Climate Change Consensus?

[Moon The Loon]

Of course. We need it. I don't understand your last point (quoted in my above post) then... Who has it wrong? I haven't heard anyone claim the atmosphere is doing the heating. ? Put plainly, what is it that either Gore or Suzuki claim regarding the process that you specifically disagree with? (other than whether or not we're causing any problems ourselves.... where I gather you stand firmly on the side that say's we're not)

Who has it wrong?

The politicians. Plain and simple. The legitimate science (from my perspective, and my opinion) is not complete. The articles I linked to show the history of the development of various theories, mostly solar based in nature, and dispelling many of them.

The science is not complete. And may not be completed in our lifetime, or in the lifetimes of our great grandchildren.

The overall climate is warming, mostly in the northern and southern hemispheres. I don't dispute that. But for any human to think that they can change that, from what we know today, I believe to be the height of preposterousness (izzat a word, Kip?)

I said here over two years ago - politicians need to be preparing for the ultimate rise of the water levels over the next 50 years. Almost 1/2 of the world's population lives less than 50 feet above sea level. A rise of only 1/2 metre (about 20 inches) will affect fully 10% of the population according to http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/se...ulation-hit.php

The climate is changing. The science is ongoing. The tectonic and vulcanic activity beneath the surface of the oceans will continue to pump MASSIVE amounts of so-called GHG's and heat into the oceans and ultimately the atmosphere. The great carbon sinks of the world will continue to be cut down so as to grow corn for ethanol, thereby increasing the "carbon footprint" in the atmosphere. The politicians will continue to be lobbied by those who can glean an obscene financial reward from the politics of fear.

To refer again to the IPCC report, we would have to go to ZERO emissions, worldwide, for a very long time so as to give the atmosphere a chance to cleanse itself from the pollutants of the industrial age.

All I'm advocating Mitch is to be realistic. Is my last statement going to happen in a million years? (Well, maybe...) Or how about the next 50 years?

Not a chance.

So while it is still good to attempt to put a cap on pollution (I joined Pollution Probe back in 1967 - I still believe in the goals set then - reduce, reuse, recycle), the climate is changing. Sea levels are rising. The earth will continue around the sun. There's nothing that I, you or anyone can do to change any of that. In my opinion. Nothing.

Unless one subscribes to the nuclear winter theory put forth by Dr. Helen Caldicott in the 1970's.

Mother Nature can be a b!tch!

[Mitch Cronin]

...said the Injin Chief to his visitor: Hmmm. You tell many things. Your tales have many arrows, and many paths. Our people will talk. Even the Eagle cannot know the choices he will make tomorrow.

I think I agree with all of that Moon... except I think we may find we are making a difference. ...as you said, the science isn't complete.

[Guest rattler]

Two things... - None of those grandstanding futzes speak for me. and - Your blue highlight stirs an anger in me. I'm getting tired of hearing that line. The writer is wrong, it's used far too often.

I would like to answer Albertans who like to think like that, that if they don't like Canada, then they are quite welcome to vamoose! The rest of us can work out the details of a deserving nation of decent people who want to work together.

That, is really a topic for another thread.

As for the record temperatures. Yes, that's an expected result of this global climate change that we're all discussing here. It would seem that few doubt our "climate" is changing, though the direction of change is not wholly agreed, nor the causes....

What I meant was,  holding up record low temps across the province and saying something like "it sure doesn't look like global warming is happening here" makes it appear to me that you've missed these two points:

1- as stated above, broken records (on either end of the tube) are an expected result.

and

2 - what happens over a few days or weeks or months, in any given locale, does not say anything about what the global climate is doing.

Mitch: Blue stirs you up, the red highlights piss me off. Guess it all depends upon what part of the country you live in.......

As far as Albertans wanting to leave, it is beginning to look more like some other Canadians don't want us to stay unless we play the game only by their rules and perceptions....., however I remain committed to Canada and as for those who want to break away, an amazing number of those so minded moved to Alberta from Central and eastern Canada.

[DEFCON]

Rattler

Our country has either lost, or given up its soul.

[Guest rattler]

Facts continue to escape Mr Gore:

- London Times

- December 15, 2009

Inconvenient Truth for Gore as Arctic Ice Claims Don't Add Up

The former vice president said new research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years, but the scientist his estimate was based on denies the timeline.

There are many kinds of truth. Al Gore was hit by an inconvenient one yesterday.

The former vice president, who became an unlikely figurehead for the green movement after narrating the Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," became entangled in a new climate change row.

Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.

In his speech, Gore told the conference: "These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr. [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years."

However, the climatologist whose work Gore was relying upon dropped the former vice president in the water with an icy blast.

"It's unclear to me how this figure was arrived at," Dr. Maslowski said. "I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this."

Gore's office later admitted that the 75 percent figure was one used by Dr. Maslowski as a "ballpark figure" several years ago in a conversation with Gore.The embarrassing error cast another shadow over the conference after the controversy over the hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, which appeared to suggest that scientists had manipulated data to strengthen their argument that human activities were causing global warming.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/envi...icle6956783.ece

[Mitch Cronin]

Facts continue to escape Mr Gore:

That's a little more than facts escaping him... that's much closer to pure fabrication.

