May 29, 06 #2: Kyoto, Scientists & Data

What instigated this quest to learn more (and the next post which continues this) was the following: Kyoto, Global Warming, Scientists, Cdn. Activists & Watt-Cloutier

Last week there was an article by Sheila Watt Cloutier in the Globe and Mail against the Harper government's approach to climate change. She apparently believes in gloom and doom if the Liberal plans are not followed. Missing was enough information on her background to tell readers why she was published and whether readers should pay any more attention to her than to a theorizing neighbour. What is the scientific data and what are her qualifications to speak out? A search led further and to more on her network, connections to the former Liberal government, and more, including what she was noted for and her funding in that endeavour. (For more on the activist network and Ms. Watt-Cloutier, see the post below this.)

Liberal plan to cut greenhouse emissions was a dud, researchers say Dennis Bueckert, May 28, 06

OTTAWA (CP) - The Liberals' $12-billion plan to implement the Kyoto Protocol over seven years would have been largely ineffective, says an as-yet unpublished report by the C.D. Howe Institute.

[....] Project Green largely relied on voluntary measures and incentives which have been shown not to work, says the study, which sarcastically calls the package "Project Dream."

[....] The report says Project Green would have cost $12 billion by 2012, with much of that money being spent outside Canada.

[....] The most effective policy would likely be a gradually rising tax on greenhouse gas emissions, combined with reductions in other taxes to ensure no net tax increase, says the report.

Search: Sage Climate Project



Hundreds of millions promised to provinces for climate change redirected Dennis Bueckert, May 25, 06

"We have a made-in-Canada plan and money will be designated to certain projects based on our made-in-Canada plan.

[....] A spokeswoman for [Liberal] Ontario Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Marie Bountrogianni said Ontario expects its agreement with the previous government to be honoured. [The feds will jump to that, then.]

Ontario had planned to use the lion's share of its money to shut down high-polluting coal-fired power plants. [....]

They should ask Warren Buffet why he's been buying land in coal areas. Does he know something that might be useful?



Another View of Global Warming posted by bisbee, 5/25/2006

leads to Did global warming stop in 1998? By Dennis T. Avery, Hudson Institute, Thursday, May 25, 2006

The official thermometers at the U.S. National Climate Data Center show a slight global cooling trend over the last seven years, from 1998 to 2005.

[....] Speaking of the 1500-year climate cycles, grab an Internet peek at the earth’s official temperatures since 1850. They describe a long, gentle S-curve, with the below-mean temperatures of the Little Ice Age gradually giving way to the above-the-mean temperatures we should expect during a Modern Warming.

Carter points out that since the early 1990s, the First World’s media have featured "an increasing stream of alarmist letters and articles on hypothetical, human-caused climate change. Each such alarmist article is larded with words such as ‘if’, ‘might,’ ‘could,’ ‘probably,’ ‘perhaps,’ ‘expected,’ ‘projected’ or ‘modeled’--and many . . . are akin to nonsense."

Search: Fred Singer, a well-known skeptic , Bob Carter, a paleoclimatologist from Australia , a sudden natural cooling

DENNIS T. AVERY is a senior fellow for Hudson Institute in Washington, DC and the Director for Global Food Issues (www.cgfi.org). He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State.




Debunking Global Warming Hysteria -- Since 1970, the year of the first Earth Day ... Pete DuPont, May 23, 06

Mr. du Pont ... is chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis.

Incidentally, it appears that Al Gore has moved on from inventing the internet to ... global warming.

[....] A new study released this week by the National Center for Policy Analysis, "Climate Science: Climate Change and Its Impacts" (www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st285) looks at a wide variety of climate matters, .... "the science does not support claims of drastic increases in global temperatures over the 21rst century, nor does it support claims of human influence on weather events and other secondary effects of climate change."

There are substantial differences in climate models ... but the Climate Science study concludes that "computer models consistently project a rise in temperatures over the past century that is more than twice as high as the measured increase." ....

What warming there is turns out to be caused by solar radiation rather than human pollution.

