Climate Change

[John Dolva]

Of course there isn't consensus. Wannabe politician/schoolteachers with PhD in electromagnetics play optics expert and after one year suggest they have qualifications to join other rightwingers to excuse the dominant economic powers from any responsibility in contributing to Climate Change, the very countries that stand to lose from a consensus churn out research to support this, yet in your first post you support the notion that Earths climate is fragile, but oh no, nothing that humanity has done has exacerbated this fragility, it's just the sun doing its thing. I'm sure the massive coal industry increase and the reduction in funding in R&D for renewable resources beneficiaries are very happy with that.

Tell you what, I personally hereby give disinterested third parties composed of qualified scientists permission to study the matter. Even Costella.

[Greg Burnham]

Of course there isn't consensus. Wannabe politician/schoolteachers with PhD in electromagnetics play optics expert and after one year suggest they have qualifications to join other rightwingers to excuse the dominant economic powers from any responsibility in contributing to Climate Change, the very countries that stand to lose from a consensus churn out research to support this, yet in your first post you support the notion that Earths climate is fragile, but oh no, nothing that humanity has done has exacerbated this fragility, it's just the sun doing its thing. I'm sure the massive coal industry increase and the reduction in funding in R&D for renewable resources beneficiaries are very happy with that.

Tell you what, I personally hereby give disinterested third parties composed of qualified scientists permission to study the matter. Even Costella.

Well, at least you got me laughing about this normally upsetting topic! Thanks for lightening it up. Seriously, though, I'm not claiming to know for certain the truth about this matter. There are other potential problems, in my view, with the theory as far as I know it. My biggest concern is that the procedures and data used to reach their conclusions have been held secret--and that is a violation of the most fundmental principles of the Scientific Method. When that occurs there is no legitimate "peer review" process at all.

That said, I don't believe that the Earth's climate is "fragile" at all! I do believe it is hyper-sensitive to the influence of the SUN, though.

Thanks for your reply.

Edited April 13, 2010 by Greg Burnham

[John Dolva]

You're welcome Greg. I agree it's a ''work in progress''. I don't claim to know the whole truth of the matter either. Work needs doing, sans vested interests. At the moment it is not, it's like the ''intelligent'' creationists and the pro tobacco lobbies versus the scientific method. Should one give credence to creationists because serious scientists don't want to run with their agenda and does that imply that the creationists are being stifled in some way. No doubt many millions are being spent on studies by scientists to bolster the reasons that politicians use to control the consequences of accepting that industrialised humanity may contribute to destabilising the fragile climate referred to.

[Greg Burnham]

Of course there isn't consensus. Wannabe politician/schoolteachers with PhD in electromagnetics play optics expert and after one year suggest they have qualifications to join other rightwingers to excuse the dominant economic powers from any responsibility in contributing to Climate Change, the very countries that stand to lose from a consensus churn out research to support this...

Well, gee--let's paint a very broad stroke, shall we?

Have you had the time or opportunity, in the short interval since I posted the link, to personally vet the list of those scientists who signed the petition? If so, you might not have made the above post. As an example, one of the most respected members of our local community here in San Diego, is a meteorologist on local KUSI News. His name is John Coleman. He is also the Founder of the Weather Channel. He would appear to be "qualified" to render an opinion.

The Amazing Story Behind the Global Warming Scam

By John Coleman

January 28, 2009 (Revised and edited February 11, 2009)

The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax us citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way: the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have led to a rise in public awareness that there is no runaway global warming. A majority of American citizens are now becoming skeptical of the claim that our carbon footprints, resulting from our use of fossil fuels, are going to lead to climatic calamities. But governments are not yet listening to the citizens.

How did we ever get to this point where bad science is driving big government to punish the citizens for living the good life that fossil fuels provide for us?

The story begins with an Oceanographer named Roger Revelle. He served with the Navy in World War II. After the war he became the Director of the Scripps Oceanographic Institute in La Jolla in San Diego, California. Revelle obtained major funding from the Navy to do measurements and research on the ocean around the Pacific Atolls where the US military was conducting post war atomic bomb tests. He greatly expanded the Institute's areas of interest and among others hired Hans Suess, a noted Chemist from the University of Chicago. Suess was very interested in the traces of carbon in the environment from the burning of fossil fuels. Revelle co-authored a scientific paper with Suess in 1957—a paper that raised the possibility that the atmospheric carbon dioxide might be creating a greenhouse effect and causing atmospheric warming. The thrust of the paper was a plea for funding for more studies. Funding, frankly, is where Revelle's mind was most of the time.

Next Revelle hired a Geochemist named David Keeling to devise a way to measure the atmospheric content of Carbon dioxide. In 1958 Keeling published his first paper showing the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and linking the increase to the burning of fossil fuels. These two research papers became the bedrock of the science of global warming, even though they offered no proof that carbon dioxide was in fact a greenhouse gas. In addition they failed to explain how this trace gas, only a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, could have any significant impact on temperatures.

Back in the1950s, when this was going on, our cities were entrapped in a pall of pollution left by the crude internal combustion engines and poorly refined gasoline that powered cars and trucks back then, and from the uncontrolled emissions from power plants and factories. There was a valid and serious concern about the health consequences of this pollution. As a result a strong environmental movement was developing to demand action.

