The Drone Armies

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/08/31/eaclimate131.xml

The 'consensus' on climate change is a catastrophe in itself

By Christopher Booker

As the estimated cost of measures proposed by politicians to "combat global warming" soars ever higher – such as the International Energy Council's $45 trillion – "fighting climate change" has become the single most expensive item on the world's political agenda.

As Senators Obama and McCain vie with the leaders of the European Union to promise 50, 60, even 80 per cent cuts in "carbon emissions", it is clear that to realise even half their imaginary targets would necessitate a dramatic change in how we all live, and a drastic reduction in living standards.

All this makes it rather important to know just why our politicians have come to believe that global warming is the most serious challenge confronting mankind, and just how reliable is the evidence for the theory on which their policies are based.

By far the most influential player in putting climate change at the top of the global agenda has been the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Chan ge (IPCC), set up in 1988, not least on the initiative of the Thatcher government. (This was why the first chairman of its scientific working group was Sir John Houghton, then the head of the UK's Meteorological Office.)

Through a succession of reports and international conferences, it was the IPCC which led to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, soon to have an even more ambitious successor, to be agreed in Copenhagen next year.

The common view of the IPCC is that it consists of 2,500 of the world's leading scientists who, after carefully weighing all the evidence, have arrived at a "consensus" that world temperatures are rising disastrously, and that the only plausible cause has been rising levels of CO2 and other man-made greenhouse gases.

In fact, as has become ever more apparent over the past 20 years –not least thanks to the evidence of a succession of scientists who have participated in the IPCC itself – the reality of this curious body could scarcely be more different.

It is not so much a scientific as a political organisation. Its brief has never been to look dispassionately at all the evidence for man-made global warming: it has always taken this as an accepted fact.

Indeed only a comparatively small part of its reports are concerned with the science of climate change at all. The greater part must start by accepting the official line, and are concerned only with assessing the impact of warming and what should be done about it.

In reality the IPCC's agenda has always been tightly controlled by the small group of officials at its head. As one recent study has shown, of the 53 contributors to the key Chapter 9 of the latest report dealing with the basic science (most of them British and American, and 10 of them associated with the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office), 37 belong to a closely related network of academics who are all active promoters of the official warming thesis.

It is on the projections of their computer models that all the IPCC's predictions of future warming are based.

The final step in the process is that, before each report is published, a "Summary for Policymakers" is drafted by those at the top of the IPCC, to which governments can make input.

It is this which makes headlines in the media, and which all too frequently eliminates the more carefully qualified findings of contributors to the report itself.

The idea that the IPCC represents any kind of genuine scientific "consensus" is a complete fiction. Again and again there have been examples of how evidence has been manipulated to promote the official line, the most glaring instance being the notorious "hockey stick".

Initially the advocates of global warming had one huge problem. Evidence from all over the world indicated that the earth was hotter 1,000 years ago than it is today.

This was so generally accepted that the first two IPCC reports included a graph, based on work by Sir John Houghton himself, showing that temperatures were higher in what is known as the Mediaeval Warming period than they were in the 1990s.

The trouble was that this blew a mighty hole in the thesis that warming was caused only by recent man-made CO2.

Then in 1999 an obscure young US physicist, Michael Mann, came up with a new graph like nothing seen before.

Instead of the familiar rises and falls in temperature over the past 1,000 years, the line ran virtually flat, only curving up dramatically at the end in a hockey-stick shape to show recent decades as easily the hottest on record.

This was just what the IPCC wanted, The Mediaeval Warming had simply been wiped from the record.

When its next report came along in 2001, Mann's graph was given top billing, appearing right at the top of page one of the Summary for Policymakers and five more times in the report proper.

But then two Canadian computer analysts, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, got to work on how Mann had arrived at his graph.

When, with great difficulty, they eventually persuaded Mann to hand over his data, it turned out he had built into his programme an algorithm which would produce a hockey stick shape whatever data were fed into it.

Even numbers from the phonebook would come out looking like a hockey stick.

By the time of its latest report, last year, the IPCC had an even greater problem. Far from continuing to rise in line with rising CO2, as its computer models predicted they should, global temperatures since the abnormally hot year of 1998 had flattened out at a lower level and were even falling – a trend confirmed by Nasa's satellite readings over the past 18 months.

So pronounced has this been that even scientists supporting the warmist thesis now concede that, due to changes in ocean currents, we can expect a decade or more of "cooling", before the "underlying warming trend" reappears.

The point is that none of this was predicted by the computer models on which the IPCC relies.

Among the ever-growing mountain of informed criticism of the IPCC's methods, a detailed study by an Australian analyst John McLean (to find it, Google "Prejudiced authors, prejudiced findings") shows just how incestuously linked are most of the core group of academics whose models underpin everything the IPCC wishes us to believe about global warming.

