Matt Ridley
"Some weeks ago I wrote an article for The Times about why I no longer find persuasive the IPCC's arguments that today's climate change is unprecedented, fast and dangerous.
I was delighted to receive a long and courteous letter from David MacKay, the chief scientific advisor to Britain's Department of Energy and Climate Change. With his permission I am publishing my reply to that letter. I would put his letter here too (again he agrees), but I only have a hard copy of it, so that will have to follow when he has time to send me a soft version.
The remarkable thing about this exchange is that far from weakening my doubts about the IPCC case, it has strengthened them. The letter explains why. Essentially, I have realised that almost the only weapons left in the alarm locker are the retreat of the Arctic sea ice and an event that happened 55m years ago and was probably not caused by CO2 at all. Everything else -- the CO2-temperature correlation in the Antarctic ice core, the hockey stick, storm frequency, phenology, etc etc -- no longer supports the argument that something unprecedented in magnitude or rate is happening. Remarkable.
Here is my letter: "
Monday, 8 November 2010
Public carbon trading dead in the USA
WUWT
"Collapse is Personal Setback for U.S. President
Barack Obama was a board member of the Joyce Foundation that funded the fledgling CCX. Professor Richard Sandor, of Northwestern University had started the business with $1.1 million in grants from the Chicago-based left-wing Joyce Foundation enthusiastically endorsed by Obama. When founded in November 2000, CCX’s carbon trading market was predicted to grow anywhere between $500 billion and $10 trillion. Fortunately before its collapse Sandor was able to net $98.5 million for his 16.5% stake when CCX was sold.
Failure of European Climate Market May Follow
Milloy writes, “although the trading in carbon emissions credits was voluntary, the CCX was intended to be the hub of the mandatory carbon trading established by a cap-and-trade law. Trading carbon was, “the only purpose for which it was founded.” But with their resurgence after the mid-terms the Republicans have now put a new cohort of global warming skeptics into the corridors of power.
Unlike the American voluntary scheme, the European cousin of the CCX, the European Climate Exchange (ECX), continues to trade due to the mandatory carbon caps of the Kyoto Protocol. But the future of the ECX will be in doubt unless a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol is introduced. That treaty expires in 2012. But the ineffectual Copenhagen Climate Conference (2009) exposed an inability among international politicians to agree on climate change. If this stalement persists then the European ECX may likely suffer the same fate as Chicago’s CCX."
"Collapse is Personal Setback for U.S. President
Barack Obama was a board member of the Joyce Foundation that funded the fledgling CCX. Professor Richard Sandor, of Northwestern University had started the business with $1.1 million in grants from the Chicago-based left-wing Joyce Foundation enthusiastically endorsed by Obama. When founded in November 2000, CCX’s carbon trading market was predicted to grow anywhere between $500 billion and $10 trillion. Fortunately before its collapse Sandor was able to net $98.5 million for his 16.5% stake when CCX was sold.
Failure of European Climate Market May Follow
Milloy writes, “although the trading in carbon emissions credits was voluntary, the CCX was intended to be the hub of the mandatory carbon trading established by a cap-and-trade law. Trading carbon was, “the only purpose for which it was founded.” But with their resurgence after the mid-terms the Republicans have now put a new cohort of global warming skeptics into the corridors of power.
Unlike the American voluntary scheme, the European cousin of the CCX, the European Climate Exchange (ECX), continues to trade due to the mandatory carbon caps of the Kyoto Protocol. But the future of the ECX will be in doubt unless a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol is introduced. That treaty expires in 2012. But the ineffectual Copenhagen Climate Conference (2009) exposed an inability among international politicians to agree on climate change. If this stalement persists then the European ECX may likely suffer the same fate as Chicago’s CCX."
