Climate Tricks 11: Coal and James Hansen, RE Law and the WWF

Way back in 15 February 2009, the head of NASA GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies), Dr. James Hansen, proclaimed these scary scenarios:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/15/james-hansen-power-plants-coal

A year ago, I wrote to Gordon Brown... causing more warming. As species are exterminated by shifting climate zones, ecosystems can collapse, destroying more species....


Our planet is in peril. If we do not change course, we'll hand our children a situation that is out of their control. One ecological collapse will lead to another, in amplifying feedbacks.


practically all of the glaciers could be gone within 50 years - if carbon dioxide continues to increase at current rates. Coral reefs, harbouring a quarter of ocean species, are threatened...


Clearly, if we burn all fossil fuels, we will destroy the planet we know. Carbon dioxide would increase to 500 ppm or more. We would set the planet on a course to the ice-free state, with sea level 75 metres higher....


Coal is not only the largest fossil fuel reservoir of carbon dioxide, it is the dirtiest fuel. Coal is polluting the world's oceans and streams with mercury, arsenic and other dangerous chemicals. The dirtiest trick that governments play on their citizens is the pretence that they are working on "clean coal" or that they will build power plants that are "capture-ready" in case technology is ever developed to capture all pollutants.


The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death....

Can one believe that?
* coal is the single biggest threat to civilization
* climate nearing tipping points, destruction of more species
* planet in peril, ecological collapse will lead to another
* all the glaciers could be gone in 50 years (by 2059)
* sea level 75 meters higher (about 25 storeys high building, gasp!)
* death trains, coal power plants are factories of death.

Wow, one wonders if it was an objective scientist or an environmental priest who wrote that.

Climate Tricks 8: Catastrophic Scare for Climate Money

Here is another proof that the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) is mainly about money-money.

A bill in Philippine Congress, called the "People's Survival Fund" (PSF) bill, authored by Cong. Erin Tanada et al in the lower House, and Sen. Loren Legarda and other Senators in the upper Chamber, wants to distribute millions, or billions of pesos of tax money to local governments and possibly environmental NGOs to improve climate change adaptation and mitigation. This is on top of existing "fight climate change" laws and programs. The bill will also create a new bureaucracy, the PSF Board, under a new bureaucracy, the Climate Change Commission (CCC).

And why so? This news was written and published in December 2007, suggesting that by end of summer this year, ie, around 3rd week of September 2012 or just four months from now, the Arctic will be ice-free. Scary.

Original source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071212-AP-arctic-melt.html

Reposted in:  http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/12/the-arctic-ocean-could-be-nearly-ice-free-at-the-end-of-summer-by-2012/#more-63430

This prognosis is similar to another prediction made in January 2007 saying that up to 4.5 billion people could this this year due to "global warming-related causes" -- so guys, take cover! See, Climate Tricks 1: 4.5 Billion People to Die This Year, January 03, 2012.

Meanwhile, here are more recent stories from more realistic, non-alarmist climate change analysis.

Climate Tricks 7: On a "New Ice Age" and Temperature Cheating

After a wet and cloudy March, April this year here in Metro Manila and surrounding provinces was generally hot and often cloudless. There were about three days of cloudy sky, it even rained once. Now the 1st day of May is generally cloudy, dark actually this afternoon. The moth have appeared last night in some places, one of nature's early signs that the rainy season is coming soon. So what happens now, out of supposedly seven months of "dry" season (November to May), we shall have only one month of dry and hot month, last April? Terrible global warming indeed.

I am posting portions of four articles from four climate and scientific blogs that I follow regularly. You'll enjoy them. Cheers.
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(1)  From NTZ,
http://notrickszone.com/2012/04/27/russian-lake-vostok-researchers-say-ice-age-is-unavoidable/

Russian Lake Vostok Scientists Say “New Ice Age Is Unavoidable”

By P Gosselin on 27. April 2012

Someone forgot to tell the Russians that natural climate factors no longer count for anything, and that from the 20th century on man-made CO2 is the sole driver of the climate – now making the Earth only warmer and warmer.

Lake Vostok under almost 4000 meters of ice in Antarctica. Source: US Government.

The German edition of Russian online daily Ria Novosti here writes how a team of Russian scientists in Antarctica has reached Lake Vostok, isolated from the rest of the world by a massive ice sheet for over 15 million years. A team of Russian scientists bored through 4000 meters of ice to reach the lake on 5 February 2012....

(2) From WUWT, 
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/30/a-tale-of-two-altitudes-how-stratospheric-temperature-is-de-coupled-from-the-surface-temperatures/#more-62378

A Tale of Two Altitudes: how stratospheric temperature is de-coupled from the surface temperatures

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Anthony Watts

On the battle between Arrhenius and Ångström.

Story submitted by John Kehr, The Inconvenient Skeptic

Any serious discussion about the Theory of Global Warming will eventually include the absorption band argument that started more than 100 years ago between Arrhenius and Ångström.  One of the arguments presented by Ångström was that the main CO₂absorption band is between 14-16 micron and that band is also absorbed by water vapor (which is correct).  The counter to this by Arrhenius was that it didn’t matter in the upper atmosphere where there was no water vapor.  Of course none of this matters because radiative heat transfer is only 20% of the energy transferred to the atmosphere, but that is generally ignored by both sides of the argument.

At the time there was no way to measure the temperature in the upper atmosphere so there was no way to determine what was going on there, but of course now there are many ways to measure the temperature there.  When I started looking at the annual temperature behavior of the stratosphere and the top of the troposphere I found something very interesting that is as usual, bad for the warmists.

Here is the average daily temperature of the troposphere (at ~4.2 km) and the stratosphere (41 km).

What makes this so interesting is that they are completely out of phase with each other....

Climate Tricks 4: Don't Use Air Temp. Data, Don't Mention the Sun

To continue propagating climate alarmism, end-of-the-world-unless-you-follow-us doomsday scenario, alarmists use several tricks. Here are some of them.

One, not using air and tropospheric temperature data, and using only land surface temperature -- those that are gathered by thermometer stations in airports, weather forecasting agencies' offices, etc. Then cherry-pick those stations that report warming trend while ignore those stations that report flat lining or cooling trends.

Two, not factoring in natural factors that can affect the planet's climate and weather, like the Sun, galactic cosmic rays (GCRs), water vapor and clouds, volcanoes and geological degassing, other natural greenhouse gases (GHGs), the oceans and multi-decadal oscillations. It's all caused by more human CO2 emissions.

Three, trumpeting "ocean acidification", "rising sea level", "extreme storms/typhoons", etc. without showing enough graphs and data, and as if there were no super-strong storms and typhoons in the past.

Four, not taking the global data and satellite pictures of Arctic and Antarctica ice, just take photos of  broken icebergs and show these as "proof" of ever-melting polar ice towards "ice-free Arctic/Antarctica" in the next few years.

There are many other tricks, dozens of them, used by the alarmists to further advance their end goal: more UN and country governments' environmental regulations, carbon and energy taxation, more subsidies to crony power sources, more or expanded climate bureaucracies, more global climate meetings and junkets.

I am posting below four articles and data sets that debunk those four tricks by the alarmists. This is a bit long, so you may get your favorite snacks while reading :-)
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(1) Air and tropospheric temperature

From Dr. Roy Spencer, http://www.drroyspencer.com/

UAH Global Temperature Update for February 2012: -0.12 deg. C

March 2nd, 2012

The global average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly cooled a little more in February, 2012, again not unexpected for the current La Nina conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean (click on the image for the full-size version):

The 3rd order polynomial fit to the data (courtesy of Excel) is for entertainment purposes only, and should not be construed as having any predictive value whatsoever.

Here are the monthly stats:

YR MON GLOBAL NH SH TROPICS
2011 1 -0.010 -0.055 +0.036 -0.372
2011 2 -0.020 -0.042 +0.002 -0.348
2011 3 -0.101 -0.073 -0.128 -0.342
2011 4 +0.117 +0.195 +0.039 -0.229
2011 5 +0.133 +0.145 +0.121 -0.043
2011 6 +0.315 +0.379 +0.250 +0.233
2011 7 +0.374 +0.344 +0.404 +0.204
2011 8 +0.327 +0.321 +0.332 +0.155
2011 9 +0.289 +0.304 +0.274 +0.178
2011 10 +0.116 +0.169 +0.062 -0.054
2011 11 +0.123 +0.075 +0.170 +0.024
2011 12 +0.126 +0.197 +0.055 +0.041
2012 01 -0.090 -0.057 -0.123 -0.138
2012 02 -0.116 -0.014 -0.217 -0.281

World liberty day, June 17

A friend in Germany, Pierre Gosselin, who owns the popular climate (skeptical) blog, No Tricks Zone, pointed to a new freedom day, the World Liberty Day, June 17 each year. It's the first time that I have heard or read about this day.

If we have "Independence day" for various countries, a world statism day aka "UN day", it's good to have a freedom day for people who believe in more individual freedom, more personal responsibility, and less government coercion.

Here is the website of the World liberty day.

Pierre put this quote from Ronald Reagan,

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

That's nice. But my favorite quote from Reagan is this:

If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.

Yeah!