Banking Rats Desert The Carbon Emission Sinking Ship

Banks and investors are pulling out of the carbon market after the failure to make progress at Copenhagen on reaching new emissions targets after 2012.

Carbon financiers have already begun leaving banks in London because of the lack of activity and the drop-off in investment demand. The Guardian has been told that backers have this month pulled out of a large planned clean-energy project in the developing world because of the expected fall in emissions credits after 2012.

Anthony Hobley, partner and global head of climate change and carbon finance at law firm Norton Rose, said: "People will gradually start to leave carbon desks, we are beginning to see that already. We are seeing a freeze in banks' recruitment plans for the carbon market. It's not clear at what point this will turn into a cull or a rout."

Paul Kelly, chief executive of Eco­Securities, which develops clean energy projects, said that while markets had not expected a definitive post-Kyoto Protocol deal at Copenhagen, they had expected some progress.

Two sources said that Australian bank Westpac had scaled back plans to increase its carbon desk in London. A bank spokeswoman denied there were plans to recruit more staff in London, adding: "We have always said that we would look to grow this business organically as carbon markets develop and that remains the case."

See the full report:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/24/carbon-emissions-green-copenhagen-banks

I don't think this will make much difference to Rudd the Dud's ETS push. He still has his orders to follow.

Pity they didn't come from the electorate!

This will be my last post for about a week. I will be up the mid North Coast surfing, again!

If Bob Brown and the Greens have their way with a 5c increase in fuel prices and a god knows what increase in power prices, then my surfing trips may be curtailed a little.

Ah well, like Splitpin says, "The Greens - to yellow to admit they're red."

Lord Christopher Monckton Savages Rudd the Dudd

How absobloodylouetly amazing! Mainstream media has reported that there is opposition to The Big Dudder's ETS.

Here it is diret from News.com.au

A BRITISH climate sceptic says he has evidence climate change isn't a problem and the Australian Government's emissions trading scheme (ETS) is unnecessary.

Lord Christopher Monckton says he has come to Australia to prove Prime Minister Kevin Rudd wrong.

The former adviser to British prime minister Margaret Thatcher says Mr Rudd carried out "a 45-minute sustained personal attack" on him last November claiming he had no evidence on the effects of climate change.

"I'm going to say to the people of Australia, when your Prime Minister said I don't have any evidence, here I am, here is my evidence, here is where I got it from," Lord Monckton said today.

The climate change sceptic will carry out an extensive 13-day lecture tour of Australia at an estimated cost of $100,000.

The cost is being covered by two semi-retired Queensland engineers, John Smeed and Case Smit.

Lord Monckton claims climate change isn't a problem for the planet and carbon dioxide emissions don't contribute significantly to global warming.

He claims world temperatures will rise by just half a degree (Celsius) by the end of the decade, compared with UN scientists' prediction of a 3.5 degree rise.

He said millions of dollars were being made by "climate change profiteers".

"The ETS - which I understand your Government is proposing to introduce - is unnecessary," he said.

"It will simply be the largest tax increase in the history of Australia.

"All that will happen is that bankers and politicians will become even richer than they are."

Lord Monckton says his evidence against climate change includes tropical cyclones in Australian are at a 40-year low, Greenland's ice cover is increasing 5cm a year and polar bear numbers are on the rise, although there is some dispute amongst scientists about these findings.

Link to story here:

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/british-climate-sceptic-lord-christopher-monckton-slams-kevin-rudds-ets/story-e6frfku0-1225823273895

I Wonder Why This Wasn't in the MSM?

As Seen on Radar by thousands Over Australia on January 22, 2010.

What is going on?

Two bizarre features seen on radar over the North West and South East of Australia on Jan 22, 2010.
The ring over the south east appeared approximately 30 seconds before the bizarre red star over the north west.

Colin Andrews reports on his website:

"I have received E-mails from all over Australia today reporting this rather extraordinary feature captured on the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology radar site. This follows a series of so far unexplained features seen on Australian national radars since the 15th. For a while radar from the Melbourne Airport facility was out of action ( see below). Another strange ring appeared today over the South East of the country as seen below.

Today has been very lively surrounding this debate over what some are suggesting are weather modification experiments now under way over huge country. I have received data also today that shows the HAARP facility has been ramped up (see their own monitoring
data below).

One anonymous source sent me details that he claims to account for the large ring which started this article, that which appeared on the 15th. I would not normally publish material from anonymous sources but in this occasion somehow it seemed right that I should.

