I am only posting this to let you know that I am viciously working full bore to expose the denialists' bad faith and false arguments... As you might imagine, it's a Herculean task — like attacking a giant rubbish tip, armed with a toothpick to find a glimmer. So far, I have not been able to find anyone that has done it comprehensively in a manner that can be understood by mere mortals...  Bear with me...

SEA ice in the Arctic was melting at a record pace last month, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre.

Measurements taken on June 18 showed the area containing sea ice had shrunk to 10.62 million square kilometres, about 31,000 square kilometres lower than the previous record for that day, set in in 2010.

The rate of melt slowed slightly later in the month, so it is not yet clear whether this year's melt will challenge 2007, the year in which sea ice reached its lowest extent since instrumental records began.

''Early melt onset, and clear skies near the solstice are favourable conditions for more rapid melting, and warming of the ocean in open water areas,'' the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre said in its report.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/heat-rises-over-record-sea-ice-melt-in-arctic-20120701-21b41.html#ixzz1zRR2miEh
This is the most important news today and tomorrow. This news defines the future we leave to the planet... We are careless. Tony Abbott is an idiot...

In One Kansas Town, Even Hotter Than Usual

HILL CITY, Kan. — This town on the parched plains, best known for its bountiful pheasant hunting and museum of oil history, recently earned a new, if unwelcome, distinction — the center of America’s summer inferno.

For five days last week, a brutal heat wave here crested at 115 degrees. Crops wilted. Streets emptied. Farmers fainted in the fields. Air-conditioners gave up. Children even temporarily abandoned the municipal swimming pool. Hill City was, for a spell, in the ranks of the hottest spots in the country.

“Hell, it’s the hottest place on earth,” Allen Trexler, an 81-year-old farmer who introduced himself as Old Man Trexler. He spoke while standing in the shade of a tree on Saturday morning, the temperature already sneaking toward 100.

Across the country, it is the same, sweaty story. On Sunday, two million people across the mid-Atlantic were left stewing in nearly 100-degree heat with no electricity after deadly thunderstorms toppled trees and power lines. Officials warned that the high heat could fuel more severe thunderstorms this week.

“There is a significant risk of additional storms that could lead to additional outages, so there is a possibility that the situation could deteriorate in the coming days,” Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia said during a conference call with reporters. “This is going to be a multiday recovery event with dangerously high heat, so everyone needs to remain vigilant.”

Utility companies said it might take a week to restore power completely in some places.

Officials throughout the region opened air-conditioned libraries and community centers to provide some relief for residents without power. Grocery stores reported runs on ice, water and nonperishable foods. Harris Teeter, a regional grocery chain, quickly went through 25,000 bags of free ice it was dispensing at stores in Northern Virginia and Maryland.

In parts of Georgia and Tennessee, the air quality was so bad over the weekend that officials scrapped their Code Red warnings and dubbed the steamy haze a Code Purple, signaling very unhealthy air.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/us/kansas-town-stuggles-to-deal-with-115-degrees.html?_r=1&hp&pagewanted=print

There is a very powerful network of conservative information — websites, journals and spruikers — all working hard to promote the denial of global warming, while bashing the science, day in day out...

In this framework, science is not for scientists but for industrialists, gold-watch makers, oil cartels, car makers, miners of coal and iron ore, and developers — and can I mention many lawyers... All of them jovially compete with each other for your small buck and use you as slaves at the same time — because you are prisoners of comforts, including the clutches of credit... 

There is no evidence that mermaids exist, a US government scientific agency has said.

The National Ocean Service made the unusual declaration in response to public inquiries following a TV show on the mythical creatures. It is thought some [many] viewers may have mistaken the programme for a documentary.

"No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found," the service wrote in an online post.

Blimey... But then this is a happening the land where 60 per cent of the folks there still do not subscribe to the theory of evolution because it is contrary to the scriptures...

We're on a loosing streak trying to fight scientific ignorance and conservatism in a world where emotions and denial rule... and where the power of the rich prevails in controlling the commercial emotional debate.

As well, our national media is pushed to be "balanced":

Q&A on ABC TV is an emotional debate and this is why I hate it...

The conservative denialists are cleverly destroying our trust in science... Their tactic is to increase and control the proportion of doubters... In this context, they are succeeding in a 54/45 ration which is about the same as Liberal (conservative)/LaborGreen ratio... But in Labor there are also many doubters influenced by the conservative machine... In the end, Summer will tell us a bit more about the future...

My next instalment, hopefully: religion versus science...

This colour photograph on the forum brochure shows grey-white vapour emanating from smokestacks at an unidentified industrial site. Condensing steam, however, is not carbon dioxide, nor is soot (carbon). Carbon dioxide is a colourless and odourless trace gas. Red herrings –be they “carbon” images or rhetoric - do not make gaseous plant food a pollutant, except in Warmerland and Orwell’s Oceania.

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Gus: this gets my beef... The image and comment above are used in a Quadrant article to illustrate how the climate change alarmists are trying to fool us... The picture was taken from a WA university forum paper cover...

But one needs to be careful here. One does not know what comes out of these chimney stacks... As far as one could speculate, it could methane out of one, SO2 out of one other and CO2 out of the rest... One does not know... The fact is more often than not, these gases when released into the atmosphere by industrial processes are released MIXED with water vapour. The mix is usually at high temperature as the picture would suggest since the cloudiness does not come out of the chimney but from about four or five metres away from the top... This indicates a high temperature of the gas coming out. Once outside, the water vapour will start to condense — having reached the dew point very quickly by being mixed in cool air that becomes thus quickly saturated with humidity. Should the other gas be SO2, this would turn very quickly into the product that used to create acid rain in the 1980s... Should the other gases be CO2 and methane, they quickly dissipate into the atmosphere according to the law of thermodynamics applied to gas — adding more CO2 to the atmosphere in the process...

Having worked in industrial factories in the 1960s, I know that NEVER EVER, the steam that comes out these chimney stacks is pure water vapour... More often than not these emissions of water vapours contain a lot of other gases that the plant wants to get rid off... One of the plant I worked at was releasing straight nitrous oxide NO2 into the atmosphere until was shut down... The long streak of yellow smoke was too obvious...

Unless one knows what I have explained above, one would take the denialists rants as a bible of knowledge. It's crap...

picture by Gus...

As to be expected, there is no religious consensus for or against on climate change — mostly contradictions...

Even the catholic church is divided. The pope of course has warned about humans destroying the planet by various means, including climate change — you should see his power bill — and rampant population "explosion", but the church is still opposed to proven methods of arresting population growth, such as condom and the pill. I can understand his position: on the other side of the ledger, people in other religious groups such as the Muslims are multiplying like rabbits. Thus in the immediate future, we won't see major population control brought out by religious intent. 

picture by Gus leonisky

Meteorology and global warming are two different scientific studies of the atmosphere... Both make usage of complex mathematics that would make mere mortals scratch their heads... I am a mere mortal with a bit of understanding of the maths involved, but to say the least it's more complex than a Jamie Oliver recipe. Meteorologists may or may not subscribe to the global warming theory, yet they should, but their discipline though complex is mostly limited to conditions, rather than inductors or "triggers" of warming... nor does meteorology included the complete study of past aeons...

The covariation of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration and temperature in Antarctic ice-core records suggests a close link between CO2 and climate during the Pleistocene ice ages. The role and relative importance of CO2 in producing these climate changes remains unclear, however, in part because the ice-core deuterium record reflects local rather than global temperature. Here we construct a record of global surface temperature from 80 proxy records and show that temperature is correlated with and generally lags CO2 during the last (that is, the most recent) deglaciation. Differences between the respective temperature changes of the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere parallel variations in the strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation recorded in marine sediments. These observations, together with transient global climate model simulations, support the conclusion that an antiphased hemispheric temperature response to ocean circulation changes superimposed on globally in-phase warming driven by increasing CO2 concentrations is an explanation for much of the temperature change at the end of the most recent ice age.

A Gus proposition is that CO2 (a "greenhouse" gas) absorbs certain wavelengths of infrared radiation. Water vapour (the main "greenhouse" gas) may absorb different wavelengths of infrared...  When CO2 releases the absorbed energy it may release it in a wavelength easily absorbed by water vapour, adding to the energy level in the vapour, possibly with the effect of changing the cloudy to clear water vapour status.

This seems innocuous but this process lets more sunlight through, thus more heat being absorbed by the water vapour, increasing the atmospheric heat in a self-feeding loop within time limits — due to local conditions and day or night. The clouds, in relation to dew point, thus could form at higher altitude or may not form at all.

Should there be more humidity near ground level due to higher sea evaporation due to such heat, some unshapen clouds may appear not far above (around 100 metres or lower) ground level... These changed local conditions could also come possibly from a separate warming area several hundred kilometres away from these local conditions. 

Most of the chaotic atmospheric disturbances may not participate in the warming itself but in the distribution thereof at local level... Under such warming, these disturbances will make some locations either more dry or more humid, colder or hotter according to the historical development of these local conditions —with a bit more. 

Meanwhile, the general outlook is for warming on a global scale nonetheless with more extreme in climatic disturbances at local level.

Some "denialist" scientists who do some rigourous analysis of the irrefutable warming, are getting worried they are actually providing ammunitions to the alarmists (as they call the majority of scientists who subscribe to the global warming theory)... One of the main sticking points for denialists has been the lag observed between temperature rising and the CO2 rising in some of the record... pointing out that temperature rose first then CO2... (Either way we cook)...

The major influences upon these recorded lag of CO2 rising after temperatures has been rightfully attributed to "local" conditions where the record was created and now studied. In most other records, CO2 has been shown to rise earlier than temperature, but both are in "sinc".. 

The rises of temperature/CO2 are "distorted" first by local factors, though influenced by the global phenomenon of CO2 induced warming...

In the end, the science of Global warming is correct despite "local" variations. 

This is why it is called "global warming" not "London warming". Under some complex computer models that also take into account the possible change to ocean currents, The UK is likely to become colder for a while — in a global warming world, but not necessarily as local conditions can shift chaotically in a different direction while the trend is still towards global warming. 

The present rise of CO2 in the atmosphere has been anthropomorphic since the 1850s. The global temperature have risen accordingly...

PRESENT GLOBAL WARMING is DUE TO ANTHROPOMORPHIC CO2 and is REAL.

Next instalment: what do we do?....

(PHILADELPHIA) — Americans dipped into the water, went to the movies and rode the subway just to be in air conditioning Saturday for relief from unrelenting heat that has killed 30 people across half the country.
The heat sent temperatures soaring over 100 degrees in several cities, including a record 105 in Washington, St. Louis (106), and Indianapolis (104), buckled highways and derailed a Washington-area train even as another round of summer storms threatened.
If people ventured outside to do anything, they did it early. But even then, the heat was stifling.
"It was baking on the 18th green," said golfer Zeb Rogerson, who teed off at 6 a.m. at an Alexandria, Va., golf course but was sweltering by the end of his round.
The heat sent temperatures soaring in more than 20 states to 105 in Louisville, Ky., 101 in Philadelphia, and 95 in New York; besides Washington, a record of 104 was set in Sioux Falls, S.D., and Baltimore set a record at 102.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2119020,00.html#ixzz200q8LSfb

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Flash floods, the worst there in living memory, struck in the Krasnodar region on Friday night, reportedly without warning.

