Saving the Planet?

Nov 24th, 2008, in Opinion, by

Willie Soon & Christopher Monckton, climate change sceptics, on temperature levels in Indonesia and the “saving the planet” mantra.

Indonesia’s National Agency for Meteorology & Geophysics plays host to the International Symposium on Climate and Weather of the Sun-Earth System in Jakarta on November 24th-26th 2008.

In this article Dr. Willie Soon, geo-scientist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, and Lord Christopher Monckton, chief policy adviser to the Science and Public Policy Institute in Washington DC., urge the assembled scientists to avoid the hysteria of global-warming alarmists, and instead study solar activity.

Indonesia’s Climate Follows the Sun

Carbon dioxide is not an air pollutant. It is plant food. All life on Earth depends on it. It is natural. It forms the bubbles in bread, champagne, and Coca-Cola. You breathe it out, and plants breathe it in.

The Earth contains a lot of CO2, but the atmosphere contains so little that the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) rightly calls CO2 a “trace gas”. A scientific mystery is why the air does not hold more CO2 than it does. Half a billion years ago, there was almost 20 times today’s CO2 concentration.

Most farmers would prefer to grow crops under much-higher concentrations of CO2 than today’s 385 parts per million—less than 1/25 of 1 percent of the atmosphere. To feed the world, low CO2 concentration is not such a great idea. High concentrations are better, and they cause no harm. Experiments have shown that even delicate plants such as orchids thrive at CO2 concentrations of 10,000 ppm.

That is why U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia has declared that if CO2 is to be labeled an “air pollutant”, then so must Frisbees and flatulence.

What about the danger of overheating the Earth by CO2? Al Gore is spending $300 million telling us “global warming” will be a catastrophe. Yet a survey of 539 scientific papers containing the words “global climate change” and published between January 2004 and February 2007 found not a single one that provided any evidence that “global warming” would be catastrophic. It does not matter how many scientists or politicians say that more CO2 will cause a catastrophe. To true scientists, what matters is whether any real-world data support the idea.

If CO2 is a powerful greenhouse gas, we would have seen a great warming trend in Indonesian temperature history. We haven’t. Recent temperatures, according to the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, have been scarcely warmer than they were 70 to 100 years ago. Instead of a strong warming trend, the Indonesian data are dominated by year-to-year changes and natural oscillations every 50 to 100 years.

It is remarkable to find documents on the Internet, circulated by WWF-Indonesia, trying to scare the unsuspecting public by saying the temperature in Indonesia has “increased by 0.3º C” over the twentieth century and that one can expect additional warming of 0.1 to 0.3º C per decade for the next 20 to 100 years.

In a humid, equatorial nation such as Indonesia, with annual temperatures between 23º and 32º C, there is little chance of seeing those predicted warming trends, or any of the predicted changes in rainfall.

Professor Mezak Ratag of the Indonesia National Agency for Meteorology & Geophysics says,

The output from different models is often different and sometimes contradictory. For example, [a UK climate model] predicts increases in temperature and decreases in precipitation for Indonesia, while [a German model] predicts an increase in both temperature and precipitation.

When climate models say that both increased and decreased rainfall are possible, they are not actually making any predictions.

Worse, climate scientists from Stanford University and the University of Washington in the United States recently admitted that

the islands of Java and Bali are not even represented as land in many global-circulation models [used by the IPCC].

The 100-year mean temperatures over the period 1901-2000 for March-April-May, June-July-August, September-October-November, and December-January-February are 26.2, 25.6, 26.1, and 25.9º C, respectively. This confirms the clear dependence of the basic climatology of Indonesia on the arrival and relative intensity of the sun overhead. More sun means warmer weather, and vice versa. It is as simple as that.

More sun also means more rain, except that during the December-January-February season there is an additional large contribution from the northwest monsoon and the southward migration of the inter-tropical rainbelt.

Look to matahari (the sun in Bahasa Indonesia) rather than CO2 as the key player in Indonesia’s climate.

Cutting CO2 emissions by sharply curtailing the use of gasoline and other fossil fuels will make no difference to the weather. It will merely lead the foolish to feel good about “saving the planet”. Even if the planet needed saving, all proposed mitigation measures would be futile. It would be cheaper and less irresponsible to adapt to warmer weather as—or rather if—necessary.

We have already seen food prices double and triple worldwide because the “green” movement told us biofuels would “save the planet”. Science, however, demonstrates that biofuels have a bigger carbon footprint than does gasoline.

Foolish mitigation measures that owe everything to political fashion and nothing to scientific rigor are already harming the world’s poor. It is time to stop the hysteria about CO2 before anyone else gets hurt—or even killed.

About the Authors

Willie Soon
Willie Soon is a geoscientist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He will address the International Symposium on Climate and Weather of the Sun-Earth System, hosted by Indonesia’s National Agency for Meteorology & Geophysics in Jakarta November 24-26.

Christopher Monckton
Christopher Monckton is chief policy adviser to the Science and Public Policy Institute in the USA. (http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org).


57 Comments on “Saving the Planet?”

  1. Peter says:

    The difference between climate and weather is not simple a matter of semantics – the two are completely different things. A serious climate scientist is expected to accurately use some of the most crucial words of his/her trade. Honestly I am surprised that the post above was written by someone who has published in peer-reviewed journals. If you want to be taken more seriously I’d suggest being more judicious with your words and arguments.

    You may be correct in your observation that global temperature has not been climbing in the past five or six years, and your argument seems compelling at first glance. The problem is that you have jumped to the conclusion that this trend means that global climate change is suddenly discredited. Your unstated assumption would be that temperatures will not continue to climb at the rate we’ve seen in the 20th century. There is no evidence to prove that. If you look back at the fluctuations in the global mean temperature over the last 100 years or so, you’ll note that there were similar cool periods of 6 of so years starting in the late 1870s, late 1890s, late 1930s, and the late 1950s. Look what happened – each time the earth experienced a 5-8 year cooling period, a steep increase in temperature followed. The earth’s average temperature does not need to be constantly rising for a global warming trend to occur. Global climate change is a longer term process better analyzed in increments of 50 or 100 years than 5 or six. You should know this. Don’t you think it is rather irresponsible of you to suggest that global warming is all a sham because of very very short-term cooling trend that has happened several times in the past century with nothing doing each time? What makes your post so suspect is not that you question some of the science of global climate change (which you didn’t entirey do and instead chose to argue against Mr. Gore’s assessment), but that you are suggesting that we disregard it completely and pretend as if there’s nothing to it at all.

