Expensive Energy Kills Poor People

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

Lesotho (pronounced “Leh – soo – too”), is a mountain fortress of a country, totally surrounded by South Africa. The people there, the Basotho (pronounced “Bah – soo – too), are tough as nails, and you’d have to be. It’s high desert country, cold in the winter, not much water. The Basotho are fiercely independent.

Back in the early days, they fought off the Boers who tried to take their land. The Boers then drove them off of the fertile lowlands and into the arid mountains. So their King cut a deal with the British Queen Victoria for the country to be a British Protectorate … very clever, one of the few parts of Africa that was never conquered and was never a colony of anybody. These days, curiously, most of the time the country is populated by old folks, and women and kids—the only real employment for hundreds of miles around are the mines of South Africa … including the coal mines. So the men are all at work in South Africa, and the country runs on the money that the miners send home.

Of a wintry morning in Maseru, the capital, there’s a haze across the city from the thousands and thousands of coal fires. By and large, these fires are warming poor women’s shacks and shanties, and cooking what passes for their kids’ breakfasts. They burn coal because it’s what they have. There are no forests, so they can’t burn wood. There are no great herds of cattle, so they can’t burn dung.

And as a result, Maseru mornings have that curious acrid smell that only comes from coal, and the haze that comes from coal burnt in leaky stoves and open three-stone fires.

I bring up this image of dirt-poor people in a dirt-poor country to provide a clear context for the New York Times report of the latest lethal IPCC recommendation, which they describe as follows:

To stand the best chance of keeping the planetary warming below an internationally agreed target of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above the level of preindustrial times, the panel found, no more than one trillion metric tons of carbon can be burned and the resulting gas released into the atmosphere.

Just over half that amount has already been emitted since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and at the rate energy consumption is growing, the trillionth ton will be released somewhere around 2040, according to calculations by Myles R. Allen, a scientist at the University of Oxford and one of the authors of the new report. More than three trillion tons of carbon are still left in the ground as fossil fuels. SOURCE

First, the “internationally agreed target” of 2°C? I don’t recall any international agreement on that, except perhaps among attendees at one of the IPCC’s annual moribund quackathons held in Rio or somewhere.

But lets look instead at the important issue, the numbers that they give for carbon. They say we’ve burnt a half-trillion tonnes, and that we should stop when we’ve burned another half trillion tonnes, and leave the other two-and-a-half trillion tons of fossil fuels in the ground. Leave it in the ground … the mind boggles. Never happen.

So in a scant few decades, the women of Maseru are supposed to just stop burning coal? And do what? Burn their furniture? They could pull up the floorboards and burn them … if they had floors …

Dont’cha love these guys? Don’t they understand that their policies KILL PEOPLE! I apologize for shouting, but they seem to be congenitally blind to the results of their actions, so perhaps their ears still work. Do they have a plan in hand for fueling Maseru, and a thousand other Maseru’s around the world? Wind won’t do it. Sun won’t do it. So in a couple decades … what?

Here’s what they avert their eyes from.

Artificially increasing energy prices for any reason harms, impoverishes, and kills the poor.

Yes, kills. People die from the cold. If the women of Maseru have to pay more for coal, they have less money to pay for food. So they will buy a bit less coal and a bit less food, and somewhere in there, in the hidden part that far too many people don’t want to think about, kids are dying. It’s already happening. The World Bank and the US are currently refusing to fund coal-fired power plants around the world … rich people refusing cheap energy to poor people, on my planet that is disgusting and criminal behavior.

Can’t say much more than that without excessively angrifying my blood, thinking about rich 1%ers like the IPCC conclave and Myles R. Allen trying to make all fossil fuels more expensive, and blithely ignoring the lethal consequences of their actions. So I’ll leave it there, but spread the word.

Expensive energy kills poor people.

Best to all,

w.

Sea Level Rise: Climate Change and an Ocean of Natural Variability

By Steve Goreham

Originally published in The Washington Times

Sea level rise is the greatest disaster predicted by Climatism, the belief in catastrophic climate change. Today, leading scientific organizations support the idea that the ocean level is rising due to man-made emissions. Further, they claim to be able to measure ocean level to a high degree of accuracy. But a look at natural ocean variation shows that official sea level measurements are nonsense.

The theory of man-made climate change warns that human emissions of greenhouse gases will raise global temperatures and melt Earth’s icecaps, causing rising oceans and flooding coastal cities. Former Vice President Al Gore’s best-selling book, An Inconvenient Truth, showed simulated pictures of flooding in South Florida, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, and other world locations. Dr. James Hansen predicted an ocean rise of 75 feet during the next 100 years.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in 2007, “Global average sea level rose at an average rate of 1.8 mm per year over 1961 to 2003. The rate was faster over 1993 to 2003: about 3.1 mm per year.” This translates to a 100-year rise of only 7 inches and 12 inches, far below the dire predictions of the climate alarmists.

But three millimeters is about the thickness of two dimes. Can scientists really measure a change in sea level over the course of a year, averaged across the world, which is two dimes thick

Today, sea level is measured with satellite radar altimeters. Satellites bounce radar waves off the surface of the ocean to measure the distance. Scientific organizations, such as the Sea Level Research Group at the University of Colorado (CU), use the satellite data to estimate ocean rise. The CU team estimates current ocean rise at 3.2 millimeters per year.

