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AUSTRALIAN DIARY


ARCHIVES 1997-2007  --- ARCHIVES 2007 +
 
 
JANUARY 2014
 
CLIMATE CHANGE

"Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas and adding more of it will warm the planet.  Yes, absolutely.  That is all well proven science, known for years.  Yes, I have no disagreement with any of that.

Disagreement is with how much warming there is.  Is it going to be catastrophic or is it going to be half a degree?"
Joanne Nova

I have been writing about climate since March 2005, when I pointed out that only a few decades earlier climate scientists had been concerned that Earth was entering a new ice age, and sarcastically suggested that:

American entrepreneurs together with Arab oil sheiks rose to the challenge, and popularised the newly devised automobile.  This had the effect of efficiently increasing the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere, thus producing a "greenhouse effect" which cancelled the looming danger.

In January 2006 I commented on recent research suggested by my 2005 post, where it appeared that climate scientists were testing my predictions.

In July 2007 I commented in detail on the duplicity in the various Warmist reviews, the IPCC, UNFCC, Kyoto and Stern.  Stern in particularly I discovered was not peer reviewed, and was a compilation of extremist scenarios.  The IPCC had major dissenting opinions which were not included in the final reports.

My current narrative is that the problem is not climate change.  The problem is Government.  Government is a cohort of like minded people that exists to tax and oppress "we the people" for it's own member's benefit.  To make their governing more efficient (i.e. requiring less police to keep we the people compliant) the cohort has devised various narratives (e.g. "Democracy", with no emphasis on the word "representative" which tends to hide it's true dictatorial nature).  These narratives hide the true nature of their oppression.

The latest narrative is "Climate Change".   This narrative is designed to legitimize a new tax that people will feel is morally justified.  To develop that narrative, the cohort has bribed sections of academia, media and (regulated) big business.  (Not small business entrepreneurs.  They are the main victims).

Academics get promoted if they publish, (Such is the conclusion that can be drawn from Carey Nelson's comments via Elspeth Probyn.) and if they have a choice, publishing something alarmist in the public media (ABC, NBN) beats most academic publications hands down.  So the formula for an Academic to get promoted to Professor:
 This Pickering cartoon explains the "bribery" of academics.

The latest academic rort is to develop a computer model that predicts some sort of warmist disaster.  In computer jargon, they are GIGO models.  (Garbage In, Garbage Out.).  Just for example, in some (most? all?) models more than two thirds of the Greenhouse effect is assumed to be caused by increased water vapour concentration, which results from increased evaporation caused by the increase of atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.  (Water vapour is a strong "greenhouse gas").  The problem?  Given the state of current atmospheric boundary layer predictor formulae, those models would be unable to make reliable assumptions about wind transport effects which might modify that water vapour assumption.

Another example of alarmist researchers' duplicity is biased data selection.   McIntyre uncovered the bristlecone pine annular rings fiasco, where alarmist researchers claimed that wider tree growth rings were evidence of faster tree growth caused by warming.  McIntyre presented evidence that the wider rings were caused by animal depredation of the tree bark, which caused growth spurts.   In another example of duplicity, enlarged growth ring widths were "found" in a "selected" sample of twelve Larch trees.  That looked very persuasive until a fact checker used an expanded sample from the Larch trees in the same region and found no such evidence.  The original researcher's explanation of how those 12 trees were selected was unpersuasive.

Big business relies on "regulation" for survival.  For example, ask your local corner store how much it costs for an accountant each month to ensure compliance with government regulations.  Big business loves regulation because it kills off the more efficient small competitors.  Without regulation, Woolworths and Coles would have far more difficulty in using "predatory pricing" to crush the plethora of small business competitors that would arise.  Big business likes the idea of a Carbon Tax.  It means more regulation, more paperwork.

AN EXPLANATION

Do not get me wrong.  CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) is most certainly a "greenhouse gas" which means that it acts like the glass of a greenhouse.  It allows the sun's high frequency photons (light energy) to reach earth, but absorbs the low frequency photons heat radiation that arises when the light frequency is absorbed and re-radiated in the infra red spectrum.  Without the CO2 blanket, that heat would escape.  So all other things being equal, CO2 should produce global warming.

But referring again to my 2005 blog.

Analysis of the latest Anthropology digs indicates that the human race has been evolved to it's present form for around 200,000 years.  In that time it has survived several ice ages, the last of which ended around 20,000 years ago.  A few decades ago climate scientists were concerned that a new ice age was imminent, and that the ice sheets were already advancing and would reach the tropics within a few hundred years, or at most within a couple of millennia.

There was a "little ice age" during the 17th-18th Centuries, which coincided with the "Maunder Minimum" (1645-1750) during which sunspot activity reached historic lows.


Below are recent observations of sunspot activity (copied from this website).  It can be seen that sunspot cycle activity (a cycle is about 12 years) has fallen by about two thirds over the last four cycles.(approximately 50 years)


If we consider the coincidence of low sunspot activity during the "little ice age" and consider the recent observations of historic lows of sunspot activity then the recent global weather (renamed from "warming" to "climate change") must beg the question:

Perhaps global warming is happening, perhaps the CO2 increase caused by burning fossil fuels has produced a consequent warming which is actually insulating us from the worst effects of a new "little ice age"?
But don't expect the government or it's paid researchers or publicists (NBN) to admit it.  Both researchers and government need your money.


Afterword.  After writing the above, I would like to go on record as favouring a Carbon Tax.  Not for the purpose of "saving the world" by reducing atmospheric CO2 back to 0.028% because no Carbon tax could do that.  I favour it for the purpose of reducing waste, and reducing unnecessary pollution.  There should be a penalty for putting waste into the atmosphere.

And a CO2 tax need not disadvantage our export industries.  Everybody in business already uses and understands the GST.  All we need do is apply that principal to Carbon taxes.  So that at every stage of production a "CO2" weight is assigned to the product.  At retail level, only Australians pay the tax on Carbon.  We leave it to foreign countries to levy the CO2 tax on their imports.  So as not to disadvantage our local industry, a carbon tax should also be levied on all of our imports.


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