Government heard that outcry and set new environmental standards. Scientists and engineers came to the rescue. New reformulated fuels were developed, as were new high tech, computer controlled, fuel injection engines and catalytic converters. By the mid seventies cars were no longer significant polluters, emitting only some carbon dioxide and water vapor from their tail pipes. New fuel processing and smoke stack scrubbers were added to industrial and power plants and their emissions were greatly reduced as well.

But an environmental movement had been established and its funding and very existence depended on having a continuing crisis issue. Roger Revelle’s research at the Scripps Institute had tricked a wave of scientific inquiry. So the concept of uncontrollable atmospheric warming from the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels became the cornerstone issue of the environmental movement. Automobiles and power planets became the prime targets.

Revelle and Keeling used this new alarmism to keep their funding growing. Other researchers with environmental motivations and a hunger for funding saw this developing and climbed aboard as well. The research grants flowed and alarming hypotheses began to show up everywhere.

The Keeling curve continues to show a steady rise in CO2 in the atmosphere during the period since oil and coal were discovered and used by man. Carbon dioxide has increased from the 1958 reading of 315 to 385 parts per million in 2008. But, despite the increases, it is still only a trace gas in the atmosphere. The percentage of the atmosphere that is CO2 remains tiny, about 3.8 hundredths of one percent by volume and 41 hundredths of one percent by weight. And, by the way, only a fraction of that fraction is from mankind’s use of fossil fuels. The best estimate is that atmospheric CO2 is 75 percent natural and 25 percent the result of civilization.

Several hypotheses emerged in the 70s and 80s about how this tiny atmospheric component of CO2 might cause a significant warming. But they remained unproven. As years have passed, the scientists have kept reaching out for evidence of the warming and proof of their theories. And, the money and environmental claims kept on building up.

Back in the 1960s, this global warming research came to the attention of a Canadian born United Nation's bureaucrat named Maurice Strong. He was looking for issues he could use to fulfill his dream of one-world government. Strong organized a World Earth Day event in Stockholm, Sweden in 1970. From this he developed a committee of scientists, environmentalists and political operatives from the UN to continue a series of meetings.

Strong developed the concept that the UN could demand payments from the advanced nations for the climatic damage from their burning of fossil fuels to benefit the underdeveloped nations—a sort of CO2 tax that would be the funding for his one-world government. But he needed more scientific evidence to support his primary thesis. So Strong championed the establishment of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC). This was not a pure, “climate study” scientific organization, as we have been led to believe. It was an organization of one-world government UN bureaucrats, environmental activists and environmentalist scientists who craved UN funding so they could produce the science they needed to stop the burning of fossil fuels.

Over the last 25 years the IPCC has been very effective. Hundreds of scientific papers, four major international meetings and reams of news stories about climatic Armageddon later, it has made its points to the satisfaction of most governments and even shared in a Nobel Peace Prize.

At the same time Maurice Strong was busy at the UN, things were getting a bit out of hand for the man who is now called the grandfather of global warming, Roger Revelle. He had been very politically active in the late 1950's as he worked to have the University of California locate a San Diego campus adjacent to Scripps Institute in La Jolla. He won that major war, but lost an all important battle afterward when he was passed over in the selection of the first Chancellor of the new campus.

He left Scripps finally in 1963 and moved to Harvard University to establish a Center for Population Studies. It was there that Revelle inspired one of his students. This student would say later, "It felt like such a privilege to be able to hear about the readouts from some of those measurements in a group of no more than a dozen undergraduates. Here was this teacher presenting something not years old but fresh out of the lab, with profound implications for our future!" The student described him as "a wonderful, visionary professor" who was "one of the first people in the academic community to sound the alarm on global warming." That student was Al Gore. He thought of Dr. Revelle as his mentor and referred to him frequently, relaying his experiences as a student in his book “Earth in the Balance,” published in 1992.

So there it is. Roger Revelle was indeed the grandfather of global warming. His work had laid the foundation for the UN IPCC, provided the anti-fossil fuel ammunition to the environmental movement and sent Al Gore on his road to his books, his movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” his Nobel Peace Prize and a hundred million dollars from the carbon credits business.

The global warming frenzy was becoming the cause célèbre of the media. After all, the media is mostly liberal, loves Al Gore, loves to warn us of impending disasters and tell us "the sky is falling, the sky is falling." The politicians and the environmentalist loved it, too.

But the tide was turning with Roger Revelle. He was forced out at Harvard at 65 and returned to California and a semi retirement position at UCSD. There he had time to rethink Carbon Dioxide and the greenhouse effect. The man who had inspired Al Gore and given the UN the basic research it needed to launch its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was having second thoughts. In 1988 he wrote two cautionary letters to members of Congress. He wrote, "My own personal belief is that we should wait another 10 or 20 years to really be convinced that the greenhouse effect is going to be important for human beings, in both positive and negative ways." He added, "…we should be careful not to arouse too much alarm until the rate and amount of warming becomes clearer."