Sunday, 7 November 2010
The solar panel gold rush that threatens to ruin our countryside...and make millions for the Germans and Chinese
Daily Mail
"Farmers are being offered up to £50,000 a year to fill fields with solar panels under a Government-backed green initiative that threatens to change the face of the British countryside.More than 100 planning applications have been submitted and work on a large-scale installation in Wiltshire is due to begin later this month.But with a 30-acre farm able to accommodate up to 18,000 of the 2ft-high panels, campaigners fear some rural areas could be submerged by a sea of black silicon slabs.The ‘Feed-in Tariff’ scheme was launched in April as part of an attempt to meet European Union targets on renewable energy. But the financial incentives are so generous that farmers are being cold-called by developers keen to sign contracts before the payment structure is reviewed in 2012.
The influx is led by German and Chinese companies, but there is also interest from speculators who have seen profits slump since similar schemes were scaled down or abandoned in Spain, Italy and Germany to cut costs.Dustin Benton, senior policy officer at the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said: ‘There is a real push now by developers to make the most of the short time-window. Solar panels are a useful form of renewable energy but there are many places where they should not go.’
"Farmers are being offered up to £50,000 a year to fill fields with solar panels under a Government-backed green initiative that threatens to change the face of the British countryside.More than 100 planning applications have been submitted and work on a large-scale installation in Wiltshire is due to begin later this month.But with a 30-acre farm able to accommodate up to 18,000 of the 2ft-high panels, campaigners fear some rural areas could be submerged by a sea of black silicon slabs.The ‘Feed-in Tariff’ scheme was launched in April as part of an attempt to meet European Union targets on renewable energy. But the financial incentives are so generous that farmers are being cold-called by developers keen to sign contracts before the payment structure is reviewed in 2012.
The influx is led by German and Chinese companies, but there is also interest from speculators who have seen profits slump since similar schemes were scaled down or abandoned in Spain, Italy and Germany to cut costs.Dustin Benton, senior policy officer at the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said: ‘There is a real push now by developers to make the most of the short time-window. Solar panels are a useful form of renewable energy but there are many places where they should not go.’
Another letter from Hal Lewis to the American Physical Society
WUWT
"When on October 6 I sent you my letter of resignation from APS , I of course expected the Empire to strike back in one way or another. It pleased me however, when I read your response, to find a very minimum of ad hominem attacks, confined mostly to apparently irresistible eruptions of “Lewis is a liar.” (“His statements are all false” is the equivalent.) So I thank you for that courtesy.
What took me by surprise was the pusillanimous, almost puerile, tone of the comment, which reads more like an ad for a used-car lot than as a declaration of a great scientific society. All our products have passed a complete inspection by our factory-trained mechanics. We’re making no money on this, take it and be thankful. Etc. Not a single major issue confronted in any substantive way. Yet everyone knows about the sloppy handling of the 2007 statement; everyone knows about the financial investments of many of the major players; there is plenty of dirt in the public domain, yet you continue to pretend it is all in a different universe."
"When on October 6 I sent you my letter of resignation from APS , I of course expected the Empire to strike back in one way or another. It pleased me however, when I read your response, to find a very minimum of ad hominem attacks, confined mostly to apparently irresistible eruptions of “Lewis is a liar.” (“His statements are all false” is the equivalent.) So I thank you for that courtesy.
What took me by surprise was the pusillanimous, almost puerile, tone of the comment, which reads more like an ad for a used-car lot than as a declaration of a great scientific society. All our products have passed a complete inspection by our factory-trained mechanics. We’re making no money on this, take it and be thankful. Etc. Not a single major issue confronted in any substantive way. Yet everyone knows about the sloppy handling of the 2007 statement; everyone knows about the financial investments of many of the major players; there is plenty of dirt in the public domain, yet you continue to pretend it is all in a different universe."
Saturday, 6 November 2010
Climate Change: The Keywords (Part 1 of 3)
WUWT
"In the not too distant future, it will likely be difficult to understand how so many educated people believed in and accepted uncritically for so long a scientifically unproven theory like the so-called Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).
Taken almost as a dogma, the AGW has been forcefully imposed by means of a barrage of scare stories and indoctrination that begins in the elementary school textbooks and is volleyed relentlessly upon us by the media and many scientific institutions (including some pseudo-scientific ones), while gullible or opportunistic politicians devise all possible means of inserting climate-motivated items into their power-seeking schemes."
"In the not too distant future, it will likely be difficult to understand how so many educated people believed in and accepted uncritically for so long a scientifically unproven theory like the so-called Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).
Taken almost as a dogma, the AGW has been forcefully imposed by means of a barrage of scare stories and indoctrination that begins in the elementary school textbooks and is volleyed relentlessly upon us by the media and many scientific institutions (including some pseudo-scientific ones), while gullible or opportunistic politicians devise all possible means of inserting climate-motivated items into their power-seeking schemes."
Dumb Meteorologists – Part II
NoTricksZone
"Yesterday I wrote here about an expedition that included a Canadian meteorologist/journalist Jocelyne Blouin whose documentary tried to convince us that a single receding glacier at a single location in Greenland over the last 10 years was “direct proof “of climate change and so was justification to “act now”. The target of the documentary of course was to spread panic and heighten the level of urgency. ...The claim that there is a CO2 cause, as Blouin asserts, and that the warming is unusual has no merit. Also ice cores show that Greenland was very warm 900 years ago, during the MWP. In short: Madame Blouin est plein merde."
---------
Dumb Meteorologists And Journalists Unaware Of Seasons In Southern Greenland
"Yesterday I wrote here about an expedition that included a Canadian meteorologist/journalist Jocelyne Blouin whose documentary tried to convince us that a single receding glacier at a single location in Greenland over the last 10 years was “direct proof “of climate change and so was justification to “act now”. The target of the documentary of course was to spread panic and heighten the level of urgency. ...The claim that there is a CO2 cause, as Blouin asserts, and that the warming is unusual has no merit. Also ice cores show that Greenland was very warm 900 years ago, during the MWP. In short: Madame Blouin est plein merde."
---------
Dumb Meteorologists And Journalists Unaware Of Seasons In Southern Greenland
Friday, 5 November 2010
Der Spiegel: Geologists Warning Of “Mega-Eruption”
NoTricksZone
"Der Spiegel reports on the growling-ever-louder Indonesian Merapi volcano in an article titled: Geologists Warning of Mega-Eruption of Merapi. ......'The Merapi eruptions are becoming more violent – and the big bang could be just ahead. The Indonesian volcano has been spewing 800°C ash clouds for days. .....A rough estimate indicates that there is three times more magma than what was ejected by the Indonesian volcano Tambora in 1815 – the biggest eruption in the last 10,000 years, which led to a cooling of the climate globally.'
"Der Spiegel reports on the growling-ever-louder Indonesian Merapi volcano in an article titled: Geologists Warning of Mega-Eruption of Merapi. ......'The Merapi eruptions are becoming more violent – and the big bang could be just ahead. The Indonesian volcano has been spewing 800°C ash clouds for days. .....A rough estimate indicates that there is three times more magma than what was ejected by the Indonesian volcano Tambora in 1815 – the biggest eruption in the last 10,000 years, which led to a cooling of the climate globally.'
Should our biggest climate change fear be fear itself?
WUWT
"From apocalyptic forecasting to estimates of mass extinctions, climate change is a topic which is filled with fearful predictions for the future. In his latest research, published in WIREs Climate Change, historian Matthias Dörries examines the cultural significance of fear and how it became a central presence in current debates over climate change. Climatic change, as represented by the media, often prompts headlines predicting disastrous events, frequently adopting fear laden language including analogies with war and warnings of the imminence or irreversibility of pending catastrophes. For Professor Matthias Dörries from the University of Strasbourg, a culture of fear is alive, and doing very well."
"From apocalyptic forecasting to estimates of mass extinctions, climate change is a topic which is filled with fearful predictions for the future. In his latest research, published in WIREs Climate Change, historian Matthias Dörries examines the cultural significance of fear and how it became a central presence in current debates over climate change. Climatic change, as represented by the media, often prompts headlines predicting disastrous events, frequently adopting fear laden language including analogies with war and warnings of the imminence or irreversibility of pending catastrophes. For Professor Matthias Dörries from the University of Strasbourg, a culture of fear is alive, and doing very well."
Why being Green means never having to say you're sorry
Telegraph
"Anyway, watching Channel 4’s What The Green Movement Got Wrong last night I felt very much like the Other Son. The documentary was a celebration of the fact that two notable green campaigners – Mark Lynas and Stewart Brand (creator of the Whole Earth Catalog) had finally come round to appreciating that some of the key tenets of their Green religion were flawed and had in fact done more harm than good. ...Green campaigners like Brand and Lynas have not only caused massive damage to the global economy – the biotech and nuclear industry, especially – but they have also almost certainly contributed to numerous deaths in the Third World."
"Anyway, watching Channel 4’s What The Green Movement Got Wrong last night I felt very much like the Other Son. The documentary was a celebration of the fact that two notable green campaigners – Mark Lynas and Stewart Brand (creator of the Whole Earth Catalog) had finally come round to appreciating that some of the key tenets of their Green religion were flawed and had in fact done more harm than good. ...Green campaigners like Brand and Lynas have not only caused massive damage to the global economy – the biotech and nuclear industry, especially – but they have also almost certainly contributed to numerous deaths in the Third World."
Thursday, 4 November 2010
Obama Moves Away From `Cap and Trade,' Seeks New Tools
Bloomberg
"Futures contracts in the U.S. Northeast’s carbon market fell to their lowest level in six weeks yesterday after Obama’s remarks.
Obama spoke the day after Republicans won control of the House of Representatives and gained at least six seats in the Senate after a campaign in which Republican candidates and some Democrats denounced cap-and-trade as a disguised energy tax. A cap-and-trade bill backed by Obama passed the House last year, then stalled in the Senate this year.
Prospects for a U.S. carbon market are more remote than before the election because “the vast majority of Republicans have opposed cap-and-trade proposals to date,” Peter Shattuck, a carbon-markets policy analyst at Environment Northeast, an advocacy group based in Rockport, Maine, said in a telephone interview. "
"Futures contracts in the U.S. Northeast’s carbon market fell to their lowest level in six weeks yesterday after Obama’s remarks.
Obama spoke the day after Republicans won control of the House of Representatives and gained at least six seats in the Senate after a campaign in which Republican candidates and some Democrats denounced cap-and-trade as a disguised energy tax. A cap-and-trade bill backed by Obama passed the House last year, then stalled in the Senate this year.
Prospects for a U.S. carbon market are more remote than before the election because “the vast majority of Republicans have opposed cap-and-trade proposals to date,” Peter Shattuck, a carbon-markets policy analyst at Environment Northeast, an advocacy group based in Rockport, Maine, said in a telephone interview. "
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
Solar-powered trough
Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
" PLANNING Minister Tony Kelly stands to make three times as much as many other households for solar power after he applied for a subsidy last week, only hours before the benefits were cut back. Mr Kelly now joins Premier Kristina Keneally in facing accusations of trying to profit when the overly generous scheme was under review and, in his case, about to be slashed. Ms Keneally bought solar panels for her home within days of her Government announcing a review in August, when it became clear it had become so popular it would add billions electricity costs. Mr Kelly signed up for the 60c per kW/h subsidy within hours of Ms Keneally announcing last Wednesday that the scheme would be slashed to 20c from midnight that night after legislation was rushed through Parliament… After Ms Keneally’s purchase was revealed, the Premier said she would accept the lower subsidy as “a sign of good faith”.
