Carbon Hysterics

2013-Almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong for the cause of global warming

from

2013 has been a gloomy year for global warming enthusiasts. The sea ice in the Antarctic set a record, according to NASA, extending over a greater area than at any time since 1979 when satellite measurements first began. In the Arctic, the news is also glum. Five years ago, Al Gore predicted that by 2013 “the entire North polar ice cap will be gone.” Didn’t happen. Instead, a deflated Gore saw the Arctic ice cap increase by 50% over 2012. This year’s Arctic ice likewise exceeded that of 2008, the year of his prediction.  And that of 2009, 2010, and 2011.

The weather between the poles has also conspired to make the global warming believers look bad. In December, U.S. weather stations reported over 2000 record cold and snow days. Almost 60% of the U.S. was covered in snow, twice as much as last year. The heavens even opened up in the Holy Land, where an awestruck citizenry saw 16 inches of snowfall in Jerusalem, almost three feet in its environs. Snow blanketed Cairo for the first time in more than 100 years.

2013 marks the 17th year of no warming on the planet. It marks the first time that James Hansen, Al Gore’s guru and the one whose predictions set off the global warming scare, admitted that warming had stopped. It marks the first time that major media enforcers of the orthodoxy — the Economist, Reuters, and the London Telegraph – admitted that the science was not settled on global warming, the Economist even mocking the scientists’ models by putting them on “negative watch.” Scientific predictions of global cooling – until recently mostly shunned in the academic press for fear of being labeled crackpot – were published and publicized by no less than the BBC, a broadcaster previously unmatched in the anthropogenic apocalyptic media.

2013 was likewise bleak for businesses banking on global warming. Layoffs and bankruptcies continued to mount for European and North American companies producing solar panels and wind turbines, as did their pleas for subsidies to fight off what they labeled unfair competition from Chinese firms. Starting in 2013, though, their excuses have been wearing thin. China’s Suntech, the world’s largest solar panel manufacturer, has now filed for bankruptcy, as has LDK Solar, another major firm.  Sinovel, China’s largest manufacturers of wind turbines and the world’s second-largest, reported it lost $100-million after its revenues plunged 60%, and it is now closing plants in Canada, the U.S., and Europe.

While these no-carbon technologies get buried, carbon-rich fuels go gung ho. Last month Germany fired up a spanking new coal plant, the first of 10 modern CO2-gushers that Europe’s biggest economy will be banking on to power it’s economy into the 21st century. Worldwide, 1200 coal-fired plants are in the works. According to the International Agency, coal’s dominance will especially grow in the countries of the developing world, helping to raise their poor out of poverty as they modernize their economies.

But important as coal is, the fossil fuel darlings are indisputably shale gas and shale oil. This week the U.K. sloughed off the naysayers and announced it will be going all out to tap into these next-generation fuels. Half of the UK will be opened up to drilling to accomplish for the U.K. what shale oil and shale gas are doing for the U.S. – drastically lowering energy costs while eliminating the country’s dependence on foreign fuels. China, too, has decided to tap into the shale revolution – in a deal with the U.S. announced this week, it will be exploiting what some estimate to be the world’s biggest shale gas reserves, equivalent in energy content to about half the oil in Saudi Arabia.

2013 as well marks a turning point for the governments of the world. January 1, 2013, Day One of the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol, saw Kyoto abandoned by Canada and Russia, two fossil fuel powerhouses. With their departure Kyoto became a club for the non-emitters – the Kyoto Protocol now only covers a paltry 15% of global emissions. At UN-sponsored talks on global warming in Warsaw last month, the Western countries of Europe, North America, and Australia refused to even discuss a proposal from developing countries that would limit emissions in the future.

2013 also saw Australia elect a climate-skeptic government in an election that was hailed as a referendum on climate change. Upon winning, the government promptly proceeded to scrap the country’s carbon tax along with its climate change ministry, now in the rubbish heap of history. Other countries are taking note of the public’s attitude toward climate change alarmism – almost nowhere does the public believe the scary scenarios painted by the climate change advocates.

2013 was the best of years for climate skeptics; the worst of years for climate change enthusiasts for whom any change – or absence of change — in the weather served as irrefutable proof of climate change. The enthusiasts fell into disbelief that everyone didn’t join them in pooh-poohing the failure of the climate models. That governments and the public would abandon the duty to stop climate change was in their minds no more thinkable than Hell freezing over. Which the way things are going for them, may happen in 2014.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe, a Toronto-based environmental group. LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com

51 Responses to “Carbon Hysterics”


  1. 1 Steve Owens

    Yeah you can believe what Lawrence Solomon wrote or you can read what NASA really said
    http://climate.nasa.gov/news/986

  2. 2 Byork

    Steve, I read your link from NASA and it says “This year’s ice extent is substantially higher than last year’s record low minimum”. I don’t like using the term “nutter” so I will say that Gore is an eccentric who should not be taken seriously. Within the NASA article to which you linked, there is another NASA report which is more specific and which suggests that Lawrence Solomon is right: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2013/09/draft-arctic-sea-ice-reaches-lowest-extent-for-2013/ Your link says the Arctic ice was 1.32 million sq miles in 2012 but doesn’t say what it was in 2013. The NASA report to which I have linked spells it out: in 2013 it was 1.97 sq miles. What’s that as an increase in percentage terms over 2012?

