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Whither global warming? Not Harvard

February 10, 2015

Climate is an integral of local weather over time and space . If climate change (specifically global warming) does not show up as weather then it does not exist. From The Harvard Crimson:

Snow on Plympton

A student walks down Plympton St. on Monday evening, flanked by growing piles of snow. – Harvard Crimson

 As many Harvard schools cancel classes Tuesday for the third time in as many weeks — only its fourth snow day since one in 1978—administrators have begun to consider ways to compensate for lost instructional time. ……. 

……. Harvard has had only five snow days in the last four decades; before this semester, the only other two were in 2013 and 1978. …..

 …….. Between 2013 and 2015, Harvard has seen four of its five snow days in four decades. In 1977, before a snow day in 1978, former Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III joked that, “Harvard University will close only for an act of God, such as the end of the world.”

It wasn’t a joke.

Clearly snow days are to be taken as an Act of God where I take “God” to represent the natural variations in weather (and climate) which are beyond the wit of man to influence. But it does take some imagination for a winter snow storm to be equated to the “end of the world”. A summer snow storm might better qualify!

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Galapagos conservation project prevents the evolution of ninja turtles

January 19, 2015
Adult Galápagos tortoise

Adult Galápagos tortoise

Giant tortoises are to be found only on the Aldabra Atoll in the Seychelles and on the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador.  Pinzón Island is home to the giant Galápagos tortoises of the endemic subspecies Chelonoidis nigra duncanensis. Pinzón is a tiny island covering 18 km2 right at the geographical centre of the Galapagos chain.

Galapagos Islands

The basic story is simple and just another example of a misguided conservation project where a successful species is exterminated to ensure the survival of an unfit species. The unfit species in this case is a reptile, the giant Galapagos tortoise which has been threatened by rodents of the black rat variety. Of course, black rats are politically incorrect and nasty and “vermin”, while the giant reptiles are seen as “cute” and “amusing” and “loveable”, even though the species is proving incompetent to adapt. (If rats had only been white they would probably be protected).

The rats preceded Darwin

By the time Darwin arrived in the Galapagos in 1835, the rodents had long since settled in. Mice and black rats were probably the first to arrive, introduced by pirates or whalers in the seventeenth century; since the 1980s, Norway rats have found their way there too.

Since 2012 a “conservancy project” has spent some $3 million to eradicate the rats and this now seems to have succeeded since new tortoise hatchlings have been observed for the first time in 150 years. That’s all very well, but there does not seem to be any one speaking up for the persecuted, murdered rats who, after all, have been present for over 300 years. They have been attacked by conservationists for over 50 years and -against all odds – have still thrived. Why this species-discrimination? Whatever happened to rodent rights?

In fact the rhetoric used by the conservationists reminds me of the language used by extreme, right-wing, anti-immigrant political parties:

“I just hated the immigrant killers because I could see what they were doing,” says Felipe Cruz, a lifelong conservationist who grew up on Floreana, one of four inhabited islands in the archipelago. In the early 1980s, Cruz spent nine months of the year camped in the Floreana highlands deploying a cocktail of rodenticide …… 

I find the analogy between conservationists as “specists” and right-wing, nationalistic, anti-immigration political parties as racists, quite revealing. Just as with conservationists who support politically correct species and try to exterminate the politically incorrect, right-wing extremists also support certain politically correct human races and try to exclude and remove the politically incorrect races. It is no great secret that even among immigrants in Europe there are “politically correct” races and those which are “politically incorrect”. The politically incorrect races are to be kept out. And conservationists all over Europe try to protect the unfit but politically correct species while destroying or keeping out the immigrant species.

But what conservationists are forgetting in their euphoria over killing all the rats on Pinzón is that without the rats there is no chance of the mutation needed to create Master Splinter and without Master Splinter there is no possibility that the Ninja Turtles will ever become a reality.

The Turtles’ sensei and adoptive father, Splinter is a Japanese mutant rat who learned the ways of ninjutsu from his owner and master, Hamato Yoshi. ……… Splinter was Hamato Yoshi mutated into a humanoid rat instead of being just Yoshi’s pet.