The significance of the past year is not just that the vaunted "consensus" on the forces driving our climate has been blown apart as never before, but that a new "counter-consensus" has been emerging among thousands of scientists across the world, given expression in last March's Manhattan Declaration by the so-called Non-Governmental Panel on Climate Change.

This wholly repudiates the IPCC process, showing how its computer models are hopelessly biased, based on unreliable data and programmed to ignore many of the genuine drivers of climate change, from variations in solar activity to those cyclical shifts in ocean currents.

As it was put by Roger Cohen, a senior US physicist formerly involved with the IPCC process, who long accepted its orthodoxy: "I was appalled at how flimsy the case is. I was also appalled at the behaviour of many of those who helped produce the IPCC reports and by many of those who promote it.

"In particular I am referring to the arrogance, the activities aimed at shutting down debate; the outright fabrications; the mindless defence of bogus science; and the politicisation of the IPCC process and the science process itself."

Yet it is at just this moment, when the IPCC's house of cards is crumbling, that the politicians of the Western world are using it to propose steps that can only damage our way of life beyond recognition.

It really is time for that "counter-consensus" to be taken seriously.



If the window was open, if the thoughts flew away, if we were savaged and salvaged, lost ruins, broken flesh, diseased, wounded, he staggered. What was it all about? Why had the core dreams disintegrated so early? Why had the people he so passionately believed in just slipped away? Quietly. Their final years battles with illness. Pain. Colin has broken his jaw during a fall in the latest of a string of disasters that makes you wonder, whatever happened to the quality of life? Is it really worth the grief? Who wants to live to a 100? Someone who's 99.

Cold calamity stalked the middle years. There was danger in the alleys, late at night, the strange corners of the city he would find himself in, but mostly it was soporific, grey, growing older without purpose, drunk. Always drunk. He met them now, and caught glimpses of his own past lives, their grog blossoms and their unhealthy, clammy skin, the fanatic gleam in their eyes as they ranted left wing dogma about the evils of the modern world, anything to disrupt the mainstream and the neat suburban houses that surrounded them.

They went down the chute to the tune of clinking bottles, the acres of dreams, the clammy toil. They swilled and he ranted and they frothed, and global warming had provided them with the perfect foil, the perfect set of manufactured beliefs, confirming everything they had always suspected about the evils of the mainstream world. Now they could prove it. Industry was destroying the planet. We were choking on our own gasses. The evils of capitalism were now there for all to see, the belching smoke stacks, the dying fish, the poisoned lakes, the bare stick trees. And all they had to do was turn off light bulbs, and they too could be part of the noblest enterprise, saving the planet.

He was born sceptical, he liked to think, out of the womb sneering, what's all this about? But in fact it was the job and the Family Court which had finally entrenched in him the belief that most of what constituted mainstream culture was little more than bull shit. He was satisfied they were evil. He knew they couldn't pretend any more. He knew that lies were mostly what the populace believed, that their heads had been filled with garbage, deliberately, and the entire culture had been dumbed down. Trivia from TV, a few false beliefs, a fear of stepping out of line, and hey presto, a compliant population, their heads filled with trash.

We shiver through one of the coldest winters in years and visions of the apocalypse plague us on TV, warning of the perils of global warming. People of good will still believe. It has become universal mantra, a sign of intelligence, sensitivity. Dare to disagree and you're a Neanderthal. Yet surely there is much to disbelieve in. Give the planet a chance, they say, caring more for the abstract than the particular. Just as people care more for their animals than they do for each other, pampering their pooches with special diets while next door an old person starves to death, unable to get out of the bathroom after having fallen and broken their hip. We don't know what we don't want to know.

We don't care any more, because there's always the characters on the flickering screen to keep us company. There's always mass politics, mass beliefs, and the number of people who actually read newspapers is infinitesimal. We drop our heads sadly, defeated. Ideas count for nothing. Truth is irrelevant. He is moved by the shadows, the darkness, old fashioned truth seekers, diamonds in the dross, piercing ideas and piercing truths, but none of this makes any impact in the land of clones, the armies of drones, the stifling sweetness that had become the overwhelming conformity of the age. All was lost. All was shadowed. And he peaked out slowly, trying to determine if it was safe? No, no it wasn't.



http://progn.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/global-warming-has-ended/

The Space and Science Research Center Issues A Formal Declaration:
Global Warming Has Ended – The Next Climate Change to A Pronounced Cold Era Has
Begun.

In a news conference held in Orlando, Florida today, Mr. John L. Casey, Director of the Space and Science Research Center, issued a landmark declaration on climate change.

