Comments by Mokummer

One could have noticed that during the winters some areas in the Northern Hemisphere are unusually warm, others are unusually cold, as we can trace patterns along the latitude from the eastern Pacific shores into Siberia. There is a logical meteorological explanation for this without having to invoke the unproven hypothesis of any human-caused global warming.

The atmosphere of both hemispheres contains longitudinal waves of low and high pressure ridges and valleys. They are called the Rossby waves. They move slowly from West to East.

The Polar area contains an almost permanent high pressure area. It is called the Mobile Polar High.

In simple terms (and the Economist's blog is not the place for a long scientific discussion), one should imagine the Polar High's outbursts of cold air from the high pressure warehouse finding their way within the depressions of the Rossby waves. One can see this modification in the pattern of the Jet Stream.

My southern hemisphere correspondents report the mirror image of such outbursts in the Argentinian winter. They have reached as far North as the wine growing area of Mendoza.

AGW and The Economist

We all know how the MSM have slavishly followed the IPCC terminology, out of ignorance, political compliance or economic interest. The Economist, otherwise one of the world’s most intelligent news periodicals, has been no exception. It still talks about "carbon" reduction and "Tar" sands and reports in its Science and Technology section (March 17th,p. 89) about a new Columbia University project, which proposes capturing CO2 from the atmosphere (sic) and "tucking it away in the Earth’s crust". Columbia professors have been joined by none other than Dr David Keith, now back at Harvard, who likely found the oil field based Carbon Capture & Storage project he supported in Alberta at U of Calgary’s ISEEE running into disfavour after having convinced the Provincial Government to invest two billion of our tax dollars to try it out.
But the new flight of fancy of sucking the 0.04% CO2 trace gas out of the atmosphere, while using plenty of energy to do it, seems to be the greatest fool’s errand yet.

However, some individuals at The Economist appear to become more circumspect. On page 42 of the same issue columnist "Lexington" writes about President Obama and oil prices and starts out with ".......... given that, in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence, most [Republican politicians] still question and many deny that man plays a role in global warming."
Blimey! A lawyer could have written that, though he still seems to think that computer simulation models constitute scientific evidence. It must be their roots in Economics that makes them do it.
But note: no mention of CO2, emissions or GHGs. Most of us do not deny that man "plays a role in global warming", if only because of Urban Heat Island effect (you should look at a UHI anomaly map of the eastern US!), land use and other albedo changes and deforestation, caused by human, industrial development.
Man plays a role; yes, few sceptics would deny that actually. Is the paper covering its backside?

Let Solaman be assured that - far from an industry shill - Mokummer is a professional earth scientist with post graduate degrees, who knows of what he speaks. He is politically and religiously neutral on the matter.

Furthermore, ad hominem attacks like Solamon's weaken his argument and his stature. There is altogether too much ranting in his long post to make it credible. The blogosphere contains far too much of it and one should not infer that anyone who questions AGW is on side with any ranters.

Let it also be clear that Arrhenius of >100 years ago is no basis on which to build the IPCC's case. Nor do computer simulations of "scenarios" constitute anything more than "what if" constructions. They do not deliver "proof" of any kind.
The IPCC presents a case which has never been proven and let's face it: The onus of proof is on the proposer. Do some reading, my friend, without prejudice.

The word "believe" features twice in your first paragraph. In matters of science it is irrelevant to me what the Economist "believes". The word carries little legitimacy in science research. The Economist, a weekly I have been reading for years, is hardly a peer-reviewed science periodical; in Climate Science it supports the conclusions of the IPCC, a political body, not a scientific one, the working methodology of which has been well exposed by Donna Laframboise ("The Delinquent Teenager who was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert"), John McLean ("Climate Science Corrupted". SPPI 2009) and many others.
As for the Science of the multi-discipline field of Climatology, the Editors would be well served to take a look at the work by the independent NIPCC, whose last report can be obtained on line and as ISBN-13 – 978-1-934791-36-3. Apart from that there are large numbers of peer-reviewed papers, sceptical of human-caused catastrophic global warming, some 450 references of which have been published by Anthony Watts, also in a SPPI publication in 2009.
Your ignorance of these publications does not become you.
Science has been cherry-picked and abused to justify political decisions already made.