Master Splinter superherohype.com

 

Further Reading:

http://www.nature.com/news/invasive-species-the-18-km2-rat-trap-1.12992

http://www.galapagos.org/blog/pinzon-tortoise-survey-part2/

http://www.theguardian.com/science/animal-magic/2015/jan/16/rat-eradication-galapagos-tortoise-pinzon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splinter_(Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles

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Numerical gibberish from a Professor of Meteorology at Florida State

January 12, 2015

There is a strange article in the Tallahassee Democrat by a Peter Ray, a Professor of Meteorology at Florida State University. This is not exactly Nature and the TD’s fact checking processes are not to be compared to a proper peer review, yet they allowed this nonsense to be published:

-TLHBrd_12-28-2014_Democrat_1_A003~~2014~12~27~IMG_-TLHBrd_11-16-2014_D_1_1_.jpg

Peter Ray – image Tallahassee Democrat photo Craig Litten

The population doubles every 40 years. In 100 years there will be 100 times as many people living on the earth. All will suffer the lack of food and water. Many will die and wars will be over resources.

Never mind that the UN projections show a world population of 7 billion today reaching a peak of about 10-11 billion by 2100. Never mind that global fertility is declining fast. Never mind that a doubling every 40 years would need some 265 years to reach a factor of 100. Never mind that in 100 years the growth would be by a factor of 6.6. Peter Ray seems to be calculating by his strange mathematics a population of 700 billion in 100 years (though quite how he calculates this is a mystery). The rest of the article is conventional gloom and doom gibberish but masochists can find it here.

Prof. Peter S Ray, Florida State University

However I thought it odd that somebody so numerically illiterate – in a public article – could be a Professor of Meteorology, which led me to the Florida State University page of a Professor Peter S Ray which in turn led me to his homepage and then on to his cv. He is the only Peter Ray listed. The pictures – if all of the same person – seem a little anachronistic. Presumably the Tallahassee Democrat picture was chosen as being the most flattering but I would guess it is from 20 years ago. Personally I would prefer the later picture.

The “back to the future” theme appears also in his cv where his PhD (Meteorology) is from 1973 but his MS (Meteorology) is from 2013. It is not inconceivable that a Masters degree could follow a PhD, but in the same field?

I get worried when Professors start spouting about matters outside their own narrow fields. They are imbued with an authority they do not have and – more often than not – are misguided and misinformed. We could call it the Newton’s Alchemy Syndrome (NAS). Professor Peter Ray should probably avoid demographics.

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The freedom not to breed is the coming demographic challenge

December 26, 2014

Alarmism has its downsides. It is always cowardly since it requires actions (and inactions) to be subservient to fear. The actions proposed by Alarmists are very often coercive in the name of the “common good”. But the Alarmists are nearly always wrong.

For over 40 years we have been brain-washed by the Malthusian alarmism of catastrophic population growth, catastrophic resource consumption (peak oil, peak gas, peak food), catastrophic loss of biodiversity and catastrophic environmental change. The population alarmism was expounded in 1968 in Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons”. Garrett Hardin was one of the leading lights of the population doom-sayers. His paper became a classic but is a classic example of the arrogance of the Alarmist, overwhelmed by the fear of doom and looking down at the “Commons” from on high. It was the conclusion of the Hardins of this world that “coercion” was both necessary and acceptable to control breeding which led to the coercive sterilisation programmes and the one-child policy.

Freedom To Breed Is Intolerable. To couple the concept of freedom to breed with the belief that everyone born has an equal right to the commons is to lock the world into a tragic course of action.

Unfortunately this is just the course of action that is being pursued by the United Nations. In late 1967, some 30 nations agreed to the following :

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes the family as the natural and fundamental unit of society. It follows that any choice and decision with regard to the size of the family must irrevocably rest with the family itself, and cannot be made by anyone else.

It is painful to have to deny categorically the validity of this right; denying it, one feels as uncomfortable as a resident of Salem, Massachusetts, who denied the reality of witches in the 17th century. ……. If we love the truth we must openly deny the validity of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, even though it is promoted by the United Nations. …….. 

The only way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms is by relinquishing the freedom to breed, and that very soon. “Freedom is the recognition of necessity”–and it is the role of education to reveal to all the necessity of abandoning the freedom to breed. Only so, can we put an end to this aspect of the tragedy of the commons.