The rains dumped as much as 28cm (11 inches) of water overnight, forcing many residents to take refuge in trees or on house roofs.

TV pictures later showed thousands of house almost completely submerged with people scrambling onto their rooftops to escape the rising waters.

Most of those who died were in and around Krymsk, a town of 57,000 people. But nine deaths were reported in the Black Sea resort of Gelendzhik with a further two in the port town of Novorossiysk.

Anna Kovalevskaya, who says she has relatives in Krymsk, told the BBC her family was caught unawares by the floods.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18758895

So what is up with former climate sceptics, conversions, and media attention?

The short answer is that most non-science journalists (and editors!) simply don’t know much about the science of climate change or how solid it is. In this area in particular, they are classic low information thinkers, and so they make up their minds about what is newsworthy based upon short-cuts and heuristics.

This has many consequences. For instance, it explains why journalists (like average Americans) are much more likely to focus on climate change in the context of extreme heat and weather. It also makes these non-science journalists highly susceptible to framing effects — which gets to the heart of our story.

There are few frames that journalists dig more than the conversion story; the “Nixon Going to China” narrative, in all its various incarnations. And, of course, they don’t dig it for scientific reasons — they dig it for political ones. A convert represents a shift – movement – in the overall political narrative. A convert is also likely a proxy for the public, especially at a time when more and more Americans are shocked and alarmed by extreme weather and highly open to considering global warming as its cause.

What all of this means, of course, is that while in a scientific sense Muller’s conversion is quite insignificant – in fact, its tardiness may even seem rather trying – in a political sense, his recent arrival is all that matters. So just declare victory, my scientific friends. True, we won over most of the scientists that matter a long time ago. But politically, converts still count for a great deal.

read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/environment/why-the-media-adore-former-climate-sceptics/

See picture and read articles from top

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/climate-change-science-is-a-load-of-hot-air-and-warmists-are-wrong-20120801-23fdv.html#ixzz22NB2LagZ

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Codswallop....

"evidence supporting the idea that CO2 emissions were the main cause of global warming reversed itself from 1998 to 2006"???... 

The sun magnetic shield protecting the earth??? Sure!!! but the cycle is well noted.

 The scientific models of global warming do account for the sun cycles (solar magnetic activity cycle 11 years approx). In the last ten years, global warming has "slowed" ONLY SLIGHTLY — mostly due to the sun being "dormant" — though six of the warmest years in recorded history were in that last decade. Solar magnetic variation and other variations such as the earth axis wobble or/and the Milankovitch cycles are factored in. 

The Sydney Morning Herald should be ashamed for letting such blatant manipulation of reality by a Dr David M. W. Evans. He may be a doctor, but he is a poor spinner for the denialists... 

Once all the factors are allowed for, the main culprit of warming IS CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases, including water vapour.

END OF STORY.

One should actually pay EXTREME attention to the fact than no previous CO2 amount has ever been greater than now in our atmosphere, for a million years on this planet. Since then, the greatest amounts in the atmosphere of CO2 has been 300 ppm with MATCHING temperature increases in the range of 10 degrees C above temperatures noted from lows of around 150 ppm of CO2... 

At present we have passed 400 ppm of CO2 (recorded in the arctic region). Excuse me for being a CO2 warmist vermin...

Read all articles from top to bottom...

Manne's essay charts the decades-long effort to spread doubt and confusion about the science of human-caused climate change, focusing on the think tanks and corporations that created and backed a "relentless" campaign in the United States which has infected other parts of the Western world, including Australia.

Manne draws on already published books and research papers about the climate denial industry, and so in that respect close watchers won't find anything new. But it is his declaration that climate science denialists have won which will stick in the throat of many climate change campaigners and science communicators.

Manne tells me why he had come to that conclusion:

I find it difficult to see how a reasonably objective observer could deny that this is what has happened - gradually at first but also dramatically since the end of 2009, due largely to the combination of the failure of Copenhagen and the impact of 'Climategate'.

The victory I write about is limited to the United States, although denialism is an important and almost certainly growing movement in Canada, Australia and the UK.

If climate change denialists are pleased [by the conclusion], then they have chosen to ignore the explicit claim of the article that they are part of an irrationalist movement that is placing the future of the Earth at risk. The role of analysis is to be as faithful to the truth as one can be, not to boost morale or to support delusion.

For the denialists to be "victorious", they do not need to "prove" that global warming is a "hoax". All they have to do is to "manufacture doubt", that is to say to create a substantial level of public doubt about the solidity of the science.

According to Manne, president Barack Obama has been "nobbled" by the denialist campaign and the Republican Party almost "entirely converted" to denying the science.

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At least Gus Leonisky will have a clear conscience on this subject, though I could do more to kill denialism...

But, I will count the dead... Every time there is a major climatic event on this planet that destroys things and kills people, I will assume that 10 per cent of these effects are due to human induced global warming... This 10 per cent applies from now on, with an increase of one per cent per year. By 2030, the attributable climatic event deaths from human induced global warming will be 38 per cent... Then, by 2032, things will get far worse.

Denialists are thus murderers. The longer they are in denial, the more murders will be committed...

But there is at least one conspiracy theory which Andrew Bolt isn’t happy to endorse. Up until last week, Bolt was listed as an adviser to one of Australia’s most active climate denialist organisations the Galileo Movement. But then what happened?

read more at http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/environment/bolting-like-lightning-from-galileo-movement/

....

One of Bolt’s other favourite “experts” to cite is Christopher Monckton who, like Evans and Nova, is also an adviser to the Galileo Movement. Bolt cites Monckton enthusiastically  here, here, here and here and probably lots of other places.

Monckton has been pushing his various conspiratorial talking points around the globe for years. To add to his insistence that climate change is some sort of socialist plot to take over the world, Monckton has recently taken to questioning the legitimacy of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate in a Tea Party-sponsored tour. Is Bolt happy to stick with Monckton, one wonders?

But is it fair to generalise that people who deny climate change science are all conspiracy theorists? Well no, but one piece of new research does suggest that people who reject the science are also more likely to entertain a whole range of whacky ideas.

Research led by cognitive psychologist Professor Stephan Lewandowsky at the University of Western Australia, to be published in the journal Psychological Science, found an important predictor for climate science denialism was a belief in free-market economics.

But the research also found a correlation between denial of human caused climate change science and “conspiracist ideation”, such as acceptance of supposed CIA plots to kill Martin Luther King, faked Moon landings or how the US government let the Japanese attack Pearl Harbour so they could enter World War II.

Or the strongest correlation, plots to create world governments.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/environment/bolting-like-lightning-from-galileo-movement/

Readers of this site know too well what we think of Jo Nova and Lord Monckton... If you don't know yet, read from top, very carefully... Say hello to my mate the possum in the picture if you feel like it too...

Note: In my excitment, I have sometimes used the wrong word. I used "anthropomorphic" when I meant "anthropogenic"... Please note, this does not diminish my arguments.

Some 20 years ago, climate scientists arrived at the conclusion that the vast acceleration in the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases since the industrial revolution was causing the temperature of the Earth to rise. Almost all agreed that we were facing a genuine crisis. Some came to believe that we were facing a catastrophe deeper than any other in the history of the human species. James Hansen of NASA, perhaps the pre-eminent climate scientist in the world, argues in Storms of My Grandchildren that if over the coming decades and centuries we continue to exploit all the fossil fuels that have lain under the surface of the Earth for hundreds of millions of years – all the coal, oil, natural gas and tar sands that have been or are yet to be discovered – then inevitably all the polar ice on Earth will melt, raising the level of the oceans by 75 metres and turning the planet into an alien, barren and unrecognisable place. He contends we have already passed certain “tipping points”.

So far nations and the international ‘community’ have failed conspicuously to rise to the challenge posed by these dangers. Since the Rio Earth Conference of 1992, which initiated the search for an international agreement, carbon dioxide emissions have risen by 40% or more. At Kyoto in 1997, a first, modest agreement was reached. It did nothing to prevent the pace of emissions increasing. Since the failure of the Copenhagen conference in 2009 to find a replacement for Kyoto, there has been no prospect of any new international agreement. Nothing was expected from the conference held at Rio in June on the 20th anniversary of the initial international gathering. Nothing was achieved. Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker has captured perfectly the world’s response so far to the warning issued by climate scientists 20 years ago: “It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.”

As greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise, as evidence of global warming has continued to grow, as the unwillingness of the world to act to curb emissions has become increasingly clear, a determination not to notice the looming catastrophe has taken hold of large parts of the population. At one level, this determination is psychological – the incapacity of a society of consumers to accept the need to sacrifice even a part of material prosperity to ensure the wellbeing of the Earth. At another level, the determination is political – the willingness of large numbers of people to listen to those who are telling them that the group of experts upon whom they customarily rely, the relevant cadre of trained and published scientists, have comprehensively got things wrong.

For reasonable citizens there ought to be no question easier to answer than whether or not human-caused global warming is real and is threatening the future of the Earth. Thousands of climate scientists in a variety of discrete disciplines have been exploring the issue for decades. They have reached a consensual conclusion whose existence is easily demonstrated. Every authoritative national scientific body in the world supports the idea of human-caused global warming. So does one of the most remarkable collaborative achievements in the history of science – the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in which the research findings of the world’s leading climate scientists, as outlined in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals, are periodically presented to and then accepted by the governments of the world.

If a citizen was not convinced by this alone, three studies have been conducted that reveal an overwhelming core consensus. In 2004, Naomi Oreskes published in Science the result of her examination of the abstracts of every article in the world’s leading scientific journals published between 1993 and 2003 that was concerned with global climate change. There were 928 articles. Not one challenged the core consensus. In 2009, two scientists from the University of Chicago published in Eos the result of a survey they conducted among a group they called “Earth scientists”. They discovered that among those who called themselves climate scientists and who had published recently in the field, 97.4% agreed with the proposition that “human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures”. And, in 2010, the eminent climate scientist Stephen Schneider revealed in an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science that 195 (97.5%) of the 200 most published climate scientists were convinced by the evidence of anthropogenic climate change.

Consensus does not imply unanimity. Nor does it suggest that climate scientists are in agreement about the most difficult questions concerning either the past or the future – their calculations of temperature over the past centuries and millennia or their precise predictions about the pace and the nature of the changes that will be visited upon the Earth and its inhabitants as a consequence of the ever-accelerating injection of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It should go without saying that the existence of a consensus on the core issue of human-caused global warming does not provide any answers to the diabolically difficult public policy questions that arise for nations and the international community. What is clear, however, is that a rational citizen has little alternative but to accept the consensual core position of climate scientists. Discussion of this point should long ago have ended. That it has not is the most persuasive possible example of the feebleness of reason, the futility of argument and the failure of politics.