And in 1991 Revelle teamed up with Chauncey Starr, founding director of the Electric Power Research Institute and Fred Singer, the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, to write an article for Cosmos magazine. They urged more research and begged scientists and governments not to move too fast to curb greenhouse CO2 emissions because the true impact of carbon dioxide was not at all certain, and curbing the use of fossil fuels could have a huge, negative impact on the economy, jobs, and our standard of living. Considerable controversy still surrounds the authorship of this article. However, I have discussed this collaboration with Dr. Singer and he assures me that Revelle was considerably more certain than he was at the time that carbon dioxide was not a problem.

Did Roger Revelle attend the summer enclave at the Bohemian Grove in Northern California in 1990 while working on that article? Did he deliver a lakeside speech there to the assembled movers and shakers from Washington and Wall Street in which he apologized for sending the UN IPCC and Al Gore on this wild goose chase about global warming? Did he say that the key scientific conjecture of his lifetime had turned out wrong? The answer to those questions is, "Apparently.” People who were there have told me about that afternoon, but I have not located a transcript or a recording. People continue to share their memories with me on an informal basis. More evidence may be forthcoming.

Roger Revelle died of a heart attack three months after the Cosmos story was printed. Oh, how I wish he were still alive today. He might be able to stop this scientific silliness and end the global warming scam. He might well stand beside me as a global warming denier.

Al Gore has dismissed Roger Revelle’s mea culpa as the actions of a senile old man. The next year, while running for Vice President, he said the science behind global warming is settled and there will be no more debate. From 1992 until today, he and most of his cohorts have refused to debate global warming and when asked about us skeptics, they insult us and call us names.

As the science now stands, the global warming alarmist scientists say the climate is sensitive to a “radiative forcing” effect from atmospheric carbon dioxide which greatly magnifies its greenhouse effect on atmospheric warming. The only proof they can provide of this complex hypothesis is by running it in climate computer models. By starting the models in about 1980 they showed how the continuing increase in CO2 was step with a steady increase in average global temperatures in the 1980s and 1990’s and claim cause and effect. But, in fact, those last two decades of the 20th century were at the peak of a strong 24 year solar cycle, and the temperature increases actually may have been a result of the solar cycle together with related warm cycle ocean current patterns during that period.

That warming ended in 1998 and global temperatures (as measured by satellites) leveled off. Starting in 2002, computer models and reality have dramatically parted company. The models predicted temperatures and carbon dioxide would continue to rise in lock step, but in fact while the CO2 continues to rise, temperatures are in decline. Now global temperatures are in such a nose dive there is wide spread talk from climatologists about an impending ice age. In any case, the UN’s computer model “proof” has gone up in a poof.

Nonetheless, today we have the continued claim that carbon dioxide is the culprit of an uncontrollable, runaway man-made global warming. We are told that when we burn fossil fuels we are leaving a dastardly carbon footprint. And, we are told we must pay Al Gore or the environmentalists for this sinful footprint. Our governments on all levels are considering taxing the use of fossil fuels. The Federal Environmental Protection Agency is on the verge of naming CO2 as a pollutant and strictly regulating its use to protect our climate. The new President and the US Congress are on board. Many state governments are moving on the same course.

We are already suffering from this CO2 silliness in many ways. Our energy policy has been strictly hobbled by the prohibiting of new refineries and of drilling for decades. We pay for the shortage this has created every time we buy gas. On top of that, the whole issue of corn based ethanol costs us millions of tax dollars in subsidies, which also has driven up food prices. All of this is a long way from over.

Yet I am totally convinced there is no scientific basis for any of it.

Global Warming: It is a hoax. It is bad science. It is high-jacking public policy. It is the greatest scam in history.

[John Dolva]

This is Climate Change. Global warming is a subset. For example (apart from the methane issue in prev post, not CO2, CO2 is part of it, not all of it.) one result of the melting of the glaciers and arctic shelf is the lowering of the temperature of the ocean. A hypothesised result is a critical point at which the gulf stream may cease flowing and the result is the opposite of warming: an Ice age. Sure, meteorologists and schoolteachers and nobodies have opinions. This is nothing but a to and fro driven as alluded to in the first paragraph : ''...tax US citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way: the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate.''. Carbon is a component of greenhouse gases whether it's chloroflourocarbon, methane, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide. It just so happens these are by products of the fossil fuel industrial complex and therefore economics is a core issue. Tax the rich instead. (or eat them)

edit:typos

Edited April 13, 2010 by John Dolva

[Greg Burnham]

This is Climate Change. Global warming is a subset. For example (apart from the methane issue in prev post, not CO2, CO2 is part of it, not all of it.) one result of the melting of the glaciers and arctic shelf is the lowering of the temperature of the ocean. A hypothesised result is a critical point at which the gulf stream may cease flowing and the result is the opposite of warming: an Ice age. Sure, meteorologists and schoolteachers and nobodies have opinions. This is nothing but a to and fro driven as alluded to in the first paragraph : ''...tax US citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way: the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate.''. Carbon is a component of greenhouse gases whether it's chloroflourocarbon, methane, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide. It just so happens these are by products of the fossil fuel industrial complex and therefore economics is a core issue. Tax the rich instead. (or eat them)

edit:typos

NO IT IS NOT "Climate Change" -- Climate Change is the cover story. In the 70's it was catastrophic GLOBAL COOLING that was to lead us to doom as a result of human use of chloroflourocarbons. The predictions of that time DID NOT PAN OUT. Not even a little. And how could they? Chaos Theory precludes such predictions. Then there was a brief reprieve from the nonsensical tendency to predict that which is chaotic, random, and otherwise unpredictable.

