Climate Conversation Group

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (July 26, 2011) — Data from NASA’s Terra satellite show that when the climate warms, Earth’s atmosphere is apparently more efficient at releasing energy to space than models used to forecast climate change have been programmed to “believe.”

The result is climate forecasts that are warming substantially faster than the atmosphere, says Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Read more…

from a variety of sources & correspondents

What a month

A visit from the incomparable Monckton was suddenly proposed and he’s already on his way. There’s nothing like hearing your own community mentioned by the famous, so here’s hoping he finds local matters to comment on and to make our leaders respond. People like Key, Smith and the honchos at NIWA have been simply avoiding our sceptical questions, which makes it impossible to hold their feet to the fire.

I wanted to attend both the Northern Club lunch and the debate at AUT but I will only get to the evening debate.

Hessell

The other day an article titled Jim Hessell: Climate change and hot air appeared in the Herald. An odd little rambling article to match its headline. Read more… »

This event is over. It was a great success, with as many turned away as were admitted.

Read more… »

A masterful performance. Inferior opposition knocked out of the park.

Viscount Monckton of Brenchley opened his debate at the National Press Club in Australia two days ago by reminding his audience that England not only took the Ashes off Australia, but also held on to them in the next rematch. He said: “I just thought I’d rub it in.” Then he proceeded to take his cudgel to his feeble debating opponent.

Economist Richard Deniss must be no intellectual weakling, but he gave the impression of not knowing where he was, so he said the things he normally said. Which usually works, because his normal audience has heard them before and agrees with him. But here, he floundered and had no idea what he was doing. Read more… »

Viscount Monckton to visit New Zealand for the first time. Sponsored by ClimateRealists.org.nz

The Climate Realists have confirmed that Lord Monckton has agreed to come here following his Australian tour. Donations have been received to cover his expenses.

There are some engagement details on the CR web site with more to be confirmed.

There is no statistically significant warming trend since November of 1996 in monthly surface temperature records compiled at the University of East Anglia. Do we now understand why there’s been no change in fourteen and a half years?

Well, yes, because “blame” for this interruption in warming has been placed on sulphates emitted by China’s power stations zealously burning coal. Hasn’t it?

Has this hypothesis been tested? No. Can it be tested? Yes.

Most of the aerosols are in the northern hemisphere, and there’s little mixing of air between the hemispheres. Reason tells us that the northern hemisphere should be cooling and the southern hemisphere should be warming.

Well, go on, this is the big test, look it up. Read more… »

de Freitas feeds his students sceptic propaganda …

So says the radical Renowden, he of the non-sceptical “believe everything they say” warmist persuasion. But read what he says about Chris de Freitas’ crimes and you’ll realise he says nothing, because no crimes exist.

Gareth Renowden is himself guilty of attempting to abridge the academic freedom to study and teach inconvenient facts.

It’s all arm-waving, and Renowden cites nothing in the Geography 101 course that’s untrue. He says many unkind things about the graphs and their provenance, but he never says they’re wrong, and that’s a strange thing to forget, which means he didn’t forget it — he omitted it, because they’re not wrong. Read more… »

What is weather?

(h/t Bob D for most of the references)

Journalist Chris Barton has a story in yesterday’s Herald titled The climate dissenter holds his ground. After looking at Barton’s alarmist arguments I’ll stand with Chris de Freitas on the solid ground.

The story begins with the implication (not that the journalist says it this plainly) that, even with the planet battling weather extremes, that is not enough to convince an Auckland climate scientist (Associate Professor Chris de Freitas, at the University of Auckland) of the truth of human-induced global warming. We’re supposed to feel exasperation: “What will it take to get that man to see sense?”

But Barton is dead wrong. For why should “extreme” weather be an indication of man-made global warming? How could we get more extreme weather out of global warming? Read more… »

– by Barry Brill, Chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

“Biofuels” are combustible liquids made from plants. They can replace petrol and diesel in our engines and are extracted from many different types of plants.

