Climate Change

ᔥ The Telegraph

Riddle me this:

The carbon floor price is aimed at ensuring Britain complies with European emissions–trading rules.

However, the policy has been criticised as ineffective and unfair, because companies elsewhere in the EU will not face a floor price.

Official projections suggest that much of the floor price charge to UK companies will actually be paid by consumers as firms recoup their costs through higher bills.

The Treasury has estimated the floor price will raise £1.4 billion by 2015–16.

At least 40 per cent of that bill is expected to be paid by households, a total cost of £560million.

Treasury estimates have suggested that the floor price floor price would add as much as six per cent to household electricity bills, an additional £25 for the average family.

Mr Davey said Liberal Democrats did not support an expansion in nuclear energy in the party’s last election manifesto, mainly due to “huge worries about the cost”.

He said: “I am determined that there will be no public subsidy for new nuclear.”

So the average pommy bastards power bill goes up by 6% to subsidise “green energy” but the greenest energy of all, nuclear power, is not allowed to have any subsidies?

ᔥ The Guardian

The Canadians are onto it. They are ditching a government agency of “green” business advisors:

The Canadian government is to mark the 25th anniversary of its green business advisers by closing the agency down.

John Baird, Canada’s foreign affairs minister and pointman for next month’s Rio+20 Earth summit in Brazil, said this week that the National Roundtable for the Environment and Economy (NRTEE) would have its funding cut in 2013 because of the availability of information from thinktanks, the internet and universities.

Baird told reporters that Canadian taxpayers should not have to pay for an organisation that has produced 10 reports promoting a carbon tax – “something that the people of Canada have repeatedly rejected”.

While the Canadian government is busy saving money by axing mad green departments our own government is spending $7.1 million on “research on sustainable land management and climate change”. Don’t you just love how they call it investment like it is going to give us taxpayers a return on our “investment”.

$7.1m for research on sustainable land management and climate change

The Government has released a request for proposals for the Sustainable Land Management and Climate Change (SLMACC) research programme valued at $7.1 million (excl GST).

The research programme is aimed at:

*       enhancing and supporting adaptation to climate change;
*       reducing agricultural greenhouse gases;
*       encouraging the establishment of forest sinks; and
*       managing deforestation and capitalising on new business opportunities arising from the world’s response to climate change.

The Ministry of Science and Innovation (MSI) is managing the 2012-13 investment process on behalf of the Ministry for Primary Industries.

ᔥ The Local

Great stuff in Sweden, now if we can get Steven Joyce and John Key to see the light:

Six of ten local politicians in Sweden doubt whether human activity is to blame for global warming, a new study has found.

In addition, one out of ten municipal politicians and local government managers totally deny that the phenomenon of global warming even exists, according to a survey carried out by the Swedish Defence Research Agency (Försvarets forskningsinstitutet – FOI).

ᔥ Stuff.co.nz

It looks like Global Warming has come a gutser. Looks like we better crank up the carbon emissions to stave off the freeze. On the plus side, it will be better weather for duck shooting

The world could be heading for a new ‘solar minimum’ period, possibly plummeting the planet into an Ice Age, scientists say.

Researchers say the present increase in sun activity with solar flares and storms could be followed by this minimum period.

The period would see a cooling of the planet, refuting predictions of further global-warming.

The research for this comes from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences.

Its scientists analysed sediment in Lake Meerfelder Maar and found direct evidence of a ‘solar minimum’ causing a sudden cooling in Europe 2800 years ago.

Dr Achim Brauer of the GFZ said the research shows there was an increase in humidity and windiness at the same time as the sustained reduction in solar activity.

He said the measurements of lake sediment allow precise dating of short-term climate changes.

the tipline

I kid you not…there is at least one person motivated enough by his belief that drought is caused by daylight saving.

ᔥ Stuff.co.nz

More alarmist clap trap from NIWA worried about half metre rises in sea levels. Basically they are scaring people about the sea level rising up to your knees?