[....] Regarding Arctic temperature changes, the Study found the coastal stations in Greenland had actually experienced a cooling trend: [....]

As for sea ice, it is not melting excessively. Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans concluded that "global warming appears to play a minor role in changes to Arctic sea ice." The U.N.'s IPCC Third Assessment Report concluded that the rate of sea level rise has not accelerated during the last century, which is supported by U.S. coastal sea level experience. In California sea levels have risen between zero and seven millimeters a year and between 2.1 and 2.8 millimeters a year in North and South Carolina.

Finally come the polar bears--a species thought by global warming proponents to be seriously at risk from the increasing temperature. According to the World Wildlife Fund, among the distinct polar bear populations, two are growing--and in areas where temperatures have risen; ten are stable; and two are decreasing. But those two are in areas such as Baffin Bay where air temperatures have actually fallen.

The Climate Science study concludes that projections of global warming over the next century "have decreased significantly since early modeling efforts," [....]

60 Scientists: Open Kyoto to debate -- An open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper Special to the Financial Post, Thursday, April 06, 2006

[....] We appreciate the difficulty any government has formulating sensible science-based policy when the loudest voices always seem to be pushing in the opposite direction. However, by convening open, unbiased consultations, Canadians will be permitted to hear from experts on both sides of the debate in the climate-science community. When the public comes to understand that there is no "consensus" among climate scientists about the relative importance of the various causes of global climate change, the government will be in a far better position to develop plans that reflect reality and so benefit both the environment and the economy.

"Climate change is real" is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural "noise." The new Canadian government's commitment to reducing air, land and water pollution is commendable, but allocating funds to "stopping climate change" would be irrational. We need to continue intensive research into the real causes of climate change and help our most vulnerable citizens adapt to whatever nature throws at us next.

We believe the Canadian public and government decision-makers need and deserve to hear the whole story concerning this very complex issue. It was only 30 years ago that many of today's global-warming alarmists were telling us that the world was in the midst of a global-cooling catastrophe. But the science continued to evolve, and still does, even though so many choose to ignore it when it does not fit with predetermined political agendas.

There is more. Also, note the list at the bottom of the 60 scientists who signed this letter.




Memory Lane

SEPP News Release: More Than 15,000 Scientists [two-thirds with advanced academic degrees] Protest Kyoto Accord; Speak Out Against Global Warming Myth -- signed "a Petition against the climate accord concluded in Kyoto (Japan) in December 1997. " The Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), April 20, 1998 [Contact: Douglas Houts]. via CNEWS Forum link posted by caspar34
Related

FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA, APRIL 21, 1998---More than 15,000 scientists, [8/4/98: now about 17,000] two-thirds with advanced academic degrees, have now signed a Petition against the climate accord concluded in Kyoto (Japan) in December 1997. The Petition (see text below) urges the US government to reject the Accord, which would force drastic cuts in energy use on the United States. This is in line with the Senate Resolution, approved by a 95-to-0 vote last July, which turns down any international agreement that damages the economy of the United States while exempting most of the world's nations, including such major emerging economic powers as China, India, and Brazil.

In signing the Petition within a period of less than six weeks, the 15,000 basic and applied scientists -- an unprecedented number for this kind of document -- also expressed their profound skepticism about the science underlying the Kyoto Accord. The atmospheric data simply do not support the elaborate computer-driven climate models that are being cited by the United Nations and other promoters of the Accord as "proof" of a major future warming. The covering letter enclosed with the Petition, signed by Dr. Frederick Seitz, president emeritus of Rockefeller University and a past president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, states it well:

"The treaty is, in our opinion, based upon flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful."

This freely expressed vote against the warming scare propaganda should be contrasted with the claimed "consensus of 2500 climate scientists" about global warming. This facile and oft-quoted assertion by the White House is a complete fabrication. The contributors and reviewers of the 1996 report by the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) actually number less than 2000, and only a small fraction -- who were never polled -- can claim to be climate scientists. Many of those are known to be critical of the IPCC report and have now become signers of the Petition. [. . . . ]

There is much more, including the petition and the names of the scientists.