In recent times it has always been GLOBAL WARMING. That moniker conveniently changed to Climate Change when the empirical evidence [read:reality] was so counter-intuitive to such a concept that it became absurd to cling to it. IOW: It got real cold.

[John Dolva]

This is Climate Change. Global warming is a subset. For example (apart from the methane issue in prev post, not CO2, CO2 is part of it, not all of it.) one result of the melting of the glaciers and arctic shelf is the lowering of the temperature of the ocean. A hypothesised result is a critical point at which the gulf stream may cease flowing and the result is the opposite of warming: an Ice age. Sure, meteorologists and schoolteachers and nobodies have opinions. This is nothing but a to and fro driven as alluded to in the first paragraph : ''...tax US citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way: the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate.''. Carbon is a component of greenhouse gases whether it's chloroflourocarbon, methane, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide. It just so happens these are by products of the fossil fuel industrial complex and therefore economics is a core issue. Tax the rich instead. (or eat them)

edit:typos

NO IT IS NOT "Climate Change" -- Climate Change is the cover story. In the 70's it was catastrophic GLOBAL COOLING that was to lead us to doom as a result of human use of chloroflourocarbons. The predictions of that time DID NOT PAN OUT. Not even a little. And how could they? Chaos Theory precludes such predictions. Then there was a brief reprieve from the nonsensical tendency to predict that which is chaotic, random, and otherwise unpredictable.

In recent times it has always been GLOBAL WARMING. That moniker conveniently changed to Climate Change when the empirical evidence [read:reality] was so counter-intuitive to such a concept that it became absurd to cling to it. IOW: It got real cold.

Everything relevant there is about Climate Change (as well as topic title). The hole in the Ozone wasn't a fantasy. Chaos theory has nothing to do with it (it is a chaotic change though, poorly understood). It's been some time since it's been just global warming. (Cuba for example is experiencing a massive draught, ie no rain, ie: less evaporation from oceans could be one answer.)

It is a fragile system that is being endangered by greed from short term economic gains in the fossil fuel industry that needs to be unaccountable to survive.

It got cold, eh?

[Greg Burnham]

John,

In all due respect, it doesn't appear that we are talking about the same thing. The difference in our approach is simple. I am disinclined to believe the conclusion since the evidence, supporting allegations of AGW, is tainted. However, I'm also unconvinced that the conclusion is definitively proved wrong. Therefore, prior to my deciding the issue is settled, I am forced--as a matter of self respect--to consult the procedures used (for their consistency with scientific method) and research the reports of those who have attempted to replicate the results of those making the positive assertions. The first problem is that the Scientific Method was not employed--or at least it was inconsistently employed--as admitted by some of those who have been involved in the study, including the guy at THE VERY TOP. Secondly, there are no reports published by those outside the inner circle because the METHODS and DATA that were relied upon by the original study HAVE NOT BEEN MADE AVAILABLE.

Unlike what you appear to have done, I have not made up my mind. I simply don't know. However, even if I was inclined to believe in AGW, I would find the evidence of ill conceived practices more than enough to cease defending the theory that has, as of now, lacked real credibility since the proper procedures were not employed--including their refusal to provide the DATA and METHODS that were relied upon to arrive at the conclusion in question! It is impossible to "test" a hypothesis (masquerading as a theory) when the parameters of the experiments have not even been disclosed for replication. This is, at the very least, suspect.

'Climategate' panel set to report

By Roger Harrabin

Environment analyst, BBC News

The row surrounds e-mails hacked from the University of East Anglia

The second of three reviews into hacked climate e-mails from the University of East Anglia (UEA) is set to be released later.

It has examined scientific papers published over 20 years by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the heart of the e-mail controversy.

The panel was nominated by the Royal Society, and climate sceptics forecast it would defend establishment science.

But the BBC understands the panel has taken a hard look at CRU methodology.

It is thought to have focued on statistical methods used by the CRU and the way uncertainties inherent in climate science may have been down-played by government bodies.

Global picture

The review has been funded by UEA and chaired by Lord Oxburgh, a former academic and industry scientist.

The chair has been challenged over his other interests. Lord Oxburgh is currently president of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association and chairman of wind energy firm Falck Renewables.

Critics say clean energy companies would benefit from policies to tackle climate change. But Lord Oxburgh insists the panel did not have a pre-conceived view.

The panel includes Professor David Hand, president of the Royal Statistical Society, who has been examining the way CRU used statistical methodology to develop an average annual global temperature.

It is easy to get a measurement precise in space and time from an individual weather station - albeit with uncertainties attached.

But some countries have many weather stations while others have very few, and there are large areas of the Earth with no surface measurements at all.

So to build up a global picture by assigning a proper statistical weighting to the importance of the various measurements is a notoriously challenging task.

Climate sceptics say CRU's statistical methods have been inadequate, and it is thought the Oxburgh panel will look at this issue.