There are three possible words to describe the political movement that has sought to convince citizens to reject the core conclusion of climate scientists: scepticism, contrarianism and denialism. ‘Scepticism’ suggests an open mind. The minds of those who dispute the consensual core of climate science are closed. ‘Contrarianism’ is a term commonly used, even by some of those who are best informed, like the climate scientist Michael Mann. ‘Contrarian’ might be the right term for the small minority among climate scientists who have not accepted the consensual conclusion of their fellow scientists. The contrarian is a loner, perhaps cranky, but also genuinely independent of mind. Most of those who dispute the consensual conclusions of the climate scientists are not mavericks or heretics but orthodox members of a tightly knit group whose natural disposition is not to think for themselves. To dispute the conclusion drawn by climate scientists involves for them neither the open mind of the sceptic nor the cranky independence of the contrarian but the determination – psychological or political or both – to deny what those who know what they are talking about have to say. They are denialists.

read more: http://www.themonthly.com.au/how-vested-interests-defeated-climate-science-dark-victory-robert-manne-5853

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Please read all articles from top down...

In truth, writes Benedict, our duty is to "exercise responsible stewardship over creation, to care for it and cultivate it." He laments "the neglect - if not downright misuse - of the earth and the natural goods that God has given us." In these concerns Pope Benedict is a worthy successor to Pope John Paul II who spoke often and passionately about the ecological crisis and the urgent need to respond to it.

Pope Benedict's call for us to do all we can to protect those most vulnerable to the ravages of climate change is unequivocal:

Amen to that.

Clive Hamilton is Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, a joint centre of Charles Sturt University and the University of Melbourne. His most recent book is Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth about Climate Change. This is the text of a public lecture delivered at Australian Catholic University, Sydney, on Wednesday, 29 August 2012.

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I have already tackled the problem of global warming and that of religious beliefs in an article above... Other people do so as well including this "Drum" article by Clive Hamilton, "The church and the ethics of climate change"...

Unfortunately, as much as I subscribe to the concept of ethics, There are NO MORALS nor ETHICS in relation to global warming. Just science — that we accept or reject and choice about what we do...

My "ethics" on many subject are basically in relation to pain and contentment... minimise pain, maximise contentment, personal and that of others. On the global warming issue, If we let  the problem (if it exists) grow, at which point will it affect our (personal and shared) comforts on this little planet?... Nothing more, nothing less...

Of course, when someone like Hamilton is tackling such complex (yet scientifically simple) issue as "global warming" there are always some IDIOTS (from that well orchestrated membership of the contrarian bloggotariat, as explained in another article above) who will dispute the science without any proof nor understanding of what they are talking about... Thus we have a smart arse like THEVIKING who makes some wild assumptions on the subject doing exactly far more cherry-picking that he accuses Hamilton of doing ...

For those who have not read all my articles on the subject of global warming, please do: GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL... And most of the present global warming experienced by this planet is due to an excess of CO2... Sure THEVIKING derides the "hockey stick" graph (that was used by Al Gore)... without noting or perhaps having never seen that for example in the Vostok Ice record there are about 5 "hockey sticks" (spikes) that correlates the relationship between CO2 and warming of the planet... this, since about 500,000 years ago... This is not even science interpretation. This is science observation that even the most denialist of scientists cannot deny...

Sure one can interpret the record differently though the relationship between CO2 and temperature is undeniable... In the Vostok record (and other records), the CO2 levels — associated with increase temperatures of about 10 degrees Celsius — are of the changing range between 150 to 300 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. Note that other factors also have so influence including water vapour, particles and O2...

Presently we have reached 400 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere and the "climate" is telling us a few things. Increase of extreme climatic events, rise of temperatures and rise of sea level. I am old enough to even have personally noted the changes... THEVIKING writes like a kid out of nappies told by his masters the coal and oil lobbies to write stuff that sounds good... to sow doubt, but it is TOTAL CRAP.  The spiel from the denialists everywhere is the same here... somewhat adapted with different colour of bile to this article that present a "philosophical" point of view on the subject of global warming that is contrary to the carbon burning buffs... The first snide comment about ethics from THEVIKING really tells that he has no reality on human relationships...

Morons like THEVIKING appear everywhere in the bloggosphere, possible the same two denialists that keep busy multiplying their responses to all articles published on the subject in order to appear like a multitude to be noted... Their arguments are always sophistic, ill-though out and simply wrongly dismissive of scientific observations... 

They have NO PROOF of what they say... THEY GIVE ME THE SHITS... And I don care much about the idea of god either...

No one would want a novelist to perform brain surgery with her biro. No one would want a man with a PhD in political science to then write textbooks claiming that those misadventures are best medical practice.

Society understands the architecture of academia and knows there are relevant qualifications in different fields, and the media accepts the idea of specialisations and accords greater respect to those with greater expertise. With one exception: climate science.

When it comes to this academic discipline, it seems that if you are a specialist in public sector food-poisoning surveillance or possess a zoology doctorate on sexual selection in pheasants, editors will seek your contrarian views more avidly than if you have qualifications in climate science and a lifetime's professional expertise. The press is further littered with climate "heretics" almost all of whom have academic backgrounds in history, literature, and the classics with a diploma in media studies. (All these examples are true.) One botanist trying to argue that glaciers were advancing took his data (described as simply false by the World Glacier Monitoring Service) from a former architect.

I recently watched a debate between a climate scientist and that pheasant-expert-turned-journalist. An audience member asked: "Please could you explain how it is that you are 'right' while all climate scientists are 'wrong'?" He could not. I almost felt sorry for him. I know that he has lectured publicly on scientific heresy. I think that he wants to be Galileo.

Contrary to the beliefs of some contrarians, academia welcomes the Galileos and encourages scepticism. It wants its hypotheses robustly tested precisely because it wants to pass those tests. Its stern system of peer review is judicious and conscientious.

One more thing is required of academia: to play its role right at the heart of democracy. Being adequately informed is a democratic duty, just as the vote is a democratic right. A misinformed electorate, voting without knowledge, is not a true democracy. Society needs the expertise of academics in the most important issues: climate science above all.

read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/31/climate-change-heretics-media-easy-ride/print

If the world’s conspiratorial blogosphere was broken up into food items on a wedding buffet table, then an eclectic array of plate-fillers would surely be on offer.

There would be canapés topped with faked moon landings and hors d’oeuvres of Government-backed plots to assassinate civil rights leaders.

Sandwich fillings would come from US military staff at Roswell in New Mexico (cheese and alien, anyone?). The alcoholic punch would be of the same vintage as that which the British Royal family gave Princess Diana’s chauffeur — as part of their plot to kill her. All of the catering would be provided by the New World Order.

Then there’s the salad of human-caused climate change being a hoax, with the world’s climate scientists, national academies and the declining Arctic sea-ice all being in on the conspiracy.

Professor Stephen Lewandowsky, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Western Australia (UWA), is about to publish research which shows that a strong indicator of the rejection of climate science is a willingness to accept conspiracy theories.

His paper, to be published in the journal Psychological Science, is titled “NASA faked the moon landing – Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science“.

The study details the results of a controlled online questionnaire posted on blogs between August and October 2010.

Among the conspiracy theories tested, were the faking of Apollo moon landings, US government agencies plotting to assassinate Martin Luther King, Princess Diana’s death being organised by members of the British Royal family and the US military covering up the recovery of an alien spacecraft that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico.

Albert Einstein wrote to his friend, the mathematician Marcel Grossmann, in 1920: “This world is a strange madhouse. Currently, every coachman and every waiter is debating whether relativity theory is correct. Belief in this matter depends on political party affiliation.” According to Jeroen van Dongen, of Utrecht University’s Institute for History and Foundations of Science in the Netherlands, the letter was written not long after a rally in Berlin’s Philharmonic Hall, organised by “a right-wing rabble-rouser with nationalist and völkisch [populist] ideals”, where Einstein had been denounced as a fraud and scientific philistine. The rally was no isolated event: even two years later, fears of anti-relativist violence led Einstein to cancel an important lecture.

If it seems remarkable now that the theory of relativity, long recognised as the foundation of modern physics and astronomy, could arouse such political passions, perhaps future generations will marvel at the lengths to which those who challenge climate science were prepared to go. In July last year, Hans Schellnhuber, the founder and director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who by coincidence works in the same building where Einstein had his office, was the star turn at a conference on climate change at the University of Melbourne. He had just risen to give his keynote speech when a protester in the second row held up a hangman’s noose. The stunt was organised by the Citizens Electoral Council, the local offshoot of the extremist LaRouche movement, which, among other things, has accused Queen Elizabeth of drug-running. The CEC regards action on climate change as “green fascism” and a plot to destroy industry. 

The CEC is at the loony end of opposition to action on climate change on ideological grounds, but the spectrum also includes respected conservatives like Nick Minchin. A few weeks before he helped remove climate change advocate Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal leader, the former senator said that the issue provided the extreme left with “the opportunity to do what they’ve always wanted to do – to sort of de-industrialise the Western world”. 

Most scientists were initially bemused by such attitudes and ignored them: science, to their way of thinking, is not about taking sides. But it has become more serious. Prominent figures in the climate debate, including scientists, economists, politicians and journalists, are now routinely abused and sometimes threatened, mainly by email and particularly after public appearances. “You try to not let it affect you but it still ruins your appetite and ability to sleep on occasions,’’ says an Australian government scientist who prefers to remain unnamed, one of several who have now removed themselves from Facebook as well as the phone book.

read more: http://www.themonthly.com.au/bullies-versus-science-angry-boys-mike-steketee-5626

JAMES DELINGPOLE is a UK columnist waging a long personal jihad against wind farms, environmentalists and climate science.

A resident blogger and columnist at London’s Daily Telegraph, Delingpole is probably best known for being among the first mainstream columnists to declare – wrongly, of course – that emails illegally hacked from an influential climate research unit showed scientists were trying to con the public.

So he is the perfect person to be appealing for people to donate their cash to the Melbourne-basedInstitute of Public Affairs, a free market think tank which has been working for about 20 years on a campaign to mislead the public about climate science and the impact of carbon pricing.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/environment/ipa-goes-up-the-delingpole-for-cash/

Some 20 years ago, climate scientists arrived at the conclusion that the vast acceleration in the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases since the industrial revolution was causing the temperature of the Earth to rise. Almost all agreed that we were facing a genuine crisis. Some came to believe that we were facing a catastrophe deeper than any other in the history of the human species. James Hansen of NASA, perhaps the pre-eminent climate scientist in the world, argues in Storms of My Grandchildren that if over the coming decades and centuries we continue to exploit all the fossil fuels that have lain under the surface of the Earth for hundreds of millions of years – all the coal, oil, natural gas and tar sands that have been or are yet to be discovered – then inevitably all the polar ice on Earth will melt, raising the level of the oceans by 75 metres and turning the planet into an alien, barren and unrecognisable place. He contends we have already passed certain “tipping points”.