[Guest rattler]

Perhaps his involvement in Generation Investment Management LLP is colouring his viewpoint?

http://www.generationim.com/about/team.html

Their News Releases do paint a picture.... http://www.generationim.com/news/

http://www.generationim.com/sustainability/advocacy/

The Generation Foundation

Five percent of the profitability of the firm is allocated to the Generation Foundation, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of sustainable development and sustainability research worldwide.

For more on the Generation Foundation, please visit www.genfound.org.

[Guest woxof]

I admire your persistence Mitch 

Glad to see that you admire persistence...and therefore myself.

There are variations in the forecast for Friday in CPH when all the leaders will be there, but BBC says -11°C. That would tie an all time record for December.

As for my near daily update that so many look forward to....It is a long one but I will only post the first part.

http://www.nationalpost.com/scripts/story.html?id=2296195

Unsettled science

Inaccurate climate models prove that the IPCC's already weak arguments for man-made climate change are false

Canwest News Service

Is there a reason to be alarmed by the prospect of global warming? Consider that the measurement used, the globally averaged temperature anomaly (GATA), is always changing. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes down, and occasionally — such as for the last dozen years or so — it does little that can be discerned.

Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction. Several of the emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have caused such a public ruckus dealt with how to do this so as to maximize apparent changes.

The general support for warming is based not so much on the quality of the data, but rather on the fact that there was a little ice age from about the 15th to the 19th century. Thus it is not surprising that temperatures should increase as we emerged from this episode. At the same time that we were emerging from the little ice age, the industrial era began, and this was accompanied by increasing emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. CO2 is the most prominent of these, and it is again generally accepted that it has increased by about 30%.

The defining characteristic of a greenhouse gas is that it is relatively transparent to visible light from the sun but can absorb portions of thermal radiation. In general, the Earth balances the incoming solar radiation by emitting thermal radiation, and the presence of greenhouse substances inhibits cooling by thermal radiation and leads to some warming.

That said, the main greenhouse substances in the Earth's atmosphere are water vapour and high clouds. Let's refer to these as major greenhouse substances to distinguish them from the anthropogenic minor substances. Even a doubling of CO2 would only upset the original balance between incoming and outgoing radiation by about 2%. This is essentially what is called "climate forcing."

There is general agreement on the above findings. At this point there is no basis for alarm regardless of whether any relation between the observed warming and the observed increase in minor greenhouse gases can be established. Nevertheless, the most publicized claims of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deal exactly with whether any relation can be discerned. The failure of the attempts to link the two over the past 20 years bespeaks the weakness of any case for concern.

The IPCC's Scientific Assessments generally consist of about 1,000 pages of text. The Summary for Policymakers is 20 pages. It is, of course, impossible to accurately summarize the 1,000-page assessment in just 20 pages; at the very least, nuances and caveats have to be omitted. However, it has been my experience that even the summary is hardly ever looked at. Rather, the whole report tends to be characterized by a single iconic claim.

The main statement publicized after the last IPCC Scientific Assessment two years ago was that it was likely that most of the warming since 1957 (a point of anomalous cold) was due to man. This claim was based on the weak argument that the current models used by the IPCC couldn't reproduce the warming from about 1978 to 1998 without some forcing, and that the only forcing that they could think of was man. Even this argument assumes that these models adequately deal with natural internal variability — that is, such naturally occurring cycles as El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, etc.

Yet articles from major modeling centers acknowledged that the failure of these models to anticipate the absence of warming for the past dozen years was due to the failure of these models to account for this natural internal variability. Thus even the basis for the weak IPCC argument for anthropogenic climate change was shown to be false.

Of course, none of the articles stressed this. Rather they emphasized that according to models modified to account for the natural internal variability, warming would resume — in 2009, 2013 and 2030, respectively.

But even if the IPCC's iconic statement were correct, it still would not be cause for alarm. After all we are still talking about tenths of a degree for over 75% of the climate forcing associated with a doubling of CO2. The potential (and only the potential) for alarm enters with the issue of climate sensitivity — which refers to the change that a doubling of CO2 will produce in GATA. It is generally accepted that a doubling of CO2 will only produce a change of about two degrees Fahrenheit if all else is held constant. This is unlikely to be much to worry about.

Yet current climate models predict much higher sensitivities. They do so because in these models, the main greenhouse substances (water vapour and clouds) act to amplify anything that CO2 does. This is referred to as positive feedback. But as the IPCC notes, clouds continue to be a source of major uncertainty in current models. Since clouds and water vapour are intimately related, the IPCC claim that they are more confident about water vapour is quite implausible.

There is some evidence of a positive feedback effect for water vapour in cloud-free regions, but a major part of any water-vapour feedback would have to acknowledge that cloud-free areas are always changing, and this remains an unknown. At this point, few scientists would argue that the science is settled. In particular, the question remains as to whether water vapour and clouds have positive or negative feedbacks.