Below some of the e-mails today that people who were good enough to let me know what they were seeing on the national radar in Australia.

From: jurgs
Subject: RE: Rings over Australia
To: "'Colin Andrews'"
Date: Friday, January 22, 2010, 1:48 AM

Dear Mr Andrews....please find attached more captures of the National BOM site taken of all days today, 22nd January 2010... showing two rings which flashed on and off, alternatively.. one in colour... again in Western Australia and the lesser of the two circles over Melbourne, Victoria.

The National Loop incorporates 4 frames. The capture numbered 22012010.6 shows when neither circle was present.

Kind regards

Jurgen

--------------------------------------------
From: Michael Relfe
Subject: RE: The Ring over Australia 2
To: "'Colin Andrews'"
Date: Thursday, January 21, 2010, 4:19 PM

The picture of the "radar rings" is the result of a test period for a Tesla Shield Generator. The
correct question is "What type of government installation is located at the center of that image"

Hi
Similar images can be located on the www.cyberspaceorbit.com website (it is frozen and still
available even though the creator has passed on) I think they are filed under “radar rings” or
something similar. The give away is the fact that it is a ring, with a clear area inside.

As a former Navy radar technician I am familiar with almost any type of radar return and what is displayed is actually impossible unless you are familiar with Tom Beardens description of a “fourier transformed scalar wave” and how it “just appears” at a certain point. A “slow” scalar wave is transmitted, then a “faster” scalar wave is transmitted. When the faster wave overtakes the slower wave, the two waves “pair couple” and create a standing wave at that point. If you transmit this with an omni-directional antenna, you have a “bubble” or “shield” around the transmitting station / area.

Hope this helps. Its nice to see tax dollars at work doing something good for a change.

Sincerely

Michael Relfe

See Colin's article in detail here:

http://www.colinandrews.net/Cloud-Radar-Circle-Australia-2010-0122.html

Global Warming Scientist Endorses Book Calling for Mass Genocide

Prominent NASA global warming alarmist Dr. James Hansen has endorsed an eco-fascist book that calls for cities to be razed to the ground, industrial civilization to be destroyed and genocidal population reduction measures to be implemented in the name of preventing climate change.

Hansen, who was back in the news today commenting on a NASA press release that claims the last decade was the warmest on record, said that Keith Farnish, author of a new book called Time’s Up, is correct in calling for acts of sabotage and environmental terrorism in blowing up dams and demolishing cities in order to return the planet to the agrarian age.

Hansen is a key figure in the global warming movement, for it was his 1988 with testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore that really got the ball rolling for the elite in their mission to hijack the environmental movement and promote apocalyptic fears of climate change as a means of seizing absolute power over humanity.

Author Farnish “believes – as the Hon Sir Jonathon Porritt does – that mankind is a blot on the landscape and that breeding (or for that matter, existence) should be discouraged,”

The entire climate change takeover is being spearheaded by self-hating psychotics who want to impose a global one child policy in the name of curbing overpopulation. As we have vehemently proven, the overpopulation hype is a debunked myth with no basis in reality. The real reason global eugenicists want to implement such policies, along with taxing the life-giving gas carbon dioxide, is because it would give them absolute control over every single aspect of our lives – a control freak’s utopia.

The propagandistic method of depicting humans as the enemy is perfectly tailored to this agenda, because it elicits the response of making people call for their own kind to be regulated, controlled, and even killed under the contrived pretext of preventing an ecological apocalypse.

See the rest of the article at:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/nasa-global-warming-alarmist-endorses-book-that-calls-for-mass-genocide.html

World Misled Over Himalayan Glacier Meltdown

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research.

Sound familar? A "reporter" from a once influential and once unbiased scientific publication calls up a never was been, puts a few words in his/her mouth and then publishes the interview as "truth".

Gotta Keep Those Glaciers Melting!

Gotta Keep Those Glaciers Melting.

Well, friends, the AGW folks are on the ropes, and they are taking a beating. When people in the Northern Hemisphere can step out of their doors and tell that it’s VERY COLD, they aren’t going to be easily convinced that AGW is happening. When people have free access to international information, they can see that it is VERY COLD all over the northern hemisphere!

Of course, there are some AGW folks that are trying very hard to keep the faith, but they are coming off as increasingly desperate. Al Gore has not been seen much lately. Could the Goracle be in a fetal position, counting the billions he might have made if Cap and Trade had passed?