So far nations and the international ‘community’ have failed conspicuously to rise to the challenge posed by these dangers. Since the Rio Earth Conference of 1992, which initiated the search for an international agreement, carbon dioxide emissions have risen by 40% or more. At Kyoto in 1997, a first, modest agreement was reached. It did nothing to prevent the pace of emissions increasing. Since the failure of the Copenhagen conference in 2009 to find a replacement for Kyoto, there has been no prospect of any new international agreement. Nothing was expected from the conference held at Rio in June on the 20th anniversary of the initial international gathering. Nothing was achieved. Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker has captured perfectly the world’s response so far to the warning issued by climate scientists 20 years ago: “It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.”

read more: http://www.themonthly.com.au/how-vested-interests-defeated-climate-science-dark-victory-robert-manne-5853

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The general media organisations (and the ABC to a very sad extent) know what butters their bread : money... Most monies come from the industrialisation of our society, itself greased by advertising and promotions that fuels the media itself designed to fuel our consumption for this industrialisation to work... The industrialisation of the world has had major benefits for us all, but it has also developped some dark sides to it......

All is crook when those who profit from maxing this industrialisation to the hilt, actually work hard at making sure we stay in the dark about the problems this industrialisation is presently having and will have in the future...  

For the ABC, the sad part is the desire (ordered by government decree) to appear to be balanced, thus pitting strong emotional porkies versus the boring truth of facts and figures...  

Read all articles from top...

http://grist.org/climate-energy/quiz-how-many-climate-denier-attackers-could-you-fight-off/

“Scientific truth” alone is not enough to sway public opinion. We must not stand by in silence while fossil-fuel climate change deniers confuse the public and dissuade our policy makers from taking the urgent actions needed to fight global warming. Join me in the climate war – for the sake of future generations and the planet.

Buy the book: The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines

ACCORDING to the team of psychological scientists working on the study, led by Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Western Australia, the main reason that people are more likely to believe false information (for example, that climate change is a hoax) is because it actually takes less brain power to believe a statement is false than to accept it as truth. Finding the truth takes time and effort that people often don’t care enough to spend on particular issues that aren’t of immediate concern.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/environment/why-misinformation-works/

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One does not need to be Einstein to understand this... I have exposed this problem, over and over, on this YD website... It's much easier to say "Global Warming is Crap" rather than spend time and headache-inducing brainpower to understand what is a quite complex and demanding science, in its rigourous observations, yet quite simple in its postulation: "CO2 is a greehouse gas — Humans add CO2 into the atmosphere from carbon that has been sequestered below the Earth surface for millions of years — temperature rises"......

Yet, as I have mentioned before, in a contrary fashion, Einstein did a great job at selling his theory of relativity, which by all means is a far more complex proposition than say "the concept of global warming"... But most of us fake understanding the theory, because it's "fashionable" to "understand" and it underpins a lot of our technologies... 

The quantities of CO2 that can change the earth's atmosphere temperature are quite small and are measured in ppms (parts per million)... Similarly, venom from a blue-ring octopus can kill an adult person in a few minutes is measured in ppb (or parts per billion). One is a poison, the other (CO2) is an excess... Both are dangerous on different scales...

Should the global warming issue not be a "threat" to our carbon over-usage, we would scientifically embrace it with open arms... But it has laid the inconvenient foundations to a major problem that demands a reality check and some mighty "soul" (I don't believe in souls) searching about our humanity's relationship with this planet. The rich and powerful, who profit from carbon, do not want us to do see the future... The religious mobsters who sell us that other place that does not exist in the sky, don't care enough to push the barrow so hard it would make the business mobsters listen up... They actually live in each others pockets...

Australia's chief Antarctic scientist says claims by climate experts about environmental changes in the southern continent are not alarmist.

The Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) told a Senate estimates hearing today "rapid changes" taking place across the icy land mass would have significant impact on global climate.

Changes in ocean flows and shifts in Antarctic ice cap levels were occurring at rates faster than at any other time in history, chief scientist Nick Gales said."That's the part that is the most dramatic about the information we're receiving," he told the hearing.

Scientists were detecting major changes in the circulation of deep, dense salty water off Antarctica.

This water, which drives the circulation of the world's oceans and in turn climate patterns, was reducing, while becoming warmer and less salty.Meanwhile, parts of the Antarctic ice caps were melting at unprecedented rates.

"The findings around changes in Antarctica and the southern oceans are critically important to driving world climate," Dr Gales said."That is the engine room of a large amount of world climate, so changes there are important."

He dismissed suggestions the claims were alarmist, adding scientists were "by definition" sceptics and based their conclusions only on testing data.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/antarctic-climate-facing-rapid-changes-chief-scientist-20121016-27ohg.html#ixzz29SQPxBRP

World’s most environmentally outspoken president forced to resign at gunpoint

By Sarah Laskow

Tuesday, we told you that Mohamed Nasheed, president of the climate change-threatened Maldives, stepped down from his office. Wednesday, it became clearer that he was forced to step down — at gunpoint. Tuesday, his aides said that Nasheed was being held against his will and his party, the Maldivian Democratic Party, called the move to oust him a “coup d’etat.”

On Wednesday, Nasheed was able to meet with supporters and,according to the BBC, told reporters: “I was forced to resign at gunpoint. There were guns all around me and they told me they wouldn’t hesitate to use them if I didn’t resign.”

Protesters in the Maldives had been clamoring against Nasheed’s arrest of a judge who had ordered the release of a government critic.

Nasheed has worked as president to raise awareness of climate change issues and the threat it posed to his nation and others. The climate campaigners have rallied to support him: Tuesday night, 350.org asked supporters around the world to tell their leaders to “put diplomatic pressure not the leaders of this coup to avoid violence and work for a peaceful, democratic solution to their conflict.” 350.org’s message said that Nasheed “has been one of 350.org’s strongest allies, and friends, for many years” and that “he needs your support to ensure his safety.”

The climate writer Mark Lynas, who was Nasheed’s climate change adviser for the past two years, wrote in the Guardian:

Those governments of the world that do value democracy and the rule of law should not be under any illusions about what has just taken place. The former dictator Gayoom and his forces never accepted the outcome of the 2008 elections, and their networks of power and influence were increasingly threatened by Nasheed’s campaign against corruption in the judiciary. Indeed, this crisis was sparked by the arrest of senior court judge who had repeatedly refused to prosecute corruption cases in order to protect powerful allies from the former regime.”

http://grist.org/list/worlds-most-environmentally-outspoken-president-forced-to-resign-at-gunpoint/

In The Conversation, scientist Gary W Yohe lists some of these recent extremes we’ve been witnessing, including the super-storm Sandy, and suggests that we’re now living in a climate which is transitioning to something for which we don’t have any yardstick from our recent past. This is, argues Yohe, not so much a ‘new normal’ but more a journey to somewhere much less predictable.

Writing for Mother Jones, Chris Mooney pulls together some of the ways that human activities have likely influenced Sandy, such as the unusually high sea temperatures in the Atlantic. ‘Warm oceans are jet fuel for hurricanes,’ writes Mooney.

Also on The Conversation, climate scientist Kevin Trenberth discusses the contribution of rising sea temperatures to Sandy’s muscular gait, while keeping a close eye on his wife and daughter as they evacuate New Jersey.

In an LA Times examination of the role of human-caused climate change in Sandy’s make-up, Trenberth adds that:

‘All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be.’

In New York’s financial district, reports have come in of cars floating down Wall St. The next few days are uncertain.

But what you can guarantee is that climate science deniers will seek to downplay the role of climate change in events like Sandy, or in the US droughts, or the floods of recent years in Pakistan, Russia and Australia, or the tumbling of heat records across the US.

Late last week, PBS screened a documentary as part of their Frontline series called “Climate of Doubt” which looked at the ongoing campaign to demonise and misrepresent the science of climate change.

The show used the climate science denying think tank the Heartland Institute’s recent sixth conference on climate change as a hook. The show (watch below) interviewed many of the current protagonists of climate science denial ― the “scientists” and professionals who are paid to carry out this work to confuse and fool the public, intimidate climate scientists and push their own political agenda where fossil fuel corporations can operate with near impunity in a “free market”.

read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/environment/weather/superstorm-sandy-washes-away-climate-of-doubt/

Read all the stories from top...

Note: when writing the articles above, I accidentally misused the word anthropomorphic instead of the word anthropogenic... Please adjust. I will make sure I don't do it again. I cannot change the comments: they have been cemented for posterity as they were writen them. 

Myths can spread quickly and widely and are resistant to eradication. Stephan Lewandowsky rebuts recent comments about climate change.

The American healthcare debate in 2009 took a turn towards the surreal when former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin claimed on her Facebook page that under president Obama's plan, "death panels" of bureaucrats would decide who would receive medical care and who would be left to die.

Although there was nothing in the plan that would have warranted this concern, the "death panel" myth spread like wildfire, and within a few weeks nearly 90 per cent of Americans had heard of it, with a large proportion believing it to be true.

It didn't seem to matter that independent fact checkers revealed Palin's claim to be false. The myth spread widely and it has proven resistant to eradication.

The rapid spread of misinformation and its subsequent resistance to correction routinely inflicts contemporary societies: Many Americans falsely believed that Weapons of Mass Destruction were found in Iraq after the 2003 invasion; many parents falsely believe that childhood vaccinations are associated with autism; and the myth that president Obama was born outside the US is alive and well in sections of the internet.

Research in cognitive science has identified the factors necessary for a successful rebuttal of misinformation. A simple correction is often insufficient.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4446160.html?WT.svl=theDrum

Gus: unfortunately, even psychological "science" has to work super-hard to make a "successful" rebuttal of misinformation...

We know how hard it is for people to give up drinking or smoking... Giving up misinformation is in the SAME league.

Some people can be persuaded by various means, including repeat of treatment — or repeat of the correct information.

Three of the major problems on this issue are 1) the battle of facts versus emotions...  2) the battle of complicated facts versus inability to comprehend.... and 3) vested interests spreading efficient "comfortable" disinformation.

As I have mentioned before, it is much easier to do a Tony Abbott and claim "global warming is crap" rather than spend days on ends study the problem seriously. It is easier for an Alan Jones to spruik days on ends about global warming being crap and present some falsified pseudoscientific argument from a Lord Monckton to suit the narrative, all presented with an emotive effect of righteousness... It simply is pure lies...

One of our other weapons against disinformation is to treat the disseminators of such with high contempt — and promote the concept that they are idiots — clever idiots — but idiots nonetheless.... And repeat this, ad nauseam...

Alan Jones is an idiot

Tony Abbott is an iddiott

etc...

Read articles from top down. Note my accidental misuse of a word as noted in the comment above.

Climate change currently kills 400,000 people annually worldwide and unchecked will increase to kill 700,000 people annually by 2030 — so by publishing these people, and artificially prolonging, for its own purposes, a debate long since concluded, media platforms such as The Age effectively materially support this happening. They should be ashamed.

Perhaps the article Facts are boring – we need much more opinionated idiocy,published on the Fairfax opinion platform ‘National Times’ on New Year’s Day, indicates what we can expect from Fairfax’s laugh-a-minute opinion pages in future.