    I’m afraid you’ll have to endure the outrageous accusations piled on by some of the other contributors here. It bugs me as well at times, but it seems to be the nature of the beast here. Be prepared to be called a colonialist, imperialist, CIA agent, pasty Anglo, child predator, and so on. Welcome to Indonesia Matters 🙂

  2. Gunung Batu says:

    When people says “Save the Planet” they mean “Save Human Being.” The earth is too strong to be destroyed by human being, even the strongest nuclear weapon can not destroy it. Even if human being tries to kill all the living, they can’t kill them all. I believe some lucky flies, mosquitos, and virus will find a way to survive.

    So if some day human being extinct, because the earth becomes an unlivable planet due to the pollution, or nuclear war, or illegal logging, or global warming, or any other words that was written in Greenpeace or WALHI banner, biological evolution will go on, many kind of life forms will flourish, mate, and regenerate, also mutate. The first creature on earth started the evolution on an unlivable planet aeons ago, they’ve made the earth a livable place as our standard today. Perhaps 4 billion years after human extinction, there will be a mutant, a new species who able to think, and this new species 250.000 year later will create internet. And they will again, in a blog, arguing whether they need to save the planet or to save their own survival. And they will extinct again. But don’t worry, life will find a way.

    I’m very sure that this is the purpose of life. Not to be immortal, but to keep on arguing. To search for the truth. And on their way searching for the truth they indulge their laziness, greed, and tendency to dominate. It’s unavoidable, as it was the most important ‘assets’ in surviving the survival of the fittest.

    So, Save The Earth, enjoy life!

  3. David says:

    Finally, one of the posters above has made a rather unpleasant, racialist remark about my skin colour

    If you mean this, unless I’m missing something else:

    diddums PN…..
    poor little brown boys…. did the naughty white boys take your petrol dollars sweetie?

    It wasn’t directed at you, or anyone else here specifically. But, Purba, this is not the place for another white man vs brown man thing, take it elsewhere.

  4. Purba Negoro says:

    I’m entirely innocent this time. Read what I said.

    Go spank Janma- the ignorant colonial apologist.

    Monckton,
    Jibes and personal slur remain convenient distraction. If I have offended- I apologise in full.

    Please tell what is the motive in informing us that our own scientists- advised by the UN and IPCC are all wrong- yet your stance is correct?

    Global warming is hardly controversial if the minority of opponents to global warmning appear to be very secretively funded scientists from the pockets of Big Oil.
    One cannot divorce the financier from the findings- in the exactly same vain as Big Tobacco- British American included of course sponsored the allegedly independent “nicoteine ain’t addictive” and “tobbacco smoke is healthy” studies.

    Furthermore- your work has been discredited as being psuedo science by leading climate scientists.

    I am very sorry to inform you that it is very apparent financial motive has everything to do with this.

    British petroleum industry has always played very dirty.

    I am sorry you may personally find the label “imperialist” offensive- and one is well aware the British people albeit propagandised to the point of idiotic trite (undeserved) jingoism are in the main innocents.

    But bear in mind the financial rape the British imposed on my nation and how it attempted to thwart our freedom- heavily sponsored by the Petroleum industry.

    Bear in mind the thousands of Indonesian innocent peasant villagers strafed, incinerated and blown to pieces by your heroic RAF chaps in their Hawker Typhoons and the British 5th Division attempting to impose Dutch rule on an oppressed people who had no quarrel with the British and no role in WW2.

    To return East Indies oil fields to the Dutch and British petroleum industry who were to bail Europe out of its’ self-created smoldering crater.

    So, one must admit- that albeit from your perspective somewhat tangential to the main crux of your argument- yes indeed politics, and motive do indeed remain valid mitigating considerations.

    Masquerading the very obvious big oil strategy in disreputable science and argument is merely insulting all of our intelligence.

    If you could put in a good word to your Club chums at the Imperial British Museum to return their loot- it would be most appreciated.
    The Raffles bandits still has one of our pilfered inscription stones in his garden- be a dear and see it returned.

    Or could that be cause for “beware of Maltese [sic] bearing gifts”?

  5. Purba Negoro says:

    As for Juan (I imagine surname Tripp as in unapologetic Pan Am monopolist and political corruptor par excellence)

    I provided the links as provided by Trane.
    You are welcome to refute the repudiation of Monckton’s argument without allowing yourself to be Asperger-esque distracted by my own entertaining colourful polemic.

    Racist, bigot or not- question remains unaltered and unanswered:

    Why is this being informed here?
    What’s in it for the British and or Dutch?

  6. Sunsettommy says:

    I noticed that the red herrings about funding sources have once again been brought up.

    How about this crazy idea of just addressing the contents of article instead? And leave out the red herrings and ad hominems?

    I prefer the Viscounts way of discussing the climate issue to those of Peter’s red herrings and general avoidance of the posted article itself.To me that smacks of trolling.

  7. From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

    It is interesting that true believers in the new imperialist religion that is “global warming” blithely make statements, such as “Your work has been discredited by leading climate scientists”, but without providing a single reference to any paper in the peer-reviewed literature that refutes my conclusions as published in Physics and Society for July 2008. There have indeed been one or two rather unsuccessful attempts at refutation, but none of them by “leading climate scientists”, and none of them peer-reviewed: they are mere chatter on blogs that are known to be tendentious, inaccurate, and prejudiced. If those readers of Indonesia Matters who believe in the new religion wish to argue against my equations and conclusions, they should do so scientifically, and with proper references, and not merely by citing non-existent “leading scientists” who are said – on no evidence – to have “discredited” my work.

    As for the global temperature trend, I have already made it clear that mean surface temperatures worldwide rose at about 0.5 K / century for almost 300 years, between the end of the 70-year Maunder Minimum in about 1700 and the end of the 70-year solar Grand Maximum in 1998 (Akasofu, 2008). It is agreed among all parties that the overwhelming majority of this warming occurred before humankind was numerous enough to have any influence over it, even in theory, and therefore occurred for natural reasons, the most obvious of which was the inexorable strengthening of solar activity over the period (Hathaway et al., 2004). Indeed, as I have also pointed out, during the recently-ended Grand Maximum the Sun was more active, and for longer, than during almost any previous similar period in the whole of the past 11,400 years (Solanki et al., 2005). No surprise, then, that during the Grand Maximum the rising trend of temperature that had already been established for almost a quarter of a millennium should have continued unabated. Indeed, the warming trend continued even as solar activity declined from the Grand Maximum’s peak in the early 1960s, because the oceans tend to induce a delay of several decades in the temperature response.

