Last Friday, I attended a conference for a multinational bank in Oman.

It is an annual event to update the region’s clients about the bank’s latest views on local and global conditions and, of course, to tell us about its latest products.

For the first time, I heard about the Chicago Climate Exchange (http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/)

I had thought that “green derivatives” was just myth or bad idea, not something able to be sold. But I was shocked to learn that the volume of trades has reached to one trillion dollars!

It seems we are just creating another speculative industry, which will attract huge funds, the whole thing far removed from basic and essential social investments.

I am not against real green initiatives that reduce the pollution, make use of energy more efficient, offer cleaner/better water or improve the healthy environment that surrounds us. I am against the linkage between those useful things and “climate change”, which just seems to put restrictions and taxes on some industries just to fund something not real.

“Climate Change” is something universal. It will keep changing and is more powerful than any human actions. This is my own personal view.

The joke of the conference was this:

When one of the attendees asked the instructor: “What if the investment is lost, how I can justify that to my manager?”

The answer: “Tell him that your company was supporting the fight against global warming!”

I wonder if that answer would be enough to keep feed me in future, if I will lose my job, or will I blame the weather for my decision!

I wonder how the carbon taxes collected in past and future will be justified to the future generations, when they discover that they were used to fund unnecessary and non-productive expenditures like trading on the Chicago Climate Exchange?

R H, Our Middle East Correspondent

Australia’s Minister for Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong, today released the report, “Climate Change Risks to Australia’s Coast” which estimates, by 2100, “a sea-level rise scenario of 1.1m”. (http://www.climatechange.gov.au/publications/coastline/climate-change-risks-to-australias-coasts.aspx)

In the past, Ms Wong and Kevin Rudd have said they rely on the IPCC reports for their policy decisions. They also criticise those who disagree with the IPCC.

However, the IPCC report (2007) gives a high and low scenario for sea level rises. The high of the high scenario is a rise of 59cm for the 21st century. That is far less than the 110cm in this new report.

So is Ms Wong now saying that the IPCC is wrong? If so, why won’t she listen to the large number of sceptics who also disagree with the IPCC?

Interestingly, the report also says (p. 6), “Over the geological past this dynamism has been even more pronounced, with sea levels up to 4-6 metres higher than today and the shoreline in some places more than 500 kilometres inland.”

Clearly, those increases could not have been caused by humans, but I don’t expect the media, or Wong or Rudd, will make that point!

Bob Long

The political climate continues to hot up, with more double dissolution triggers possible as the senate continues to reject government legislation. One would expect a double dissolution is going to be an option for Kevin Rudd to call from February next year.

I have included a PowerPoint^® slide show (http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/ashby-presentation.pps, 2.6MB) for you to pass around to your email contacts or to use at any community group meetings you get a chance to put something on.

Please send it to whoever you like.

Leon Ashby
President The Climate Sceptics
PO, Box 721, Mt Gambier SA 5290
Ph 0887259561 or 0887235550
info@climatesceptics.com.au
http://www.climatesceptics.com.au/

The Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition, Mr Viv Forbes, today claimed that the plan by Australian PM Rudd to cull one million camels may have unexpected carbon tax consequences.

Forbes explains:
“PM Rudd proposes to spend $19 million shooting one million wild camels.

“A big camel probably weighs about a tonne, so Mr Rudd is going to let a million tonnes of valuable meat rot under the Centralian sun.

“Each camel probably has about 190 kg of carbon sequestered in its body. As it rots and absorbs oxygen, this carbon will increase into about 700 kg of carbon dioxide which will then dissipate into the atmosphere.

“If the Australian Senate is silly enough to pass the Wong carbon dioxide Ration-n-Tax Scheme this shootout will thus trigger a huge carbon tax liability.

“At a carbon emission price of say $40 per tonne of carbon dioxide, the carbon tax on one million rotting camels would be about $28 million.

“If we add to that the actual cull costs of about $19 million and the carbon tax due on helicopter emissions and other activities, the total cost of the cull is about $50 million.

“This illustrates the dangers of costly unexpected consequences resulting from complex poorly designed bills being rushed through both Australian and US Legislatures by Mr Rudd and his buddy Mr Obama. Luckily Senators in both countries will probably reject this nonsense.
(more…)

This paper by Peter Lang, “…contains a simple analysis of the amount of greenhouse gas emissions avoided by wind power and the cost per tonne of emissions avoided. It puts these figures in context by comparing them with some other ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation.”

and concludes:

“1. Wind power does not avoid significant amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.
“2. Wind power is a very high cost way to avoid greenhouse gas emissions.
“3. Wind power, even with high capacity penetration, can not make a significant contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

Read the full document here [PDF, 177 KB].

See also: http://www.masterresource.org/2009/11/wind-integration-incremental-emissions-from-back-up-generation-cycling-part-i-a-framework-and-calculator/

We have recently been led to believe that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” and its atmospheric levels should be reduced at almost any cost. This article by Robert Chouinard, although not entirely related to “global warming”, raises some interesting points about carbon dioxide and its role in human health. Read on: http://www.nzcpr.com/soapbox.htm#RobertC.

No warming for 13 years, so why are we still listening to the Alarmists.