Spooner should also be ashamed but, as with all other deniers I have ever had contact with, Spooner is driven not by logic, but by some combination of emotional and psychological factors that sweep reason to one side.Perhaps we can excuse Spooner for his weakness and compulsions, but there is no excuse for The Age and other media platforms for their disgraceful lack of ethics when they display and consecrate the ravings of such people.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/business/media-2/climate-change-denialism-paedophilia-and-fairfax/

A guest post by Spencer Weart, in collaboration with Raymond T. Pierrehumbert

The simple physics explanations for the greenhouse effect that you find on the internet are often quite wrong. These well-meaning errors can promote confusion about whether humanity is truly causing global warming by adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Some people have been arguing that simple physics shows there is already so much CO2 in the air that its effect on infrared radiation is "saturated"— meaning that adding more gas can make scarcely any difference in how much radiation gets through the atmosphere, since all the radiation is already blocked. And besides, isn’t water vapor already blocking all the infrared rays that CO2 ever would?

The arguments do sound good, so good that in fact they helped to suppress research on the greenhouse effect for half a century. In 1900, shortly after Svante Arrhenius published his pathbreaking argument that our use of fossil fuels will eventually warm the planet, another scientist, Knut Ångström, asked an assistant, Herr J. Koch, to do a simple experiment. He sent infrared radiation through a tube filled with carbon dioxide, containing somewhat less gas in total then would be found in a column of air reaching to the top of the atmosphere. That’s not much, since the concentration in air is only a few hundred parts per million. Herr Koch did his experiments in a 30cm long tube, though 250cm would have been closer to the right length to use to represent the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Herr Koch reported that when he cut the amount of gas in the tube by one-third, the amount of radiation that got through scarcely changed. The American meteorological community was alerted to Ångström’s result in a commentary appearing in the June, 1901 issue of Monthly Weather Review, which used the result to caution "geologists" against adhering to Arrhenius’ wild ideas.

Still more persuasive to scientists of the day was the fact that water vapor, which is far more abundant in the air than carbon dioxide, also intercepts infrared radiation. In the infrared spectrum, the main bands where each gas blocked radiation overlapped one another. How could adding CO2 affect radiation in bands of the spectrum that H2O (not to mention CO2 itself) already made opaque? As these ideas spread, even scientists who had been enthusiastic about Arrhenius’s work decided it was in error. Work on the question stagnated. If there was ever an “establishment” view about the greenhouse effect, it was confidence that the CO2 emitted by humans could not affect anything so grand as the Earth’s climate.

Nobody was interested in thinking about the matter deeply enough to notice the flaw in the argument. The scientists were looking at warming from ground level, so to speak, asking about the radiation that reaches and leaves the surface of the Earth. Like Ångström, they tended to treat the atmosphere overhead as a unit, as if it were a single sheet of glass. (Thus the “greenhouse” analogy.) But this is not how global warming actually works.

What happens to infrared radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface? As it moves up layer by layer through the atmosphere, some is stopped in each layer. To be specific: a molecule of carbon dioxide, water vapor or some other greenhouse gas absorbs a bit of energy from the radiation. The molecule may radiate the energy back out again in a random direction. Or it may transfer the energy into velocity in collisions with other air molecules, so that the layer of air where it sits gets warmer. The layer of air radiates some of the energy it has absorbed back toward the ground, and some upwards to higher layers. As you go higher, the atmosphere gets thinner and colder. Eventually the energy reaches a layer so thin that radiation can escape into space.

What happens if we add more carbon dioxide? In the layers so high and thin that much of the heat radiation from lower down slips through, adding more greenhouse gas molecules means the layer will absorb more of the rays. So the place from which most of the heat energy finally leaves the Earth will shift to higher layers. Those are colder layers, so they do not radiate heat as well. The planet as a whole is now taking in more energy than it radiates (which is in fact our current situation). As the higher levels radiate some of the excess downwards, all the lower levels down to the surface warm up. The imbalance must continue until the high levels get hot enough to radiate as much energy back out as the planet is receiving.

Any saturation at lower levels would not change this, since it is the layers from which radiation does escape that determine the planet’s heat balance. The basic logic was neatly explained by John Tyndall back in 1862: "As a dam built across a river causes a local deepening of the stream, so our atmosphere, thrown as a barrier across the terrestrial [infrared] rays, produces a local heightening of the temperature at the Earth’s surface."

Even a simple explanation can be hard to grasp in all its implications, and scientists only worked those out piecewise. First they had to understand that it was worth the trouble to think about carbon dioxide at all. Didn’t the fact that water vapor thoroughly blocks infrared radiation mean that any changes in CO2 are meaningless? Again, the scientists of the day got caught in the trap of thinking of the atmosphere as a single slab. Although they knew that the higher you went, the drier the air got, they only considered the total water vapor in the column.

The breakthroughs that finally set the field back on the right track came from research during the 1940s. Military officers lavishly funded research on the high layers of the air where their bombers operated, layers traversed by the infrared radiation they might use to detect enemies. Theoretical analysis of absorption leaped forward, with results confirmed by laboratory studies using techniques orders of magnitude better than Ångström could deploy. The resulting developments stimulated new and clearer thinking about atmospheric radiation.

Among other things, the new studies showed that in the frigid and rarified upper atmosphere where the crucial infrared absorption takes place, the nature of the absorption is different from what scientists had assumed from the old sea-level measurements. Take a single molecule of CO2 or H2O. It will absorb light only in a set of specific wavelengths, which show up as thin dark lines in a spectrum. In a gas at sea-level temperature and pressure, the countless molecules colliding with one another at different velocities each absorb at slightly different wavelengths, so the lines are broadened and overlap to a considerable extent. Even at sea level pressure, the absorption is concentrated into discrete spikes, but the gaps between the spikes are fairly narrow and the "valleys" between the spikes are not terribly deep. (see Part II) None of this was known a century ago. With the primitive infrared instruments available in the early 20th century, scientists saw the absorption smeared out into wide bands. And they had no theory to suggest anything different.

Measurements done for the US Air Force drew scientists’ attention to the details of the absorption, and especially at high altitudes. At low pressure the spikes become much more sharply defined, like a picket fence. There are gaps between the H2O lines where radiation can get through unless blocked by CO2 lines. Moreover, researchers had become acutely aware of how very dry the air gets at upper altitudes — indeed the stratosphere has scarcely any water vapor at all. By contrast, CO2 is well mixed all through the atmosphere, so as you look higher it becomes relatively more significant. The main points could have been understood already in the 1930s if scientists had looked at the greenhouse effect closely (in fact one physicist, E.O. Hulbert, did make a pretty good calculation, but the matter was of so little interest that nobody noticed.)

As we have seen, in the higher layers where radiation starts to slip through easily, adding some greenhouse gas must warm the Earth regardless of how the absorption works. The changes in the H2O and CO2 absorption lines with pressure and temperature only shift the layers where the main action takes place. You do need to take it all into account to make an exact calculation of the warming. In the 1950s, after good infrared data and digital computers became available, the physicist Gilbert Plass took time off from what seemed like more important research to work through lengthy calculations of the radiation balance, layer by layer in the atmosphere and point by point in the spectrum. He announced that adding CO2 really could cause a degree or so of global warming. Plass’s calculations were too primitive to account for many important effects. (Heat energy moves up not only by radiation but by convection, some radiation is blocked not by gas but by clouds, etc.) But for the few scientists who paid attention, it was now clear that the question was worth studying. Decades more would pass before scientists began to give the public a clear explanation of what was really going on in these calculations, drawing attention to the high, cold layers of the atmosphere. Even today, many popularizers try to explain the greenhouse effect as if the atmosphere were a single sheet of glass.

In sum, the way radiation is absorbed only matters if you want to calculate the exact degree of warming — adding carbon dioxide will make the greenhouse effect stronger regardless of saturation in the lower atmosphere. But in fact, the Earth’s atmosphere is not even close to being in a state of saturation. With the primitive techniques of his day, Ångström got a bad result, as explained in the Part II . Actually, it’s not clear that he would have appreciated the significance of his result even if he had gotten the correct answer for the way absorption varies with CO2amount. From his writing, it’s a pretty good guess that he’d think a change of absorption of a percent or so upon doubling CO2 would be insignificant. In reality, that mere percent increase, when combined properly with the "thinning and cooling" argument, adds 4 Watts per square meter to the planets radiation balance for doubled CO2. That’s only about a percent of the solar energy absorbed by the Earth, but it’s a highly important percent to us! After all, a mere one percent change in the 280 Kelvin surface temperature of the Earth is 2.8 Kelvin (which is also 2.8 Celsius). And that’s without even taking into account the radiative forcing from all those amplifying feedbacks, like those due to water vapor and ice-albedo.

In any event, modern measurements show that there is not nearly enough CO2 in the atmosphere to block most of the infrared radiation in the bands of the spectrum where the gas absorbs. That’s even the case for water vapor in places where the air is very dry. (When night falls in a desert, the temperature can quickly drop from warm to freezing. Radiation from the surface escapes directly into space unless there are clouds to block it.)

So, if a skeptical friend hits you with the "saturation argument" against global warming, here’s all you need to say: (a) You’d still get an increase in greenhouse warming even if the atmosphere were saturated, because it’s the absorption in the thin upper atmosphere (which is unsaturated) that counts (b) It’s not even true that the atmosphere is actually saturated with respect to absorption by CO2, (c) Water vapor doesn’t overwhelm the effects of CO2 because there’s little water vapor in the high, cold regions from which infrared escapes, and at the low pressures there water vapor absorption is like a leaky sieve, which would let a lot more radiation through were it not for CO2, and (d) These issues were satisfactorily addressed by physicists 50 years ago, and the necessary physics is included in all climate models.

Then you can heave a sigh, and wonder how much different the world would be today if these arguments were understood in the 1920′s, as they could well have been if anybody had thought it important enough to think through.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/

READ ALL ARTICLES FROM TOP DOWN, PLEASE.

Gus: I have long mentioned Einstein's theory of relativity in the debate about global warming... I have long stated that despite Einstein's critics in Germany, he found a voice and respect in the USA, and now Einstein is synonymous with genius — even for the most of conservative minds. I have claimed and still claim with 100 per cent certainty that the great man would be appalled at the way conservative denialists of global warming are behaving... He of all people would chase them cleverly from their temples of greed.

But we're on our own, we are lonely sods — as geniuses have been blended into the privatisation and politicisation of knowledge — to fight this war against deliberate ignorance. The problem of global warming is far more serious than that of paying an extra $100 on an electricity bill today... Global warming will stress this planet beyond belief until it reaches its next balance point. For many humans this will be too late.

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...

In Britain, suspicions were less politically grounded, but relativity’s subversion of Newton was a sensitive issue, leading Einstein to write an encomium for the great English scientist prior to a lecture tour.

Like Einstein’s opponents, who denied relativity because of its perceived association with progressive politics, conservative climate deniers follow the maxim that “my enemy’s friend is my enemy”. Scientists whose research strengthens the claims of environmentalism must be opposed.

