Calling people 'headless chickens' Chazza becomes one.

At the very least HRH Prince of Wales should now hear full presentations delivered by Lords Monckton and Lawson and their supporting scientists.

 

With credit to What's Up With That for the following:

 

 

 

Monckton: Challenge to Prince Charles

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Guest Blogger

Lord Monckton invites ‘Chazza’ to spar over ‘unroyal’ global-warming remark

His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales,
Clarence House, London.

Candlemas, 2014

Your Royal Highness’ recent remarks describing those who have scientific and economic reason to question the Establishment opinion on climatic apocalypse in uncomplimentary and unroyal terms as “headless chickens” mark the end of our constitutional monarchy and a return to the direct involvement of the Royal Family, in the Person of our future king, no less, in the cut and thrust of partisan politics.

Now that Your Royal Highness has offered Your Person as fair game in the shootout of politics, I am at last free to offer two options. I need no longer hold back, as so many have held back, as Your Royal Highness’ interventions in politics have become more frequent and less acceptable in their manner as well as in their matter.

Option 1. Your Royal Highness will renounce the Throne forthwith and for aye. Those remarks were rankly party-political and were calculated to offend those who still believe, as Your Royal Highness plainly does not, that the United Kingdom should be and remain a free country, where any subject of Her Majesty may study science and economics, may draw his conclusions from his research and may publish the results, however uncongenial the results may be.

The line has been crossed. No one who has intervened thus intemperately in politics may legitimately occupy the Throne. Your Royal Highness’ arrogant and derogatory dismissiveness towards the near-50 percent of your subjects who no longer follow the New Religion is tantamount to premature abdication. Goodnight, sweet prince. No more “Your Royal Highness.”

Hi, there, Chazza! You are a commoner now, just like most of Her Majesty’s subjects. You will find us a cheerfully undeferential lot. Most of us don’t live in palaces, and none of us goes everywhere with his own personalized set of monogrammed white leather lavatory seat covers.

The United Kingdom Independence Party, which until recently I had the honor to represent in Scotland, considers – on the best scientific and economic evidence – that the profiteers of doom are unjustifiably enriching themselves at our expense.

For instance, even the unspeakable Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has accepted advice from me and my fellow expert reviewers that reliance upon ill-constructed and defective computer models to predict climate was a mistake. Between the pre-final and final drafts of the “Fifth Assessment Report,” published late last year, the Panel ditched the models and substituted its own “expert assessment” that in the next 30 years the rate of warming will be half what the models predict.

In fact, the dithering old fossils in white lab coats with leaky Biros sticking out of the front pocket now think the rate of warming over the next 30 years could be less than in the past 30 years, notwithstanding an undiminished increase in the atmospheric concentration of plant food. Next time you talk to the plants, ask them whether they would like more CO2 in the air they breathe. Their answer will be Yes.

The learned journals of economics are near-unanimous in saying it is 10-100 times costlier to mitigate global warming today than to adapt to its supposedly adverse consequences the day after tomorrow.

Besides, in the realm that might have been yours there has been no change – none at all – in mean surface temperature for 25 full years. So if you are tempted to blame last year’s cold winter (which killed 31,000 before their time) or this year’s floods (partly caused by the Environment Agency’s mad policy of returning dozens of square miles of the Somerset Levels to the sea) on global warming, don’t.

You got your science and economics wrong. And you were rude as well. And you took sides in politics. Constitutionally, that’s a no-no. Thronewise, mate, you’ve blown it.

On the other hand, we Brits are sport-mad. So here is option 2. I am going to give you a sporting second chance, Charlie, baby.

You see, squire, you are no longer above politics. You’ve toppled off your gilded perch and now you’re in it up to your once-regal neck. So, to get you used to the idea of debating on equal terms with your fellow countrymen, I’m going to give you a once-in-a-reign opportunity to win back your Throne in a debate about the climate. The motion: “Global warming is a global crisis.” You say it is. I say it isn’t.

We’ll hold the debate at the Cambridge Union, for Cambridge is your alma mater and mine. You get to pick two supporting speakers and so do I. We can use PowerPoint graphs. The Grand Debate will be televised internationally over two commercial hours. We let the world vote by phone, before and after the debate. If the vote swings your way, you keep your Throne. Otherwise, see you down the pub.

Cheers, mate!

Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

 

'97% scientists believe in AGW'? Not so.

