Forleden blev det halvofficielt at den globale opvarmning “holder pause” på 16. år da den engelske meterologiske institut MET, nedjusterede deres forventninger for de næste 4 år, så den forventede pause nu kan løbe over hele to årtier. Længe har den etablerede holdning ellers været at temperaturen ikke var stoppet med at stige (så beskedent den stigning ellers var i første omgang), men nu anerkendes det altså omend som en pause, hvis forklaring endnu er ukendte naturlige faktorer, af hvilke man ellers hidtil har udtalt sig om med ubetvivlelig sikkerhed. Peter C Glover minder i The Commentator om at denne uhyre menneskeligt fremdrevne overdrevne frygt allerede har haft store økonomiske konsekvenser
Within a year of the assessment, the UK passed its infamous Climate Act, the first of its kind in the world. It was widely touted as the “most expensive legislation in history”. The Act effectively committed the UK to foot an annual extra ‘de-carbonising’ spending bill of over £18 billion every year for the next 40 years. It’s the kind of government spending action the UN IPCC is urging on all governments, especially in the developed world, even in the face of the current global economic crisis.
But the simple fact is that the UK Met Office’s predictive credibility beyond assessing the next few days’ weather prospects has long been a national laughing stock. There was the farce of its warning over a “barbecue summer” prior to one of the UK’s coolest summers for decades. Then more than one warning about warming-induced perennial drought conditions just before the UK experienced extended periods of rainy weather causing major flooding.
As long-time critic of the Met Office Paul Hudson points out, “In the 12 years to 2011, 11 out of 12 [Met Office predictions] were too high.”
Og for Glover har MET’s problemer med forudsigelser, fortielser og benægtelsernetop sin kerne i den fejlslagne teori om CO2’s afgørende virkning på klimaet.
The UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Research is one of a select group of four global centres upon which the UN IPCC depends, having been set up by former Hadley Centre Director John Houghton. And the downgrade calls into question the credibility of the entire ‘human-carbon-emissions-are-to-blame’ house of cards. And here’s how it adds to the growing crisis for the UN IPCC’s AGW theory.
In December, a draft of the IPCC’s fifth assessment, due for final publication in September 2013, was leaked to the press by climate sceptic Alec Rawls. Rawls had been accepted by the UN IPCC as one of its expert reviewers. The IPCC confirmed the draft was genuine while lamenting the leak. The media furor that followed, however, focused on a section of the report that suggests what some key climate scientists, including Dr Henrik Svensmark in the excellent The Chilling Stars, have said all along: that the influence of cosmic rays (the Sun) could have a greater warming influence than mankind’s emissions.
Rawls describes the relevant section as “an astounding bit of honesty, a killing admission that completely undercuts the main premise and main conclusion of the full report, revealing the dishonesty of the whole”. Given what we know of how UN IPCC administrators have, shall we say, ‘boosted’ the alarmist language of previous reports after the actual scientists went home, there’s no change there then.
Tyve år uden opvarmning mens vi leder stadig mere CO2 ud i atmosfæren oven i en økonomisk krise, der kalder politikerne til regnskab, får tvivlen til at nage. Og bedre bliver det ikke når det gamle sorte guld lokker med nye forekomster, der vil holde verden med firehjulstrækkere i nok et århundrede. Telegraph skriver om Australiens lyksaligheder
The discovery in central Australia was reported by Linc Energy to the stock exchange and was based on two consultants reports, though it is not yet known how commercially viable it will be to access the oil.
The reports estimated the company’s 16 million acres of land in the Arckaringa Basin in South Australia contain between 133 billion and 233 billion barrels of shale oil trapped in the region’s rocks.
It is likely however that just 3.5 billion barrels, worth almost $359 billion (£227 billion) at today’s oil price, will be able to be recovered.
The find was likened to the Bakken and Eagle Ford shale oil projects in the US, which have resulted in massive outflows and have led to predictions that the US could overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer as soon as this year.
Med så meget kulstofbaseret brændsel til rådighed er det klart at ingen gider handle i dårlig samvittighed. Det lurer politikerne, der tøver med at kaste penge i grams på CO2 børserne, med et forventeligt resultat, som Reuters skriver
European carbon prices went into freefall on Thursday, dropping 40 percent at one point to a record low 2.81 euros, after members of the EU Parliament’s industry committee voted against a plan to rescue the ailing market.
Alt er rædselsfuldt, skriver David Roberts, og nævner bl.a sin skuffelse over at Washington Post svigter sit klimastandpunkt når deres leder opmuntrer “Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline“, en økonomisk, som politisk nødvendighed, der svinger om den samme akse der også har fået solen til at skinne på Arizonas fornuft
Remember when I wrote, late last year, that a crucial showdown over clean-energy was taking place in Arizona? That Arizonans elect the members of the public utilities commission and that three far-right nutjobs were running against three clean-energy Democrats?
Well, all three of the nutjobs won. The Arizona Corporation Commission (the state’s PUC) is now entirely Republican. And sure enough, it just slashed incentives for home solar and eliminated incentives for commercial solar.
Incentives er andre menneskers skattekroner, hvis nogen kunne være i tvivl. Roberts kommer med et nedslående klarsyn for alle de mennesker, der svinger ind og ud af frygt for klimaforandringer; “when the public says it “believes” in climate change, it doesn’t understand climate change.”. Hvor sandt, men han overser, at det er ham selv og andre af klimaangstens advokater der ikke har forstået “klimaforandringerne” når han sorgløst sparker den ellers ubetvivlelige dør ind til den rene kaotiske uforudsigelighed med; “if we enter a few years with unseasonably cool temperatures or low storm activity, which is entirely possible”. Ekspertisen’s argumenterer nu ud fra uvidenhed.
Og som om det ikke var nok at den accelererende udledning af CO2 ikke har givet ændringer i snart 20 år, så ser det nu ud til at CO2 endda er blevet effektivt bistået af en anden menneskeudledt forureningskilde, nemlig sod. Fra The Economist
SOOT—also known as black carbon—heats up the atmosphere because it absorbs sunlight. Black things do. That is basic physics. But for years the institutions that focus on climate policy have played down the role of pollutants such as black carbon that stay in the atmosphere for a short time, and concentrated on carbon dioxide, which, once generated, tends to remain there. That may soon change.
On January 15th, the fifth day that smog-darkened Beijing’s air-quality index was registering “hazardous” (see article), the most comprehensive study of black carbon yet conducted was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. It concluded that the stuff was the second-most-damaging greenhouse agent after CO2 and about twice as bad for the climate as had been thought until now. The implications are profound.
Ja, implikationerne er store for det vil med andre ord sige at CO2 skal dele en god del af sin andel af den temperaturstigning, der ikke har været til stede de seneste snart 20 år, med sod i kampen om at være den afgørende “forcing”. Det er rædselsfuldt.