Conservative climate deniers often link their repudiation of climate science to fears that cultural values are under attack from “liberals” and progressives. In Weimar Germany, the threat to the cultural order apparently posed by relativity saw Einstein accused of “scientific dadaism”, after the anarchistic cultural and artistic movement then at its peak. The epithet is revealing, because it reflected anxiety that Einstein’s theory would overthrow the established Newtonian understanding of the world, a destabilisation of the physical world that mirrored the subversion of the social order then underway.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/environment/einstein-climate-change-denial-and-politics/

Attributing a single incident to climate change can be controversial, but Douglas Richardson, head of living collections at the Highland Wildlife Park near Kingussie, said: "It's not just one bear though. There are an increasing number of bears in this condition: they are just not putting down enough fat to survive their summer fast. This particular polar bear is the latest bit of evidence of the impact of climate change."

Ice loss due to climate change is "absolutely, categorically and without question" the cause of falling polar bear populations, said Richardson, who cares for the UK's only publicly kept polar bears. He said 16 years was not particularly old for a wild male polar bear, which usually live into their early 20s. "There may have been some underlying disease, but I would be surprised if this was anything other than starvation," he said. "Once polar bears reach adulthood they are normally nigh on indestructible, they are hard as nails."

Jeff Flocken, at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said: "While it is difficult to ascribe a single death or act to climate change it couldn't be clearer that drastic and long-term changes in their Arctic habitat threaten the survival of the polar bear. The threat of habitat loss from climate change, exacerbated by unsustainable killing for commercial trade in Canada, could lead to the demise of one of the world's most iconic animals, and this would be a true tragedy."

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/aug/06/starved-polar-bear-record-sea-ice-melt

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Read article at top... Read also : http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/26870

Polar bear populations are a sensitive topic for the Canadian government, which has faced international criticism for its policies on climate change and for allowing limited hunting of bears, mainly by indigenous communities.

The Canadian environment minister provoked outrage last October when she discounted abundant scientific studies of polar bear decline across the Arctic, saying her brother, a hunter, was having no trouble finding bears. Leona Aglukkaq, an Inuk, spoke of a "debate" about the existence of climate change.

"Scientists latch on to the wildlife in the north to state their case that climate change is happening and the polar bears will disappear and whatnot," she said. "But people on the ground will say the polar bear population is quite healthy. You know, in these regions, the population has increased, in fact. Why are you [saying it's] decreasing?" she told a meeting. "My brother is a full-time hunter who will tell you polar bear populations have increased and scientists are wrong."

Scientists dispute this. One single polar bear population on the western shore of Hudson Bay, for example, has shrunk by nearly 10% to 850 bears in under a decade, according to the latest Canadian government estimate seen by the Guardian.

The rate of decline – and an even sharper drop in the birth and survival rate of young cubs – puts the entire population of western Hudson Bay polar bears at risk of collapse within a matter of years, scientists have warned.

"All indications are that this population could collapse in the space of a year or two if conditions got bad enough," said Andrew Derocher, a polar bear scientist at the University of Alberta.

"In 2020, I think it is still an open bet that we are going to have polar bears in western Hudson Bay."

The latest Canadian government estimates, which have yet to be shared with independent scientists or the public, confirm scientists' fears that the polar bears of the western Hudson Bay have little chance of long-term survival.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/27/polar-bears-climate-change-canada-hudson-bay/print

Like the NEW Australian crappy government, the Canadian government is a fierce disbeliever in climate change... Actually, I think the Canadian government is hoping global warming will improve their nordic winters — but it wont... As well, in one of the articles above, I have stated that the Inuit could find more bears "closer" to their settlements mostly because the bear population had to move closer to land due to lack of ice...

See winter storm in the US: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/11/27/round-up-east-coast-storm-battering-new-england-some-snow-on-backside/

See also: 

October mean temperatures were unusually warm, with a national anomaly 1.43 °C above the 1961–1990 average. This means that Australia has seen 15 consecutive months of warmer-than-average temperatures, with numerous records broken as a result.

This continuation of unusually high spring temperatures has been sufficient to break the national record for the warmest 12-month period again, the third consecutive month in which a new record has been set.

Averaged over the 12 months from November 2012 to October 2013, Australian mean temperatures were 1.30 °C above the 1961–1990 average. This surpasses the records set in the previous two months (+1.25 °C for October 2012 to September 2013 and +1.11 °C for September 2012 to August 2013) and is some 0.22 °C warmer than any 12-month period prior to 2013 (+1.08 °C for February 2005 to January 2006).

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/?ref=ftr

NOTE: THESE 15 consecutive months ARE above the NEW average based on the 1961-1991 record... BASED on the 1850-1991 average record, Australia has been approaching 400 months continuously above this OLD average...

Please also visit: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/27479

See also story at top and all stories below it...

Note: as mentioned earlier, I have accidentally substituted "anthropomorphic" for "anthropogenic" in some of the articles above. It is anthropogenic in regard to the source of global warming — and anthropomorphic in regard to humans applying human traits to animals or things.

Conservative groups may have spent up to $1bn a year on the effort to deny science and oppose action on climate change, according to the first extensive study into the anatomy of the anti-climate effort.

The anti-climate effort has been largely underwritten by conservative billionaires, often working through secretive funding networks. They have displaced corporations as the prime supporters of 91 think tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations which have worked to block action on climate change. Such financial support has hardened conservative opposition to climate policy, ultimately dooming any chances of action from Congress to cut greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet, the study found.

“I call it the climate-change counter movement,” said the author of the study, Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle. “It is not just a couple of rogue individuals doing this. This is a large-scale political effort.”

Brulle's study, published on Friday in the journal Climatic Change, offers the most definitive exposure to date of the political and financial forces blocking American action on climate change. Still, there are big gaps.

It was not always possible to separate funds designated strictly for climate-change work from overall budgets, Brulle said. “Since the majority of the organizations are multiple focus organizations, not all of this income was devoted to climate change activities.”

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/20/conservative-groups-1bn-against-climate-change

Read all articles from top...

The freezing polar vortex that has gripped the US has extended an abnormally mild winter in Scandinavia and disrupted the seasonal patterns of flora and fauna.

The weather system that brought snow, ice and record low temperaturesto many parts of the United States this week left Iceland, Greenland and Scandinavia much warmer than normal.

On the back of a generally mild winter, there have been reports of bears emerging early from hibernation in Finland, changes in the behaviour of migratory birds off the coast of Sweden and plants appearing earlier than normal in Norway.

Scandinavia and Russia's cold weather during the winter comes from a high-pressure system that keeps warmer, more humid air and low-pressure systems with wind and rain from coming up from the Atlantic Ocean.

The weakening of the jetstream that holds this in place has allowed cold air to spill further south into much of the United States and Canada, while bringing above-average temperatures to parts of Europe.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/10/polar-vortex-us-mild-weather-scandinavia

Global warming is shifting patterns substantially — as predicted by most climate models. Read articles from top.

Say I were to ask you to prove that the dinosaurs were wiped out when an asteroid collided with the Earth 66m years ago, in what is now snappily called the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event.

If you were as weirdly obsessed by these catastrophes as I am, you would maybe start by citing the worldwide layer of sediment known as K-Pg boundary, which was first discovered near Gubbio, in Italy, and is thought to be the fallout from a massive explosion. You would mention the soot that is associated with this layer, the site of a huge impact in the Yucatán region of Mexico 66m years ago and, finally, you'd ask what else could have caused the dinosaurs to die out more or less overnight. A sceptic might respond that this is all supposition, evidence tenuously linked to fit a very recent theory: none of it constitutes proof and no one can ever know why the dinosaurs vanished to allow the rise of mammals and the eventual evolution of man.

So you would quote more evidence, such as the presence in the K-Pg layer of iridium, an element rare on Earth but not in asteroids, as well as the altered state of quartz, which can only be made under extremely high pressure, such as is caused by a huge impact of a 10km asteroid. You would mention the long darkness when only ferns grew and the fact that the seas were emptied of all but the most tenacious species.

Ah, but this is still all very hypothetical, the sceptic would say, at which point you might give up and tell him, yes, a spacecraft might have visited Earth and exterminated 75% of the world's species, but you're going with the best available evidence. The sceptic would walk away, satisfied that he had achieved a draw, not from the merit of his argument, but simply because he had not let you convince him.

This is where we are with the climate change deniers. The absolute proof of manmade global warming is unlikely to arrive until it is too late and so the deniers are scrupulously indulged with equal time in the argument, where, taking the part of Little Britain's wheelchair user Andy to our Lou, nothing is ever good enough for them.

read more at: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/16/climate-change-deniers-put-up-or-shut-up

Actually the undeniable proof of human-made global warming is here to be seen. Humans are releasing 3 to 4 per cent EXTRA carbon dioxide per year into the atmosphere. The science can demonstrate that the relationship between higher temperature in the atmosphere and higher concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere are linked by a complex sets of feed-back mechanisms. The natural variations of CO2 in the atmosphere have been measured at between 180 to 300 PPM. The present CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, due to the EXTRA  human-made CO2, has now passed 400 PPM.

How long is a piece of string? How have the denialists managed to steal both ends of the string? The media in general and Mr Murdoch in particular have supported the denialist option through supporting scientifically ignoramus moronic politicians. The debate has never been had, as the terms have been "framed" by the highest idiotic common denominator by the people with the greater ability of deceit. 

Deceit and denialism go hand in hand and the truth is always a poor relative of lies, the truth often placed in prison by the brilliant porkyists...

The day we start to feel the heat will be too late to stop it, but never too late to stop the damage being catastrophic.

Read articles from top.

In this line of blogs I mention the damage done by goats... Now:

The humble goat, an animal that has long been seen predominantly as a pest, is helping farmers turn a profit even in some of the country's most arid areas.

Katie and Ed Davies run Fairmount Station, south of Wilcannia, a town that straddles the famous Darling River in western New South Wales.

"The goat is an amazing animal," Ms Davies said.

"We've gone from having a pest animal into a resource now. It is a lean, green source of protein and you can't ask for better than that."

It is the couple's second year on the land after years striving to raise the funds to achieve their goal of buying a rangeland station.

Ed spent a decade working underground in the mines of Broken Hill, a two-hour drive west, and also runs an earthmoving business for additional off-farm income.

Katie still spends the weekdays in Broken Hill, employed in the mining industry.

But goats are the main focus of their enterprise.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-21/goats-helping-farmers-turn-profits-in-arid-areas/5539152

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The goat is an amazing animal. when it feeds it eats roots as well as the rest of plants... Goats, I have claimed and still claim, are responsible for creating and maintaining many deserts.

... some people believe in phenomena rejected by science, like chemtrails, but deny real problems demonstrated by massive amounts of scientific evidence, like climate change. Dr David Suzuki comments.

Last year, I wrote about geoengineering as a strategy to deal with climate change and carbon dioxide emissions. That drew comments from people who confuse this scientific process with the unscientific theory of 'chemtrails'. Some also claimed the column supported geoengineering, which it didn't.

The reaction got me wondering why some people believe in phenomena rejected by science, like chemtrails, but deny real problems demonstrated by massive amounts of scientific evidence, like climate change.