  3. 3 byork

    Steve, Lawrence Solomon also has it right on the increase since 1979 of Antarctic sea ice. According to NASA: “Since 1979, the total annual Antarctic sea ice extent has increased about 1 percent per decade”.
    http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SeaIce/page4.php
    (That’s quite a bit of ice given that the Antarctic ice area is 18 million sq kilometres).

  4. 4 Dalec

    Photo-Voltaic module manufacture is going through a classical crisis of global over production.
    The consequence is that the cost to the consumer of electricity from PV modules on the roof is at parity with conventional grid power; in some cases it is lower cost.
    Over 2000 MW of PV is now installed in Australia, nearly half of this was installed in 2012 as PV module prices crashed. The drivers for this are lower cost modules and reduced installation costs.
    The over-production crisis has left only the most efficient manufacturers in the game, “Solar panel cost to fall from $0.50 per watt to $0.36/W by 2017: GTM research
    JUNE 25, 2013”
    By contrast the cost of nuclear construction is rising dramatically as is coal etc. Add in distribution costs and PV looks better every-day.
    BTW Barry maybe you should try to understand the difference between polar sea ice extent and polar sea ice volume.
    go to:
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/Has-Arctic-sea-ice-recovered.htm

  5. 5 Byork

    dalec, you haven’t improved much in your capacity for argument. Both sets of NASA data, in Steve’s link and in mine, both from NASA, are about sea ice extent. The difference between extent and volume is not relevant to the false assertion by Steve that Lawrence Solomon’s claim is wrong. I’m still waiting for Steve to acknowledge this.

  6. 6 Dalec

    Barry,
    Sea ice extent is not important , sea ice volume is:
    “In winter 2004, the volume of sea ice in the central Arctic was approximately 17,000 cubic kilometres. This winter it was 14,000, according to CryoSat.

    However, the summer figures provide the real shock. In 2004 there was about 13,000 cubic kilometres of sea ice in the Arctic. In 2012, there is 7,000 cubic kilometres, almost half the figure eight years ago. If the current annual loss of around 900 cubic kilometres continues, summer ice coverage could disappear in about a decade in the Arctic.”
    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/11/arctic-sea-ice-vanishing
    This item is a summary of various research papers.
    The extent of the ice is basically a transient phenomena that grows and shrinks every year it is the underlying and more permanent volume that matters.

  7. 7 steve owens

    Barry I never claimed that Solomon was wrong on the contrary Solomon’s cleverly talks about the increase in ice measured by NASA in 2013 over the measurement in 2012. He is not incorrect he is just slippery with facts. The fact was that 2013 was an increase but still below average. The fact was that 2013 was an increase but an increase going against the trend.
    How can I put this clearly Solomon is a charlatan.
    Solomon uses data so selectively that he verges on lying
    Solomon gives people who are skeptical a bad name.
    The NASA report is titled “Arctic sea ice minimum in 2013 is 6th lowest on record”
    There are only three ways a person can read this report and come to the conclusion that it points to a bad year for the warmists, either they are a straight out fraud or their reading comprehension is at such a low level that they need help in this area. Or that they are so ideologically driven that they are in some complex process of self delusion.
    PS Barry I wont be acknowledging that my non existent false assertion was wrong.
    Merry festivus

  8. 8 Byork

    Steve, that is so pathetic. You initially said: “Yeah you can believe what Lawrence Solomon wrote or you can read what NASA really said”. This suggests that you thought he was wrong in what he was saying. As for dalec, his attempts to look superior are also quite sad, as he is saying nothing that is not already known. Alarmism is the problem, and the alarmists have ‘alarmed’ themselves into a corner over time. Hopefully there is now opportunity for proper debate among scientists who have reached differing positions as to the reasons for loss of Arctic ice volume over the decades. The science is not settled on this question, and dalec lost credibility for me years ago. He isn’t much better than Al Gore – the catastrophe doesn’t happen and so it will definitely happen a decade from now. And you wonder why public opinion voted against – and still opposes – the carbon tax!

