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News Roundup August 3, 2007

3 New Studies question climate 'consensus' - SEJ = Propaganda - UN ignores climate gender - Bloomberg in SUVs?

By EPW Blog

Saturday, August 4, 2007

Society of Environmental Journalists called Global Warming Propaganda Factory

Excerpt: In January of this year, the SEJ published what they call Climate change: A guide to the information and disinformation. The guide is neatly organized into twelve chapters. Except for the seventh chapter titled with the freighted descriptive: "Deniers, Dissenters and Skeptics", the guide is a one sided presentation that resoundingly affirms global warming and puts down anyone with a different point of view. The site is a virtual digest of the global warming industry. If you're looking for a road map to the special interest groups behind the hysteria, this is the place to go. The journalist members of this association have obviously abandoned all pretense of objectivity. The site is largely a compendium of links to global warming promoters. Many of the links use adjectives like prestigious, best respected, and reputation unrivaled to burnish their credibility. The so-called deniers on the other hand are described with adjectives like, highly polemical, outright false, and deceptive partisan attack dogs. The description of the Competitive Enterprise Institute is especially derisive, citing the often leveled false accusation that they the tool of Exxon Mobile. And this is journalism at its finest? The SEJ is supported mainly by foundation grants from many of the places that fund Bill Moyers and PBS. The remaining revenue is generated from membership dues and conference fees. American Thinker

STUDY # 1: "Belgian weather institute (RMI) study dismisses role of CO2" (alt) – (Translation)

Excerpt: "Brussels: CO2 is not the big bogeyman of climate change and global warming. This is the conclusion of a comprehensive scientific study done by the Royal Meteorological Institute, which will be published this summer. The study does not state that CO2 plays no role in warming the earth. "But it can never play the decisive role that is currently attributed to it", climate scientist Luc Debontridder says. "Not CO2, but water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas. It is responsible for at least 75 % of the greenhouse effect. This is a simple scientific fact, but Al Gore's movie has hyped CO2 so much that nobody seems to take note of it." said Luc Debontridder. "Every change in weather conditions is blamed on CO2. But the warm winters of the last few years (in Belgium) are simply due to the 'North-Atlantic Oscillation'. And this has absolutely nothing to do with CO2. (Belga) Translation provided by Theo van Daele

STUDY # 2: Surface Warming And The Solar Cycle

Excerpt: Science Daily -- To accurately assess the effects of human-induced climate change, scientists must be able to quantify the contribution of natural variation in solar irradiance to temperature changes. The existence of a long-term trend in solar output is controversial, but its periodic change within an 11-year cycle has been measured by satellites. To assess how this less-controversial oscillatory forcing affects climate on Earth, Camp and Tung compare surface temperature measurements across the globe between years of solar maximum (with higher heat output) and years of solar minimum. They find that times of high solar activity are on average 0.2 C warmer than times of low solar activity, and that there is a polar amplification of the warming. This result is the first to document a statistically significant globally coherent temperature response to the solar cycle, the authors note. Title: Surface warming by the solar cycle as revealed by the composite mean difference projection. Authors: Charles D. Camp and Ka Kit Tung: Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.Source: Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) paper 10.1029/2007GL030207, 2007

STUDY # 3: New Study: Global warming over last century linked to natural causes

Excerpts: It is interesting to speculate on the climate shift after the 1970s event. The standard explanation for the post 1970s warming is that the radiative effect of greenhouse gases overcame shortwave reflection effects due to aerosols [Mann and Emanuel, 2006]. However, comparison of the 2035 event in the 21st century simulation and the 1910s event Figure 3. Same as Figure 1 but for a control run of GFDL CM2.1 model with 1860 pre-industrial conditions. See text for discussion.L13705 TSONIS ET AL.: MECHANISM FOR MAJOR CLIMATE SHIFTS L13705 4 of 5 in the observations with this event, suggests an alternative hypothesis, namely that the climate shifted after the 1970s event to a different state of a warmer climate, which may be superimposed on an anthropogenic warming trend.

Harvard Physicist Lubos Motl reacts to new climate change study linking temps to natural causes

Excerpt: If you are interested in their predictions, a 0.2 Celsius cooling between 2005 and 2020 should be followed by a 0.3 Celsius warming until 2045 or so and by cooling in the rest of the 21st century. 2100 is seen as more than 0.1 Celsius cooler than 2005. While they admit the possibility that their curves should be superimposed with contributions such as the enhanced greenhouse effect, they have a very different explanation for the climate shift in the late 1970s that has nothing to do with aerosols or greenhouse gases.