These biologically-based fuels have long been supported by green activists because when you burn them they only emit as much CO2 as the plants absorbed while growing. Their CO2 is taken out of the atmosphere and then returned, while fossil fuels add new CO2, removing nothing. Using biofuels adds no new CO2.

But it was difficult to ignore the fact that world food prices soared in 2008 as a result of US legislation requiring the conversion of US corn into fuel for motor vehicles. That price explosion led to farmers everywhere seeking to expand their cropping areas, often chopping down forests in the process. Here was another of the unforeseen consequences which seem endemic in climate policies.

This led to the new concept known as indirect land-use change (ILUC) being brought into the calculations. If you take a field of grain and sell the crop for biofuel, then somebody, somewhere, will go hungry unless those missing tonnes of grain are grown elsewhere. If the shortfall is grown on farmland created by cutting down forests or draining peat land, it can create enough new climate-warming emissions to cancel out any benefits from using the biofuels in the first place.

That’s an indirect land use change (ILUC). Read more… »

[UPDATE Sun 17 July 2011 16:05 NZT] An announcement is expected soon from the organisers and I’ve been given no reason for pessimism. Let’s hope this is the news we’ve been waiting for.

[UPDATE Sat 16 July 2011 21:05 NZT] There has been good progress and everyone’s optimistic that we will see Lord M in the country. However, it’s not quite a done deal yet, so keep your fingers crossed.

[UPDATE Sat 16 July 2011 12:40 NZT] This post was removed for a while at the request of the organisers while they confirmed funding. It’s still unclear to me whether funding is secure, although the probability seems high that it is. The Dominion Post has published a piece on it and got feedback from James Renwick, who was at first keen on a debate. There’s a lot of interest in getting Monckton over here.

Viscount Monckton, perhaps to visit New Zealand for the first time.

Plans are afoot to bring Christopher Monckton to New Zealand on 4th–7th August, though details are sketchy and sponsors unconfirmed.

Groups known to support his visit include the Climate Realists Network, Investigate Magazine, the NZ Climate Science Coalition and of course us here at the Climate Conversation. Read more… »

Beautiful tiger in the snow, presumably at some risk of extinction. We should save these and remember that it’s human encroachment on the tigers’ habitat that threatens their survival, not burning petrol. In the meantime, forget about preserving Antarctic nematode worms, which we couldn’t eradicate if we tried. There just aren’t enough people down there to threaten their habitat.

A study from the University of Exeter on species decline declares “climate change warnings not exaggerated.”

However the press release leaves one singularly unimpressed with the raw activism of the lead researcher, who says: “It is time to stop using the uncertainties as an excuse for not acting. We need to act now to prevent threatened species from becoming extinct. This means cutting carbon emissions.” Read more… »

The sky, location of most of the climate.

Yesterday I saw the headline: Climate change reducing ocean’s carbon dioxide uptake. If they mean the temperature’s been rising, I thought, these guys need a lesson in 1) recent, 15-year-long atmospheric temperature non-rise and 2) the gas laws, or specifically, Henry’s Law.

Henry’s Law states that the solubility of a gas in a liquid at a particular temperature is proportional to the pressure of that gas above the liquid. If the temperature of the liquid rises, it can’t hold so much gas, so some will leave (“outgas”). It hardly requires a paper based on 28 years of observations to confirm this. Read more… »

Carbon Tax Mk IV flimsy, cancerous

To the Editor
Climate Conversation
10th July 2011

Carbon Tax Mark 4 is flimsy but dangerous.

Because of public opposition to a new tax on everything, the tax has been gutted. The PM hopes to buy public support by giving exemptions to almost everyone and offering widespread bribes to voters. It is now feeble and ineffective.

But the Green-Gillard coalition is desperate and such people cannot be trusted. They will say or promise anything in order to get this new tax introduced.

Once on the law books, the exemptions will be whittled away, the tax rate will increase and the tax bribes will disappear. It is a stealthy cancer in the gut of the Australian economy.

The cost of electricity, food, fuel and travel will increase, but few people will recognise the root cause. Politicians will blame “Woolworths, power suppliers and Big Oil” for the pain.