“After an exhaustive review of a substantial body of climate research, and in conjunction with the obvious and compelling new evidence that exists, it is time that the world community acknowledges that the Earth has begun its next climate change. In an opinion echoed by many scientists around the world, the Space and Science Research Center (SSRC), today declares that the world’s climate warming of the past decades has now come to an end. A new climate era has already started that is bringing predominantly colder global temperatures for many years into the future. In some years this new climate will create dangerously cold weather with significant ill-effects world wide. Global warming is over – a new cold climate has begun.”

According to Mr. Casey, who spoke to print and TV media representatives today, this next cold era is coming about as a result of the reversal of the 206 year cycle of the sun which he independently discovered and announced in May of 2007.

Casey amplified the declaration by adding, “Though the SSRC first announced a prediction of the coming new climate era to the US government and media in early 2007, the formal declaration has been held off pending actual events that validate the previously forecast new cold period. We now have unmistakable signs of accelerating decline in global temperatures and growing glacial ice, coupled with the dramatic if not startling changes in the sun’s surface including unusually low and slow sunspot activity. These signs, in conjunction with the research center’s ‘relational cycle theory ” or “RC Theory” of climate change which predicted these changes, now leaves no doubt that the process has already been initiated. It is also unstoppable. Our world is rapidly cooling. Even though we still may have isolated warm temperature records, the global trend to a colder era is now irreversible.”

As to whether others agree with his declaration, Casey congratulated the many other scientists around the world who had done “many years of outstanding research” which he used to corroborate his own research after he first found these climate-driving solar cycles and formulated the RC Theory. In the news conference he listed and praised more than a dozen other scientists, most in foreign countries, who had come to the same prediction on the Earth’s climate shift to a cold era.

He said, “I have consulted with colleagues world wide who have reached a similar conclusion. They have likewise been attempting to advise their own governments and media of the impending cold era and the difficult times that the extreme cold weather may bring. They are to be commended for their bold public stances and publication of their research which of course has been in direct opposition to past conventional thought on the nature and causes of the last twenty years of global warming. These last one or two decades of increased global warming were essentially the peak heating phase of the 206 year cycle.”

In the one hour presentation, Casey detailed the solar activity cycles that have been driving the Earth’s climate for the past 1,200 years. He condemned the climate change confusion and alarmism which has accompanied seven separate periods over the past 100 years, where scientists and the media flip-flopped on reporting that the Earth was either entering a new ‘ice age’ or headed for a global meltdown where melting glacial ice would swamp the planet’s coastal cities.

Much of the presentation focused on the positive and negative effects the next climate change will have on the State of Florida, the nation and the world.

Some effects of the coming cold climate on NASA’s space program were highlighted including an extended “quiet period’ produced by reduced solar activity. Casey believes this cold climate era will be the best time since the space program began to conduct human spaceflight. Advises Casey, “With the sun going into what I call “solar hibernation,” the harmful effects of solar radiation on astronauts in space will be minimized.”

Regarding the impacts of the next cold climate period on hurricanes, Casey summarized by saying “I would not be surprised to see the lowest number and least intense storms ever recorded in the US during this cold epoch, for obvious reasons. We should not forget however, the buildup along coastlines and an ever increasing population may continue to make Florida’s hurricanes potentially more destructive in the future, regardless of the number we have.”

On the subject of cold climate effects on agriculture, Casey was not optimistic. “I can see,” he added, “just like the last time this 206 year cycle brought cold, that there will be substantial damage to the world’s agricultural systems. This time however we will have eight billion mouths to feed during the worst years around 2031 compared to previously when we had only one billion. Yet even then, many died from the combined effects of bitter cold and lack of food.”

In his concluding remarks, Casey called on all leaders to immediately move from the past global warming planning to prepare for the already started change to a cold climate.

He ended with, “Now that the new cold climate has begun to arrive, we must immediately start the preparation, the adaptation process. At least because of the RC Theory we now have some advance warning. No longer do we need to wonder what the Earth’s next climate changes will be two or three generations out. But we must nonetheless be ready to adjust with our now more predictable solar cycles that are the primary determinants of climate on Earth.”

http://blog-reporter.blogspot.com/2008/09/mad-professors-want-fleets-of-drones-to.html

Global warming alarmists, who have routinely dismissed evidence that the Sun is the main driver of climate change, are now calling to block out the celestial body that supports all life on Earth in a set of bizarre new proposals to “geo-engineer” the planet.

One idea being promoted is a madcap plan to send a fleet of shiny spaceships to form a physical cloud between the Sun and the Earth, covering half the diameter of the entire planet.

“Political inaction on global warming has become so dire that nations must now consider extreme technical solutions - such as blocking out the sun - to address catastrophic temperature rises, scientists from around the world warn today,” reports the Guardian.