The theory of foreseeing people's needs is very nice on paper. Authorities love it for admin purposes, as well as tax and policing. Much of Europe is documented, integrated and regimented that way. I recall that this was of great value to the Nazis in occupied territories. It is one reason I will never have anything to do with the "social networks". I am quite happy being as anonymous as possible in modern society.
The modern version goes from mass eye-scans and fingerprinting in Kenya for social services distribution (they say) to commercialisation of demographic data to crass advertising, marketing and political purposes based on contacts, purchasing, web-visits and ..... private mail.
May-be Europe has been weaned into this, but I do not think North America is ready for it.
I hope Google comes to its senses. I am moving to Bing.

Concluding the second last paragraph, the Economist says: "In that case, the world’s climate problem would remain unsolved."
May I ask what "problem" the paper refers to beyond the colossal waste of resources and transfer of wealth?

* Sea levels have not been rising beyond 3 mm/year, which has been the case for centuries; they have been declining slowly from higher values in centuries past.
* Temperatures have been steady or declining for ten years. Any relatively small increase or decrease is part of natural variation. Ignoring the fabricated hockey-stick constructs, records show that warming and cooling periods have alternated in 30 year stretches for the past 150 years, with little net increase.
* Large scale tropical disease outbreaks have not occurred. Malaria increase was a DDT restriction problem. The carbon craze has been detrimental to the food supply of developing countries.
* No hurricanes or flooding can be linked to changes in climate. Any perceived increase in"Extreme Weather" is more likely to be a function of 24/7 reporting and costlier claims in modern society.

On century scales and longer, there have always been changes in climate on this planet and they have been natural, mostly related to solar magnetic and gravitational variances. If CO2 plays any role at all it is minor. Its biggest role is as a stimulant for plant growth. In fact, land use of modern society is a greater factor.
No scientific theory like catastrophic "anthropogenic global warming" can rest on the mere "evidence" of scenario exercises through computer simulations and the political body that the IPCC is, has played fast and loose with scientific ethics and the scientific method, as the Climate Gate e-mails have proven. So far it has cost us a trillion dollars.

Worldwide, the enthusiasm for Kyoto-like measures is decreasing rapidly. Because the media, the politicians and public at large are generally scientifically uneducated, it has taken a long time and much waste tax money to reach the conclusion of those countries that are abandoning the Kyoto effort. As a scientist, I can only regret that it is probably more for economic reasons than for those of scientific truth.

Dear Sir,
In my opinion, the question is wrong and appears to be resulting in a tie vote.
As an migrant myself from the Netherlands to Canada half a century ago, I arrived in my new country equipped with language skills and a profession. As a Canadian, I remain a man with a European upbringing, which has served me well. I have learned, adapted and contributed.
The main problem is that of integration of the present cohort of migrants. It starts at the front door: Is the prospective immigrant equipped to take his place in the language, the culture and the work place of his new home, or does he wish to remain a stranger in a strange land?
The solution is to be found, not in either an open or a closed door, but in the policies of governments. Prior screening of applicants should be rigorous and focussed on willingness of integration into society. Don't look at the immigrant to solve a short term labour problem.
Within my native Holland there has been a series of immigrant waves. The first post-war one was of people of Ambon (now Indonesia). The then government leaned over backwards to accommodate and integrate this tropical population. It succeeded.
If as much effort would have been applied to assure integration of later waves from other parts of the world, either by pre-screeningor some tyupe of performance qualification, Geert Wilders would have had less of an audience today.

The motion should therefore have been something like:
"This House believes that most governments in open societies are failing to select and assure integration of immigrants from societies with different cultures".