The notion that the Earth's climate is dominated by positive feedbacks is intuitively implausible, and the history of the Earth's climate offers some guidance on this matter. About 2.5 billion years ago, the sun was 20%-30% less bright than now (compare this with the 2% perturbation that a doubling of CO2 would produce), and yet the evidence is that the oceans were unfrozen at the time, and that temperatures might not have been very different from today's. Carl Sagan in the 1970s referred to this as the "Early Faint Sun Paradox."

For more than 30 years there have been attempts to resolve the paradox with greenhouse gases. Some have suggested CO2 — but the amount needed was thousands of times greater than present levels and incompatible with geological evidence. Methane also proved unlikely. It turns out that increased thin cirrus cloud coverage in the tropics readily resolves the paradox — but only if the clouds constitute a negative feedback. In present terms this means that they would diminish rather than enhance the impact of CO2.

There are quite a few papers in the literature that also point to the absence of positive feedbacks. The implied low sensitivity is entirely compatible with the small warming that has been observed. So how do models with high sensitivity manage to simulate the currently small response to a forcing that is almost as large as a doubling of CO2? Jeff Kiehl notes in a 2007 article from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the models use another quantity that the IPCC lists as poorly known (namely aerosols) to arbitrarily cancel as much greenhouse warming as needed to match the data, with each model choosing a different degree of cancellation according to the sensitivity of that model.

What does all this have to do with climate catastrophe? The answer brings us to a scandal that is, in my opinion, considerably greater than that implied in the hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit (though perhaps not as bad as their destruction of raw data): namely the suggestion that the very existence of warming or of the greenhouse effect is tantamount to catastrophe. This is the grossest of "bait and switch" scams. It is only such a scam that lends importance to the machinations in the emails designed to nudge temperatures a few tenths of a degree.

The notion that complex climate "catastrophes" are simply a matter of the response of a single number, GATA, to a single forcing, CO2 (or solar forcing for that matter), represents a gigantic step backward in the science of climate. Many disasters associated with warming are simply normal occurrences whose existence is falsely claimed to be evidence of warming. And all these examples involve phenomena that are dependent on the confluence of many factors.

Our perceptions of nature are similarly dragged back centuries so that the normal occasional occurrences of open water in summer over the North Pole, droughts, floods, hurricanes, sea-level variations, etc. are all taken as omens, portending doom due to our sinful ways (as epitomized by our carbon footprint). All of these phenomena depend on the confluence of multiple factors as well.

Consider the following example. Suppose that I leave a box on the floor, and my wife trips on it, falling against my son, who is carrying a carton of eggs, which then fall and break. Our present approach to emissions would be analogous to deciding that the best way to prevent the breakage of eggs would be to outlaw leaving boxes on the floor. The chief difference is that in the case of atmospheric CO2 and climate catastrophe, the chain of inference is longer and less plausible than in my example. – Mr. Lindzen is professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

[FireFox]

Good article in Watt's Up today.

Another Al Gore Reality Check: “Rising tree mortality”?

16 12 2009

Guest post by Indur M. Goklany

In this Reuters story (15 December 2009) they report: “Describing a ‘runaway melt’ of the Earth’s ice, rising tree mortality and prospects of severe water scarcities, Gore told a UN audience: ‘In the face of effects like these, clear evidence that only reckless fools would ignore, I feel a sense of frustration’ at the lack of agreement so far.”

Former US Vice President Al Gore speaks at a presentation on melting ice and snow at the UN Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen December 14, 2009. Credit: REUTERS/Bob Strong

Now to most people, “rising tree mortality” raises the specter of a world with less greenery. But how does real world data compare with the virtual modeled world? Is the world getting less greener? Is there any hint of the virtual world in the real world data?

Satellite data for the real world (not the one Mr. Gore lives in) can help give us an idea.

Global

Globally net primary productivity (NPP) has increased. As the IPCC’s WG II report (p. 106) says:

Satellite-derived estimates of global net primary production from satellite data of vegetation indexes indicate a 6% increase from 1982 to 1999, with large increases in tropical ecosystems (Nemani et al., 2003) [Figure 1]. The study by Zhou et al. (2003), also using satellite data, confirm that the Northern Hemisphere vegetation activity has increased in magnitude by 12% in Eurasia and by 8% in NorthAmerica from 1981 to 1999

Full article...

[Steam Driven]

Thought this might be a better fit in this thread...

From the letters page of the National Post... Tongue firmly in cheek I'm guessing...

Don't believe the raw data, it's toasty in Edmonton

National Post

Larry Wong, Canwest News Service

Re: Cold Comfort: Mercury Rises To -20 C In Edmonton, Dec. 15.

Those who believe it may be cold in Edmonton will be cheered to know that the recently published temperatures consist of only raw temperature data. The Climate Research Unit (CRU) in East Anglia, U.K., has used its complex and peer-reviewed computer adjustment for that raw data to determine the real temperatures for inclusion in future IPCC reports on global warming.

It must be noted that the CRU-adjusted temperatures for Edmonton continue to show this to be one of the warmest weeks in Edmonton's history and exactly matches the catastrophic and accelerating warming prediction of the proven IPCC computer model.