See report here

Press Release 23/09/13 Lord Lawson Calls For Independent Review Of Official UK Climate Predictions Major Flaw In Met Office Computer Model Identified

Press Release London, 23 September   In a briefing paper issued today, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) reveals that a significant problem has been identified in the UK's official UKCP09 climate predictions. Nic Lewis, an independent climate scientist, has published research that shows that because of the way the predictions are prepared using the Met Office's computer climate model, they are bound to predict fairly high warming in the UK whatever observational data are fed into the process. The UK climate predictions programme informs decisions to invest billions of pounds in climate change adaptation measures across the public and private sectors. The inherent warm bias in the predictions means that much of this spending is probably unnecessary. Andrew Montford, the author of the GWPF briefing paper, said: “There are potentially billions of pounds being misspent on the basis of these predictions. The government has little choice but to withdraw them pending a review of the way they are put together”. GWPF chairman Lord Lawson is calling for an independent panel of climate scientists and statisticians to review the UKCP09 predictions. Full briefing paper available here (PDF) Contact: Andrew Montford m: 07523 350729 e: awmontford@gmail.com

Prince Charles clearly listens to the Luvvies & Greens

Prince Charles Vs Climate Sceptics - Again With The Deepest Respect, Charles, Please Do Shut Up  Prince Charles has attacked corporate lobbyists and climate change sceptics for turning the Earth into a "dying patient", making his most outspoken criticism yet of the world's failure to tackle global warming just when the heir to the throne is assuming a growing number of the duties of what is supposed to be an apolitical monarchy. Prince Charles's views were reinforced by Lord Stern, author of the 2006 report on the economics of climate change, who called sceptics and lobbyists "forces of darkness" who would be driven back. --Fiona Harvey, The Guardian, 9 May 2013 The prince's remarks were attacked by climate change sceptics and dismissed by several lobbyists. Benny Peiser, of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the thinktank founded by Lord Lawson, which takes a climate-sceptic stance, accused the prince of poisoning the debate on climate change with "apocalyptic language that a government minister would not use", and accused him of being happy for consumers to pay more in their energy bills for green policies. --Fiona Harvey, The Guardian, 9 May 2013 Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation - a climate-sceptic think tank set up by former Conservative chancellor Nigel Lawson - sharply criticised the prince. "He doesn't make himself popular by attacking half the British public, who are known to be sceptical." Dr Peiser said the heir to the throne should "have a conversation with his father", who he said had a different view. "It's not about the science," he said. "It's about the apocalyptic rhetoric that is poisoning the debate." --BBC News, 9 May 2013 In the fields of medicine, agriculture, architecture and energy production, the prince is taking positions that are intensely partisan; and some of these are areas in which decisions have monumental economic implications for every family in the land… The prince certainly needs someone to point out to him that the planet is not “dying” and that it was doing just fine when CO2 concentrations were vastly higher than they are now or are ever likely to be as a result of whatever amount of fossil fuels we burn. --Dominic Lawson, The Sunday Times, 12 May 2013   But no matter how much you and I agree, Prince Charles should have remained silent. Charles strays into areas of political dispute over what should be done [about global warming]. Charles's lack of judgment may explain why, though he will take over duties such as attending Commonwealth heads of government conferences, the Queen will not agree to either abdication or a regency. Charles is a dangerously divisive figure – not because he may destroy the monarchy (which I would welcome), but because he threatens an already fragile public confidence in democracy.  --Peter Wilby, The Guardian, 10 May 2013 The Prince of Wales has warned that mankind is on the brink of “committing suicide on a grand scale” unless urgent progress is made in tackling green issues such as carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, intensive farming and resource depletion. Adopting uncharacteristically apocalyptic language, the Prince said the world was heading towards a “terrifying point of no return” and that future generations faced an “unimaginable future” on a toxic planet. However Dr Benny Peiser, director of Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the Prince’s views were still out of step with mainstream thinking. “He is really a good representative of the environmental movement as such and it is not a personal issue,” he said. But he added that the “extreme alarm and extreme concern” was “over the top and not helpful to the debate”. “It doesn’t convince any governments or any ministers and in the end it is over the top and won’t be heard.” --Jonathan Brown, The Independent 23 November 2012

Polar Bears are doing well

Global Warming Policy Foundation

1) Polar bears are a conservation success story
Their numbers have rebounded remarkably since 1973 and we can say for sure that there are more polar bears now than there were 40 years ago. Although we cannot state the precise amount that populations have increased (which is true for many species – counts are usually undertaken only after a major decline is noticeable), polar bears join a long list of other marine mammals whose populations rebounded spectacularly after unregulated hunting stopped: sea otters, all eight species of fur seals, walrus, both species of elephant seal, and whales of all kinds (including grey, right, bowhead, humpback, sei, fin, blue and sperm whales). Once surveys have been completed for the four sub-populations of polar bears whose numbers are currently listed as zero, the total world population will almost certainly rise to well above the current official estimate of 20,000-25,000 (perhaps to 27,000-32,000?).