Could “AGW” actually be code for “Al Gore’s Wealth?”

Here is an article from the Daily Mail on the current state of AGW.

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in summer by 2013.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.

From 1940 until the late Seventies, the last MDO cold-mode era, the world cooled, despite the fact that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continued to rise.

GASP!!!! The Earth COOLED when CO2 levels ROSE???

Many of the consequences of the recent warm mode were also observed 90 years ago.

For example, in 1922, the Washington Post reported that Greenland’s glaciers were fast disappearing, while Arctic seals were ‘finding the water too hot’.

It interviewed a Captain Martin Ingebrigsten, who had been sailing the eastern Arctic for 54 years: ‘He says that he first noted warmer conditions in 1918, and since that time it has gotten steadily warmer.

‘Where formerly great masses of ice were found, there are now moraines, accumulations of earth and stones. At many points where glaciers formerly extended into the sea they have entirely disappeared.’

As a result, the shoals of fish that used to live in these waters had vanished, while the sea ice beyond the north coast of Spitsbergen in the Arctic Ocean had melted.

Warm Gulf Stream water was still detectable within a few hundred miles of the Pole.

In contrast, Prof Tsonis said, last week 56 per cent of the surface of the United States was covered by snow.

‘That hasn’t happened for several decades,’ he pointed out. ‘It just isn’t true to say this is a blip. We can expect colder winters for quite a while.’

He recalled that towards the end of the last cold mode, the world’s media were preoccupied by fears of freezing.

Catch the rest of this report at: http://conservativehideout.com/wordpress/2010/01/15/climategate-will-the-alarmists-have-to-go-back-to-ice-ages/

Thousands Gather to Protest Over Global Warming

Courtesy http://www.davidicke.com/content/blogcategory/30/48/

Climategate Scientist Received Over Half A Million From Obama Stimulus Package

A leading scientist involved in the climategate scandal received over half a million dollars in federal economic stimulus funds from the Obama Administration last Summer, it has been revealed.

Professor Michael Mann of Penn State University, currently under investigation by the institution itself for his role in massaging climate data and hijacking the peer review process to advance the myth of anthropogenic global warming, was awarded a grant of $541,184 by the government in June 2009.

Mann, the creator of the now infamously discredited Hockey Stick Graph, landed money that came directly from the U.S. Treasury’s economic stimulus package, reveals the Washington free-market think-tank group The National Center For Public Policy Research (NCPPR).

The funds Mann is receiving from the government come in addition to another award to Penn State University researchers of $1.9 million in stimulus funds to study the effects of climate change on the spread of infectious diseases.

The leaked emails from the Hadley centre revealed that (now former) CRU chief Phil Jones received 55 endowments since 1990 from agencies ranging from the U.S. Department of Energy to NATO, worth a total of $22.6 million.

$19 million alone came between the years 2000 and 2006.

Sea Water Under Shelf in the East Antarctic is Still Freezing

Sea water under an East Antarctic ice shelf showed no sign of higher temperatures, first tests showed today.

Despite fears of a thaw linked to global warming that could bring higher world ocean levels, tests conducted on the Fimbul Ice Shelf showed the sea water is still around freezing point.

Thanks to sensors, lowered through three holes drilled in the shelf, scientists have discovered the water is not at higher temperatures widely blamed for the break-up of 10 shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula, the most northerly part of the frozen continent.

After drilling through the shelf, which is between 250 metres and 400 metres thick, Ole Anders Noest of the Norwegian Polar Institute wrote in a statement: 'The water under the ice shelf is very close to the freezing point. This situation seems to be stable, suggesting that the melting under the ice shelf does not increase.'

The Institute said the water under the Fimbul was about -2.05 degrees Celsius (28.31 Fahrenheit) - salt water freezes at a slightly lower temperature than fresh water. This was slightly icier than estimates in a regional computer model for Antarctica, said Nalan Koc, head of the Norwegian Polar Institute's Centre for Ice, Climate and Ecosystems.

'The important thing is that we are now in a position to monitor the water beneath the ice shelf,' she told Reuters.

'If there is a warming in future we can tell.'

She said data collected could go into a new report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due in 2013-14.