    As Scafetta and West (2008) have recently pointed out in the latest in their cogently-argued series of papers, the Sun has been responsible for about two-thirds of the warming of the past half-century, leaving only a small and generally beneficial role to carbon dioxide. Now, the Sun is unusually inactive, and – sure enough – the planet’s temperature, both air and ocean, has been cooling for seven years. There has been no net warming, on any measure, in the 13 years since 1995.

    The IPCC, in its now-discredited table of radiative forcings – external perturbations that may cause long-run changes in the temperature trend – gives so tiny a role to the Sun that the IPCC really has no explanation of why, in temperature and Arctic latitudes, there is so very strong a temperature difference between summer and winter. And there is certainly nothing in the table of forcings that can possibly explain as many as 13 years of stasis in global temperatures, still less seven years of carefully-unreported cooling. Indeed, the IPCC neatly truncates its graph of global temperatures in 2000 so as not to show the recent cooling, and its chairman (a railway engineer) says global temperatures are still rising. They are doing no such thing, and there is no longer any point in pretending that they are.

    True, there have been periods of cooling over the past century, but the trend of that century, like the trend of the two centuries that preceded it, was of increasing global temperatures, because the Sun’s activity was increasing. The significance of the present prolonged and pronounced fall in global temperatures, with early and severe Northern-Hemisphere winter and the advance of many glaciers this season, and a record rate of Arctic sea-ice formation (all events not reported in the general news media), is that, this time, the activity of the Sun is declining sharply, so there is no reason to suppose that the upward trend of the past three centuries will resume. Indeed, many solar physicists (perhaps most, for there have been numerous papers and conferences on the subject) are expecting a prolonged period of global cooling. Keenlyside et al., 2008, for instance, say they expect no new record year for global temperatures until at least 2015.

    Even if temperatures were not falling as fast as they have, there is no proper theoretical basis for the IPCC’s assumption of a high climate sensitivity – i.e. a very substantial temperature response to a very small increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. My paper Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered gives very detailed reasons why the theory is so shaky, and cites numerous peer-reviewed papers that question it in a fundamental manner. Many of the serious questions that have been raised in the peer-reviewed literature have simply been ignored by the UN’s climate panel. It is now clear that the official theory has been disproved by events: was was predicted or projected to happen in the weather or climate has not happened, is not happening and, if my calculations are in the right ball-park, will not happen. The scare is over. Get used to it, and enjoy the sunshine.

    And stop complaining that the fossil-fuel industry is arguing against “global warming”. No doubt it is, and for very good scientific reasons. I repeat that I do not write what I write because I am paid to write it, but because it is verifiably true. Anyone who does not believe that it is true can study the cited references and data for himself and decide whether I am telling the truth. That is the way true science is done, by checking and measuring and calculating and checking again: not by baselessly accusing one’s opponents of imperialist or mercenary motives. – Monckton of Brenchley

  8. Purba Negoro says:

    Viscount Monckton,

    I will actually apologise fully again. I think actually we are in very violent agreement- but my mastery of English and argument are not so good as yours.

    Monckton states, the best solution should be to “go nuclear and reverse 20th-century deforestation”.
    I fully agree.

    I am beginning to be swayed by Monckton’s argument- he seems not only a very intelligent man, but a very interesting one so much to be quite the character, as well.

    Monckton seems not the stereotypical rarefied ignorant country gent cheerily poo-pooing the upstart plebs.

    2nd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, Inherited title in 2006. Lives in tropical Scotland beside the warm Lomond lake.

    Born Feb 1962*, eldest son of Pak Gilbert yg wafat (*yes I know flattery will get me everywhere)

    Married Mbak Juliet Jenson in 1990 (they met when she found him asleep by the fire in Brooks’s Club, London). No children- yet more than welcome to take mine.

    1974 reporter Yorkshire Post (aka “Ay Oop! Daily”)
    1979 Editor Catholic paper “The Universe”
    1981 Managing Editor “Sunday Telegraph Magazine”

    1982-86 Special adviser to Margaret Thatcher.
    1999 Created the Eternity puzzle, which challenged people to fit together 209 irregularly shaped pieces for a prize of £1m.
    Invented Sudoku X and children’s game Supermind. Eternity II will be released in July.
    Is opposed to European Federalism
    This highlights his intellectual capability.

    Beloved wife dotes, “Christopher’s terrifically clever, but he can’t stop talking.’

    Knight of Malta and St John- one of world’s oldest and respected charities – totally oblivious to religion- aiding Muslim and Christians alike, and a guild member of

    Returning to the Scientific:
    The Federation of American Scientists states

    “There is no serious doubt that human activity is
    altering the earth’s climate in potentially catastrophic ways. Even skeptics are forced to admit that the risk is real and that prudence demands action if only as an insurance policy, the only serious debate is about how best to respond.”

    The World Meteorological Organistaion states:

    scientific assessments have increasingly reaffirmed that human activities are indeed changing the composition of the atmosphere, in particular through the burning of fossil fuels for energy production and transportation

    Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
    states:

    “Global climate change and global warming are real and observable…It is highly likely that those human activities that have increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have been largely responsible for the observed warming since 1950. The warming associated with increases in greenhouse gases originating from human activity is called the enhanced greenhouse effect. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by more than 30% since the start of the industrial age and is higher now than at any time in at least the past 650,000 years. This increase is a direct result of burning fossil fuels, broad-scale deforestation and other human activity.

    I welcome Monckton’s response on these two above quotes.

    I completely agree with Monckton yes indeed there are far more pressing issues for the Developing World- for example- very close to home safe drinking water- even a major headache for developed nations.
    Sewerage? Litter? Recycling? Public infrastructure and health? Sustainable development?

    Imagine the very real environmental problems we can tackle with a hopeful, healthy populace.

    Health and human quality of life are incontrovertibly linked to pollution- and indeed a person with future and hope is more likely to be concerned, not only have the cpaital capacity bto effect change about very serious immediate issues and by extension global warming- than the starving waif.

    Re-afforestation would be a major factor in improving water resources and provide sustainable employment- all of which lead to major pollution reduction- and indeed reduction in carbon emissions.
    Wood- no longer used inefficiently as source for heat/light/cooking- but centralised and controlled mains electricity- with built its’ in pollution control mechanisms.