As van Dalen and Henkens put it

…… the Malthusian assertion that the earth’s capacity to support mankind is outpaced by population growth. The main proponent of this view was Hardin (1968), who explained this idea more fully in his classic article,
“Tragedy of the Commons.” ……. it is the central thesis behind Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Hardin related the tragedy directly to the problem of overpopulation, and his conclusion was therefore quite unequivocal: “Freedom to breed will bring ruin to us all” 

There are numerous political pressure groups in the international arena trying to establish zero or negative population growth in order to prevent a “tragedy of the commons.”

Al Gore like Hardin before him is another example of an arrogant Alarmist.

We are now less than one hundred years away from a general population decline across all countries of the world. It is already a reality in many countries. Development and economic growth and the emancipation of women has achieved far more than forced sterilisation programmes. The Chinese one-child policy has only anticipated by a few years what development would have achieved anyway.

Japan’s population will be down to less than 90 million in 2060 compared to the 128 million today. The replacement fertility rate is 2.1 births/woman in industrialised countries and about 2.3 -2.4 in countries with higher mortality rates. Already (2014) more than half the world’s population has fertility rates below the replacement level. Europe as a whole has a fertility rate of less than 1.6. So has China. Japan is at 1.4 and Singapore is down at 0.8. More than half the states of India are at below the replacement rates and half are just above but declining fast. Countries which have significant immigration from developing countries initially see a boost to their fertility rates but that tends to be short-lived as immigrants are assimilated and also exhibit the rates applying to the country’s level of development. In parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America where fertility rates are higher than the replacement rate, they are declining fast.

Hardin got it quite wrong. As with all Alarmist memes, he was more than just a little condescending of the “Commons” but his worst mistake was allowing his fear to exclude common sense. The freedom to breed is no guarantee that any breeding – let alone uncontrolled breeding – will occur. In fact, it is the freedom not to breed which could make humanity extinct.

Many countries are now seeing population declines in rural areas which are significant enough to affect local tax revenues and cause the deterioration of infrastructure and social services. All over Europe, rural areas see growing needs for health and social services for the elderly and declining demands for children’s services. Skilled craftsmen leave because the client-base is declining. The public sector in rural areas is tending towards being both underfunded due to the loss of tax revenues and over-staffed (and mis-matched) for the declining and ageing population. It is not that planners are not aware of the challenges.

The reality is that fertility is reducing (and subsequently population is peaking), not for lack of resources but because of new technologies and the shift of attitudes that they have brought about. The factors well correlated with a decline of fertility are fairly well established, even if the mechanisms by which these factors affect attitude are not certain. Some of the clearest factors – where many are interlinked – are:

  1. the availability of contraception,
  2. the emancipation of women,
  3. women being an integral part of the labour market,
  4. economic development (GDP)
  5. the decline of infant mortality,
  6. the decline of mortality rates and the increase of longevity
  7. the availability of TV
  8. the availability of safe abortion procedures

Some of the changes of attitude which can also be observed are of couples marrying later (or not marrying), of women having children later and a social acceptance of being childless. It is the spread of the ability and of the freedom not to breed which dominates fertility rate decline.

While we can observe the decline of fertility rates all across the world, we have no clear notion of how fertility rates can be increased. Many countries have tried but few – if any – have succeeded in increasing fertility rates. Russia has tried many times and failed.

In 1944, as Russians were being ground up in the war against Germany, Josef Stalin created the “Motherhood Medal” for women who bore six children. …….. In 1955, Nikita Khrushchev surveyed the nascent Western overpopulation mania and declared it a “cannibalistic theory” invented by “bourgeois ideology.” ……….

None of it worked, then or now. The Soviet Union’s fertility rate—that’s the average number of children a woman bears during her lifetime—declined throughout the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. The only brief period of increase came during the late 1980s. And then it resumed decline.

Putin’s initiatives haven’t fared any better. The Russian government declared demographic victory in 2012 because there was an increase in the crude number of births. “The demographic programs enacted in the past decade are, thank God, working,” Putin said. But most demographers believe this is a statistical ghost—the slight spike in fertility rates during the late ’80s created a relatively fat cohort of women now in their prime childbearing years. So while the number of births has increased thanks to the size of this cohort, Russia’s total fertility rate has remained very low. The CIA World FactBook puts it at 1.61.

Singapore, Spain, Japan and South Korea have all instituted programmes to increase fertility rates but – at best – they have had limited and only temporary success.