The Edmonton weather office will replace the raw temperature data in its records with the CRU-corrected data as soon as possible to support future CRU climate research, however, the CRU asks that anyone who may have taken notes or have a memory of the raw temperature data of recent days to erase or otherwise forget it in order to avoid any possible future embarrassment the raw temperature data may cause. It further states that the science remains fully settled and there is no need to invite any silly debate with climate warming deniers who do not understand the CRU's complex scientific methods.

Dwight Christensen, Ottawa.

[Guest rattler]

The climate change conference from Hell

Posted: December 16, 2009, 4:30 PM by NP Editor

Let's see now...

Over in Copenhagen, we have Robert Mugabe, perhaps the most brutal and corrupt despot in Africa, whose life's work has been to destroy the once-prosperous country of Zimbabwe, lecturing the West on the "hypocrisy" of its position on climate change. (Zimbabwe doesn't have to worry about greenhouse gas emissions, because, thanks to Mugane, its economy is in a state of collapse.) Update: Here's Stephen Lewis talking about a new report on Mugabe's use of rape as a weapon.

We have the government of China, which won't allow its citizens free access to the Internet, complaining that the climate summit is "not transparent."

We have Hugo Chavez, who took time off from shutting down Venezuela's radio stations to fly to Denmark, complaining about western "dictatorship." (If anyone back in Venezuela disagrees, he'll toss them in jail).

We have "climate change activists" cutting down and desecrating the Canadian flag. More "activists" disrupting the talks and trying to break into the conference centre, beaten off by police in riot gear using tear gas and pepper spray.

We have the mayor of Toronto telling the world he's "embarrassed" by his country's policy while denying he already has a plum job lined up with an environmental organization when he finally, mercifully (and not a moment too soon) quits his job as mayor late next year. (Way to stand up for your country Mr. Mayor! Way to display pride at being Canadian). We have Al Gore, he of the energy-sucking mansion and private jets, who charges $1,200 a handshake to be fawned over by fans, announcing that new hot-off-the-presses data show the Arctic ice cap will be fully melted in seven years, the only problem being that it's not true.

All this so countries like Canada can pony up something in the range of $100 billion for a climate fund, to be dispursed to people like Mugabe, so they can use it to pad their foreign bank accounts "adapt" their nations to climate change.

Remind me again why I want nothing to do with these clowns and their farce of an international climate crisis, and why I have no faith whatsoever in their ability to mount a credible emisions plan...

No, wait ... nevermind. I remember!

Kelly McParland

National Post

Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/f...x#ixzz0ZtopWvLm

The National Post is now on Facebook. Join our fan community today.

[RussD]

The overall climate is warming, mostly in the northern and southern hemispheres.

Not that's particularly germane to your point, but what other bits of the planet are there?

[Mitch Cronin]

The value in this thread is the fact that it has been read by over eight thousand readers [etceteraaaa]

[read with British Accent]

Sir, I've reviewed your numbers and meticulously analyzed the entire thread, inside and out, top to bottom, from stem to stern, with every winkling widget and electronic fandangle known to man..., and I'm afraid I'm forced to bring to you the unsettling conclusion that.... although their origin is completely understood, they ....are ....wrong.

I humbly, and respectfully submit, sir, that at least 6500 of those were from a man called Wax off (I believe?), a further 800 were Canus Shnookus (which I think is Old world "Ug-Latin" for a 'mischievous dog'.... not sure tho'?), ...four hundred and sixty two were from a Mr. Loon and his naughty cousin, ...one hundred and twelve were from a fellow named Alan Goare, ...ninety two were from Rattler, ...fourty seven were from myself, 23 from Kip, eleventy seven or eight from yourself.... and the rest divided amonst all the rest..., and of course there are always..... The Lurkers!....

[planett]

QUOTE (Moon The Loon @ Dec 15 2009, 12:48 PM)

The overall climate is warming, mostly in the northern and southern hemispheres.

Not that's particularly germane to your point, but what other bits of the planet are there?

He completely left out the Eastern and Western hemispheres.

[Kip Powick]

Well there we go....over 10,000 views and I believe it is a record, especially when it really has little to do with aviation......how well rounded, (in a good sense..has nothing to do with weight, y'know), are AEF members?

[Guest woxof]

Yes...China, Venezuela and Zimbabwe all lecturing us.

Meanwhile we see more of the hipocrisy from Gore and the others....

Copenhagen summit has biggest-ever carbon footprint: report

COPENHAGEN, Dec 14 -- The Copenhagen climate talks will generate more carbon emissions than any previous climate conference, equivalent to the annual output of more than half- -a-million Ethiopians, figures commissioned by hosts Denmark show.

Delegates, journalists, activists and observers from almost 200 countries have gathered at the Dec 7-18 summit and their travel and work will create 46,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide, most of it from their flights.

This would fill nearly 10,000 Olympic swimming pools, and is the same amount produced each year by 2,300 Americans or 660,000 Ethiopians -- the vast difference is due to the huge gap in consumption patterns in the two countries -- according to U.S. government statistics about per-person emissions in 2006.

Despite efforts by the Danish government to reduce the conference's carbon footprint, around 5,700 tonnes of carbon dioxide will be created by the summit and a further 40,500 tonnes created by attendees' flights to Copenhagen.

