With the Copenhagen Climate summit around the corner, there has been a lot of discussion on an appropriate collective response to climate change-and what it should look like.  While many hope major international commitments to greenhouses gas reductions can be reached, it is doubtful much of any substance will be finalized.  There is still considerable, reasonable debate over what type and what level of action should be undertaken.  Resources directed toward mitigating actions today have to be weighed with our other priorities, like economic prosperity, poverty alleviation, and energy security; all while requiring a continued prioritization of innovation and adaptability.

In contemporary climate change debate the loudest calls for urgent, extensive action come from alarmists.  They argue major mitigating action is required today to stave off certain disaster in the future.  However, the arguments for imposing dramatic mitigating action are typically heavily predicated on a deterministic view of climate and its overarching influence upon humanity.

Climate determinism describes a school of thought that believes climate drives cultural development and ultimately human outcomes.   This type of determinism isn’t new.  During the early twentieth century determinist proponents believed that based on a populations latitude, you could predict outcomes; like economic development and quality of life.

Proponents of determinism like Thomas Griffith Taylor argued the closer to the equator you were born or the less stressful the physical environment, the more likely you would be poor, uneducated and lazy.  Taylor (and others like Ellsworth Huntington) reasoned that the environment determines those outcomes.  While there may be a correlation in some cases, even some level of causation, Taylor believed the outcome was determined by the climate the population lived.

Climate determinism underestimates mankind’s ability to use free-will, creativity and adaptability to thrive in changing and challenging environments.  It also ignores our internal desire for progress, evolutionary success and engaging our creative faculties to achieve improved efficiency and favorable outcomes independent of environmental conditions.

The alarmists’ level of determinism drives the major moral imperative for urgent and massive climate change action today.  If we don’t take major action, like shutting down Canada’s oilsands and coal power generation, the argument goes, we will have wars over fresh water.  If we don’t build more windmills people will starve, or be flooded out of existence- and many other apocalyptic scenarios.  While there can be partial climate causation in such scenarios, it is only if you subscribe to determinism that these events become unavoidable outcomes of climate change.

Our future response to water or food shortages could be starvation and war; or we could use our ingenuity to develop more suitable crops for a region or build a dam. We can expand foreign aid, or sign a trade pact, or help relocate affected people to a suitable region, or utilize technology to recycle wastewater into drinkable water.  There are many alternative solutions to these scenarios, many of which haven’t been thought of yet.

Drought will likely contribute to future isolated food shortages-as it does today.  But other areas affected by climate change may be able to produce even more food, scientists will develop even more resistant crops with better yields, and people will migrate to more fertile regions, like they always have.  To assume a potential drought event will determine whether affected people live or die, as a predetermined consequence, is truly under-estimating ourselves, and our ability to change.

Determinism not only incorrectly underestimates mankind’s potential for adaptation, but is also a major factor in the modeling used to develop the most apocalyptic climate change predictions.  Modeling is by nature deterministic and as such should be viewed appropriately.  While some models may show catastrophic climate change, those models are driven, determined by defined inputs, directed at the most fundamental level by human code writers.  As such the model is a hypothetical experiment, an explored scenario that is not necessarily a reflection of future outcomes.   While it is important to recognize modeling limitations, they are useful in exploring future possibilities, just not in determining them.

Recognition of collective rights and responsibilities around our atmosphere, as well as efficient resource management, warrants some action by governments.  But mitigating actions must be balanced with the moral imperatives of today.  The climate (and by extension atmosphere) has an obvious effect on human events, but it is only one of many factors that contribute to human outcomes.

Decisions shouldn’t be overtly driven by climate change determinism, especially if actions severely limit our flexibility and adaptability in the future.   Aside from mankind’s contribution to climate change, Mother Nature will continue to change and present challenges in the future.  We will still have adverse climate events that affects select populations, regardless of our mitigation efforts.  It will be our innovation; driven by free-will, creativity, and adaptability that will allow us to flourish and thrive.

The limiting assumptions of determinism restrict possibility.  It is the notion of predefined destiny versus the promise of future advancements, both great and small.  To argue today that our children will be incapable of dealing with climate challenges sells them and humanity short.  It fails to recognize the potentiality and promise of humanity and the changing world.  Let’s base our action today on a balanced recognition of human capability and on our responsibilities to both our contemporaries and future generations.

15th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15)

I say its about time we act… We ‘ve all listened to those endless conversations about how the planet is going from bad to worse and how the climate coditions are deteriorating. So maybe its time for action to replace the words. Lets agree to reduce CO2 emissions before its too late. We dont own this planet, we are just passing by. Its our duty to deliver it to our children. But this planet has become too fragile. No, we have used it and abused it. And now we are called to stop its downhill.