Where fertility is increasing, it is often a result of delayed childbearing caused by a long-term shift in childbearing patterns or by marriages delayed by an unfavorable economy. In Sweden, the peak age group of childbearing for women is now 30 to 34, up from 25 to 29 in 2001. In Russia, childbearing below age 25 dropped sharply after 1990 so that women ages 25 to 29 are just as likely to have a birth as those ages 20 to 24. A similar pattern has emerged in Ukraine. …… 

Many governments have moved to address the problem of low fertility and extreme societal aging. In Russia, couples can receive about $9,000, a huge sum, for a second or subsequent child. Child payments are lower in Ukraine, but are still significant. Singapore has introduced beneficial tax packages and lengthened government-subsidized maternity leave from 12 to 16 weeks. Spain introduced a 2,500 Euro payment for each birth. Other countries debate ways to encourage childbearing, without reaching a consensus. In Japan, there has been much discussion in government and the media on steps that might be taken but little has actually been done. The very slight rise in births from 2007 to 2008, heralded in the press, was almost entirely due to births to non-Japanese resident in the country.

Iran has shifted from promoting birth control to promoting more children. Ayatollah Khamenei has implemented a 14 point plan to avoid a population implosion but the fertility rate is still stubbornly declining.

Iran has seen its fertility rate reduce from close to 7 children per woman in 1960 to around an implosion level of 1.8 per woman  at the current time. …. Through the 1980’s Iran ran a free contraception program and the birth rate plummeted. So much so that Iran is facing a coming crisis of population implosion. The Ayatollah Khamenei has taken notice and issued a 14 point plan to increase the fertility rate.

The fertility increase programmes around the world generally offer various forms of financial incentives – by way of grants or tax breaks or subsidies – for additional children, but the declining trends have not been arrested.

By 2100 the world population will be between 10 and 11 billion and a fertility rate of -perhaps – about 1.9. To remain at such a level is unsustainable of course, but the real question is what are the behavioural forces which could increase fertility rate. Certainly financial incentives will help but their effect seems weak. An Alarmist of the 22nd century would no doubt suggest coercive and compulsory artificial insemination and ban abortions for convenience. But parents resentful of children they are forced to have seems counter-productive. Better no child than an unwanted child. The social engineering needed to ensure that sufficient breeding takes place – but not too much – will be the challenge of the 21st century.

Maybe it will happen naturally. No doubt children will be given higher value when they are in short supply. But I suspect that behavioural change, leading to the desire to have more children, will only come when there is both an elevation of status and of the financial condition of the mother. I can imagine a time where the social accolades and real benefits for having children are more than sufficient to outweigh the perceived disadvantages. But a woman’s career is also linked to fertility rate and there is an obvious trade-off between caring for a number of children and a woman’s working career. An increase of fertility may be necessarily connected to a reduction of time spent on the labour market. Abortions for convenience may come to be impacted more by social acceptance and social pressures than by any religious or moral considerations. Having children may afford social prestige.

The countries of the former Soviet Union maintain the highest rate of abortions in the world. In 2001, 1.31 million children were born in Russia, while 2.11 million abortions were performed – 62% of all conceptions. Currently about 25% of all conceptions worldwide are aborted. In Japan, the overall abortion rate dropped from 26% to 22% of all conceptions between 1975 and 1995 but these rates are thought to be under-reported. These numbers are not insignificant since a  dangerously low fertility rate of 1.6 – for example – would increase to 2.1 without the 25% abortion of all conceptions. It is conceivable that abortions will come to be permitted only for serious health issues for the mother or for the foetus.

But the bottom line is that every freedom has a corresponding duty. And so does the freedom to breed. There has to be a perceived duty to breed but not to breed indiscriminately.

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Lima Climate conference agreement contains no commitments by anybody

December 16, 2014

The UN Conference of the Parties, Twentieth session, held in Lima Peru from 1st to 13th December 2014 is now over. The conference agreement is well worth reading as an  example of how an exercise with 9,000 delegates from 196 participating countries, could spend some $ 50 million over 2 weeks to accomplish – by their own expectations – absolutely nothing. The only decision of any significance to be taken by the parties is to meet again.

COP20 Lima Agreement (pdf)

But all 9,000 had a great time.

(In my judgement, the lack of accomplishment was a great success).

The agreement contains 22 clauses:

  • one clause “confirms”
  • three clauses “decide”
  • three clauses “agree”

All the remaining clauses are merely wishes and hopes with no commitments or obligations. Just waffle.