The figure for the flights was calculated by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), while the domestic carbon footprint from the summit was calculated by accountants Deloitte, said Deloitte consultant Stine Balslev.

"This is much bigger than the last talks because there are many more people here," she said, adding that 18,000 people were expected to pass through the conference centre every day.

"These are preliminary figures but we expect that when we do the final calculations after the conference is over, the carbon footprint will be about the same."

Deloitte included in their calculations emissions caused by accommodation, local transport, electricity and heating of the conference centre, paper, security, transport of goods and services as well as energy used by computers, kitchens, photocopiers and printers inside the conference centre.

Accommodation accounted for 23% of the summit's greenhouse gas emissions in Copenhagen, while transport caused 7%. Activities inside the conference centre accounted for 70%, she said.

"We have been forced to put up some temporary buildings in order to provide the delegation rooms because the number of participants is so much larger than expected," said Ms. Balslev.

"For instance the U.S. delegation has ordered an area that's five times as big as last year."

The temporary buildings housing delegation offices are not well insulated and are warmed by oil heaters, so this area is the most energy-wasteful, she said.

The researchers assumed that 60% of conference participants would catch public transport to and from the conference but Ms. Balslev said that was probably optimistic.

Ms. Balslev said most of the energy used by the conference was from coal fired power stations that power the electricity grid, but some was from wind power.

[Guest rattler]

National Post editorial board: The Copenhagen PR scam

Posted: December 17, 2009, 8:00 AM by NP Editor

Editorial, Canadian politics

For those stressed by news that negotiators from 192 countries may not reach a comprehensive global-warming deal in Copenhagen before the Earth summit ends Friday, we say … stop worrying. These extravagant UN get-togethers always produce some sort of a final accord. Witness Kyoto in 1997, where an all-night session produced a compromise deal — even if all the signatories have spent the last 12 years ignoring it.

As for those who are stressed by the possibility that negotiators will reach a last-minute agreement containing bona fide emission caps that will beggar industrialized nations for the benefit of developing ones, we also say stop worrying. While delegates might sign away the moon amid the giddy glitter of Copenhagen, the realities of domestic politics they face when they return home — recession, unemployment, budget deficits — mean their pledges will quickly fade to nothingness.

Prospects of a deal have looked bleak all week. First, developing nations scoffed at a European Union offer of a $11-billion fund to help them tackle climate change over the next three years. Lumumba Stanislaus Dia-Ping of Sudan, who has become a sort of de facto leader of developing and underdeveloped nations at the conference, said the EU offer was the equivalent of “providing no finance whatsoever.”

We’re pretty sure $11-billion is more than $0-billion, but Mr. Dia-Ping’s graceless and ungrateful point was clear.

Then the G-77 group of poor nations — which only at the UN could, in reality, actually be a group of 130 nations, including China, India and Brazil — staged a brief walkout to emphasize their point that rich nations must agree to even deeper emissions cuts than they agreed to at Kyoto, while also ceasing to insist G-77 nations commit to any hard cuts at all.

The irony is that, amid all this chaos, the environmental ends of the Earth summit have been largely abandoned. Instead, both sides seem focused on negotiating what amounts essentially to a straight-out inter-regional transfer of wealth.

In fact, it became obvious as early as August that we would see no deal that might actually trim carbon emissions enough to have an impact on global warming. In Copenhagen, there is still grandiose talk of saving the planet by reducing emissions by such-and-such a pie-in-the-sky percentage from 2006 levels, or 2000 levels, or even from 1990 levels (the benchmark at Kyoto). But because developing nations were adamant in pre-conference talks that they would not accept binding caps until they were as rich as developed nations, and because developed nations were unwilling to accept Kyoto-plus cuts in their own emissions until developing nations agreed even just to slow their CO2 production, negotiators let slide the science-based environmental issue and focused instead on the money.

The UN and G-77 decided, effectively, to measure the developed nations’ concern for the planet in dollars rather than CO2 concentrations and global average temperatures. Canada’s government is one of the few that has been openly skeptical of this scheme from the start — a fact that Canadians should take as a point of pride, no matter how many mocking “Fossil” awards the environmentalists give to Ottawa.

One reason why the EU’s aid offer was rejected out of hand is that the UN and G-77 are demanding $11-billion or more each year beginning immediately, jumping to between $100-billion and $200-billion annually by 2020.

In their analysis of this plan, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has calculated the burden on each Canadian household at $3,000 a year, a burden we suspect few Canadians would welcome just to assuage their climate consciences. (Last week, anti-war activists were scandalized to learn that Canadian military spending works out to $75 per taxpayer per month. What is being discussed at Copenhagen is four times as much — and with absolutely no way of determining whether it has any impact on rising global temperatures.)

Not that there aren’t any Canadians who wouldn’t pay this amount — if what they were buying truly was a cooler, more thermodynaically stable atmosphere. But that isn’t what’s on offer in Copenhagen. Instead, the conference has become a sort of PR exercise, in which cynical Third Worlders try to extract the highest price possible from guilty First worlders for a symbolic agreement that both sides secretly know will do little except bloat the budgets of poor nations — including dictatorships such as the one that employs Lumumba Stanislaus Dia-Ping.