Chemtrails believers claim governments around the world are in cahoots with secret organizations to seed the atmosphere with chemicals and materials – aluminum salts, barium crystals, biological agents, polymer fibres, and so on – for a range of nefarious purposes. These include controlling weather for military purposes, poisoning people for population or mind control and supporting secret weapons programs based on the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP.

Scientists have tested and used cloud and atmospheric seeding for weather modification and considered them as ways to slow global warming. With so many unknowns and possible unintended consequences, these practices have the potential to cause harm. But the chemtrails conspiracy theory is much broader, positing that military and commercial airlines are involved in constant massive daily spraying that is harming the physical and mental health of citizens worldwide.

I don't have space to get into the absurdities of belief in a plot that would require worldwide collusion between governments, scientists and airline company executives and pilots to amass and spray unimaginable amounts of chemicals from altitudes of 10,000 metres or more. I'm a scientist, so I look at credible science — and there is simply none for the existence of chemtrails. They're condensation trails, formed when hot, humid air from jet exhaust mixes with colder low-vapour-pressure air. This, of course, comes with its own environmental problems.

But what interests me is the connection between climate change denial and belief in chemtrails. Why do so many people accept a theory for which there is no scientific evidence, while rejecting a serious and potentially catastrophic phenomenon that can be easily observed and for which overwhelming evidence has been building for decades?

To begin, climate change denial and chemtrails theories are often conspiracy-based.

 A study by researchers at the University of Western Australia found

Not all go to such extremes. Some accept climate change is occurring but deny humans are responsible.

Still, it doesn't seem rational to deny something so undeniable!

In a Bloomberg article, author and Harvard Law School professor Cass R. Sunstein points to three psychological barriers to accepting climate change that may also help explain why it's easier for people to believe in chemtrails — people look to readily available examples when assessing danger, focus 'on risks or hazards that have an identifiable perpetrator', and pay more attention to immediate threats than long-term ones.

Researchers Ezra Markowitz and Azim Shariff of the University of Oregon Psychology and Environmental Studies departments add a few more, including that human-caused climate change 'provokes self-defensive biases' and its politicization 'fosters ideological polarization'.

People who subscribe to unbelievable conspiracy theories may feel helpless, so they see themselves as victims of powerful forces — or as heroes standing up to those forces. Whether it's to deny real problems or promulgate imaginary ones, it helps reinforce a worldview that is distrustful of governments, media, scientists and shadowy cabals variously referred to as banksters, global elites, the Illuminati or the New World Order.

The problem is that science denial is, in the case of chemtrails, a wacky distraction and, in the case of climate change denial, a barrier to addressing an urgent, critical problem.

Science is rarely 100 per cent certain, but it's the best tool we have for coming to terms with our actions and their consequences, and for finding solutions to problems.

The science is clear: human-caused climate change is the most pressing threat to humanity, and we must work to resolve it. We don't have time for debunked conspiracy theories.

With contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington. Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

see more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/a-tale-of-two-conspiracy-theories-chemtrails-and-climate-change-denial,6792

read from top...

A 16-minute video of U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's speech to Congress is the most sobering evidence yet of the threat to our very existence by the powerful oligarchs behind the apparatus of lies that is the Climate Denial Beast.

ALL THROUGH 2014, the hottest year on record, a junior U.S. Senator from Rhode Island (Democrat) continued to ramp up the heat on climate deniers. Sheldon Whitehouse has delivered a “scorcher” on climate change in each of the 83 weeks that Congress has been in session since he won the seat in 2007. But no speech more relevant to Australia given our own place in the shadowy global denialist web was his dissection of the Climate Denial Beast.

Skilfully laying bare the innards of the beast, Whitehouse names its parts: the 91 conservative think tanks (or phoney “front” groups), media outlets, etc. that make up the propaganda machine and the source of the dark money flowing through its veins – the 140-odd “foundations”. Sound familiar? It should. The same beast funded by similar vested interests roams at large here in Australia (led by our own “climate sceptic factory” the Institute of Public Affairs), just as it does in the U.K.

A 16-minute video of Whitehouse’s speech is the most sobering evidence yet of the threat to our very existence by powerful oligarchs. If you watch nothing else this weekend, make sure you watch this and share it around.

read more: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-climate-denial-beast,7288

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Shortly after part one of the latest IPCC report came out back in September 2013, scientists gathered at the Royal Society in London to discuss the 1,552-page opus like a bunch of gossips around the latest People Magazine. Journalist Leo Hickman was at the two-day conference and, as he writes in this month’s Nature Climate Change, recalls the U.K. chief scientific advisor at one point standing in front of the crowd and saying, “Science is not finished until it’s communicated.”

Indeed, as complicated as climate science is, the problem of how to communicate said science can sometimes seem even more complicated — which is a pretty big problem, considering that the fate of our species rests on how well we understand this stuff.

So to get a sense of how the media’s doing with its coverage of climate change, a group of researchers from the University of Exeter (plus one dude from the University of Colorado-Boulder) decided to assess how various news outlets in both the U.S. and the U.K. covered the latest 3-part IPCC report (parts two and three came out in March and April of 2014, respectively).

Here’s the short version of their results: The U.K. had way more coverage than the U.S.; both countries appeared to lose interest by the third installment of the report; the Guardian was the overall shining star, which is maybe not surprising given its recent declaration of war on climate change; news outlets are drawn to dramatic narratives (but isn’t this all just one big dramatic narrative?) and human interest angles (ditto); and there’s been a notable lack of interest in the media on how climate change will impact human health.

The researchers looked specifically at stories that came out during the two weeks surrounding each of the three releases. They assessed both the amount of coverage and the content of the coverage, which they refer to as its “frame.”

The possible frames were: settled science (SS), political or ideological struggle (PIS), role of science (ROS), uncertain science (US), disaster (D), security (S), morality and ethics (ME), opportunity (O), economics (E), and health (H).

read more: http://grist.org/science/these-scientists-studied-journalists-covering-science-whoa-meta/

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A group of farmers who travelled to Canberra as part of a climate change advocacy campaign were disappointed with the response from Coalition members of parliament.

The group were there to promote Earth Hour, which will aim to raise awareness for the impact of climate change on farmers and food production this Saturday.

Earth Hour is an annual event in which people around the world turn out their lights for climate change.

Over the course of two days, the farmers met with MPs from different parties, as well as independents, to share their personal experiences of working on the land, and the changes in temperature and rainfall variability they had witnessed.

Queensland producer and Dairy Farmer of the Year Greg Dennis said he and his peers were generally well received in meetings during the visit.

But Mr Dennis said it was during a meeting with Coalition members on Thursday that they met resistance to the idea of taking more action on climate change.

He said the farmers faced more opposition on their climate change message during the Coalition meeting than in any other.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-27/farmers-disappointed-over-resistance-on-climate-action/6351572

On this site I have quite a few times referred to scientists being scare of what is happening to the climate. Mostly because we have not seen anything yet... we are not paying attention. We don't want to know... Our leaders are cads, psychopaths, capitalists with no desire to learn anything contrary to their doctrine of "growth is good, greed is good"... All crap...

From Rod Dreher:

I read a couple of long pieces last night at bedtime that were scary but illuminating, and cast reflections on our own chief cultural crisis in the West. This requires some unpacking.

First, John H. Richardson’s piece in Esquire about trauma and depression among climate scientists is a must-read. It profiles top scientists working on the global warming issue, and how they deal with their intense depression over what they believe is coming, and the world’s failure to take their warnings seriously. The sub-headline sums it up: “Things are worse than we think, but they can’t really talk about it.” Look:

"For more than thirty years, climate scientists have been living a surreal existence. A vast and ever-growing body of research shows that warming is tracking the rise of greenhouse gases exactly as their models predicted. The physical evidence becomes more dramatic every year: forests retreating, animals moving north, glaciers melting, wildfire seasons getting longer, higher rates of droughts, floods, and storms—five times as many in the 2000s as in the 1970s. In the blunt words of the 2014 National Climate Assessment, conducted by three hundred of America’s most distinguished experts at the request of the U. S. government, human-induced climate change is real—U. S. temperatures have gone up between 1.3 and 1.9 degrees, mostly since 1970—and the change is already affecting “agriculture, water, human health, energy, transportation, forests, and ecosystems.” But that’s not the worst of it. Arctic air temperatures are increasing at twice the rate of the rest of the world—a study by the U. S. Navy says that the Arctic could lose its summer sea ice by next year, eighty-four years ahead of the models—and evidence little more than a year old suggests the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is doomed, which will add between twenty and twenty-five feet to ocean levels. The one hundred million people in Bangladesh will need another place to live and coastal cities globally will be forced to relocate, a task complicated by economic crisis and famine—with continental interiors drying out, the chief scientist at the U. S. State Department in 2009 predicted a billion people will suffer famine within twenty or thirty years. And yet, despite some encouraging developments in renewable energy and some breakthroughs in international leadership, carbon emissions continue to rise at a steady rate, and for their pains the scientists themselves—the cruelest blow of all—have been the targets of an unrelenting and well-organized attack that includes death threats, summonses from a hostile Congress, attempts to get them fired, legal harassment, and intrusive discovery demands so severe they had to start their own legal-defense fund, all amplified by a relentless propaganda campaign nakedly financed by the fossil-fuel companies. Shortly before a pivotal climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, thousands of their e-mail streams were hacked in a sophisticated espionage operation that has never been solved—although the official police investigation revealed nothing, an analysis by forensics experts traced its path through servers in Turkey and two of the world’s largest oil producers, Saudi Arabia and Russia."

Read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-crises-we-dont-see-islam-global-warming-metaphysics/

Gus: On this site early in 2005, I postulated that the poles would be warming faster than the equatorial region. This would leads to a variety of "climate change" in a global warming conditions. Some serious calculations of such changes done on super computers have led some scientists to "shit in their pants"...

By 2040, the climatic conditions will start to flip. Gus own calculations and estimates have placed this flip at 2032. In the most conservative estimates, the flip will have been in full swing by 2057... Now, all these figures are not picked out of thin air. The climatic "flips" does not mean that the pole will be like the equator and the equator like the present pole... 

The warming will become obvious to our senses. Weather patterns will be totally out of whack. Winters could become like summers and summers like hell... Storms could become super-powerful and far more frequent... The list of traumatic events will be beyond belief. Floods, drought, storms, snap cold, warm bubbles, acceleration of the rising of the oceans. Extinction. trouble...

Read from top...

In private conversations, many climate scientists express far greater concern at the progression of global warming and its consequences than they do in public, writes Dr Andrew Glikson.

In an article titled When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job, a reference to a study by the University of Bristol cites, "Climate scientists have been so distracted and intimidated by the relentless campaign against them that they tend to avoid any statements that might get them labelled 'alarmists', retreating into a world of charts and data."

An analogy comes to mind of a medical team advising distressed relatives of the prognosis of a cancer patient, indicating a possible remission should the patient cease smoking. Some of the relatives plunge into depression but some criticise and attack the doctors, aided and abetted by the tobacco industry.

It is not uncommon to hear people criticising climate scientists for not telling them more about the climate, although when they are told, many recoil.

By contrast, in private conversations many climate scientists express far greater concern at the progression of global warming and its consequences than they do in public.