However, if the panel follows the recent House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report into the e-mails it will conclude that the scientists involved had no intention to deceive.

Different practices

The Oxburgh panel also studied how the CRU acknowledged unavoidable scientific uncertainties in its work, especially over research into the Medieval Warm Period.

Climate sceptics complain that the summary reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) do not always properly reflect the uncertainties defined in the underlying science, and the panel may comment on this.

It is also understood that members of the panel have remarked on the difference in practice between university science and industry science.

Many climate sceptics in the blogosphere are former industry scientists. In industry it is routine for original scientific research data to be archived by a records team and kept safe for as long as it might prove useful.

University scientists, on the other hand, are said to be have been more used to a culture in which notes are kept until papers are peer-reviewed - but then are filed in a less rigorous fashion.

This is an area where the House of Commons committee said that academic science needed to improve - particularly in an issue as contentious as climate change.

Members of the panel are said to have cross-examined CRU researchers for a total of 15 man-days.

The final review to be published will be the review headed by Sir Muir Russell, which will, among other things investigate whether the scientists manipulated data.

Edited April 14, 2010 by Greg Burnham

[John Dolva]

Greg, as you say : talking at cross purposes. I'm talking about Climate Change, you're talking about AGW. I'm not talking of a specific study. I'm touching on many (there are probably hundreds of thousands related ones to look at, as well as simple statistics. So, yes, there is a difference.

Have I made up my mind? Not completely. I look at what I can in a wide spectrum and in this instance, Climate Change, have been following the debate for years, as most people have to some extent. We can throw papers at each other but will always be always lagging in knowledge because the important studies are ongoing.

You have made your mind up just as much, if not more. The use of arcane terms and concepts and truther type monikers like climategate indicate this.

Climate Change is a real concern in the world just as denying it is. It is very much like past studies where something is shown to be so but because it upsets a powerful few it is denied. I understand it took til the 20'th century for the Catholic church to ''forgive'' Galileo.

[Greg Burnham]

Greg, as you say : talking at cross purposes. I'm talking about Climate Change, you're talking about AGW. I'm not talking of a specific study. I'm touching on many (there are probably hundreds of thousands related ones to look at, as well as simple statistics. So, yes, there is a difference.

Have I made up my mind? Not completely. I look at what I can in a wide spectrum and in this instance, Climate Change, have been following the debate for years, as most people have to some extent. We can throw papers at each other but will always be always lagging in knowledge because the important studies are ongoing.

You have made your mind up just as much, if not more. The use of arcane terms and concepts and truther type monikers like climategate indicate this.

Climate Change is a real concern in the world just as denying it is. It is very much like past studies where something is shown to be so but because it upsets a powerful few it is denied. I understand it took til the 20'th century for the Catholic church to ''forgive'' Galileo.

John,

I'm not talking about a specific study either. That was a typo. I meant to say the DATA and METHODOLOGY used to reach the conclusion by the CRU (among others) was not made available to the public or to scientists outside the inner circle. I thought you knew what I meant.

As for Human caused Climate Change versus Human caused Global Warming, why the distinction? IOW: none of the climate modeling computers predicted any cooling trend as the result of global warming! All the published studies claimed an increase in temperature would happen. Only recently has the term Climate Change been adopted. It is a retrospective prediction of sorts--an oxymoron.

I guess we'll just have to disagree on this issue.

[John Dolva]

Billionaires funding climate change denial

17 April 2010

The article below is an excerpt from a March 2010 Greenpeace report entitled Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine, published in March 2010 by Greenpeace. The full report can be read here.

* * *

Most Americans have never heard of Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the country, because it has no Koch-branded consumer products, sells no shares on the stock market and has few of the disclosure requirements of a public company.

However, it is now playing a quiet but dominant role in a high-profile national policy debate on global warming. Koch Industries has become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition.

This private, out-of-sight corporation is now a partner to ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and other donors that support organisations and front-groups opposing progressive clean energy and climate policy.

From 2005 to 2008, ExxonMobil spent US$8.9 million, while the Koch Industries controlled foundations contributed $24.9 million in funding to organisations of the "climate denial machine".

Charles and David Koch, brothers who own the corporation and control its political spending, are two of the top 10 richest people in the United States.

Kansas-based Koch Industries is a conglomerate dominated by petroleum and chemical interests with approximately $100 billion in annual sales and operations in nearly 60 countries.

Koch Industries has been ranked as the first- or second-largest privately-held company in the US in recent years, currently ranked second behind Cargill corporation.

From: International News, Green Left Weekly issue #<a href="http://"http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2010/834"" target="_blank">834</a> 21 April 2010.

Edited April 23, 2010 by John Dolva

[John Dolva]

NEWS: UN backs climate conference, Harper snubs historic gathering

By Brent Patterson

| April 22, 2010

The "dialogo pueblos -- gobiernos conferencia mundial climatica" (the dialogue between governments and the people) is taking place at this moment.

Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow is at the Hotel Regina where it is underway, while climate justice campaigner Andrea Harden-Donahue and I are at the media centre at the universidad watching the coverage live on television.

(Maude e-mailed us as Bolivian president Evo Morales and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez passed by her as they entered the meeting space.)