The organizations AVISO (Archiving, Validation, and Interpretation of Satellite Oceanographic Data) of France, CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) of Australia, and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) of the United States agree with the University of Colorado that seas are rising three millimeters per year. Given the huge natural variation in global sea level, the three millimeter number is incredible. The fact that four different organizations have arrived at the same number is suspect.

As Dr. Willie Soon of Harvard shows, ocean level variation is large and affected by many factors. If temperatures rise, water expands, adding to sea level rise. If icecaps melt, levels rise, but if icecaps grow due to increased snowfall, levels fall. If ocean saltiness changes, the water volume will also change.

The land itself moves continuously. Some shorelines are rising and some are subsiding. The land around Hudson Bay in Canada is rising, freed of ice from the last ice age. In contrast, the area around New Orleans is sinking. Long-term movement of Earth’s tectonic plates also changes sea level.

Tides are a major source of ocean variation, primarily caused by the gravitational pull of the moon, the sun, and the rotation of the Earth. Ocean water “sloshes” from shore to shore, with tides changing as much as 38 feet per day at the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. The global average tide range is about one meter, but this daily change is still 300 times the three-millimeter change that scientists claim to be able to measure over an entire year

Storms and weather are major factors affecting satellite measurements. Wave heights change by meters each day, dwarfing the annual rise in ocean level. Winds also change the height of the sea. The easterly wind of a strong La Niña pushes seas at Singapore to a meter higher than in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Satellites themselves have error bias. Satellite specifications claim a measurement accuracy of about one or two centimeters. How can scientists then measure an annual change of three millimeters, which is almost ten times smaller than the error in daily measurements? Measuring tools typically must have accuracy ten times better than the quantity to be measured, not ten times worse. Dr. Carl Wunsch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology commented on the satellite data in 2007, “It remains possible that the database is insufficient to compute mean sea level trends with the accuracy necessary to discuss the impact of global warming—as disappointing as this conclusion may be.”

Scientists add many “fudge factors” to the raw data. The same measurement taken by each of the three satellites, TOPEX, JASON-1, and JASON-2, differs by 75 millimeters and must be corrected. As a natural adjustment, researchers add 0.3 millimeters to the measured data, because ocean basins appear to be getting larger, able to hold more water, and reducing apparent ocean levels.

Tide gauges are also used to “calibrate” the satellite data. But gauge measurements are subject to errors of one or two centimeters, again many times more than the sea level rise to be measured.

Clearly, the official three millimeter sea level rise number is a product of scientific “group think.” Not only is this number far below what can be accurately measured, but all leading organizations support this nonsense number. Could it be that our leading scientists must endorse sea-level rise to support the ideology of man-made global warming?

Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.

National Geographic’ s Sea Level Folly

By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM

In the September 2013 issue of National Geographic, the feature story is on rising sea levels and how they are changing our coastlines. It shows a Statue of Liberty half submerged. The magazine in at least the past decade has adopted the failing climate change advocacy position prevalent in today’s mainstream media. It has become more science fiction than science fact. It is sad because it once was a very popular very balanced and informative trustworthy magazine. A lot of the hype on sea level rises including talk by Mayor Bloomberg of the need to spend $20 billion dollars to protect the city from rising seas and storms is based on faulty data.

The entire environmental movement and government policy is based on flawed theories and models. Whenever the data disagrees with the data they assume the data is wrong and adjust it to fit their projections.

The late, great Richard Feynman, a Cornell Physicist said about the scientific method that if data or experiments don’t support your theory no matter how beautiful it is or smart you are, the theory is wrong.

For example, global temperatures stopped warming close to 17 years ago and have cooled since 2002. This is while CO2 has increased over 11%. None of the climate change models used by the UN showed this hiatus. Claims of the warmest decade and very high ranking months and years are based entirely on our government manipulating climate data. In 1999 when NASA’s James Hansen observed relative to the US annual temperatures in the 20th century, that the 1930s was clearly the warmest decade and 1934 the warmest year, 1934 was a full 1.1F warmer than the spike in the super El Nino of 1998 in the NOAA’s/NASA’s prize US data set which adjusted for urban contamination.

That was inconvenient since their global data set that was not adjusted for urbanization was showing significant warming over the same period.

NOAA in 2007 removed the urban adjustment and changed other processing steps. The result was now that 1998 became 0.2F warmer than 1934, a change of 1.3F.

One data set that was not altered, the state all time record highs and lows, showed a very different story more like that depicted in 1999. 39 of the 50 all time state record highs occurred before 1960. The most, 23, occurred in the 1930s. More state record cold records than warm have been set since the 1940s.

NOAA NCDC data compiled by Dr. John Christy for senate testimony in August 2012

The government loves to reinvent statistics. Does anyone really believe our real unemployment number is 7.3%? We get there by not counting people hopelessly unable to find employment. The CPI each month implies inflation is under control. But they exclude ‘volatile food and energy’. Sure boxer short prices are not rising at an alarming rate but gasoline is double what it was when Obama took office and a tank of heating oil may soon require a second mortgage. We shoppers all experience sticker shock when they go to buy package of chop meat. Sadly, this affects the poor and middle class the most as food and energy is what they spend the most money on. Europe went through this same green madness and is now abandoning it.

But not the National Geographic, which had abdicated the once honest science for junk science advocacy. Let’s look at the facts.

Sea levels rise and fall as ocean temperatures rise and fall (causing expansion and contraction of the water) and as water is locked up in or increased in the major ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland or during major glacial periods on the continents.