So why don't many scientists talk more directly to the public?

There is more than one answer to this question.

For one, they do. A number of prominent climate scientists, mostly representing the scientific consensus on climate change documented by the IPCC, have tried their best to convey the message in public forums. These scientists are mostly shunned by the conservative media which commonly offers platforms for those who do not accept the scientific evidence and the basic laws of nature.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-29/glikson-the-dilemma-of-a-climate-scientist/7123246

Since 2005, this site has been relentless at exposing that "scientists are shitting in their pants" for what they really know about global warming. These scientists though are afraid of the MMMMM (the Murdoch Mediocre Mass Media de Mierda) which rules the communications in the Western English world. They also are annoyed at other scientists who, paid by the coal and other fossil fuel industries, combat the notion of global warming with rubbish scientific nonsense and glib sentences such as "global warming is crap".

Not only that, most politicians are ignoramuses of the real sciences and will go for the least that can be done or even less with great fanfare about spending money — of course in the wrong places, like paying their mates to pollute "less" by fiddling the books. 

Bob Carter, one of the main denialist, died recently. He "was paid a monthly fee of $1,667 (USD) "as part of a program to pay 'high-profile individuals who regularly and publicly counter the alarmist [anthropogenic global warming] message by the Heartland Institute", which itself is financed by big business and rich individuals — mostly making money from fossil fuel industries.

Now I have nothing against anyone questioning the validity of the science of global warming and the propoment of anthropogenic warming do that every day. They question the validity of their observations — and the more they compute and challenge themselves, the more afraid they are of the result: WE ARE IN SHIT-HOT TROUBLE.

Read article from top and those posted in 2005. Gus Leonisky has been on the case since 1979.

As part of the 62nd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, Giaever referred to agreement with the evidence of climate change as a "religion" and commented on the significance of the apparent rise in temperature when he stated, "What does it mean that the temperature has gone up 0.8 degrees [Kelvin/Celsius]? Probably nothing." Referring to the selection of evidence in his presentation, Giaever stated "I pick and choose when I give this talk just the way the previous speaker (Mario Molina) picked and chose when he gave his talk." Giaever concluded his presentation with a pronouncement: "Is climate change pseudoscience? If I’m going to answer the question, the answer is: absolutely."[15][16]

Giaever is currently a science advisor at The Heartland Institute.[17]

-----------------------

Giaever is not a climate scientist. He may understand things about "holes" (tunnels) in solids and semi-conductors but he understands zilch, nada, nothing about the complexity of global warming which his "next door neighbour", Sven Arrhenius (Swedish), devised the calculation of, 120 years ago. There is no religious "belief" in the scientific observations of global warming. And 0.8 degrees (Kelvin or Celsius which is the same difference, except different point of origin) is a massive amount of EXTRA energy on the surface of the planet, even if Giaever thinks it's peanuts. But what we have here is a process, already started, that is going to take the surface temperature of this planet beyond 9 degrees Celsius extra to what we have now in the near future, say a couple of century or less. 

Giaever is an idiot with a Nobel Prize. Congratulations.

Pressure is mounting on ExxonMobil to explain why the oil giant funded climate denial around the world years after its own scientists established global warming was real.

Exxon has a long history of funding climate denial and last September it was revealed that it did so despite a full scientific knowledge about the impacts of manmade climate change in the 1970s’ and ‘80s.

This prompted the New York Attorney General to subpoena ExxonMobil to “determine whether the company lied to the public about the risks of climate change or to investors about how those risks might hurt the oil business.” A similar investigation has also been launched in California.

These revelations tell us what Exxon knew. The investigations in New York and California are asking ‘what did Exxon do?’

Exxon in the EU

So, while the oil giant has been getting a lot of heat in the U.S. for funding climate denial, this DeSmog UK investigation takes these questions across the Atlantic, and asks: what has ExxonMobil been up to in Europe?

The past 10 years are pretty murky when it comes to deciphering ExxonMobil’s climate denial activities in Europe.

In 2007, the oil giant pledged to stop funding climate denial groups in response to pressure from shareholder activists. However, eight years later the company was found to have given more than $2.3m (£1.7m) to an American lobbying group and members of Congress that deny climate change and block efforts to tackle the issue.

It begs the question: has ExxonMobil been up to the same tricks in Europe?

The last time a full analysis of Exxon’s ties to European climate denial think tanks was done was in 2006 by transparency watchdogs Corporate Europe Observatory, the year before Exxon pledged to stop funding such groups.

In January, DeSmog UK revealed that Exxon spent at least £5.6m in 2014 on EU lobby efforts and corporate donations. The oil giant has also donated more than £2.36m to 15 of the top universities in the UK over the past five years. Now we map the various European groups which are tied to Exxon.

2014 Groups

According to ExxonMobil’s latest entry for 2014 in the voluntary EU Transparency Register, it is a member of more than a dozen trade associations, think tanks and lobby groups. Many focus on energy and climate policy with some having a reputation for opposing climate action.

Two of these groups also have close ties helping the tobacco industry’s campaign against the science confirming health impacts from its products. The tobacco industry is notorious for its playbook for stalling control measures on the industry – a large feature of this was funding scientists to cast doubt on the mainstream scientific consensus. Sound familiar? ExxonMobil is currently being investigated for its climate denial efforts in both New York State andCalifornia.

More specifically, ExxonMobil was a member of at least five European think tanks in 2014 according to its latest voluntary lobby register entry. Prior to that it’s a bit hazier, so let’s start with the most recent:

Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)

This think tank was originally set up to deal primarily with issues related to the European integration in the early 1980s.

On climate change, its website describes its main priorities as carbon markets and emissions trading as well as international negotiations. It reads: “The focus of our research is on the design of EU climate change policies to ensure the progressive engagement of the EU’s main international partners. The key challenge is to think about howEU initiatives… could foster the involvement of the broadest possible number of countries.”

CEPS most recent lobby spend is for 2013, when it declared it spent no more than £7,600 (€9,999). The main EUpolicies it’s interested in include TTIP and Energy 2030 along with energy, climate change, and regulatory policies.

This past March, CEPS invited William Colton, Vice President of corporate strategic planning at Exxon, to explain to “Brussels” how ExxonMobil views the future of energy. Unfortunately for Exxon it got some serious push-back by experts in the audience.

Annual corporate membership ranges from £4,562 to £13,685 (€6,000 to €18,000) depending on the company’s size. But if you’re part of the “inner circle corporate membership” this will cost you £22,809 (€30,000).

European Policy Centre (EPC)

The EPC describes itself as an independent think tankt that “supports European integration, with a multi-constituency membership”. It has a pretty extensive membership list which, beyond Exxon, also includes Chevron, Statoil, Edelman, Ikea, Facebook, and Google. The annual membership fee for a multinational corporation is £7,603 (€10,000).

The think tank spent between £1.71 and £1.9m (€2.25m – €2.5m) in 2014 lobbying the EU commission. Among its many listed interests you can find energy, climate action and the environment as well as agriculture, education, and public health.

This is one group that has ties to the tobacco industry. In January 2010, a report revealed that in the 1990s EPChelped tobacco companies, as well as other industry groups, to lobby to increase “the likelihood that the EU will produce policies that advance the interests of major corporations, including those that produce products damaging to health, rather than in the interests of its citizens.”

As documents show, British American Tobacco approached EPC on the issue. The EPC then formed an organisation called the Risk Assessment Forum.

This was essentially a front group through which Big Tobacco and other corporations lobbied for EU policies to incorporate rigorous impact assessments – these assign monetary values to the costs and benefits of a particular policy and are criticised for their inability of assigning easily measurable values to fundamental impacts such as lives lost or harmed compared to business impacts. BAT believed incorporating such assessments would weaken or eliminate the introduction of public smoking restrictions and those against tobacco advertising.

During the 1990s, the EPC also had close ties to the now-defunct climate sceptic think tank, the European Science and Environment Forum. You can read DeSmog UK’s account on how this climate sceptic think tank came into being and what it did to attack the science here.

Friends of Europe

This think tank has a broad focus to promote “new thinking” on political, economic and environmental issues in Europe. Corporate membership costs £1,558 (€2,050) per year.

In 2014, it declared a lobby spend of less than £7,600 (€9,999). Among its listed policy interests you can find climate action, environment and energy as well as health, education, and single markets.

ExxonMobil has sponsored a couple of the think tank’s events on energy. For example, in 2013 it sponsored the European Policy Summit co-hosted by Friends of Europe and where ExxonMobil executives were among the speakers. You can read all about it in the Summit report summary: A New EU Energy Policy for the 21st Century.

More recently, Exxon’s name is also plastered on a spring 2015 report on Europe’s Energy Outlook: The race against the clock based on that year’s European Policy Summit attended by Exxon.

CERA

This entry was pretty obscure on Exxon’s registry as the oil giant prefers to name all organisations by acronym rather than their full title.

However, a separate Austrian petroleum company, OMV Aktiengesellschaft, also lists itself as a member of CERA on the EU lobby registry, except it took the time to spell out the full titles for each of the organisations it declared membership to.

This shows that CERA stands for the Cambridge Energy Research Associates – an international energy consultancy operating under the parent company IHS (Information Handling Services). CERA specialises in advising governments and private companies on energy markets, geopolitics, industry trends, and strategy.

Exxon has repeatedly been a ‘strategic partner’ of the annual IHS CERAweek event, including in 2014. And last year, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson gave a keynote address at the conference where he spoke of the environmental benefits of natural gas and the opportunities in the Arctic.

Exxon also helped fund at least one of CERA's research projects – a 2006 report entitled Modernizing Oil and Gas Reserves Disclosures. This report was then sent by CERA to Florence Harmon, Acting Secretary Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington D.C. in September 2008.

Council for Multilateral Business Diplomacy

Like CERA, this Geneva-based group also seemed pretty mysterious. At first. It does not have a lobby register entry and much of the content on its original website – as well as the new one the first redirects you to – is password protected. But it seems this group has pretty serious connections with top officials, and it focuses a lot on climate change. It’s also relatively small, with just 22 members in 2016.

The organisation was established in 2007. According to its LinkedIn description, this group “provides a forum for informal dialogue on global policy issues between representatives of multinational enterprises and international organizations… It is designed to bring business together with the many institutions and international organizations based in Europe that directly affect the commercial and regulatory environment for international business.”

ExxonMobil has been a member since 2008 according to the Council’s annual reports. That year Council members were able to be briefed by, and discuss climate, energy and environment issues with, senior officials of the World Health Organisation, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the World Meteorological Organization, and the OECD.

In 2010, the Council hosted a luncheon meeting with Dr Renate Christ, Secretary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, following the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit. As its annual report describes: “Dr Christ gave useful insights on the 2009 Copenhagen Summit and the IPCC work plan for its next assessment report and special studies on the carbon cycle, sea level changes, agricultural practices, housing and ethics.”

http://www.desmog.uk/2016/02/10/here-are-european-think-tanks-tied-exxon-2014

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and 

a puff piece from the idiot destroying the CSIRO... in the hospital you don't want to end up in...