Climate Conversation Group

Big things influence little things. Little things hardly at all influence big things.

Please bear this in mind when the topic of climate comes up. Let me elaborate.

In the fourth form, little boys do not push big fat boys around and taunt them with “who’s a mummy’s boy, then?” The big fat boys pick on the little boys instead. It just seems more natural.

Among animals, rats don’t eat live caribou, lizards leave lions alone and hamsters don’t munch bears.

Any animal meeting a tiger fears for tomorrow, and an animal near enough to a lion to distinguish its nose hairs wishes it couldn’t, unless it’s an elephant or cape buffalo.

You see which way this goes, don’t you? Little gives way to big. Big overpowers little. It’s a rule of nature. No way can the mouse clamp its ferocious jaws around the neck of the antelope. Read more… »

The Associated Press, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, keep to their warmist line. Now they’re keen to highlight a steep increase in carbon dioxide emissions, without letting on that it hasn’t affected the temperature.

The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped last year by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.

The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst-case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.

In 2008, the annual increase was half of the year before. Now there’s a crisis?

It is a “monster” increase that is unheard of, said Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, who has helped calculate Department of Energy figures in the past.

Which just means it hasn’t happened before that we know of.

Climate Realists carried a letter from John O’Sullivan on 2 November, claiming ill treatment at the hands of Suite101.com, in terminating their publishing arrangement with him. I note that two of O’Sullivan’s articles are still available at Suite101 but this is his letter:

Friends,

I write to announce my employment with my publishers, Suite101 was terminated today without prior notice or explanation and all my articles published over a two-year period with them are now removed from the Internet. I believe this is in retaliation for my latest article ‘New Satellite Data Contradicts Carbon Dioxide Climate Theory’ revealing the shocking fact that the Japanese ‘IBUKI’ satellite measuring surface carbon dioxide emissions shows that Third World regions are emitting considerably more CO2 than western, industrial nations. Read more… »

Now where should we start?

How confusing is this?

Climate Realists announce that new satellite data from Japanese scientists show carbon dioxide is emitted mostly by the third world, with much less coming from industry in the west. For those asleep in the back, that’s the reverse of our previous understanding (so it’s a confusing result). On the map, pink is where emissions are occurring, green is where absorption is occurring.

Hmm, New Zealand apparently doesn’t exist. Panic!

Life is now officially upside down — the giant northern hemisphere economies are not emitting CO2 after all, they’re absorbing the stuff! Read more… »

Evidence that observed or predicted levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide will cause sufficiently strong widespread acidification to harm shellfish is difficult to obtain.

The School of Chemical Sciences at the University of Auckland hosted a lecture by Assoc-Prof. Mary A. Sewell, of the School of Biological Sciences, on “Ocean Acidification: Integrating chemistry and marine biology and what it means for you.“
 
Our friend Roger Dewhurst, engineering geologist and founding member of the NZ Climate Science Coalition, went along and paid close attention. Then he sent Mary Sewell the following entertaining and informative letter, which he kindly shares with us to provoke conversation.

Past is key to future; CO2 ruined nothing before; there’s no evidence of ruin to come; alarming climate predictions are inconsistent and unconvincing.

Roger Dewhurst writes:

Thanks for an interesting seminar.

Demonstrating that the appendages of a larval echinoderm tend to be stunted when the little beastie is grown in soda water is one thing. To extrapolate that to an absence of oysters, mussels and scallops on the dinner table next year is, in my view, stretching things a little too far. I was reminded of Al Gore’s polar bear on an iceberg!

When I was at Victoria University in the 1960s science was divorced from politics, and zoology, botany and geology were separate subjects. Now zoology and botany are lumped together as biology, and geology has been lumped in with geography as earth science and includes — would you believe it — a strand called ‘feminist geography’. I suppose that feminist mathematics is next in the pipeline. Sic transit gloria ["thus fades the glory of the world" – RT].

I suspect, on the basis of opinions from two universities, that no science student will get a decent degree now without paying obeisance to anthropogenic global warming and its apostles, ‘Piltdown’ Mann and his gang who, I presume, you know as ‘The Team’. This is not science as I know it but the ‘science’ of Lysenko. Read more… »

Human emissions of CO2 1990 to 2010.
From PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

Two days ago we heard about the long-term trend in atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions, copied above.