While this is a rather clearheaded analysis of the Canadian election results, giving credit to the effective, good government that Harper and his cabinet have been able to provide even while in a minority position, it is regrettable that the Economist is less clearheaded about the old bugbear of what it calls "carbon".
The Economist, writing "the energy-producing western province of Alberta, with its carbon-belching tar sands" should lift its head out of the self-serving propaganda put out by the politicised UN IPCC, study a bit of chemistry and physics and - may-be - visit the Athabasca area, trying to find the "belching carbon".

First of all, they are called the Athabasca Oil Sands; "tar" is a different substance.
Second, "carbon" is a solid. You probably mean carbon-dioxide, a colourless, non-polluting gas, which is essential for life on earth.
Third, there is absolutely no scientific evidence that this 0.04 % of CO2 in the atmosphere has anything more than a very small influence on the world's climate, which has been changing naturally since earliest geologic times.
As for more recent years even the chief of the Hadley/CRU, Dr Philip Jones, has stated that no unusual warming had occurred in 15 years. The alarmist prediction for 2010, made by the IPCC in the late eighties have been proven wrong.

Only those that profit from the travelling IPCC circus, from the trade in "carbon credits" or from the lavish government research grants, will keep cheering for anthropogenic global warming and its profitable spin-offs.

The tide is turning on the acceptance of the IPCC's religion and unless your editors take a good deep look at the scientific base of the issue, they will shortly find themselves standing in public as did the Emperor without clothes.

"romer jt" writes:
<<………have the intellectual honesty to state their position in the affirmative and say, "the current increases in carbon dioxide are not related to the burning of fossil fuels and it doesn't matter how much fossil fuels we burn there is no way it can effect the climate" . . come on, say it! Then let's see your proof.>>
Well Romer, that's not how the game is played: In science, he who proposes a hypothesis, a theory, (let alone a policy for the entire world) has the onus to prove his initial point.
The IPCC folk have never been able to do so. Taking into account that old poster boy Arrhenius who proposed the CO2/ Temp link in 1896 (i.e. causing run-away global warming) withdrew his calculations in 1906 and lowered the effect to within the range of recovery from the Little Ice Age, and accepting that the effect of additional CO2 in the atmosphere has a logarithmically declining effect on warming and that Quantum Physics has indicated that the catastrophic AGW theory is for the birds, I would suggest that you stop issuing challenges and start reading the peer-reviewed literature on these subjects.
You will discover that forces in the solar system are likely forcing climate changes on the planets and that our planet's water-vapour atmosphere and oceans act like a thermostat to keep our living conditions between certain extremes.
Apart from that, life is pretty capable at adaptation.

A book like this one by Mr Smith send shivers up the spine of any scientist. While Smith decries unreliable weather forecasts that upset his two weddings, he uses climate-change model predictions out to 2050 as if those could be trusted more.

In spite of what the political IPCC presents as expectations with a probability restriction, these are no more than "what if" scenarios. Most of its scientists are much aware of the uncertainties and limitations of such computer simulation efforts. Smith may call his book an "informed thought experiment", but that's a title that would not sell books. Instead he joins the "Warmists'" hype by using the definitive title "The New North: The World in 2050" and the Economist sees fit to amplify this by heading it: "The de-icing age".
To be sure: climate models do not "predict", let alone "prove" anything. They are exploratory tools in the play room.

The main problem in all this is that the IPCC, working under the political mandate of investigating human-caused global warming has not seriously investigated other probable causes. The catastrophic warming first predicted more than twenty years ago has never materialized, while carbon dioxide levels have been increasing steadily, a boon to plant life. Our planet is still recovering from the Little Ice Age at a rate of less than a degree Celsius per century, a rate that has actually decreased, if not reversed during the last decade.

Climate has been changing since the earliest days of this planet. The forces that brought (and bring) this about are almost entirely natural. The earth and its atmosphere are not a self-contained unit. Interactions between forces within the solar system (solar magnetic and radiation activity; orbital forces of the planets) and beyond (cosmic rays) on one side and the earth systems (oceanic oscillations and atmospheric patterns) on the other should be as seriously examined as the pre-occupation with carbon dioxide has been. That leaves the fact, that no scientifically acceptable proof of the catastrophic consequences of CO2 has ever been offered.

