Andrew Bolt: affirmed yet cognition challenged

Who still does not appear to understand that the definition of climate change can take in extreme cold?

Oops. I made a mistake in today’s column when I said that despite all this alleged global warming, Australia’s record temperatures had not been broken for decades. Reader Cameron says I’ve been proved wrong - and on the very day my column appeared:

A new Australian record was set early this morning, a temperature of minus 13 degrees, at Charlotte Pass on the Snowy Mountains. This is the lowest temperature recorded anywhere in Australia in April and is 13 below the average.

I stand both corrected and affirmed.

Affirmed as a dummy.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Climate Sceptics needs all the help it can get

Found this in my inbox, forwarded to me by a reader after reading this:

Climate Sceptics News - 10/04/09 www.climatesceptics.com.au

to unsubscribe - reply "please unsubribe" (sic)

Welcome to the first of what will be regular updates of what Climate Sceptics around the country are doing to change the perspective of the community on global warming scares etc. As President of "The Climate Sceptics", I can inform you I have a great team of people looking to build the "Climate Sceptic movement" in ways that allow people of differing political perspectives to get involved at some level. Of course most importantly we will give everyone an upper house voting option in the next Federal election to say they are opposed to an Emissions Trading Scheme. If you need to know more about our party and how we accomodate the different situations of people being members of other party`s and uniting us in the broader cause, please email me your questions.

Laymans climate change chronicle to begin soon.

In coming weeks The Climate Sceptics will be putting out a climate change chronicle that will be different to this newsletter and will explain the science and logic of climate change issues to ordinary people. The idea is to give climate sceptics across the country brief and moderately easy to understand materials they can pass onto their friends and relatives to gently and continually inform them of the science, the costs of an ETS, and what climate sceptics are doing. You will get a copy of the climate change chronicle emailed to you for passing on if you are happy to remain on this list. If you know of other climate sceptics who want to receive this newsletter please ask them to email "please subscribe" to newsletter@climatesceptics.com.au or sign up on our web site
Miklos Zagoni in Australia and available for meetings
Dr. Miklos Zagoni, Hungarian physicist, reviewer of the IPCC 2007 Assessment Report Four is now in Australia staying with his Uncle in Melbourne. On 4th May, he will appearing in front of a Committee set up by the NZ Government to revise their emissions trading scheme. Miklos is available to speak at any meetings we can find someone to organise between now and 2nd May. TCS Secretary Anthony Cox will have him speaking in Newcastle on 15th April. Miklos will be my guest in Mt Gambier speaking on 23rd April. If anyone would like to invite Miklos to explain the work of his colleague Ferenc Miskolczi let me know. I can assist with media releases and Miklos is very helpful in making things happen. Please email info@climatesceptics.com to chat about this if you are interested and would like more info - especially if you live in Victoria. What Dr Miklos Zagoni will speak about “I am not sceptic at all”, he said, “I am positively convinced that the anthropogenic global warming theory is wrong. New developments in the physics of greenhouse effect and radiative transfer show that the accepted theory leads to largely exaggerated global warming projections”. The new results were achieved and published in peer-reviewed periodicals by his fellow Hungarian physicist dr. Ferenc Miskolczi, who has been principal research scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center in the U.S. for years. And in 2 years no one has published a rebuttal Dr. Zagoni can give talks and lectures to layman and expert groups and university people. “The new results of Dr. Miskolczi prove that the accepted theory contradicts fundamental physical principles. The Earth maintains a controlled greenhouse effect by strict energetic constraints”, he said. “Runaway global warming seems physically impossible.” “We obviously do not deny that a certain change in the climate is taking place. This might be a mix of natural processes and consequence of the influence of human activity on the Earth’s surface (land use change and deforestation might altered the surface reflectivity, modifying the amount of the absorbed solar energy). We also accept that the climate has warmed during previous centuries. What we challenge is the cause: Our results show that it cannot be the increase of atmospheric GHG composition.” “If we are right, extra CO2 cannot enhance the atmospheric greenhouse effect. Powerful energetic feedbacks drive it back to its equilibrium state. Fluctuations are possible in the stochastic system of the climate, and time-scales are to be thoroughly examined, but the average surface temperature is clearly limited by the global energy balance. Incoming energy of the sun, planetary albedo, water vapor cycle and the partial cloud cover may be the main players on the scene.” “According Dr. Miskolczi’s calculation on the NOAA 60-years global average database, during these decades the Earth’s greenhouse effect remained constant. The atmosphere equated the increase of CO2 with minor modifications in the hydrological cycle.” "This may sound crazy to those accepting the common wisdom. But I will present data and the computations and I welcome anyone who can come and falsify Dr. Miskolczi and myself. Dr. Zagoni’s website, with all the relevant publications and other information: http://miskolczi.webs.com
Till next time
Leon Ashby President
"The Climate Sceptics"
PO box 721, Mt Gambier, SA 5290
(447 Chambers Rd Mt Gambier SA 5290)
Ph 0887259561 or 0887235550
www.climatesceptics.com.au