This graph functions as a fine graph of productive output, and doesn’t it reveal the new world order? The countries with the highest emissions are (broadly speaking) doing the most work, making the most money and having the most influence.

It was ever so. If our leaders wake up to that simple fact they might be able to make sensible plans to maximise our work. Perhaps improve on the half-baked notion of a magic “knowledge economy” — as though knowledge alone would succeed without the application of intelligent planning, consistent effort and good service. 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… »

A suit in handcuffs. Only the educated, trusted men can engage in theft on this grand scale — £156 million! This story concerns GST fraud (called VAT in Europe) but there are easier scams occurring in the carbon trading field, based on the simple fact that the only thing being sold is thin air. Actually, it’s worse than that: they’re selling CO₂. Unmeasurable, invisible and useless to both buyer and seller. At least air is of some use. What a confidence trick!

Sends shivers down the spine, this does. For, not only does “regular” carbon trading take food from the mouths of mothers and babies, but fraudulent activities, increasing costs and therefore prices, take even more. How long before it turns up in New Zealand, if National really does launch its ill-advised scheme on July 1? The most important part of the story waits until the last two paragraphs, though I’ve flagged it in the heading. Further comments below.

First published by BusinessGreen, 30 Apr 2010

by BusinessGreen.com staff

German carbon fraud investigation moves to UK

Prosecutors confirm that four arrests have been made in €180m fraud investigation

German prosecutors today confirmed they have arrested four people in Germany and the UK following raids on more than 50 homes and offices this week in connection with an alleged €180m (£156m) carbon fraud. Read more… »

On 8 March, 2010, David Archibald wrote a guest post on WUWT entitled “The Logarithmic Effect of Carbon Dioxide”. This was brought to my attention recently as an article worthy of attention, so here it is.

The greenhouse gases keep the Earth 30° C warmer than it would otherwise be without them in the atmosphere, so instead of the average surface temperature being -15° C, it is 15° C. Carbon dioxide contributes 10% of the effect so that is 3° C. The pre-industrial level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 280 ppm. So roughly, if the heating effect was a linear relationship, each 100 ppm contributes 1° C. With the atmospheric concentration rising by 2 ppm annually, it would go up by 100 ppm every 50 years and we would all fry as per the IPCC predictions.

But the relationship isn’t linear, it is logarithmic. In 2006, Willis Eschenbach posted this graph on Climate Audit showing the logarithmic heating effect of carbon dioxide relative to atmospheric concentration:

The logarithmic relationship between atmospheric CO₂ concentration and temperature forcing. In other words, Willis Eschenbach shows that later increments of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere have lesser effects on atmospheric temperature.

And this graphic of his shows carbon dioxide’s contribution to the whole greenhouse effect:
Read more… »

Come tell us your opinion while it’s fresh!

We want to know if you think that carbon dioxide dominates the climate. Note that does not mean simply “affects” the climate: do you think it dominates?

Because it’s quite clear to us that for carbon dioxide to be declared quite the villain it is made out to be, it must dominate climate in a very dominating way! It must be, in fact, the most dominating thing in a dominantly long time, climatically speaking. It must dominate the climate as a mushroom shades a blade of grass in that completely over-shadowing, dominating kind of mushroomy way.

What do you think? Vote here.

Tell everyone.

Thank you.

The science is never settled. Only we are settled. What we knew for certain last week, last year or even for half a life might need reforming today.

Over the last ten years or so, as the heat faded from the warming dimension of climate change, so alarm was raised about the dire effects of ocean “acidification”. The mainstream media began to describe the appalling effects on sea life, especially creatures with exoskeletons, of the increasingly “acid” waters being created by higher and higher levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere.

Coral reefs were doomed, many even now were “suffering” and all were in peril of destruction if we continued “spewing” huge quantities of CO₂ into the air. Crabs, crayfish, shellfish of all kinds, plankton and krill were all at risk, and their decline spelt doom for the higher creatures in the sea, even unto man himself, who eats them.

Now, published in the December 1 issue of Geology, comes a remarkable—and remarkably courageous—study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution that shows many denizens of the oceans benefit hugely from that increased CO₂. Did you predict that?