What we wouldn’t give for a leader who understands the Copenhagen fraud for what it is.

Oh wait, we do. His name is Stephen Harper.

Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/f...x#ixzz0ZxWcy99X

The National Post is now on Facebook. Join our fan community today.

[Guest woxof]

Thank goodness for Stephen Harper(and Woxof). If he doesn't get the Nobel prize someday....I will gladly accept in his place as a deserving individual . And donate the money appropriately of course.

Today's CPH wether right now...METAR EKCH 171720Z 04017KT 9999 DRSN FEW014 BKN033 M04/M06 Q1015. BBC forecast highs for their cold spell over the next several days....-3, -4, -4, -7. No wonder all the protesters want to get arrested. While the rest of us generate heat by....working.

Here is your daily example of how the alarmists lie to us....

Al Gore condemned over Arctic ice melting prediction

Speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, Mr Gore said new computer modelling suggests there is a 75 per cent chance of the entire polar ice cap melting during the summertime by 2014.

However, he faced embarrassment last night after Dr Wieslav Maslowski, the climatologist whose work the prediction was based on, refuted his claims.

Dr Maslowski, of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, told The Times: “It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at.

“I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

The blunder follows the controversy over hacked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, which sceptics claim suggest scientists manipulated data to strengthen their argument that global warming is man-made.

Mr Gore, who narrated the Oscar-winning climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth, told the conference that record melting of Polar and Himalayan ice could deprive more than a billion people of access to clean water.

Alluding to Dr Maslowski’s work, he said: “These figures are fresh, I just got them yesterday.

"Some of the models suggest to Dr Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire polar ice cap during some of summer months could be completely ice free within five to seven years.

"There are more than a billion people on the planet who get more than half of their drinking water – many of them all of their drinking water – from the seasonal melting of snow melt and glacier ice."

His projection strongly contradicted forecasts made eight months ago by the US government agency that the ice cap may nearly vanish in the summer by 2030.

Dr Maslowki said that his latest results give a six-year projection for the melting of 80 per cent of the ice, but he said he expects some ice to remain beyond 2020.

He added: “I was very explicit that we were talking about near-ice-free conditions and not completely ice-free conditions in the northern ocean.”

Following Dr Maslowski’s comments, Mr Gore’s office later said the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.

Mr Gore’s speech also provoked criticism from leading members of the climate science community, who described the projection as “aggressive”.

Professor Jim Overland, a leading oceanographer at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Times: “This is an exaggeration that opens the science up to criticism from sceptics.

“You really don’t need to exaggerate the changes in the Arctic.”

Mark Serreze, of the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, said: “It's possible but not likely. We're sticking with 2030."

Average global temperatures have increased by 1.3F (0.74C) in the past century, but the mercury has risen at least twice as quickly in the Arctic.

Scientists say the make up of the frozen north polar sea has shifted significantly in recent years as much of the thick year-round ice has given way to thin seasonal ice.

In the summer of 2007, the Arctic ice cap dwindled to a record low minimum extent of 1.7 million square miles in September. The melting in 2008 and 2009 was not as extensive, but still ranked as the second and third greatest decreases on record.

[DEFCON]

Arguing about all this crap is a bit like a 'checklist', it keeps us all busy waiting for the crash.

There's but one problem we face and from it, 'all' our troubles flow.

There are too many people on planet earth. It's really that simple. Collectively, we are going to destroy the environment going forward, one way or another!

[Guest woxof]

Very true Defcon. The proposed money should instead be spent on birth control progams in areas of the world with high birth rates. That would make a great reduction in carbon emissions.

The real inconvenient truth

The whole world needs to adopt China's one-child policy

The "inconvenient truth" overhanging the UN's Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world.

A planetary law, such as China's one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate currently, which is one million births every four days.

The world's other species, vegetation, resources, oceans, arable land, water supplies and atmosphere are being destroyed and pushed out of existence as a result of humanity's soaring reproduction rate.

Ironically, China, despite its dirty coal plants, is the world's leader in terms of fashioning policy to combat environmental degradation, thanks to its one-child-only edict.

The intelligence behind this is the following:

-If only one child per female was born as of now, the world's population would drop from its current 6.5 billion to 5.5 billion by 2050, according to a study done for scientific academy Vienna Institute of Demography.

-By 2075, there would be 3.43 billion humans on the planet. This would have immediate positive effects on the world's forests, other species, the oceans, atmospheric quality and living standards.

-Doing nothing, by contrast, will result in an unsustainable population of nine billion by 2050.

Humans are the only rational animals but have yet to prove it. Medical and other scientific advances have benefited by delivering lower infant mortality rates as well as longevity. Both are welcome, but humankind has not yet recalibrated its behavior to account for the fact that the world can only accommodate so many people, especially if billions get indoor plumbing and cars.

The fix is simple. It's dramatic. And yet the world's leaders don't even have this on their agenda in Copenhagen. Instead there will be photo ops, posturing, optics, blah-blah-blah about climate science and climate fraud, announcements of giant wind farms, then cap-and-trade subsidies.