If Ferenc Everything-bar-the-CO2e Miskolczithe is anything to go by then the climate change chronicle promises to be fun pickings.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Financial crisis equals breathing space on climate

In news that Andrew Bolt is sure to jump on, climate adviser Ross Garnaut claims that the economic crisis has bought Australia at least two years of "breathing space" in the fight against climate change.

The crisis has clamped down on industry and production, which has put a lid on greenhouse gas emissions.

Australia's emissions have been rising every year, but are now some years behind predictions because of the financial meltdown.

"At this stage it looks like we've transferred two years ... it might turn out to be longer than that if this turns out to be an even worse economic crisis," Prof Garnaut told an agriculture conference in Canberra on Tuesday evening.

"We've got a little bit of breathing space."

"But we need it, because the world's a long way behind where it needs to be."

This follows the call by Nicholas Stern on February 11, this year, to spend billions on green investments now to reverse economic downturn and halt climate change.

A report published today, written by many of the team that prepared the influential 2006 Stern Review on the economics of climate change, says politicians should not delay plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions because of the global slowdown. Instead, action to tackle climate change could form a central part of fiscal packages to stimulate national economies.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Who is fueling new Climate Sceptics political party?

Witness the birth of The Climate Sceptics, Australia's newest political party. Aren't we truly the lucky country? They bill themselves as 

"The World's first up front political party representing climate sceptics"

Well, after John Howard's Liberals here in Australia, and George W. Bush's Republicans in the US. And then there was that Vaclav Klaus' Civic Democratic Party in Checkloslavakia. That's why we are in the mess we are in.

Forth time lucky's president, Leon Ashby, used to run the The Australian Environment Foundation, a front group founded by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), a conservative Melbourne-based think tank, according to Sourcewatch.

The newest party's website is carrying advertising for the US ExxonMobil funded AGW denier outfit, The HeartLand Institute.

Gee, I wonder who is financing The Climate Sceptics?

 Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Intelligent design falsified by cdesign proponentsists' intellligence decline

I have just finished watching a fascinating documentary on SBS, called Judgment Day, about how a bunch of weird Christian extremists tried to introduce stealth creationism into the science class of Dover High School as an alternative to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. This was obviously Dover, Pa, in the US, and not Dover, England. 

They called this stealth creationism Intelligent Design (ID).  Actually they didn't originally, they called it creationism, but obviously realised this would not fly in a science class with sharp students, so they rebadged it as ID — and gave it scientific trappings. It was part of a 20 year plan to make science (the gift that gives everyday)  subordinate to bible 'teachings' (the gift that gives every day... after you are dead).  All this was uncovered in the gruelling court case that followed, Kitzmiller v. Dover, along with the creationists' original planning document detailing the deception, The Wedge Strategy.

To cut a long story short, Judge John E. Jones III finally ruled that ID was an assault on the the US constitution because it ignored the first amendment, which provides for separation of religion and state. To prove this the prosecution had to establish that ID was originally a creationist theory, and this did this by subpoenaing all the drafts of the ID Trojan text-book, Of Pandas and People. 

Ironically, these drafts established evidence that the intent always was religiously motivated deception, such as the evolution of the term creation to Intelligent Design via search and replace. At least these creationists don't typeset in lead anymore. It was found there were approximately 150 uses of the root word "creation", such as "creationism" and "creationist", were systematically changed to refer to intelligent design. Definitions remained essentially the same, with "intelligent design" substituted for "creation", and "intelligent creator" changed to "intelligent agency." But, unfortunately for the god botherers, the final draft still contains vestigal organs evidencing these deceptions: The term "creationists" was changed to "design proponents", but in one case the beginning and end of the original word "creationists" were accidentally retained, so that "creationists" became "cdesign proponentsists".

The judge ruled againt them, and the rest is history. The poor bugger received death threats to himself and his family soon after, and now lives under federal protection. Charming, those so called Christians.

Watching the program, I was repeatedly reminded of the contemporary anti-science offence of AGW denial. One of the main claims AGW deniers make about AGW is that it is the new green faith — a religion.

Given the precedence that Kitzmiller v. Dover sets, you would think that cashed-up think-tanks in the US pushing AGW denial would at least attempt to prevent anthropogenic global warming from being taught in the science-class, and at least relegated to religion class.

But they won't. And, this indicates that they don't have the conviction.

 Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Climate change tougher than Sydney roofs

Great!

The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) called on the Federal and State governments to toughen the Building Code of Australia and address the problem of "brittle buildings".

It seems research conducted by Professor Alan Jeary, a structural design specialist from the University of Western Sydney's school of engineering, concludes that roofs tiles will not withstand the onslaught of a summer storm season. Sydney's present roofing materials - up to 75 per cent ceramic tile and 10 per cent slate - were easily damaged by relatively minor hail storms.

In the past 20 years, Sydney has been hit by five significant hailstorms, which have caused more than $6 billion damage. Climate change research indicates that the problems could get much worse.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

AGW deniers desperate in their death throws.

Desmogblog asks why we have seen such a flurry of activity from the global warming denial lobby, lately:

Barack Obama has promised to lead the nation in a massive climate intervention and reengage with the international community on climate change. The past weeks have also seen progressive environmentalist Rep. Henry Waxman take over as chairman of the House Energy and Environment Committee and Senator Barbara Boxer announce plans to introduce two major climate bills early next year. The first hearing that she will hold in January will be titled, "How Fighting Global Warming is Good for the Economy and Will Create Jobs."

In other words, the deniers are gearing up for yet another fight against reality--this time, political reality as much as scientific reality. Unlike President George W. Bush, who at best played the role of apathetic substitute teacher to the United States, President-elect Obama is preparing to lay down the law.  He’s made it clear that our planetary fever will be taken seriously under his watch.

It's not worth underestimating these guys. Afterall -- with big fossil-fuel backing them, it's clear they aren't running out of cash anytime soon. 

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Andrew Bolt: The climate concerned are Nazis

Andrew Bolt reckons "the Global Day of Climate Action, which, to judge from this Friends of the Earth ad requires greenshirts to stage rallies eerily similar to the ones once seen at Nuremberg".



What an uncut dick-head! What a prize scumbag this Andrew Bolt is. Only he can be flippant about 6 million murdered Jews and Gypsies, and 80 million dead all up. Put it down to the evidential success of his self-lobotomy.

Here we see the outcome of the operation -- watch closely as he misinterprets a straight-forward graph: 

UPDATE

And with sea levels now refusing to rise, too, I guess the Rudd Government can ice its policy and plans to take in the Tuvalu islanders as “environmental refugees”. 

See, lobotomy successful. What? More proof, I hear you say:

UPDATE 2

Global warming theory is still being questioned, despite the efforts of the mainstream media and the Left to declare the debate closed. From a new study published in Climate Dynamics:

Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land… Although not a focus of this study, the degree to which the oceans themselves have recently warmed due to increased GHG, other anthropogenic, natural solar and volcanic forcings, or internal multi-decadal climate variations is a matter of active investigation.

And in news just at hand, Bolt's demonstrated ability to survive without a brain has thrown the whole medical ethical area of when to turn off a life-support system into chaos.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

This isn't Funk — it's the Flying Spagetti Monster

Heathens! What's this, a creepy schism?

