Reproduced with thanks from Andy Semple at www.andysrant.com

At presentation to a seminar at the British House of Commons recently, Professor Lindzen clarified what the debate over climate change is really about.

“It most certainly is not about whether climate is changing: it always is.
“It is not about whether CO2 is increasing: it clearly is.
“It is not about whether the increase in CO2, by itself, will lead to some warming: it should.
“The debate is simply over the matter of how much warming the increase in CO2 can lead to, and the connection of such warming to the innumerable claimed catastrophes. The evidence is that the increase in CO2 will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak – and commonly acknowledged as such. They are sometimes overtly dishonest.

For the whole presentation see: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/lindzen-reconsidering-the-climate-change-act.pdf [PDF, 1.7 MB]

For another summary see: http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/02/22/is-catastrophic-global-warming-like-the-millenium-bug-a-mistake/

Prof Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT.

By Dr. Robert Brown,
Physics Dept. Duke University

One of many, many problems with modern climate research is that the researchers seem to take their thermal reconstructions far too seriously and assign completely absurd measures of accuracy and precision, with a very few exceptions. In my opinion it is categorically impossible to “correct” for things like the UHI (Urban Heat Island) effect — it presupposes a knowledge of the uncorrected temperature that one simply cannot have or reliably infer from the data. The problem becomes greater and greater the further back in time one proceeds, with big jumps (in uncertainty) 250, 200, 100 and 40 odd years ago. The proxy-derived record from more than 250 years ago is uncertain in the extreme, with the thermal record of well over 70% of the Earth’s surface completely inaccessible and with an enormously sparse sampling of highly noisy and confounded proxies elsewhere. To claim accuracy greater than 2-3 K is almost certainly sheer piffle, given that we probably don’t know current “true” global average temperatures within 1 K, and 5K is more likely.

See the full post on: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/04/global-annualized-temperature-full-of-snip-up-to-their-eyebrows/

The Australian government’s plan to sell their un-saleable carbon tax has hit a snag – their pollsters have discovered that the word ”carbon” provokes anger in the electorate. This is no surprise. Most decent people hate liars and the carbon tax campaign has been mired in lies from the start.

There are five big carbon lies.

Read on for more, including:

• Farming Carbon Credits
• The New Brisbane Line?
• The Big Unravelling Starts, in Germany
• Global Warming is not the Threat – Ice is the Killer
• Renewable Electricity for Australia – the Cost
• Practical Weather Prediction
• How we are Winning the Climate Wars
• Carbon Sense will keep up the fight

See: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/carbon-lies.pdf [PDF, 230 KB]

The Carbon Sense Coalition was formed in 2007 by a bunch of alarmed and annoyed senior citizens (mainly crusty old blokes and a few smart young things). Many had long experience in science, engineering, economics, industry and government.

We were alarmed at the stupidity of anyone classing carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and annoyed at the misuse of government funds to promote the foolish notion that man controls the climate, and all that is needed to improve it is a carbon tax.

The founders are more senior now and a bit more relaxed because we have been joined by many concerned youngsters, and the alarmist tide has definitely turned. Once we were ignored by most of the media – now some friends report our message and the others are sufficiently concerned by our message that they try to dig up dirt on us and our motivations.

Why was this battle against climate alarmism all over the world largely led by the oldies? Here are a few reasons:

Read on: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/future-carbon-sense.pdf [PDF, 114 KB]

“Australia, when Europeans arrived, consisted of a series of biota highly adapted to what we now call hazard reduction burning. The reason is that this is what the aborigines had been practicing for 50,000 years or so.

“They were greatly assisted in this by the existence in Australia of the “The Fire Tree”, the eucalypt. The eucalypt promotes fire and is resistant to fire, so that in a regime of constant burning, eucalypts have a higher survival rate and you tend to get the type of monoculture remarked on by many early scientists, including Charles Darwin.

“Early settlers repeatedly remarked on the constant burning carried out by the Aborigines and often described the Australian landscape as grasslands with widely spaced trees.”

Peter Stitt, Bushwaker and Environmentalist.

For a fascinating report on the condition of Australia when Europeans arrived see:
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/fire-and-landscape.pdf [PDF, 1.8 MB]

We acknowledge that this report was prepared for the Murrumbidgee Catchment Management Committee and was obtained from the library of the NSW Farmers Association.

The Climate Scare/Green Energy Bubble will be the defining feature of our age. Never before have so many people wasted so much money and time on climate fables, alarmist handouts and energy toys.

Already it has spread further, distracted more people and wasted more community resources than the South Sea Bubble, the Tulip Mania or Y2K. Future generations will read in wonder how sensible people like Germans, British, Spanish, Danes, Californians, Australians and Kiwis lost their ability for critical thinking.

The guilty parties will never admit their foolishness, and the vested interests will fight to keep their privileges, so we will have to fight every inch of the way. They will have to be removed.

But reality and public opinion are on our side. We just need to keep illustrating and lampooning the cost of this foolishness. And keep Tony Abbott to his promise to AXE THE CARBON TAX.

Please help us by passing this on.

More:

• Coal Powered Cars
• Solar Bubble Bursts
• Wasteful Wind Power
• Can Green Energy be Saved?
• The Real History of Global Warming
• Karma Neutral
• How to Vote
• The Last Word

See: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/green-toys.pdf [PDF, 163 KB]

Below are some comments received by “Carbon Sense” in 2011. Originals of all (with full names) are held in our files. Naturally we also get a few brickbats, some too abusive to reproduce, but they are vastly outnumbered by comments like those below. We appreciate all feedback, even critical ones. We learn most by being challenged by intelligent people.

Read here: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/testimonials.pdf [PDF, 183 KB]

I keep hearing about the “pollutant CO2,” or about “poisoning the atmosphere” with CO2, or about minimizing our “carbon footprint.” This brings to mind another Orwellian pronouncement that is worth pondering: “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

CO2 is not a pollutant and it is not a poison and we should not corrupt the English language by depriving “pollutant” and “poison” of their original meaning.

Our exhaled breath contains about 4% CO2. That is 40,000 parts per million, or about 100 times the current atmospheric concentration. CO2 is absolutely essential for life on earth. Commercial greenhouse operators often use CO2 as a fertilizer to improve the health and growth rate of their plants. Plants, and our own primate ancestors evolved when the levels of atmospheric CO2 were about 1000 ppm, a level that we will probably not reach by burning fossil fuels, and far above our current level of about 380 ppm. We try to keep CO2 levels in our US Navy submarines no higher than 8,000 parts per million, about 20 times current atmospheric levels. Few adverse effects are observed at even higher levels.

By William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Princeton University

An extract from his submission to U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

To read the full submissions see:
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/happer-testimony.pdf [PDF, 61 KB]