None will work unless a China one-child policy is imposed. Unfortunately, there are powerful opponents. Leaders of the world's big fundamentalist religions preach in favor of procreation and fiercely oppose birth control. And most political leaders in emerging economies perpetuate a disastrous Catch-22: Many children (i. e. sons) stave off hardship in the absence of a social safety net or economic development, which, in turn, prevents protections or development.

China has proven that birth restriction is smart policy. Its middle class grows, all its citizens have housing, health care, education and food, and the one out of five human beings who live there are not overpopulating the planet.

For those who balk at the notion that governments should control family sizes, just wait until the growing human population turns twice as much pastureland into desert as is now the case, or when the Amazon is gone, the elephants disappear for good and wars erupt over water, scarce resources and spatial needs.

The point is that Copenhagen's talking points are beside the point.

The only fix is if all countries drastically reduce their populations, clean up their messes and impose mandatory conservation measures.

http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=2314438

Woxof...Now we are talking common sense.

[Canus Chinookus]

Don't worry, DEFCON. Mother Nature always knows how to deal with overpopulation. Just look at the animal kingdom(which we're a part of, btw, don't kid yourself) for the answer... it's the mighty virus.

[Mitch Cronin]

6,795,063,712 of us, and rising....

[from http://www.peterrussell.dreamhosters.com/Odds/WorldClock.php ]

[Canus Chinookus]

The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero

by Willis Eschenbach

People keep saying “Yes, the Climategate scientists behaved badly. But that doesn’t mean the data is bad. That doesn’t mean the earth is not warming.”

Darwin Airport - by Dominic Perrin via Panoramio

Let me start with the second objection first. The earth has generally been warming since the Little Ice Age, around 1650. There is general agreement that the earth has warmed since then. See e.g. Akasofu . Climategate doesn’t affect that.

The second question, the integrity of the data, is different. People say “Yes, they destroyed emails, and hid from Freedom of information Acts, and messed with proxies, and fought to keep other scientists’ papers out of the journals … but that doesn’t affect the data, the data is still good.” Which sounds reasonable....

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-...at-darwin-zero/

[Steam Driven]

6,795,063,712 of us, and rising....

Quite an article here from the Fraser Institute regarding "Overpopulation". I've quoted a very small portion. A much more concise article appeared in the Newspaper some months ago.

This topic should possibly have its' own thread...

The Myth of Famine

IT IS ORTHODOX IDEOLOGY TODAY THAT overpopulation is a problem. We regularly hear dire warnings about the dangers it poses. But the term "overpopulation" is never defined. Exactly what is it? How do we know if a country is overpopulated? If overpopulation exists, is there such a thing as underpopulation?

For decades people have been announcing that China is "overpopulated," but no one has seemed overly concerned about the state of Maryland. Yet the population density (the number of people per square kilometre) in Maryland is much greater than in China. The United Kingdom also has a far higher population density than does China. Actually, the UK has a population density almost equal to that of "overpopulated" India. And Switzerland is more densely populated than Pakistan.

Clearly, some problems exist when it comes to defining our terms. If Maryland, the UK, and Switzerland have greater population densities than India, China, and Pakistan, then why are the latter considered overpopulated, but not the former?

Defining the problem

If we are to make any sense of the term "overpopulation," we need to be more careful in our use of the word. "Overpopulation" is meant to be a measure, but when we measure something we must have a point of reference. Presumably, if we know what "overpopulation" is, we should be able to state what the optimum population is as well, since the former term simply means "more than the correct population." Now, if this is our reference point, why has no one devised a formula for determining the correct population so that we know when we have exceeded that number?

The reason these terms are never defined is that to define the terms is to solve the problem... or, rather, to discover that there was no such problem in the first place. For instance, most people would probably agree that if people in a certain area die of starvation because food production cannot keep up with population growth, then the area is clearly overpopulated. The Environmental Fund certainly saw population growth and available food supply as co-factors in the "overpopulation" problem. In 1975 it ran a full-page ad in leading American newspapers announcing: "The world as we know it will likely be ruined before the year 2000 and the reason for this will be its inhabitants' failure to comprehend two facts. These facts are: 1. World food production cannot keep pace with the galloping growth of population. 2. `Family Planning' cannot and will not, in the foreseeable future, check this runaway growth." Wall Street Journal, October 30, 1985.Note In other words, nothing could be done to prevent a major catastrophe because food production was declining on a per capita basis, and this catastrophe would strike "before the year 2000." We have almost reached the year 2000 and this prediction seems no closer to coming true today than it did in 1975. If anything, it now seems unlikely ever to come true!

Famine everywhere

The Environmental Fund was not alone in its dire forecasts. Many others also saw a crisis looming. William and Paul Paddock, in their book Famine--1975!, published in 1967, said that some nations were so far past salvation that a triage system must be instituted: Haiti, Egypt, and India, for example, could never be saved, and must be left to starve to death. William and Paul Paddock, Famine--1975! (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), p. 222.Note Again, the mass starvation they predicted for these countries has not taken place, and there is no reason to believe that it will any time in the near future.