Extreme floods which usually only occur once a century could eventually happen every year as sea levels rise, National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research (NIWA) says.

New Zealand needs to start preparing for that possibility now – before it’s too late, NIWA’s principal scientist Rob Bell said.

Once sea levels have risen by half a metre, once in 100-year flooding events could occur annually, Bell said.

Higher storm surges could damage beaches, seawalls, buildings and roads and may affect drinking water, Bell said.

When the half a metre rise will occur is uncertain, but Bell said a one metre rise by 2100 could not be ruled out.

It was crucial that councils started thinking about the risks as sixty-five per cent of Kiwis lived within five kilometres of the sea, Bell said.

ᔥ The Telegraph

Oh dear…it looks like the poster child for climate change advocates and warmists actually cause active climate change themselves.

Wind farms can cause climate change, according to new research, that shows for the first time the new technology is already pushing up temperatures.

Usually at night the air closer to the ground becomes colder when the sun goes down and the earth cools.

But on huge wind farms the motion of the turbines mixes the air higher in the atmosphere that is warmer, pushing up the overall temperature.

Satellite data over a large area in Texas, that is now covered by four of the world’s largest wind farms, found that over a decade the local temperature went up by almost 1C as more turbines are built.

This could have long term effects on wildlife living in the immediate areas of larger wind farms.

It could also affect regional weather patterns as warmer areas affect the formation of cloud and even wind speeds.

↬ Not PC

James Cameron was welcomed as a land investor by Labour because he was not Chinese. But he is also a climate hypocrite, openly opposing Proposition 23 in California, all the while expecting “other people” to sacrifice, hoping no one will find out about his extravagance.

Prop 23 would suspend California’s AB32, Global Warming legislation which would require energy companies reduce their carbon output to 1990 levels.

James Cameron has donated $1m to oppose Prop 23, even though he hypocritically lives a carbon intensive lifestyle.

MSNBC.com

The great global arming swindle is coming to an end, and the cracks are beginning to appear in the edifice. When former alarmists are starting to apologise and of their own volition then I believe we have progress:

James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too.

Lovelock, 92, is writing a new book in which he will say climate change is still happening, but not as quickly as he once feared.

He previously painted some of the direst visions of the effects of climate change. In 2006, in an article in the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, he wrote that “before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”

It was this sort of alarmism that made reasonable arguments for mitigation get swamped int he race for the worst possible headlines.

“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.

“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.

“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.

He pointed to Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” as other examples of “alarmist” forecasts of the future.

Finally someone from the alarmist team has called bullshit on Al Gore. I await his apology.

Asked if he was now a climate skeptic, Lovelock told msnbc.com: “It depends what you mean by a skeptic. I’m not a denier.”

He said human-caused carbon dioxide emissions were driving an increase in the global temperature, but added that the effect of the oceans was not well enough understood and could have a key role.

“It (the sea) could make all the difference between a hot age and an ice age,” he said.

He said he still thought that climate change was happening, but that its effects would be felt farther in the future than he previously thought.

“We will have global warming, but it’s been deferred a bit,” Lovelock said.

As “an independent and a loner,” he said he did not mind saying “All right, I made a mistake.” He claimed a university or government scientist might fear an admission of a mistake would lead to the loss of funding.

And there is James Lovelock’s apology. Now let’s hear some more.

ᔥ BBC

Climate Change enthusiasts and warmists like to say that Climate CHange is killing all sorts of things, like seals, polar bears, penguins…even glaciers…but then facts smack them in the face:

Some glaciers on Asia’s Karakoram mountains are defying the global trend and getting thicker, say researchers.

A French team used satellite data to show that glaciers in part of the Karakoram range, to the west of the Himalayan region, are putting on mass.

The reason is unclear, as glaciers in other parts of the Himalayas are losing mass – which also is the global trend.

The region’s glaciers are poorly studied, yet provide a vital water source for more than a billion people.

The response of Himalayan glaciers to global warming has been a hot topic ever since the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which contained the erroneous claim that ice from most of the region could disappear by 2035.