Lower troposphere temperature from satellites, updated to January 2011.

Global monthly average lower troposphere temperature (thin line) since 1979 according to University of Alabama at Huntsville, USA. The thick line is the simple running 37 month average.

For many more graphs see: http://www.climate4you.com/Text/Climate4you_January_2011.pdf [PDF, 1.3 MB]

[An abbreviated version of this article first appeared at Quadrant Online: http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/08/viv-forbes]

Most of human history has been a struggle for food and energy.

The abundance of food in the western world during the last century or so is not the normal human condition. Snow and ice, drought and famine have been regular and persistent visitors to mankind.

We are lucky to live in a time of recent natural global warming. Warmth increases plant growth rate, lengthens the growing season, expands plant habitat and makes more land arable. As the oceans warm, they expel some of their vast reserves of carbon dioxide, the essential atmospheric plant food. Warm oceans also produce more evaporation, and thus more precipitation for adjacent land masses. Man’s recent production of carbon dioxide from burning coal and oil and calcining limestone has also helped to unlock buried carbon and restore valuable carbon dioxide to the biosphere.

Warmth, water and more abundant carbon dioxide have been the main causes of the 20th century Green Revolution which has enabled farmers to feed the growing millions on earth.

All these beneficial developments are threatened by two things – the distinct possibility of a return to natural global cooling, and silly government policies all over the western world that will slash food production.

Read the full document here [PDF, 50KB]

“The newest game by the banks is carbon emissions trading. The plan is to manufacture emission credit certificates out of thin air, trade them between big financial companies, and compel the rest of us pay for them by producing real goods and services. The new financial slavery.

“Carbon emission permits are the latest paper currency, brought to you by the same crowd who profited from the world’s largest financial bubble. Same structure, same modus operandi, same beneficiaries, same exaggerations, half-truths, and tricky government statistics.” [P. 2]

“Emissions trading by the finance industry was $120 billion in 2008. This will grow to over $1 trillion by 2012, and carbon emission permit trading will be the largest “commodity” market in the world—larger than oil, steel, rice, or wheat. Typically the finance industry will pocket 1% – 5% of that turnover. So even now their financial interest matches the alarmist spending, and soon will vastly exceed it.” [P. 30]

Dr David Evans 2009, Manufacturing Money and Global Warming, SPPI, Haymarket, VA, USA. www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org

By Martin Durkin

Poor Al Gore. Global warming is fast turning into a joke. From the jolly Hockey Stick (remember that one) to the topsy-turvy ice core data (what a howler), from the laughable computer models, to the dodgy temperature records … not a single scrap of global warming garbage has escaped the blistering, excoriating scrutiny of McIntyre, Lindzen, Christy, Spencer, Singer, Carter & Co. The awkward-squad army of sceptics have kicked and trampled this theory to death, not once, but a hundred times over.

And yet, for all the onslaught of reasoned, scientific argument, the global warming beast refuses to lie down. Like some beleagured, maniac cyborg from the future, it just goes on and on. We all know the reason. The edifice of global warming is built not on science, but politics.

But what kind of politics? This is the first in a series of blog pieces to explore the green politics behind global warming …..

A BEGINNERS GUIDE TO POSH ANTI-CAPITALISM

The next time you’re forced to attend a dinner party, keep an eye out for the global warmer. Then ask him what he thinks about supermarkets (wicked), ‘consumer society’ (soulless), world trade (cruel) and government regulation (more needed). Global warmers are, in short, anti-capitalist. But – and here’s the really important thing to understand – it’s a very specific form of anti-capitalism. We might call it posh anti-capitalism.

In the old days, when there was less swearing on TV and kids were scared of policemen, anti-capitalism was coloured Red. The Reds complained that capitalism would cause the ‘immiseration’ of the workers, and they dreamed of giant socialist factories, out-producing the West.

The tragedy (for the Reds) was that capitalism didn’t play ball. Instead of getting poorer, ordinary folk got richer – much, much richer. For the simple reason that capitalist mass production must necessarily go hand in hand with mass consumption. What the new-leftists call ‘consumer society’.

But these days, anti-capitalists are coloured Green. They campaign not in the name of the working class, but of ‘Earth’. Instead of giant factories, they dream of little handicraft workshops and organic peasant farms. They complain not that capitalism will impoverish the workers, but, on the contrary, that capitalism has made them too rich. It is the very success of capitalism that seems to upset them.

Source: http://www.martindurkin.com/blogs/secret-global-warming-posh-anti-capitalism

For a print ready pdf of the full article see: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/durkin-posh-anti-capitalism.pdf [PDF, 42 KB]

Martin Durkin is a documentary film director and TV producer. Of the various prizes for his wonderful films, the one he is most proud of is the Free Enterprise Award, given him recently by the Institute of Economic Affairs. Previous winners include F.A. Hayek and Margaret Thatcher. He is currently directing on a feature-length film on Margaret Thatcher for Channel Four Television. One of his masterpieces is the film “The Great Global Warming Swindle”.

He is founder and managing director of Wag TV, which was listed among Britain’s top ten TV production companies in an industry poll conducted by REAL SCREEN magazine. He has served on the steering committees of the World Congress of Science Producers and lives in London with his wife and their four children.