Is Climate Change really man-made?

[item8]

And your doing for them, because you are saying there is no problem at all, and that there is no cause and effect, which is a lie.

I am not doing it for them, I am saying what I say because I am not a gullible fool. You most certainly are fooled by them if you believe their fairy tale. The planet warmed for a brief period in the last twenty years or so - something it has done repeatedly over history. Now it is cooling again so they say global warming is causing the cooling so lets change it to "Climate Change" to cover that inconvenient reality. Like ignoring the medieval warming period because it showed the "Hockey Stick" to be garbage. I would not care one jot about anyone believing in the myth of man made climate change if it was not for the fact that I will have to pay the taxes to the criminal hoaxers that "believers" will insist I pay. Like religion of old I will be made to believe or else. Fortunately more and more people with a bit of discernment are realising that like 9/11 and 7/7 and the economic meltdown, man made climate change is another pack of lies invented by the criminal "elite" to enslave us. Believe what you want just don't make me suffer from your disease.

[Andrew.]

And your doing for them, because you are saying there is no problem at all, and that there is no cause and effect, which is a lie.

I am not doing it for them, I am saying what I say because I am not a gullible fool. You most certainly are fooled by them if you believe their fairy tale. The planet warmed for a brief period in the last twenty years or so - something it has done repeatedly over history. Now it is cooling again so they say global warming is causing the cooling so lets change it to "Climate Change" to cover that inconvenient reality. Like ignoring the medieval warming period because it showed the "Hockey Stick" to be garbage. I would not care one jot about anyone believing in the myth of man made climate change if it was not for the fact that I will have to pay the taxes to the criminal hoaxers that "believers" will insist I pay. Like religion of old I will be made to believe or else. Fortunately more and more people with a bit of discernment are realising that like 9/11 and 7/7 and the economic meltdown, man made climate change is another pack of lies invented by the criminal "elite" to enslave us. Believe what you want just don't make me suffer from your disease.

How can you possibly know and verify that data?

But there is this:

"Its just that if you put something into a system its going to have some effect, measuring that may be difficult and hard to verify for the public."

[item8]

http://xrepublic.tv/node/883

Thomas Sowell: Global Warming Manufactured by Intellectuals

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/12/11/Thomas_Sowell ... nd_Society

Author Thomas Sowell argues that public demand for intellectuals is largely manufactured by intellectuals themselves. He says intellectuals make alarming predictions using causes like global warming to create a need for their services.

-----

Thomas Sowell introduces his new book Intellectuals and Society and expounds on what he calls "the fatal misstep of intellectuals" -- the assumption that superior ability within a particular realm can be generalized as superior wisdom or morality over all. He offers examples of this misstep in areas as divergent as economics, the environment, and national defense.

Finally, he warns us to resist the influence of intellectuals and points out that the demand for public intellectuals is largely manufactured by the public intellectuals themselves. - Hoover Institution

Thomas Sowell is an American economist, political writer, and commentator. He is currently a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 1990, he won the Francis Boyer Award, presented by the American Enterprise Institute. In 2002 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal for prolific scholarship melding history, economics, and political science.

Peter M. Robinson is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he writes about business and politics, edits Hoover's quarterly journal, the Hoover Diges

[item8]

http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=10591

BREAKING: Climate Change panel chief says ‘not invited to COP18’ by Bonnie James, Gulf-Times.com
Friday, November 16th 2012, 6:23 PM EST
Co2sceptic (Site Admin)
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will not be attending the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP18/CMP8) in Doha, chairman Dr Rajendra K Pachauri has said.

“For the first time in the 18 years of COP, the IPCC will not be attending, because we have not been invited,” he told Gulf Times in Doha.

COP18 is to be held from November 26 to December 7.

The IPCC, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, former vice president of the US and environmental activist, is the leading international body for the assessment of climate change. Currently 195 countries are members.

Dr Pachauri first hinted about his ‘anticipated absence’ at COP18, while speaking at the opening session of the International Conference on Food Security in Dry Lands (FSDL) on Wednesday at Qatar University.

Later, he told Gulf Times he did not know why the IPCC has not been invited to COP18, something that has happened never before.

[item8]

http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id ... position=1

John O'Sullivan: The Courts, Hans Jelbring and the Kiwis Bring Joy for Greenhouse Gas Deniers
Monday, November 26th 2012, 12:40 PM EST
Co2sceptic (Site Admin)
Fast-growing maverick science body, Principia Scientific International (PSI) takes three more steps closer to defeating junk climate science and forcing an overhaul of the world’s “broken” science peer-review system. In the courts PSI’s chairman, Dr. Tim Ball hammers two prominent climate scientists, while in the science labs PSI’s debunk of the alleged greenhouse gas effect (GHE) has won over another slew of key recruits including a prominent climate researcher.

Today renowned climate expert Hans Jelbring and Bryan Leyland, chairman and co-founder of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) each announce themselves among dozens of new faces in the PSI team. Leyland’s influential skeptic body also issues a press release seen as further validation of PSI’s indomitable stance in refuting greenhouse gas science.

Tim Ball Launches Legal Counter Attack against Michael Mann (& Andrew Weaver)

But it is at the courtrooms of British Columbia, Canada that we must first begin our rousing roundup of news. It is here that popular Canadian climatologist, Dr Tim Ball delivers the evidence signalling not one, but two impending dramatic legal victories against carbon hating junk climate scientists. Specialist Canadian libel firm, Pearlman Lindholm of Vancouver are to announce the filing of separate counterclaims on behalf of Dr. Ball and against discredited climate professors Michael Mann and Andrew Weaver. Recently the Nobel Committee affirmed that both professors lied when each claimed to be co-winners of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Ball's legal team are to file stiff counterclaims in the Supreme Court of British Columbia to coincide with the announcement of his victory not only over Mann, but also over fellow IPCC doomsayer, Weaver. Cynics will say Weaver’s qualification as a proven and adept liar helped clinch his position as new Green Party leader.

Sadly, for Weaver his new political position will do nothing to save his junk science. The dismissal of his vexatious libel suit against Ball is set to reverberate around the world as the death knell of all those now discredited "complex computer models" touted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Weaver, the IPCC’s chief climate modeler, has fallen foul of court rules because he, just like Mann, has been timed out for failing to advance his case since last year due to a bizarre refusal to comply with court rules to show what's behind his science. Honest scientists would have no qualms over a little 'show and tell' to convince a jury their science is "settled." But these charlatans must think its worth blowing a cool million to keep it hidden. As such, for their failures to come clean both their lawsuits are now scheduled for immediate summary dismissal, plus costs. The desperate duo are represented by libel expert, Roger McConchie, a big-hitting lawyer unused to having his butt kicked so emphatically round a courtroom.

Dr. Ball and PSI are especially delighted that Weaver failed to back up his pompous claims about the IPCC’s "complex models" that allegedly validate the GHE. Because Weaver won’t allow the court to examine those “complex” greenhouse gas models the only ruling it can now make is that they don’t exist. As such, Ball and his PSI colleagues will be able to claim it has the Canadian state's ultimate legal validation of their debunk of greenhouse gas physics.

Sharing in the joy is Dr. Hans Jelbring, a long-standing independent critic of the greenhouse gas “theory.” Dr Jelbring provided PSI with a further boost by declaring, “The initiative of PSI is much needed and I will be glad to be informed by PSI and contribute to the goals of PSI as much as my skill allows me to do.” Jelbring’s 2003 paper, published in Energy & Environment is seen as being much in accord with PSI science as well as that of Nikolov and Zeller.

New Zealand Skeptics Align with Maverick Science Body

As independent climate researchers move closer towards the universal abandonment of the greenhouse gas “theory” last week the indomitable Bryan Leyland showed his leadership by becoming the first prominent Kiwi skeptic to join PSI. Bryan is both chairman and co-founder with Vincent Gray of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition. On Friday NZCSC, along with Professor Cliff Ollier of the University of Western Australia announced their acceptance of all key elements of PSI science (see below).

Canadian Astrophysicist, Joe Postma, who also assists the Indian space agency and is now at the vanguard of advancing PSI science. Joe had this to say, “NZCSC has made an important declaration in their newsletter and we are very gratified. The NZCSC position is almost a perfect echo of the work the Slayers and myself have been presenting over the past 2 years and more. I am very happy to see this synchronicity!”

Dr. Vincent Gray, author of the NZCSC newsletter wrote, “In several recent newsletters I have attacked the plausibility of the basic climate model promoted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” In particular Dr. Gray condemned the practice of IPCC junk science in stubbornly modelling Earth as is if were flat. As Postma’s calculations have shown, it is by crassly choosing to stick with this “flat earth physics” that climatologists have gotten away for decades in duping policymakers that any such greenhouse effect exists.

Postma’s work, most notably his latest paper, shows that IPCC models critically failed to factor into the mix legitimate heat flow differential equations nor did it take into account the impacts of latent heat, circulation, the Zero-Energy-Balance plot, etc. [1]

As Dr. Gray points out the IPCC went badly wrong because omitting these key factors was “completely at odds with meteorological science.” Dr. Gray, like Postma asserts that Earth’s surface is immediately cooled by “convection by the atmosphere and evaporation of water.”

Postma backed Gray’s assessment by declaring, “My initial papers were based on exposing the inherent tautologies and abuse of mathematics and physics such [IPCC] models exploit, introducing a new graphical schematic model baseline for treating the system dynamically as it actually occurs in reality.”

Thanks to such unswerving dedication to defend itself against the "dirty little secrets" of junk science, not only in the labs but in the courtrooms, Principia Scientific International is moving to the forefront as the only international science association prepared to expose the flaws woven (deliberately?) into greenhouse gas climate science.

[TonyGosling]

UNBELIEVABLE CONTRADICTION TODAY!

Antarctic icecap is melting more slowly than previously estimated, scientists find

http://phys.org/news/2012-11-antarctic- ... tists.html

November 29, 2012

(Phys.org)—The Antarctic icecap is melting more slowly than previously estimated, according to new estimates based on satellite measurements and GPS sensors on the ground.

The authors of the study, published in Nature, estimate an annual total ice loss of 69 billion tonnes, plus or minus 18 billion – between half and a third of previous estimates, and equivalent to only around 0.19mm of sea-level rise a year.