  • one clause “underscores”
  • one clause “urges”
  • one clause “acknowledges”
  • one clause “invites”
  • one clause “encourages”
  • one clause “welcomes”
  • two clauses “note”
  • three clauses “request”
  • four clauses “reiterate”

Looking just at the clauses which “confirm”, “decide” or “agree”:

The only “confirmation” comes first in the agreement and it is to meet again for COP 21 and adopt another agreement! Just a self-serving clause perpetuating the meetings.

The three “decides” also commit to nothing very much. The first “decides that any protocol which is legally binding shall be balanced. (This is a wonderful loophole. Any country which believes the protocol to be unbalanced can then ignore it). The next “decide” is that the working group will make a draft text. (The purpose of this is to make sure that all those working on this text can get paid). The third rather long “decide” only says that a technical examination will continue. Wow! But note that it establishes a framework – and thereby the funding – for “a series of in-session technical expert meetings”. Meetings galore – and the delegates shall have a great time.

There are also three “agree” clauses. The first says that all parties agree that each party will do better in the future. The second merely says that all developing countries and small island states may make special pleadings. The third says that each party may provide quantifiable information on how they intend to contribute. Not a commitment or obligation in sight.

It really is time that these meetings ceased and the IPCC was disbanded.

The clauses (my bold)

Confirms:

  1. Confirms that the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action shall complete the work referred to in decision 1/CP.17, paragraph 2, as early as possible in order for the Conference of the Parties at its twenty-first session to adopt a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties;

Decides:

  1. Decides that the protocol, another legal instrument or agreed outcome with egal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties shall address in a balanced manner, inter alia, mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology development and transfer, and capacity-building, and transparency of action and support;
  2. Decides that the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action will intensify its work, with a view to making available a negotiating text for a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties before May 2015;
  3. Decides to continue the technical examination of opportunities with high mitigation potential, including those with adaptation, health and sustainable development co-benefits, in the period 2015–2020, by requesting the secretariat to:
    (a) Organize a series of in-session technical expert meetings which:
    (i) Facilitate Parties in the identification of policy options, practices and technologies and in planning for their implementation in accordance with nationally defined development priorities;
    (ii) Build on and utilize the related activities of, and further enhance collaboration and synergies among, the Technology Executive Committee, the Climate Technology Centre and Network, the Durban Forum on capacity-building, the Executive Board of the clean development mechanism and the operating entities of the Financial Mechanism;
    (iii) Build on previous technical expert meetings in order to hone and focus on actionable policy options;
    (iv) Provide meaningful and regular opportunities for the effective engagement of experts from Parties, relevant international organizations, civil society, indigenous peoples, women, youth, academic institutions, the private sector, and subnational authorities nominated by their respective countries;
    (v) Support the accelerated implementation of policy options and enhanced mitigation action, including through international cooperation;
    (vi) Facilitate the enhanced engagement of all Parties through the announcement of topics to be addressed, agendas and related materials at least two months in advance of technical expert meetings;
    (b) Update, following the technical expert meetings referred to in paragraph 19(a) above, the technical paper on the mitigation benefits of actions, and on initiatives and options to enhance mitigation ambition, compiling information provided in submissions from Parties and observer organizations and the discussions held at the technical expert meetings and drawing on other relevant information on the implementation of policy options at all levels, including through multilateral cooperation;
    (c) Disseminate the information referred to in paragraph 19(b) above, including
    by publishing a summary for policymakers;

Agrees:

  1. Agrees that each Party’s intended nationally determined contribution towards achieving the objective of the Convention as set out in its Article 2 will represent a progression beyond the current undertaking of that Party;
  2. Also agrees that the least developed countries and small island developing States
    may communicate information on strategies, plans and actions for low greenhouse gas emission development reflecting their special circumstances in the context of intended nationally determined contributions;
  3. Agrees that the information to be provided by Parties communicating their intended nationally determined contributions, in order to facilitate clarity, transparency and understanding, may include, as appropriate, inter alia, quantifiable information on the reference point (including, as appropriate, a base year), time frames and/or periods for implementation, scope and coverage, planning processes, assumptions and methodological approaches including those for estimating and accounting for anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and, as appropriate, removals, and how the Party considers that its intended nationally determined contribution is fair and ambitious, in light of its national circumstances, and how it contributes towards achieving the objective of the Convention as set out in its Article 2;

What a waste for a pointless exercise where the key action item (carbon dioxide) has no significant impact on the parameter ostensibly to be controlled. No targets, no tools but a great deal of arrogance.