In 2012 the Kyoto Protocol to prevent climate changes runs out. So, obviously, its urget to come up with a new protocol to keep the efforts going. Therefore ending up with a Copenhagen Protocol is essential for the world’s climate.

Is there any webpage u know, where u can sign the message to the Leaders of the World? If u know of one, then i suggest u sign. If not i will right now give u instructions to do it on a greek webpage ^^ (haha cool stuff!)

So u go over here: www.mazigiatoklima.gr where u see a greyish box. Where it says “Ονομα” u put ur name and under it u put ur email. You click on “Υποβολη” and ur done!

Cya folks

Thanks to the Energy Action Coalition (which the Sierra Student Coalition is a part of) and their “It’s Game Time, Obama!” campaign, they have scored our generation a sit-down meeting with President Obama’s Cabinet this Wednesday. Leaders from the youth climate movement will participate in the White House’s first-ever Youth Clean Energy Forum to discuss moving forward to a bold, clean and just energy future. According to Jessy Tolkan, Executive Director of the Energy Action Coalition, “We asked Obama to meet with us, give a national address outlining his strategy, and attend Copenhagen in person. Not only did the President announce this morning that he’ll be attending Copenhagen, the Youth Clean Energy Forum will give us a direct opportunity to inform his agenda there and tell his team what kind of leadership we need on climate and energy.”

The Youth Clean Energy Forum will be webcase live via the link below. Here’s the press advisory directly from the White House:

On Wednesday, December 2, four members of President Obama’s Cabinet will host a Clean Energy Economy Forum with youth leaders from around the country at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.  Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar , Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, and other Administration officials will reiterate the need for a comprehensive energy plan that puts America back in control of its energy future.  Transitioning to clean energy will create jobs, enhance national security and help protect our environment for generations to come.  They will also participate in a dialogue with attendees on the benefits of the clean energy economy for younger generations and the role young Americans have in creating and sharing those opportunities.

The forum will be webcast live at www.whitehouse.gov/live and will be open to the public through Facebook, where an innovative White House application will allow the public to watch and discuss the event live.  The White House will be keeping up with the chat, taking questions, and incorporating feedback from chat participants during the event.

TUI Nordic fly is now one of the three airlines offering green certified flights. The company has flights from airports in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Sweden and has been awarded the charter industry’s first ISO14001 certificate designating environmental efficiency. The international organization of Standardization has awarded the airlines low-polluting fuel and innovative design techniques. The TUI has invested 40 million Kroner into the new fuel efficiency programming and is spearheading the movement internationally. Companies in Brazil and Montreal have put forth similar efforts to build smaller, more fuel efficient planes.

Why should anyone care about the wackiness of a few deniers of Global Warming? What’s the big deal about a few morons dragging a big issue into a morass of non-truths, voodoo and plain boredom? These fools succeeded in turning the potential life-and-death issue of Global Warming into pettiness about Al Gore and, more importantly, about scientists in general. They hail the lunacy of Senator James Inhofe and bless the ignorance of George W. Bush. They echo the saintliness of an oil industry deriving massive, record profits from raping Earth. They applaud the smokestack plants burning cheap coal, as long as such plants are not in their backyard. They are the deniers.

Vague, irresponsible and stereotype statements by the skeptics challenge the existence of Global Warming. Never mind their statements lack any objective support. They still make possible the foot dragging of the US Senate and Congress. Most deniers camp out in the Republican Right wing. They should be out in the cold, but aren’t. The Democratic dominance in the Senate and Congress produced nothing substantial. Even the Supreme Court rulings are ignored. Nothing, nada, nichts, ingenting, rien.

The Siberian tundra is no longer frozen but spews untold, catastrophic tons of green house gasses into the air. The Northwest Passage is suddenly navigateable. Antarctica will calve ice sufficient to raise ocean levels by a meter or so. Florida may not like that. Alp ski resorts stand without snow. Glaciers disappear. Coral reefs die. Intuit villages sink in mud as perm freeze melts. Greenland becomes an agricultural Mecca rather than an ice chest. Untold masses of species disappear, under the water and above. Hoax? Not so.

The Bush administration deep-sixed Global Warming by lying to the World about the findings of its own scientists. China, India, Brazil, Indonesia and scores of others joined the US in putting the perceived threats to limitless economic growth before the safety of the world. Let nothing stand in the way of more SUVs for the lucky. Support your local gas station. Surely we must thirst for mineral water from far-away Italy or France.

The Copenhagen Climate Talks are fast approaching. Expectations have moved up a few degrees from absolute zero as Obama promises to show up in person, as will, maybe, the Chinese Premier. Obama carries a lunch box of toothless promises to reduce to US green gas emissions. China generously may promise to release some data on its world leading pollution. Observers announce such data is likely to contain more lies on top of current lies. The EU dispatches a Global Warming denier as its representative.

No one expects progress any time soon towards progressive action. An agreement to replace the flawed Kyoto agreement is not in the stars. After all, Kyoto is wildly profitable to some of the worst polluters. Obama’s hoax proposals aim at reducing criticism of US foot dragging. They mean nothing as the Senate and Congress remains locked up in its deepfreeze of Global Warming.

A fair share of the pessimism expressed above comes from the might of the deniers. They managed to put sufficient scare into the American people and government. Every argument put forward by these crackpot rednecks has been disproved over and over but keep popping up like a California brush fire. Lunatic misfits keep throwing lighted matches at the brushes. California burns at the will of a few token arsonists. The World might burn at the will of token deniers. Never mind logic, science or sanity. Let it all burn.

On this day of November 30th, 2009, Scientific American published “Seven Answers to Climate Contrarian Nonsense“. You owe it to yourself and your kids to read this article. Do it now. Then read the comments associated with the article. Almost all comments appear to be written by core deniers. Let it burn, no matter why, where, when, who or how. For example (SA is Scientific American):

• “Global warming has been demonstrated to be a hoax with fabricated and fraudulent data. SA knows this, but instead of dealing with the MAJOR issue of widespread scientific fraud and corruption, instead decides continue to pretend the hoax is real. It is obvious that SA is nothing more than a political propaganda publication.”

Like the above, unsubstantiated non-truths and self serving distortions have swept the world many times before. Africans are born to be slaves. Women are unfit to vote. There is but one God. The rich are better than the poor. I am better than you. I am not an ape or fish. Kill thy neighbor. Inferior groups – be it Jews, gays, gypsies, bloggers or scientists – should be whacked once and for all. Burn the books. Let it all burn. Help us all.

Karl

Paul Taylor of Project 540, came across a website perfect for the Biochar Gardener. It was done by Gary Gilmore and includes descriptions and pictures of using the direct method to create biochar. It is really well done and highly informative so hopefully all of you will learn a thing or two from the site. 

Check it out here. 

Hello, everyone. Recently, there have been some location changes, and while I’m in the middle of quite slowly, I apologize, telling my stories from South Africa, I figured I should update you.

I moved. From New York to Geneva. Why? Well, truth be told, I had the opportunity, and it seemed like the perfect time. And when things work out this well, you just know they’re meant to be. So, here I am, working at a human rights NGO, trying to put my French minor to use, living, eating, and traveling, bien sûr.

Geneva, it seems, is amongst the most central cities in Europe…it is so easy, and inexpensive, to just hop over to another city. Proof? Well, this weekend, I’m going to Lyon. The weekend afterwards, I’m going to Copenhagen.

A word on those trips: Lyon was planned. A dear friend from college is living in Paris, but is spending three weeks in Lyon so I promised I’d come visit her. Copenhagen, on the other hand…sigh. It all started when I was enjoying a nice dinner of raclette, when in Switzerland…and two of my new friends kept talking about how they were going to Copenhagen and how it would be so much fun if I came. I said various versions of “No.” and “I’ll think about it,” until finally I decided to “just see” how much plane tickets would be. Never one to pass up a good deal, I immediately booked tickets. I’m sorry, but to Denmark for under 250CHF? Of course, I will. So, I did. So, now I’m going.

I spent the next two days singing the only song I can remember ever hearing about Copenhagen. Honestly, the things we remember from our childhood. And I’ll be there mid climate conference, so I’ll have to let you know about all the goings-on. I don’t really have any other concrete travel plans, just Paris for New Year’s Eve and London sometime soon afterwards. Everything else will just have to happen as it will.

xo

J. Justine

Com a proximidade da conferência de Copenhagen, o tema das mudanças climáticas está na ordem do dia. Infelizmente, o debate está confinado às metas para reduzir a emissão de carbono e não considera aspectos fundamentais: o possível impacto destas metas sobre os maiores afetados (países e populações pobres) e as estratégias de adaptação à nova realidade do clima.

A grande ameaça que as mudanças climáticas colocam não é sobre a Terra, pois o planeta já superou os mais variados cataclismas e vai continuar se transformando e sobrevivendo. A grande questão é a sobrevivência da espécie humana. Estamos diante de uma “Arca de Noé” contemporânea, e a pergunta central é: quem construirá essa arca e quem poderá entrar nela?

Os eventos extremos, tais como enchentes e desmoronamentos decorrentes do aumento das chuvas, afeta com maior intensidade moradores de assentamentos irregulares, que ocupam áreas renegadas pelo mercado, como várzeas de rios ou encostas de morros. Por outro lado, a ampliação da seca afeta países sem agricultura mecanizada e aprofunda o problema da fome.

Além disso, mecanismos para mitigar o aquecimento global, como metas de emissão, créditos de carbono e compensações ambientais, podem ter efeitos perversos sobre o direito à moradia. Por exemplo, a compensação estipulada para as obras de ampliação da Marginal do Tietê provocará o despejo de 20 mil famílias de áreas reservadas para o plantio de árvores.

Em meio à crise, soluções aparentemente limpas como a construção de hidrelétricas podem ocultar aspectos negativos. A hidrelétrica de Belomonte, a ser construída no Pará, resultará na remoção forçada de várias comunidades rurais e aumento de favelas em áreas urbanas. Os chamados produtos verdes, ou “carbon-free”, também são mais caros e menos acessíveis para a população pobre.

O mundo precisa nortear suas estratégias no sentido da garantia dos direitos humanos das populações atingidas. As mudanças climáticas já estão vindo por aí, e é urgente criarmos mecanismos de adaptação com investimentos focados nas maiores vítimas. Investir em infraestrtura e proteção para quem mora hoje em zonas de risco e urbanizar ocupações irregulares sujeitas a inundações são algumas destas possibilidades.

On her Facebook page Sunday night, Sarah Palin posted a letter from a 95-year-old veteran named Harold B. Estes. The letter was to Obama saying, “I realize you never served in the military and never had to defend your country with your life, but you’re the Commander-in-Chief now, son,” Estes wrote. “Do your job. linked to the whole letter:

November 20, 2009

Dear President Obama,
My name is Harold Estes, approaching 95 on December 13 of this year. People meeting me for the first time don’t believe my age because I remain wrinkle free and pretty much mentally alert. I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1934 and served proudly before, during and after WW II retiring as a Master Chief Bos’n Mate. Now I live in a “rest home” located on the western end of Pearl Harbor allowing me to keep alive the memories of 23 years of service to my country.
One of the benefits of my age, perhaps the only one, is to speak my mind, blunt and direct even to the head man. So here goes.
I am amazed, angry and determined not to see my country die before I do but you seem hell bent not to grant me that wish. I can’t figure out what country you are the president of. You fly around the world telling our friends and enemies despicable lies like:
” We’re no longer a Christian nation”
” America is arrogant” – (Your wife even announced to the world,”America is mean-spirited. “

Please tell her to try preaching that nonsense to 23 generations of our war dead buried all over the globe who died for no other reason than to free a whole lot of strangers from tyranny and hopelessness.) I’d say shame on the both of you but I don’t think you like America nor do I see an ounce of gratefulness in anything you do for the obvious gifts this country has given you. To be without shame or gratefulness is a dangerous thing for a man sitting in the White House.

After 9/11 you said,” America hasn’t lived up to her ideals.” Which ones did you mean? Was it the notion of personal liberty that 11,000 farmers and shopkeepers died for to win independence from the British ? Or maybe the ideal that no man should be a slave to another man that 500,000 men died for in the Civil War ? I hope you didn’t mean the ideal 470,000 fathers, brothers,husbands,and a lot of fellas I knew personally died for in WWII, because we felt real strongly about not letting any nation push us around because we stand for freedom.

I don’t think you mean the ideal that says equality is better than discrimination. You know the one that a whole lot of white people understood when they helped to get you elected.
Take a little advice from a very old geezer, young man. Shape up and start acting like an American.If you don’t, I’ll do what I can to see you get shipped out of that fancy rental on Pennsylvania Avenue .You were elected to lead not to bow, apologize and kiss the hands of murderers and corrupt leaders who still treat their people like slaves.

And just who do you think you are telling the American people not to jump to conclusions and condemn that Muslim major who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers and wounded dozens more. You mean you don’t want us to do what you did when that white cop used force to subdue that black college professor in Massachusetts who was putting up a fight ? You don’t mind offending the police calling them stupid but you don’t want us to offend Muslim fanatics by calling them what they are, terrorists.

One more thing. I realize you never served in the military and never had to defend your country with your life but you’re the Commander-in-Chief now, son. Do your job. When your battle-hardened field General asks you for 40,000 more troops to complete the mission, give them to him. But if you’re not in this fight to win, then get out. The life of one American soldier is not worth the best political strategy you’re thinking of.

