Alice in Wonderland Science
Our energy and environment deserve better – in South Africa and Qatar

Kelvin Kemm

A few weeks ago, perhaps as a prologue to the “global warming disaster” convention in Doha, Qatar, South Africa’s Department of Environment Affairs took out a full-page advertisement in our country’s newspapers, promoting National Marine Week.

The ad showed a map of the Antarctic continent, from above the pole, surrounded by the vast blue Southern Ocean. It also promoted South Africa’s new Antarctic research vessel, SA Agulhas II.

The advertisement’s text mentioned the massive Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which is responsible for distributing vital nutrients to the world’s oceans. It noted that the truly massive quantities of phytoplankton found in the ocean are vital marine building blocks in ocean processes. All that is true, and I certainly applaud efforts to protect the environment and promote National Marine Week and our country’s research efforts.

But then, sadly, the ad’s discussion of physics content went off the rails. Referring to phytoplankton, it said “these microscopic creatures also use carbon to create energy.” Wrong!
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By Don Aitkin

“I object to having to pay more for electricity that is produced inefficiently and erratically because some people are worried about the end of the world. In the 1980s, solar energy looked a possible way in the future of protecting our small and diminishing reserves of oil – because even then there were experts telling us that ‘Peak Oil’ had already arrived. It would never have occurred to me that we would be considering it as a source of baseline power. How would we store overnight the energy gained during the day? No one had the answer then, and no one has produced an efficient working model of the answer today. For isolated settlements and properties? Yes. For the grid? No.”

From: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14447

Does an increase in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere increase global temperature or not?

Most climate commentators immediately parrot the conventional wisdom of the climate alarmists – “The atmosphere is a blanket retaining the heat from the sun. Increased carbon dioxide thickens the blanket and will cause dangerous warming, leading to a tipping point where runaway heating becomes irreversible.”

However an experiment conducted in 1909 shows this conclusion to be wrong – the atmosphere acts more like a radiator, quickly removing heat from land and water surfaces, transporting it aloft and radiating much of it back to space. The atmosphere is a great temperature moderator – it stops daytime temperatures from rising too high, and keeps night-time temperatures from falling as low as they would otherwise. The net result, averaged over the whole world, is not known, but the daytime shading probably has a greater effect on surface temperatures than the night-time insulation.

For much more real science from one of the few authors who writes clearly, see this paper:

Klause Ermecke, 2010 – “Rescue from the Climate Saviours – Is there any Danger from “World Climate?” KE Research.

Read the full paper:
http://www.ke-research.de/downloads/ClimateSaviors.pdf [PDF, 1MB]

Harnessing sunlight for heating and other power purposes is not new. Solar collection devices were developed in the 17th century to protect plants brought from the tropics to northern countries, and both the first solar water heater and the first solar oven were developed the 18th century. Indeed, the solar power revolution has been on the verge of taking off for centuries.

In response to the Arab Oil Embargo, in part, the relatively new U.S. Department of Energy (along with other agencies) began a slew of programs to fund solar energy research, deployment and commercialization. Based strictly on performance, these programs have failed at the cost of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money.

More: http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/st334.pdf [PDF, 1.7 MB]

Energy Roulette Week
(The antithesis of Earth Hour)

A Reality Game for those Concerned about the Future for their Families

Acknowledgement: Josh at www.cartoonsbyjosh.com

Media Statement by Viv Forbes
Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition.

Any quotes taken directly from this statement may be attributed to Mr Forbes.

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called on electricity consumers to boycott Earth Hour grandstanding by pampered people too silly to recognise the realities and benefits of reliable electricity.

The Chairman of Carbon Sense, Mr Viv Forbes, is supporting an alternative proposal that “Earth Hour” be replaced by “Energy Roulette Week”.

Quote:

The Earth Hour people turn off a few lights on a balmy night for a romantic hour in candle-light (incidentally generating twice as much CO2 as light bulbs for the same amount of light.) This is unrealistic green tokenism.
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Well, the verdict is in on Global Warming, and guess what? There isn’t any!!! So says the British Met Office in a new report, issued quietly and without any publicity last month.

In fact, they sheepishly admitted that there has been “no measurable increase in Global Temperature during the last 16 years”. If you missed this story when it broke, you can read the full article at the following link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released–chart-prove-it.html

“Germany and the European Union have taken a pioneering role on climate protection, under the mistaken assumption that other countries would follow our example. That’s the wrong strategy. Making this kind of advanced effort weakens our bargaining position. Instead of building wind turbines, we should build higher dikes.”

– German government advisor Kai Konrad

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/interview-with-kai-konrad-on-the-mistakes-of-european-climate-policy-a-870693.html

In June this year the UNEP report announced that Global Renewable Energy investment reached $257 Billion in 2011. It’s so large it rivals the $302 billion invested in fossil fuel power. But how much electricity do we get for all that money? When the details are pulled from the fog, a quarter of a trillion dollars appears to produce only about 3% of all our global electricity, and even less of our global energy. All that money, so few gigawatts.

Source: http://joannenova.com.au/2012/08/renewable-energy-is-a-257-billion-dollar-industry-that-makes-only-3-of-our-electricity/

Cartoon Credit: Steve Hunter http://www.stevehunterillustrations.com.au/political-cartoons/

This is a very useful presentation of simple graphs illustrating all aspects of the global warming and carbon demonization scams. Well worth printing in colour for close study:

By H. Leighton Steward:
http://www.nal-jsc.org/Climate_Change_Symposium_Leighton_Steward_Presentation.pdf [PDF, 7.4 MB]

Cartoon Credit: Steve Hunter http://www.stevehunterillustrations.com.au/political-cartoons/