  9. 9 steve owens

    “On September 13, Arctic sea ice reached its likely minimum extent for 2013. The minimum ice extent was the sixth lowest* in the satellite record, and reinforces the long-term downward trend in Arctic ice extent.” That is from the report that Barry linked to.
    Solomon is correct in that the arctic ice coverage was greater in 2013 than in 2012. He fails to mention that the ice coverage in 2013 was below average that it was the 6th lowest on record and that the long term trend is for less ice coverage.
    Its breathtaking that someone could argue that the warmists look silly because of the 2013 arctic ice coverage. Its unbelievable Barry that you could read the report and not comprehend that Solomon is a shyster

  10. 10 Byork

    One of the NASA links has a chart that shows how Solomon is also right when he says “This year’s Arctic ice likewise exceeded that of 2008, the year of his prediction. And that of 2009, 2010 and 2011”. So it’s not just about 2012 and 2013. And, yes, the NASA data and Solomon only talk about ice extent – but that is what alarmists have used in their propaganda for a couple of decades now. Ice extent was meant to decline rapidly and greatly. Does anyone still take Gore seriously? The rest of Solomon’s article suggests that alarmism is negating itself and people and governments are rightly fed up with it and prefer practical, evidence-based, ‘direct’ ways of dealing with real environmental changes, including through adaptation to change.

  11. 11 steve owens

    “The 2013 summertime minimum extent is in line with the long-term downward trend of about 12 percent per decade since the late 1970s, a decline that has accelerated after 2007. This year’s rebound from 2012 does not disagree with this downward trend and is not a surprise to scientists.

    “I was expecting that this year would be higher than last year,” said Walt Meier, a glaciologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “There is always a tendency to have an uptick after an extreme low; in our satellite data, the Arctic sea ice has never set record low minimums in consecutive years.””
    This is what NASA is saying Arctic ice has never set a record low 2 years running but Solomon ignores this to state that NASA has found an increase in ice coverage.
    NASA is saying that there is a downward trend but Solomon cherry picks the report to argue that 2013 was a increase over those other years, completely misrepresenting the report.
    The report states that ice coverage loss is accelerating since 2007 yet Solomon completely ignores the main argument of the report so that he can highlight one aspect that suits his misrepresentations.
    The trend is down and if deniers are having to argue that a slight uptick is vindication then its no wonder that people come to see deniers as kooks and Barry the more deniers dodge the argument the kookier they look

  12. 12 steve owens

    Solomon has form on this issue
    “Three of those profiled by Solomon in his “Deniers” columns disputed his portrayals of their opinions and/or research. Sami Solanki stated on his personal website that Solomon’s article was a misleading account of his views and reiterated his belief that manmade greenhouse gases are responsible for global warming and their effects would continue to be felt as concentrations increase. Solanki also stated that he felt that The National Post had similarly misquoted other scientists regarding the topic.[12] Nir Shaviv disputed Solomon’s 2007 National Post profile of some of his opinions and research findings. Shaviv stated on his blog that he was never interviewed by Solomon and that there were several inaccuracies in Solomon’s article.[13] Nigel Weiss, “rebutted claims that a fall in solar activity could somehow compensate for the man-made causes of global warming”[14] and The National Post retracted the allegation and published an apology.[15] Solanki and Shaviv were included in Solomon’s subsequent book; Weiss was not.
    So there we are Barry the publication that carried Solomons articles apologized and three scientists objected to Solomon misrepresenting their views just as he has with the NASA reports.
    The guy is a fraud Im surprised that you have been sucked in.

  13. 13 Byork

    Steve, the NASA link has a chart that sets out by year, since 2007, the extent of Arctic sea ice by millions of sq kms. It was your link, I think. Here it is again: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2013/09/draft-arctic-sea-ice-reaches-lowest-extent-for-2013/ The NASA chart shows that there is not an accelerating decline since 2007 at all. Solomon is correct to say “This year’s Arctic ice likewise exceeded that of 2008, the year of his prediction. And that of 2009, 2010 and 2011″. Just look at the chart for heaven’s sake! What is it about your world view that REQUIRES catastrophe?!

    And, in case you misread the chart as you mis-read the link, here’s the data:
    Arctic sea ice extent (by millions of sq kms):
    2007 – 4.17
    2008 – 4.59
    2009 – 5.13
    2010 – 4.63
    2011 – 4.33
    2012 – 3.41
    2013 – 6.70

    It may interest you (and dalec) to know that the most recent satellite data on ice volume (not extent but volume) also indicates a similar process (ie, thickening/increasing over the past few years). But the European Space Agency’s Cryosat system is fairly new and so the measurements are not long-term or reliable in that sense.

    Look, sorry, but I’m not wasting more time with you grasping at straws. The exchange and the data is there for all to see.

  14. 14 steve owens

    Barry it takes ‘special’ analytical powers to see that arctic ice is on the increase
    http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

  15. 15 patrickm

    Slight error 5.10 is 2013
    6.70 is average 79-2000
    6.22 is average 81-2010.

    Anyway, nothing bothers the alarmists. I recall early this year when the rate of fall was steep reading some typical alarm-ism over at LP. Never mind how the year turned out, there is always something to get alarmed about!