The last IPCC report, in 2007, did not include models for sea temperature around the Fimbul Ice Shelf. It is doubtful that the new data will be included in the next report either as it conflicts with the outcomes required by the IPCC.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1242398/Now-tests-ice-ISNT-melting-Sea-water-shelf-East-Antarctic-freezing.html#ixzz0cSCvC894

The Mini Ice Age Starts Here

Pictures of the snow in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, last week show the city is the coldest it has been since 1970

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in summer by 2013.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.

The scientists’ predictions also undermine the standard climate computer models, which assert that the warming of the Earth since 1900 has been driven solely by man-made greenhouse gas emissions and will continue as long as carbon dioxide levels rise.

They say that their research shows that much of the warming was caused by oceanic cycles when they were in a ‘warm mode’ as opposed to the present ‘cold mode’.
This challenge to the widespread view that the planet is on the brink of an irreversible catastrophe is all the greater because the scientists could never be described as global warming ‘deniers’ or sceptics.

Among the most prominent of the scientists is Professor Mojib Latif, a leading member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has been pushing the issue of man-made global warming on to the international political agenda since it was formed 22 years ago.

Prof Latif, who leads a research team at the renowned Leibniz Institute at Germany’s Kiel University, has developed new methods for measuring ocean temperatures 3,000ft beneath the surface, where the cooling and warming cycles start.

He and his colleagues predicted the new cooling trend in a paper published in 2008 and warned of it again at an IPCC conference in Geneva last September.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html#ixzz0cGNLvwU0

Gun Control

My thanks to Ron Owen for the cartoon. I didn't ask his permission to use it either!

Splitpin's Revelation

Splitpin claims he has psychic moments and can see the future!

I would suspect Splitpin hails from the late’60 early 70’s and these aberrations should probably be called flashbacks that rum and coke mixed with decades old acid residue have somehow skewed into flashforwards!

Splitpin swears he has been seeing the above image every night for the last 3 months. Now only last week he claims a real revelation. This is not a SUV parked on some Scandinavian fjord side in their present deep and coldest winter.

In reality good old Splitpin swears it is Peter Garrett’s Commonwealth car beside Lake Burley Griffin come mid June 2010!

Go Splitpin! We luv ya son.

Iceland Calls for Help

On this site I try to keep matters to the global warming scam however there are times when people are getting scammed by their governments and the governments of other countries on different matters. The lowlife corporations behind much country scamming today are usually linked with other frauds.

The International Monetary Fund is one of those bastard organisations behind the financial crisis that ripped so many people. At the moment the people of Iceland are battling financial blackmail brought to bear against their country by the governments in London and The Hague, with the backing of the IMF, in the wake of the insolvency of three large Icelandic banks in the midst of the Lehman Brothers-AIG world financial panic of September-October2008.

What follows is an article by Birgitta Jonsdottir the leader of The Movement, a group within the Icelandic Parliament, a courageous leader in the fight for national sovereignty, independence, dignity, and the economic well-being and future of her country.

“January 5, 2010 is a historical day for Icelanders. The Icelandic President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson had a tough decision to make, and difficult choices to make. To listen to the 23% of the nation that signed a petition calling on him to put the state guarantee for 5.4 billion dollars to be paid to the British and Dutch governments to a national referendum. Or to ignore the nation and sign the bill for the government, after the bill had been passed through the parliament with a narrow vote on December 30, 2009 after months of acrimonious debate, tainted with secrecy and dishonesty on the part of the government. Every day throughout the debate, new information would emerge and documents would leak to local media or wikileaks.

Yesterday, the people of Iceland finally had a chance to have something to say about their fate, because if the state guarantee is accepted it will mean that Iceland will become like a third world country, spending its GDP largely on paying interest on foreign debt. Last summer, a bill for a state guarantee was passed that had a significant meaning not only for Iceland, but also for other nations around the world facing the same problems of private debt being forced on taxpayers.

The bill included a reasonable and fair way of handling the interest and the debt: Icelanders would pay, but only a certain percentage of their GDP, and if there were to be another financial black hole, they would not pay during that time. Thus it comes as no surprise that the Dutch and British governments reacted so swiftly with a condemnation of Iceland's citizens for having the audacity to think they have the right to exercise their democratic rights in deciding for themselves what is in the best economic interests of their nation.

Let's also put this debt into perspective: 320.000 people live in Iceland, each and every person on the island, including children and the elderly, the disabled and the poor, would have to pay around $30,000 under the bill. The danger if Icelanders will accept this enormous burden is that the entire welfare system would simply collapse with no money to run it. On January 5th the Icelandic president had the courage, backed up by his nation, to place the interest of the people before that of the banks.