The study makes it clear that many forms of oceanic life are disadvantaged to some degree by increased acidification, but this message is very different from the hitherto confident, ceaseless prognostications of universal doom proceeding from the pens of the alarmists. The scientists are calling for more detailed studies to be done, because there is so much to learn.

Anthony Watts, over at WUWT (hat-tip to Anthony), puts it succinctly:

And some thought ocean acidification would destroy everything.

Here’s how the media release from WHOI begins:

In a striking finding that raises new questions about carbon dioxide’s impact on marine life, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists report that some shell-building creatures—such as crabs, shrimp and lobsters—unexpectedly build more shell when exposed to ocean acidification caused by elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂).

Sorry, but I guess the paper itself is behind a pay-wall; there’s no link I can find at WHOI.

Gareth Hughes, an obviously earnest young man, writing in the NZ Herald recently, advises us breathlessly to take all manner of feel-good actions to stave off global warming and prevent any further drain on the national grid. As though the national grid was not supposed to supply energy for our use. That we pay for.

He seems to take the view that the Earth is a fragile, sensitive object that, without the most rigorous balancing of resources to ensure what is called “sustainability” (but which is never defined), might never recover from the ravages of this human life upon it. Never mind that animals, birds and fish rage and stamp, consume and defecate their mindless ways above, across and under it and in the oceans in their millions willy-nilly. What they do is natural but everything we do is unnatural, artificial—even inhuman, perhaps. Certainly endlessly disagreeable. Read more… »

Last Sunday the NZ Herald reported on a Kiwi woman, one Emily Hall, now a Greenpeace activist in the UK, who was in a boarding party that recently attacked what used to be called a collier—a vessel used for transporting coal.

The Herald’s story contained no censure against Greenpeace’s overt lawlessness. It was a sympathetic treatment of Hall’s experiences with Greenpeace and her and its tactics of rebellion against the Establishment in the name of the environment.

But the story incorrectly described carbon dioxide as “poisonous”.

There was nothing wrong with describing the ship’s load as “dirty” coal, since either handling the stuff or burning it inefficiently results in a mess, although modern methods of burning powdered coal, combined with smokestack “scrubbing” of most of the airborne pollutants, is thermally efficient and allows us truly to describe coal as “clean”.

But labelling “carbon emissions” as “poisonous” is just plain wrong. Carbon emissions is a euphemism for carbon dioxide and there is nothing remotely poisonous about that. Neither is it “dirty”, regardless of Greenpeace’s clumsy propaganda attempts to link it with the visible pollutants that come from coal.

Describing this clean, invisible plant food as poisonous simply attempts to justify Greenpeace’s hostility towards carbon dioxide, and thus legitimise an attack on a vessel and its crew going about their lawful business.

The Herald ought to stand aside from the campaign to wrongly vilify carbon dioxide for the activists’ political purposes.

Environmentalists have educated society first to notice, then to condemn and finally to clean up pollution of air, water and land. But now activists focus on carbon dioxide because it warms the planet. We have been induced to fear what we actually prefer.

Improvements have been achieved over many decades, and it is wonderful that, for example, the United States pollutes a lot less than it used to, has a greater area in forests now than at the end of the 19th century and enjoys cleaner rivers, like many of the developed nations, including New Zealand. Read more… »

Spencer raises a scientific point of order in the global warming debate. Are there not many advantageous effects of CO₂? Are there any negative effects? more…

17 March 2008 – Richard Treadgold – first published in Tool Magazine

download pdf (101 KB)…

New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS)—will it reduce global warming?

We breathe carbon dioxide and without it we would die. Growers routinely add it to greenhouses (four times the normal level) to make the plants grow better. Forests are growing measurably faster as the level of atmospheric CO2 climbs.

But human emissions of CO2 are allegedly warming the planet. Inducing a sense of guilt for driving a car or turning the lights on hasn’t reduced emissions. An alternative way to force emissions down is to create emission licences (or carbon credits) and then buy and sell them to each other. Entrepreneurs love it. New Zealand is setting up such a scheme right now. Read more… »

A couple of weeks ago, plans for a wonderful new coal-fired power station in Kent were given the green light and I was very pleased. more…

All responsible citizens are ‘environmentalists’, but that is no reason to yield to mass delusion. more…