    The important take-home is that the carbon tax is still STILL being undone with all the political implications for those who want to lower people’s standards of living by price signals that make us face up to ‘the real price of the externalities’. Yet here the costs to the planet seem to be a little more open ocean up north in summer and a little more ice accumulating on Antarctica. So the initial big fear when global warming got going of very big rises in sea levels vanishes, and people in the know like Tim Flannery buy beachfront property!

  16. 16 steve owens

    Barry its not me thats saying that there is a long term decline in Arctic ice NASA is saying it. Ill post their exact words again
    “The 2013 summertime minimum extent is in line with the long-term downward trend of about 12 percent per decade since the late 1970s, a decline that has accelerated after 2007. This year’s rebound from 2012 does not disagree with this downward trend and is not a surprise to scientists.”

  17. 17 Byork

    Thanks Patrick. Yes: 5.10 million sq kms for 2013 (not 6.7). Still represents an increase since 2007, according to NASA chart.

    No-one disputes the overall decline in Arctic sea ice extent since the 1970s (or the opportunities this will provide). The NASA data is consistent with Lawrence Solomon’s claim about the increase since 2007.

  18. 18 steve owens

    Barry Solomon claimed “the Arctic ice cap increase by 50% over 2012. This year’s Arctic ice likewise exceeded that of 2008, the year of his prediction. And that of 2009, 2010 and 2011.”
    I never said that he was wrong. I was just pointing out that 2013 was below average,2012 was a record low, 2011 was below average, 2010 was below average, 2009 was below average, 2008 was below average and 2007 was the previous record low. On the basis of one minor uptick Solomon presents a picture of warmists as deflated that their predictions were so wrong. When you look at his claim and examine the evidence its hard not to come to the conclusion that he is a distorter of evidence. When you look up his history you find that his publisher has had to apologize because to put it politely he distorted evidence.

  19. 19 steve owens

    Lawrence also has such good ideas on the dictators in Cairo
    “Egypt’s losers in the restored military rule are Islamic fundamentalists and their supporters. Egypt’s winners are the poor, the young, women, Christians and other minorities, and those who fear that Islamic rule would permanently end prospects for democracy and a modern society. If Western leaders and the Western press stop their obtuse condemnations of Egypt’s military for rescuing Egyptians from Muslim Brotherhood rule, some semblance of peace could also be a winner.”

  20. 20 steve owens

    Lawrence Solomon has lots of great ideas like this one
    http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/12/22/lawrence-solomon-godless-societies-are-unfit-for-survival/
    really godless societies are unfit for survival

  21. 21 steve owens

    I JUST FEEL THAT IN DISCUSSING CLIMATE CHANGE WE SHOULD AVOID NUT JOBS AND LISTEN TO PEOPLE LIKE THIS
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10362717/Keep-calm-and-save-the-Earth.html

  22. 22 Byork

    Ha Ha. Steve, you should have put inverted commas around “great ideas”. As you would know, I oppose the military rule in Egypt and I am an atheist, so disagree with Lawrence Solomon on both points. However, I think his article on how 2013 was a bad year for the alarmists was very good (and accurate) and worthy of republishing on a left-wing site. BTW, I don’t think he’s in the “nut job” category. He argued a reasoned case, from his point of view, against us atheists. Didn’t convince me, but he knows his stuff and can argue.

  23. 23 Dalec

    There is a striking similarity between the theist view that the earth was created as a home for mankind and the apparent position taken by some that we cannot in any way damage the planet by our actions.

    There seems to be an underlying assumption that the environment we live in is unconditionally stable and that we can, for example, increase the CO2 level in the atmosphere and there will be no consequences.

    There is no God watching over us folks, we are responsible for our world.

  24. 24 Byork

    Give me “Man must conquer Nature” over “harmony between heaven and humankind” any day.

    I have just drunk the waters of Changsha
    And come to eat the fish of Wuchang.
    Now I am swimming across the great Yangtze,
    Looking afar to the open sky of Chu.
    Let the wind blow and waves beat,
    Better far than idly strolling in a courtyard.
    Today I am at ease.
    “It was by a stream that the Master said–
    ‘Thus do things flow away!’ ”
    Sails move with the wind.
    Tortoise and Snake are still.
    Great plans are afoot:
    A bridge will fly to span the north and south,
    Turning a deep chasm into a thoroughfare;
    Walls of stone will stand upstream to the west
    To hold back Wushan’s clouds and rain
    Till a smooth lake rises in the narrow gorges.
    The mountain goddess if she is still there
    Will marvel at a world so changed.

  25. 25 Dalec

    Yea Barry we will all be swimming if you have your way.
    Mao did not challenge the basic laws of physics, he knew better.
    If man is to “conquer nature” he must work within the bounds of physical laws.
    We can overcome the global warming phenomena but first of all we must recognise it and the laws of physics that drive it.
    You can pretend its not there if you like; you can pretend that the world we live in never changes. Good luck with that.