Of course there has been an incredible spin by the government controlled media, attacking the nation and the president for this simple and fair demand. The UK and Dutch media were also full of misleading news, saying the nation had demanded not to pay, and that we would become isolated and there were even suggestions that the British navy should flex its muscles against this nation which has no military. As if the terrorist act they imposed on us was not enough during the darkest hour of our crises to bring us further down!

The spin is failing because people around the world are finally starting to hear our side of the story, and other suppressed nations have perhaps seen this as a sign that they can also rise up against the corpocracy in our world where those with the money have as a rule always won. Let's hope the nation will not been coaxed into fear of isolation and let's hope the people of the world will join in this experiment of letting the interest of the peoples rise above the interests of banks, corporations, and international bullies such as the IMF.

We need your support.

I will soon issue a comprehensive report on the entire Icesave saga.”

Love and rage from Iceland
Birgitta Jonsdottir
Party group chairman for The Movement in the Icelandic Parliament

Documentation: I append links to the files about Icesave that were leaked to wikileaks, and which show how the EU member states blackmailed Iceland into the same corner the government helped push into by accepting the Icesave bill. This file also contains letters between the main financial adviser to the Iceland Finance Minister and Mark Flanagan of the IMF:

http://file.wikileaks.org/leak/icesave-eu7.pdf

Watchdog Smacks Times for Bogus Climate Claim

An advertising campaign touting the depth and quality of the London Times newspaper's environment coverage has been slapped by an industry watchdog for inaccuracy. The paper has agreed to modify the advertisements, which are based on a false climate change claim.

The Times ads claimed that global warming had caused the North East shipping passage, the icy Arctic route which in summer links Russia's European ports to the Bering Strait, to be opened for the first time. In fact, the North East Passage opened in 1934, and was opened to overseas traffic after the fall of the Soviet Union. Modern technology, specifically radar, has permitted a safer passage in recent years.

The campaign received 29 complaints to the industry's self-regulator, the Advertising Standards Authority.

News International has agreed to amend the ad, which instead of claiming "Climate change has allowed the Northeast Passage to be used as a commercial shipping route for the first time," now claims that "Climate change has allowed the Northeast passage to be more accessible as a viable commercial shipping route".

With the climate cooling, as we have seen with the recent cold snap in Europe and England, the route is less accessible than it was in warmer times. In the leaked East Anglia emails, scientists who confidently predicted continued warming ahead confess they can't account for the refusal of the climate to conform to their models.

The present cold snap is the most severe in the last 35 years with the lowest temperature forecast in England for Friday 8/01/10 was only 2 degrees warmer then the temperature at the North Pole!

In November, The Times promised not to repeat another ad in the same series, which also boasted about its eco-reporting credentials. The paper had claimed that the oceans would be free of fish by 2048. The researcher who made the original claim has now revised it. Oops.

Se full article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/05/times_asa_wrong/

Quality of U.S. Temperature Data

Photo (courtesy of Anthony Watts, Dr. Roger Pielke Sr., and SurfaceStations.org.)

This is a photo of a surface weather station in Hopkinsville, KY. See the white bird house looking thing hanging off the building? That's the thermometer. Notice that it comes off of a chimney of a brick house, it's just above a black asphalt driveway, that big white thing is an A/C compressor, and it's directly over a Weber grill.

The data from this thermometer becomes a part of the US Historical Climatological Network (USHCN) Station of Record for Hopkinsville, KY. Initially, this seems rather humorous. They are literally "cooking the books" at this station. But then it sinks in that this station data is being compiled in with the rest of the data from the country, and it is from these stations that we determine the change in temperature over time.

You may wonder if stations such as this one is unique. Sadly, it is not. There are many similar graphics available here of weather stations that would have their local environment affecting the data.

http://www.surfacestations.org/odd_sites.htm

Have a look at this weather station below at an airfield in the US. A great number of Australian weather stations are located at airfields like this one. About ten years ago a vast majority of these weather stations were made more “user friendly” for the techs collecting the data. This was done by laying a bitumen pad around the weather station. Duty of Care was the so called reason so the techs weren’t wading through mud to collect data!

Do you think that siting a weather station on a black bitumen pad would affect temperature readings from that station?

Damn! Here we go again. A dumb arsed retired truck driver who had to sit for his Intermediate Certificate twice knows that it is a lot hotter on a tarred road then it is in a field!