UK Astrophysicist Piers Corbyn Debunks recent 'No Solar-Climate Link Study'

(Corbyn heads the UK based long-term solar forecast group Weather Action)

Excerpt: In desperate attempts to shore up their crumbling doctrine of man-made climate change, Professor Lockwood and Henry Davenport (Letters, July 14) themselves cherry-pick data. Prof Lockwood's "refutation" of the decisive role of solar activity in driving climate is as valid as claiming a particular year was not warm by simply looking at the winter half of data. The most significant and persistent cycle of variation in the world's temperature follows the 22-year magnetic cycle of the sun's activity. So what does he do? He "finds" that for an 11-year stretch around 1987 to 1998 world temperatures rose, while there was a fall in his preferred measures of solar activity. A 22-year cycle and an 11-year cycle will of necessity move in opposite directions half the time. The problem for global warmers is that there is no evidence that changing CO2 is a net driver for world climate. Feedback processes negate its potential warming effects. Their theory has no power to predict. It is faith, not science. I challenge them to issue a forecast to compete with our severe weather warnings - made months ago - for this month and August which are based on predictions of solar-particle and magnetic effects that there will be periods of major thunderstorms, hail and further flooding in Britain, most notably July 22-26, August 5-9 and August 18-23. These periods will be associated with new activity on the sun and tropical storms. We also forecast that British and world temperatures will continue to decline this year and in 2008. What do the global warmers forecast?

Solar-climate link debunking

Excerpt: Solar activity is higher than it has been for at least 1000 years. IPCC AR4 rates the 'level of scientific understanding' of 'solar irradiance' as 'low,' other solar factors have a LOSU of 'very low.' The emphasis is always on irradiance rather than eruptivity, which I believe is much more important. Small solar changes seem to have a much larger influence on climate than expected, suggesting an unknown amplification mechanism. Global mean surface temperatures have leveled off since the 1998 El Nino, and there has been little or no ocean warming for the past 5 years according to the ARGO network. Solar cycle length, sunspots, irradiance, are general indicators of solar activity. Nir Shaviv sees no reason why the length of the solar cycle should be related to solar activity – it could be a coincidence, and it is largely a phenomenon of the Northern Hemisphere. That said, the correlation between solar cycle length and a long mean surface temperature series has also been observed at Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland.

More on Outrageous Temperature Surface Station Problems

Excerpt: A very embarrassing chapter for our nation's scientific establishment has been unfolding, including on line and much or it at the new website, www.SurfaceStations.org run by Anthony Watts. Mr. Watt among others in the field had noticed a preponderance of ridiculously sited surface temperature measuring apparatuses such that an obvious warming bias must be reflected in ours, the world's most reliable network of surface measuring stations (see below for examples). It seems that siting thermometers in Arizona parking lots, amid California black asphalt, cell towers and air conditioning vents, next to trash burn barrels or, humorously, attached to a chimney, overhanging a Weber grill in Hopkinsville, KY, corrupts the data upon which our policymakers desperately seek to base an energy scarcity regime. In apparent response, the National Climatic Data Center suddenly pulled the location addresses from publicly available resources. We are not amused! Mr. Watts took them to task, and now the locations are again publicly available . There are fewer than 1000 left to photograph, so enterprising shutterbugs, snap-to. [BTW, let me be the first, so far as I know, to predict that the alarmists will do what they've done with other legitimate enterprises debunking their hysteria, and submit phony photos to the effort in order to discredit the entirety].

UN criticized for ignoring global warming's 'gender perspective'

Excerpt: UNITED NATIONS, Aug 2 (IPS) - When the United Nations concluded a two-day debate Thursday on the potential devastation from climate change, it covered a lot of territory: deforestation, desertification, greenhouse gases, renewable energy sources, biofuels and sustainable development. But one thing the debate lacked, June Zeitlin executive director of the New York-based Women's Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO) told IPS, was a gender perspective. "Women and children are 14 times more likely to die than men are during a disaster," she said.

NYC Mayor Bloomberg Caught In SUV-Sized Snafu

Excerpt: When the mayor leaves his East Side brownstone it's only a four-block walk to 77th and Lex, but he bypasses that subway stop and also one at 68th. Instead, MetroCard Mike is driven in two huge SUVs 22 blocks so he can catch the express at 59th Street. Now, about his SUVs, they're not the greenest cars on the block. Federal figures say the mayor's Chevrolet Suburbans put out 9.2 tons of greenhouse gas emissions with a tank of ethanol, 11.4 tons with gas. Your average Ford Explorer puts out 12.2 tons, but a Lexus hybrid SUV puts out just 7.1 tons. The mayor at first tried to joke about the story. "We'll take a couple of questions about other subjects and then anyone who wants a ride to the subway I'd be happy to give it to them," Bloomberg said.

Eco-chic nightclubs put energy into conservation

Excerpt: The most eco-chic clubs offer everything from dance floors that generate electricity to stationary bikes that power the DJ booth. The rest have barely tapped the keg, using recycled goods and energy-efficient lighting.

It's the wrong direction. "Anti-Energy Bill"

Excerpt: How does the bill propose to move us towards energy independence? It purports to do this by expanding production of "homegrown fuels such as cellulosic ethanol and biodeisel" and by incentivizing the development of plug-in hybrid technology. Both of these provisions are gambles with the future. Cellulosic ethanol is an untried technology, with great potential, but as yet non-existent in a commercially viable form and with serious logistical problems involved that will require massive amounts of transportation fuel themselves. Plug-in hybrids again show promise, but current battery technology is nowhere near ready to make the plug-in hybrid the drivetrain of an all-purpose vehicle fleet meeting the demands of American consumers for the sort of autos they want to buy.

