Members' Contributions

'Nothing off-limits' in climate debate- Rajendra Pachauri

by: Graham Lloyd
    From: The Australian
    February 22, 2013 12:00AM

THE UN's climate change chief, Rajendra Pachauri, has acknowledged a 17-year pause in global temperature rises, confirmed recently by Britain's Met Office, but said it would need to last "30 to 40 years at least" to break the long-term global warming trend.

Dr Pachauri, the chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said that open discussion about controversial science and politically incorrect views was an essential part of tackling climate change.

In a wide-ranging interview on topics that included this year's record northern summer Arctic ice growth, the US shale-gas revolution, the collapse of renewable energy subsidies across Europe and the faltering European carbon market, Dr Pachauri said no issues should be off-limits for public discussion.

In Melbourne for a 24-hour visit to deliver a lecture for Deakin University, Dr Pachauri said that people had the right to question the science, whatever their motivations.

"People have to question these things and science only thrives on the basis of questioning," Dr Pachauri said.

He said there was "no doubt about it" that it was good for controversial issues to be "thrashed out in the public arena".

Coldest records

by Vic Wieland

I  started Googling for " record temperature " , and was quite amazed how
little I had ever seen reported in the press about record cold spells .
Well - amazed is the wrong word - I expect it , but it always dismays me
.

So I started to compile a list out of interest to send to some friends .

Long Range Forecasts. Is it Weather or Climate?

by Ken Calvert

25 March 2013

Are our drought conditions getting more extreme?  Farmers have experienced this sort of thing before.  It is not pleasant to watch livestock lose condition  at the same time as the  local market prices  plunge  and  one's equity  gets closer and closer to the mortgage.  The climate change fraternity would  have us believe that our weather  will swing  to even more extremes.  But they are not sure whether it is going to get hotter or colder, wetter or drier, probably the lot!

   What does worry  us at the moment  is when will we get a good slow soaking rain?  This week or next week?   I am going to stick my neck out and say yes the drought will break, it always has,  but too late to get our pastures growing again before  winter.  And winter feed will be very expensive.  Furthermore,  over the next  2-10  years  our climate is going to get colder and colder, but it's nothing to do with carbon dioxide .  Why?  Bear with me  for a little background  on my methods,  and I will reveal all!

      For close to ten years I kept the rainfall records for a remote pacific island

My Challenge to the Warmists & Sir John Beddington

Common Misconceptions

There is a common misconception that the atmosphere warms the Earth and it is this misconception that is at the root of all the theories of Anthropogenic Global Warming, and that beloved offshoot of theirs, namely Climate Change.

So let me ask you a question? Why is the temperature at the surface of the Earth warmer than the atmosphere above it? Why does standard atmosphere state that the temperature falls by 2°C for every 1,000 feet of altitude? I used to ask, ‘Why is there snow on the tops of mountains’, but it comes to the same thing.

The atmosphere gets progressively colder with altitude.

Climate and energy policy in perspective

Scientific Alliance in the UK, by its director Martin Livermore:

14 December 2012

Not surprisingly, perhaps, no big new issues have come to the top of the environmental agenda in the last year. Climate change remains the key issue which has dominated thinking for the 21st Century so far. However, the Copenhagen COP15 summit in 2009 arguably marked the high-water level of momentum on mitigation efforts. After the failure to make any substantive progress on agreeing a post-Kyoto settlement, succeeding conferences in Cancun, Durban and Doha have received fairly low-key coverage in the media and expectations remain low.

Activists have tried for some time to put forward lurid visions of a planet nearing the point of no return and committed to temperature rises of several degrees, bringing catastrophe to both the human race and many of the other species we share the Earth with. They realise that there is only a certain window of opportunity to embed new opinions in people’s minds and generate a groundswell of backing for action to be taken. It takes time to get to that position and, once the momentum begins to fade, it is pretty much impossible to revive it.

The Difference Between Engineers And Scientists

http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012 ... cientists/

Engineers in industry know that their continued employment depends on being brutally honest and accurate. When engineering fails, there is no place to hide.

Scientist’s employment has different challenges. They have to convince politicians that they should receive money for their research. The easiest way to do this is by hypothesizing about future potential disasters. The global warming gravy train has been the most reliable ever, and honesty and accuracy got crushed on the tracks sometime around the year 2000.

The vast majority of “climate change scientists” have no marketable or useful skills. For people in that position, honesty and accuracy are irrelevant. It is all about survival of their pay check, not survival of the planet.

Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations

H.E. Ban Ki-Moon,
Secretary-General,
United Nations
First Avenue and East 44th Street,
New York,
U.S.A.

November 29, 2012

Mr. Secretary-General:

On November 9 this year you told the General Assembly: “Extreme weather due to climate change is the new normal … Our challenge remains, clear and urgent: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to strengthen adaptation to … even larger climate shocks … and to reach a legally binding climate agreement by 2015 … This should be one of the main lessons of Hurricane Sandy.”

On November 13 you said at Yale: “The science is clear; we should waste no more time on that debate.”

The following day, in Al Gore’s “Dirty Weather” Webcast, you spoke of “more severe storms, harsher droughts, greater floods”, concluding: “Two weeks ago, Hurricane Sandy struck the eastern seaboard of the United States. A nation saw the reality of climate change. The recovery will cost tens of billions of dollars. The cost of inaction will be even higher. We must reduce our dependence on carbon emissions.”

We the undersigned, qualified in climate-related matters, wish to state that current scientific knowledge does not substantiate your assertions.

UN Summit: Transforming Your Kids into “Climate Change Agents”

http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/item/13843-un-summit-transforming-your-kids-into-%E2%80%9Cclimate-change-agents%E2%80%9D

by William F Jasper    6 December 2012

Do your children (or grandchildren) have nightmares about the Earth melting or exploding due to human-caused global warming? Do they believe they have no future because our planet is dying, the icecaps and glaciers are melting, the sea levels are rising, islands and coastal areas are disappearing, polar bears and children are drowning, plant and animal species are rapidly going extinct, and extreme weather will soon make human life unbearable, if not impossible? 

Frightening, not Enlightening

Fear of an impending Climate Apocalypse apparently afflicts millions of children and adolescents worldwide, according to news stories in the mainstream media over the past few years (see hereherehere, and here).

Psychologists, psychiatrists, teachers, and parents report that many children are depressed and fearful, have difficulty sleeping, and believe it is pointless to study or plan a career, since there is little hope for a livable future. As a result, many are experiencing serious psychological and physical health issues. This should not surprise anyone, considering that hundreds of millions of students have been captive audiences for Al Gore’s “documentary,” An Inconvenient Truth, (with many of them being subjected to multiple classroom showings) and other similar fare. After being continuously marinated in climate-change K-12 indoctrination in almost every subject area, it is little wonder that many kids suffer from depression and anxiety.

To Stop Climate Change, Students Aim at College Portfolios

Amy

 

By

SWARTHMORE, Pa. — A group of Swarthmore College students is asking the school administration to take a seemingly simple step to combat pollution and climate change: sell off the endowment’s holdings in large fossil fuel companies. For months, they have been getting a simple answer: no.

As they consider how to ratchet up their campaign, the students suddenly find themselves at the vanguard of a national movement.

In recent weeks, college students on dozens of campuses have demanded that university endowment funds rid themselves of coal, oil and gas stocks. The students see it as a tactic that could force climate change, barely discussed in the presidential campaign, back onto the national political agenda.

“We’ve reached this point of intense urgency that we need to act on climate change now, but the situation is bleaker than it’s ever been from a political perspective,” said William Lawrence, a Swarthmore senior from East Lansing, Mich.

The dead DOHA duck... and what it means, politically.

report on Doha from Jo Nova

Doha: dead- Kyoto: kaput, but NGO's win anyway (?)

How is Doha going? (Where was that, again?)

The Indians have gone home, The Chinese are being told off. Nobody else is very interested, except developing nations looking for a hand-out. The Australians already agreed to everything whatever it is. (Great negotiation ploy by our Labour Government that.) The EU wants to do what it’s already doing.

Mike Haseler at the Scottish Climate and Energy Forum says it’s all over, bar the shouting. Kyoto ends on December 31, and there is no treaty to replace it, and there can be no ratified treaty by Jan 1.

“Contrary to what many green NGOs are saying, the Kyoto commitment to CO2 reduction will cease effect on the 31st December. This is because the treaty requires amendments to be ratified well before they come into effect (by 3rd October). It took some 4 years for a quorum of countries to ratify Kyoto. Even if there were total agreement at Doha on any amendment (there isn’t) the earliest change to Kyoto is 2015. Without agreement the earliest if there were agreement at the end of next year is that a change to the Kyoto Commitment could come into force in 2016."

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Members' Contributions