  26. 26 Byork

    dalec, Mao understood that we could “conquer Nature” and that means overcoming its limitations. You basically want harmony with it. That’s the mentality that Mao and the revolutionaries overthrew. Anyway, no doubt you’re okay with the current anti-communist regime over there: solar panels galore, I believe. You seem to think we have nothing more to learn – the “laws of physics” are your religious dogma. Marx and Engels – and Mao – knew that there’s so much more to learn, because everything is in constant motion, changing. The laws of physics are a springboard, not a prison. Who knows how we will conquer Nature under modern socialism. But it won’t be solar-panelled or sustainable, that’s for sure.

  27. 27 Dalec

    Not quite Barry, we conquer nature by using its own laws against it.
    The bridge over the chasm will fall down unless it complies with the laws of physics.

  28. 28 Byork

    … as we understand them now. But I’m all for the construction of more and bigger dams, especially as part of a program to develop the north of Australia. It is on these practical issues that the ‘harmonisers’ are revealed as reactionaries – because they invariably oppose them.

  29. 29 Dalec

    More and bigger dams up North will have consequences especially for the fishing industry I understand.
    Point is such decisions should be made on the basis of detailed investigation, not from the top of the head.

  30. 30 Byork

    When I first became interested in communism in the mid-1960s, all the old communists were talking about rapid development of the north. That kind of talk appealed to working class people in particular, like my father (and me). Now Abbott has taken it up – capitalism is so retarded it took this long for it to be raised as a mainstream issue – and the usual suspects are ridiculing it. The ‘greenies’ oppose it, with or without detailed investigation. Under socialism, northern Australia would already be a growing cosmopolitan area with huge dams and vast irrigation systems, a significant producer of food, with cities and townships with millions of people. It would be a bridge to south-east Asia, and there would probably be physical bridges built to link us all too. Funding would be so dramatically increased for research and development, and science for its own sake, under a system in which social wealth is socially owned, that who knows what new laws will be uncovered from Nature. Our current level of understanding is very modest. This is the kind of socialism I believe in.

  31. 31 Dalec

    Barry, The new socialist heroes are Tony Abbot and the Institute for Public Affairs ? Of course don’t forget Andrew Forrest and Gina Rinehart. Suggest you go to the next May day and promote them all as socialist heroes for their altruistic desire to develop the north.

  32. 32 Byork

    Nothing altruistic with those people – they’re profit driven. As is the system they represent. Which is why the north hasn’t been developed yet – many many decades after the notion was first mooted. It will take socialism to do it the right (enthusiastic, energetic, determined) way. The Greens opposition to such a notion puts them to the right of Reinhardt and Forrest. And as for Labor’s ridicule of the idea… well, look how the workers voted last time!

    PS – I don’t go to May Day marches – who wants to be made depressed by the distressed?

  33. 33 steve owens

    Holy Jesus, Solomon is anti vaccinations
    http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/01/06/lawrence-solomon-get-dirty-and-avoid-vaccines/
    And Dalec you are just wrong, wrong, wrong, Mao proved that the laws of physics mean nothing. When he instructed people all over China to create wood fired steel mills in just about every town you know it all scientific types said but you cant produce steel in wood fired furnaces well look whose laughing now.

  34. 34 Byork

    With Mao’s 120th approaching, it’s worth looking at his Critique of Stalin’s “Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR”. It says a lot about the differences between Stalin and Mao’s lines, including the following (relevant to this thread):

    Stalin believed that: “Leaving aside astronomical, geological, and other similar processes, which man really is powerless to influence, even if he has come to know the laws of their development. . . .”

    Mao’s critique: “This argument is wrong. Human knowledge and the capability to transform nature have no limit. Stalin did not consider these matters developmentally. What cannot now be done, may be done in the future”.

  35. 35 Dalec

    Steve, there is no real mystery attached to the manufacture of steel with wood fired furnaces. I once did a research project for the CSIRO that used methanol to reduce iron ore to iron. By mixing in some wood derived charcoal I could make a crude steel.
    Barry,
    If you believe in the progress of science so much why do you seek allies such as lord Monkton and that Solomon ?

  36. 36 Byork

    I don’t have time for Monckton and his conspiracy theories. I disagree with Solomon on the issues to which Steve has drawn attention. But, boy, he sure put it up you guys very effectively with that overview of how you alarmists are losing out now that the evidence has debunked it even more convincingly and the politics has turned more to practical evidence-based direct adaptive responses than feel-good turn back the clock to save-the-children claptrap.

    dalec, you’d be more to the point, and more honest, to ask me why I seek an ally who believes that “Human knowledge and the capability to transform nature have no limit”. Maybe there are right-wingers who believe that too… but it’s a basic left-wing outlook, to me, and a big part of what attracted me to communism way back.

    I’m becoming bored with this thread and about to have a break for a few days.