This new stealth tax is the thin edge of the wedge.

It will have no effect on the climate, but is a fiscal weapon too dangerous to be left in the hands of green extremists.

Letting Bob Brown loose with the vast powers of a carbon tax is like leaving the grandkids alone in the hayshed with a box of matches.

“Abolish the Stealth Tax” will be the next election slogan.

Viv Forbes

Global Warming Hysteria: Gore’s Profound Failure of Leadership

First published in www.firstthings.com
Sunday, June 26, 2011
by Wesley J. Smith

Ouch. A notable political scientist (and believer in global warming, at least in the general sense) has mounted a powerful critique of the disastrous political leadership on the issue by Al Gore. From “The Failure of Gore, Part 1″ by Walter Russell Mead in his blog at The American Interest:

Gore has the Midas touch in reverse; objects of great value (Nobel prizes, Oscars) turn dull and leaden at his touch. Few celebrity cause leaders have had more or better publicity than Gore has had for his climate advocacy. Hailed by the world press, lionized by the entertainment community and the Global Assemblage of the Great and the Good as incarnated in the Nobel Peace Prize committee, he has nevertheless seen the movement he led flounder from one inglorious defeat to the next. The most recent, failed global climate meeting passed almost unnoticed last week in Bonn; the world has turned its eyes away from the expiring anguish of the Copenhagen agenda.

This is an adopted article.

The state of the global green movement is shambolic. Read more… »

Climate changes and we didn’t see it coming.

French soccer team 1959

French football team 1959.

French soccer team 2008

French football team 2008.

The effects of climate change can no longer be ignored

h/t Keith Hancox.

Chimneys pouring out “carbon”. Except the “carbon” in carbon dioxide is different; for one thing, it’s colourless. For another thing, it doesn’t harm people (or anything else in the environment). The UN is threatening to stop our factories from working, so their chimneys will stop pouring out their inoffensive carbon dioxide. To “save” the climate.

Several people drew my attention to James Delingpole’s attack on the UN economic and social survey. Examine the report for yourself — scratch its toxic socialist surface — and you’ll easily discover that its policy prescriptions, rather than being proposals for voluntary action suggested in all humility for our best welfare, are destined to become mankind’s inescapable future if the UN is permitted to continue its relentless pursuit of world domination, and our opinion will be neither considered significant nor requested.

World Economic and Social Survey 2011

This is a report from the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations (DESA) dedicated to something they call “The Great Green Technological Transformation.”

The authors a) cannot conceal their sense of self-importance in their chosen role of directing the rest of us and b) reveal their intention to specify policy while maintaining the public fiction that they don’t. Read more… »

Who’s in charge? Who’s at the top?

They want to rule us not love us

On the United Nations’ web site a brief description of the General Assembly includes the statement:

The General Assembly is not a world government — its resolutions are not legally binding upon Member States.

That’s reassuring, because everyone appreciates their own country’s ability to make decisions about matters that affect them. Nobody likes strangers telling them what to do, what to have, what to avoid or what to endure.

But there’s next a “but” which bears the thin end of a very important wedge. Read more… »

Dr Don Brash, leader of the ACT Party. More sense in his little finger
than some climate deniers have in their whole body.

But Brash simply reflects reality

A post today at Hot Topic gets really stuck in to Don Brash. Don gave a speech today to the Federated Farmers annual conference. He mentioned the ETS, which exists because of a belief in the dangerous global warming created by the actions of humanity, which Don and many others disbelieve.

Therefore Gareth Renowden, the dynamic self-starter who runs the Hot Topic blog (named after the book he wrote — guess what that’s about?), which exists to sell more copies of his book, so he’s never going to admit he’s wrong about the climate (yes, he has a strong vested interest in this “discussion”), couldn’t let it go without having his say. Thing is, he vilifies more than he informs.

Don wondered aloud (in his speech to the farmers) why we have an ETS. He had to admit (answering himself) that he knows of no good reason at all. I agree we’ve been given no good reason. Read more… »