You think our climate scientists don’t know this?




The official record of temperatures in the continental United States comes from a network of 1,221 climate-monitoring stations overseen by the National Weather Service, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). These surface stations are supposed to be setup in accordance with guidelines given by the NOAA's Climate Reference Network (CRN).

In 2007 a project was initiated by Watts to visually inspect and document the quality of the surface stations. So what did they find? Some of the stations that they found are pictured at the link above. We can see the thermometers located next to asphalt parking lots, located next to air-conditioner exhausts, located on brick buildings, located next to BBQ pits, located next to trash burning barrels, located on rooftops and near sidewalks. All of which absorb and radiate heat. These all influence the thermometer to read higher than it would otherwise.

Let's look at the numbers.

There are 1,221 active climate-monitoring surface stations in the USA. Of those 1,221 stations, 948 have been evaluated by Watt's Surface Stations project. Of these 948, 90% have been found to be very poorly sited. Poorly sited means that they are likely reporting higher or rising temperatures. This means the overwhelming majority of stations in the USA have been reporting bad data. (Please note that the USA data is generally considered the best data in the world. Mmmm!)

I wonder just how bad the Australian weather reporting stations would rate sitting on their little bitumen pads?

See the link to Anthony Watt’s site here: http://www.surfacestations.org/

So, now we know that according to the NOAA CRN's guidelines, 90% of the surface stations in the USA are not capable of giving good data. They have errors greater than the amount of global warming we have supposedly experienced in the last one hundred years. It would be easy to assume that the other 10% give good data all the time.

Unfortunately that is not the case. Let's see why.

To collect surface station data site observers are given a card on which they are supposed to fill out the maximum and minimum temperatures each day. At the end of the month they are supposed to submit their card to National Climatic Data Center so that they can be compiled into the national database.

Well, what happens when the site observer doesn't work on a particular day? No readings occur. What happens when that observer is off because of a holiday? No readings occur. In fact, in Marysville, California, at Chico University Mr. Watts found that the temperature form for July 2007 had only 14 of 31 days completed. That is less than half a month's worth of data.

Missing data is not a rare phenomenon. Many sites have missing data. So even if a site is rated as capable of providing good data by the NOAA CRN, the data still must be read by someone. If that person is missing half the month, then you're not getting a significant quantity of good data.

So what happens when stations have missing data? From Watts' report: "[There exists] a data algorithm used by NCDC called FILNET, short for Fill Missing Original Data in the Network, that is used to “infill” missing data using interpolations of data from surrounding stations. After reading about it, I came to the conclusion that NCDC uses FILNET to create “missing” data where none was ever actually “ measured."

Basically, if data is missing from a certain site then data is taken from near-by sites and adjusted to fit the missing data site. Wow.

So, we see that 90% of US stations are not capable of providing quality data, and then we see that sites which have missing data have data filled in from surrounding sites by the FILNET program. So even a site that is capable of producing good data, if data is not read for a day, could have bad data filled in for it by this FILNET program. This means that even the 10% of sites that are capable of providing good data are contaminated by the 90% of sites that have bad data.

So now that we see the quality of data from the stations is overwhelmingly poor, let's look a little more at the numbers and types of stations.

In April 1978 there were over 6,000 surface stations in the US being used, that has now dropped down to around 1,200. So, we know somewhere around 4,800 surface stations dropped out of monitoring temperatures. The vast majority of the stations that dropped out were rural stations.

This is unfortunate because the rural stations are the ones that tend to give the most accurate data (because of less urban heat contamination.)

I wonder if this has also happened in Australia?

The majority of content in this post came from: http://www.theclimateconspiracy.com/?p=180

Antarctic Sea Ice Getting Thicker - Just Like Some of our Politicians!

ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.

Ice core drilling in the fast ice off Australia's Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years. The average thickness of the ice at Davis since the 1950s is 1.67m.

The results of the ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent's western coast.

Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth's ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water, The Australian reports. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica. The destabilization of the Wilkins ice shelf generated international headlines last year.

However, the picture is very different in east Antarctica, which includes the territory claimed by Australia.

East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica and parts of it are cooling. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research report noted the South Pole had shown "significant cooling in recent decades".

Australian Antarctic Division glaciology program head Ian Allison said sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years had been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica.

"Sea ice conditions have remained stable in Antarctica generally," Dr Allison said.