Al Jazeera now reports that, "the United Nations has backed (the) Bolivian sponsored summit on climate change..."

Alicia Barcena, a representative of UN secretary-general Ban Ki Moon, said today that, "Sometimes at the global level, as with what happened with the recent climate change debate, many groups felt excluded and I think it is right to address this."

It is being reported that the governments of more than 70 countries are present to participate in this dialogue with civil society representatives of nearly 130 countries.

The Council of Canadians had requested that the Harper government send a high-level official representative to this conference.

Advertising

Neither the prime minister nor the environment minister are at the conference.

Not even Richard Lecoq, Canada's ambassador to Peru - who also has responsibility for Bolivia - is present.

The Harper government has only sent a representative from the Canadian consulate in La Paz, Bolivia. We have just sent an e-mail to the Canadian embassy in Peru requesting a meeting with this consular officer.

Still, this is further proof that -- with emission reduction goals that actually mean emissions will increase, continued promotion of the tar sands, the gutting of the environmental assessment process, the ongoing destruction of water in Canada, no laws stopping the destructive actions of Canadian mining companies at home and abroad -- the Harper government is an eco-outlaw with no commitment to acting responsibly to stop climate change.

Maude is taking notes and Andrea is Twittering reports on the dialogue as it continues. (Venezuelan president Chavez is speaking now.)

We'll have a fuller report as soon as possible.

Brent Patterson, Director of Campaigns and Communications, Council of Canadians

www.canadians.org

Edited April 23, 2010 by John Dolva

[John Dolva]

''Bolivia’s world climate summit a breakthrough

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Bolivia's World People's Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth was radical, inspiring, uncompromising and exactly what was needed.

Up to 30,000 people from six continents took part in the summit, which was held in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba from April 19 to 22.

The huge oil spill from a BP rig in the Gulf of Mexico underscores the summit’s significance. About 800,000 litres of oil are spewing out a day. The company admits it may not be able to stop the leak for weeks — or even months.

Oil companies like BP are among the most powerful organisations on the planet. Seven of the 10 richest companies worldwide are oil giants.

If we don’t end the system that rewards such ecological destruction, capitalism will make the Earth uninhabitable.

The huge protests outside December's failed Copenhagen climate summit showed that a global movement for real climate action had emerged. Cochabamba showed the movement is getting stronger and more ambitious.

The final “people's agreement” adopted by the summit — the Cochabamba protocol — warned that climate change puts the future of humanity in danger. It noted that the 2°C average warming target favoured by the rich countries would lead to mass species extinctions, severe water shortages and rising sea levels.

A 2°C target is the official goal of countries supporting the Copenhagen Accord — a plan announced by wealthy nations at Copenhagen and endorsed by Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

However, the emissions cuts pledged under the accord are so small it would actually mean a catastrophic 3°C rise or more, said the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Unlike the Copenhagen fiasco, the climate activists at Cochabamba took aim at the real culprits for global warming.

The protocol said: “The corporations and governments of the so-called ‘developed’ countries, in complicity with a segment of the scientific community, have led us to discuss climate change as a problem limited to the rise in temperature without questioning the cause, which is the capitalist system.”

Capitalism is the problem because it “has imposed on us a logic of competition, progress and limitless growth. This regime of production and consumption seeks profit without limits, separating human beings from nature and imposing a logic of domination upon nature, transforming everything into commodities: water, earth, the human genome, ancestral cultures, biodiversity, justice, ethics, the rights of peoples, and life itself.”

The existing system is incompatible with a safe climate. It converts the Earth “into a source of raw materials, and human beings into consumers and a means of production, into people that are seen as valuable only for what they own, and not for what they are.”

The call from Cochabamba is unmistakable. Global warming is not just an “environmental” concern. To save the planet from dangerous climate change the climate movement must also stand for radical social change and grassroots democracy.

“Humanity confronts a great dilemma: to continue on the path of capitalism, depredation and death, or to choose the path of harmony with nature and respect for life”, the protocol said.

“It is imperative that we forge a new system that restores harmony with nature and among human beings. And in order for there to be balance with nature, there must first be equity among human beings.”

The summit also adopted a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth that will be submitted to the United Nations for approval. The declaration calls to “establish … measures to prevent human activities from causing species extinction, the destruction of ecosystems or the disruption of ecological cycles” and to “promote economic systems that are in harmony with Mother Earth”.

The conference gives hope of a coming together of the revolutionary movements in Latin America, the social movements of the poor in the global South and the grassroots climate movement in the North.

This kind of international alliance is essential to defeat the global elites who will stop at nothing to put their profits ahead of people and planet.

Also, the Cochabamba summit underscores the need for active solidarity with the revolutions in Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America, which are under attack from US imperialism. A setback for the Latin American left will be a setback for the world climate justice movement too.

Unsurprisingly, Australia was singled out for criticism during the summit. The Bolivian newspaper Cambio ran a special feature that listed Australia alongside the US and China as among the world's worst polluters.

As the Cochabamba summit closed, the Rudd government announced it would delay its centrepiece climate policy, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, until 2013.

