Download ITER_Feb2012 - Australian ITER Forum

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.