The fact that sunspot activity and solar radiation have driven natural climate change throughout history is routinely dismissed by man-made global warming advocates who insist that human produced CO2 is to blame for global temperature increases, despite the fact that no global warming has been observed for the past 10 years and strong evidence suggests the planet is now embarking on a significant cooling trend. In addition, it was recently revealed that Arctic ice has actually grown by around 30 per cent in the year since August 2007.

Indeed, the month of August passed without a single visible sunspot being observed, a milestone that heralds a potentially devastating and rapid course of global cooling.

But now top university heads and professors are pushing to “geo-engineer” the planet and even block out the sun to prevent what they claim will be a global temperature increase of 4C.

Methods being discussed include a plan to “Insert “scatterers” into the stratosphere….deploy jumbo jets into the upper atmosphere and deposit clouds of tiny particles there, such as sulphur dioxide. Dispersing around 1m tonnes of sulphur dioxide per year across 10m square kilometres of the atmosphere would be enough to reflect away sufficient amounts of sunlight.”

The fact that sulphur dioxide is an an acid-rain causing pollutant that will literally change the color of our serene blue skies doesn’t seem to be a concern for these alleged “environmentalists”.

And if you think Australian professor Tim Flannery’s idea to cut down pristine beautiful old growth forests was hare-brained then listen to this - an even more bizarre proposal is to use a mass fleet of shiny spaceships to sit between the Earth and the Sun, forming a physical cloud and reflecting away sunlight.

“Scientists have suggested launching a constellation of free-flying craft that would sit between the Sun and Earth forming a cylindrical cloud around half the Earth’s diameter and 10 times longer,” reports the Guardian. “Approximately 10% of the sunlight passing through the 60,000 mile length of the cloud, pointing lengthwise between the Earth and the Sun would be diverted away from the Earth, which would uniformly reduce sunlight over the planet by approximately 2%,” writes Stephen Schneider of Stanford University. The cost would be a dazzling $100bn (£55.5bn) a year.”

No it’s not April 1st, this is not a joke. Scientists at top universities are actually proposing that spaceships be sent up into the atmosphere to sit over half of the planet and block out the Sun! Your tax dollars actually fund the research grants that finance this nonsense!


Beside the Darling River, far western NSW, Australia.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/chilling_truths/

Andrew Bolt
Monday, September 01, 2008 at 10:27am


The day after Channel 9 screens Scorched, an eco-alarmist drama showing Sydney being fried by global warming, we read this:

SYDNEY’S global warming sceptics have a new bit of ammunition - the harbour city just experienced its coldest August in 64 years.

And this:


THE weather experts have confirmed what Brisbane people suspected - the city has just shivered through its coldest August in at least eight years.

UPDATE

And this:

ADELAIDE has recorded its coldest August in more than 35 years.

Meanwhile the Climate Institute wants you to pay billions on “solutions” to this (non)warming that it swear will cost, um, next to nothing:

Australia can slash greenhouse emissions and save money at the same time, according to modelling released yesterday…. The Climate Institute says $46 billion needs to be spent cleaning up the energy sector over the next decade.

What is it with warming priests and exaggeration? Also preaching today is Dr Cameron Hepburn is an economist at Oxford University’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment:

But it is clear to anyone who looks at the evidence, including several thousand Nobel Prize-winning scientists, that we are running grave risks.

Excuse me? Who are these “several thousand Nobel Prize-winning scientists”?

I presume Hepburn is in fact referring to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (sic) last year. It is popularly claimed to produce alarming reports on global warming on behalf of 2500 scientists, but John McLean has checked who signed off on what on its last one:

Chapter 9 is the single most important chapter of the entire report because it is where the IPCC states, “it is very highly likely that greenhouse gas forcing has been the dominant cause of the observed global warming over the last 50 years”. The IPCC leads us to believe that this statement is supported by a large number of reviewers. We often hear reference to 2,500 scientists supporting the IPCC’s findings but that number supposedly includes about 1,500 acting as chapter editors… In fact only 62 reviewers commented on this chapter.

But on Hepburn prattles:

But we [in Australia] are finally starting to get our act together. And the world is watching. The Government’s proposed emissions trading scheme, set out in the Green Paper, is a giant leap in the right direction… So far, the rest of the world is impressed.

Er, who is “the world” that is “watching” and applauding? A few alarmists like Hepburn’s friends in Oxford? A few professional alarmists in Canada? I would guess that 99.9 per cent of the world in fact knows nothing and cares less about what Australia is doing.

Australia is coming from behind, but we do have many of the leading ...

Leading climate scientists? Leading climate modellers? Leading hurricane experts?

...but we do have many of the leading climate lawyers, banks and funds.

Wow. Some disctinction. We have many of the leading carpet baggers hustling a buck from this global warming hype. Excuse me if I keep my hand on my wallet, and my gullibility in check.