    I argue human and industrial development is actually the best path for the developed world to fight it’s own pollution problems- much easier to fight litter, water quality and food security/ non GMO when you have a pocket full of money- than being a broke beggar.

    Like it or not- fossil hydrocarbons are not leaving.
    They are here to stay- too much money, national interest, energy security- the whole bundle is inextricably linked.
    The new green fuels are still fossil: butane, propane and methane all more effective, proven and cost-benefit effective (mass attainable?) than renewables. Even the utropian green fuel-cell/hydrogen future will be by economic reality/necessity- hydrocarbon based.

    It would appear global warming is a convenient excuse to stymie the development of the poor with the hypocrisy of never calling noxious mega-polluters China or India to account (both now each out pollute the USA).
    The West is more than welcome to play the charade of caring for the environment- but not at the expense or turning the developing world into a static artifact for the wealthy.

    That, as Monckton so very correctly argues- is the religion of Imperialism and rightly insulting.

    If Monckton’s motive is to remove the scale from Developing World’s eyes and remember more pressing priorities via his scientific controversies- well so be it- the end justifies the means.

    For simpletons like myself- why not peruse this:
    from Oxford Uni:
    http://www.begbroke.ox.ac.uk/climate/interface.html

    Monckton- say I agree to your argument.
    Then what’s next step?

  9. From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

    I am most grateful to Purba Negaro for his thoughtful (and flattering) contribution to this increasingly constructive discussion.

    He asks me to comment on statements by various meteorological organizations to the effect that “global warming” is real, man-made, observable, and potentially catastrophic. I shall deal with each statement quoted.

    First, the World Meteorological Organization is right to say that humankind is altering the composition of the atmosphere. However, a little elementary arithmetic, combined with the monthly carbon-dioxide concentration data that have been collected at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii since March 1958, will show how very small our influence is. From proxy measurements it is inferred that the concentration of CO2 in 1750, at the outset of the industrial revolution, was 280 parts per million. Currently, the concentration is about 390 parts per million. The increase over the past 250 years, therefore, is 110 parts per million. So the proportion of the atmosphere occupied by the carbon dioxide has increased by just over one part in 10,000 of the atmosphere. My paper Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered, published in the July 2008 quarterly edition of the learned journal Physics and Society, explains in detail the mathematical and physical reasons why such very small changes in concentration are unlikely to have more than a small, harmless and beneficial effect on the climate.

    Next, the Australian Meteorological Society makes the same point as the WMO, but then adds that the “global warming” that has resulted from our enrichment of the atmosphere with additional carbon dioxide is “real and observable”. The latter statement is untrue. Yes, the world has warmed, but the warming began 300 years ago, at the end of the 70-year Maunder Minimum (Akasofu, 2008; Hathaway, 2004; Usoskin et al., 2003), and continued at a mean rate of about 0.5 K per century until 1998 (Akasofu, 2008). Then it stopped. Late in 2001, on all measures of global temperature, it began to fall, and has now fallen so far that, on one measure (University of Alabama at Huntsville satellite global-temperature dataset for the lower troposphere), 2008 will turn out cooler than 1980, 28 years ago. On all measures, the rate of warming over the past 50 years, as reduced by the seven years of sharp cooling that have occurred, has been no greater than the mean warming rate over the past 300 years. There is, therefore, no anthropogenic signal at all in the global temperature record. It is as though we have made no difference at all. In fact, I think we have made a difference, chiefly by the direct output of heat from cars, factories, refrigeration plants, industries, etc., and also, to a small and harmless degree, by putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. However, the recovery of the Sun’s activity, which reached an 11,400-year peak in the early 1960s, is generally agreed to have been responsible for very nearly all of the warming from 1700 to 1950; and, according to Scafetta and West (2008), is responsible for fully two-thirds of the warming since then. This leaves only a very small role for all the heat-generating activities of humankind.

    Finally, the Federation of American Scientists says the warming we are causing is potentially catastrophic and that we should take measures to reduce our emission of carbon dioxide, if only as a precaution. I have already pointed out in earlier postings that the scientific literature, as opposed to the statements of various rent-seeking scientific bodies, provides no evidence whatsoever that even the exaggerated warming imagined by the UN’s climate panel as a result of our enrichment of the atmosphere with trace quantities of a trace gas will produce any consequences that are catastrophic, disastrous, cataclysmic, etc., etc. Not a single one of 539 papers published since the beginning of 2004 and chosen randomly by the computer because they contained the words “global climate change” contained even a single item of evidence that any catastrophic consequence might occur (Schulte, 2008). Not one.

    Let us examine the catastrophes usually cited by politicians, the media, and schoolteachers. First, sea-level rise. Sea level has been rising by 1.2 metres per century for at least 10,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age. It is now some 130 metres higher than it was when ice still covered much of the Northern Hemisphere’s land mass. The remaining land-based ice – very nearly all of it in Antarctica or Greenland – is at altitudes and latitudes too high to be at any risk of melting at any time in the near future (IPCC, 2001, 2007). It would require sustained temperature increases of 2-5.5 K, persisting for thousands of years, before either of the last two great land-based ice-masses in the world were to melt. The Greenland ice sheet actually melted away quite recently – just 850,000 years ago. Obviously, it did so for entirely natural reasons. So even if Greenland were to melt (and currently many of its glaciers are advancing, reversing the recent years of retreat), this would not be an exceptional or unprecedented event. But – and this is the important point – whatever we do, it’s not going to melt anytime soon. Nils-Axel Moerner, the world’s foremost expert on sea level, tells me that he expects sea level to rise this century by no more than it did last century – less than 0.2 metres, or one-sixth of the centennial mean rate of sea-level rise over the past ten millennia. Even the UN’s climate panel has a best estimate of just over 0.4 m and a high-end estimate of less than 0.6 m. Frankly, none of these figures is anything to write home about: corals, for instance, can grow at ten times even the highest forecast rate of sea level, which is why coral atolls are always just above the sea level, even though it has risen so much in the past 10,000 years. Oh, and the extent of Arctic sea ice, on which a lot of nonsense has been written, is almost as great today as it was on the same day of the year in 1979, the first year of the satellite record (University of Illinois: Cryosphere Today, 2008). A temporary dip in summer sea-ice extent in 2007 was caused by a northerly flow of currents driven by unusual winds (NASA, 2008). The sea has actually been cooling for at least five years since deployment of the comprehensive ARGO network of buoys in 2003. This cooling will lead to thermosteric contraction, causing a fall in sea level if it persists. The cooling of the oceans was also reported by Lyman et al. (2006) in a very detailed study.