During the last glacial period, an ice sheet as much as 2 miles thick covered many parts of northern Europe and Asia and North America over Canada and the northern United States down to New York and south of Chicago. When the interglacial began and the ice retreated, meltwater caused a rapid sea level rise of 360 feet. In the last 8000 years sea level rise slowed to a crawl.

This figure shows sea level rise since the end of the last glacial episode based on data from Fleming et al. 1998, Fleming 2000, & Milne et al. 2005.

It likely varied with the cooling and warming periods that occur naturally. Global sea levels temporarily rise more when the ocean enter their warmer multidecadal phases and during major El Ninos and slow when the ocean basins cool and during major La Ninas.

Antarctica has been growing for 30 years, locking up more of the planet’s water in the icesheet. Greenland was 4C (8F) warmer than today’s level during the last interglacial without melting. With the Atlantic soon the head into its multidecadal cold mode and the sun sink further into a 200 year slumber, cooling is likely to increase ice in Greenland. We already are seeing more snow in winter on land. 4 of the top 5 snowiest years for the hemisphere have occurred in the last 6 years.

Renowned oceanographic expert Nils-Axel Mörner has studied sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 45 years. Recently retired as director of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University, Mörner is past president (1999- 2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project. In a 2010 paper in 21st Century Science and Technology Morner said

“While the IPCC and its boy scouts present wilder and wilder sea level predictions for the near future, the real observational facts demonstrate that sea level has remained virtually stable for the last 40-50 years.”

This is in sharp contrast with the model projections, similar to the way temperatures are defying the models.

Morner (2011)

TIDE GAUGES

Measurement sea level change at any location with tide gauges is complicated by the fact that the land is in many places sinking or rising. The mean of all the 159 NOAA tide gauge sites gives a rate of 0.5 mm/ year to 0.6 mm/year (Burton 2010). When you exclude those sites that represent uplifted and subsided areas, you are left with 68 sites of reasonable stability. These sites give a present rate of sea level rise in the order of 1.0 (± 1.0) mm/year (about 4 inches per century). Morner noted that most tide-gauges are installed on unstable harbor constructions or landing piers. Therefore, tide-gauge records are bound to exaggerate sea level rise.

A paper by Wenzel etal (2010) using a neural network on tide gauges found a mean sea level rise of 1.56 +/- 0.25 mm/yr from 1900 to 2006. The South Atlantic as well as the tropical Atlantic are the only basins that show significant rises. They found the basins sea level are dominated by oscillations with periods of about 50-75 years, which relate nicely to the 60 year ocean oscillations.

SATELLITE ALTIMETRY

Satellite altimetry is a promising new technology that offers the reconstruction of sea level changes all over the ocean surface. The technology though has also produced disappointing results to the alarmist community as it has not shown the rise they expected.

The Topex/Poseidon and later Jason missions recorded the variations of the ocean surface with high resolution. Having applied all technical correction needed, Menard 2000 and also Aviso 2000) presented a linear trend of 1.0 mm/year from 1992 to 2000. However, the rise came mostly from a spike due to the ocean warming from a super El Nino in 1997/98. Eliminating that spike, gave as change of 0 +/- 10mm. This graph provides no indication of any rise over the time-period covered (Mörner 2004, 2007a, 2007c).

Morner presented this trend analysis that treated the 1997 El Nino peak (yellow) as a separate event superimposed on the long term trend. This shows a stability over the first 5 years blue and possibly over the whole time period covered (from Morner 2004, 2007c).

IPCC SHENANIGHANS

Dr. Morner states that none of the 33 authors of the 2001 IPCC Chapter on sea levels was considered to be a sea level expert, that all 33 were from other disciplines and selected “due to loyalty” to the IPCC. Furthermore, Dr. Morner estimates that of the 300-400 individual scientists “in the sea-level [scientific] community”, 80% of sea-level experts disagree with the IPCC conclusions regarding sea level rise. And the IPCC in 2007 was actually relatively conservative (an average of 15 inches) with their projections compared with others who projected a change of 3 feet up to 20 feet or more. If you recall in the movie, an inconvenient truth Al Gore used a crane to demonstrate how high 20 feet was. It appears, he could have instead stood on the Manhattan phone book.

But even the IPCC played data games. The IPCC combined tide gauge and altimetry and to their alarm, showed no change. But they made an ‘adjustment’ to the data using the sea level change from one of four Hong Kong gauges. It was the only one that showed a sea level rise, indicating that the land was likely subsiding there. At the Moscow global warming meeting in 2005, in answer to Morner’s criticisms about this “correction,” one of the British IPCC delegation said, “We had to do so, otherwise there would not be any trend.”

Satellite altimetry data also shows no upward trend and to resolve this dilemma, corrections were applied including corrections assuming that land is still rebounding from the retreat of the glaciers 10,500 years ago (glacial isostatic adjustment).

As with the surface temperatures, most all of the increases are in the adjustments.

So what does all this data suggest for the National Geographic scenario of a 200 foot rise?

Of course if the recent sea level rise has been 0 and it continues so, it will never reach the level depicted in the National Geographic. If it is Morner’s 1 mm/year, which the tide gauges, without accounting for the 1997/98 El Nino spike suggest, it would take 65,200 years. If the rise of 7 inches the last century repeats, it would take 36,629 years. If the 15 inches predicted by the IPCC in AR4 remains in the Fifth assessment and were to verify, it would take 17,112 years.

Considering the fact we are already well past 10,000 years into the current interglacial and interglacials historically ranged from 10-15,000 years, under none of these scenarios would we ever see the Lady Liberty swimming. In fact we are more likely to be able to walk to the statue on a frozen sea/river or encased in ice.

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N.-A. Mörner, 2007a. “The Sun rules climate. There’s no danger of global sea level rise.” 21st Century, Fall 2007, pp. 31-34.

N.-A. Mörner, 2007b. “Sea Level Changes and Tsu- namis. Environmental Stress and Migration over the Seas.” Internationales Asienforum, Vol. 38, pp. 353-374.

N.-A. Mörner, 2007c. “The Greatest Lie Ever Told.” P&G-print (2nd edition 2009, 3rd edition 2010.

N.-A. Mörner, 2008. “Comments.” Global Planet. Change, Vol. 62, pp. 219-220.

N.-A. Mörner, 2009. “Open letter to the President of the Maldives.” New Concepts in Global Tecton- ics Newsletter, No. 53, pp. 80-83.

N.-A. Mörner, 2010a. “Sea level changes in Bangladesh. New observational facts.” Energy and En- vironment, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 249-263.

N.-A. Mörner, 2010b. “Some problems in the re- construction of mean sea level and its changes with time.” Quaternary International, Vol. 221, pp. 3-8.

N.-A. Morner, 2010, “There is No Alarming Sea Level Rise,” 21st Century Science and Technology, Fall 2010, pp 7-17.
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Socialist Science in the Climate Science Neighborhood

By Anthony Sadar

Radical socialists (often disguised with the euphemism “progressives”) have many potential avenues they can travel to arrive at their ends — an end that justifies its means. And, rather than a goal to save lives or help the poor, the nefarious ends of socialists unfortunately seems to be their own power and control over the rest of us great unwashed.

Typically, the socialist trail is carved out through the down-trodden by whipping up resentment and jealousy and a sense of entitlement that is to be fulfilled by the social activist/community organizer. Furthermore, socialist socialites in high political and organizational authority are celebrated and idealized as saviors of the needy by the witting and unwitting media.

Thus, the assault on society comes from below and above facilitated by the media to ultimately enslave and impoverish all — all except the ruling class of socialists, and the wealthy who carefully avoid excessive irritation of the rulers.

After decades of inroads into unions, education, politics, law, journalism, public relations, and many of the “soft” scientific disciplines, the latest avenue of attack has been via the “hard” sciences, in particular, atmospheric science.

During my 35 years of practice in the atmospheric science profession, in government, consulting, and academia, the socialist techniques that have become apparent include blatant dishonesty stemming from arrogance — a hallmark of socialism — and its offshoot, a sense of supreme superiority.

Haughty socialism has no problem with twisting the truth or simply lying. Although for most people, “honesty is the best policy,” in socialist ideology the ends justifies the means and so, even though verity can be useful, it’s not absolutely necessary.

There are many experienced real-world atmospheric-science practitioners who legitimately question the conclusions of the cadre of academic and government scientists who have declared “settled” the complex scientific endeavor of understanding climate change. When experienced practitioners are labeled “climate change deniers” by some of these very same arrogant scientists, you know a symptom of socialism has reared its ugly head. (Note that I am not claiming that those who use such derogatory terms are necessarily radical socialists, rather that they are displaying the characteristics germane to that radicalism.)

The denier moniker is obviously untrue, which makes it a bit problematic to trust a researcher or research director who relies on using this blatant ad hominem attack. Professor Michael Mann used the phrase “climate change denier” or some variant of it seven times on one page alone, page 193 (if you count endnotes to the page), in his 2012 book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines. Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, impudently stated in August that she didn’t want any “climate-change deniers in my department.”

Likewise, another basic tactic of socialism is to “divide and conquer,” that’s why differing science views are framed as a “war.” It’s all or nothing when a personal philosophy/religion is at stake, whereas with authentic scientific practice a middle ground is quite acceptable and often is the path to discovering the truth about a matter under investigation. Of course, with extremists on both sides, “you’re either for us or against us,” a view more typical of politics than science. So, socialists demand that you choose sides — pick a conclusion and defend it at all costs. With such socialist thinking in control of academia, politics, and much of the media, a scientist’s conclusions must meet socialist approval or he/she is not “doing science.” Independent thinking is not acceptable. And, if you have doubts that the socialist side is correct, then you must be a denier of the “truth.” Yet, authentic science is liberating, whereas science in the grips of an ideology, like socialism, is bound not to progress.

The path to true progress for people and the planet should be traveled with gracious, empathetic, and humble responsibility by those who can make a difference with advanced science and technology. In short, science should be in the service of humanity, rather than in the service of any ideology. But, unfortunately, with radical socialism now taking up residence on Climate Science Street, well… there goes the neighborhood.

Anthony J. Sadar, a Certified Consulting Meteorologist, is author of In Global Warming We Trust: A Heretic’s Guide to Climate Science (Telescope Books, 2012).

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Greens Anti-Coal War Turns Heat on World’s Poor

by: Peter C. Glover, Energy Tribune

If ever proof were needed that capitalism works for the interest of the poorest and most vulnerable (and for all of us) while leftist social engineering works against those interests, consider the escalating green war on coal.