China becomes world's third-largest economy

As the Speaker of the House celebrates the unveiling of an energy bill today defined more for what isn't in it -- energy, for instance -- than what is, it's worth noting that China has been busy celebrating a very different accomplishment. Just this past week, the Communist country of 1.3 billion budding capitalists surpassed Germany as the proud owner of the third-largest economy in the world. But with four consecutive years of double-digit growth -- soon to be five -- China doesn't plan to be in third much longer. And thanks to a national commitment to investing in new energy infrastructure at home, and securing additional energy resources abroad, it shouldn't be long before the country finds itself in an economic class by itself. In many ways, it already has.

Global Warming Skeptics Advance, Says Inhofe

Excerpt: Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member on the Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW), told approximately 400 conservative students Thursday morning that despite attempts to silence global warming critics, the ground of the climate change debate is starting to shift their way, giving their views more exposure and effect.

A cynic's view of global warming

Excerpt: This article could get me arrested, and possibly shot for treason if Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were to have his way. Speaking at the New York venue of the Live Earth concert event, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attacked those who don't believe that global warming is being increased by human activity. More sober minded people would not make such outlandish statements even when on stage with less sober minded rock stars.

Video: DiCaprio Gets Serious In Latest 11th Hour Video Clip

Excerpt: In the latest 11th Hour clip shown online, Leonardo DiCaprio proves how serious he is about this generation's task of "changing the world". See kids, there are a lot of big words thrown into this speech -- so much so that it should give you an indication of what to expect come the film's release later this month.

The New York Times Prefers Tap Water

Excerpt: Americans are increasingly thirsty for what is billed as the healthiest, and often most expensive, water on the grocery shelf. But this country has some of the best public water supplies in the world. Instead of consuming four billion gallons of water a year in individual-sized bottles, we need to start thinking about what all those bottles are doing to the planet's health.

Asia's brown clouds 'warm planet'

Excerpt: Clouds of pollution over the Indian Ocean appear to cause as much warming as greenhouse gases released by human activity, a study has suggested.

How Now Brown Cloud?

Excerpt: Consider other recent research that ought to give our arm-chair climatologists in Congress pause. In May, researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the rate of manmade carbon dioxide emissions was three times greater during 2000 to 2004 than during the 1990s. But while humans may be burning more fossil fuels than ever before, that ever-increasing activity isn't having any sort of discernible or proportionate impact on global temperatures. In April, researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that forests in northern regions -- those north of the line of latitude that runs through southern Cuba -- will warm surface temperatures by an estimated 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. Last October, Swedish researchers reported that cosmic-ray-caused changes in cloud cover over a five-year period can have 85 percent of the temperature effect alleged to have been caused by nearly 200 years of manmade carbon dioxide emissions. They estimated that the temperature effects of cloud cover during the 20th century could be as much as seven times greater than the alleged temperature effect of 200 years worth of additional carbon dioxide and several times greater than that of all additional greenhouse gases combined. These are just some of the things that climatologists have learned or have been proven wrong about in just the past year.

(Typical one-sided reporting) Greenland Residents Detect Sea Changes (PBS TV)

Excerpt: NewsHour Correspondent: On Greenland's west coast, residents of the town of Ilulissat -- the name means "among the icebergs" -- say they are already feeling some results of global warming. Climbing temperatures have affected the fishing and tourism industries, the lifeblood of the town's 4,500 residents, sometimes for good, sometimes not. OLE HANSEN HOF, Crane Operator: Some people say it's OK because it's warmer. Some people, they worry about the future, what might happen if the ocean is changed and the fish move out. Even a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or the IPCC, couldn't answer those questions. It said scientists simply did not have enough understanding of the melting process to make solid predictions of future sea level rise. That's where researchers like New York University's David Holland come in.

Reality Check: Latest Scientific Studies Refute Fears of Greenland Melt

Excerpt: Ilulissat, Greenland – The July 27-29 2007 U.S. Senate trip to Greenland to investigate fears of a glacier meltdown revealed an Arctic land where current climatic conditions are neither alarming nor linked to a rise in man-made carbon dioxide emissions, according to many of the latest peer-reviewed scientific findings. Recent research has found that Greenland has been warming since the 1880's, but since 1955, temperature averages at Greenland stations have been colder than the period between 1881-1955. A recent study concluded Greenland was as warm or warmer in the 1930's and 40's and the rate of warming from 1920-1930 was about 50% higher than the warming from 1995-2005. One 2005 study found Greenland gaining ice in the interior higher elevations and thinning ice at the lower elevations. < > Ivy League geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack of the University of Pennsylvania rejected fears of a catastrophic 20 foot sea level rise. "At the present rate of sea-level rise it's going to take 3,500 years to get up there (to a rise of20 feet) So if for some reason this warming process that melts ice is cutting loose and accelerating, sea level doesn't know it. And sea level, we think, is the best indicator of global warming,"Giegengack said according to a February 2007 article in Philadelphia Magazine.


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