  37. 37 steve owens

    Dalek what Im trying to get at is not whether you can get steel through the use of charcoal but what the back yard furnace campaign means politically. It raises questions that no one here wants to discuss like why is this monumental decision in the hands of one under qualified person? What happens in a one party state when things go wrong? ect ect
    have a good break Barry

  38. 38 steve owens

    Firstly my apologies for my part in dragging this threat from the polar ice caps into China
    Secondly now that we have covered Solomons claims about the Arctic we should focus on Solomons claim about the Antarctic. Here again Solomons claim is true but it lacks details that would provide some balance.
    So here we go the truth seems to be that the ice area is expanding despite the sea and air temperatures rising
    http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/09/17/stronger-winds-explain-puzzling-growth-of-sea-ice-in-antarctica/

  39. 39 Dalec

    Steve,
    I think there is general agreement that the average global temperature has risen since the mid 19th century. Since this temperature rise represents a very large rise in the energy content of the surface of the earth and the atmosphere we should expect large fluctuations in what we call weather. You will get record temperatures such as those in Queensland at the moment and very low temperature events as more violent storms come down from the polar latitudes. Solomon simply cherry picks that data to support his thesis as indeed do other commentators.
    To make sense of the data one needs to understand and explain the underlying physics; if the underlying physics do not support the data then the the data are wrong or selected.

  40. 40 steve owens

    Dalek, Solomon does more than cherry pick he puts forward arguments for golbal cooling
    http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/10/31/lawrence-solomon-a-global-cooling-consensus/

  41. 41 Dalec

    Thanks for that link Steve,
    It may well be that the anthropogenic derived CO2 increase will mitigate a little ice age.(Or a little a ice age mitigate global warming) The last little ice age started in about 1645 and went to 1715. We could be lucky enough. Of course when the ice age ends in 70 years or so we will cook unless we have reduced the CO2.
    I think the IPCC case is based upon the relative effects of pure radiative forcing and the non linear effects of forcing due to thermal absorption by CO2. Think there are some cube laws and fourth power laws invoked here – will find out.

  42. 42 Dalec

    Steve, did some research on global cooling.
    The insolation variation due to sunspot activity amounts to ony a bit over a Watt per m2 <0.1% – trivial.
    The little ice age was triggered by the stuff injected by avolcanic eruption in Indonesia (Somalas) There was a massive injection of s Sulphur and Sulphur compounds that blocked the radiation for 50 years or so no mention of that by Mr Solomon.
    The recent fall in insolation is totally trivial.

  43. 43 patrickm

    I take it that the essential point that 2013 was not a good year for the green alarmists is conceded! No?

    I think that’s a VERY good thing, and in Australia it’s well overdue and was predicted by communists like me ‘when the realty of ‘price signal’ carbon taxing sank in with working class people’. I thought they would have a reason to prefer tweedledee over dum and that’s how the country has gone in 2013.

    It got so bad that if they kept Gilard they were going to lose ‘the furniture’ so they swallowed their pride and exposed even further what humbugs they are. BUT Rudd saved the furniture!

    Now they have to reposition under what’s his name…

    ‘Leftists’ who have backed ALP governments as somehow important are (like Dalec’s mates over at LP) generally not facing up to the very stupid politics of Carbon taxing and consequently are in for a few more years of living a lie, about how progressive they are.

    see
    http://larvatusprodeo.net/archives/2011/07/its-simple-really/
    my comments @ 46, (sample below)
    and also 52, 57, 76, (78), 95 102
    patrickm
    July 14, 2011 at 4:22 pm | Permalink

    Brian; simple or not people ought to recall that republicans quite happily destroyed the type of republic that latte-Malcolm; trust-me-Julia; the-Bob-Brown-shirt-Greens; and the where are they now Democrats of the Natasha era etc., ALL wanted to ram down our throats. These political elites just could not help themselves but the masses stuck their fingers up to them big time when it came to the referendum. The Yes case had lost the debate re mass support for their model but they intended to ram it through anyway and the Australian public simply did not allow them to get away with it. So the whole thing ended in exposing who stood where, and most at LP were on the losing side and this fiasco will end in the same result.

    JG will not get away with it and as the alternative is an Abbot led government CO2 taxing, levying or charging will be killed off for a decade at least. Even if the ALP got back after only 2 Liberal terms, they would not be prepared to fight that election over
    re-introducing said tax, and what’s more, whom ever is the leader then won’t try a JG and dud the electorate and again do it once in.

    It will be interesting after the electorate has rolled over the bet for three or four more electoral cycles to see how the science stands at that time. The bet was put on the table some years ago when Flannery declared we only had a decade to take the urgent action required. So far no action four years on, and the smart money is betting that when this current little bit of ‘lets just get it in, and ramp it up later’ action gets put to the people it will be simply undone by a landslide vote against the ALP / Greens.’

    END

    Anyway at the end of this parliament Flannery’s ten years will be up and nothing will have meaningfully been done (except him pocketing plenty along with creeps like Gore and Ross Garnaut. The Tweedle’s won’t be introducing a carbon tax in the next parliament. So the argument will have to go in another direction! Most greens will not be able to make the change but I bet the formal greens will have got rid of Milne by then!