It’s a war being conducted from the very top. President Obama, the European Union, even the United Nations are among those doing their level best to prevent the exploitation of one of the most ubiquitous, and thus cheap, energy resource available to us. In vain pursuit of controlling the global climate via the doomed war on man-made carbon dioxide emissions, social engineers are prepared to ignore both the economy-busting cost and, ultimately, the human cost.

But if the recent ignominious dumping of Australia’s carbon-tax-imposing Labour Government teaches anything, it’s that, in a democracy, it’s the people that call the shots in the global marketplace, not governments. Just ask Julia Gillard (who imposed the disastrous Oz carbon tax) and Kevin Rudd (who pushed her aside then tried to run with it). Quite simply, the message to democratic governments worldwide is straightforward enough: an industry and society crippling carbon tax is a step too far. Democratic governments can take their chances. We cannot, however, take the same view when it comes to the world’s millions still living in poverty. Not that they appear to factor in the ideological calculations of the unelected ‘greenist’ elites at the European Union Commission or United Nations (or greens generally).

Social engineers are rarely fans of democracy. They know well enough that electorates will allow them only so much rope; precisely why greens prefer ‘backdoor’ means, such as procuring regulations from government quangos. Apart from getting fellow green ideologues into key government roles, it usually means lobbying for policies that skew the free marketplace. In the case of energy, they lobby against hydrocarbon resources while contriving to represent renewable energy as a commercially economic alternative. Joe Average, for a while at least, is duly taken in. Unfortunately, as the world’s first government to impose a carbon tax just found out, you can fool some of the people some of the time…

Don’t think for one moment, however, that the social engineers are prepared to bow to the will of the people. It’s not in their DNA. Which is precisely why they have been lobbying hard for the world’s banks to step in and cut the usual investments and loans to hydrocarbon energy industry businesses; and lately, with some success. Investment loans are crucial to enable economically viable electricity generating power plants to be built in developing states.

In May 2013, World Bank President Jim Young Kim was robustly defending his organisation’s investment in coal-fired power plants to help end poverty by bringing electricity to millions. By July, however, in the face of massive criticism of its perceived lack of commitment towards ‘fighting climate change’, especially by Barack Obama, the World Bank agreed to a “new energy strategy” that would limit the financing of coal-fired plants except in “rare circumstances”. Of its funding to poorer nations, around eight percent or $18 billion between 2007-12 was being channelled into sectors that include energy. Much of that funding will now be diverted towards non-viable (without on-going subsidy) renewable energy projects. In early September the World Bank moved up another gear. It announced that it would now be taking “aggressive action” to ensure funds go towards the climate fight and not fossil-fuelled power plants. They claim the move will promote public health and crop growth. It will do neither. At a stroke the World Bank has effectively negated a key founding principle: that which aims to lift countless millions out of poverty.

We know this because a similar policy is already in place at the European Investment Bank (EIB) where the negative impact on populations has had devastating results. Long targeted by campaign groups who want fossil fuel loans stopped, the EIB enacted a highly controversial pro-biofuels policy which is now being blamed for pushing large sectors of African populations into poverty. As a direct result of its policy, six million hectares of sub-Saharan Africa are now under the control of European companies all vying for a slice of the EU biofuel ‘slush fund’ action. This has instigated a significant shift away from food crop production to crop production to manufacture biofuels, and largely for use in the affluent West. In July, the Europe’s Parliamentary Environment Committee (EPEC) was forced to admit its policy was having a serious impact on global food stocks. A fact fleshed out by an ActionAid report Broken Promises.

The report cited the example of the Addax bioenergy project in Sierra Leone which was shown to have adversely affected the lives of 13,000 people in 60 villages. 90 percent of those interviewed by Actionaid confirmed that spreading local hunger was directly attributable to Addax acquiring lands to grow biofuel crops, and without compensation. As the author of Actionaid’s report put it, “The fact that this is done in the name of the EU ‘green’ policies is shocking.” The EPEC duly voted to reduce the cap of 10 percent of transport fuel from renewable from sources by 2020 to 5.5 percent. The European Parliament eventually voted to confirm a reduction to 6 percent on September 11. The environmental lobbies had wanted it kept at 8.5 percent. The policy, however, remains in place to the detriment of those for whom food crops matter much more.

Nor do environmental NGOs, including the WWF, SEE Change Net and Bankwatch, have any compunction about keeping much of the world in power-less poverty. Having jetted into Serbia for yet another ‘consultation’ jaunt in September, the NGOs decided to submit a 17,000 strong petition demanding that the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) stop lending cash for coal projects, too.

Industrializing nations and communities don’t want lectures about an alarmist climate change theory with more holes in it than in Lennon’s “Blackburn, Lancashire” (a mere 4,000, if you were wondering). Nor do they want to remain in an eco-activist-styled ‘quaint’ but distinctly poverty-stricken community. What they need is food crops, full stomachs and poverty-alleviating electrical power. And that means utilizing hydrocarbon-fuelled power. When it comes to poverty-alleviation, capitalism – and specifically the lending of global investment banks to build workable power plants – is not the chief hope for the world’s poor, it’s their only hope.

– See more at: http://www.energytribune.com/79165/greens-anti-coal-war-turns-heat-on-worlds-poor#sthash.b93T0uDo.eDHBJMLV.dpuf

NO DOUBT ABOUT IT. THE EARTH’S CLIMATE IS COOLING!

Written by Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser

One of the most prescient indicators clearly shows it, namely the Danish Meteorological Institute’s daily mean temperatures for the Arctic area north of the 80th northern parallel. They have been measured for over 50 years which shows a long-term average of 90 days with the air temperature above freezing.

The Year 2013

The year 2013 has seen a dramatic departure from that routine. In 2013, the summer (above freezing temperatures) lasted for only 45 days, one half of the average number of days. Not only did the frost-free days start much later than on average this year, they also ended much earlier, see the figure below. In fact, the frost-free period seen this year was significantly shorter than in other year since 1958, when the recordings began.

The new data corroborate other findings of no global warming for the last 18 years. In fact, not a single of the 20-plus climate prediction models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) even shows the recent temperature developments as within their model uncertainties. It begs the question: Is another ice age imminent?

Climate at the Poles

The climate at the earth’s poles is quite different from that at mid-latitudes or near the equator. To begin with, at the poles, the lengths of day and night vary with the seasons. At the earth’s equator, day and night periods are ALWAYS equal, 12 hours exactly. In contrast, near the poles, day and night periods vary from 24-hour sunshine in summer to 24-hour darkness in the depth of winter.

The Arctic winter temperatures average around MINUS 30 °C (MINUS 35 °F) but it can get much colder than that. If nature so wants it, that kind of cold weather can slide down to cover half of the North American continent; even in Minnesota, winter temperatures can reach MINUS 60 °F!

The Arctic summer period extends from mid-June to mid-September. Above the Arctic Circle (latitude 66° N) summer days are longer than the nights and vice versa in winter. At even higher latitude, above 80° N, there is 24-hour sunshine for a few weeks around summer and total darkness at winter solstice. Needless to say, any visitors to such areas prefer to come in mid-summer.

Old Man Frost

Old Man Frost also known as “Father Frost” is a fictional character in Russian folklore, reminiscent of Santa Claus. Though fictional, the character provides the quintessential basis for understanding the country’s psyche: Much of the landscape is frozen for a long time each year. The brief summer periods do not change that fact and various armies’ intent on conquering the land have learned such with great pain and defeat.

Permafrost (defined as soil at or below the freezing point of water for two or more years) covers much of Russia’s tundra and taiga regions, just like on this continent. Even today, well preserved woolly mammoth bodies are found in Siberia from time to time—thanks to permafrost. These relatives of modern day elephants died out approximately 4,500 years ago. You may think of the area as a giant freezer—entirely natural.

Ice Ages

The world has experienced a number of “ice ages.” Those were times when large parts of the North American and Eurasian continents were covered by a thick layer of ice, mostly one to two miles high. All that ice melted and began to disappear 20,000 years ago. By about 5,000 years ago, the ice was mostly gone and, since then, we are enjoying an “interglacial period.” Such interglacial periods of “global warming” (also known as “climate change”) had nothing to do with changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels. If there is any credible correlation at all, it shows the rise of CO2 levels lagging the rise in temperatures by 1,000 years or so.

All indications are that in the past such interglacial periods have ended quite suddenly; on a geological time scale “overnight.” As Robert W. Felix describes eloquently in his book Not by Fire but by Ice, massive snowfalls entrapped and killed the mammoths and everything else around them. There was no route of escape.

The question now is solely “when, not if” the current interglacial period will come to a sudden end. Nature had an earlier attempt at it when, in the mid-1600’s, the world experienced a cold spell lasting some 60 years which is now commonly known as the medieval “Little Ice Age.” That period coincided with the “Maunder Minimum,” an unusual low number of sunspots through several sunspot cycles. Guess what? Current predictions are once again for several decades of low counts of sunspots.

Though the sunspots are affecting the radiation received from the sun, they are not the only thing affecting our climate. Much closer to home, there are thousands of volcanos and volcanic vents spewing volcanic ash and gases into the atmosphere.

Volcanic Ash & Gas

Massive volcanic eruptions on earth have had severe consequences in the earth’s past, none good. Apart from the areas in the immediate vicinity which were incinerated and buried by lava flows, forceful eruptions can blast large amounts of ash high up into the atmosphere. It can stay aloft for many months and reduces the amount of sunshine received at the surface. Such events happened repeatedly in recorded history and are also known from geological records. Ian Plimer, in his book Heaven and Earth describes it well in the chapter One volcano can ruin your day.

While massive eruptions are rare, there are active volcanoes and thousands of vents all along the earth’s 40,000+ miles of tectonic rifts. Nearly all volcanoes are constantly emitting gas with carbon dioxide making up the bulk of it, but it is not the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which determines the climate. If carbon dioxide has any effect on the climate at all, it provides a moderating and cooling effect, not a warm blanket effect. The widely claimed “greenhouse gas” theory is bunk.

End of the Interglacial?

The question as to the end of the current interglacial period has been asked repeatedly. The short answer is: Nobody knows when it will come about. It could happen tomorrow, or a thousand or more years from now.

Given the time horizons of the earth’s age (currently estimated at 4,500,000,000 years) and geological time frames in general, a period of 1,000 years does not even count as a “rounding error.”

Politicians’ Talk

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, many politicians still ride the “global warming” bandwagon. Presidents, prime ministers, chancellors and other world leaders still claim that the earth is in a run-away warming phase and push their anti-carbon dioxide alternative energy schemes. In reality though, the earth’s climate is largely controlled by solar radiation, volcanism on earth, and the hydrological cycling of water between solid, liquid and vapor states.