Changes in ice mass vary across the continent. The area along the Amundsen Sea coast is losing ice at a fast and accelerating rate, whereas West Antarctica as a whole is roughly stable and East Antarctica is gaining substantial amounts of ice.

Antarctica is warming due to worldwide climate change but it's still extremely cold; away from where the ice flows into the warming sea, it's very difficult for large volumes of ice to melt, so changes in ice mass in the continent's interior may have more to do with global patterns of precipitation – that is, how much it snows, replenishing ice stocks – than with the air temperature.

Recent ice-mass loss from West Antarctica has been largely counterbalanced by mass gain in the interior, so the continent's total contribution to sea level is less than previously believed. In the longer term, though, the scientists behind the study say that if temperatures keep rising, this balance cannot be depended on. Antarctica holds enough water to raise sea level by around 59 metres, so if it starts to melt more quickly there is the potential for a dramatic increase in the already worrying rate of sea-level rise.

'The concern is that sea levels are already rising about 3mm a year, but it now turns out that's without a large contribution from melting ice in Antarctica,' says Dr Rory Bingham of Newcastle University, one of the paper's authors. 'There are some areas with very heavy loss of ice mass, but at the moment the gain in ice mass in East Antarctica is largely compensating. Worryingly there are signs of acceleration in the regions of heavy mass loss. Should this continue sea-level rise could accelerate substantially.'

He says that the continent's western reaches already seem less stable than elsewhere, with fast changes to ice mass in places like the Pine Island Glacier where warmer seawater and air temperatures are promoting melting.

The findings will help scientists understand the history of the Antarctic ice since the last ice age, which has huge implications for how it will respond to climate change over the next few centuries, and hence how much it might contribute to global sea-level rise.

During the last ice age, there was far more ice covering Antarctica. It was so heavy that it deformed the Earth below, forcing the hot rocks of its mantle away from Antarctica and causing the surface of the land to sink. Ever since the end of the ice age removed much of that weight of ice, the land has been slowly rebounding as the mantle has flowed back into the region - a process called Glacial Isostatic Adjustment, or GIA.

This makes it hard to measure changes in how much ice there is using satellites. The GRACE satellites have sensitive instruments to read minute variations in the strength of the Earth's gravity field caused by differences in the amount of mass from place to place - areas where the planet's crust is thicker have more mass, for example. Their results show a clear trend of decreasing mass in the Antarctic. But this fall in mass is made up of a combination of two trends - on the one hand ice melting causes mass to fall, and on the other GIA adds to the continent's mass by adding rock underneath it. Scientists haven't been sure exactly how much GIA has been happening, meaning they couldn't accurately estimate the rate of ice melt.

The new paper addresses that problem, assessing the rate of GIA - and hence also of ice loss - far more accurately than has ever before been possible. The researchers drew on earlier work by members of the same team installing GPS sensors on the rare rocky outcrops poking through the Antarctic icecap. This let them measure the speed of the rock's rebound directly. For this paper, they created a new model of GIA into which to feed the results. They could then subtract the GIA estimates from the readings of the overall change in the mass of the Antarctic provided by GRACE to pinpoint the contribution of ice melting.

They concluded that the landmass has been gaining mass more slowly than earlier estimates suggested, meaning that in order to make the figures add up the loss of ice must also have been slower than had been assumed.

Bingham says the GRACE satellites probably won't be flying for much longer, and that it's vital replacements are launched soon so that researchers can continue to monitor changes in the land and ice mass of Antarctica over time.

A chilling message: Ice sheets melting three times faster than 20 years ago

New research using satellite measurements shows polar caps are shrinking three times quicker than 20 years ago
Lewis Smith

Thursday 29 November 2012
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 69038.html

The polar ice sheets are melting three times faster than they were 20 years ago, according to satellite measurements.

More than 4,200 gigatonnes were lost from the polar ice sheets from 1992 to 2011, an average of 223Gt a year and rising.

Researchers described the losses as being at “the high end” of forecasts by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007.

The findings are based on previous satellite readings but have been combined and correlated to provide what scientists believe is “the most accurate assessment” yet of polar ice loss.

Accurate calculations of how much ice is lost from Greenland and Antarctica are notoriously difficult.

In 2007, the IPCC wasn’t even sure if there was a net loss or gain.

Professor Andrew Shephard, of the University of Leeds, said it was “two or three times” more accurate than previous assessments. He said the implications were serious: “The ice sheets used to be a minor player in sea-level rise. Now they seem to be a substantial player.”

It provides “baseline” data which will make future forecasts of ice loss and sea-level rises much more accurate.

Net losses of ice contribute to sea- level rises and the study found that the rate has increased significantly in only 20 years. During the 1990s, ice sheet loss accounted for 10 per cent of sea- level rises but in the past five years it has risen to more than 30 per cent.

Melting ice caps, the new calculations show, caused 11mm of the overall rise since 1992 but the rate of loss is increasing rapidly. In the 1990s, 0.27mm of annual sea-level rise was blamed on polar melting, whereas in the past five years it has risen to 0.95mm annually.

Melting of ice in Greenland has had the biggest impact, contributing 7.4mm to sea-level rises since 1992. Antarctica has contributed 3.7mm but there are clear regional differences. While West Antarctica has lost an average 65Gt annually and the Antarctic Peninsular 20Gt, there has been a 14Gt gain in East Antarctica.

Annual sea-level rises are still small but are forecast to increase significantly and the study suggests the most pessimistic forecasts will be proved right.

It comes after a report published earlier this week showed overall sea levels rose 3.2mm a year between 1993 and 2011, 60 per cent above the 2mm estimate in projections by the IPCC.

The findings, published in the journal Science, were made by an international team of scientists jointly led by Professor Shepherd and Dr Eric Ivins at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Professor Michiel van den Broeke, of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, warned: “Sea-level rises are at the very upper end of what the IPCC has predicted.”

The causes and mechanisms behind the increased rate of ice loss are not fully understood but it is widely attributed to global warming.

Professor Richard Alley, a climate scientist at Penn State University in the US, who was not involved in the study, said: “This project is a spectacular achievement. The data will support testing of predictive models, and lead to a better understanding of how sea-level change may depend on the human decisions that influence global temperatures.”

Enough ice is contained in the ice sheets to cause sea-level rises, if it all melted, of an estimated 63m – 7m from Greenland and 56m from Antarctica.

[TonyGosling]

Hi again!
Whether man-made or not this looks to me like a train crash coming our way.
I can't believe it's been so difficult to find an explanation for these basic figures
1. Rate Ice sheets are absorbing energy every year.
2. Projected date the last ice at the poles finally melts.
3. Projected temperature rise of earth from that point on.
4. Population loss in millions from that date.
5. Projected year mankind is wiped out (assuming non man made climate change).

Average temperature doesn't have as much significance as you might think.
The ice caps melt as the Earth warms up, cooling it down again.
It's called 'latent heat'.

Potential for climate disaster should more correctly be monitored by looking at the total quantity of, and temperature below freezing of, ice on the poles. A much better measure than global temperature.
Specific Latent Heat of Liquification of Water is 334 Kj/Kg
Specific Heat Capacity of Water is 4.1813 J/(g·K)

Annoyingly the units for energy and mass appear to be different for the two
The first looks like KiloJoules per Kilogram to melt the ice
The second looks like Joules per gramme to heat it 1 degree Kelvin (same as Celcius)
Attempting to align the two measurements by multiplying both the SHC units grammes and Joules by 1000:
Specific Latent Heat of Liquification of Water is 334 Kj/Kg
Specific Heat Capacity of Water is 4.1813 KJ/(Kg·K)

Now if this is correct the melting of polar ice is the equivalent of 80 degrees celcius change in temperature.
Now that surely can not be right but illustrates the point that we need to work out how many degrees in temperature is the equivalent energy taken up by ice as it melts???

Measurements of SLH and SHC for water and melting ice should both be in
Joules per kilogramme (per degree kelvin)
Any answers????

Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released... and here is the chart to prove it

Trouble is of course this could all be an oil industry ruse

[item8]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxFm1TXshZY[/youtube]

[item8]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/09 ... n_save_us/

Swedish boffins: An ICE AGE is coming, only CO2 can save us

Forget Hurricane Sandy - fear the peat powered freeze

By Lewis Page

Posted in Science, 9th November 2012 15:58 GMT

A group of Swedish scientists at the University of Gothenburg have published a paper in which they argue that spreading peatlands are inexorably driving planet Earth into its next ice age, and the only thing holding back catastrophe is humanity's hotly debated atmospheric carbon emissions.

"We are probably entering a new ice age right now. However, we're not noticing it due to the effects of carbon dioxide," says Professor of Physical Geography Lars Franzén, from the Department of Earth Sciences at Gothenburg uni.

Franzén and his colleagues have examined various scenarios for the peatlands of Sweden, which are a continually expanding "dynamic landscape element". According to the scientists:

Peatlands grow in height and spread across their surroundings by waterlogging woodlands. They are also one of the biggest terrestrial sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Each year, around 20 grams of carbon are absorbed by every square metre of peatland.

The scientists have calculated that the potential is there for Swedish peatlands to triple in extent, enormously increasing their carbon sink effect. By extrapolating to include the rest of the world's high-latitude temperate areas - the parts of the globe where peatland can expand as it does in Sweden - they project the creation of an extremely powerful carbon sink. They theorise that this is the mechanism which tends to force the Earth back into prolonged ice ages after each relatively brief "interglacial" warm period.

"Carbon sequestration in peatland may be one of the main reasons why ice age conditions have occurred time after time," says Franzén.

With no other factors in play, the time is about right for the present interglacial to end and the next ice age to come on. Indeed, Franzén and his crew think it has barely been staved off by human activity:

The researchers believe that the Little Ice Age of the 16th to 18th centuries may have been halted as a result of human activity. Increased felling of woodlands and growing areas of agricultural land, combined with the early stages of industrialisation, resulted in increased emissions of carbon dioxide which probably slowed down, or even reversed, the cooling trend.

Other scientists have attributed the Little Ice Age to a quiet period in the Sun's activity: others say it was purely a local effect in Europe, though that theory has lately been disproved by research in Antarctica.

In any case, the scientists assess that if it weren't for human activity such as carbon emissions, we could expect a new ice era in short order. They write:

Thus, on a global scale, carbon sequestration in peatlands may have had important climate cooling effects towards the ends of previous interglacials ... It cannot be ruled out that similar effects would be seen in a hypothetical Holocene lacking human presence.

It's probably worth noting that the great physicist Freeman Dyson long ago suggested that only relatively small amounts of new peatland would be enough to sequestrate colossal amounts of CO2 from the air. Other scientists have noted in recent times that brief warming spells like that observed at the end of the 20th century appear to have occurred towards the end of previous interglacial periods - just before the glaciers returned.

If Franzén and his team are right, the big chill is now under way, and is only just being held off by increasing human carbon emissions - perhaps explaining why temperatures have been merely flat for the last 15 years or so, rather than descending.

The Swedish scientists' paper is published in the peer-reviewed journal Mires and Peat, and can be read here in pdf.
Comment

Naturally this theory runs counter to the global warming scenario as presented by many other scientists and most of the media. That stance has lately been boosted by wildly unjustifiable assertions that global warming caused Hurricane Sandy. Unfortunately if you believe that isolated events prove theories, you would pretty much have to accept that global warming has stopped: ten to fifteen years of flat temperatures, or even a few very cold winters - both of which have just happened - are a lot more significant than one storm (and they still aren't significant enough to mean anything much in a climate context). ®

[TonyGosling]

One day, turning off the lights won't be up to you
Governments have taken suicidal gambles with our energy supplies
Wind turbines produce a fraction of the power that we need Photo: ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP

By Christopher Booker
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy ... o-you.html
7:00PM GMT 23 Feb 2013

569 Comments

Readers of this column might have been astonished by the media response last week to that warning by Alistair Buchanan, retiring head of the energy regulator Ofgem, that next month we will see the closure of five major coal-fired power stations that between them contribute nearly a sixth of the UK’s average electricity needs.

Over the next few years, Mr Buchanan feared, we will be dangerously close to not having enough power in the grid to keep Britain’s lights on.

I have been trying to explain this here for so long that my readers may be weary of it. It was back in 2006 that I first reported on why, within a decade or so, we might see Britain’s lights going out. In fact, as I set out in my book, The Real Global Warming Disaster, in 2009, the writing was already on the wall in the government’s energy White Paper of 2003. Tony Blair signed us up to an energy policy centred on building thousands of windmills, already fully aware that we would be losing many of our coal-fired power stations due to an EU anti-pollution directive, and that we were unlikely to build any new nuclear power stations to replace those that by now would be nearing the end of their life.

This made a nonsense of Mr Buchanan’s claim in a vacuous interview with Evan Davis, on Tuesday’s Today programme on Radio 4, that everything was fine with Britain’s “visionary” energy policy until we were hit by that “financial tsunami” in 2008. This prompted Mr Davis to comment, “So we can blame the bankers for it, as we normally do”. (Nine months earlier I had written a column headed, “When the lights go out, you’ll know who to blame” – it wasn’t the bankers.)

The most interesting passage in Mr Buchanan’s interview was where he began hinting at what has recently been emerging as a terrifying new element in the Government’s energy policy. It well knows that electricity from the tens of thousands more wind turbines it hopes to see built in the coming years will cost between two and four times as much as that from conventional power stations. Its solution to this is to rig the market with new taxes and other devices so that this will make electricity from wind farms somehow seem competitive – not by making wind cheaper but by doubling the cost of electricity from the gas, coal and nuclear power stations that still provide virtually all the electricity we need to keep our lights on.

Around lunchtime last Monday, for instance, National Grid was showing that all our 4,300 wind turbines put together were providing barely a thousandth of the power we were using, 0.1 per cent, or a paltry 31MW (as compared with the 2,200MW we can get from a single gas-fired plant).

The harsh fact is that successive governments in the past 10 years have staked our national future on two utterly suicidal gambles. First, they have fallen for the delusion that we can depend for nearly a third of our future power on those useless and unreliable windmills – which will require a dozen or more new gas-fired power stations just to provide back-up for when the wind is not blowing.

Yet, at the same time, by devices such as the increasingly punitive “carbon tax” due to come into force on April 1, they plan to double the cost of the electricity we get from grown-up power stations, which can only have the effect in the coming years of doubling our electricity bills, driving millions more households into fuel poverty.

If our government were not lost in a bubble of complete make-believe, it would keep open those coal-fired power stations the EU is forcing us to close next month (although it may be too late), it would stop subsidising grotesquely expensive wind farms, and it would go flat out to exploit Britain’s vast reserves of the shale gas that has more than halved US gas prices in four years.

But we do not have such a government. Our lights will go out, our economy will suffer a catastrophe, our bills will double, and tens of thousands more people will die of cold in those freezing winters that our politicians were somehow fooled into believing would never come again

[item8]

But we do not have such a government. Our lights will go out, our economy will suffer a catastrophe, our bills will double, and tens of thousands more people will die of cold in those freezing winters that our politicians were somehow fooled into believing would never come again

Exactly as planned!

[TonyGosling]

I remember the power cuts of the 1970s.
And it felt good in a weird way because the miners were striking to stop the closedown of their industry.
These power cuts will be bad ones, a stick to whip the masses with.

[item8]

I remember the power cuts of the 1970s.
And it felt good in a weird way because the miners were striking to stop the closedown of their industry.
These power cuts will be bad ones, a stick to whip the masses with.

I think the strike of the 70's was for pay but in the 80's it was for the protection of the industry.... and the communities that relied on them. So we ALL lost when the miner's lost. Well nearly all - the rich have done quite well!

[item8]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n92YenWfz0Y[/youtube]

[item8]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... along.html

The Great Green Con no. 1: The hard proof that finally shows global warming forecasts that are costing you billions were WRONG all along

By David Rose

PUBLISHED: 23:37, 16 March 2013 | UPDATED: 23:37, 16 March 2013


No, the world ISN'T getting warmer (as you may have noticed). Now we reveal the official data that's making scientists suddenly change their minds about climate doom. So will eco-funded MPs stop waging a green crusade with your money? Well... what do YOU think?

The Mail on Sunday today presents irrefutable evidence that official predictions of global climate warming have been catastrophically flawed.

The graph on this page blows apart the ‘scientific basis’ for Britain reshaping its entire economy and spending billions in taxes and subsidies in order to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. These moves have already added £100 a year to household energy bills.



Steadily climbing orange and red bands on the graph show the computer predictions of world temperatures used by the official United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The estimates – given with 75 per cent and 95 per cent certainty – suggest only a five per cent chance of the real temperature falling outside both bands.

But when the latest official global temperature figures from the Met Office are placed over the predictions, they show how wrong the estimates have been, to the point of falling out of the ‘95 per cent’ band completely.
In 1977 we were warned of the 'next ice age', now we are warned that the planet is getting dangerously hot

Varying fears: In 1977 we were warned of the 'next ice age', now we are warned that the planet is getting dangerously hot

The graph shows in incontrovertible detail how the speed of global warming has been massively overestimated. Yet those forecasts have had a ruinous impact on the bills we pay, from heating to car fuel to huge sums paid by councils to reduce carbon emissions.

The eco-debate was, in effect, hijacked by false data. The forecasts have also forced jobs abroad as manufacturers relocate to places with no emissions targets.

A version of the graph appears in a leaked draft of the IPCC’s landmark Fifth Assessment Report due out later this year. It comes as leading climate scientists begin to admit that their worst fears about global warming will not be realised.

Academics are revising their views after acknowledging the miscalculation. Last night Myles Allen, Oxford University’s Professor of Geosystem Science, said that until recently he believed the world might be on course for a catastrophic temperature rise of more than five degrees this century.

But he now says: ‘The odds have come down,’ – adding that warming is likely to be significantly lower.
Prof Allen says higher estimates are now ‘looking iffy’.

The graph confirms there has been no statistically significant increase in the world’s average temperature since January 1997 – as this newspaper first disclosed last year.

At the end of last year the Met Office revised its ten-year forecast predicting a succession of years breaking records for warmth. It now says the pause in warming will last until at least 2017. A glance at the graph will confirm that the world will be cooler than even the coolest scenario predicted.
experts




Its source is impeccable. The line showing world temperatures comes from the Met Office ‘HadCRUT4’ database, which contains readings from more than 30,000 measuring posts. This was added to the 75 and 95 per cent certainty bands to produce the graph by a group that amalgamates the work of 20 climate model centres working for the IPCC.

Predictions of global warming, based on scientists’ forecasts of how fast increasing CO2 levels would cause temperatures to rise, directly led to Britain’s Climate Change Act. This commits the UK to cut emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
1977 - THE YEAR WE WERE TOLD TO FEAR TERROR OF...GLOBAL COOLING

In the Seventies, scientists and policymakers were just as concerned about a looming ‘ice age’ as they have been lately about global warming – as the Time magazine cover pictured here illustrates.

Temperatures had been falling since the beginning of the Forties. Professors warned that the trend would continue and food crises were going to get worse because of shorter growing seasons.

Newsweek magazine reported that evidence of cooling was so strong ‘meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it’. But, it lamented, ‘scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections’. It said the planet was already ‘a sixth of the way towards the next ice age’.

While recently every kind of extreme weather event has been blamed on warming, in the Seventies the culprit was cooling. One article predicted ‘the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded’, along with ‘droughts, floods, extended dry spells and long freezes’.

The current Energy Bill is set to increase subsidies for wind turbines to £7.6 billion a year – leading to a combined cost of £110 billion. Motorists will soon see a further 3p per litre rise in the cost of petrol because this now has to contain ‘biofuel’ ethanol.

Many scientists say the pause, and new research into factors such as smoke particles and ocean cycles, has made them rethink what is termed ‘climate sensitivity’ – how much the world will warm for a given level of CO2.

Yesterday Piers Forster, Climate Change Professor at Leeds University, said: ‘The fact that global surface temperatures haven’t risen in the last 15 years, combined with good knowledge of the terms changing climate, make the high estimates unlikely.’

And Professor Judith Curry, head of climate science at the prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said: ‘The models are running too hot. The flat trend in global surface temperatures may continue for another decade or two.’

James Annan, of Frontier Research For Global Change, a prominent ‘warmist’, recently said high estimates for climate sensitivity now look ‘increasingly untenable’, with the true figure likely to be about half of the IPCC prediction in its last report in 2007.

Avowed climate sceptics are more unequivocal. Dr David Whitehouse, author of a new report on the pause published on Friday by Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: ‘This changes everything. It means we have much longer to work things out. Global warming should no longer be the main determinant of anyone’s economic or energy policy.’

I said the end wasn't nigh... and it cost me my BBC career says TV's first environmentalist, David Bellamy
Former BBC Botanist David Bellamy said that he was regarded as heretical for not toeing the line on global warming

Challenged the orthodoxy: Former BBC Botanist David Bellamy said that he was regarded as heretical for not toeing the line on global warming

This graph shows the end of the world isn’t nigh. But for anyone – like myself – who has been vilified for holding such an unfashionable view, possibly the most important thing about it is its source: the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Since its creation in 1988, the IPCC has been sounding the alarm about man-made global warming. Yet here, in a draft of its latest report, is a diagram overlaying the observed temperature of the earth on its predictions.

The graph shows a world stubbornly refusing to warm. Indeed, it shows the world is soon set to be cooler.

The awkward fact is that the earth has warmed just 0.5 degrees over the past 50 years. And Met Office records show that for the past 16 years temperatures have plateaued and, if anything, are going down.

As the graph shows, the longer this goes on, the more the actual, real-world temperature record will diverge from the IPCC’s doom-laden prediction.

Yet this prediction is used to justify the ugly wind farms spoiling our countryside and billions in unnecessary ‘green’ taxes that make our industry less competitive and add up to £100 a year to household energy bills.

Man-made global warming has become scientific orthodoxy, with no room for dissent. Tragically, the traditional caution of my brethren has gone out of the window along with the concept of sceptical peer reviewing to test new theories.

Opponents of man-made global warming are regarded as dangerous heretics, as I learnt to my cost. Soon after the IPCC was created, I was invited to what is now the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter to hear a presentation on global warming.

As the face of natural history on the BBC and a science academic, they wanted to enrol me in their cause. But when I read the so-called evidence, I realised it was flawed and refused to ‘sign up’.

I rapidly found myself cast out from the BBC and the wider scientific community. When I helped some children campaign against a wind farm as part of a Blue Peter programme, I was publicly vilified. Abusive emails criticised me. I realised my career at the BBC was over.

But scientific theory should be tested. That’s why I question the science which casts carbon as the villain that will bring about the end of the world.
David Bellamy argues that we should be able to test theories about global warming and that the world can live with fluctuations of carbon levels in the air

Open discussion: David Bellamy argues that we should be able to test theories about global warming and that the world can live with fluctuations of carbon levels in the air

Geology tells us that fossil fuels are predominantly carbon which was part of our atmosphere before being locked away in the earth millions of years ago. At that time, there were more than 4,000 carbon parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere. Over time this has been as low as 270ppm and is now about 385ppm.

It is obvious the world can live with these fluctuations in the level of atmospheric carbon.
There is a correlation between temperature and CO2, but some of my colleagues have put the cart before the horse.

The evidence shows CO2 levels follow temperature, not the other way around.
Indeed, there may be many factors that determine our climate. Australian scientist David Archibald has shown a remarkable correlation between the sun’s activity and our climate over the past 300 years. Climate scientists insist we must accept the ‘carbon’ orthodoxy or be cast into the wilderness.

But the scientists behind the theory have a vested interest – it’s a great way to justify new taxes, get more money and guarantee themselves more work.

The reality is that man-made global warming is a myth: the global temperature is well within life’s limits and, indeed, the present day is cooler by comparison to much of Earth’s history. Perhaps this will be the moment that this fact becomes the new scientific orthodoxy.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z2NmzQyTbP
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

[TonyGosling]

You know in some ways the refusal of the BBC to release the names of News Chief Helen Boaden's scientific advisers behind the June 2007 report 'From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel ' FOI'd by blogger Tony Newbery says it all...



What a very strange coincidence
Posted by TonyN on 23/11/2012 at 12:13 pm
BBC and Freedom of Information
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=631
When I returned home after the Information Tribunal hearing in London, I assumed that apart from deciding whether it was worth taking further action in an attempt to get the information out of the BBC, really the last word had been spoken on the matter of the Seminar. It looked as though life might become pleasantly quiet again, for a while at least. How wrong I was.

First there was Andrew Orlowski’s revelations about the two lay judges who sat on the tribunal, and the rather tantalising comment that he obtained from the BBC concerning grounds for an appeal.

And Andrew Orlowski was anything but finished with the story. He was still publishing reports which were picked up by Christopher Booker, James Delingpole and others.

Then the bombshell from Maurizio arrived late last Monday night, and a media storm began to develop. At the moment, if I type ‘my name’ + BBC + seminar into Google, it yields over 3 million hits. Life is not quiet at all really, but yesterday I thought that things were, at last, beginning to settle down a little. Surely nothing else could to crawl out of the woodwork?

So in rare idle moments I was exchanging comments with Maurizio on Geoff Chamber’s blog about the files that he had found on the WayBack Machine. I seemed to have a print-out of the same ten-page PDF file in which he found the participants list. The funny thing was that my September 2008 version had only had three pages: no sign of any participants lists.

One couldn’t help wondering when the file was either altered or replaced.

So in the end, Maurizio and I put a chronology together, and this is what it looks like:

(Maurizio’s contributions are in red, and mine are in black)


13/07/2007 International Broadcasting Trust (IBT) ten-page document recovered by Maurizio written after this date.
20/07/2007 Request to BBC for information about the seminar.
21/08/2007 The BBC’s response citing their derogation under the FOIA.
05/09/2007 I send a complaint to the Information Commissioner.
09/09/2007 Creation of ten-page IBT document recovered by Maurizio according to file properties.
08/11/2007 IBT document recovered by Maurizio written before this date.
It was a very long time before the ICO did anything more, and so far as I am aware the BBC never replied to their letter.
July 2008 Date when link to truncated IBT document became available according to Gareth.
28/07/2008 The ICO eventually writes to the BBC asking for their side if the story.
30/07/2008 Creation date of truncated IBT file according to file properties.
O6/08/2008 My first post at Harlmess Sky on the mattter:
Jeremy Paxman, the BBC, Impartiality, and Freedom of Information





Sept 2008 I print out a three page document at the IBT website describing a number of seminars, including Climate Change – the Challenge to Broadcasting, but without the participants lists.
29/09/2008 Post at Harmless Sky mentioning the IBT:
The Freedom of Information Act and the BBC’s willing little helpers





28/01/2009 The ICO say they are still waiting for the BBC to reply to their letter of 28/07/2008 and so I ask for a case review.
17/11/2009 The ICO publishes a decision notice endorsing the BBC’s decision not to provide me with any of the information.
16/12/2009 I send Grounds of Appeal to the Information Commissioner.
19/01/2010 The ICO submits its response to my appeal.
14/04/2010 BBC joined as a party in the appeal.
12/05/2010 The BBC submits its response to my appeal.
The speed at which the case could then be heard was determined by the progress through higher courts of Steven Sugar’s attempts to obtain the Balen Report as this sought to determine how ‘for the purpose of journalism’ should be interpreted in terms of the FOIA and therefore how the BBC derogation should be applied.
Can anyone spot a rather startling coincidence? Sometime around the end of August 2008?

Well goodness-gracious-me! You never seem to know what’s going to happen next, do you?

So far, everyone seems to have been so transfixed by the revelations of the participants list that they have ignored any other alterations made to the information on the IBT website. So lets look at the first section of each version of the document.

Here’s the first section headed Background from the first page of the later, three-page version:

REAL WORLD BRAINSTORMS

Background

The Real World Brainstorms take place annually and are co-hosted by BBC Vision and BBC News. The aim is to bring together key decision makers within broadcasting with a mix of writers, producers and environment and development specialists to explore how we can more effectively represent our interconnected world Delegates exchange views on key issues and ideas, discussing fresh approaches to stories which impact here in the UK and around the world.

Past seminars have had enormously positive feedback, inspiring major programme seasons as well as diverse individual projects. But the meetings are not about pitching ideas – they are about making space for fresh thinking about the way the world is and how it might be represented more richly.

The seminars are organized jointly by the BBC, IBT and the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme.

3-page version

And here is the Background section from the 10-page version, with the participants list, found by Maurizio:

REAL WORLD BRAINSTORMS

Background

The International Broadcasting Trust (IBT) has been lobbying the BBC, on behalf of all the major UK aid and development agencies, to improve its coverage of the developing world. One of the aims is to take this coverage out of the box of news and current affairs, so that the lives of people in the rest of the world, and the issues which affect them, become a regular feature of a much wider range of BBC programmes, for example dramas and features. The BBC has agreed to hold a series of seminars with IBT, which are being organized jointly with the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme, to discuss some of these issues.

So far, 6 seminars have taken place. They have had a significant impact on the BBC’s output and have also provided a unique opportunity for dialogue between those working in development and broadcasters.

As a result of the success of these seminars, further brainstorms are now planned for 2008.

For a full list of delegates see attached Appendix.
10-page version

If you then have a look at the bottom of page 2, and then page three of this document, you will find sections headed The Aim, Themes, Participants and Plans for 2008, none of which appear in the later version. There are a fair number of other minor differences between the two documents that suggest routine editing, and the later document includes a description of the 2008 seminar, which had taken place some two months earlier. (3-page Version and 10-page version)

Whether all this is just coincidence, or an annual update that had nothing to do with the Information Commissioner’s letter alerting the BBC to the fact that a complaint was about to be investigated, is hard to say. But there can be no doubt that between September 2007 and September 2008 the IBT seems to have become very much less forthcoming about its relationship with the BBC, and about its agenda as lobbyists representing some of the wealthiest and most active NGOs, including Oxfam and Friends of the Earth,dedicated to campaigning for action on climate change.

Am I being too suspicious about this coincidence? The problem is that the BBC is a national institution that has traded on its reputation for integrity throughout its ninety-year history. If that reputation is compromised, then public trust is likely to be lost very quickly and very completely.

[TonyGosling]

You know in some ways the refusal of the BBC to release the names of News Chief Helen Boaden's scientific advisers behind the June 2007 report 'From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel ' FOI'd by blogger Tony Newbery says it all...



What a very strange coincidence
Posted by TonyN on 23/11/2012 at 12:13 pm
BBC and Freedom of Information
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=631
When I returned home after the Information Tribunal hearing in London, I assumed that apart from deciding whether it was worth taking further action in an attempt to get the information out of the BBC, really the last word had been spoken on the matter of the Seminar. It looked as though life might become pleasantly quiet again, for a while at least. How wrong I was.

First there was Andrew Orlowski’s revelations about the two lay judges who sat on the tribunal, and the rather tantalising comment that he obtained from the BBC concerning grounds for an appeal.

And Andrew Orlowski was anything but finished with the story. He was still publishing reports which were picked up by Christopher Booker, James Delingpole and others.

Then the bombshell from Maurizio arrived late last Monday night, and a media storm began to develop. At the moment, if I type ‘my name’ + BBC + seminar into Google, it yields over 3 million hits. Life is not quiet at all really, but yesterday I thought that things were, at last, beginning to settle down a little. Surely nothing else could to crawl out of the woodwork?

So in rare idle moments I was exchanging comments with Maurizio on Geoff Chamber’s blog about the files that he had found on the WayBack Machine. I seemed to have a print-out of the same ten-page PDF file in which he found the participants list. The funny thing was that my September 2008 version had only had three pages: no sign of any participants lists.

One couldn’t help wondering when the file was either altered or replaced.

So in the end, Maurizio and I put a chronology together, and this is what it looks like:

(Maurizio’s contributions are in red, and mine are in black)


13/07/2007 International Broadcasting Trust (IBT) ten-page document recovered by Maurizio written after this date.
20/07/2007 Request to BBC for information about the seminar.
21/08/2007 The BBC’s response citing their derogation under the FOIA.
05/09/2007 I send a complaint to the Information Commissioner.
09/09/2007 Creation of ten-page IBT document recovered by Maurizio according to file properties.
08/11/2007 IBT document recovered by Maurizio written before this date.
It was a very long time before the ICO did anything more, and so far as I am aware the BBC never replied to their letter.
July 2008 Date when link to truncated IBT document became available according to Gareth.
28/07/2008 The ICO eventually writes to the BBC asking for their side if the story.
30/07/2008 Creation date of truncated IBT file according to file properties.
O6/08/2008 My first post at Harlmess Sky on the mattter:
Jeremy Paxman, the BBC, Impartiality, and Freedom of Information





Sept 2008 I print out a three page document at the IBT website describing a number of seminars, including Climate Change – the Challenge to Broadcasting, but without the participants lists.
29/09/2008 Post at Harmless Sky mentioning the IBT:
The Freedom of Information Act and the BBC’s willing little helpers





28/01/2009 The ICO say they are still waiting for the BBC to reply to their letter of 28/07/2008 and so I ask for a case review.
17/11/2009 The ICO publishes a decision notice endorsing the BBC’s decision not to provide me with any of the information.
16/12/2009 I send Grounds of Appeal to the Information Commissioner.
19/01/2010 The ICO submits its response to my appeal.
14/04/2010 BBC joined as a party in the appeal.
12/05/2010 The BBC submits its response to my appeal.
The speed at which the case could then be heard was determined by the progress through higher courts of Steven Sugar’s attempts to obtain the Balen Report as this sought to determine how ‘for the purpose of journalism’ should be interpreted in terms of the FOIA and therefore how the BBC derogation should be applied.
Can anyone spot a rather startling coincidence? Sometime around the end of August 2008?

Well goodness-gracious-me! You never seem to know what’s going to happen next, do you?

So far, everyone seems to have been so transfixed by the revelations of the participants list that they have ignored any other alterations made to the information on the IBT website. So lets look at the first section of each version of the document.

Here’s the first section headed Background from the first page of the later, three-page version:

REAL WORLD BRAINSTORMS

Background

The Real World Brainstorms take place annually and are co-hosted by BBC Vision and BBC News. The aim is to bring together key decision makers within broadcasting with a mix of writers, producers and environment and development specialists to explore how we can more effectively represent our interconnected world Delegates exchange views on key issues and ideas, discussing fresh approaches to stories which impact here in the UK and around the world.

Past seminars have had enormously positive feedback, inspiring major programme seasons as well as diverse individual projects. But the meetings are not about pitching ideas – they are about making space for fresh thinking about the way the world is and how it might be represented more richly.

The seminars are organized jointly by the BBC, IBT and the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme.

3-page version

And here is the Background section from the 10-page version, with the participants list, found by Maurizio:

REAL WORLD BRAINSTORMS

Background

The International Broadcasting Trust (IBT) has been lobbying the BBC, on behalf of all the major UK aid and development agencies, to improve its coverage of the developing world. One of the aims is to take this coverage out of the box of news and current affairs, so that the lives of people in the rest of the world, and the issues which affect them, become a regular feature of a much wider range of BBC programmes, for example dramas and features. The BBC has agreed to hold a series of seminars with IBT, which are being organized jointly with the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme, to discuss some of these issues.

So far, 6 seminars have taken place. They have had a significant impact on the BBC’s output and have also provided a unique opportunity for dialogue between those working in development and broadcasters.

As a result of the success of these seminars, further brainstorms are now planned for 2008.

For a full list of delegates see attached Appendix.
10-page version

If you then have a look at the bottom of page 2, and then page three of this document, you will find sections headed The Aim, Themes, Participants and Plans for 2008, none of which appear in the later version. There are a fair number of other minor differences between the two documents that suggest routine editing, and the later document includes a description of the 2008 seminar, which had taken place some two months earlier. (3-page Version and 10-page version)

Whether all this is just coincidence, or an annual update that had nothing to do with the Information Commissioner’s letter alerting the BBC to the fact that a complaint was about to be investigated, is hard to say. But there can be no doubt that between September 2007 and September 2008 the IBT seems to have become very much less forthcoming about its relationship with the BBC, and about its agenda as lobbyists representing some of the wealthiest and most active NGOs, including Oxfam and Friends of the Earth,dedicated to campaigning for action on climate change.

Am I being too suspicious about this coincidence? The problem is that the BBC is a national institution that has traded on its reputation for integrity throughout its ninety-year history. If that reputation is compromised, then public trust is likely to be lost very quickly and very completely.

[TonyGosling]

You know in some ways the story of the costly refusal of the BBC to release the names of News Chief Helen Boaden's scientific advisers behind the June 2007 report 'From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel' and the FOI request by blogger Tony Newbery. Then the discovery of those names on a previous version of the PDF on the archive.org 'Wayback Machine' says it all about the manipulation of this 'debate' ...

The Invite Only Chatham House rules list from: January 26th 2006, BBC Television Centre, London
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/12/b ... ow-public/
Specialists:
Robert May, Oxford University and Imperial College London
Mike Hulme, Director, Tyndall Centre, UEA
Blake Lee-Harwood, Head of Campaigns, Greenpeace
Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen
Michael Bravo, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge
Andrew Dlugolecki, Insurance industry consultant
Trevor Evans, US Embassy
Colin Challen MP, Chair, All Party Group on Climate Change
Anuradha Vittachi, Director, Oneworld.net
Andrew Simms, Policy Director, New Economics Foundation
Claire Foster, Church of England
Saleemul Huq, IIED
Poshendra Satyal Pravat, Open University
Li Moxuan, Climate campaigner, Greenpeace China
Tadesse Dadi, Tearfund Ethiopia
Iain Wright, CO2 Project Manager, BP International
Ashok Sinha, Stop Climate Chaos
Andy Atkins, Advocacy Director, Tearfund
Matthew Farrow, CBI
Rafael Hidalgo, TV/multimedia producer
Cheryl Campbell, Executive Director, Television for the Environment
Kevin McCullough, Director, Npower Renewables
Richard D North, Institute of Economic Affairs
Steve Widdicombe, Plymouth Marine Labs
Joe Smith, The Open University
Mark Galloway, Director, IBT
Anita Neville, E3G
Eleni Andreadis, Harvard University
Jos Wheatley, Global Environment Assets Team, DFID
Tessa Tennant, Chair, AsRia

BBC attendees:
Jana Bennett, Director of Television
Sacha Baveystock, Executive Producer, Science
Helen Boaden, Director of News
Andrew Lane, Manager, Weather, TV News
Anne Gilchrist, Executive Editor Indies & Events, CBBC
Dominic Vallely, Executive Editor, Entertainment
Eleanor Moran, Development Executive, Drama Commissioning
Elizabeth McKay, Project Executive, Education
Emma Swain, Commissioning Editor, Specialist Factual
Fergal Keane, (Chair), Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Fran Unsworth, Head of Newsgathering
George Entwistle, Head of TV Current Affairs
Glenwyn Benson, Controller, Factual TV
John Lynch, Creative Director, Specialist Factual
Jon Plowman, Head of Comedy
Jon Williams, TV Editor Newsgathering
Karen O’Connor, Editor, This World, Current Affairs
Catriona McKenzie, Tightrope Pictures catriona@tightropepictures.com

BBC Television Centre, London (cont)
Liz Molyneux, Editorial Executive, Factual Commissioning
Matt Morris, Head of News, Radio Five Live
Neil Nightingale, Head of Natural History Unit
Paul Brannan, Deputy Head of News Interactive
Peter Horrocks, Head of Television News
Peter Rippon, Duty Editor, World at One/PM/The World this Weekend
Phil Harding, Director, English Networks & Nations
Steve Mitchell, Head Of Radio News
Sue Inglish, Head Of Political Programmes
Frances Weil, Editor of News Special Events

What a very strange coincidence
Posted by TonyN on 23/11/2012 at 12:13 pm
BBC and Freedom of Information
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=631
When I returned home after the Information Tribunal hearing in London, I assumed that apart from deciding whether it was worth taking further action in an attempt to get the information out of the BBC, really the last word had been spoken on the matter of the Seminar. It looked as though life might become pleasantly quiet again, for a while at least. How wrong I was.

First there was Andrew Orlowski’s revelations about the two lay judges who sat on the tribunal, and the rather tantalising comment that he obtained from the BBC concerning grounds for an appeal.

And Andrew Orlowski was anything but finished with the story. He was still publishing reports which were picked up by Christopher Booker, James Delingpole and others.

Then the bombshell from Maurizio arrived late last Monday night, and a media storm began to develop. At the moment, if I type ‘my name’ + BBC + seminar into Google, it yields over 3 million hits. Life is not quiet at all really, but yesterday I thought that things were, at last, beginning to settle down a little. Surely nothing else could to crawl out of the woodwork?

So in rare idle moments I was exchanging comments with Maurizio on Geoff Chamber’s blog about the files that he had found on the WayBack Machine. I seemed to have a print-out of the same ten-page PDF file in which he found the participants list. The funny thing was that my September 2008 version had only had three pages: no sign of any participants lists.

One couldn’t help wondering when the file was either altered or replaced.

So in the end, Maurizio and I put a chronology together, and this is what it looks like:

(Maurizio’s contributions are in red, and mine are in black)


13/07/2007 International Broadcasting Trust (IBT) ten-page document recovered by Maurizio written after this date.
20/07/2007 Request to BBC for information about the seminar.
21/08/2007 The BBC’s response citing their derogation under the FOIA.
05/09/2007 I send a complaint to the Information Commissioner.
09/09/2007 Creation of ten-page IBT document recovered by Maurizio according to file properties.
08/11/2007 IBT document recovered by Maurizio written before this date.
It was a very long time before the ICO did anything more, and so far as I am aware the BBC never replied to their letter.
July 2008 Date when link to truncated IBT document became available according to Gareth.
28/07/2008 The ICO eventually writes to the BBC asking for their side if the story.
30/07/2008 Creation date of truncated IBT file according to file properties.
O6/08/2008 My first post at Harlmess Sky on the mattter:
Jeremy Paxman, the BBC, Impartiality, and Freedom of Information





Sept 2008 I print out a three page document at the IBT website describing a number of seminars, including Climate Change – the Challenge to Broadcasting, but without the participants lists.
29/09/2008 Post at Harmless Sky mentioning the IBT:
The Freedom of Information Act and the BBC’s willing little helpers





28/01/2009 The ICO say they are still waiting for the BBC to reply to their letter of 28/07/2008 and so I ask for a case review.
17/11/2009 The ICO publishes a decision notice endorsing the BBC’s decision not to provide me with any of the information.
16/12/2009 I send Grounds of Appeal to the Information Commissioner.
19/01/2010 The ICO submits its response to my appeal.
14/04/2010 BBC joined as a party in the appeal.
12/05/2010 The BBC submits its response to my appeal.
The speed at which the case could then be heard was determined by the progress through higher courts of Steven Sugar’s attempts to obtain the Balen Report as this sought to determine how ‘for the purpose of journalism’ should be interpreted in terms of the FOIA and therefore how the BBC derogation should be applied.
Can anyone spot a rather startling coincidence? Sometime around the end of August 2008?

Well goodness-gracious-me! You never seem to know what’s going to happen next, do you?

So far, everyone seems to have been so transfixed by the revelations of the participants list that they have ignored any other alterations made to the information on the IBT website. So lets look at the first section of each version of the document.

Here’s the first section headed Background from the first page of the later, three-page version:

REAL WORLD BRAINSTORMS

Background

The Real World Brainstorms take place annually and are co-hosted by BBC Vision and BBC News. The aim is to bring together key decision makers within broadcasting with a mix of writers, producers and environment and development specialists to explore how we can more effectively represent our interconnected world Delegates exchange views on key issues and ideas, discussing fresh approaches to stories which impact here in the UK and around the world.

Past seminars have had enormously positive feedback, inspiring major programme seasons as well as diverse individual projects. But the meetings are not about pitching ideas – they are about making space for fresh thinking about the way the world is and how it might be represented more richly.

The seminars are organized jointly by the BBC, IBT and the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme.

3-page version

And here is the Background section from the 10-page version, with the participants list, found by Maurizio:

REAL WORLD BRAINSTORMS

Background

The International Broadcasting Trust (IBT) has been lobbying the BBC, on behalf of all the major UK aid and development agencies, to improve its coverage of the developing world. One of the aims is to take this coverage out of the box of news and current affairs, so that the lives of people in the rest of the world, and the issues which affect them, become a regular feature of a much wider range of BBC programmes, for example dramas and features. The BBC has agreed to hold a series of seminars with IBT, which are being organized jointly with the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme, to discuss some of these issues.

So far, 6 seminars have taken place. They have had a significant impact on the BBC’s output and have also provided a unique opportunity for dialogue between those working in development and broadcasters.

As a result of the success of these seminars, further brainstorms are now planned for 2008.

For a full list of delegates see attached Appendix.
10-page version

If you then have a look at the bottom of page 2, and then page three of this document, you will find sections headed The Aim, Themes, Participants and Plans for 2008, none of which appear in the later version. There are a fair number of other minor differences between the two documents that suggest routine editing, and the later document includes a description of the 2008 seminar, which had taken place some two months earlier. (3-page Version and 10-page version)

Whether all this is just coincidence, or an annual update that had nothing to do with the Information Commissioner’s letter alerting the BBC to the fact that a complaint was about to be investigated, is hard to say. But there can be no doubt that between September 2007 and September 2008 the IBT seems to have become very much less forthcoming about its relationship with the BBC, and about its agenda as lobbyists representing some of the wealthiest and most active NGOs, including Oxfam and Friends of the Earth,dedicated to campaigning for action on climate change.

Am I being too suspicious about this coincidence? The problem is that the BBC is a national institution that has traded on its reputation for integrity throughout its ninety-year history. If that reputation is compromised, then public trust is likely to be lost very quickly and very completely.

[item8]

http://notrickszone.com/2013/12/03/germ ... s-by-2100/

Climate Driven By Natural Cycles – Global Temperature To Drop To 1870 Levels By 2100!
German Scientists Show Climate Driven By Natural Cycles – Global Temperature To Drop To 1870 Levels By 2100!

By P Gosselin on 3. Dezember 2013
Climate reveals periodic nature, thus no influence by CO2

http://wakeupcallnews.blogspot.co.uk/20 ... -gore.html

Global Warming High Priest Al Gore Closes All Alliance for Climate Protection Field Offices, Lays Off 90% of Staff

Malcolm Gladwell's great book The Tipping Point presents the case that sudden seismic shifts in society can result from small events, if the right factors are present. Tipping points happen when momentum toward an idea builds and finally crosses a threshold where it is evident that a major cultural change has occurred. The global warming tipping point is coming, but not the one anticipated by climate change "experts."
Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory has been dominant for the past three decades as absolute fact in the public mind. In the last several years, however, cracks in the fortress of "settled science" have appeared, and public opinion has begun to shift. Increasingly, alarmist predictions have failed to come to fruition.

In 2004, NASA's chief scientist James Hansen authoritatively announced that there is only a ten-year window to act on AGW (presumably by transferring mass quantities of taxpayer funds to global warmist causes) before climate Armageddon destroys humanity. Well, that window has now shut tight, and AGW is AWOL.

Al Gore, the high priest of AGW theory, has closed all of his Alliance for Climate Protection field offices, and laid off 90% of his staff. Contributions have all but dried up since 2008.

Australia's conservative government has severely curtailed the country's climate change initiatives and is in the process of repealing its business-killing carbon tax. A group of German scientists predicts dramatic global cooling over the next 90 years toward a new "little ice age."
Of course, even many "low information" folks have an awareness of the record increase in Arctic sea ice, as well as the current highly-publicized predicament of the cadre of wealthy global warmists stuck in record-high sea ice while on a cruise to the Antarctic to prove the absence of sea ice.
Now the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has quietly downgraded their prediction for global warming for the next 30 years in the final draft of their landmark "Fifth Assessment Report." The effect of this is that they are tacitly admitting that the computer models they have religiously relied-upon for decades as "proof" of AGW theory are dead wrong.

[item8]

http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014 ... t-the-co2/

IR Expert Speaks Out After 40 Years Of Silence : “IT’S THE WATER VAPOR STUPID and not the CO2″

Posted on January 25, 2014 by stevengoddard

Mike Sanicola says:

I’m a professional infrared astronomer who spent his life trying to observe space through the atmosphere’s back-radiation that the environmental activists claim is caused by CO2 and guess what? In all the bands that are responsible for back radiation in the brightness temperatures (color temperatures) related to earth’s surface temperature (between 9 microns and 13 microns for temps of 220K to 320 K) there is no absorption of radiation by CO2 at all. In all the bands between 9 and 9.5 there is mild absorption by H2O, from 9.5 to 10 microns (300 K) the atmosphere is perfectly clear except around 9.6 is a big ozone band that the warmists never mention for some reason. From 10 to 13 microns there is more absorption by H2O. Starting at 13 we get CO2 absorption but that wavelength corresponds to temperatures below even that of the south pole. Nowhere from 9 to 13 microns do we see appreciable absorption bands of CO2. This means the greenhouse effect is way over 95% caused by water vapor and probably less than 3% from CO2. I would say even ozone is more important due to the 9.6 band, but it’s so high in the atmosphere that it probably serves more to radiate heat into space than for back-radiation to the surface. The whole theory of a CO2 greenhouse effect is wrong yet the ignorant masses in academia have gone to great lengths trying to prove it with one lie and false study after another, mainly because the people pushing the global warming hoax are funded by the government who needs to report what it does to the IPCC to further their “cause”. I’m retired so I don’t need to keep my mouth shut anymore. Kept my mouth shut for 40 years, now I will tell you, not one single IR astronomer gives a rats arse about CO2. Just to let you know how stupid the global warming activists are, I’ve been to the south pole 3 times and even there, where the water vapor is under 0.2 mm precipitable, it’s still the H2O that is the main concern in our field and nobody even talks about CO2 because CO2 doesn’t absorb or radiate in the portion of the spectrum corresponding with earth’s surface temps of 220 to 320 K. Not at all. Therefore, for Earth as a black body radiator IT’S THE WATER VAPOR STUPID and not the CO2.

January 25, 2014 at 11:28 pm

[scienceplease 2]

http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014 ... t-the-co2/

IR Expert Speaks Out After 40 Years Of Silence : “IT’S THE WATER VAPOR STUPID and not the CO2″

Posted on January 25, 2014 by stevengoddard

Mike Sanicola says:

I’m a professional infrared astronomer who spent his life trying to observe space through the atmosphere’s back-radiation that the environmental activists claim is caused by CO2 and guess what? In all the bands that are responsible for back radiation in the brightness temperatures (color temperatures) related to earth’s surface temperature (between 9 microns and 13 microns for temps of 220K to 320 K) there is no absorption of radiation by CO2 at all. In all the bands between 9 and 9.5 there is mild absorption by H2O, from 9.5 to 10 microns (300 K) the atmosphere is perfectly clear except around 9.6 is a big ozone band that the warmists never mention for some reason. From 10 to 13 microns there is more absorption by H2O. Starting at 13 we get CO2 absorption but that wavelength corresponds to temperatures below even that of the south pole. Nowhere from 9 to 13 microns do we see appreciable absorption bands of CO2. This means the greenhouse effect is way over 95% caused by water vapor and probably less than 3% from CO2. I would say even ozone is more important due to the 9.6 band, but it’s so high in the atmosphere that it probably serves more to radiate heat into space than for back-radiation to the surface. The whole theory of a CO2 greenhouse effect is wrong yet the ignorant masses in academia have gone to great lengths trying to prove it with one lie and false study after another, mainly because the people pushing the global warming hoax are funded by the government who needs to report what it does to the IPCC to further their “cause”. I’m retired so I don’t need to keep my mouth shut anymore. Kept my mouth shut for 40 years, now I will tell you, not one single IR astronomer gives a rats arse about CO2. Just to let you know how stupid the global warming activists are, I’ve been to the south pole 3 times and even there, where the water vapor is under 0.2 mm precipitable, it’s still the H2O that is the main concern in our field and nobody even talks about CO2 because CO2 doesn’t absorb or radiate in the portion of the spectrum corresponding with earth’s surface temps of 220 to 320 K. Not at all. Therefore, for Earth as a black body radiator IT’S THE WATER VAPOR STUPID and not the CO2.

January 25, 2014 at 11:28 pm

All seems very good - surely there must be some basic physics texts to back up Sanicola's assertions. As always, we have to go back to the basic physics!

[TonyGosling]

Lots of blame being put on Climate Change for the Somerset Levels' flooding - poppycock - the flooding appears to be DELIBERATE - or at best mismanagement from Chris Smith
Somerset Levels' Environment Agency Huntspill sluice CLOSED mid-tide 2pm Sat 25 Jan 2014
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUjoABQDXj4[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUjoABQDXj4

[TonyGosling]

Floods show risk of ignoring climate change, says Prince Charles
Prince of Wales says flooding of Somerset Levels result of society paying “little attention to the accumulating impact of climate change”
By Sam Marsden 07 Feb 2014
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/enviro ... arles.html
The Prince of Wales has described the flooding of the Somerset Levels as a “classic example” of what happens if society pays “little attention to the accumulating impact of climate change”.
The Prince visited Somerset on Tuesday to see how residents and farming communities are coping after being cut off by flood waters for weeks.
Yesterday he spoke at a leadership summit in east London organised by his charity Business in the Community, in his capacity as president. Addressing delegates, who included business leaders, he said: “And incidentally I was down in Somerset this week and it is, I think, a classic example of what happens if we pay little attention to the accumulating impact of climate change on the larger picture.
“What we’re increasingly finding now, I think, is that we’re having to deal with the symptoms, and tinker with them, which is going to become ever more expensive.”...................

Climate change playing a part in severe weather, says Met Office chief scientist Dame Julia Slingo
http://www.bathchronicle.co.uk/Climate- ... story.html

By ChronReports | Posted: February 10, 2014

Climate change almost certainly lies behind the storms that have been lashing Britain this winter, according to the Met Office’s chief scientist.

Dame Julia Slingo said while there was not yet “definitive proof”, all the evidence pointed to a role for the phenomenon.

She also delivered a grim warning that the country should prepare itself for more similar events in future.

The comments came at a briefing for journalists as the latest wave of storms crashed into southern England. It is the strongest link yet made by the Met Office between the intense weather and climate change, and backs David Cameron’s remark last month that he “very much suspects” a connection.

New analysis published by the Met Office blames persistent rainfall over Indonesia and the tropical West Pacific for triggering the weather system.

“The severe weather in the UK coincided with exceptionally cold weather in Canada and the USA,” the document said. “These extreme weather events on both sides of the Atlantic were linked to a persistent pattern of perturbations to the jet stream over the Pacific Ocean and North America.

“There is a strong association with the stormy weather experienced in the UK during December and January and the up-stream perturbations to the jet stream over North America and the North Pacific. The North Atlantic jet stream has also been unusually strong; this can be linked to an unusually strong westerly phase of the stratospheric Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, which in turn has driven a very deep polar vortex and strong polar night jet.”

Dame Julia said none of the individual storms had been exceptional but the “clustering and persistence” were extremely unusual.

“We have seen exceptional weather. We cannot say it’s unprecedented, but it is certainly exceptional,” she said. “Is it consistent with what we might expect from climate change? Of course, as yet there can be no definitive answer on the particular events that we have seen this winter, but if we look at the broader base of evidence then we see things that support the premise that climate change has been making a contribution.”

Recent studies have suggested storms are developing a more southerly track, and that has been “typical” of the weather patterns here over the winter.

“One of the most unusual aspects of the winter’s weather has been the southerly track of the storms. We expect them to go well north of Scotland,” Dame Julia said. “They have been slamming into the southern part of Britain. We also know that the subtropical, tropical Atlantic is now quite a lot warmer than it was 50 years ago. The air that enters this storm system comes from that part of the Atlantic where it is obviously going to be warmer and carrying more moisture. This is just basic physics.

“We also now have strong evidence that extreme daily rainfall rates are becoming more intense. There is no evidence to counter the premise that a warmer world will lead to more intense daily and hourly heavy rain events.”

Dame Julia said sea levels were expected to rise by a foot over time, causing more problems for those trying to deal with flooding.

“That might not sound a lot, but when you are looking at storm surges, when you are looking at moving water from the Somerset Levels out to sea, it does matter,” she added. “In a nutshell, while there is no definitive answer for the current weather patterns that we have seen, all the evidence suggests that climate change has a role to play in it.”

Meanwhile, concerns have been raised over the risks of giving “fracking” the go-ahead in flood-prone areas of the UK. Greenpeace said licences had been given to companies to potentially drill for shale gas and oil in some of the areas of Somerset that have been hit by flooding.

Government planning guidance shows it will consider applications to drill in areas which are at risk of floods, potentially leaving flood-hit communities facing leaks and pollution from fracking operations, the green group claimed.

Fracking operations in Colorado, in the US, were hit by major flooding last year, with a number of notable leaks reported, Greenpeace added.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, involves pumping liquid made up of water, chemicals and sand at high pressure down into rock to fracture it and release gas. Shale gas exploration is backed by the Government, which claims it will boost jobs, create more secure energy supplies and even cut fuel bills.

Greenpeace’s chief scientist, Dr Doug Parr, said: “If fracking had already gone ahead in some of the licensed areas in Somerset, flood-hit communities could now have more to worry about than just high water. Broken equipment, leaking wells and spillages of chemicals or waste water could all represent a risk to public health and our natural environment in the event of a major flood.”

There are no licences for the worst-hit area, in the Somerset Levels, but places such as Keynsham, near Bath, which has also experienced flooding, are in areas covered by onshore oil and gas licences.

A bid by UK Methane to drill in Keynsham was put on hold last year, amid local opposition, but Greenpeace claimed the company was set to resubmit plans.

[TonyGosling]

AMAZING - Environment Agency's 'Jubilee river' relieves Eton and Datchet but diverts water to now flooded residential areas round Shepperton

Wraysbury residents say Jubilee River is a 'disaster'
BBC - 14 January 2014 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-25727040
Old Windsor residents say it has caused more homes to flood since it opened
Work by the Environment Agency to control flood water on the Thames has been a "disaster" for Wraysbury, according to residents.
The £110m Jubilee River opened in 2002, and was planned to reduce flooding in Maidenhead, Windsor, Eton and Cookham.
Wraysbury and Old Windsor residents say it has caused more homes to flood since it opened.
The agency said the scheme was working as planned and it may extend the river to protect more flood-prone areas.

The Jubilee River
In flood conditions the Jubilee River diverts water from the River Thames upstream of Maidenhead
This reduces flood levels in the River Thames running through Maidenhead, Windsor, Eton and Cookham
The Jubilee River rejoins the Thames downstream of Windsor, and does not provide protection to communities downstream of the scheme
The Environment Agency states the Jubilee River does not adversely affect flood levels downstream
The Jubilee River has been running at full capacity since 7 January
This is the first time the Jubilee River has run at full capacity since it was opened in 2002

'Sacrificial lambs'
Graham Sinclair, who lives in Wraysbury, said his neighbours were "very angry".
"It's grossly unfair that a man-made river can be to the benefit of some people and to the detriment of others," he said.
Flood warden Gillie Bolton who lives on Ham Island in Old Windsor, said: "I believe we are being used as sacrificial lambs to stop Maidenhead from flooding."
However, the Environment Agency says the Jubilee River has worked well to protect Maidenhead and Eton.
The Environment Agency's Barry Russell said a review had been held following similar floods in 2003, which found the Jubilee River was operating as planned.
He said the agency planned to extend the scheme to protect Wraysbury and Old Windsor in the future, but this would cost £256m.
"We have very extensive plans to continue the Jubilee River all the way down from Datchet down to Teddington.
"It's very expensive but it's got huge support," he said.

[item8]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... perts.html

No, global warming did NOT cause the storms, says one of the Met Office's most senior experts

Mat Collins, Exeter University Professor in climate systems, said storms driven by jet stream that has been 'stuck' further south than usual
He told The Mail on Sunday there is 'no evidence that global warming can cause the jet stream to get stuck in the way it has this winter'
Appears to contradict Met Office chief scientist Dame Julia Slingo

By David Rose

PUBLISHED: 22:07, 15 February 2014 | UPDATED: 16:38, 16 February 2014

One of the Met Office’s most senior experts yesterday made a dramatic intervention in the climate change debate by insisting there is no link between the storms that have battered Britain and global warming.

Mat Collins, a Professor in climate systems at Exeter University, said the storms have been driven by the jet stream – the high-speed current of air that girdles the globe – which has been ‘stuck’ further south than usual.

Professor Collins told The Mail on Sunday: ‘There is no evidence that global warming can cause the jet stream to get stuck in the way it has this winter. If this is due to climate change, it is outside our knowledge.’

His statement carries particular significance because he is an internationally acknowledged expert on climate computer models and forecasts, and his university post is jointly funded by the Met Office.

Prof Collins is also a senior adviser – a ‘co-ordinating lead author’ – for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). His statement appears to contradict Met Office chief scientist Dame Julia Slingo.

Last weekend, she said ‘all the evidence suggests that climate change has a role to play’ in the storms.

Prof Collins made clear that he believes it is likely global warming could lead to higher rainfall totals, because a warmer atmosphere can hold more water. But he said this has nothing to do with the storm conveyor belt.

He said that when the IPCC was compiling its Fifth Assessment Report on climate change last year, it discussed whether warming might affect the jet stream. But, he went on, ‘there was very low confidence that climate change has any effect on the jet stream getting stuck’. In the end, the possibility was not even mentioned in the report.

Prof Collins declined to comment on his difference of opinion with Dame Julia.

Five months ago, in a briefing on the IPCC report to Ministers, Dame Julia conceded the consequence of warming for rainfall ‘is not simulated well’ by climate models – though they are the basis for most of what she and other scientists say about the effects of climate change.

Last April, after the temperature fell to -11C in Aberdeenshire, the coldest April temperature for more than 100 years, Dame Julia said the cold winter and spring might also be due to global warming, because of ice melting in the Arctic.

Meanwhile, the Met Office has continued to issue questionable long-term forecasts. In mid-November, two weeks before the first of the storms, it predicted persistent high pressure for the winter, which was ‘likely to lead to drier-than-normal conditions across the country’.

It added that its models showed the probability of the winter being in the driest of five official categories was 25 per cent. The chances of it being in the wettest category was 15 per cent.

Infamously, in April 2009, the Met Office promised a ‘barbecue summer’ – which then turned out to be a washout. It forecast the winter of 2010 to 2011 would be mild: it was the coldest for 120 years.

In 2007, the Met Office said that globally, the decade 2004-2014 would see warming of 0.3C. In fact, the world has not got any warmer at all in this period.

At the beginning of 13 of the past 14 years, the Met Office has predicted the following 12 months would be significantly warmer than they have been. This, says the sceptic think-tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation, indicates ‘systemic’ bias.

[TonyGosling]

These floods really have become the spearhead of this debate - still no really good documentary giving both sides as far as I know.
Several such as Prince Charles hinting at climate change.
Anyone on the ground knowing Environment Agency have not 'actually' caused this but made it much worse than it would have been.
Civilian drones being used for first time on the levels.
Channel 4 News Today saying EA auctioned off Somerset Levels dredging equipment when they took over from the National Rivers Authority (NRA) in 1995

Environment Agency abandons sell-off of dredging equipment
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-26192320
Flooded Somerset Levels, Jan 2014
Numerous people have called for dredging on the Somerset Levels in recent weeks
The Environment Agency which had been criticised for planning to sell dredging equipment has withdrawn the items from auction at the last minute.
Three long-reach excavators, capable of removing earth and debris from underwater, were due to be auctioned by Brightwells, near Hereford, on Friday.
Three other lots featuring non-dredging equipment were left in the sale.
The agency said it had withdrawn the items from auction because of the present floods.
The planned sale had attracted strong criticism from some farmers.
John Bishop, whose farm in Colwall, Herefordshire has been affected by flooding said the timing of the planned sell-off was "very undiplomatic putting it mildly".

'National reserve'
Jeremy Perkins, who runs a livestock farm in Suffolk and is an online moderator for The Farming Forum, went further.
"The timing couldn't be worse, but it should never have been put for sale at all," he said.
"There should be a national reserve of this kit, either to allow it to be used for preventative measures, or for use in an emergency."
The Environment Agency said the three excavators would now be reconditioned and put back into service.
A statement on the auctioneers' website read: "We are instructed to withdraw lots 649, 650 and 651, on behalf of the seller. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."

A protest flag asking for river dredging
Residents of some flooded areas have campaigned for river dredging
A spokesman for the Environment Agency admitted Friday's auction was "not great timing" and a decision to withdraw the items was taken "very recently".
However, he said selling off equipment was all part of managing a working fleet and designed to recoup some of the cost for taxpayers.
He said the excavators due to be sold in Herefordshire were eight years old and being replaced.
Mr Perkins likened selling off an excavator of this age as selling a car that's done 30,000 miles, adding that it had "plenty of miles left in it".
He said there had been a huge response to the intended sale on The Farming Forum.
One post said the sell-off was a good indication of the amount of dredging the agency intended to carry out in Somerset. Another said "have they no shame?".
The agency said it had invested in 10 new and improved models of long-reach excavators over the last three months.
It is not the first time the Environment Agency has auctioned off dredging machinery. In December, a long-reach excavator, almost identical to those slated for auction on Friday, was sold for £47,000.

[outsider]

A Flood of Policies and a Pack of Dam(n) Lies: The Deliberate Flooding of the Somerset Levels:
http://communitypressgroup.com/articles ... et-levels/

'Regardless of what ‘Lord’ Smith states, it is evidently clear from the diagram on the right, with the corresponding key in the top right hand corner, that the policy is indeed a mandate to flood the Somerset Levels and to further flood the surrounding areas over time with the exceptions of Bridgwater, Taunton and Yeovil.



The Environment Agency

The policy diagram that proves that the flooding of the Somerset Levels is deliberate

When policies are written by foreign powers and implemented by our politicians then we're looking at TREASON

It would appear that every other human settlement is to be given over to nature in the form of enforced flooding, either under the guise of supposed incompetence or by ensuring that flood defenses, such as dredging operations and maintenance pumps, have to be curtailed, all in the interests of a few birds and to save taxpayer’s money due to 'austerity' measures.

Perhaps ‘Lord’ Smith should consider the effects on people’s financial status, regardless of saving them a few pounds a year in tax, when they’re having to pay thousands to have their homes restored as soon as is feasibly possible. I doubt if he’s asked those unfortunate people who have been flooded out of their family dwellings by his, and previous governments’ deliberate implementation of EU policies, to ensure flooding would occur in their area. I doubt if they’d have minded receiving the flood defences which they’ve already paid for instead..'

[item8]

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Lond ... -Consensus

American Physical Society Sees The Light: Will It Be The First Major Scientific Institution To Reject The Global Warming 'Consensus'?

by James Delingpole 20 Mar 2014

The American Physical Society (APS) has signalled a dramatic turnabout in its position on "climate change" by appointing three notorious climate skeptics to its panel on public affairs (POPA).

They are:

Professor Richard Lindzen, formerly Alfred P Sloan Professor of Meteorology at Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a highly regarded physicist who once described climate change alarmism on The Larry King Show as "mainly just like little kids locking themselves in dark closets to see how much they can scare each other and themselves."

John Christy, Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who has written: "I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see."

Judith Curry, Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, a former Warmist (and still a self-described "luke warmer") who has infuriated many of her more extremist colleagues by defending skeptics and by testifying to the US House Subcommittee on the Environment that the uncertainties in forecasting climate science are much greater than the alarmists will admit.

As Anthony Watts has noted, this is news guaranteed to make a Warmist's head explode.

The reason it's so significant is that it comes only three years after one of the APS's most distinguished members - Professor Hal Lewis - resigned in disgust at its endorsement of what he called "the global warming scam."

Disturbed by an "appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change" which "was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members", Lewis went public with his letter of resignation to the APS's then President Curtis G Callan Jr. (Callan's replacement Malcolm Beasley appears to be of a more skeptical bent. When he wrote earlier this year to President Obama congratulating him on his support for "science", he studiously avoided any mention of the president's war on climate change)

It began:

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d'être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

Lewis went on to describe global warming as "the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist."

Yet when Lewis had gathered two hundred plus signatures from fellow members to protest against the APS's position, they found - "Constitution be damned" - that the Council simply refused to accept their petition.

He concluded:

This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don't think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I'm not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

It is inconceivable, given the new panel's constitution, that when the APS releases its new position statement on climate change later this year it will be anything other than broadly skeptical of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.

This will mark a major victory for climate skeptics. Up until now, one of the most effective weapons in the climate alarmists' armoury has been to declare that all the world's major scientific institutions subscribe to the Man-Made Global Warming "Consensus."

These include: Academia Brasiliera de Ciencas; Academia Mexicana de Ciencas; Academie des Sciences (France); Academy of Science of South Africa; Accademia dei Lincei (Italy); American Association for the Advancement of Science; American Astronomical Society; American Chemical Society; American Geophysical Union; American Institute of Physics; American Meteorological Society; Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society; British Antarctic Survey; Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences; Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society; Chinese Academy of Sciences; Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (Germany); Environmental Protection Agency; European Federation of Geologists; European Geosciences Union; European Physical Society; Federation of American Scientists; Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies; Geological Society of America; Geological Society of Australia; Geological Society of London; Indian National Science Academy; International Union for Quaternary Research; International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics; National Academy of Sciences; National Center for Atmospheric Research; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Royal Meteorological Society; Royal Society of Canada; Royal Society; Science Council of Japan.

If that list looks impressive, perhaps it's worth reminding ourselves of Hal Lewis's theory as to why so many scientific institutions have fallen for the scam.

There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst.

Yes the American Physical Society's change of heart is significant but we've a long way to go before that oil tanker turns round. Or, as Churchill might have said: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Just heard the Met office chief scientist Julia Sligo on radio 4 explain that the reason we are not seeing surface temperatures rising as would be expected by man made climate change is because the temperature rises are hiding in vast masses of sea water at the bottom of the oceans.
Also her husband got taken ill with a suspected heart attack at Los Angeles airport just after she had been offered the job, was taken to hospital there and never recovered.

[item8]

As everyone knows, warm water sinks!! Very scientific. They say any old junk now that they think they can get away with anything.

Just heard the Met office chief scientist Julia Sligo on radio 4 explain that the reason we are not seeing surface temperatures rising as would be expected by man made climate change is because the temperature rises are hiding in vast masses of sea water at the bottom of the oceans.
Also her husband got taken ill with a suspected heart attack at Los Angeles airport just after she had been offered the job, was taken to hospital there and never recovered.