Articles Tagged "Opinion"

The latest volcano eruption in Iceland is now being used as an example by the Global Warming fanatics of how thinning ice caps can actually cause volcanoes to erupt. The latest is how thinning ice caps in Iceland are releasing pressure on the ground and creating liquid magma. Freysteinn Sigmundsson, a vulcanologist at the University of Iceland, goes on to say that melting ice caused by Global Warming can influence magmatic systems as seen from the increasing volcano activity at the end of the Ice Age 10,000 years ago apparently because as the ice caps melted, the land rose.

Carolina Pagli, a geophysicist at the University of Leeds in England warns of the risk of volcano eruptions in other ice covered areas such as Antarctica and Alaska because the decrease in pressure on the ground from decreasing ice caps can have effects in deep areas where magma is produced.

Pagli and Sigmundsson wrote a 2008 paper in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters about possible links between global warming and Icelandic volcanoes.

Their report said that about 10 percent of Iceland's biggest ice cap, Vatnajokull, has melted since 1890 and the land nearby was rising about 25 millimetres (0.98 inch) a year, bringing shifts in geological stresses.

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When you listen to those who say that human-caused global-warming is a fact, you will hear statements like “The science is settled,” and “We should defer to what the scientists say.”

So, the question is, is it science, or cult science?

First, let me explain why a writer whose column is titled “Populist Economics” is musing about climate science.

The reason is The-Mother-of-All-Environmental-Laws -- climate-change legislation -- is coming.

Every time an environmental law is passed, politicians affect the choices of your life and opportunities you have to get a job, make money to support yourself and your family. Frankly, to this observer, the most of the environmental laws passed are detrimental to those ends, and ironically, do little to protect the environment or people, and, in fact, may actually harm them.

One recent example was the forced introduction of MTBE additive to gasoline by Angus King during his governorship. He eventually made the correct decision to withdraw the order, but not before wells and aquifers were poisoned. The same may be true of wind-powered electricity today. King may realize that before Maine’s mountains, coastlines and economy are gutted. But don’t count on it. He stands to make too much money. Let’s go back to the premise behind climate-change legislation and wind-powered electricity: global-warming.

Is it science?

Click source to read FULL report by J. Dwight

Green policies lack detail but some experts detect 'seismic shift' in new era of regulations, sanctions and subsidies


Cover of the Labour Manifesto 2010: a green future for all?

"After 13 years they have finally understood that they can't create a low carbon, secure energy supply in this country without some more intervention," said Matthew. "[We need] certainty for investors so they shift their money from high to low carbon energy services. They need that support to get off the ground, but eventually they'll stand on their own and end up cheaper than the fossil fuel industries."

Click source to read FULL report from Juliette Jowit. Our opinion on this is that the importance of "Man Made" Climate Change will be dropped within the next few years. No longer will it be put forward as an issue that concerns the direct action of "Man". Instead Governments will come to their senses about how to help people adapt from a less active Sun and a cooler world.

The warmer version of our world that has been put forward by the very misinformed media will also be changed after the next election, just like the new Labour manifesto.

The IPCC's climate-change fearmongering is only the latest excuse to expand the public sector.

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admitted for the first time last month that it is facing a crisis of confidence. But the IPCC's failings go far beyond the recent spate of errors identified in its reports. The problem began with the global political climate that led to the formation of the IPCC two decades ago.

Contrary to popular perception, the IPCC is not a scientific organization. It does no research of its own. Composed of scientists nominated by different governments, its key function is to collate evidence of human-induced climate change, not just changes in climate.

It is hardly surprising that with such an inherently biased objective the scientists lost their objectivity. Many of them went on a crusade to support the political goal of proving anthropogenic global warming. Concerns about scientific objectivity and critical discourse were thrown overboard.

Quality science, not alarmist hyperbole, must inform debate

SERIOUS climate change debate is not the place for alarmist hyperbole and sophistry. Australians need to come to grips with the issue through quality science and rational argument, which is why a new CSIRO/Bureau of Meteorology analysis is welcome. While more than 90 per cent certain that greenhouse emissions have caused most of the global warming observed since 1950, the report's balanced approach enhances its credibility.

Temperatures in Australia, it notes, have increased by about 0.7C since the 1960s, with some areas experiencing warming of 1.5C to 2C. Sea levels are rising between 1.5cm and 3cm per decade in the south and east, and between 7cm and 9cm in the north, it says - a trend far short of the deluges predicted by some. Greenhouse gases are blamed for half the fall-off in winter rainfall in southwest Western Australia, while heavy increases in rainfall in northern and central Australia and decreases across the south and the east are also noted.

For years, The Australian has promoted intelligent discussion on climate, recently providing a platform to commentators as diverse as climate change father James Hansen and economist Bjorn Lomborg, who accepts the theory of climate change but argues that cutting carbon would be more costly than living with the problem.

It has been a bad—make that dreadful—few weeks for what used to be called the "settled science" of global warming, and especially for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that is supposed to be its gold standard.

First it turns out that the Himalayan glaciers are not going to melt anytime soon, notwithstanding dire U.N. predictions. Next came news that an IPCC claim that global warming could destroy 40% of the Amazon was based on a report by an environmental pressure group. Other IPCC sources of scholarly note have included a mountaineering magazine and a student paper.

Since the climategate email story broke in November, the standard defense is that while the scandal may have revealed some all-too-human behavior by a handful of leading climatologists, it made no difference to the underlying science. We think the science is still disputable. But there's no doubt that climategate has spurred at least some reporters to scrutinize the IPCC's headline-grabbing claims in a way they had rarely done previously.

I shall rephrase this question. Is the sun a major factor in causing climate change?

The answer is YES and I shall endeavor to explain the current thinking on the subject.

Global warming is now more commonly called "climate change", which can include global cooling. Also, I don't wish to blame the sun because it can't help doing what suns and planetary systems have to do, by virtue of their existence. Do we blame dogs for barking?

The correlation of sun spot activity to climate was first reported by Sir William Herschel in 1801 who noticed a relationship between solar activity and the price of wheat, from the data given in Adam Smith's book "The Wealth of Nations" published in 1776.

Global warming's heyday of 2006 and 2007 is long gone. With temperatures dropping recently, skepticism may be rising.

Climate change just isn't what it used to be. Case in point: The number of otherwise intelligent people who are saying that all the cold weather (in the East) and rain (here at home) are causing them to lose faith in the gospel of global warming.

To their way of thinking, it's fine and good to be bellyaching about rising sea levels when it's 100 degrees outside. It's easy to remember to carry around your reusable tote bag when drought begets parched hillsides, which beget wildfires, which beget air that smells like rotisserie chicken minus the chicken.

But guess what? It's been pouring all week. In Florida, the oranges are perishing under frost. The temperature bottomed out at minus 52 in North Dakota earlier this month, and Beijing recently had its biggest snowfall since 1951.

Click source to read FULL article by Meghan Daum

Climate Change: A new study shows that Earth's ability to absorb carbon dioxide from all sources, including man, has remained unchanged for 160 years. As it turns out, there may be no carbon to offset.

A major tenet of the global warming religion, straight from the Book of Gore, has been that the ability of the earth to handle increasing CO2 emissions is finite and that once the "tipping point" is reached, the earth will warm uncontrollably. Well, another climate domino has fallen — the myth that man-made CO2 is leading to climate catastrophe.

This "settled science" has been upended by an unsettling (for warm-mongers) new study out of the University of Bristol in England. Unlike the Climate-gate charlatans at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, Wolfgang Knorr of Bristol's Earth Sciences Department followed the data where it led instead of trying to manipulate it to "hide the decline" in global temperatures the earth has experienced in the last decade.