2) The only polar bear subpopulation that has had a statistically significant decline in recent years is the one in Western Hudson Bay. A few others have been presumed to be decreasing, based on suspicions of over-harvest- of over-harvest of over-harvesting, assumed repercussions of reduced sea ice and/or statistically insignificant declines in body condition – not actual population declines.

3) Polar bears in the US portion of the Chukchi Sea are in good condition and reproducing well, while sea ice in the Bering Sea has rebounded from record lows over the last ten years – good reasons not to be worried about polar bears in the Chukchi.

4) A survey by the Nunavut government in 2011 showed that polar bear numbers in Western Hudson Bay have not declined since 2004 as predicted and all available evidence indicates that Hudson Bay sea ice is not on a steadily precipitous decline – good reasons not to be worried about Hudson Bay bears.

Full report

Dr Susan Crockford
Dr Susan Crockford is an evolutionary biologist and an expert on polar bear evolution. She has been working for 35 years in archaeozoology, paleozoology and forensic zoology and is an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. She is the author of Rhythms of Life: Thyroid Hormone and the Origin of Species.



Matt Ridley: We Should Be Listening To Susan Crockford
The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 13 March 2013

Foreword To Susan Crockford’s Ten Good Reasons Not To Worry About Polar Bears

In 1978 three friends and I spent six weeks camped in a valley in Spitsbergen. The possibility that we would meet a polar bear there, even in winter, let alone summer, was far-fetched and we slept soundly in our tents without taking any precautions. We used a nearby hut for shelter from the weather. Last year I enquired about using that hut again and was told that it was no longer habitable: ‘due to damages made by polar bears’.

The west coast of Spitsbergen is now thickly inhabited by bears in summer, as it was not then. In recent years they have killed all the eggs and goslings laid by barnacle geese on offshore islands: breeding success has been near zero. Something similar has been happening on Cooper Island off Alaska, where bears have predated black guillemot nests in recent years. In both cases, scientists are attempting to explain these changes in terms of bears being stranded on land by the loss of ice, but there never was summer sea ice (and rarely winter ice) on the west coast of Spitsbergen. Nobody with local experience is in any doubt that bear numbers have boomed in the region, thanks to the cessation of hunting in the 1970s, and that this rather than any change in ice cover locally is the chief reason for their more frequent encounters with bears. Yet the Polar Bear Specialist Group calls the trend in the Barents Sea bear sub-population ‘unknown’. Indeed, Dr. Susan Crockford has uncovered the astonishing fact that this entire population, which the Norwegian government has estimated as containing more than 2,000 animals, is officially listed as ‘data deficient’ on a new PBSG’s map, as is true for several Canadian ones that have also been counted.

The same organization claims that eight of the polar bear’s sub-populations are decreasing, but read its own website and you will find that this is based almost entirely on projections and mathematical models. The official data table and map says that two of these eight sub-populations are only ‘thought’ or ‘believed’ to be declining – entirely due to hunting; four are in decline only according to computer models, despite some claims by ‘traditional ecological knowledge’ (ie, locals) that they are thriving; one has more than doubled but is now said to be ‘currently declining’ because of crowding, not climate change; and only one showed a real decline. The latest data show that even that decline (in the West Hudson Bay population) has probably recently been reversed.

In other words, the claim that polar bear populations are declining at all, let alone due to climate change, is a manufactured myth, designed for media consumption and with

very little basis in fact. That it works all too well is demonstrated by an episode in 2011 involving Sir David Attenborough. In a television series the brilliant television presenter, unwisely diverging from neutral natural history, had asserted that the polar bear is already in trouble. When challenged by Lord Lawson that ‘the polar bear population has not been falling, but rising’, Sir David responded. He was quoted by The Daily Telegraph as saying ‘Most [polar bear populations] are in decline and just one is increasing – for a number of factors – one being they have stopped hunting…Lord Lawson is denying what the whole scientific community is accepting and working at and it is extraordinary thing for him to do’.