From the actual temperature observations to the ice extent in the Arctic and Antarctic and to the sunspot cycles, they all point into the opposite direction. How long will it take for the politicians and bureaucrats to wake up?

You may not have time to wait for that. Better get your woollies now.

———————-

Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser has authored nearly 200 publications in scientific journals, government and national and international agency reports, books, trade magazines, and newspapers. He has been president of the Intl. Association for Great Lakes Research, and is a recipient of the Intl. QSAR Award. He is currently Director of Research of TerraBase Inc., and is a Fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada.

Dr. Kaiser is author of CONVENIENT MYTHS, the green revolution – perceptions, politics, and facts, and is widely recognized for his expertise in environmental chemistry and his “no-nonsense” approach to issues.

Australian Government Axes Climate Programmes

Benny Peiser, GWPF

MPs Call For Review Of Britain’s Climate Change Act

Public servants are drawing up plans to collapse 33 climate change schemes run by seven departments and eight agencies into just three bodies run by two departments under a substantial rewrite of the administration of carbon abatement schemes under the Coalition. The move is forecast to save the government tens of millions of dollars. The Climate Change Authority, which sets emissions caps, the Climate Commission, which has conducted research into climate change, and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which funds renewable technologies, are all slated to be abolished under the plans. –Sid Maher and Lauren Wilson, The Australian, 11 September 2013

Following the election of a new government, Australia is to abolish its emissions trading scheme, disband a climate advisory body and institute a carbon reduction policy that experts say will fail to meet its meagre target.

Tony Abbott’s coalition signalled that it would disband Australia’s Climate Commission – an independent scientific body that provides reliable information on climate change to the public. In response to a report the commission released, warning that extreme weather was made more likely by climate change, Abbott said: “When the carbon tax goes, all of those bureaucracies will go and I suspect we might find that the particular position you refer to goes with them.” –Michael Slezak, New Scientist, 10 September 2013

Coalition MP Dennis Jensen, who is a vocal climate science sceptic, has called on Prime Minister-elect Tony Abbott to appoint him as science minister. “At the moment to be honest I’m feeling under-utilised,” said Dr Jensen, the member for Tangney in Western Australia, who has a master’s degree in physics and a PhD in material science. Dr Jensen suggests he would be better qualified than anyone to take charge of science. “I’m not aware of any other scientist [in the Parliament],” he said. –Jonathan Swan, The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 September 2013

During the election campaign countless thousands of words were written claiming Australia’s carbon tax would either not be removed because Tony Abbott would have second thoughts or would be blocked in the Senate. Assuming the Coalition was convincing, it was always a very dubious argument because the Labor Party would not want another election after a big defeat. But, as it happens, the election gave effective control of the Senate to a group of unknowns and that makes the end of the carbon tax virtually certain, without a double dissolution. The independents were elected on complex preference arrangements and now have six years in the Senate. If there is a double dissolution in the second half of 2014 they may not be re-elected and their term will be closer to six months. So once it becomes a double dissolution issue carbon taxes will go. –Robert Gottliebsen, Business Spectator, 12 September 2013

I urge the minister, in the light of all the evidence that has come out about the lack of any change in temperature over the past 15 years, to think again about the Climate Change Act and to revoke it, amend it and support home owners and British businesses. –David Davies MP, House of Commons, 10 September 2013

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Climate Change Act is without doubt the most foolish piece of statute that any of us here is likely to see in Parliament? Does he further agree that the very principle of unilaterally re-embarking on a crash programme of carbon reduction can only have the effect of exporting our energy-intensive industries to places where they may emit more carbon, and that carbon reduction will have only a nugatory effect on the problem because, as he correctly states, the Chinese are increasing carbon emissions faster than we are succeeding in reducing them? –Andrew Tyrie MP, House of Commons, 10 September 2013

What worries me is our attacks on people’s energy bills — the poorest suffer most — and on British industry, because we have such penal energy policies. Tony Abbott recently won an important election victory in Australia saying that for him it was a referendum on the carbon tax, because he simply rejected dear energy for Australia. He was right about that for Australia, and should we not be doing the same here? –John Redwood MP House of Commons, 10 September 2013

Does my hon. Friend acknowledge that although the issue used to be called “global warming”, when the globe stopped warming the fanatics changed the name to “climate change” because nobody can ever deny that the climate changes? As he has just acknowledged, the climate always changes, and by changing the name they admitted that their previous hypothesis was wrong. –Philip Davies MP, House of Commons, 10 September 2013

David Cameron will face another challenge to his authority and credibility as a world leader today when Conservative MPs call for the UK to abandon its targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. David Davies, the MP for Monmouth, and his other backbench colleagues will call during a debate in Westminster Hall for the Government to review the Climate Change Act, which commits the UK to cut its emissions by at least 80 per cent by 2050 compared with 1990. So Mr Cameron will have to choose between pandering to ‘sceptics’ in his own party or instead side with the world’s scientific community. It may not be an easy choice for the Prime Minister. And most of the editors of Britain’s right-wing newspapers have been coaxed by Lord Lawson into carrying out a concerted campaign of misinformation about the causes and consequences of climate change. –Bob Ward, The Independent, 10 September 2013

Nine of Europe’s biggest utilities have joined forces to warn that the EU’s energy policies are putting the continent’s power supplies at risk. Their intervention will put added pressure on EU leaders as they weigh the future of the bloc’s climate change policies. Gérard Mestrallet, chief executive of GDF Suez, said one of the biggest problems was overgenerous renewable energy subsidies that had pushed up costs for energy consumers and now needed to be cut: “We have to reduce the speed at which Europe is building new wind farms and solar panels. At the moment, it is not sustainable.” –Guy Chazan and Pilita Clark, Financial Times, 10 September 2013

The battle over the future direction of the EU’s climate change strategy is to escalate further today, as a group of Europe’s leading energy companies prepares to warn that current policies are undermining the continent’s competitiveness. The energy giants are expected to side with the UK government and a number of other countries in arguing that the EU should not replace its current target for 2020 requiring a 20 per cent share of renewable energy with a new renewables target for 2030. -–BusinessGreen, 10 September 2013

Central European powerhouse Poland will anchor its energy strategy in coal and shale gas, with only limited investment in renewables, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Tuesday. An EU nation of 38 million people, Poland currently relies on its vast coal reserves to produce about 90 percent of the electricity it consumes. “We want to have renewable energy sources, but hard coal and lignite — and soon shale gas — will remain our principal energy sources. That’s where the future of the energy sector lies,” Tusk told reporters. –Agence France-Presse, 12 September 2013

In a really good article in the New York Times, Eduardo Porter explains the economic end of the global warming debate in terms that even the most rabid green could understand. If he’s right then it may be that sanity has broken out in Washington. The Americans are going to reject Sternonomics out of hand. How long before politicians in Westminster follow suit? –Andrew Montford, Bishop Hill, 12 September 2013

Climate Scientists Challenge Evangelical Climate Alarmists to Debate

Cornwall Alliance Climate Scientists Challenge Evangelical Climate Alarmists to Debate

“As evangelicals, we need to get serious about protecting the poor from the harms of climate alarmism.”—David Legates and Roy Spencer

After evangelical climate scientists Katharine Hayhoe and Thomas Ackerman wrote in The Christian Post August 31 that “climate change is real, that most of it is human-caused, and that it is a threat to future generations that must be addressed by the global community,” two other evangelical climate scientists—Cornwall Alliance Senior Fellows Dr. David Legates and Dr. Roy W. Spencer—replied in The Christian Post September 10 with evidence that while climate change is real, most of it is not human-caused, and it is not a threat to future generations that must be addressed by the global community.

“While Hayhoe and Ackerman insist that their belief in dangerous manmade climate change is a matter not of faith but of sight—of scientific evidence—we are convinced that it is precisely the opposite,” Legates and Spencer wrote. “Why? Because the observational (scientific) evidence conflicts with it.”

“As illustrated in the two graphs below,” they continued, “the average (mean) carbon dioxide-driven warming predicted for 1979–2013 by the computer climate models on which Hayhoe and Ackerman depend for their alarms runs about three-and-a-half times the actual observed warming. Even the few model predictions closest to reality run at least 60% higher than observations. And as the second graph shows, contrary to the models’ predictions, there has been no significant warming for about the last 17 years.”

The “divergence between real-world observations and predictions means that the models vastly exaggerate CO2’s warming effect,” Legates and Spencer wrote. “Consequently, estimates of harms from CO2-induced warming, and of benefits from reducing CO2 emissions, too, are vastly exaggerated.”

Legates, whose Ph.D. is in climatology, is Professor of Geography/Climatology at the University of Delaware.

Spencer, whose Ph.D. is in meteorology, is Principal Research Scientist in Atmospheric Science in the National Space Science and Technology Center at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite—source of global atmospheric temperature data since 1979—and an award-winning former Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

“Hayhoe and Ackerman—like other climate alarmists—urge us to try to reduce future warming by reducing our use of fossil fuels,” they added. “That is doubly mistaken.” Legates and Spencer then explained why, and posed their challenge:
First, it would have next to no impact on future temperatures. As evangelical climate scientist Dr. John R. Christy calculates, even if the U.S. achieved a 50% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050, the net impact would be a reduction in global average temperature of a practically undetectable and inconsequential 7 hundredths of 1 degree Celsius.

Second, the only way to reduce CO2 emissions is to make drastic cuts in use of fossil fuels for energy. But abundant, affordable, reliable energy is crucial to economic development, and, aside from nuclear, fossil fuels are, especially in the developing world, our best source for that. Switching from them to “renewables” like wind, solar, and biomass would mean drastically raising energy costs (and so the cost of everything else)—hurting everybody, but the poor worst of all.

As evangelicals, we need to get serious about protecting the poor from the harms of climate alarmism.

Hayhoe and Ackerman say they want “informed and sustained conversations.”

We agree. Therefore we challenge them, or other evangelicals of their choice, to a formal public debate—with a scientist, an economist, and a theologian on each side—at an evangelical college of their choice. Up for debate would be the magnitude, causes, and consequences of recent and foreseeable global warming and whether fighting it by reducing CO2 emissions would cause more good than harm to the poor.
The Cornwall Alliance is eager to assist in arranging for such a debate—something we’ve sought for six years. If you are an evangelical college administrator or faculty member and would be interested in arranging for the debate to take place at your school, contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). If you know an evangelical college administrator or faculty member who you think might help arrange for the debate, please forward this email with your recommendation.

E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., Founder and National Spokesman
Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation