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ITER Forum Website Update 2.2012 B.J.Green (?/212) Carbon tax 'alarmism' doesn't fit facts, scientists warn 1. BY: DEBBIE GUEST From: The Australian January 30, 2012 12:00AM http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/healthscience/carbon-tax-alarmism-doesnt-fit-factsscientists-warn/story-e6frg8y6-1226256747962 SCIENTISTS from around the world, including the former head of Australia's National Climate Centre, are calling for calm on global warming, saying alarmist rhetoric is not backed by evidence and is being used to increase taxes. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, the 16 scientists say a "large and growing number" of scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic action on global warming is needed. "The number of scientific 'heretics' is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts," they say. "Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now." The scientists -- who include former head of the Bureau of Meteorology's National Climate Centre, William Kininmonth -- argue that while many young scientists have serious doubts about the "global warming message" they are afraid to speak out for fear they will not be promoted. n the opinion piece, the scientists say computer models have exaggerated how much warming extra carbon dioxide could cause. "Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2." The scientists -- who also include the former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, Claude Allegre -- argue that alarmism over climate change benefits those who receive government funding for research and allows government bureaucracies to grow. "Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, (for) taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system and (is) a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet." Mr Kininmonth told The Australian climate change was happening, but in a "very slow sense" rather than at the pace predicted in some computer models. He said the more concerning problem was climate extremes, such as the recent Queensland floods, and the Australian government should be focused on building infrastructure to cope with those events. He said introducing a carbon tax was not the answer. "The climate tax is going to raise a lot of money . . . although the government says it's going to give it back, it's the turning of our money that they're doing on the basis of climate change . . . I don't think it's of any value at all." Mr Kininmonth said he and the other scientists were in support of more research. "Just because we're against the alarmism of the computer model predictions, none of us are against climate model research." 2. Article rank 26 Jan 2012 The Australian Green power breaking the bank in Germany Zoom Bookmark http://www.pressdisplay .com/pressdisplay/viewe r.aspx Berlin backs down on trying to ‘grow pineapples in Alaska’ GERMANY enjoys, if that’s the right word, a thriving solar energy industry. But the cost of this success, to taxpayers and electricity users alike, has risen to astronomical levels. Some 56 per cent of green energy subsidies in Germany goes to solar even though solar plants produce 21 per cent of all subsidised energy. The cost to German consumers of all solar subsidy commitments already tops j100 billion ($124bn). Last week, the German government reached an agreement with the solar industry to begin monthly reductions in the abovemarket prices Berlin forces power companies to pay for solar energy. But the crack-up has been more than two decades in the making. Since 1990, Berlin has imposed feed-in tariffs — mandates that require utility companies to buy renewable energy producers’ electricity output at cost and on longterm contracts. That has translated into a boom in solar installations — subsidised, of course, by higher electricity bills for consumers. The average green surcharge is soon expected to amount to an extra j200 each year, according to one estimate. Berlin is selling the decision as a mere adjustment to market reality. Parliamentarian Michael Fuchs told Der Spiegel that ‘‘prices of solar cells are dropping much faster than we have been able to reduce subsidies so far. That’s a huge mistake.’’ Chinese competitors have indeed driven down the cost of production, so much so that German producers were finding it difficult to stay afloat even before Berlin considered slashing giveaways. Solar stocks collapsed after last week’s announcement. But the real story is what the decision means for Germany’s ambitions to abandon nuclear power and switch en masse to green sources. Angela Merkel agreed to the nuclear drawdown after last year’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan, in a political move aimed at shoring up support for her government among leftleaning constituencies. The transition is proving more easily dreamed up than done. The solar farms and rooftop-panel homeowners who profit from feed-in tariffs generate electricity in unpredictable amounts and at unpredictable times. Der Spiegel reports that Germany’s 1.1 million solar power systems have generated almost no electricity this winter owing to overcast weather. Jurgen Grossmann, chief executive of electricity giant RWE, compared subsidising solar power in Germany to ‘‘growing pineapples in Alaska’’. The analogy would be even more apt if pineapples were economic lifeblood. In a recent survey by the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce, a majority of the 1520 companies polled said that rising energy prices, not the euro crisis, were their biggest worry. Onefifth of companies said they had moved business abroad or were planning to do so because of concerns about the electricity supply. So while dialing back on subsidies is a clear victory for economic rationality, Germany’s entire push towards renewables deserves a rethink. In an interview with Reuters last week, Siemens board member Michael Suss estimated that exiting nuclear power could cost German energy consumers and taxpayers as much as j1.7 trillion by 2030, or two-thirds of German gross domestic product. That cost may end up higher still; companies whose products no one would buy without government fiat are not exactly known for being costconscious. Under last week’s agreement, feed-in tariffs could be cut by as much as 24 per cent per year and phased out entirely by 2017. If Berlin is expecting those Alaskan pineapples to be any more viable by then, it may be in for a shock. Dick Smith slams door on cold fusion 'invention' 3. BY: ANTHONY KLAN From: The Australian January 31, 2012 12:00AM http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/healthscience/dick-smith-slams-door-on-cold-fusioninvention/story-e6frg8y6-1226257712367 ENTREPRENEUR Dick Smith has officially rejected the authenticity of an Italian cold fusion "invention" alleged to provide an almost limitless supply of clean energy. Mr Smith said he had earlier refused to rule out the technology claims made by inventor Andrea Rossi as "at least 15 scientists (had) lent some support for it". Mr Rossi claims his "E-CAT", via a series of low-energy nuclear reactions, generated substantially more energy than was put into it. Mr Smith, as a patron of Australian Skeptics -- a charlatan-policing group he formed in 1970 with journalists Phillip Adams and the late Richard Carleton -- issued a statement yesterday discounting the alleged invention. He said the apparent energy gains witnessed by independent scientists at Mr Rossi's warehouse in Bologna in northern Italy were probably the result of a "miscounted power lead". "I believe it's intentional or a very serious mistake," Mr Smith said yesterday. The former electronics entrepreneur began examining the claims made by Mr Rossi after he was last month approached by Sol Millin, a man living on a yoga retreat north of Mullumbimby in northern NSW. Mr Millin was seeking funding to buy the Australian rights to the technology. Mr Smith had said that if it could be proven the technology worked then he would invest $200,000 in it. This month, Mr Millin threatened to sue Mr Smith for $200,000 after Mr Smith refused to make any payment because he did not believe the claims were correct. Yesterday, Mr Millin wrote to Mr Smith claiming he had another investor called "Roger Green" who was eager to invest $150,000 in the technology. In the letter, Mr Millin claimed he had turned down "Mr Green" because "he was being too greedy" and urged Mr Smith to invest in the technology because "we really don't have much time". Mr Rossi spent time in an Italian jail in the late 1980s in relation to a "clean energy" company, but was later acquitted. Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry 4. about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again) Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years By DAVID ROSE Last updated at 5:38 AM on 29th January 2012 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming-Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years. The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century. Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997. Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food. Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak. We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24’ – which is why last week’s solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century. Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still. According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is a 92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in the following decades will be as weak as, or weaker than, the ‘Dalton minimum’ of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe fell by 2C. However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the ‘Maunder minimum’ (after astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the ‘Little Ice Age’ when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid. Yet, in its paper, the Met Office claimed that the consequences now would be negligible – because the impact of the sun on climate is far less than man-made carbon dioxide. Although the sun’s output is likely to decrease until 2100, ‘This would only cause a reduction in global temperatures of 0.08C.’ Peter Stott, one of the authors, said: ‘Our findings suggest a reduction of solar activity to levels not seen in hundreds of years would be insufficient to offset the dominant influence of greenhouse gases.’ These findings are fiercely disputed by other solar experts. ‘World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’ He pointed out that, in claiming the effect of the solar minimum would be small, the Met Office was relying on the same computer models that are being undermined by the current pause in global-warming. CO2 levels have continued to rise without interruption and, in 2007, the Met Office claimed that global warming was about to ‘come roaring back’. It said that between 2004 and 2014 there would be an overall increase of 0.3C. In 2009, it predicted that at least three of the years 2009 to 2014 would break the previous temperature record set in 1998. So far there is no sign of any of this happening. But yesterday a Met Office spokesman insisted its models were still valid. ‘The ten-year projection remains groundbreaking science. The period for the original projection is not over yet,’ he said. Dr Nicola Scafetta, of Duke University in North Carolina, is the author of several papers that argue the Met Office climate models show there should have been ‘steady warming from 2000 until now’. ‘If temperatures continue to stay flat or start to cool again, the divergence between the models and recorded data will eventually become so great that the whole scientific community will question the current theories,’ he said. He believes that as the Met Office model attaches much greater significance to CO2 than to the sun, it was bound to conclude that there would not be cooling. ‘The real issue is whether the model itself is accurate,’ Dr Scafetta said. Meanwhile, one of America’s most eminent climate experts, Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology, said she found the Met Office’s confident prediction of a ‘negligible’ impact difficult to understand. ‘The responsible thing to do would be to accept the fact that the models may have severe shortcomings when it comes to the influence of the sun,’ said Professor Curry. As for the warming pause, she said that many scientists ‘are not surprised’. She argued it is becoming evident that factors other than CO2 play an important role in rising or falling warmth, such as the 60-year water temperature cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. ‘They have insufficiently been appreciated in terms of global climate,’ said Prof Curry. When both oceans were cold in the past, such as from 1940 to 1970, the climate cooled. The Pacific cycle ‘flipped’ back from warm to cold mode in 2008 and the Atlantic is also thought likely to flip in the next few years . Pal Brekke, senior adviser at the Norwegian Space Centre, said some scientists found the importance of water cycles difficult to accept, because doing so means admitting that the oceans – not CO2 – caused much of the global warming between 1970 and 1997. The same goes for the impact of the sun – which was highly active for much of the 20th Century. ‘Nature is about to carry out a very interesting experiment,’ he said. ‘Ten or 15 years from now, we will be able to determine much better whether the warming of the late 20th Century really was caused by man-made CO2, or by natural variability.’ Meanwhile, since the end of last year, world temperatures have fallen by more than half a degree, as the cold ‘La Nina’ effect has re-emerged in the South Pacific. ‘We’re now well into the second decade of the pause,’ said Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. ‘If we don’t see convincing evidence of global warming by 2015, it will start to become clear whether the models are bunk. And, if they are, the implications for some scientists could be very serious.’ 5. OPINION JANUARY 27, 2012 No Need to Panic About Global Warming There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html Editor's Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article: A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about "global warming." Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed. In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?" In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts. Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2. The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smallerthan-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2. The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere. Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job. This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death. Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern update, "Follow the money." Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them. Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically. A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet. If elected officials feel compelled to "do something" about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review. Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of "incontrovertible" evidence. Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva. 6. 30 January 2012 Last updated at 06:44 GMT UN panel aims for 'a future worth choosing' By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News Corbis Growing inequality, environmental decline and "teetering" economies mean the world must change the way it does business, a UN report concludes. Health and education must improve, it says. Subsidies on fossil fuels should end, and governments must look beyond the standard economic indicator of GDP. The High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability was established in 2010 by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Its report will feed into discussions leading to the Rio+20 summit in June. It is being launched in Addis Ababa by its two co-chairs, Finnish President Tarja Halonen and her South African counterpart Jacob Zuma. "With the possibility of the world slipping further into recession, policymakers are hungry for ideas that can help them to navigate these difficult times," said Mr Zuma. "Our report makes clear that sustainable development is more important than ever given the multiple crises now enveloping the world." Ms Halonen emphasised the theme of equality that runs through the report, in terms of gender and redressing the burgeoning gap between people on high and low incomes. "Eradication of poverty and improving equity must remain priorities for the world community," she said. The panel's diagnosis The number of people living in poverty is declining, but the number hungry is rising Inequality in wealth distribution is rising Access to clean water is increasing, but 2.6 billion people lack access to modern sanitation By 2030, demand for food will rise by 50%, for energy by 45% and for water by 30% Women are too often excluded from economic opportunities The financial crisis was partly caused by market rules that encourage short-termism and do not reward sustainable investment The current economic model is "pushing us inexorably towards the limits of natural resources and planetary life support systems" The panel's 22 members include heads of government and ministers past and present, including Barbadian Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, Australian Foreign Minister and former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and India's Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh. They also include Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former Norwegian Prime Minister who led the Brundtland Commission in 1987. It was that report that coined the most familiar definition of sustainable development as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Twenty-five years on, the new report concludes that although substantial progress has been made in many directions, such as reducing poverty, development is anything but sustainable. "We undertook this report during a period of global volatility and uncertainty," it says. "Economies are teetering. Inequality is growing. And global temperatures continue to rise. "We are testing the capacity of the planet to sustain us." To turn this around, it says: "We need to change dramatically, beginning with how we think about our relationship to each other, to future generations, and to the ecosystems that support us". Changing track The report - Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing - includes 56 recommendations that would, if implemented in full, have profound implications for societies, governments, and businesses. Governments would build the true environmental costs of products into the prices that people pay to purchase them, leading to an economic system that protects natural resources. Goods would be labelled with information on their environmental impact, enabling consumers to make more informed purchasing decisions. With UN support, governments would adopt indicators of economic performance that go beyond simple GDP, and measure the sustainability of countries' economies. Governments would change the regulation of financial markets to promote longer-term, more stable and sustainable investment. Subsidies that damage environmental integrity would be phased out by 2020. The UN estimates that governments spend more than $400bn each year subsidising fossil fuels, while OECD countries alone spend nearly the same amount on agricultural subsidies. In parallel, access to energy, clean water, sanitation and food would be increased, meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and going beyond them. New targets would be established of ensuring "universal access to affordable sustainable energy" by 2030, while universal telecommunications and broadband access should arrive by 2025. Governments "should consider establishing a global fund for education" in order to meet the existing MDG on universal access to primary education by 2015, and aim for universal access to secondary education by 2030. These and other targets should be incorporated into a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to be drawn up in the next few years, the panel says. Some of its recommendations parallel the initial draft agreement drawn up for the Rio+20 summit. "We greatly welcome the report of the panel and its messages," said Farooq Ullah, head of policy and advocacy at Stakeholder Forum, a civil society group involved with preparations for the summit. "It outlines a vision of the future which is people-centric and which exists within the safe operating space necessary for planetary health and our existence." 7. Lawrence Solomon: NASA scientist reverses sunspot prediction, bolstering global cooling theory Lawrence Solomon Jun 16, 2011 – 3:37 PM ET http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/06/16/lawrence-solomon-nasa-scientistreverses-sunspot-prediction-bolstering-global-cooling-theory/ Five years ago, NASA’s David Hathaway, one of the world’s leading authorities on the solar cycle, predicted that the Sun was about to enter an unusually intense period of sunspot activity. Referring to Solar Cycle 24, the 11-year period that we’re now in, Hathaway predicted that it “looks like it’s going to be one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago.” Because sunspot activity has historically predicted periods of global warming and global cooling – lots of sunspots translates into lots of warming and vice versa – Hathaway’s study – presented at a December 2006 meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco — acted to support global warming theorists and to discredit the various solar scientists who believe that Earth is about to enter a prolonged period of cooling. Today, Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, believes his earlier prediction was wrong. Rather than hitting a peak of 160 sunspots, and possibly 185, as he predicted in 2006, he now believes that the Sun’s activity will decline dramatically. The current prediction, to less than half that of 2006, “would make this the smallest sunspot cycle in over 100 years,” he now states. All this comes amid a flurry of other reports, including from scientists at the U.S. National Solar Observatory (NSO) and U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, indicating that global cooling, and perhaps even a new Little Ice Age, is on its way. “We expected to see the start of the zonal flow for Cycle 25 by now, but we see no sign of it,” states Frank Hill of the U.S. National Solar Observatory, who recently co-authored another paper in the field. “This indicates that the start of Cycle 25 may be delayed to 2021 or 2022, or may not happen at all.” The upshot is chilling: “If we are right, this could be the last solar maximum we’ll see for a few decades,” Hill states. “That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth’s climate.” The notion of another Little Ice Age, as happened in the last half of the 1600s, is no longer dismissed. Asks the National Solar Observatory: “An immediate question is whether this slowdown presages a second Maunder Minimum, a 70-year period with virtually no sunspots [which occurred] during 1645-1715.” To see the historic number of sunspots, including the number during the Little Ice Age in the mid 1600s, click here. To see Hathaway’s new, dramatically lowered prediction, click here. Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers. [email protected]. 8. SpaceShipOne man, Nobel boffins: DON'T PANIC on global warming Row gets nasty – ghosts of Lysenko and McCarthy invoked By Lewis Page • Get more from this author Posted in Environment, 30th January 2012 12:15 GMT http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/30/wsj_global_warming_letter/ The debate over global warming flamed hotter over the weekend, as a group of eminent scientists and engineers – including Burt Rutan, the famous designer of the X-prize-winning suborbital rocketplane SpaceShipOne – signed an open letter stating that the dangers of climate change are being deliberately exaggerated. The statement, which was published in the Wall Street Journal, ran under the Hitchhikers'-esque headline "No Need To Panic About Global Warming", and was addressed to future political candidates for high office. It says bluntly: Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed. The letter goes on to point out that Nobel Prize winning physicist Ivar Giaever – by no means a standard right-wing climate sceptic, as he publicly supported President Obama's election campaign – has recently resigned from the American Physical Society over the Society's insistence in its policy statement that "The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring ... We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now." Giaever is not the only top physicist to have major problems with this stance by the APS: the eminent boffin Professor Harold Lewis also resigned from the Society over the matter in 2010, and legendary physicist Freeman Dyson is also known to be a warming sceptic. The WSJ letter goes on to rehash other climate-sceptic points, including the levelling-off of temperatures seen around the world over the past decade. Rather extremely perhaps, it likens the warmist consensus in today's scientific world – reflected in such things as the APS policy statement – to the infamous era of Lysenkoism in Soviet biology, when academician Trofim Lysenko would routinely have scientists with dissenting (and as it turned out, correct) theories fired, imprisoned or even executed. Signing alongside Rutan are 15 other distinguished names, some of them (like him) not experts in climate science – Apollo astronaut and ex-US senator Harrison Schmitt is there, for instance – but also including various top-bracket meteorologists and atmo-boffins. Response from the warmist wing of the boffinry community has been every bit as emotional as the sceptics with their talk of Lysenkoism. Peter Gleick, a prominent warmist scientist (also well known for his contention that bottled water is evil) describes the "No Need To Panic" article as "unabashed bias" on the part of the WSJ and says that Rutan et al use "false/strawman" arguments and make "ad hominem attacks on particular climate scientists". (The WSJ article does name climate scientist Kevin Trenberth, but only to quote his leaked ClimateGate email to fellow warmists in which he wrote: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't.") Gleick goes on to point out that he has recently organised a prowarmist open letter signed by no less than 255 scientists, not just a measly 16 – and none of them ignorant rocketeers or astronauts either – but the WSJ turned this down. In that letter – which did get published anyway (PDF), in premier boffinry mag Science - Gleick and his co-signatories insist that it is not the sceptics but they the warmists who are being persecuted by oppressive dogmatics. Rather than Lysenko, they evoke from the same era the spectre of US senator Joseph McCarthy and his anticommunist witch hunts. They write: We also call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them. This is ironic as the sceptic Professor Lewis, who describes global warming as "the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist," was actually forced out of his academic position as a young boffin in 1950 for refusing to sign a McCarthy-era "loyalty oath" as a matter of principle. The debate is plainly becoming unpleasantly polarised and extreme on both sides. As is common in such situations, people are starting to think of the children: Dr Gleick, for instance, has recently joined the board of the National Center for Science Education, an American non-profit which for many years has done sterling work defending the teaching of evolution in US science classrooms against creationist attempts to suppress it. Depressingly for those not absolutely convinced of the warmist argument, the NCSE has now taken on an extra mission, for which it has brought Dr Gleick on board: "to defend and support the teaching of climate change". As far as Dr Gleick is concerned, doubting the case for immediate and serious action against carbon emissions is the same as being a creationist as well as a McCarthy-style witchfinder. ® Wendelstein 7-X closes the ring http://www.fusenet.eu/node/174 The European Fusion Education network 9. Last month the ring of Wendelstein 7-X was closed: the last of the five large modules that make up the core of the stellarator was installed, closing the ring-shaped core of the device. The vessel of the stellarator consists of five parts. With a special crane the last, one hundred ton section of the vessel was put in position. The operation took about three hours and marks a milestone in the Wendelstein 7-X project of Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. After completion, Wendelstein 7-x will be the most modern fusion reactor of the stellarator type, and is intended to investigate this model’s suitability as a power station, in particular its capability for long pulse operation. If everything continues to run according to plan, the Wendelstein 7-X project expects to complete the stellarator in time to achieve a first plasma experiment in Greifswald in 2014. 10. Core of fusion experiment completed Facts and Info from the European Physical Society By e-EPS. Published on 20 January 2012 in: News, Energy, Fusion Research, Germany, Max Planck Institute, Wendelstein 7-X http://www.epsnews.eu/2012/01/wendelstein-core-completed/ The last major part of the Wendelstein 7-X fusion experiment was installed on 21 December last year. The addition of the 14 tonne final part of the device – the lid of the thermally insulating outer shell – sees the completion of the ring-like base machine, at the Greifswald branch of the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics, which will begin operation in 2014. Fusion research aims to draw energy from the fusion of atomic nuclei – the same power source which drives the sun. To achieve this, hydrogen plasma must be superheated to temperatures above 100 million degrees, within the confines of a restricting magnetic field. The Wendelstein 7-X – which will be the largest fusion device of its type – will investigate the feasibility of such a power plant and its potential for continuous operation. “There are still many things to be completed before the whole of the experiment will be operational; remaining tasks include the installation of the main power lines and coolant pipes; the incorporation of the plasma heating systems and the connection of the various measuring equipment for diagnosing the plasma’s behaviour. “It’s just a pity, that there will then be nothing more to be seen of the machine’s interior, particularly of its hallmark, the coils,” says Hans-Stephan Bosch, Wendelstein 7- X project Associate Director. For more information, please visit the Max Planck Institute website. 11. PW 2012: fusion laser on track for 2012 burn 26 Jan 2012 The National Ignition Facility’s Mike Dunne expects to see fusion with gain in around n http://optics.org/news/3/1/37 by Mike Hatcher in San Francisco Mike Dunne, the National Ignition Facility’s director for laser fusion energy, is expecting the giant laser system to generate fusion with energy gain, or "burn", by the end of 2012. Deputizing for NIF director Ed Moses in a Photonics West 2012 plenary talk, Dunne said that the ignition campaign was now in its latter stages. “We are now in a position to say with some confidence that ignition will happen in the next 6-18 months,” stated the former head of the HiPER European laser fusion project, adding that he felt personally that the breakthrough was likely to happen in around nine months. One key areas of progress in the ignition project has been better-thanexpected results in damage limitation to optical components, which Dunne said should now “go well beyond the initial specifications of NIF.” But one of the toughest parts of the project has been perfecting the design of the deuterium-tritium target – not surprising, given that under the colossal pressures generated by the 192 NIF laser beams it implodes at an astonishing one million miles per hour. Although the current design is not felt to be totally optimized, Dunne remarked that the NIF team now has a genuinely engineered solution in place, having started the project with a blank piece of paper. With the end of the ignition campaign now in sight and the system yielding excellent uptime and what Dunne described as “exquisite” reproducibility, the NIF beams are starting to become used as a general scientific tool more regularly. Recent work has included recreating conditions at the centers of gas giant planets, and aiding the study of supernovae. Last month NIF announced that in the first university-based planetary science experiment at the facility, researchers had been able to gradually compress a diamond sample to a record pressure of 50 megabars, or 50 million times Earth's atmospheric pressure. Commercial angle The NIF team is also starting seriously to look beyond ignition and towards the implementation of fusion-based power stations. That is still a long way off, although Dunne showed what is known as the “LIFE box” – a compact, modular version of the NIF laser system that fits in a 10 meter-long unit rather than requiring a ten-storey building the size of a football field. The main difference between NIF and the LIFE designs for energy production will be the adoption of laser diodes to pump the Nd:glass amplifier crystals, meaning that the entire system will become a lot more energy-efficient and – it is hoped – suitable for commercial deployment. Dunne said that NIF has so far engaged with around 40 industrial partners in the early stages of the LIFE project, and that the next 6-12 months will see the more formal organization of “delivery partnerships” for the project. One of the key requirements for commercial energy production will be to deliver much more energy out of the system than is put in, because a small amount of fusion-driven energy gain would soon be wiped out by system inefficiencies. But Dunne believes that once gain can be achieved, this should be readily possible as the pathway to higher gain is more linear. This should mean that a factor of 50 gain ought to be possible with a relatively marginal increase in laser power, he said. “The next year will tell us what the exact point of optimized energy input really is,” he concluded. Study finds coral reef growth thrives in warmer waters 12. BY: AMOS AIKMAN From: The Australian February 03, 2012 6:00AM http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/study-findscoral-reef-growth-thrives-in-warmer-waters/story-e6frg8y6- 1226261278615 A GOVERNMENT-RUN research body has found in an extensive study of corals spanning more than 1000km of Australia's coastline that the past 110 years of ocean warming has been good for their growth. The findings undermine blanket predictions that global warming will devastate coral reefs, and add to a growing body of evidence showing corals are more resilient than previously thought, up to a certain point. The study by the commonwealth-funded Australian Institute of Marine Science, peer-reviewed findings of which are published in the leading journal Science today, examined 27 samples from six locations from the West Australian coast off Geraldton to offshore from Darwin. At each site, scientists took cores from massive porites corals similar to a biopsy in humans - and counted back to record their age in much the same way tree rings are counted. Although some cores extended back to the 18th century, they focused on the period from 1900 to 2010. The researchers found that, contrary to their expectations, warmer waters had not negatively affected coral growth. Quite the opposite, in fact: for their southern samples, where ocean temperatures are the coolest but have warmed the most, coral growth increased most significantly over the past 110 years. For their northern samples, where waters are the warmest and have changed the least, coral growth still increased, but not by as much. "Those reefs have actually been able to take advantage of the warmer conditions," said Janice Lough, a senior AIMS research scientist and one of the study's authors. Maria Byrne, a professor of marine biology at Sydney University, said after reading the paper that its findings "made perfect sense". "Temperature rules metabolism, so it's a no-brainer that if you get more temperature you will get more metabolism." She compared the findings to studies of sea urchins, where higher temperatures had been shown to offset the negative effects of ocean acidification, and to commercial aquaculture farms, in which some organisms are deliberately raised in warmer water to increase their growth rate. The key question is how warm the water can get before the positive effects are reversed. Lab studies have typically measured the effect of short-term, rapid changes in temperature and water chemistry; these mimic, for example, coral-bleaching events that are known to be devastating. Much harder to measure are the long-term effects of gradual warming, such as is caused by climate change. A recent paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change, reported in The Australian, showed Zooxanthellae - the symbiotic organisms that live inside corals - can adapt much better to warming water than was previously thought. It is also known corals can, to a degree, change their Zooxanthellae with changing conditions. Professor Byrne said the eggs of marine organisms laid in warmer water would pass that temperature tolerance on to the embryo, allowing ecosystems to evolve. One of her recent papers, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, showed sea cucumbers helped corals survive ocean acidification better. Warming temperatures make coral bleaching more likely. Big wind farms 'alter climate', but could be used to control the weather 13. BY: JONATHAN LEAKE From: The Times February 06, 2012 12:00AM http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/big-wind-farms-alterclimate-but-could-be-used-to-control-the-weather/story-e6frg8y61226263191582 WIND farms are intended to help combat global warming, yet they can themselves alter the climate, say scientists. Although the effect so far is largely local, the expansion of renewable energy means the larger wind farms planned could change wind and rainfall on a regional scale. "In the daytime, temperatures downwind of a wind farm can fall by as much as 4C," said Somnath Roy, assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "At night the reverse happens and the turbines have a warming effect." Dr Roy based some of his research on the San Gorgonio Pass wind farm in California, where he discovered the day ground-level temperature behind the turbines was up to 4C lower than in front. The turbines' blades scooped warm air away from the ground and pushed cooler air above it downwards. At night, when the ground cooled and the air above was warmer, the effect reversed. He believed the effects were caused by turbines reducing overall wind speed and creating turbulence. The rotating blades churn the air, bringing high-level air down to earth and lifting up air that had been sitting just above the ground to a much greater height. The resulting vortices can extend far downwind depending on the size and number of turbines. His findigs are backed by Eugene Takle, of Iowa State University's agronomy department, who examined how a 100-turbine wind farm affected temperature, humidity, wind speed, turbulence and the levels of CO2 on surrounding farmland. He found warmer temperatures close to the ground at night made the crops breathe more. This meant they used more food reserves and their overall growth slowed. However, the turbulence may also help crops grow faster in the daytime by bringing down air with higher levels of CO2 that plants need for photosynthesis. Air that stays at ground level can become slightly depleted in CO2 as plants use it up. Dr Takle is now working with scientists from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, including the atmospheric scientist Julie Lundquist. She used "lidar", a system that works like radar but uses light, to study turbulence downwind of a turbine. She found "wakes" extending long distances from the turbine tower, spreading out as they moved downwind. Some scientists have taken such research much further, suggesting that giant wind farms comprising hundreds of thousands of turbines would alter the weather and could be used to control it. A study published by Britain's Institute of Physics used computers to model the impact of installing 230,000 turbines across the US midwest. Wind farms of such magnitude are already under discussion because the US government has pledged to boost renewable energy generation. Brian Fiedler, of Oklahoma University's school of meteorology, who co-authored the research, said such a farm could have a big impact on regional weather, changing wind speeds and possibly increasing rainfall. He also suggested such a huge wind farm would have an effect on hurricanes and could be used to try to weaken them or affect their path. Warming data show shades of grey 14. BY: JONATHAN LEAKE From: The Sunday Times February 07, 2012 12:00AM http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/warming-data-show-shades-ofgrey/story-fnb64oi6-1226264121900 THE former deputy prime minister of Britain was apocalyptic. "Our polar ice caps are melting," thundered John Prescott. "Only this weekend Mexico was hit by freak snowstorms ... a world of drought and crop failures, rising seas, mass migration and disease ... rising greenhouse grasses (sic)." The year was 1997 and Prescott had just come back from Kyoto in Japan to give the House of Commons his account of the latest climate talks. Prescott's terrifying warnings were backed by Britain's leading climate scientists. Just before Kyoto a Met Office report warned that climate-related floods would put 50 million people at risk of death from starvation in the coming decades. Whole island nations would disappear, it added, while the American midwest, which helps to feed 100 nations, was likely to face drought and the North Pole might melt. That was 15 years ago - what has happened to world temperatures since then? Last month came the suggestion that the answer was, embarrassingly, nothing. Research based on Met Office figures pointed to temperatures having been flat since 1997. It was the kind of admission that those who doubt climate science pounce on. "Forget global warming" trumpeted the Mail on Sunday, because "the planet has not warmed in 15 years". It then cited other research, into the declining energy output of the sun, to suggest the real danger was from a big freeze, raising the prospect of a reprise of the frost fairs held on the frozen Thames in the 17th century. Two days earlier The Wall Street Journal had published a letter from 16 scientists advancing similar arguments. It said: "The lack of warming for more than a decade ... suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause." Since then the same cry has been taken up by innumerable bloggers, exemplified by David Whitehouse, formerly the BBC's science editor, now an adviser to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which has become a leading source of attacks on climate science. He, it turns out, was the source of the research that sparked the whole row. "We set out to see how long it had been since the temperature had risen and 15 years was what emerged from the data set," he says. "It raises serious questions about how the Met Office models future climate." It seems a strong argument but the climate scientists came out fighting, starting with a furious blog posted by the Met Office itself which attacked the Mail on Sunday article as "entirely misleading". That was followed by another letter in The Wall Street Journal, this time signed by 35 leading climate scientists, who pointed out that few of the signatories to its sceptical predecessor were actually involved in climate research. "Do you consult your dentist about your heart condition?" it asked, adding: "Climate experts know that the long-term warming trend has not abated in the past decade. In fact, it was the warmest on record." What were the rest of us meant to make of this? Some scientists appear to be warning we will fry, while other sources fear we will freeze. For the public the outcome is, increasingly, confusion. Where might the truth lie? Perhaps the simplest first step is to put aside the arguments and get back to the data. Is it really true that global temperatures have not risen since 1997? The simple answer is they have risen, but not by very much. "Our records for the past 15 years suggest the world has warmed by about 0.051C over that period," the Met Office says. In layman's terms that is 51 thousandths of a degree. These figures come from the Met Office HadCruT3 database, which takes readings from 3000 land stations around the world along with oceanic readings from a similar number of ships and buoys. However, HadCruT3 is just one of several global temperature databases, each overseen by different scientists and calculated in slightly different ways. This allows each group to cross-check results. One, held at the National Climate Data Centre, run by America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, suggests that global temperatures rose by an average of 0.074C since 1997. That's small, too - but it is another rise. A third and very different data set is overseen by John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He gathers figures from three satellites that orbit the earth 14 times a day. They measure the average temperature of the air from ground level to a height of 10,600m, a method completely different from those of the Met Office and NCDC. Ironically, given his reputation as a climate sceptic, he found the biggest rise. "From 1997-2011 our data show a global temperature rise of 0.15C," he said. "What's more, our satellites have been taking this data since 1979 and over that period (the) global temperature has risen 0.46C, so the world has been getting warmer." Overall, then, the world does seem to have got slightly warmer since 1997. Perhaps the real question is why has it warmed by so much less than predicted by the climate models? For most climate scientists the answer is simple. "Fifteen years is just too short a period over which to measure climate change," says Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at the Met Office. "The world undergoes temperature changes on all kinds of time scales from daily variations to seasonal ones." David Whitehouse accepts this point. "The records do show that global temperatures have risen by about 0.4C over the three decades, most of it in the 1990s," he said. "I accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that might warm the world but the key issue is how strong the effect is and how the data compare with the models used to predict the future." This seems a surprising admission, turning what had appeared to be an attack on the keystones of climate science - that greenhouse gases cause global warming - into a "shades of grey" debate over whether global warming will happen slowly and steadily or in jerks, accelerating in some decades but then slowing or even reversing a little in others. For the critics of climate science this is a crucial point - but why? The answer goes back to the 2001 and 2007 science reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which had predicted the world was likely to warm by an average of about 0.2C a decade. The implication was that temperatures would rise relatively steadily, not with 15-year gaps. The existence of such gaps, the critics argue, implies the climate models are too flawed to be relied on. Other leading climate scientists have raised similar issues. One is Judith Curry, professor of atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She argues that global climate is affected by so many factors, ranging from solar output to volcanic eruptions, that predicting how the world will warm is impossible. Crucially, however, Curry accepts that greenhouse gas emissions are likely to lead to long-term warming. She wrote on her blog: "We don't know what the climate will be for the next several decades. In terms of when global warming will come 'roaring back', it is possible this may not happen for the first half of the 21st century." For Curry and many others, one of the key unresolved issues lies in the behaviour of the sun, whose output appears to be undergoing a steady but small decline. Most scientists accept that this will reduce global warming. The debate is over just how strong this effect will be, with people such as Curry suggesting it could be powerful while others see it as small. Among the latter is Mike Lockwood, professor of space environment physics at Reading University's meteorology department, who believes the sun has been in a "grand solar maximum" since the 1960s, thought to be the longest-lived peak in its output for more than 9000 years. "A decline in activity is long overdue," he said. "How deep will it go? We think there is about an 8 per cent chance that it will drop below the famous Maunder minimum." This was a 60-year period starting about 1645 when the sun had very few sunspots and was also marked by an unusually high proportion of cold winters in Europe. That sounds ominous but Lockwood calculates that even a decline in activity on that scale would now have little effect because the impact would be far smaller than the opposing effects of surging greenhouse gas emissions. What about the prediction that the Thames might freeze over? This did happen in 1963, but far upstream in the stretches around Windsor. The idea that the lower tidal reaches might be in similar danger generates little but scorn. Lockwood says: "The disappearance of frost fairs is nothing to do with climate. It is because the old London Bridge - really more of a weir - was pulled down and the embankments were put in. So the river now flows much too fast to freeze and is also a lot saltier. "Even a return to Maunder minimum solar conditions would not cause the Thames to freeze again so far downstream." The Sunday Times Scientific research drowning in a sea of alarmism 15. BY: BOB CARTER From: The Australian February 07, 2012 12:00AM http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/scientific-research-drowning-ina-sea-of-alarmism/story-e6frgd0x-1226264130114 LAST week, almost 400 people attended a public meeting in Newcastle to learn about the scientific evidence that underpins sea-level change. The meeting was prompted by strong public discontent with Lake Macquarie City Council's new coastal planning regulations designed to accommodate a science-fiction prediction of a 91cm rise in sea level in the district by 2100. This prediction comes from the NSW government, which in turn sourced it from a UN political body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. As with its unnecessarily alarmist projections of global warming, the IPCC's estimate of future sea-level rise derives from speculative computer models. Where, then, should the government get its advice about sea-level change instead? Prior to the advent of global warming alarmism in the late 20th century, governments and councils drew their advice from statutory authorities involved with harbour and tidal management, and from scientific research groups such as the CSIRO. With the IPCC's formation in 1988, which was tasked to ponder on global warming, the focus of governments shifted from sea-level change as a ports, harbours and beaches issue to it being seen as a more general environmental issue related to hypothetical, humancaused global warming. At about the same time, attention shifted from basing public policy on the use of measured tide gauge records to basing it on the theoretical projections of computer models. By the end of the 1990s, Australian governments and councils were basing their sea-level planning almost entirely on IPCC advice, that is, on unvalidated computer predictions that are in no way tied to accurate local sea-level measurement. The CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, at official level, have consistently supported the IPCC sea-level projections as valid and accurate, as indeed has the government-appointed Coasts and Climate Change Council. To make matters worse, the IPCC sea-level predictions are for an entirely notional statistic, global average sealevel. Astonishingly, the predictions have been adopted uncritically as the basis for local planning. This is equivalent to introducing new housing regulations for the heating and cooling of Australian dwellings based upon global average temperature. Well, now that we have learned about the unsuitable nature of its sea-level speculations, what else do we know about the IPCC? Does it have form? My word it does. As long ago as 1996 a former president of the US National Academy of Sciences, Frederick Seitz, commented on its second assessment report on global warming that "I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report". Subsequently, successive scandals have engulfed the IPCC, and destroyed the credibility of its claimed "gold standard" of science summary and peer-review. These scandals are well described in several easily accessible publications, and include such things as statistical chicanery related to the global temperature "hockey stick" (a faulty analysis of ancient tree ring measurements used to reconstruct global temperatures), a biased and dysfunctional peer-review process, the Climategate affair (leaked emails from Britain's Climatic Research Unit that contained abundant evidence of scientific malfeasance by leading IPCC scientists), the Glaciergate affair (inaccurate anecdotal evidence about Himalayan glacier melt in an IPCC report) and the infiltration of IPCC advisory panels and authors by environmental activists and partisan researchers. Public reaction to these scandals has included calls for the IPCC be disbanded or that its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri resign, with former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt even recommending an IPCC audit be undertaken because "some of their researchers have shown themselves to be fraudsters (betrueger)". In such circumstances, that Australian governments still use IPCC advice about sea-level change as their guide for coastal planning is hard to understand, when sitespecific measurements of actual Australian change are readily available. Well-qualified independent scientists have repeatedly drawn public attention to the existence of a body of official agency sea-level measurements (now maintained by the BOM), and peer-reviewed research papers based on these and other empirical data, which demonstrates conclusively the four following facts. First, that rates of sea-level change vary around the Australian coast. This means any new coastal planning regulations (if and where they are needed) should be based on the appropriate local sea-level measurements rather than a hypothetical global average. Second, the longest east coast tide-gauge record, from Fort Denison (Sydney), records an average rate of rise over the past 100 years of about 1mm a year (10cm a century). Third, that other tide gauges, scattered around Australia as part of the national tidal network, mostly record rates of long-term rise between about 0.5mm and 2.5mm a year with no change in behaviour in the late 20th century that might reflect a human (global warming) influence. And, fourth, that the Sydney tide gauge, as well as other long tidal records from nearby (Fremantle, Auckland) and overseas, exhibits a slowing rate of sea-level rise over the past 40 years. All of which leads directly to the three following money questions. Why do Australian governments still draw their advice about sea-level change from the IPCC, a discredited international political agency that is now known to flout conventional scientific and peer-review procedures in favour of promulgating environmental activism? Why have governments adopted the irrational policy of basing Australian sea-level planning on theoretical computer-generated projections of global sea-level change? Last, why do Australian authorities ignore the solid base of empirical measurements, and the more than 100 years of peer-reviewed local and international research, that contradicts completely the alarmist views of the IPCC; and that also provides the accurate, site-specific records of local sea-level change that are the necessary basis for achieving sensible coastal policies in Australia? The good folk who live around Lake Macquarie, and doubtless tens of thousands of other coastal residents upon whom new planning regulations are now impinging, deserve an explanation; and it needs to be a good one. Bob Carter is an adjunct research fellow at James Cook University and an emeritus fellow of the IPA. UN's 2C goal on global warming 'optimistic', say French scientists 16. From: AFP February 11, 2012 12:00AM http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/uns-2c-goal-on-global-warming-optimisticsay-french-scientists/story-e6frg6so-1226268201211 FRENCH scientists unveiling new estimates for global warming said yesterday the 2C goal enshrined by the UN was "the most optimistic" scenario for greenhouse gas emissions. The estimates, compiled by five scientific institutes, will be handed to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for consideration in its next overview of global warming and its impacts. The report - the fifth in the series - will be published in three volumes in September 2013, March 2014 and April 2014. The French team said that by 2100, increased warming from preindustrial times would range from 2C to 5C. The most pessimistic scenarios foresaw warming of 3.5-5C, the scientists said. Achieving 2C, "the most optimistic scenario", was possible, but "only by applying climate policies to reduce greenhouse gases". In its Fourth Assessment Report published in 2007, the IPCC said Earth had already warmed in the 20th century by 0.74C. he panel predicted additional warming in the 21st century of 1.1-6.4C, of which the likeliest range was 1.8-4C. Meanwhile, a study published in the journal Nature yesterday said Himalayan glaciers and icecaps that supply water to more than a billion people in Asia were losing mass up to 10 times less quickly than once feared. But researchers warned that the study, based on an improved analysis of satellite data from 2003 to 2010, did not mean the threat of disruption had gone. "The good news is that the glaciers are not losing mass as fast as we thought," said Tad Pfeffer, a professor at the University of Colorado's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and a co-author of the study. "The bad news is they are still losing a lot of water. There is still definitely a serious problem for the Himalayas." Much of that loss, it turns out, is taking place in the huge plains south of the mountain range, where pumping from wells is draining ancient aquifers faster than rain can replenish them. The Himalayas and nearby peaks have lost no ice in past 10 years, study shows 17. Damian Carrington guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 February 2012 18.10 GMT http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/08/glaciers-mountains?intcmp=122 The world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows. The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall. The study is the first to survey all the world's icecaps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less than previously estimated, with the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy. Bristol University glaciologist Prof Jonathan Bamber, who was not part of the research team, said: "The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero." The melting of Himalayan glaciers caused controversy in 2009 when a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change mistakenly stated that they would disappear by 2035, instead of 2350. However, the scientist who led the new work is clear that while greater uncertainty has been discovered in Asia's highest mountains, the melting of ice caps and glaciers around the world remains a serious concern. "Our results and those of everyone else show we are losing a huge amount of water into the oceans every year," said Prof John Wahr of the University of Colorado. "People should be just as worried about the melting of the world's ice as they were before." His team's study, published in the journal Nature, concludes that between 443-629bn tonnes of meltwater overall are added to the world's oceans each year. This is raising sea level by about 1.5mm a year, the team reports, in addition to the 2mm a year caused by expansion of the warming ocean. The scientists are careful to point out that lower-altitude glaciers in the Asian mountain ranges – sometimes dubbed the "third pole" – are definitely melting. Satellite images and reports confirm this. But over the study period from 2003-10 enough ice was added to the peaks to compensate. The impact on predictions for future sea level rise is yet to be fully studied but Bamber said: "The projections for sea level rise by 2100 will not change by much, say 5cm or so, so we are talking about a very small modification." Existing estimates range from 30cm to 1m. Wahr warned that while crucial to a better understanding of ice melting, the eight years of data is a relatively short time period and that variable monsoons mean year-to-year changes in ice mass of hundreds of billions of tonnes. "It is awfully dangerous to take an eight-year record and predict even the next eight years, let alone the next century," he said. The reason for the radical reappraisal of ice melting in Asia is the different ways in which the current and previous studies were conducted. Until now, estimates of meltwater loss for all the world's 200,000 glaciers were based on extrapolations of data from a few hundred monitored on the ground. Those glaciers at lower altitudes are much easier for scientists to get to and so were more frequently included, but they were also more prone to melting. The bias was particularly strong in Asia, said Wahr: "There extrapolation is really tough as only a handful of lower-altitude glaciers are monitored and there are thousands there very high up." The new study used a pair of satellites, called Grace, which measure tiny changes in the Earth's gravitational pull. When ice is lost, the gravitational pull weakens and is detected by the orbiting spacecraft. "They fly at 500km, so they see everything," said Wahr, including the hard-to-reach, high-altitude glaciers. "I believe this data is the most reliable estimate of global glacier mass balance that has been produced to date," said Bamber. He noted that 1.4 billion people depend on the rivers that flow from the Himalayas and Tibetan plateau: "That is a compelling reason to try to understand what is happening there better." He added: "The new data does not mean that concerns about climate change are overblown in any way. It means there is a much larger uncertainty in high mountain Asia than we thought. Taken globally all the observations of the Earth's ice – permafrost, Arctic sea ice, snow cover and glaciers – are going in the same direction." Grace launched in 2002 and continues to monitor the planet, but it has passed its expected mission span and its batteries are beginning to weaken. A replacement mission has been approved by the US and German space agencies and could launch in 2016. • This article was amended on 9 February 2012. The original subheading read "Melting ice from Asia's peaks is much less then previously estimated" as did the photo caption and text: "Melting ice outside the two largest caps - Greenland and Antarctica - is much less then previously estimated". These have all been corrected.