The full Old Greg (minus ending)


Old Greg -- The Ending

Oceans cooling. Not.

A common misconception about measuring global warming, one that deniers prey upon, is that the average global temperature is the whole story. Ergo, if the last ten years of lower atmosphere temperatures plateau, the warming must have stopped, so the meme goes... on and on.

No so, according to Josh Willis, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who specialises in estimating how much heat the ocean stores annually:

"The oceans are absorbing more than 80 percent of the heat from global warming,” he says. "If you aren’t measuring heat content in the upper ocean, you aren’t measuring global warming."

And so goes a fascinating NASA Earth Observatory feature story of how a conundrum facing scientists, that climate models predicting rising ocean temperatures mismatched observations, was solved.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Cheney grounded $100 million climate satellite

Desmogblog is right into the unfolding story of the Bush Administration's interference with NASA's climate science research. This time it is allegations of Cheney's hand in the mothballing of the DSCOVR satellite question :

An unnamed source within NASA intimately familiar with the mothballed Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) mission spoke to Desmog Blog on the condition of anonymity.

The story is incredible.

The big question has always been: who would want to kill a $100 million fully completed climate satellite that has sat in a box since the 2000 presidential election - even though dozens of leading scientists have demanded it be launched?

“Apparently Cheney was the hatchet man”, said the source. “Bush tried the keep his hands clean so he didn’t actually have direct involvement. It almost reminds me of the way Nixon used to operate…He assigned Cheney to be the hatchet man job on DSCOVR… Bush’s fingerprints weren’t on it but Cheney’s were… That’s what we heard through the grapevine.”

All allegations, though. No nitty gritty yet. Watch this space.


Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Obama wins the US elocution

I'm sure I am not the only one outside the US who has become fixated on US President-elect Barrack Hussain Obama. I was one of the lucky few who survived the long, long US election media flood by simply ignoring it all. But tuning into the thrilling finish has wet my appetite for more about Obama. The confluence of an historic presidential choice by the US electorate, a global financial crisis of historic proportions, and unprecedented climate change, is a compelling backdrop for a man who comfortably shoulders an aura of history-in-the-making.

And, apart from enjoying his obvious magnetism, it's refreshing to hear a US President-elect speak in complete sentences, let alone grammatically correct ones. It's a big addition to their international relations skill-set. Having your subjects and verbs in agreement is a must-have in a multilateral world.

But, it is Obama's vision to tackle the economic crisis by investing in projects for decarbonising their economy that is disarming the cynic in me. If there is any up-side to the world economic down-side currently being experienced, it is that this crisis represents our best opportunity to make the transition to a carbon-neutral world. It is serendipitous that those from the biggest economy are finally making noises about taking up a leadership role the rest of the world has been crying out for. Given the immensity of the task ahead, and the fact that we have to make the transition at some point, there is no better financial climate than now.

Reassuringly, Obama confirmed that he gets it by using his second Internet address as President-elect to outline his vision of rescuing the economy by rebuilding it.

Jan 20. Bring it on!

UPDATE
In a piece for posterity, just recorded for the library of the Congress and a Bush Presidency museum, lies the mangled wreckage of President Bush's construction, poignantly mirroring his record: "I'd like to be a president, as somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace,".

Two unfinished wars, one financial crisis, one world's largest government-subsidised housing-project, eight years of US paralysis on global warming agreement, and a hanging clause later we have this plaintiff outro.

Readers will think I hate the guy. I don't. I'm sure I would respond warmly in his presence, he seems like that kind of guy.

But presidential material? In the old days the head nodding refrain would have been 'only in America', but these are newer, hopeful days.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

EPA ruling gives Obama clean slate to build the clean economy

Breaking news at Desmogblog. Kevin Grandia is as surprised as I:

Wow. A decision by the Environmental Protection Agency today has ruled that all new and proposed coal-fired power plants must have their carbon dioxide emissions regulated.

The implications are very opportune, according to John Spalding, attorney of the Sierra Club, who successfully prosecuted the case:

Today’s decision opens the way for meaningful action to fight global warming and is a major step in bringing about a clean energy economy. This is one more sign that we must begin repowering, refueling and rebuilding America. The EAB rejected every Bush Administration excuse for failing to regulate the largest source of greenhouse gases in the United States. This decision gives the Obama Administration a clean slate to begin building our clean energy economy for the 21st century.

How very opportune. What a gift for the Obama Administration. The times, they are a changing.

 Global Warning Climate Change Energy

The Foole is Dead. Long live the King!

Barrack Hussein Obama delivered a fine acceptance speech on becoming President Elect. So said my goosebumps. Very powerful stuff.

It was the first time I had seen and heard more than a soundbite of Obama's famed oratory — two avoidance years plus eighteen listening minutes, and I then knew why he has this reputation. Compelling cadence, great words, good looks, and authoritative body language make him a gifted messenger with a welcomed message.

His message was simple: CHANGE. Delivered with pathos, and ethos, in clear English, President Elect Obama's fine words made for a heady brew after all the dissembling, and disemvoweling of the drawled-out, last, eight, years. At last a man of stature, not swagger, to represent the US to the outside world.

Yet the flip side of getting carried away with Obama is just as good... George Bush and his neocon, crony-capitalist climate-wrecking, with-us-or-against-us, terror-obsessed, bellicose, pugilistic agenda... are all gone come Jan 20. As the Dog's Bollocks kindly puts it, "Bye Bye Bushites!"

Praise the Lord and pass the whiskey! The election of Barrack Obama to President of the United States marks the end of the toxic neocon dream - we don’t react to reality – we create reality. The Bush Administration has been the most grotesque in US history. The foxes had finally taken over the hen-house. It was bound to end in tears, and so it has. To use some Bushite vernacular – it has been the mother of all clusterfucks.

I cannot recall a single redeeming feature of the Bush Administration, let alone three. The littany of policy disasters is mind boggling both in extent and all-encompassing range. Begun by stealing the 2000 election, to the cronyism of putting Monsanto in charge of the EPA and Halliburton in charge of the administration. Deficit creating tax cuts for the uber-wealthy – the golden boys and girls of the ponzi financial schemes and scams. Two ill-advised and botched invasions which have done nothing but breed support for Al Q’aida and run up trillion dollar budget deficits. Hurricane Katrina. The failure to plan for energy efficiency, preferring instead to wage war on oil rich dictatorships under the guise of spreading democracy and liberation, all the while enriching the coffers of Halliburton and Bush’s oil cronies. The cultivation of Christian Fundamentalists within the Administration and lobby industry while undermining the fundamental principles of the US constitution in the name of an apocalyptic Never-Ending War on Terror.

All finished off with the mother of all financial distasters when the ponzi schemes collapsed – products of the great freemarket experiment allowing the proliferation of unregulated financial systems that no-one really understood. The undoing of which almost resulted in a global meltdown, narrowly averted only by massive injections of liquidity from the public purse.

To be fair, GWB's focus on Africa is a bit redeeming, and Iraq might limp home to proper democracy in 20 years. But Jesus, what a way to do it. Worst of all is his war on climate science, and his fossil fuel agenda. You fuck with reality, and it will come back and bite you hard on the arse.

Nah, there's nothing much redeeming about Bush, unless you do comedy for a living.

Two unfinished wars, two bubbles, and two recessions. Bye bye Bushites. History will, like the world did, just shake it's head at how a hegemon handed over it's moral authority for the next contender to step-up. For the last eight years we've been head-shaking. Is US democracy that malign?

Now here's Obama, American dream incarnate, stepping up to reclaim that moral authority by hitting all the right notes about embracing the global challenges that befall us, including climate change.

Even his name, Barrack, Blessed; What a fabulous story so far. We have yet to see how he goes, but right now I am hooked. I have hope. It's Mandela all over again, this time it's not my old country, but the world that needs to be brought back from the precipice.

CCS — Use It Or Lose It

One of the most compelling chapters in the PBS Frontline 2-hour special on global warming that aired earlier this week was the segment on America's Addiction to Coal.
PBS dives headfirst into the myth of clean coal and pretty much tears it apart using something we don't often see these days when it come US energy issues: facts.