" PLANNING Minister Tony Kelly stands to make three times as much as many other households for solar power after he applied for a subsidy last week, only hours before the benefits were cut back. Mr Kelly now joins Premier Kristina Keneally in facing accusations of trying to profit when the overly generous scheme was under review and, in his case, about to be slashed. Ms Keneally bought solar panels for her home within days of her Government announcing a review in August, when it became clear it had become so popular it would add billions electricity costs. Mr Kelly signed up for the 60c per kW/h subsidy within hours of Ms Keneally announcing last Wednesday that the scheme would be slashed to 20c from midnight that night after legislation was rushed through Parliament… After Ms Keneally’s purchase was revealed, the Premier said she would accept the lower subsidy as “a sign of good faith”.
Mann in New Scientist
Bishop Hill
"Michael Mann has been given space in New Scientist to say nothing, well, New.
I'D LIKE to say I was surprised when news broke a year ago that emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK, had been hacked into and leaked, and that scientists' personal emails were being quoted out of context to disingenuously imply impropriety on their part. But I wasn't.
As so, so many people have noted, the emails are much, much worse in context.
"Michael Mann has been given space in New Scientist to say nothing, well, New.
I'D LIKE to say I was surprised when news broke a year ago that emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK, had been hacked into and leaked, and that scientists' personal emails were being quoted out of context to disingenuously imply impropriety on their part. But I wasn't.
As so, so many people have noted, the emails are much, much worse in context.
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
Global Warming Elitism, Tomorrow’s Election, and The Future
Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
"Manmade Global Warming as the Justification
Since I believe the majority of what we now view as “climate change” is just part of a natural cycle in the climate system, I argued from the outset that NASA should be also selling “Mission to Planet Earth” as a way to better prepare ourselves for natural climate change — something that history tells us has indeed occurred, and we can be assured will occur again.
But behind the scenes there was a strong push for policy changes that even most of the scientists involved supported — ultimately culminating in the governmental control over how much and the kinds of energy sources humanity would be allowed to use in the future.
Cap and Trade, as well as potential regulation of carbon dioxide emissions by the EPA, are the fruits of the labor of politicians, governmental representatives, bureaucrats, the United Nations, and activist scientists who have used global warming as an excuse to accomplish policy goals that would have never been accomplished on their own merits.
Of course, most who speak out on this issue continue to point to the supposed “scientific consensus” on global warming as the justification, but those of us who knew the players also knew of these other motives."
"Manmade Global Warming as the Justification
Since I believe the majority of what we now view as “climate change” is just part of a natural cycle in the climate system, I argued from the outset that NASA should be also selling “Mission to Planet Earth” as a way to better prepare ourselves for natural climate change — something that history tells us has indeed occurred, and we can be assured will occur again.
But behind the scenes there was a strong push for policy changes that even most of the scientists involved supported — ultimately culminating in the governmental control over how much and the kinds of energy sources humanity would be allowed to use in the future.
Cap and Trade, as well as potential regulation of carbon dioxide emissions by the EPA, are the fruits of the labor of politicians, governmental representatives, bureaucrats, the United Nations, and activist scientists who have used global warming as an excuse to accomplish policy goals that would have never been accomplished on their own merits.
Of course, most who speak out on this issue continue to point to the supposed “scientific consensus” on global warming as the justification, but those of us who knew the players also knew of these other motives."
Climate Control Hinges On Today’s US Election
NoTricksZone
"Two years ago the German and European media made Obama their darling, portraying him as the savior that had delivered America and the world from the clutches of the evil Bush regime. A year later he was even awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for doing so. But that has since turned out to be a certificate of failure (think Gore, Arafat and a host of others)."
"Two years ago the German and European media made Obama their darling, portraying him as the savior that had delivered America and the world from the clutches of the evil Bush regime. A year later he was even awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for doing so. But that has since turned out to be a certificate of failure (think Gore, Arafat and a host of others)."
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