An Honest Climate Debate

The Climate Engine November 10, 2009

The Climate Engine

By Erl Happ
Climate Change, November 8, 2009

What follows is a general theory of natural climate variation supported by observation of the changing temperature of the atmosphere and the sea between 1948 and September 2009. This work suggests that strong warming after 1978 is an entirely natural phenomenon.

Imagine a small planet about the size of the Earth orbiting a sun just like our own. The planet has an atmosphere composed of nitrogen (76%), oxygen (23%) and trace gases (1%) of which argon makes up half of that one percent.

Let us further imagine that the sun bombards the Earth with radiation so energetic as to destroy the integrity of nitrogen and oxygen in the planet’s upper atmosphere. The region where this occurs may be called the ‘ionosphere’. When superheated at the highest elevations it can be known as the ‘thermosphere’.  The electrically unbalanced particles of the ionosphere possess negative or a positive polarity. Like iron filings scattered across a piece of paper atop a magnetized iron bar, atmospheric ions orient themselves according to the lines of the planets magnetic field. Rotating with the planet, the ionosphere is a place of constant flux.  Particles are energized on the dayside and dragged into a long tail on the night-side by the pressure of the solar wind, a highly magnetized stream of helium and hydrogen emanating from the sun. There is an exchange of energy between the wind and the ionosphere and particles are accelerated in one direction or the other and re-distributed according to the tension imposed by the constantly changing electromagnetic medium.

As ionized particles radiate energy and cool they will join up with particles of opposite polarity. The junction of one with the other moves the union closer to a ‘neutral’ state.  The orgy of irradiation, excitement, and reorientation, begins anew each day as the sun appears above the horizon. Recombination occurs mainly at night.

Nitrogen requires the most energetic short wave radiation to achieve the ionic state. This energy is available at a higher altitude. Oxygen ions are scarce at altitudes where nitrogen ions are formed because when the music stops, ions of nitrogen grab oxygen partners just as happily as nitrogen partners and there are many more nitrogen partners than oxygen partners.

Where free oxygen ions exist, they do so at a lower level where there is insufficient very short wave radiation to ionize nitrogen.

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It’s about making cash, not cutting gas November 6, 2009

It’s about making cash, not cutting gas

By Andrew Bolt
Herald Sun, November 5, 2009

Even greens say emissions trading is more about hot money than hot air:

The world’s carbon trading markets growing complexity threatens another “sub-prime” style financial crisis that could again destabilise the global economy, campaigners warn today.

In a new report, Friends of the Earth says that to date “cap and trade” carbon markets have done almost nothing to reduce emissions but have been plagued by inefficiency and corruption that render them unfit for purpose…

The carbon market, mainly based in Europe, was worth $126bn in 2008 and is predicted to mushroom to $3.1tn by 2020 if a global carbon market takes off.

However, FoE fears that the area has been hijacked by speculators on the financial markets.

But surely Kevin Rudd’s scheme will be better. Right?

Seeing through hoax of the century November 4, 2009

Seeing through hoax of the century

By Janet Albrechtsen
The Australian, November 4, 2009

INCREASINGLY, the road to Copenhagen resembles a suburban street on Halloween with the number of climate change freak shows and stunts reaching a nadir in recent weeks. Nicholas Stern says we should turn vegetarian in order to combat climate change. If you must eat meat, eat kangaroos, says Ross Garnaut, because marsupials emit negligible amounts of methane. And that champagne you drank on Melbourne Cup day? Scientists scolded us with a report that a 750ml bottle of bubbly could produce 100 million bubbles, releasing five litres of carbon dioxide.

Yet far from rallying people to the cause of immediate action on climate change, every new cri de coeur may be turning people away. Could it be that those derided as the great unwashed are beginning to ask more questions than their smart political leaders or the bastions of intellectual curiosity in the media?

Late last month, activists gathered at Sydney Opera House to listen to Sydney mayor Clover Moore announce that “the time for talk is past”.

“Already we know that this building, our Opera House, for decades a symbol of optimism and the human spirit, is under threat from global warming,” she says.

The Opera House under threat? That would be from rising sea levels, right? Just like the small island nation of Maldives where, last month, the president conducted a cabinet meeting underwater to remind the world that his country would be rendered uninhabitable by rising sea levels. Kitted out in full scuba-diving outfits, Mohamed Nasheed and his ministers sat at a table underwater off the coast of the capital of Male.

As planned, the president’s stunt made headlines across the globe. Send us money – and lots of it – is his message. The media love stunts. They are so easy to report.

Sadly, the media is not inquisitive enough to report those who question the circus acts of climate change. A week after the Maldives underwater show, Nils-Axel Morner – a leading world authority on sea levels – wrote an open letter to the president telling him that his stunt was “not founded in observational facts and true scientific judgments”.

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Lawrence Solomon: Canadian concern over climate change plummeting November 3, 2009

Lawrence Solomon: Canadian concern over climate change plummeting

by Lawrence Solomon
Financial Post, November 2,2009

According to a new Climate Confidence Monitor survey released today, support for action on climate change is plummeting in Canada. Just 26% of Canadians consider global warming among their chief concerns, down from 34% in 2008.

Concern in the U.S. is even lower – just 18% , down from 26% in 2008. The UK’s level of concern is the lowest of all, a mere 15%, down from 26% in 2008.

Worldwide, the drop in concern over climate change has also dropped by 8 percentage points, from 42% to 34%.

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