  44. 44 steve owens

    Patrickm the article is titled ‘2013-Almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong for the cause of global warming’
    Ive not paid much attention to the global warming debate so I thought that I would take the opportunity to read Mr Solomons article and learn something but as soon as I scratched the surface I found that Mr Solomon was dealing in partial truths and not even mentioning facts that did not suit his argument. It turns out that Mr Solomon has a lot of crackpot ideas from anti vaccination to whole heated support of the Mayor of Toronto.
    Articles that I find more satisfying are the one by Mr Lombourg that I linked to and ones like this
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/09/10/the-daily-mail-is-wrong-the-earth-keeps-warming/

  45. 45 Dalec

    For the record;
    Never been in favour of a carbon tax,
    Always opposed subsidies for PV installations
    Lomborg is a self serving ditz http://www.desmogblog.com/bjorn-lomborg
    Solomon does not have even a basic understanding of physical laws
    The denialists are wrong, for example they should really study snow instead of just spreading the literary version all over the place
    http://phys.org/news/2011-03-global-snowstorms-scientists.html
    The apparent confusion between extent and mass of the arctic ice is just sad.

  46. 46 steve owens

    Dalek thanks for the link about the snow storms I was pretty sure that Solomons argument about ice was on the thin side (ha ha) but I wasnt sure about his snow stories which to the casual reader like myself seem at first glance impressive but then again so did the claim about 60% more ice.
    The big tip off for me in his article was that he said that he was using NASA data but put in no link which in this age of convenient links always looks suspicious.

  47. 47 admin

    Hey Barry suck this down:

    The parting shot from Dalec from the Ukraine thread. This is a joke…?

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/09/study-finds-global-warming-pause-comes-from-unusual-pacific-ocean-trade-winds/

  48. 48 patrickm

    Well here we are 3 full electoral terms later and it would seem like the right time to review this topic that never got another article here.
    This https://www.spiked-online.com/podcast-episode/the-climate-debate-is-not-settled/ is about the right place to start on the current immoral alarmist stuff.

    The extent of the ice would be an interesting subject to review as well. But there is an election heading our way for next May at the latest and by rights, Scomo ought not to win but I would not be so certain. Bringing back Glad is a brilliant move and the drums of war are beating so the nuclear subs deal was a correct move for the future! But US troops and basses and the issue of defence ought to be a big issue. (I think Putin will unfreeze Belarus / Ukraine in the next month or so for example and this latest splash with India the day before he speaks to sleepy Joe is demonstrating that Biden is not driving much).

    Anyway near a decade further along as fully predicted above and we could be seeing the return of the ALP alarmists! I for one hope not!

    And Brendan O’Neil talking to Michael Shellenberger https://www.spiked-online.com/podcast-episode/progressives-are-ruining-everything/ good stuff on San Fran Sicko and Aristocrats and the ‘disaster’ that befell the alarmists at Glasgow. Predictions (from the US and Brit POV) that the anti-woke backlash is off and running and will be very big and long-lasting are interesting. If it applies to Oz then there is hope for the working classes in the upcoming federal election.

  49. 49 patrickm

    Not a lot has changed with Prince Charles still ‘leading’.

    Here is what was on Arthur’s mind back at Kasama 13 years ago!
    arthur said September 11, 2008 at 12:12 pm

    Iris (and Linda):

    And a note to Arthur: Not that I am asking you to get into it here, but I think that people who are sounding the alarm that we may be very close to or past the cut off for averting permanent climate change is not the same as the above dramatic fatalism. I don’t want to be lumped in with conspiracy theorists when I take the environmental crisis seriously–and I hope this is something that changes in the ICM when the next generation of young leftists takes the fore, and hopefully sweeps such antiquated views away.

    From what I’ve seen of your postings I’m sure your own attitudes are not fatalistic or reactionary at all and that you view climate change as an issue for positive action rather than resignation to inevitable doom.

    But there’s nothing odd or surprising about an organization like “World Can’t Wait” attracting people with an extreme reactionary mindset based on a radicalization and rationalization of reactionary impotence that reminds you of “American firster isolationists”. They aren’t alien infiltrators and in the internal conflict with them they would find it hard to understand why you don’t share their attitudes given the actual line of “World Can’t Wait” that attracted them towards it.

    Likewise in the environmental movement. Its natural and progressive that people would want to preserve and improve their environment. We’ve been doing so and have moved a very long from the past. There is no “environmental crisis” but telling people there is and they are a problem which will cause planetary collapse unless they stop consuming so much fits well with the general attitude of the bourgeoisie towards workers living standards in favour of cutting them back to lead “simpler” ie cheaper life styles for lower wages.