Much as I admire and like both men, I have to say that the evidence suggests that Lord Lawson’s account is closer to the truth. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature estimated in 1966 that there were 10,000 polar bears in the world; in 2006, the same source estimated that the population had risen to 20,000-25,000 bears. Had Sir David examined the text on the PBSG’s website he would have found that all but one of the eight sub-population declines he cited were in fact based on ‘beliefs’ or future projections. As demonstrated by another recent mistake in another television series, this time an exaggerated claim for temperature change in Africa, Sir David is not being well served by his BBC researchers these days.

Zac Unger documents in his recent book Never Look a Polar Bear in the Eye, how polar bear ‘decline’ is now a large and lucrative industry and in places like Churchill, Manitoba, organisations like Polar Bears International cynically use the imagined plight of the bears to raise money, and push propaganda at young people about changing their lifestyles and those of their parents.

We’re empowered to teach these kids how to make a difference. It’s an enormous responsibility. Saving the polar bear is in their hands,

an activist explains to Unger, having flown school children by helicopter to a bear-proof camp so they can emote by video-conference to schools across America. As Attenborough once said:

All these big issues need a mascot and that’s what the polar bear is.

Yet as Unger discovered and Susan Crockford confirms, increasingly the local people in places like Churchill look on the carnival of tourists, journalists and scientists with bemusement, knowing full well that even there – in one of the most southerly polar bear populations of all – the evidence of a decline in numbers, or of the health of the bears, is threadbare or non-existent. How much more threadbare that evidence is farther north, where the bears’ greatest problem is usually too much ice and therefore too few seals, is poorly known. The ideal habitat for polar bears is first-year ice that lasts well into summer, when they feed on fat young seals. The fact that this ice thins or breaks up enough to allow seals to feed during the autumn keeps the seal population healthy. Four to five months of ice-free fasting in early autumn is not exceptional for polar bears and two to three months is quite normal. The recent trend in most of the Arctic – no change in winter ice extent but a decline in late summer ice extent – has been towards exactly this ideal combination.

Many scientists have grown frustrated with the domination of the polar bear story by dogmatic propagandists and have begun to speak out. Susan Crockford is one of them: a zoologist who is independent of the alarm industry and therefore free to make up her own mind. In this valuable paper, she has done a fine job of documenting the actual facts of the case as far as they are known.

Matt Ridley

Global Warming Policy Foundation

 

So man made CO2 is tiny.

An important new paper published today in Global Biogeochemical Cycles finds
that "In contrast to recent claims, trends in the airborne fraction of
anthropogenic carbon [dioxide] cannot be detected when accounting for the
decadal-scale influence of explosive volcanism and related uncertainties." In
other words, after accounting for the large effect of volcanic eruptions, ENSO,
and other uncertainties upon natural CO2 sinks, trends in the man-made fraction
of atmospheric CO2 "cannot be detected." Thus, despite an exponential increase
in man-made CO2 emissions, there is no statistically significant trend in the
man-made fraction of CO2 in the atmosphere.
This further suggests that man is not the primary cause of the increase of CO2
in the atmosphere, that temperature is responsible for the increase in CO2
levels due to out-gassing. According to the authors, "Our results highlight the
importance of considering the role of natural variability in the carbon cycle
for interpretation of observations and for data-model intercomparison."

Note man-made emissions are only about 4% of the total CO2 emissions in the
atmosphere, and CO2 only represents about 0.04% of the entire atmosphere

Click source to read more and link
Source Link: hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk

Climate crimes. Will the school kids be shown?

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 23 January 2013

Ulli Kulke, Donner und Doria, 22 January 2013

These days, much is spoken and written about the destruction of our planet as a result of climate change. In his evocative film “Climate Crimes”, the Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Eichelmann who was an active member of WWF for 17 years and worked in conservation for decades, now documents that it is rather the reverse: he shows how many ecosystems, species, habitats and the cultural heritage too are threatened – but, as he sums up, “not by climate change, but by climate protection and the things done in its name.” It is predominantly hydropower and bioenergy projects that threaten to destroy precious areas of our planet’s nature.

That current climate policies harm conservation in many ways is nothing new, even if many do not want to admit it. However, no one so far has compiled the evidence as strongly and on a global scale as Eichelmann. His one-hour film, which is shown in several cinemas in Germany these days and also on Austrian television, is the result of two years of work that led his team to Brazil, Turkey, Iraq and to Indonesia, but also to the model country of climate protection, Germany, where crimes against nature are especially evident.
Eichelmann feels particularly affected by what he has found out in the course of his research; that’s because, as he says, he has been deeply involved in the fight against climate change – until he discovered some time ago “that something went wrong here “.