While opposition leader Tony Abbott (backed by the well-funded frauds who comprise the climate change denial lobby) portrayed the CPRS as a “deep green” assault on capitalism and the modern world, in reality it was more about “compensating” the big polluters with taxpayer’s money than cutting emissions.

Its market-dependent mechanisms would not have achieved even the woefully inadequate projected 5% cut in emissions.

In 2007, Rudd called climate change “the great moral challenge of our generation”. Now, as the federal election approaches, he has ditched any pretence of action so as to play “how small is your climate change policy” with the opposition.

In his message to the Cochabamba summit, Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, author of The Open Veins of Latin America, could well have had Rudd in mind: "Besides, we are, above all, fed up with the hypocrisy of rich countries, which are leaving us without a habitable planet while making pompous speeches to cover up their heist.” ''

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/43891

Edited May 5, 2010 by John Dolva

[Greg Burnham]

Speculations Beyond the Pale of Reality

Volume 13, Number 18: 5 May 2010

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the introductory material to their paper on potential effects of predicted near-future increases in CO2-driven ocean acidification on shell-producing calcification in a certain species of oyster, Watson et al. (2009) report that over the past two centuries, CO2 emissions from deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels have increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations from 280 to 380 ppm, citing NOAA/ESRL records produced and maintained by Pieter Tans. They additionally say that the portion of this extra CO2 that has been taken up by the planet's oceans has caused a 0.1 unit drop in the pH of their surface waters, which would appear to be correct. However, they predict there will be a further reduction in ocean pH of 0.3 to 0.5 units by 2100, citing the work of Haugan and Drange (1996), Orr et al. (2005) and Caldeira and Wickett (2005), while noting that these predicted changes in ocean pH "are not only greater but far more rapid than any experienced in the last 24 million years," citing Blackford and Gilbert (2007), or "possibly the last 300 million years," citing Caldeira and Wickett (2003), which all sounds pretty scary. But does it seem just a bit too scary? ... as in too scary to be true?

Consider the findings of Tans himself, who Watson et al. approvingly cite in regard to the CO2 history they mention. In a paper published in Oceanography, which we have briefly discussed in a prior Editorial, Tans (2009) concluded that the future trajectory of oceanic pH will likely be significantly different from that suggested by the scientists cited by Watson et al., while at the same time bravely criticizing the IPCC reports that have also accepted the highly inflated acidification predictions of those scientists. Indeed, whereas Watson et al. and the IPCC accept the claims of those who project a decline in pH somewhere in the range of 0.3 to 0.5 between now and the end of the century, Tans' projections yield a pH decline somewhere in the range of 0.09 to 0.17, which is much smaller, and which would be expected to have significantly reduced biological impacts compared to those suggested by the experimental work of Watson et al. for that future point in time.

Based on the results of their experiments and the maximum decline in ocean-water pH that they accept, for example, Watson et al. predict a significant decline of 72% in Sydney rock oyster (Saccostrea glomerata) larval survival by the year 2100. However, utilizing Watson et al.'s data, but with the maximum ocean-water pH decline calculated by Tans, we obtain a non-significant larval survival decline of only 14%, based on our interpolation of the graphical results portrayed in Watson et al.'s paper. In like manner, similar assessments of changes in antero-posterior measurement yield a significant decline of 8.7% using Watson et al.'s assumptions about ocean pH, but a non-significant decline of only 1.8% according to Tans' pH calculations. Corresponding results for dorso-ventral measurement were a significant decline of 7.5% with Watson et al.'s pH values, but a non-significant decline of only 1.5% with Tans' values; while for larval dry mass there was a decline of 50% in Watson et al.'s analysis, but an actual increase (albeit non-significant) of 6% using Tans' pH analysis. Last of all, for empty shells remaining there was a significant decline of 90% in the Watson et al. study, but a non-significant decline of only 6% when Tans' pH projections were used.

In summation, based on their experimental data and the ocean pH projections for the end of the century that are promoted by them and the IPCC, Watson et al. find what they characterize as "a dramatic negative effect on the survival, growth, and shell formation of the early larval stages of the Sydney rock oyster." On the other hand, employing the pH values projected by Tans, there are no statistically significant reductions in any of the five biological parameters measured and evaluated by Watson et al., which is an amazingly benign response to an environmental threat that is being suggested by some to be more serious or extreme than it was at any other time that it may have reared its ugly head over the past 300 million years!

Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso

References

Blackford, J.C. and Gilbert, F.J. 2007. pH variability and CO2 induced acidification in the North Sea. Journal of Marine Systems 64: 229-241.

Caldeira, K. and Wickett, M.E. 2003. Anthropogenic carbon and ocean pH. Nature 425: 365.

Caldeira, K. and Wickett, M.E. 2005. Ocean model predictions of chemistry changes from carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere and ocean. Journal of Geophysical Research 110: 10.1029/2004JC002671.

Haugan, P.M. and Drange, H. 1996. Effects of CO2 on the ocean environment. Energy Conversion and Management 37: 1019-1022.

Orr, J.C., Fabry, V.J., Aumont, O., Bopp, L., Doney, S.C., Feely, R.A., Gnanadesikan, A., Gruber, N., Ishida, A., Joos, F., Key, R.M., Lindsay, K., Maier-Reimer, E., Matear, R., Monfray, P., Mouchet, A., Najjar, R.G., Plattner, G.-K., Rodgers, K.B., Sabine, C.L., Sarmiento, J.L., Schlitzer, R., Slater, R.D., Totterdell, I.J., Weirig, M.-F., Yamanaka, Y. and Yool, A. 2005. Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms. Nature 437: 681-686.

Tans, P. 2009. An accounting of the observed increase in oceanic and atmospheric CO2 and an outlook for the future. Oceanography 22: 26-35.

Watson, S.-A., Southgate, P.C., Tyler, P.A. and Peck, L.S. 2009. Early larval development of the Sydney rock oyster Saccostrea glomerata under near-future predictions of CO2-driven ocean acidification. Journal of Shellfish Research 28: 431-437.

[John Dolva]

''Bolivia’s world climate summit a breakthrough

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Bolivia's World People's Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth was radical, inspiring, uncompromising and exactly what was needed.

Up to 30,000 people from six continents took part in the summit, which was held in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba from April 19 to 22.

The huge oil spill from a BP rig in the Gulf of Mexico underscores the summit’s significance. About 800,000 litres of oil are spewing out a day. The company admits it may not be able to stop the leak for weeks — or even months.

Oil companies like BP are among the most powerful organisations on the planet. Seven of the 10 richest companies worldwide are oil giants.

If we don’t end the system that rewards such ecological destruction, capitalism will make the Earth uninhabitable.

The huge protests outside December's failed Copenhagen climate summit showed that a global movement for real climate action had emerged. Cochabamba showed the movement is getting stronger and more ambitious.

The final “people's agreement” adopted by the summit — the Cochabamba protocol — warned that climate change puts the future of humanity in danger. It noted that the 2°C average warming target favoured by the rich countries would lead to mass species extinctions, severe water shortages and rising sea levels.

A 2°C target is the official goal of countries supporting the Copenhagen Accord — a plan announced by wealthy nations at Copenhagen and endorsed by Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

However, the emissions cuts pledged under the accord are so small it would actually mean a catastrophic 3°C rise or more, said the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Unlike the Copenhagen fiasco, the climate activists at Cochabamba took aim at the real culprits for global warming.

The protocol said: “The corporations and governments of the so-called ‘developed’ countries, in complicity with a segment of the scientific community, have led us to discuss climate change as a problem limited to the rise in temperature without questioning the cause, which is the capitalist system.”

Capitalism is the problem because it “has imposed on us a logic of competition, progress and limitless growth. This regime of production and consumption seeks profit without limits, separating human beings from nature and imposing a logic of domination upon nature, transforming everything into commodities: water, earth, the human genome, ancestral cultures, biodiversity, justice, ethics, the rights of peoples, and life itself.”

The existing system is incompatible with a safe climate. It converts the Earth “into a source of raw materials, and human beings into consumers and a means of production, into people that are seen as valuable only for what they own, and not for what they are.”

The call from Cochabamba is unmistakable. Global warming is not just an “environmental” concern. To save the planet from dangerous climate change the climate movement must also stand for radical social change and grassroots democracy.

“Humanity confronts a great dilemma: to continue on the path of capitalism, depredation and death, or to choose the path of harmony with nature and respect for life”, the protocol said.

“It is imperative that we forge a new system that restores harmony with nature and among human beings. And in order for there to be balance with nature, there must first be equity among human beings.”

The summit also adopted a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth that will be submitted to the United Nations for approval. The declaration calls to “establish … measures to prevent human activities from causing species extinction, the destruction of ecosystems or the disruption of ecological cycles” and to “promote economic systems that are in harmony with Mother Earth”.

The conference gives hope of a coming together of the revolutionary movements in Latin America, the social movements of the poor in the global South and the grassroots climate movement in the North.

This kind of international alliance is essential to defeat the global elites who will stop at nothing to put their profits ahead of people and planet.

Also, the Cochabamba summit underscores the need for active solidarity with the revolutions in Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America, which are under attack from US imperialism. A setback for the Latin American left will be a setback for the world climate justice movement too.

Unsurprisingly, Australia was singled out for criticism during the summit. The Bolivian newspaper Cambio ran a special feature that listed Australia alongside the US and China as among the world's worst polluters.

As the Cochabamba summit closed, the Rudd government announced it would delay its centrepiece climate policy, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, until 2013.

While opposition leader Tony Abbott (backed by the well-funded frauds who comprise the climate change denial lobby) portrayed the CPRS as a “deep green” assault on capitalism and the modern world, in reality it was more about “compensating” the big polluters with taxpayer’s money than cutting emissions.

Its market-dependent mechanisms would not have achieved even the woefully inadequate projected 5% cut in emissions.

In 2007, Rudd called climate change “the great moral challenge of our generation”. Now, as the federal election approaches, he has ditched any pretence of action so as to play “how small is your climate change policy” with the opposition.

In his message to the Cochabamba summit, Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, author of The Open Veins of Latin America, could well have had Rudd in mind: "Besides, we are, above all, fed up with the hypocrisy of rich countries, which are leaving us without a habitable planet while making pompous speeches to cover up their heist.” ''

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/43891