Current solar activity trends seem to indicate that our globe is in for an extended cooling period, which will make Mr Smith' book as much a collector's item by 2050 as the Time magazine Global Cooling covers of June 1974 and later are today.

Dear Sir,

In the total balance of various inputs it is questionable whether there is much difference in the "carbon" input/CO2 emissions, even if alternatives such as "wind" could ever compete in scale, which they can not. I can not vote on this motion as it is rather irrelevant. In fact, it is the wrong question.

My scientific view is that the effects of the whole CO2 emission issue are overblown, as CO2 does not contribute to global warming in more than a minor way. It should be emphasized that catastrophic global warming is a political dogma, which has been been developed by a political organisation and has never been proven scientifically.
By all means, cut true pollution and spend the money on infrastructure in the Third World.

It should be realised that circuses like Cancún are primarily concerned with the matters of the IPCC's Working Groups 2 (Impact) and 3 (Mitigation), which unquestioningly accept the IPCC's version of Science of WG 1. The science of WG 1 depends on questionable assumptions, uncertain and manipulated observations, avoidance of investigation of obvious natural climate change factors and computer simulations built on programs that were predestined to show AGW.
Cancún achieved no extension of Kyoto, no commitments, no deadlines; just vague promises of a do-good nature and the resolution to meet next year in South Africa. The reason Cancún fizzled like it did is two-fold.

First, there is the present economic climate, which forces all governments to resist any measures that may negatively affect their economy. Second, the fact that an increasing number of parliamentarians, media and scientists are distrusting the very basis of WG 1, which - in turn - is the basis for the impact and the mitigation. It is not just that Europe is experiencing its third unusually cold winter in a row, and that even the Mexican Rivièra brought the negotiators little respite, but the accumulation of IPCC goofs and the shady manipulations uncovered by ClimateGate have eroded the credibility of the human-caused catastrophic Global Warming concept.

Independent scientists by the thousands have been protesting the abuse of scientific principles for years. They have signed petitions and declarations and published hundreds of critical peer-reviewed papers, which (according to the ClimateGate e-mails) were maliciously barred from the main periodicals (Science, Nature) and ignored when they appeared in smaller ones.

What does it take to stop this utter waste of money on imaginary projects which are meant to solve a problem that does not exist? Even today, NASA lowered its projected warming again.

Clean up water, develop education and health projects in the Third World. There's better use for those Billions.

It is becoming clear that the assumptions on which long term climate projections are based are at least uncertain and probably unwarranted. It would indeed take a Stern report worker or a committed politician to keep peddling the now widely criticised concepts of catastrophic global warming and Man's ability to affect climate in any material way.
There is no causal proof, empirical or otherwise, for the IPCC's dogma, but a number of alternate drivers of climate on earth and the other planets. Climate change has always been a natural phenomenon through geologic times and one that was on occasion far more violent than anything we are experiencing.
Recent abatement, and mitigation efforts in solar and wind energy sources are being throttled back for reasons of inefficiency and enormous economic costs. The Spanish example should be a wake-up call for Erdogan and Papandreou.
NEIL21 is right: There are numerous real social and third country problems on which to spend our energy and money.

Stephen Schneider was as much apolitical crusader as he was a scientist
An outspoken climate researcher, he was an alarmist in the 1970's, when Global Cooling was the flavour of the day and Snowball Earth was surely in our future. When the tide turned, he became an alarmist for Global Warming from the early days of the IPCC up to the present, advocating (in his own words) "scary scenarios, (....) simplified, dramatic statements and mak[ing] little mention of any doubts".
The late John Daly said of him: “It would be fair to say that Schneider bears a large part of the responsibility for making Greenhouse the hysterical public issue it has become today."

His latest effort was a paper, as co-author with some of his students, which dealt with the inferior scientific capabilities of "sceptics" of the AGW hypothesis and accompanied an extensive black list of such "denier" scientists. His membership in the NAS got it published in its Proceedings. It was widely condemned as a McCarthy-like terror act which could well affect the employment and reputation of scientists he did not agree with.
More compassionate obituaries can be found on the web, in the Guardian, by his colleagues Mann and Santer in the AGW community, where he is sadly missed.

After all the smoke has cleared from the various learned, but not necessarily scientific panels, commissions etc, we are left with a lot of tut-tutting and finger wagging about the naughty boys not following the rules of scientific etiquette and a mild admission that there actually is a lot of uncertainty about the whole science of Global Warming and what causes it.

While the various reports make light of the misdeeds, none of them have investigated the actual science produced, on basis of which the whole planet has been mobilised into a mad rush to ban "carbon" from its use as fuel for our societies at horrendous cost. All off these Dollars, Euros and Pounds could so much better be employed in the Third World to provide sustenance of life.

What is wrong with the IPCC's (and by extension, the CRU's) science is easy to determine:
1. The connection between the trace gas CO2 and Global Warming is based on antiquated and retracted principles (Arrhenius, 1896), and has been propelled into a dogma by further positive feedback assumptions and computer simulations.
2. No alternate explanations for varying climate have ever been seriously considered by the IPCC. In recent years strong evidence has been developed outside this organisation on the role of solar and cosmic influences on several aspects of climate, among which are correlations with the oceanic oscillations which are important in determining our weather patterns and longer term variations in climate. Most of these are natural cyclic events and none show an alarmist path to doomsday.
3. Much of the evidence developed by independent astronomers, astrophysicists, atmospheric physicists and earth scientists is being wilfully ignored by the political body that is the IPCC.

This is all true to the original charter of the IPCC, which was to investigate the human causes of Global Warming. This meant that it was created to develop selected science to prove a political decision already made.
None of the investigations so far has seen fit to explore the truth behind the charade.

As "catsick" says, surely the issue should be deforestation, as only 3 out of 70 million ha of denuded tropical forest have been planted with oil palms. The culprit in this shameful development is not so much Unilever et al as the non-policies of the earlier Indonesian governments.
Another aspect, less essential in the Indonesian case, is the biofuel madness, which in many other instances infringes on third world food supplies and regional ecologies.

Hoping that "JollyGreenMan" is correct and that the Economist is finally waking up to the reality of the IPCC's work, it is an awakening long overdue.

As a long time subscriber, I have been seething that the main media, including the Economist, have ignored well-documented criticism, back to the Panel's early mandate (not to investigate climate change, but to actually look for human CO2 causes of supposed Global Warming), which avoided an objective scientific assessment from the beginning. From that beginning it was clear that the purpose was political, not scientific. The panel's own leadership was political from the start, and still is, including Railway Engineer Pachauri. If anyone is interested in the names, it is all in the public record.

The media, largely non-scientific in its thinking, swallowed the UN authority source hook, line and sinker, exposing itself only to the SPMs and not to the many divergent opinions in the thousands of pages of the actual assessment reports. Did the Economist read the strong reservations by many well known scientists that are printed in these four AR reports and that contradict the SPMs? Did it try and find out how many of the often mentioned 2500 man consensus (which included dissenting "expert reviewers"!) actually disagreed with and criticised its conclusions? At the end, it is estimated that no more than 60 people actually wrote the politicised conclusions that generated the multi-million dollar mitigation and trading schemes. Data twiddlers at the CRU were among them. It is now thought likely that someone within the CRU had had enough and that the disclosures were made by a whistleblower, not a hacker.

Meanwhile, the CRU e-mails and documents helped in making COP 15 fail and that many politicians are taking a second look at this Consensus Science, that was supposed to be "settled".

Yes, Economist, it is time you took the mis-labelled "deniers" seriously.
As for the science: This earth scientist is distressed that the reputation of scientific pursuit, ethics and methods have suffered badly in the public eye by the abuse perpetrated by the IPCC.