    One more imagined “catastrophe” – tropical cyclones. In Indonesia you will be mindful of the disaster caused by Tropical Cyclone Nargis in Burma earlier this year. However, the UN’s climate panel has made it clear that it is not possible to attribute individual extreme-weather events of this kind to “global warming” (IPCC, 2001, 2007). And it is of course impossible to attribute Nargis to “global warming” after seven full years of actual, measured, global cooling. The best measure of trends in combined hurricane frequency and intensity is the Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index, which is a running two-year sum of the energy content of all tropical cyclones. That Index hit an all-time low in October 2008, indicating that there has actually been less tropical cyclone activity over the past two years than in any previous similar period since the record began 30 years ago. Once again, the hard data, which are readily available, plainly demonstrate the falsity of the alarmists’ claims.

    Finally, one should briefly consider the question whether we ought to take precautions, just in case. The answer is No. Remember when DDT was banned, just as a precaution, even though there was no evidence that it was in any way dangerous to humans or animals? DDT is the only, and I mean the only, effective agent against the anopheles mosquito that causes malaria, and against the Aedes Aegypti mosquito that causes dengue haemorrhagic fever. A third of a century ago, DDT was banned, by precisely the same people who are now telling us to ban CO2. The result was catastrophic. Annual deaths worldwide from malaria rose from 50,000 before the ban to 1 million after it – and nearly all of those who were killed in this appalling holocaust were children in third-world countries. And what did the world community do – the same world community that is now so convinced that we should ban CO2? It looked the other way, for more than 30 years, while millions of the world’s poorest children died in agony. It was only on 15 September 2006, after continuous and intense pressure from people like me who think things through for themselves rather than believing the official propaganda, that the World Health Organization finally reversed this murderous ban and once again recommended DDT as the first line of defence against the malaria mosquito. Dr. Arata Kochi, announcing the end of the ban, said, “In this field, politics usually takes precedence. But now we must make a stand on the science and the data.” Amen to that. Yet, even now, many countries refuse to use DDT, because the international Left have long held it as an article of faith that DDT is bad. It is in fact good. Its inventor rightly won a Nobel Prize because of the number of lives it saved. The moral of this story is clear. When you are dealing with a scientific subject, the first thing to do is to study the science carefully and get it right. If we get the science wrong, then we will get the policy wrong, and millions in the world’s poorest countries will die.

    Believe it or not, there are more people in the world dying because of the heroically stupid global belief in the “global warming” scare than “global warming” itself could ever kill, even if it were happening, and even if it were to do the damage that some politicians and bureaucrats unscientifically imagine. In Haiti, for instance, the poor are living – literally – on mud pies. Why? Because they can’t afford food. Why? Because the price of food has doubled in less than two years because vast acreages of agricultural land have been taken out of food production to grow biofuels, even though biofuel production emits more carbon dioxide than oil production. I recently gave a talk to senior Government officials in Madrid, and I gave them the recipe for Haitian mud pies (one adds water, a pinch of salt and a tiny knob of butter to a handful of dirt, then leaves the mud pies in the sun to dry, then sells them for 3 US cents). A member of the audience had recently been in Haiti and she corrected me. She said that now the poor people of Haiti can’t even afford 3 cents to buy a mud pie. So they’re starving, because – it makes me cry, this – they can’t even afford to eat dirt. And has this ghastly starvation been reported in a single Western news medium? No. I got it from Al-Jazira. The Western news media are too busy reporting on every icicle that dribbles in Greenland to report on the food riots that are taking place in a dozen of the world’s poorest regions right now: food riots that would not have had to happen if the stupid, uncaring political class in the West had not been so self-indulgent as to believe in the “global warming” scare without bothering to check any of the elementary facts.

    In the name of humanity, I beg the readers of Indonesia Matters to check the facts and the data for themselves, and not merely to drift along cosily in the fashionable but scientifically baseless belief that “global warming” is or ever could be anything other than beneficial. People in their millions are already dying because of that absurd and cruel belief. We have failed them and failed them before. We must not fail them again. – Monckton of Brenchley

    Next “catastrophe”:

  10. Purba Negoro says:

    Superb argument indeed Viscount.

    I am now absolutely convinced. And the nail in the coffin is the mud pie and DDT example.

    This is so very close to home and so relevent to Indonesia.
    I myself as a child must sometimes eat jungle leaves. My own parents skip meals to feed us children. But I was one of the very lucky noble privileged.

    My own auntie was a child of ten- they must split one egg between ten children- when they eat.
    Her parents often not eat for days. Sometimes must boil the grass the buffalo will not eat.
    And my family are the lucky nobility- imagine the horror for the truly poor common man.
    They died like flies- farmers forced to eat sticks and rice hulls.
    This is not more than 50 years ago.
    I remember exactly this horror. A nightmare beyond description.

    Then we begin to see again when so many poor Indonesian cannot afford food.
    What of our poor Chinese or Indian or worst African brother?
    Why must they starve for rich to alleviation of conscience?

    First world reader- you have not seen such hellish misery until you can smell in person corpses of hundreds of children.
    If lucky- they die from polio, malaria, cholera, typhus instead of starvation to early end the misery.

    First world luxury indeed to never endure such horror and then the foul insult to lecture the desperate nation of dying children NOT to use DDT?

    Out price our own food so we may not eat?

    Tell us not to use our own mineral resource to improve ourselves- so we may earn our way out of endless poverty?

    Very vilest and hateful prejudice. It is genocide and the death toll will be worse than Mao or Stalin or Hitler’s madness combined.

    How dare the rich tell us what to do while they continue to rob us blind!
    How insulting! How f$$$ng dare they!

    So, they can go to hell with their carbon fads until they subsidise us strings free to indulge such selfish luxury.

    I have a very good Indian friend- very brilliant man. Greenpeace and such NGO prevent his nation building some hydro dam.
    Why- because loss of some trees and a tribe must move.
    The rich will lose their museum, their nature park and noble savage curios!
    What of permanently raise living standards, eliminating poverty and end major pollution?

    No- the greedy West demand its safari park more important than human life.

    This is his sons blog:
    http://prashantmishra1.blogspot.com/

    The following is very pertinent.

    Viscount Monckton is a charitable man and a Catholic a Knight of Malta- Order of St John a- charity which has alone saved millions regardless of religions.

    Catholics ran the ONLY hospitals and (secular) schools for the natives under the Dutch- muslim and christian alike in colonial Indonesia.
    The heroism and enormous selfless contribution of Catholics to Indonesia was so great Suharto gratefully lavished millions on them to continue the work eliminating the poor- Suharto himself fed at times by Catholic charity.

    Romo Franz Magnis-Suseno DEFENDED Indonesia and Indonesian Islam to the world: “The whole world gets the impression that this is Indonesian Islam [FPI]. But this is nonsense. We Catholics are fine [safe]. There is no problem in Indonesia”.
    Of course there is not- with such foundation of eliminating misery- the Indonesian people are eternally grateful indeed!

    Prince Tedjabuana of Sunda- Keraton Cigugr- is a Catholic.
    Members of the royal Javanese Keraton Mangkunegara and Hamengkubuwana are Catholic.

    Who help preserve our beautiful Indonesians traditional cultures and language: Catholics!

    Who start to freely immunise us?
    Catholics!

    Who feed us when the Dutch burn our villages and rice fields?
    Catholics!

    Who teach so many street Muslim boy to read and some now a doctor- like my own dentist Dr Latief?
    Catholics!

    So- we know in Indonesia the Catholic is HEROIC CHAMPION of the native POOR THUS Viscount Monckton is also a CHAMPION for the poor- his very soul swears to it!

    Reader,
    Monckton is our true brother in the fight against poverty- thus a brother-in-arms to the Indonesian Rakyat

    Development, innovation and industrialization is THE only concrete way to END the vile injustice of poverty.

    So screw the Global Warming crusaders- they can pay us a trillionfold to play quaint living museum!
    Al Gore may start by auctioning his private jet and limos for UNICEF!
    The West can well do with a good walk!

  11. From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

    Once again, I am very grateful to Purba Negoro for his very kind posting. I’m delighted that the Catholic charitable work in Indonesia has been valuable for the people.

    Mr. Negoro has correctly understood that the “global warming” scare is very bad news indeed for the world’s poor, because the rich nations are planning to make themselves poor and, if they do that, they will no longer be able to help the poor nations. As Abraham Lincoln once said, “You cannot make the poor rich by making the rich poor.”

    I wish the people of Indonesia well, and I hope that you will all speak out against the cruel, unscientific nonsense that is “global warming”.

    I must end this intriguing correspondence now, so that I can return to my work on developing a cure for many of the infectious diseases that now cause such devastation among the world’s poorest people. We think we have now cured our first patient, and our programme of testing will quietly continue until we have found out which diseases we can eradicate and which remain beyond our reach. Our cure is so cheap that everyone will be able to afford it, and, if it is properly used, there are no side-effects.

    God bless you all, and thank you very much for having been so kind as to read our postings at Indonesia Matters. – Monckton of Brenchley

  12. Purba Negoro says:

    Viscount Monckton,

    thank-you so very much for your gems of wisdom.
    Indonesia has a very suspicious streak when it comes to the “expertise” of the West.
    We have tasted their “concern” re DDT and others.
    You have won our admiration and respect.

    We will not forget the warning. I am sure the your Indonesian Christian, Catholic and Muslim brothers-in-arms against poverty will spread this far and wide.

    We wish you and your organisations the greatest possible successes.

    Godspeed,
    Sugeng Tindak,
    Malaikum Salam

    Allah indeed has the closest place in His heart for such noble champion of the poor

  13. Peter says:

    It’s really funny – the article was stylistically and substantively horrid, but the (apparent) author’s comments were almost cogent.

    I guess if people are salivating for conspiracy theories, anything thrown their way will be well received… and Indonesians are as big of conspiracy theory nuts as anyone I’ve ever met.

    The moral of the story: Screw technological innovation and energy efficiency. Drill baby, drill! Full speed ahead to the status quo!

    Meanwhile Exxon Mobil & friends continue to post the largest windfall profits in history. Judging from the whole-hearted adulation of our friend PN, that investment in Frontiers of Freedom may be paying off.

    At least we can all feel smug and clever for “not falling for” what “they” want us to believe, or whatever.

  14. Purba Negoro says:

    Peter
    it’s not always a such convenient clear case of white or black, right or wrong.

    Adulation is a very loaded and somewhat pungent word.

    We Indonesians are well used to choosing the lesser of evils.
    And we are used to facing very cruel realities daily the West has a luxury of never having to endure.

    Coal/Oil/gas will be part of the future- we need it to pay our debts and to improve/develop our society.
    Fossil fuels can be clean- it is merely a matter of correct processing- very likely oil/gas will be the basis of even a hydrogen future.

    Again the reality is oil infrastructure and capital is very well established- and the reality is these multinationals will not suddenly volunteer to shut up shop- exactly as tobacco didn’t.
    Literally hundreds of thousands of people are gainfully employed by Big Oil- directly or tangentially.

    Is impoverishing them going to solve any problems or create new worse ones?
    Should the West be lecturing us- or actually coughing up to help mitigate their prbnlems?
    Indeonsian carbon footprint is comparatively tiny.
    To me the real argument is prioritise according to needs and means.

    NOT abandon an enegery effeicient or sustainable future- nor wantonly pollute masses of carbon and drill everywhere.

    For us in the Third World- we have many steps to catch up to the West- clean safe water, elimination of metals/fertiliser/pesticides/ toxins in food chain etc, better waste disposal.

    We must prioritise our people first- then we can involve these empowered, hopeful passionate citizens in the fight to reverse some of humanities shocking abuse of our only planet.

    Reforestation- clearly another very pressing priority for Indonesia.

    So I do not think at all Monckton advocates going Texas
    oil-mad but prioritise and organise.
    First things first- and one foot at a time. Hardly smug.

  15. Peter says:

    PN, I see your point, and agree with you to a certain extent. The problem, though, is that people such as the author of this article are insinuating that “the West is trying to use global warming to impose its will on developing countries”, which is hardly the case. From an economic and environmental standpoint, renewable energy is where its at. The US auto industry has largely failed to acknowledge this, and now all those gas-guzzling SUVs it churned out may end up being its ruin. Impressive gains in renewability and efficiency can be made by developing countries, who haven’t built up their energy infrastructure to the degree that we in the west have. A renewable energy industry is more stable and locally based than the petrol industry, and would provide steady employment, energy supply and prices to those most vulnerable to changes in energy costs and availability.

  16. Robertg says:

    Real scientist don’t anticipate much effect from carbon dioxide at all, much less “increasingly critical”. Atmospheric carbon dioxide’s greenhouse effect is logarithmic — the first half of pre-Industrial Revolution-level effect was achieved by less than 20 parts per million, then needing the addition of 250 ppmv more to achieve the same warming increment to reach pre-IR effect and it will take a massive increase to repeat the dose again. (The “how much” depends on total sensitivity estimates but, utilizing A Field Guide to the Atmosphere (Houghton, 1983)’s commonly cited 7 K greenhouse effect for 300 ppmv (presumably from Kondratyev & Moskalenko but the origin of this common figure is obscure) then quadrupling pre-IR levels to 1120 ppmv can deliver a mere 1.71 K warming in total — since there’s already alleged to have been 0.7 K that leaves just 1 kelvin potential for adding another 740 ppmv to the current 380 ppmv.)

  17. Purba Negoro says:

    Well Peter,
    glad you were swayed.
    In Indonesia we already have some environmental protective measures.
    Some are incidental as our power generating capacity has stagnated and is currently borderline inadequate
    But the next power stations most likely will be high effiicieny gas-turbine, not coal.

    A gas power plant is approx 65% efficient, best technology coal approx 45% efficient and nuclear ranging between 25-45% efficient.
    The advantage of nuclear is although somewhat inefficient- the attraction is in almost nil fuel.

    These include- hefty tax on motor vehicle exceeding 1998 cc displacement.
    Incandescent light bulb are banned
    Excessive household electricity usage is banned
    Excessive commercial electrical consumption banned
    Very hefty electricity charges for exceeding regulated usage

    Regulations regarding maintenance, upkeep and efficiency for aircon systems (this is the major energy consumer in Indonesia).

    All major commercial buildings including malls must turn off air conditioning and environmental systems by 16:00-18:00
    Re-roster of industry and commercial manufacture to off-peak electrical load periods- so now many factories operate nocturnally- this distribute electrical load more evenly across a day, and added advantage of reducing aircon costs- as night time is cooler.

    Most passenger vehicle in Indonesia are Japanese or German- the mean displacement is 2 litre.

    Commercial truck and van is usually 2 litre or max 3litre displacement.
    Our trains our relatively modern Japanese technology diesel electric (of course room for improvement)

    We do have bans on public in incineration of litter, leaf material etc- but it is incredibly difficult to change stupid stick-in-mud attitudes.
    Then also some indigenous group have slash and burn agricultural practice- which is incredibly difficult to enforce ban and cultural change.

    Our National Parks are actually quite large- the problem is squatter encroachment and poor enforcement of laws to protect timber.

    Also much of our environmental systems/generation technology is relatively recent from Germany and Japan.

    Then one must consider Indonesia is highly volcanically active and we also have very active lightening and forest fires.
    So- every possible natural CO emissions are at least equal to human made.
    Our major problem here is deforestation and inadequate re plantation of managed forests- te forests are not managed as they are supposed to.

  18. Demesure says:

    Incandescent light bulb are banned
    Excessive household electricity usage is banned
    Excessive commercial electrical consumption banned
    Very hefty electricity charges for exceeding regulated usage

    You’ve let the greeniacs take over the power. My condoleances to the Indonesian people (and to my friend Warsanta from Surabaya). May the common sense get back some day, like in New Zealand where newly elected PM Key has cancelled the proposed ban on incandescent light bulb.

  19. Barron Clarke says:

    Janma
    I agree. This about human survival not earth survival.
    Maybe all we humans will all die off and earth might finally get an intelligent species as its custodians. When we look at all the nonsense here it just reinforces the fact that that isn’t the present situation.

  20. Barron Clarke says:

    Ah Purba
    you’re up to it again.
    Nuclear power cause more destructive waste than than all others. Its just convenient.
    You fail to mention renewable fuels such as wind, solar, etc.
    Also I don’t know where you get your figures from but they are outdated by about 20 years. Maybe this is true where you live?
    Also what do you mean by % efficiency?
    I guess you mean a comparison between the Calories (or BTU’s) in versus the power to produce Calories (or BTU’s) out.

    car engines.

    A small engine in a big car uses more fuel per Km than the correct sized engine.
    The tax of course allows the rich and powerful to drive their big, fast cars whilst the burden is placed on the poor. The same thing applies to the electricity taxes. Yhe rich can have air conditioning, fridges, etc. The poor well they are alive what more can they expect.
    What size engines are in your military vehicles including those chauffeured vehicles of the top officials and your four wheel drives?
    When the officials lead by example then come back and tell us how well the country is doing.

    Also small engine does not equal low fuel usage or low emissions. This is the important figure to give.
    are the vehicles diesel, petrol or gas? Are they turbo charged?

    Again we now know Indonesia is the most forward country in the world in this respect as well. Look after your poor and oppressed and they won’t have to live in your national parks.

    “but it is incredibly difficult to change stupid stick-in-mud attitudes.”

    We certainly know that from the rigid views you express.

  21. Purba Negoro says:

    Demesure,
    it would seem that way- but actually it’s electricity rationing- due to our financial crises the generation infrastructure has been postponed.

    We had a just in time type power generation capacity- but now it is just borderline sufficient. We are very lucky not to have more frequent brown-outs.

    I think the new plants will be coming online in 2010- if I am not mistaken Mistubishi Heavy Industries and Krupps are building two gas turbine stations- something along those lines anyway.

    So green- but merely by accident.
    I think your New Zealand is consulting with us on geothermal technology- like what you have near Rotorua.

    Barron-
    yes we have many issues- population control is a major issue. It seems bizarre we have exploded in numbers in only 50 years.

  22. Purba Negoro says:

    Actually I would disagree re small engine and low emission.
    The cars here are generally less than 20 years old. Mileages are small.
    Vehicle loading Weight is very strictly enforced.

    The more expensive the car- commonly the better the fuel management system. My Benz uses less fuel than my office Toyota- it can turn cylinders off and on and vary the timing.
    Lexus will soon intrudce their hybrids, and Benz has many turbo diesel.

    The Diesel engine was actually intended to run on peanut oil- and we have been making palm and other oils here for centuries.

    Of course military and naval powerplant is not designed solely for efficiency- but we do avoid to use them unnecessarily- we still have to pay Pertamina’s petroleum bills.
    And like all other nations military target ranges and parks are also (paradoxically) fantastic wildlife refuge- people are prohibited from entering so cannot squat and make farms.

    Considering the US Airforce is the US government’s largest single consumer of petroleum- perhaps you should redirect your cafe angst to the truly blameworthy.

    Solar is likely problematic to Indonesia as we have frequent and unpredictable full cloud cover- at least for large scale.

    National-Panasonic and Sharp already have started gearing their factory for solar panel production- we do use in isolated areas- for government PusKesMas and Midwife centre and such.

    As we are on the equator wind is minimal onshore- and tradewinds are offshore- so there is issue of cabling.
    Perhaps tidal or wave motion is likely
    Geothermal is very promising- already 10-15% of our power generation is geothermal.

    And also I disagree at your class provocation given your limited knowledge of Indonesia.
    It is the poor who are among the worst polluters.
    They love their two-stroke scooter- which as a rule are never tuned correctly and blow smoke like a steam train.
    They litter without regard to their own environment- and then burn it off.
    They fix their vehicle and dump the waste oils straight into the street. They dump soap, sewer and contaminated water into river systems.

    We have given the poor clean and efficient Natural gas and cooker to use- but they refuse as they do not wish to adapt. They are more used to kerosene or wood.
    What can we do- hold a gun to their head?
    They slash and burn and squat in forest.

    Then they wail when the government reclaim this land the had no right to occupy let alone destroy the forest.

    We cannot control the poor from outbreeding their own limited resources- we give them free condom- free immunization, free school- so what you expect us to do.
    Much of their poverty is self caused or perpetuated.

    An example of idiot villager mentality:
    I do work in a charity which provide scholarship for thousands of poor Indonesians- it is run by wife of former Minister of Education.
    Now- everything we buy for them- school book, pens, clothing, shoes, bags, even if mother is too poor- we can help establish small garden plots and food. Often many people donate household goods.
    A large portion of these children do not attend school. Why?
    They prefer to sell these their books, shoes everything so they can buy trinkets and that which provide immediate satisfaction of base desires.

    Then what of the idiot villager woman who get broody at age 16 and wants 5 children only to discover she cannot feed 4?

    Why must society fix her stupidity?

    We can only do so much- they must learn to stand on their own feet and accept consequences of their actions.

  23. Barron Clarke says:

    Purba
    If what you say is true (and I how no reason to doubt you) about your actions towards the poor I commend you and those who try to help the poor and disenfranchised.
    I agree that you can’t educate people who don’t want to know but it is very difficult to change people who have been doing things the same way for hundreds or thousands of years. there is great suspicion about the new.
    People put the same arguments about our own indigenous people and think that throwing money at them will solve their issues. Some are happy with this and try to adapt a small minority use the money for drink. What we, the thieves of their land, need is education in their ways and see how we can work within their traditions and lifestyles. In all groups of people you get the reasonable and the unreasonable but we should not mistake unreasonable for differing with our views.

    I also would put the point that all colonialist countries have a lot to answer for. I include the US (as a fiscal colonist). They stole many countries, raped them and left them for dead. (England, Holland, Spain, France, etc)

    Now to tie all this to the debate in hand. Its easy for first world countries to expect other less developed countries to again take their share of responsibility for Global Warming when countries like the US and Australia (until recently) refuse to sign UN protocols because they may cost big business money.
    We are heading for, if we are not already there, the cooperate state where huge amounts of money rule supreme. The greed is good mentality still exists and those countries in which it is supreme will only pay lip service to Global Warming

  24. Purba Negoro says:

    Barron,
    it is amazing how one can violently diagree at one minute,
    yet violently agree the next!

    I think this is what makes for Interesting debate- otherwise the world would be so boring if everyone thinks alike.
    I only include the charity anecdote to add to debate- and show readesr we actually try top help.
    Often unsuccessful – but there are so many good people (as in the West) trying selflessly to fix their societies.
    I do like the term “fiscal colonialist”- that one is excellent- even such aggravating provocateur as myself had not thought of something so clever!

    But yes- poverty, charity- it is so complex. No one seems to have any solutions- and can only keep on trudging away on the same methods.
    But- money alone and even education cannot help them.
    We want to give a hand up- but they always expect a handout- and when we refuse them- they get upset.

    So this is one reason we consider the poor like immature children- their behaviour and mentality is often very similar. One loves ones kids- but it does not mean one cannot fantasise about bopping them with a mallet because they are so frustrating!

    And it seems the poverty issues are pan racial, pan cultural, pan religious.
    The US projects, the slums of India and China, Soweto.
    Not enough money- too may outstretched hands.

    Yes I agree your view of a cooperate uni-state. Somewhat worrying.

  25. Barron Clarke says:

    Purba
    I have many friends with whom I disagree on particular subjects but that does stop us having similar views on many things nor being friends. If only nations could be of similar mindedness.
    In general the administration of America is poor in its thinking and thrives politically on War because it diverts people’s thinking on other issues such as their contribution to global warming. Yet I have US friends, most of them fighting for recognition of the global warming and other severe social issues but in general Americans are very insular.

    Nobody actually knows how many guns there are in the US but it has been estimated that it could be as many as 1 for every man woman and child. Whilst Switzerland and Israel have similar policies on guns there is very strict controls on their access and how they must be stored. Americans have laws but they are very rarely enforced.

  26. Peter says:

    Interesting to learn about those gov’t energy policies, PN. Glad Indo is moving in that direction; it’s always best to start early.

    I was not “swayed”, by the way. These climate change skeptics can rattle off all they want. It’s not my job to refute their scientistic arguments. Nearly all “real scientists” and major scientific bodies disagree with them.

    But one final point, to the poster suggesting that CO2 ppm increase is logarithmic and therefore insignificant:

    1) That is a foolish, somewhat intuitive but factually baseless argument.

    2) You must not understand how the global climate system works. Many aspects of our climate do not change logarithmically over time, or proportionally to the source driving their alteration. They operate on thresholds, so that once a threshold is reached, positive feedback loops created by the climate itself drastically accelerate a process originally driven by “outside” inputs.

    Take a physical geography class or two before presenting yourself as knowledgeable about this topic, please.

  27. Meme Mine says:

    The NEW GREEN:
    The CO2 theory we reject.
    Now is the time to protect,
    preserve and respect.

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