging on about.

And indeed on climate change we get all this Armageddon-like reporting, alarmist stuff, scientific exaggeration and rampant overstating of the case.

So we're going to be destroyed by drought or incinerated by heat, or we'll starve for lack of a drink.

Of course, we've been there before.

I mentioned to you earlier this year another report which gained similar widespread currency, telling us there were ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns had begun to change dramatically and we were going to see all sorts of drastic consequences.

A decline in food production.

The great wheat-producing lands of the world would be under siege.

It was an advance sign of fundamental changes in the world's weather, so great that meteorologists were hard pressed to keep up with it, climatologists were pessimistic, and political leaders were urged to take action yesterday.

And as with the Kevin Rudd announcement yesterday of an inquiry into the economic consequences of doing nothing, this report warned that the longer the plan is delayed, the more difficult it will be to cope with climate change.

The only problem is this was the headline story in Newsweek magazine on April 28, 1975 and the story was about global cooling, not global warming.

Well back to America's leading hurricane forecaster who last week had harsh words for researchers and politicians who said man-made greenhouse gases were responsible for global warming.

He said "They're blaming it all on humans which is crazy. We are not the cause of it."

Indeed, he said in the past 40 years the number of serious hurricanes making landfall on the US Atlantic coast had declined, even though carbon dioxide levels had risen.

And he said increasing levels of carbon dioxide would not produce more or stronger hurricanes.

He criticised the former US Vice President Al Gore as a gross alarmist for making the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth".

Dr Gray said, and remember he's the United States' leading hurricane forecaster, he said that politics and research into global warming had created "almost an industry that had frightened the public and overwhelmed dissenting voices."

He said research arguing that human beings were causing global warming was mush, based on unreliable computer models that could not possibly take into account the hundreds of factors that influenced the weather.

And he said little understood ocean currents were behind a decades long warming cycle.

He disputed assertions that greenhouse gases could raise global temperatures as much as some scientists predicted.

Now Dr Gray's comments were reported by Dan Elliott in Denver for the Murdoch press.

They did not get the front page coverage that was given to Sir Nicholas Stern and everything that's followed him.

It may well be we are not in long term danger from global warming but in very real danger from overstating the global warming case.

After all, the Newsweek story of 1975 about global cooling tells us we weren't averse to overstating the case 32 years ago.

Russia knows how to prevent global warming - academic

30/05/2007 20:47 MOSCOW, May 30 (RIA Novosti) - Russian scientists have found a way to prevent global warming of the Earth, the director of the Global Climate and Ecology Institute said Wednesday.

Russian Academy of Sciences Academic Yury Izrael told a news conference that the method envisions air spraying of a sulfur-containing aerosol in lower stratosphere layers at a height of 10-14 kilometers (six to 10 miles). Sulfur drops would then reflect solar radiation.

According to scientists, one million tons of aerosol sprayed above the planet would make possible a reduction of solar radiation by 0.5-1%, and a reduction of air temperature by 1-1.5 degrees Celsius.

Unseasonably hot May weather with temperatures at 32.1 degrees Celsius (89.7 degrees Fahrenheit) beating a 116-year-old maximum has already seen last year's energy consumption for this time of year surpassed by about 8% in Moscow and 12% in St. Petersburg, a spokeswoman for the UES electricity monopoly said earlier.

Izrael said the method demands more detailed development, and that a relevant decision on the international level should be made for it to come into force.

However, the academic said the method is not an alternative to measures to fight climate change envisioned by the Kyoto Protocol, which contains commitments by some countries [...and I'm not naming any names...] on specific volumes of greenhouse gas emission reductions.

"I don't want any contradiction of the Kyoto Protocol, but in parallel with existing methods, cheaper ones should be developed. I am advocating that work be conducted simultaneously on several methods," Izrael said.

He also said the Russian scientists' method will make the fight against warming faster and cheaper. "It is also good that it can be stopped at any moment," Izrael said.

The Russian academic said global temperature in the coming 100 years could rise by 1.4-4 degrees Celsius, which, he said, will cause droughts, floods and cyclones. He said Russia could face the extinction of 20-30% of its animals and plants if temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius.

However, Izrael said the current high temperatures in Moscow are not connected with a global climate change.

"Any fact, even the most acute should not be directly linked to climate change, but should be considered as part of temperature fluctuations," he said. [Uhhh, okay]

Climate Change 1 May 2007

Russia knows how to prevent global warming - academic

Forget warming - beware the new ice age

Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post