The melting of sea ice - fast ice and pack ice - does not cause sea levels to rise because the ice is in the water. Sea levels may rise with losses from freshwater ice sheets on the polar caps. In Antarctica, these losses are in the form of icebergs calved from ice shelves formed by glacial movements on the mainland.

Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett said experts predicted sea level rises of up to 6m from Antarctic melting by 2100, but the worst case scenario foreshadowed by the SCAR report was a 1.25m rise. Here is another example of a politician deliberately spreading dis-information. No names mentioned, just “experts”.

Garrett the Parrot, repeating word for word the tired old mantra of Al Gore.

Garrett insisted global warming was causing ice losses throughout Antarctica. "I don't think there's any doubt it is contributing to what we've seen both on the Wilkins shelf and more generally in Antarctica," he said.

Dr Allison said there was not any evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting. "The only significant calvings in Antarctica have been in the west," he said. And he cautioned that calvings of the magnitude seen recently in west Antarctica might not be unusual.

"Ice shelves in general have episodic carvings and there can be large icebergs breaking off - I'm talking 100km or 200km long - every 10 or 20 or 50 years."

A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded.

Leading Global Warming Crusader: Cap and Trade May INCREASE CO2 Emissions.

James Hansen - the world's leading climate scientist fighting against global warming - told Amy Goodman from Democracy Now that cap and trade not only won't reduce emissions, it may actually increase them:

"The problem is that the emissions just go someplace else. That’s what happened after Kyoto, and that’s what would happen again, if—as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, they will be burned someplace. You know, the Europeans thought they actually reduced their emissions after Kyoto, but what happened was the products that had been made in their countries began to be made in other countries, which were burning the cheapest form of fossil fuel, so the total emissions actually increased. Before the Kyoto Protocol, global emissions of carbon dioxide were going up one-and-a-half percent per year. After the accord, they went up three percent per year.

Environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace are also against cap and trade, as is the head of California's cap and trade program for the EPA."

Hansen also told Goodman that most economists say that cap and trade won't work:

" * The economists who invented cap-and-trade say that it won't work for global warming

* European criminal investigators have determined that there is a tremendous amount of fraud occurring in the carbon trading market. Indeed, organized crime has largely taken over the European cap and trade market.

* Former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs Robert Shapiro says that the proposed cap and trade law "has no provisions to prevent insider trading by utilities and energy companies or a financial meltdown from speculators trading frantically in the permits and their derivatives."

* Our bailout buddies over at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and the other Wall Street behemoths are buying heavily into carbon trading. In other words, the same companies that made billions off of derivatives and other scams and are now getting bailed out on your dime are going to make billions from carbon trading.

* One the largest boosters for cap and trade invented credit default swaps - which were supposed to increase financial stability, but instead were a large part of the reason that the world economy crashed last year."

James Hansen is the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He also teaches at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and has published his first book, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain exactly what’s meant by “cap and trade.”

JAMES HANSEN: Cap and trade, they attempt to put a cap on different sources of carbon dioxide emissions. They say there’s a limit on how much a given industry in a country can emit. But the problem is that the emissions just go someplace else. That’s what happened after Kyoto, and that’s what would happen again, if—as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, they will be burned someplace. You know, the Europeans thought they actually reduced their emissions after Kyoto, but what happened was the products that had been made in their countries began to be made in other countries, which were burning the cheapest form of fossil fuel, so the total emissions actually increased.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me play an excerpt of what the Australian scientist Tim Flannery says. He was speaking on Democracy Now! earlier this year in defense of cap and trade.

TIM FLANNERY: Look, cap and trade, by itself, is not enough, but it is essential in terms of these international negotiations. And one way of showing that is to look at the alternatives. Just say the US went with a carbon tax. That would leave the President in a position where he’d be going to Copenhagen and saying, “Look, we’ve got a carbon tax, but we’ve got no idea really what it’s going to do in terms of our emissions profile.” So, countries would just say, “Well, what are you actually pledging to? What are you—how are you going to deal with your emissions?” You know, the only method, really, to allow countries to see transparently what other countries intend to do and then share the burden equally is through a cap-and-trade system. So it’s not enough to deal with emissions overall, but it is an essential prerequisite for any global deal on climate change.

AMY GOODMAN: The Australian scientist Tim Flannery. Dr. Hansen?