The individual stages of the film:

Brazil: The huge dams of the South American country, each of which put dozens of square miles of rainforest under water for the generation of electricity, have always been a problem for the Amazon basin. But now, as the momentum of climate policy is added, all laborious progress in terms of environmental sustainability, which has been be built up in recent decades, and even all moratoria, have gone overnight. 60 mega dams of several kilometres in length and several hundreds of medium size are planned in the Amazon basin in coming years. One of them alone, the Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River, will flood a forested area larger than the Lake of Constance; it threatens 200 fish species and will force 20,000 people to relocate. One of the very few large nesting sites of Amazon turtles will fall victim to the dam. The Catholic Bishop Erwin Kräutler, who works there, calls Brazil’s current energy policies of Brazil the “death knell” for the Amazon rainforest.

Turkey: One of the oldest cities in Anatolia, Hasankeyf, renowned for its extensive cave dwellings and other buildings dating from the fourth century, built on the border between the Eastern Roman and the Sassanid Empire, will simply disappear from the map. The reason: the Ilisu dam, which is built there to produce “clean energy”, will ensure that the Tigris will swallow the city. With luck, the upper tips of the ancient minarets could still poke out of the reservoir.
By the way: Do you remember the worldwide outrage over the Taliban, when they destroyed the giant statue of Buddha of Bamiyan? These barbarians, it was said at that time! The loss of Hasankeyf would be vastly greater, yet outrage outside Turkey did not happen – in the name of climate protection people keep quite.

Iraq: There was also great indignation worldwide when the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the mid 1990s dried up the vast Mesopotamian marshes near Basra, out of revenge for what he deemed as the missing fighting spirit of its inhabitants during the first Gulf War. The wetlands, where many species live and people have their agricultural livelihoods, have since been partially restored laboriously. Now, they will finally disappear because dams further upstream will deny them enough water.

Germany: It is hardly possible to describe in words the damage done to German nature, as Eichelmann describes it in his film. The country side is made desolate by monoculture of corn fields stretching to the horizon, and biosphere reserves are not spared. Everything is done just to ensure enough biofuels are produced to meet Germany’s climate targets – all in the name of a supposedly clean energy. Many bird species have already disappeared completely, others will follow. Hares and other soil dwellers will not be seen again. The largest biogas plant in the country needs 1,000 tons of corn per day. 7,000 plants have already been built, about 1,000 on average will be added each year. Due to generous subsidies, the corn farmers can pay any rent, so the rents have more than doubled and farms are going bankrupt. By the way: in 2011 Germany could not cover its cereal needs for the first time.

Indonesia: Even greater is the sprawl of monocultures in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, where palm oil plantations – not least for the production of biodiesel – have destroyed the rainforest almost completely. The last orang-utans are losing their habitat.

Eichelmann presents calculations in his film which show that almost every single project he presents, e.g. each “Climate Crime”, is responsible for emitting more carbon dioxide or methane instead of reducing emissions. Although he has changed from being a climate change campaigner into a fighter against this kind of climate protection, Eichelmann still assumes that greenhouse gases pose a risk to the global climate. He thinks the only chance to counter the risk is to question the idea of global economic growth. Only in this way, he argues, the world could prevent the “Climate Crimes”, which his film documents.

You do not have to share – like this writer – the growth denial strategy in order to be impressed by the movie which is extremely well and comprehensively researched. The development of the global climate, the warming pause in the last decade and a half, and the climate forecasts for the next few years could indicate that it might be useful to transform our energy supply in the long run; but there is no reason today to throw out “the baby with the bathwater”, as economist Niko Paech says in the film – or to accept that “climate protection is used as a cover for environmental crimes.”

My fear is, however, that a growth denial strategy would be nothing else than throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The fact is: only growth-oriented economies can afford to protect the environment. To crack this historic challenge is not impossible theoretically, but it could lead to similar questionable experiments as documented in “Climate Crimes”.

We must take the time to plan sensibly and not to rush into “head-over-heels” measures. Let us beware of exaggerated doomsday prophecies and instead protect nature. Either way, growth or denial, greenhouse hysteria or cool head: “Climate Crimes” is one of the most interesting and daring films on the subject.

Translation Philipp Mueller

see also: New Film Blasts Climate Movement