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Even BBC admits that Arctic ice shows “modest growth”

December 15, 2014

I rely on the BBC for factual news and even consider their opinion pieces as being of high quality except when politically correct subjects are involved. Then the BBC always abides by the “politically correct” view. This actually is what the BBC’s alleged bias consists of; politically correct views which – by and large – tend to be left-leaning, “do-gooding”, self-righteous, sanctimonius views. They do sometimes ignore reports which do not support their “politically correct” memes. But if one makes allowance for the opinion bias, I find the BBC to be one of the most reliable disseminators of news.

The BBC is a strong adherent of the global warming orthodoxy. In the last two weeks they have published their share of alarmist reports in support of the Lima conference. Now that the Lima agreement is virtually devoid of any obligations they have joined the “politically correct” chorus that the Lima agreement is a good step towards Paris! So it is of significance when they start reporting observations – which have been reported for a long time elsewhere – that Arctic sea ice cover is increasing and is now at the same levels as the average for the last 3 decades.

Of course Antarctic sea ice cover is at the highest levels ever recorded (which gets little space at the BBC).

There is just no evidence that the poles are melting (any more than the variations seen normally).

BBC: Arctic sea ice may be more resilient than many observers recognise.

While global warming seems to have set the polar north on a path to floe-free summers, the latest data from Europe’s Cryosat mission suggests it may take a while yet to reach those conditions. The spacecraft observed 7,500 cu km of ice cover in October when the Arctic traditionally starts its post-summer freeze-up. This was only slightly down on 2013 when 8,800 cu km were recorded.

Two cool summers in a row have now allowed the pack to increase and then hold on to a good deal of its volume. And while the ice is still much reduced compared with the 20,000 cu km that used to stick around in the Octobers of the early 1980s, there is no evidence to indicate a collapse is imminent. …….

……… Indeed, Cryosat’s five-year October average now shows pretty stable volume – even modest growth (2014 is 12% above the five year-average).

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20th Climate games over! They all agree to meet again

December 14, 2014

The global warming community is nothing if not self-serving. We have had 2 weeks of relentless publicity. New alarmist articles have appeared every day. Thousands have flown in and out of Lima. They have had a good time. They have reached agreement to continue having a good time.

THEY WILL MEET AGAIN.

And now, in accordance with tradition, we declare the Climate Games of the 20th COP closed, and I call upon the parasites and wastrels of the world to assemble one year from now in Paris to celebrate the Climate Games of the 21st COP.

The international climate conference will be held at the Le Bourget site from 30 November to 11 December 2015. This will be the 21st yearly session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 21) to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 11th session of the Meeting of the Parties (CMP 11) to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

One wonders why.

BBC:

United Nations members have reached an agreement to tackle climate change after negotiations ran into the weekend in the Peruvian capital Lima. The president of the meeting said delegates had approved a framework for setting national pledges.

The deal puts off many critical details until a summit in Paris next year. Environmental groups criticised the deal as a weak and ineffectual compromise, saying it weakened international climate rules. The talks proved tough because of divisions between rich and poor countries over the scale and scope of plans to tackle global warming.

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UN climate conference in Lima collapses and defers all contentious issues to next meeting

December 13, 2014

The UN climate conferences are an exercise in futility for something quite unnecessary. But they provide an annual jamboree for the “global warming community” of do-gooders, pseudo-scientists, advocacy groups, bureaucrats and politicians. They have been meeting for over 2 decades and have achieved nothing. The ostensible goal is to get the world to reduce carbon dioxide emissions so as to limit global temperature rise. But during the life of these nonsensical meetings, the world’s emissions of carbon dioxide has increased by over 70%. Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has risen by about 15% and it is uncertain how much of that is due to man-made emissions. But while all this has been going on, global temperature has remained stagnant and may even have decreased slightly.

So one wonders why the UN keeps hosting these incredibly wasteful and pointless meetings. But of course this is because the meetings are not really pointless – they have a hidden agenda. And this agenda is all about the getting of funds and the redistribution of money. And that automatically divides the participant countries into those who will pay and those who will get. The largely parasitic “global warming community” is always on the receiving end and has a vested interest in keeping these meetings and their funding alive indefinitely. Never mind that nothing significant is achieved as long as their funding continues.

The conference in Lima has been no different. It has all been about rich countries putting money (which countries and how much?) into a pot which other so-called developing countries can dip into (who, when and how much?). It is inevitable that the fringe elements supporting the redistribution of wealth, from the creators of wealth to the consumers of wealth (and these fringes are always consumers), are well represented at these conferences. Listening to some lobby groups it sounded like “a conference for the promotion of socialist ideals”. Greenpeace made an utter fool of itself again by their cheap publicity stunt causing damage, pollution and desecration of the Nazca Lines site. John Kerry showed up for a day and made his alarmist speech. Al Gore made a speech on the sidelines noticeable for the number of empty seats.

In any event the Lima conference is now winding down. No major agreements were reached (thank goodness) and a final draft being circulated pushes all contentious issues to the next conference (which at least achieves the purpose of continuing the meetings). One positive is that for the first time since 1992, the favourite – and critical – expression of the countries which seek to get money of “common but differentiated responsibility” is not referred to. Without an agreement on these differentiated responsibilities all talk about who will donate and how much and who will receive and how much becomes entirely meaningless. The latest draft effectively mouths platitudes and leaves each country to set its targets and its own levels of action. This is also a good thing.

Another positive is that countries making pledges of funding for the Global climate fund (target $100 billion and about $10 billion pledges received) are now just transferring or allocating money from their normal Foreign Aid budgets – which therefore cost nothing extra. I was pleased to hear that the pledges have been “ridiculously low”.

“We are disappointed,” said India’s Prakash Javadekar. “It is ridiculous. It is ridiculously low.” Javadekar said the pledges to the green climate fund amounted to backsliding. “We are upset that 2011, 2012, 2013 – three consecutive years – the developed world provided $10bn each year for climate action support to the developing world, but now they have reduced it. Now they are saying $10bn is for four years, so it is $2.5bn,” he said.

If this reluctance to pay for something pointless and ineffective is real and continues, then it could be the return of a much -needed realism and a very good thing for the world.

Reuters:

United Nations climate talks, which ran on into a an extra day on Saturday, are heading for a watered-down deal on limiting global warming, leaving many of the toughest issues for next year’s Paris summit.

Peruvian Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, hosting the talks, told delegates that a new text on Saturday morning to try to break impasses was not perfect, but reflected common ground.

Rich and poor nations were at odds after two weeks of talks in Peru over how to share the burden of curbing rising world emissions and how to raise a promised $100 billion a year by 2020 to help the poor cope with a warmer world.

Latin American and other oil producers are desperately trying to increase oil sales and curb the revenue losses as the oil price has collapsed. They have no great interest in curbing fossil fuel use. Most countries are phasing out subsidies for renewable energy especially as these subsidies will have to increase to keep renewable energy flowing when oil prices are so low.

Senior country representative are now leaving Lima and are leaving their bureaucrats to complete the final communique which will effectively say nothing and defer everything till the Paris meeting next year.

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Climate mumbo jumbo lacks scientific temper

December 9, 2014

The Constitution of India actually requires that all citizens develop “scientific temper”. It is a term that is in common usage in India but not often referred to elsewhere. The concept is not new and similar ideas were expressed by Darwin but the term “scientific temper” seems to have been established mainly by Jawaharlal Nehru in his 1946 Discovery of India.

“… the scientific approach, the adventurous and yet critical temper of science, the search for truth and new knowledge, the refusal to accept anything without testing and trial, the capacity to change previous conclusions in the face of new evidence, the reliance on observed fact and not on pre-conceived theory, the hard discipline of the mind—all this is necessary, not merely for the application of science but for life itself and the solution of its many problems.” — Jawaharlal Nehru (1946) The Discovery of India

The questing, skeptical mind that Nehru admired is not so very different from that of Kipling’s narrator

I keep six honest serving-men
  (They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
  And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
  I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
  I give them all a rest.

Rudyard Kipling (1902) – Just So Stories

The new Indian government has refocused on promoting scientific temper among children as part of marking the 125th anniversary of Nehru’s birth. But this has also led to a debate about scientific temper and how in India it must coexist with superstition, quackery and pseudo-science (astrology, homeopathy ….).

Scientific temper is thus not a private matter. Article 51A(h) places on all citizens the duty to develop a scientific temper and therefore we cannot be “chalta hai” about these events since social behaviour is impacted by it and a culture of fatalism created by it. We must rally behind the Prime Minister’s call to spread scientific temper. We must revive the debate of the 1980s on the nature of scientific temper. The Prime Minister must give us his views on the relation between scientific temper and astrology. …….

…… It is reported that when Mangalyaan was launched — the satellite which India was able to place in Mars’ orbit in the first attempt, the only country to be able to do so — the Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Dr. Radhakrishnan, went, the day before the launch, to pray at Tirupati for its success. When asked, he is reported to have said that he did not want to leave anything to “chance.” The Mars mission was successful. ………….  Was it the puja at Tirupati or the science at ISRO that worked?

And I observe as the UN meets for its annual climate jamboree in Lima that they still continue to believe in models which are contradicted by data. The global warming acolytes could do well to abandon the mumbo-jumbo and to return to basics with Kipling’s “What and Why and When, And How and Where and Who” and start displaying some scientific temper It is high time for the so-called climate scientists to exhibit 

the refusal to accept anything without testing and trial, the capacity to change previous conclusions in the face of new evidence, the reliance on observed fact and not on pre-conceived theory,

That man-made carbon dioxide has any significant impact on global warming or on climate is a pre-conceived theory and real data contradicts the model predictions based on these pre-conceived theories. There has now been no global warming for over 18 years while man made carbon dioxide emissions have increased by  over 70%.

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Antarctic sea ice much thicker than expected

November 25, 2014

The British Antarctic Survey has issued a press release regarding the use of a robot submarine which has been measuring the thickness of Antarctic sea ice. The submarine can operate at upto 30m depth and maps the sea ice from underneath. They found that, on average, the thickness of the ice beneath sea level was much greater than previously thought at 1.4 to 5.5m, with the thickest sea ice measured at 16m. They also encountered a lot of highly deformed ice, where one block had ridden over another, increasing the overall draft.

“We suggest that thick ice in the near-coastal and interior pack may be under-represented in existing in situ assessments of Antarctic sea ice and hence, on average, Antarctic sea ice may be thicker than previously thought.”

No doubt some will contort their theories and themselves to show how increased sea ice thickness and greatly increased ice cover in the Antarctic are perfectly consistent with global warming. I am inclined to the much more parsimonious explanation that increased freezing is always a sign of cooling.

The first detailed, high-resolution 3-D maps of Antarctic sea ice have been developed using an underwater robot. Scientists from the UK, USA and Australia say the new technology provides accurate ice thickness measurements from areas that were previously too difficult to access. …

Now, with the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) known as SeaBED, scientists have an invaluable new tool to fill this gap.

While most oceanographic survey instruments look down at the seafloor, SeaBED was fitted with an upward-looking sonar in order to measure and map the underside of sea ice floes. The AUV operated at a depth of 20 to 30 meters and was driven in a lawnmower pattern. These lines of data were merged to form high-resolution 3D bathymetric surveys of the underside of the ice.

Photo

SeaBed vehicle recovery Photo P. Kimball / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

 

The yellow SeaBED robot, which is approximately two meters long and weighs nearly 200 kilograms, has a twin-hull design that gives the robot enhanced stability for low-speed photographic surveys. …….. 
The research was carried out by scientists at the Institute of Antarctic and Marine Science (Australia), Antarctic Climate and Ecosystem Cooperative Research Centre (Australia), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (USA) and British Antarctic Survey (UK).

Live Science:

Not only is the amount of sea ice increasing each year, but an underwater robot now shows the ice is also much thicker than was previously thought, a new study reports.

The discovery adds to the ongoing mystery of Antarctica’s expanding sea ice. According to climate models, the region’s sea ice should be shrinking each year because of global warming. Instead, satellite observations show the ice is expanding, and the continent’s sea ice has set new records for the past three winters. At the same time, Antarctica’s ice sheet (the glacial ice on land) is melting and retreating. …….

The findings were published today (Nov. 24) in the journal Nature Geoscience. ….. 

The sea ice growth around Antarctica has averaged about 1.2 percent to 1.8 percent per decade between 1979 and 2012, according to the 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report. The increases are concentrated primarily in the Ross Sea in western Antarctica. Sea ice in the nearby Bellingshausen and Amundsen seas has significantly decreased. Researchers suspect these regional differences could result from stronger winds or increased meltwater from the Antarctic ice sheet, or a combination of both factors.

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