An Honest Climate Debate

Germans tried to warn us of Climate Fraud November 30, 2009

Germans tried to warn us of Climate Fraud

By Dennis Avery
CFP, November 29, 2009

The airwaves are full of the “secret” codes and emails from Britain’s Hadley climate research center. New Zealand is looking at the upward trend in the “official” graph of its recent temperatures—while the country’s raw temperature data show no warming. Now researchers are digging into the Hadley data to find if the rest of the world’s climate data have been similarly “adjusted.”

But Der Speigel, the German news magazine, tried to blow the whistle on this climate fraud more than two years ago. In May of 2007, it published a story titled, “Not the End of the World As We Know It.” The story pointed out that Svente Arrhenius, the Swedish chemist who first posited the Greenhouse, had seen global warming as a good thing, with “better climates” potentially making poor harvests and famine a thing of the past.

Der Spiegel noted how previous cold periods—including the Little Ice Age that began in 1300—were too cold for grain to mature properly. In Germany, thousands of mountain villages and huge tracts of farmland were abandoned due to the cold.

“When global temperatures plunged unexpectedly again in the 1960s, many meteorologists were quick to warn people about the coming of a new ice age—supposedly triggered by man-made air pollution. Hardly anyone at the time believed that a warming period could pose a threat.”

“It was not until the rise of the environmental movement in the 1980s that everything suddenly changed,” said the Speigel article. “From then on it was almost a foregone conclusion that global warming could only be perceived as a disaster for the earth’s climate. . .”

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Climate change help for the poor ‘has not materialised’ November 26, 2009

Climate change help for the poor ‘has not materialised’

BBC News, November 25, 2009

Large sums promised to developing countries to help them tackle climate change cannot be accounted for, a BBC investigation has found.

Rich countries pledged $410m (£247m) a year in a 2001 declaration – but it is now unclear whether the money was paid.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has accused industrialised countries of failing to keep their promise.

The EU says the money was paid out in bilateral deals, but admits it cannot provide data to prove it.

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Australia: Longer November heatwave 130 years ago November 24, 2009

Longer November heatwave 130 years ago

By Brett Dutschke
Weatherzone, November 24, 2009

The most recent heatwave was record-breaking for many areas, but in November 1878 a heatwave lasted almost twice as long, according to weatherzone.com.au.

Nearly all inland areas of New South Wales and South Australia and surrounding areas of Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory have had at least eight days of extreme heat, record-breaking for November.

But in some inland towns, records were not broken.

Inland weather stations which have measured temperature for the last 131 years or longer show that there was a November heatwave which lasted about two weeks.

Gunnedah, in northern NSW had 15 consecutive days of 35 degrees or hotter in November 1878. This month Gunnedah had nine in a row, the longest November stretch in 131 years. The northern NSW town only averages four-to-five days above 35 in November.

With this piece of evidence one could claim that this most recent hot spell is unprecedented in November in 131 years.

For some coastal areas of South Australia, including Adelaide this year’s heatwave is the longest on record for November. Official temperatures have been measured as far back as 1887 in Adelaide, but not as far back as 1878, like Gunnedah.

Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out November 22, 2009

Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out

Spiegel Online, November 19, 2009

Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.

At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average.

Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth’s average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.

Ironically, climate change appears to have stalled in the run-up to the upcoming world summit in the Danish capital, where thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists plan to negotiate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Billions of euros are at stake in the negotiations.

Reached a Plateau

The planet’s temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s. “At present, however, the warming is taking a break,” confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany’s best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. “There can be no argument about that,” he says. “We have to face that fact.”

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