Keith's Journal

How many believers are left?

Andrew Bolt
Friday, July 18, 2008 at 06:50am



Another sceptic declares himself. Joining the increasing crowd is Professor Geoffrey Kearsley, a geographer developing a programme in environmental communication at the University of Otago:

"It may well be that human activity is indeed changing the climate, at least in part, but there is an increasing body of science that says that the sun may have a greater role.

"If it does have, then global warming is likely to stop, as it appears to have done since 1998, and if the current sunspot cycle fails to ignite, then cooling, possibly rapid and severe cooling, may eventuate. The next five years will tell us a great deal. In these circumstances, we should wait and see. "

UPDATE

A brilliant must-read article by David Evans on how the myth was made:

I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office… It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming…

1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it…

2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None…

3. The satellites that measure the world’s temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980)…

Evans is particularly strong in describing how no one can detect what’s meant to be the signature of a man-made global warming - a “hot spot” about 10km above the tropics. But for politicians, this conclusion is particularly crucial:


What is going to happen over the next decade as global temperatures continue not to rise? The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise.

This could be Kevin Rudd’s Khemlani moment. Labor could be a laughing stock for a generation. But only if the Liberals start distancing themselves from this utter insanity.

Full article

Stop the press: Mugabe out of Monopoly money

HARARE: It has come to this - Zimbabwe is about to run out of the paper to print money on.

Fidelity Printers & Refiners, the state-owned company that tirelessly churns out bank notes for the Mugabe regime, was thrown into a crisis early this month after a German company stopped supplying bank note paper because of concerns over Zimbabwe's recent violent presidential election, widely seen as fraudulent by international observers.

The printing operation slowed drastically. Two-thirds of the 1000-strong workforce was ordered to take leave, and two of the three money-printing shifts were cancelled.

The result on the streets was an immediate cash crunch.

"If you think this currency shortage is bad, wait two weeks. By then it will be a disaster," said a senior Fidelity staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The paper will run out in two weeks, he said.

Fidelity Printers is Robert Mugabe's lifeline. It prints the money to pay police, soldiers and intelligence agents that keep the regime in power. If they cannot be paid, the country faces economic paralysis - and potential collapse.

Zimbabwe's economic meltdown harks back to the collapse of its main export industry, farming. That left the nation starved of foreign exchange, but government spending went on.

How did it do that? It printed money. But printing more money without an increase in productivity fuelled inflation.

As hyperinflation took hold last year, Fidelity printed $1 million notes, then $5 million, $10 million, $25 million, $50 million. This year, it has been forced to print $100 million, $250 million and $500 million notes in rapid succession, all now practically worthless. The highest denomination is now $50 billion (worth $US1 on the street).

Despite the recent currency shortage, the Zimbabwe dollar has continued to slide against the US dollar and shopkeepers are increasing prices steeply.

Before the crunch, a beer at a pub in Harare cost $15 billion. At 5pm on July 4, it cost $100 billion ($US4 at the time) in the same bar. An hour later, the price had gone up to $150 billion ($US6).

Los Angeles Times

From the ABC report, you’d think the Arctic ice was melting faster than ever:

A group of Russian scientists are being rescued from a melting ice-floe in the Arctic.

Our Moscow correspondent, Scott Bevan, reports the 20 scientists have been based on the ice floe since September, conducting a range of experiments, including monitoring the effects of climate change.

The team was meant to be at the drifting station, known as North Pole 35, for a year. But the ice has been melting so quickly, that the floe’s shrunk to a little more than a tenth of its size of last September.

In fact, there is much more ice now at the North Pole than there was last year - a detail the ABC strangely forgot to mention:



(Source: US National Snow and Ice Data Center.)

(This graph shows that the ice this year is more than the same time last year, although somewhat below the long term average, but well above that predicted by "the models"- Keith)

I’m guessing that this fact will get only a fraction of the coverage that this scare received last month:

The distinct possibility that this summer—for the first time in recorded history—the North pole could be free of sea ice, is now a common subject of discussion among the world’s climate experts.

Once again I ask: if the evidence for a warming world, heated by man, is so clear, why the need to constantly exaggerate and cherrrypick?

UPDATE

Speaking of which, Professor Bjorn Lomborg notes:

Given all the warnings, here is a slightly inconvenient truth: over the past two years, the global sea level hasn’t increased. It has slightly decreased. Since 1992, satellites orbiting the planet have measured the global sea level every 10 days with an amazing degree of accuracy – 3-4mm. For two years, sea levels have declined. (All of the data are available at sealevel.colorado.edu.)...

Simply put, we’re being force-fed vastly over-hyped scare stories. Proclaiming six meters of sea-level rise over this century contradicts thousands of UN scientists, and requires the sea-level rise to accelerate roughly 40-fold from today. Imagine how climate alarmists would play up the story if we actually saw an increase in the sea-level rise.

Bigger fish due to climate change: tuna industry


The tuna industry says climate change is bringing benefits.

The chief executive of the Australian Southern Bluefin Tuna Association, Brian Jeffriess, says Port Lincoln crews in South Australia are reporting an excellent quality and size catch.

He says it can be partly attributed to the effects of climate change on the waters of the Great Australian Bight.

"There's no doubt climate change will bring benefits to the Great Australian Bight ecology in the sense that there's more upwellings therefore more small pelagics as we call them - sardines, mackerel, red bait, other fish - and that will bring tuna so there may be even winners from climate change," he said.

"This year some of the oceanographers are saying they've never seen south-easterly winds in a sustained strong way now that creates a lot of upwellings in the water - that brings nutrients to the surface.

"There's a feed chain which feeds on those - the tuna is virtually the last part of that food chain and benefits from improvements in the other parts of the food chain."