    People in the their early twenties are the generation that is now already at the fore. They won’t be attracted to trying to save the world by slowing down capitalist industry before it dooms the planet for the same reason that the sixties generation weren’t attracted to it when they were in their teens and early twenties. The political left and the hippies were opposing tendencies, both opposed to the Vietnam war and united against the pigs, but very different. Both have faded away in the decades since.

    There wasn’t much continuity from previous generations although encouragement from older revolutionaries did help introduce people to Marxist theory and give confidence that young radicals weren’t freaks isolated in time and space as our enemies claimed but an inevitable outbreak of a tradition that won’t go away ever.

    Certainly the previous generation were not and could not be the leadership of the youth and student movements. The leadership was in our teens and twenties too (perhaps supplemented with some slightly older in the US because of the flow on from the immediately preceding civil rights movement). But we couldn’t have got anywhere if we had accepted it was the planet itself that faced crisis rather than the social system. That’s an outlook that suits His Royal Highness Prince Charles much better than it suits young radicals.

    https://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/two-towers-nyc-911-who-did-it/#comments

  50. 50 patrickm

    https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/20210913180000_CVCHDCTWA_0011761430.gif
    are yes the sea ice up north! Well there goes another decade of bullshit and hysterics.

    and what about Alice? https://realclimatescience.com/2024/03/australian-climate-action/

    Climate crisis or the big flop?

    And once again another mild summer in Adelaide!

  51. 51 patrickm

    People that think Russia is going to win this war or don’t seem to care about issues like the democratic revolution know not their arse from their own elbows!

    For example the following could very well be the type of thinking to expect from the desperate gangster boss Vlad Putin. Codename: Operation Poseidon’s Fist | The Southern Scenario of Russia’s Summer Offensive (youtube.com) and whatever the actual variant it is all wrong headed thinking! It is exactly what old Russian steamroller thinking would produce. Napoleonic thinking is nowhere to be seen in these models! The Navy is totally absent and the airforce doesn’t even get a mention any more than does the eyes and ears or the artillery. All are simply seen as part of the big army with the big advantage because it IS the big army of 600,000 but they are hold up behind their ‘maginot line’ of trenches and minefields. But the suggestion is that they will continue to break cover and come out to play offense! We can but hope so because that will speed up their destruction!

    The rate of loss and the running forward issues for already out ranged equipment that then runs out of fuel etc -that won’t get to the ‘new front’ anyway – are not calculated or even thought about by most, who only see the hardships faced by the AFU.

    This is another important view Update from Ukraine | The most Heavy losses for Ruzzia since the start of war | Ukraine nailed it (youtube.com) particularly the 5:00 mark stuff.

    The AFU killed and wounded per day about as many Russians in February 2024 -983- as they managed in March (386x31d=11,966 ), April (193x30d=5,790), May (231x31d=7,161) and June (172x30d=5,160) ie 122 days of 2022 for a total of =30,077 v 28,507 from 983 x 29 days, so just 1,570 less. But this was on top of as many in January 2024 as they managed in July (5,363) August (7,316) and September (10,620) of 2022! So 23299 V 846 x 31 (26,226) so +2927 -1570 =+1,357! And this on follow up to October @ (12865) and November (16770) 2022 total 29,635 was matched by December 2023 @ (29,977) +342!
    S0 1,357+342=1,699

    Then for December 22 @537 x 31 = 16,647+ for Jan23 701×31=21,731 = total of 38,378 against November23 of 28,560 +1699 =30,259 so about 12 days less. Then pretty much the months follow predictable month in the gap months of this protracted slaughter! But this is NOT the best part at all.

    ‘Artillery’ in the full modern sense of air power, naval power and all manner of big guns and equipment is closing in numbers while Ukraine continues to gain a range advantage over the russians! So what looks like a Russian force of 600,000 in current occupation is not anywhere near as mechanically advantaged compared to what was the force that began this restart 2 years ago.

    Now the Russians can’t even regain control of the left bank of the Dnipro river at Krynky!

    So I think that the way to start to think about what is going to unfold over the next 2-3 years or so is by watching the great old film ‘The Seven Samurai’. All the issues are spelt out and all the same problems are resolved in what is a classic answer to a gangster style attack by a larger and far better equipped -at the start- force. Attrition is working! Russia is NOT anywhere near as big now as was the forces that began this restart just 2 years ago and it has been getting much worse for them (despite all of Ukraine’s problems) not better, as the time goes on. The bolo punch will come and crimea will be cut off and become untenable! Meanwhile the Russians will grow more restless and Putin will eventually face a deadly revolt!

    When that happens and it will when a big Russian force is cut off and captured, the fall of Belarus to a democratic revolution may not then be far behind!

    Consider Ingushetia right now!

    Glory to all who bring this victory forward! Away with all monsters!

    Mourners queue to lay flowers at Navalny’s grave two days after his funeral.

    ***********
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfJKvcjUoS0 and this on the climate crisis consensus fraud!

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