Paul Ehrlich, the father of the overpopulation myth, has regularly predicted mass world starvation (among other catastrophes) ever since the early 1960s. Ehrlich confidently wrote in 1968 in The Population Bomb that there would be a major food shortage in the United States and that "in the 1970s . . . hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." He also claimed that by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million, less than 10 percent of its actual population as of 1994. He forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989. He also thought that the oceans would be destroyed by 1979 and that fishing would collapse. For instance, he said that world fishing production in 1977 would be 30 million metric tons, whereas in reality it was 73 million metric tons, or well over twice what he predicted. Poor England fared even worse than the U.S. in Ehrlich's scenario: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." Julian Simon, Population Matters (New Jersey: Transaction Publications, 1990), pp. 364-365.Note

As far as Ehrlich was concerned, the "battle to feed all of humanity is over" and starvation has won. Luckily for us, reality has never caught up with Erhlich's scenarios.

Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute, another major environmental organization, proclaimed in 1984 that "the period of global food security is over . . . the worldwide effort to expand food production is losing momentum . . . world food supplies are tightening and the slim margin between food production and population growth continues to narrow." Ibid, p. 103.Note Brown is a moderate, since he claimed only that the gap between food supplies and population was narrowing. In other words, unlike Ehrlich, he conceded that food production was increasing faster than population; he just believed it wouldn't continue. Ten years later, that gap still hasn't closed. But Brown hasn't changed his tune: disaster is still just around the corner. His Worldwatch Institute released another report in January 1994 saying virtually the same thing as it did ten years earlier: "Seldom has the world faced an unfolding emergency whose dimensions are as clear as the growing imbalance between food and people." "World is nearing limit to provide food: Report," The Citizen, Johannesburg, January 17, 1994, p. 16.Note Media reports summarized the Institute's findings as follows: "The world appears near the limit of its ability to produce more food, and its exploding population must be controlled if people are to be adequately fed in coming decades." Ibid.Note

In his 1994 statement, Brown emphasised that "[a]chieving a humane balance between food and people now depends more on family planners than on farmers" and ". . . we have enough data now. Unfortunately now I think we can see some of the constraints emerging more clearly" (my emphasis). Ibid.Note Brown's statements make it sound as if it is only now that he has discerned this trend toward world famine; however, he has been beating that drum for years. And if, as he says, it is only now that the data have become available, then on what evidence did he base his claims ten years ago? For instance, in 1967 he claimed, "The trend in grain stocks indicates clearly that 1961 marked a worldwide turning point . . . food consumption moved ahead of production." Ronald Bailey, Eco-Scam (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), p. 46.Note In 1984, he claimed that "we can see a clear breaking point somewhere around 1973." Ibid.Note

The U.S. government contributed to the atmosphere of impending doom in the mid-1970s by sponsoring a travelling exhibit for schoolchildren titled, "Population: the Problem is Us." The exhibit declared: "There are too many people in the world. We are running out of space. We are running out of energy. We are running out of food. And, although too few people seem to realize it, we are running out of time." Jacqueline Kasun, The War Against Population (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), p. 21.Note Children were told that "the birth rate must decrease and/or the death rate must increase." It reminded children that in times of famine "people have been known to eat dogs, cats, bird droppings, and even their own children." It showed a rat on a dinner plate and labelled it as a future "food source." Ibid.Note Books popular in "progressive" classrooms told school-children that "world population is increasing at a rate of 2 percent per year, whereas the food supply is increasing at a rate of 1 percent per year." John J. Burts and Linda Brower Meeks, Education for Sexuality (Philadelphia: WB Saunders, 1975), p. 408.Note Even the United Nations joined the chorus. The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific said in 1975 that there would be "500 million starvation deaths in Asia between 1980 and 2025." Yet Asia is now considered one of the major economic powerhouses of the world. The standard of living throughout Asia has been improving at phenomenal rates, and starvation and famine are virtually unheard of there.

We should note that dire warnings about population growth are nothing new, and that modern doomsayers have many predecessors. Tertullian said, in 200 AD, "Most convincing as evidence of populousness, we men have actually become a burden to the earth, the fruits of nature hardly suffice to sustain us, there is a general pressure of scarcity giving rise to complaints, since the earth can no longer support us. Need we be astonished that plague and famine, warfare and earthquake come to be regarded as remedies, serving, as it were, to trim and prune the superfluity of population." Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (New York: Basic Books, 1980), p. 52.Note In the 4th century, Saint Jerome made a similar observation: "The world is already full, and the population is too large for the soil." Jerome, The Principal Works, cited in Jacob Vinter, Religious Thought and Economic Society (Durham: Duke University Press, 1978), p. 34.Note At the time, the world population was around 250,000,000, or approximately the population of today's United States. Like many doomsayers, Tertullian and Saint Jerome simply assumed that they knew all there was to know. They were completely ignorant of the existence of North and South America, Australia, most of Africa, and parts of Asia and the South Pacific. In other words, they didn't know about the existence of most of the world!

Exploding Population Myths

[Canus Chinookus]

Good one, Steam.