JAMES HANSEN: Well, Tim is a great biologist, but he hasn’t looked at the data on emissions and the effect of a cap with offsets. In fact, it does not decrease emissions. And that’s one reason, in my book, I say that I’m going to update the graphs every month and every year, just showing what’s really happening, because, in fact, you have to actually decrease the emissions.

And the only way that will happen is if the price of the fossil fuels is gradually rising so that the alternatives—energy efficiency, renewable energies, nuclear power, the things that can compete with fossil fuels—begin to be cost-competitive. That’s the only way it will work."

To catch the rest of the interview with James Hansen go to:

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/22/leading_climate_scientist_james_hansen_on

Write Your MP

In the leadup to the Rudd the Dudd’s ETS push I fired off emails to a host of Opposition MP’s. I got a few replies including one from Malcolm Turnbull, who, at that stage had one foot on a banana skin and the other up around his noggin with no idea where he was headed or how hard he would land. All he could say was how important it was that Australia must have an ETS. I could read “involved merchant banker” in every line!

Included in the email list was well known headkicker Bill Heffernan a NSW Senator. Big Bad Billy, who hails from Junee, also replied via snail mail and I didn’t get to read his reply until this morning as I was on a surfing trip to northern NSW. I admire Bill as he calls bullshit when he smells it.

I wish I could include the reply here but my lack of technology (no scanner) prevents it. I quote from part of Bill’s letter:

“Essentially, the ETS relies on driving up the price of electricity to drive down people’s consumption and thereby reduce total CO2 emissions. The main problem is that any reduction in CO2 emissions from Australia would simply be offset by emissions from other countries that do not have similar schemes which meant overall global CO2 emissions would not be reduced.”

Now Bill, the woolclasser, welder, and farmer from Junee, understands quite clearly that the ETS wouldn’t work!

A broken down ex truckie (me) who had to sit for his (then) Intermediate Certificate twice can clearly see the ETS wouldn’t work!

But Rudd the Dudd, the Australian Prime Minister, who studied at the Australian National University in Canberra can’t see that the ETS wouldn’t work? Hello!!!

Something is wrong here. Kevin Rudd is on a different page. I wonder what his agenda is?

Anyway, back to Billy’s letter and the part thereof I wish to bring to his attention as misinformation, hopefully unintentional.

“It is important we examine practical, direct actions we can take on climate change based on incentive rather than punishment. This includes cleaning up power stations that account for almost half of our emissions…”

The italics are mine and here I would like to enlighten Bill as to where the majority of emissions come from. Incidentally, there are not many coal fired power stations down Bill's way.

Fred Pearce, a science writer and environmental consultant for New Scientist Magazine, has been studying the shipping industry for quite some time. Large shipping vessels have become commonplace in today's global marketplace as goods are imported and exported across the world. While the high levels of pollution they create are something that most people don't think too much about, some scientists are beginning to evaluate their environmental effect.

Fred has focused particularly on the shipping companies use of filthy, toxic fuel that is polluting the air at a staggering pace. According to his assessment, emissions from ships steaming into ports from Rotterdam to Sydney to Long Beach, are blamed for about 60,000 premature deaths around the world annually. If current practices continue, he estimates that upwards of a million people will die in the next decade due to ship pollution.

The type of fuel typically used in large ocean craft is composed of the dirty leftovers from the refined fuel that is used in cars, trucks, and other land vehicles. It is thicker than land fuel and high in sulfur. It is essentially a cheap, filthy form of fuel that would never be permitted for use on the mainland but that are tolerated on international waters. The sheer size of these ships is astounding, measuring a quarter of a mile long on average. Each one holds approximately 14,000 full-size shipping containers, typically carrying goods from Asia to Australia, Europe, and North America. There are over 100,000 ships and counting on the seas today. Incidentally, if you wish to know what happens to these ships when they wear out, see here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19125611.500-where-dirty-ships-go-to-die.html

The reason why reckless ship pollution is allowed to continue is due to the International Maritime Organization's (IMO) policy that permits bunker fuel containing up to 4.5 percent sulfur to be used in international waters. This number is 4,500 times higher than the sulfur amount permitted in vehicle fuel in the European Union. The biggest barrier to enacting stricter pollution guidelines is the increased cost of cleaner fuel. Bunker fuel is inexpensive and plentiful, allowing shippers to make use of the leftover byproducts of clean fuel production.

It would seem that with all the consumables we import from China, Japan, and other countries, ships pollute more than motor vehicles and coal fired power stations. For more on this subject:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/science/earth/10ships.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss