Cardboard Spaceship

IPCC, Glaciergate, and the Increasing Doubts over AGW

It seems that the Himalayas are safe, the glaciers will not, as claimed, melt by 2035.  A claim that given that this is 25 years away should have raised some scepticism in the first place. 

Behind it, there is the usual peril of science for sale, and that's the bad bit.  Seeking grants from the Carnegie Corporation amongst others, the claim was added to the grant requests.  If, as a layman, you get such a statement from an apparently reputable source, then wouldn't you reach for the cheque book, after all, we are talking about the water supply to 40% of the world's population?

It is not that there was no dissent to this point of view.

"Last November, however, Dr Raina, the country's most senior glaciologist, published a report for the Indian government showing that the rate of retreat of Himalayan glaciers had not increased in the past 50 years and that the IPCC's predictions were recklessly alarmist. This provoked the furious reaction from Dr Pachauri that tarred Dr Raina's report as "arrogant" and "voodoo science". Only weeks later came the devastating revelation that the IPCC's own prediction had no scientific foundation."

I've said it before, and here I say it again.  The world is a disastrous state of overpopulation, resource depletion, and pollution.  We need to react, and react now.  What we do not need is one of the greatest potential misallocation of resources in the history of the world.  

My feeling is that with the total unravelling of the Copenhagen process, we may have dodged a major bullet.

Rings Around The Earth

A chap called Roy Prol has done an animation that shows what the Earth would be like if it had a ring system similar to Saturn's.  Very interesting little imagined scenario, and set to supernally beautiful music. 

The Fix is In, in Copenhagen

Didn't know whether to file this one under Environment, Tin Foil Hat, or World Economy, as it has elements of all three.   The Guardian, a very pro-green paper on the whole, has the story of a draft doing the rounds behind the scenes in Copenhagen, called the Danish Text. 

Why did I think about whether this is a conspiracy theory one or not, well, from the article.

"The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions."

In other words the existing UN process would be sidelined, and the money men are going to take it over.  Like that has to be the least surprising outcome in a long time.  The Banksters have found another way to screw the world, carbon trading and carbon trading derivatives. 

"Banks intend to become the intermediaries in this fledgling market. Although U.S. carbon legislation may not pass for a year or more, Wall Street has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars hiring lobbyists and making deals with companies that can supply them with “carbon offsets” to sell to clients."

According to Blythe Masters, at JPMC, the person who invented the Credit Default Swap, one of the things that we the taxpayer are now paying trillions for:

"Masters says banks must be allowed to lead the way if a mandatory carbon-trading system is going to help save the planet at the lowest possible cost. And derivatives related to carbon must be part of the mix, she says. Derivatives are securities whose value is derived from the value of an underlying commodity -- in this case, CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

“This requires a massive redirection of capital,” Masters says. “You can’t have a successful climate policy without the heavy, heavy involvement of financial institutions.”

Now, I have some genuine issues around the neutrality of the climate debate because of this kind of sudden involvement of the powerful vested interests of the banks and various other people who stand to gain.   To be clear, I think that the world is overpopulated, overpolluted, and we will have serious resource problems in the very near future.  This is why getting the allocation of resources, and the approach right is so utterly critical, because we're not going to get to go around again on this one.  

Still let's leave it to the Banksters to fix it in our best interests.  What could possible go wrong with that situation?

Climate Change Fraud?

The servers at the Hadley Climatic Research Unit have been hacked, and e-mails and other documents have been taken and spread liberally around the Internet.  Why is this interesting, well, because they show what looks like some pretty damning evidence of data manipulation to make the case for global warming. 

Sample from one Phil Jones, talking about the fact that rather than increase as predicted, global temperatures have actually declined in thelast few years.

"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 from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline."  

Read more about the significance of this here .

Well, the issue with this is, in the midst of a huge economic dislocation, potential huge problems with the resource overstretch on the Earth, with overpopulation and resource depletion, and these knaves are trying to make us destroy industries, and launch some of the greatest effort misallocations in history to solve a problem that may not even exist outside of their seemingly less than open and trustworthy efforts.

Don't Buy Houses in the Maldives

Well, the Arctic is going to potentially be ice free by 2013, and the melting this year is the largest recorded.  Icebergs melting does not raise sea levels, as the ice already displaces the same weight of water, but if the land based Greenland ice melts, then it will raise them, and if the ice shelf on the Antarctic melts, then its very bad.

Bangladesh, Maldives, Some of the American East Coast, Bits of Holland, all swallowed up.  See it interactively here, if you want a bit of a shock. 

Interesting Follow On to Global Cooling

Got a useful response to the post on our heating being off about local cooling, with a link to a free computer energy management system from a company called Uniblue.  I will give this a go myself, as the amount of surplus energy that I get through in the house, where I regularly run four computers, must be astonishing. 

Give it a go if you like, I know that I will.  (I have no relationship with Uniblue, just to be clear.) 

Oil Peaked - Big Question

Well, according to the German Energy Watch Group, oil has peaked, and production will decline at about 7% a year from now onwards.  This is based on observing production rather than reserve data, which they consider to be harder to verify, and given the problems Shell had with its reserve statements some time ago, I can believe that is true. 

Read the report itself here, if you like your nightmares to be long, detailed, and rather chilly.  The Guardian seems rather pessimistic in its analysis, but then USA did invade Iraq for a reason, and I think that Oil is at least some of it. 

Crap, I'm off to hide in the basement and polish my shotguns.

Meat and Grains - Hold the Flowers

I have been reading more and more about this in the recent weeks.  Seems that the bee colonies are collapsing.  Very good piece on it here in the Telegraph. 

Yikes.  Think of all the crops that we eat that need pollination, and it's frightening - peas, oilseed rape, grapes, apples and other soft fruits, sunflowers, broccoli, and so on, and that's just what I can think of looking out of the window at the farmland near me. 

Well, at least some notice is being taken of it, but only in the USA if I understand the article correctly.  Worrisome. 

Well Organised Canned Food and Shotguns Site

Via Jerry Pournelle, I found this website on Peak Oil. 

I like it, it is the Canned Food and Shotguns directory done in tasteful font.  The revolution will not be televised, but the program might be printed in advance with elegant graphics. 

Read and weep.

One Degree and We're Done For.

After the cheering visit of the black helicopters, here's some environmental doom and gloom from NASA.  One degree centigrade, and its all over. 

Sheesh.