You could be our greatest president because you face the greatest challenge ever presented to any president. You’re not going to restore American greatness by bringing back our bloated economy. That’s not our greatest threat. Losing the heart and soul of who we are as Americans is our big fight now. And I sure as hell don’t want to think my president is the enemy in this final battle.
Sincerely,
Harold B. Estes
McAlpin , FL

Click On Links
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Profile
Fort Hood Shooting; 12 Dead, 31 Injured
Obama And Baghdad Suicide Bombers
The Afghanistan War
Hakimullah Mehud: Pakistan’s New Taliban Leader
Obama Gun Control
Taliban Attack
Iraq Car Bombing Kill 147, Wound Over 700
Six Bomb Blasts In Baghdad Kills 95 Wound 536
Peshawar Car Bomb Kills 91

Recently the University of East Anglia and the British Antartic Survey led a Global Carbon Project study to evaluate the changes in carbon emissions from 2000 to 2008. Their results were very frightening and found that instead of the expected 2°-3° C rise in temperatures over the century we are actually closer to a 6°C change. The team of researchers found that not only are we releasing more carbon into the atmosphere at an accelerating rate but the carbon sinks that used to to absorb the carbon are now failing. This just proves that we need a technology such as biochar that can sequester carbon and prevent it from being released in to the atmosphere. Hopefully the world leaders at Copenhagen will recognize it too. 

Read the article with the results here and decide for yourself what state our world is in.

I am a huge fan of Hunter S. Thompson but like most of his fans, I honestly don’t understand much of what he was writing about. It was his turn of phrase that always got me and the balls to just go with whatever was floating around in his brilliant drug addled brain.

Lately, I have been cogitating on the Death of the American Dream; something Hunter started writing about when I was like 3. His hatred towards Nixon and everyone connected with the man is legend and Hunter attributed the death of the dream to the legions of (in his mind) evil pig fuckers.

Later on in life when Hunter was ailing both mentally and physically he began to believe  George W. Bush to be banging the final nail in the coffin of the great American Dream and when Kerry got slaughtered in the ‘04 Presidential, Hunter really lost his faith in the government and politics.

I believe Hunter’s suicide had more to do with his lack of faith in what was happening to the country than it did his inability to get around as well as, a general malaise with his health situation. I believe Hunter saw what was happening around him as too depressing to deal with and ending it all was the only solution.

With the election of Barry, I also began to see what Hunter was talking about. He was right. The beginning of the end of the American Dream did begin during the late ’60’s and early 70’s although I believe it is an amalgam of everyone involved, not just Nixon or Bush but also everyone in between; past presidents and the Houses.

Let’s face it, the only reprieve we have had in 45 years from a bleak outlook for the future as a country was with Reagan whom we all rallied around and began to feel proud of the United States once again. We came back together as a country under Reagan. Ford was innocuous and boring, Carter was…well let’s not go there, Papa Bush was OK but no spitfire (I don’t believe he actually wanted to be Pres), Clinton doesn’t merit mentioning and W, well, W was W and although he kept us safe for which I am eternally grateful, he opened the door to the cult of personality that became Barry supporters.

The real death of the dream as aforementioned started some 45 years ago and what it has amounted to is the inability for middle class people to get ahead. I put partial blame on big business. Business people have begged and pleaded for years for Government to step back and let them do what they want. I completely agree with that philosophy to this day. However, what is wont to happen, did happen; complete advantage was taken of all of us when W helped to de-regulate just about everything.

Sup prime mortgages, banks playing loosey-goosey with credit card programs and then whacking their customers with crazy fees, Wall Street playing their usual games. It is all coming to a cataclysmic end.

There is no house in suburbia waiting for twenty something’s to purchase at a decent mortgage rate. There are no more BMW’s for those with combined incomes of $75,000. or less. Your kids are not going to private school unless you have a great inheritance. Forget college funds, they can go the way of your once fat 401-K in a heart beat.

Pulling yourself up by the boot straps does not exist anymore. Well, for a few maybe, but it is now even harder than it was for your old Grannie selling apples by the roadside during the Depression.

And, there are no solutions on the radar screen. An almost mystic, hope lactating, quasi-intellectual, do nothing and his cadre of fools now have dominion over our fate for the next four years. Quickly, his supporters seem to be realizing what a joke he and his administration are and there is nothing they can do about it for the next three years.

I have said many times that Barry is now irrelevant but I was wrong. He is very relevant as he has managed to screw up a situation that seemed to have no where else to go but up.

Our Non-President seems to think he is working with Monopoly money. He is unable to see or act upon the problems we are faced other than throw money at them we clearly don’t have.

In politics the best storyteller wins and Barry’s team of yarn spinners pulled a very brilliant although despicable trick on the American public. Their promises have all of course not been realized. Once actually in office they realized they didn’t have a clue and have now become experts in the spin doctor business, which is easy when you have bamboozled the media as well.

The lessons Barry’s crew of third graders are learning are great for them but awful for us. The stimulus package has made the United States slaves to foreign governments whom we should be avoiding like the plague. Can you say economic terrorism?

No jobs have been created. This is especially disappointing to the Green movement who were promised 5 million jobs by 2010. Read my lips people: this is Barry’s largest fuck up. Now is the time to reassess our use of resources and become a power on that front. We are getting our asses kicked in Copenhagen and that is just a shame.

Believe it or not, I have always been an optimist and I love this country, but even I am thinking about where I can live to be sure and provide my family with a solid situation until this shit blows over, if it ever does.

My brother whom I love dearly, likes to argue with me about Barry and says I should offer solutions instead of bitching about the situation. He’s right, the problem is unlike in the past, I can’t offer them because we are way too fucked up as a country for it to matter any longer.

We need a leader badly and I don’t see one coming along anytime soon. Goodbye American Dream, it was a good run.

Leading up to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP 15), FD is launching Copenhagen Crossroads: Insight and Perspectives, a blog featuring global business leaders, NGOs and government officials focusing on the key issues of the UN talks and their impact on business.

Below are the most recent posts:

• U.S. Senator John Kerry — “Climate Progress At Home And Around the World”
• Artur Runge-Metzger, Director for Climate Change and Air, DG Environment, European Commission — “Copenhagen Must Produce a Strong Global Climate Agreement”
• Ned Helme, founder and president of the Center for Clean Air Policy — “Copenhagen is Not Kyoto”
• Lavanya Rajamani, professor of International Law, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi — “Perspective on Copenhagen”
• Mikael Sloth, manager at H2 Logic, Denmark — “Shifting the Climate Paradigm – Hydrogen and the COP15″

This is what a massive scientific hoax looks like.

November 29, 2009
Climate change data dumped
Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.

In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.

Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.

Jones was not in charge of the CRU when the data were thrown away in the 1980s, a time when climate change was seen as a less pressing issue. The lost material was used to build the databases that have been his life’s work, showing how the world has warmed by 0.8C over the past 157 years.

He and his colleagues say this temperature rise is “unequivocally” linked to greenhouse gas emissions generated by humans. Their findings are one of the main pieces of evidence used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which says global warming is a threat to humanity.

“Trust us.”  That’s what it all boils down to.

Silly me, but I thought “science” was supposed to amount to something more than that.

Here’s your bottom line: global warming, climate change, or whatever you want to call it, is a load of nonsense.  And the only anthropogenic or “man-made” problem is the giant sack of lies that an elitist group of pseudo-scientific ideologues  sold us.

One of the emails simply demonstrates what patently bad “science” global warming has been in the first place.  At its core, science is an endeavor which predicts a certain measurable outcome, and then attempts to determine whether that prediction is verified in nature according to a fair, open, and repeatable process.  Global warming isn’t even close to being science by the very standards of science:

At the end of 2008, the scientists at East Anglia predicted that 2009 would be one of the warmest years on record:

On December 30, climate scientists from the UK Met Office and the University of East Anglia projected 2009 will be one of the top five warmest years on record. Average global temperatures for 2009 are predicted to be 0.4∞C above the 1961-1990 average of 14 ∫ C. A multiyear forecast using a Met Office climate model indicates a rapid return of global temperature to the long-term warming trend, with an increasing probability of record temperatures after 2009.

We know now that the alarmists’ prediction for 2009 didn’t come true.

But bad science wasn’t all these global warming alarmists were guilty of.  They were also guilty of making skeptics of their bogus man-caused global warming alarmism modern versions of Galileo (I’ve previously written about this chilling development in postmodernized academia to punish politically “incorrect” academics and scientists).  They used the peer-review process as an ideological club to attack and undermine fellow scientists rather than using it as a means to get at the truth:

Dating back to 1996, the emails show that both U.S. and U.K. based scientists referred to any research offering alternate viewpoints as “disinformation”,“misinformation” or “crap” that needs to be kept out of the public domain.

The emails include deliberations amongst the scientists regarding efforts to make sure that reports from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change include their own research and exclude that of dissenting scientists.

In one of the emails, Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University We “will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

This is a startling quote, given that Jones and Mann as climate scientists have the authority to review papers and determine whether they are eligible to be published by scientific journals.

Mann even discussed how to destroy a journal that had published papers with contrary views, telling his colleagues that he believed it had been “hijacked by a few skeptics on the editorial board” who had “staged a coup”.

“Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.” Mann wrote.

One article, entitled, how “The Alarmists Do “Science:” A Case Study,” describes just “one of many exchanges that shed light on the priority that the global warming alarmists give to politics and career advancement over science.”  The author provides a fairly lengthy segment of an email conversation that is frankly chilling.

Another article compiles emails under the title, “When In Doubt, Delete,” that documents a pattern of deceptive behavior by people who called themselves “scientists” and yet were more interested in destroying evidence than producing and preserving it.

There are so many emails to go over no single article can do so, but here’s a few tidbits:

From a Powerline article entitled, “Global Warming Bombshell“:

They also suggest that pro-global warming scientists fudge data to get the results they are looking for. Just over a month ago, on September 28, 2009, Tom Wigley wrote to Phil Jones of the Hadley Centre about his efforts to get the right-sized “blip” in temperatures of the 1940s:

Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean — but we’d still have to explain the land blip.

I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from. Removing ENSO does not affect this.

It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”.

This and many other emails convey the impression that these theorists are making the “science” up as they go along, with data being manipulated until it yields the results that have been predetermined by political conviction.

One email from Phil Jones is particularly damning about “scientists” making up their own version of “science” in order to sell an ideology:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

A RealClearPolitics article entitled, “ClimateGate: The Fix Is In” explains what the “trick” is:

Anthony Watts provides an explanation of this case in technical detail; the “trick” consists of selectively mixing two different kinds of data-temperature “proxies” from tree rings and actual thermometer measurements-in a way designed to produce a graph of global temperatures that ends the way the global warming establishment wants it to: with an upward “hockey stick” slope.

A “trick” to “hide the decline.”  And these demagogues call US “deniers.”

As loathsome of a collection of frauds as our global warming “scientists” have proven to be, they don’t hold a candle to the mainstream media propagandists who made this colossal hoax possible in the first place – and who are still trying to conceal the fraud even now.

Barack Obama is going to go to Copenhagen to sign some pathologically insane economy-destroying accord because he is a true believer in the religion of liberalism.

And that is what global warming has now been proven to be: a religion.  It is an ideology advanced by religious fanatics.  This latest admission proves they have no raw data; they have no “science”; all they have is a rabid faith commitment that their own self-created narratives must be true because they believe it is true.

In The Guardian today Nicholas Stern and George Monbiot answered the two sides of whether there is any hope for the Copenhagen talks. Stern argued yes, and Monbiot argued, not much. I am very much on the Monbiot side of this argument right now, and this extract of Stern’s article exemplifies why…

“Recent weeks and months have shown country after country raising their ambitions on controlling emissions. It is now clear that if countries move together and they find ways to extend their action we could set the world on a responsible path. We can now see that it is possible to achieve an agreement that is effective, efficient and equitable. It will allow us to avoid the biggest risks of climate change, to overcome poverty worldwide and to usher in an exciting new era of prosperity based on a much more attractive and stronger form of economic growth – sustainable low-carbon growth.”

Stern is arguing that the recent PR announcements from various governments have been ‘raising their ambitions’? Well, perhaps but only because before they were going backwards so anything is an improvement. But please. The US has a pitiful target that doesn’t fill anyone with excitement, even if they were to agree to it internationally. The EU is pledging less for financial transfer than anyone wanted. If anything there is acceptance that ambitions are so low, everyone has gone into lowering expectations mode pre-conference rather than a hyping up of hope. Stern then goes on to argue that ‘if countries move together’ and ‘if they find ways to extend their action’ – well two big IFs. Haven’t these been the two things holding us back for the past 19 years? There is certainly no indication that they will do either of those things, and then all that Stern hopes for is they will find a ‘responsible path’ – but what is that path?! Whose definition of responsibility? That based on history? On per capita emissions? On climate skepticism? The agreement will of course be ‘effective, efficient and equitable’ – three words no one can really disagree with, especially if you avoid any discussion of what they mean. Who would be arguing for an ineffective, inefficient and unequitable deal? And finally, the high point of the piece an argument that we will be able to have a ‘new era of prosperity based on a much more attractive and stronger form of economic growth’. Thank goodness our fundamental belief in the power of economic growth need not be shaken by this looming crisis (just don’t ask the bottom 50% how much they are enjoying this new prosperity). This piece reminds me of hearing Ed Milliband speak on climate change a few months ago in the British Council in Delhi, he again talked about a ‘fair, ambitious and effective deal’. Great, amazing soundbites, but what do these words actually mean?

When politicians and other public figures continue to couch Copenhagen success in these vague all inclusive terms, they can express hope and they can perhaps even unite different constituencies. But in those negotiating rooms, the meaning of those words ‘equitable’ and ‘effective’ will be hotly contested for days on end, as they have been throughout the negotiations this year. It is of little use to anybody to gloss over differences to express unfounded optimism. The words sound great, but they mean nothing. Enough hot air, we need to talk and argue over the points that matter and express our despair with the process not pretend that everything is going just fine.

Another poll was released by Harris-Decima today, showing that almost two-thirds of Canadians want action on climate change.

The message couldn’t be any more clear, yet the government does not seem to be listening (see yesterday’s post about the government refusing to budge on targets). This poll specifically asked participants to agree or disagree with the statement “Climate change is mankind’s defining crisis, and demands a commensurate response.”. The language is significantly stronger than previous polls on this issue – yet the majority of Canadians still agreed. The voices for action in Copenhagen continue to get louder, with reports today that Jim Flaherty’s office is being occupied in a peaceful protest in Whitby (following a similar move in Jim Prentice’s office recently).

The Conservatives are now actively battling against scientific consensus, the will of the democratically elected opposition (who together have a majority of seats in the House), and the will of the people. I’m not betting that they will cave, but I can’t image they will escape this unscathed.

Al Gore Confronted on ClimateGate

lilCarbon and CPS Carbon Project Solutions Inc. are sending blogger and CPS principal Joseph Pallant to Copenhagen!

COP15 is shaping up to be a seminal confluence of social, political and cultural endeavour on the path to halting climate change. Even as the negotiating tracks show that a final, binding piece of international law will not be issued from the meeting, global leaders are flocking to the conference in recognition that climate change can no longer be ignored.

Joseph will be updating lilCarbon with a “carbon professional’s” take on the fast-breaking events and deeper implications of COP15. He has been developing and implementing solutions to climate change for the last five years, and shall be following the negotiations with particular focus on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) and the Canadian positions at Copenhagen.

As well as bringing you exclusive coverage of the UN climate conference, lilCarbon is partnering with some of the best and brightest bloggers meeting in Copenhagen to share this event with you. If you have a blog we should follow or people we just have to meet up with, please let us know! If you’re going to Copenhagen, we’d love to meet up to share a julebryg and great content.

Stephanopoulos: ClimateGate Complicates Copenhagen for Obama

News Busters
November 29, 2009

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos actually brought up the ClimateGate scandal as a topic for discussion during the Roundtable segment on Sunday’s “This Week.”

Not surprisingly, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman found “not a single smoking gun” in those e-mail messages (video in two parts embedded below the fold with transcript and commentary by myself and others involved in this debate):

There is nothing we hate more in this world than a hypocrite. And there are no worse offenders than those elitist liberals in Hollywood & Washington. Next week is the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, where there will be more hot air on display than a thousand hot air ballons. Of course you will see the usual suspects at the summit: John Travolta, Leo Dicaprio, Sean Penn, Al Gore, etc. According to the Times of London, here is what we can expect from the summit:

• 16,500 people coming in from 192 countries.
• 41,000 tons of carbon dioxide, roughly the same as the carbon emissions of Morocco in 2006.
• 900 kilometres of computer cable and 50,000 square miles of carpet.
• More than 200,000 meals will be served and visitors will drink 200,000 cups of coffee.

Add to this the fleet of private jets, and limos to and from the summit, and you can see why the Global Warming scam is definitely liberal hypocrisy at its finest.

Bradley Brooks-The Associated Press, 11/27/09

World leaders set to gather in Copenhagen next month to draft a new accord on fighting climate change already admit the much-anticipated summit won’t produce a global treaty. There are too many disagreements among countries on how to reduce heat-trapping carbon emissions blamed for warming the planet.

So far, the Brazilian government has focused mostly on enforcement.

The Brazilian Amazon is arguably the world’s biggest natural defense against global warming, acting as a “sink,” or absorber, of carbon dioxide. But it is also a great contributor to warming. About 75 percent of Brazil’s emissions come from rainforest clearing, as vegetation burns and felled trees rot.

Advocates have long pressed to defend the world’s rain forests, to save animal and plant species, safeguard watersheds and protect indigenous people’s homelands. For Brazil, water vapor from the forest is also vital to its rainy climate. But the government now has another reason to protect the Amazon: A new global climate agreement is expected to reward countries for “avoided deforestation,” with cash or credits tradable on the global carbon market…

Read more…

Dalai Lama

Il Dalai Lama chiede al mondo di agire sui cambiamenti climatici.

“I leader del mondo – ha detto il leader spirituale tibetano –  devono dare priorità al problema del riscaldamento globale”

Il Dalai Lama, premio Nobel della Pace, in Australia per una serie di conferenze sul tema della responsabilità universale e per l’ambiente, ha detto che “i politici devono concentrare le loro energie per trovare una soluzione ai cambiamenti climatici. Credo che l’approccio dei leader del mondo al problemi globali debba cambiare: le questioni globali dovrebbero essere il problema numero uno”. 

Il settantaquattrenne leader spirituale tibetano ha detto che non può prevedere l’esito del vertice delle Nazioni Unite, ma è rincuorato dal fatto che esso si svolga.  “Penso che sia molto, molto incoraggiante”, ha detto.