It was a bi-partisan crowd: this is one of those rare issue cuts across party lines.Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the internet is a fundamental right, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests.Hat tip: The Clue MeterThe survey - of more than 27,000 adults across 26 countries - found strong support for net access on both sides of the digital divide.
Countries such as Finland and Estonia have already ruled that access is a human right for their citizens.
International bodies such as the UN are also pushing for universal net access. [Emph. original]
Flopping Aces has another good summary reviewing the IPCC predictions for declining snowfalls and the failed climate predictions of NASA's James Hansen.It's been a slow week for news because it's been a big week for weather. The East Coast is covered in snow, and Time magazine blames global warming. No, seriously: "There is some evidence that climate change could in fact make such massive snowstorms more common, even as the world continues to warm." The New York Times says the same thing, though two-sidedly: "The two sides in the climate-change debate are seizing on the mounting drifts to bolster their arguments."
The Time story notes that climate is not the same thing as weather:
Ultimately, however, it's a mistake to use any one storm--or even a season's worth of storms--to disprove climate change (or to prove it; some environmentalists have wrongly tied the lack of snow in Vancouver, the site of the Winter Olympic Games, which begin this week, to global warming). Weather is what will happen next weekend; climate is what will happen over the next decades and centuries. And while our ability to predict the former has become reasonably reliable, scientists are still a long way from being able to make accurate projections about the future of the global climate.Wait a minute, "scientists are still a long way from being able to make accurate projections about the future of the global climate"? We thought global warming was settled science, and anyone who doubted it was a knuckle-dragging lackey or handmaid of Big Oil! (Sorry for the mixed metaphors, but at least we're gender inclusive.)
To be sure, the global warmists are right to distinguish between weather and climate. A short-term condition sometimes can run counter to a long-term trend, as when a growing economy goes through a recession, or a generally healthy man suffers an acute illness (though in the long run, we're all dead).
The problem is that for years, global warmists have claimed that the weather proved their claims about the climate. This is a New York Times story from June 24, 1988:
The earth has been warmer in the first five months of this year than in any comparable period since measurements began 130 years ago, and the higher temperatures can now be attributed to a long-expected global warming trend linked to pollution, a space agency scientist reported today.Until now, scientists have been cautious about attributing rising global temperatures of recent years to the predicted global warming caused by pollutants in the atmosphere, known as the "greenhouse effect." But today Dr. James E. Hansen of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration told a Congressional committee that it was 99 percent certain that the warming trend was not a natural variation but was caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide and other artificial gases in the atmosphere.Dr. Hansen, a leading expert on climate change, said in an interview that there was no "magic number" that showed when the greenhouse effect was actually starting to cause changes in climate and weather. But he added, "It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here."Breitbart.tv has a collection of clips from the past decade depicting Democratic congressmen blaming global warming for shortfalls of snow. But perhaps the classic of the genre is a piece from the Boston Globe, dated Aug. 30, 2005, which begins: "The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming."
The author, Ross Gelbspan, goes on to blame global warming for "a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles"--something that never happened--along with high winds in Northern Europe, droughts in the American Midwest and Southeastern Europe, rain in India and even a heat wave in Arizona.
It gets better. Gelbspan faults the media for failing to take global warming seriously:
When the US press has bothered to cover the subject of global warming, it has focused almost exclusively on its political and diplomatic aspects and not on what the warming is doing to our agriculture, water supplies, plant and animal life, public health, and weather.For years, the fossil fuel industry has lobbied the media to accord the same weight to a handful of global warming skeptics that it accords the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries reporting to the United Nations.It is now clear that even if Gelbspan had been describing the media's approach to the subject accurately, they still would have been assigning too much authority to the IPCC. Yesterday London's Guardian, a left-wing paper that has long been squarely in the global-warmist camp, carried a damning report titled "How to Reform the IPCC":
The IPCC says its reports are policy relevant, but not policy prescriptive. Perhaps unknown to many people, the process is started and finished not by scientists but by political officials, who steer the way the information is presented in so-called summary for policymakers [SPM] chapters. Is that right, the Guardian asked?"The Nobel prize was for peace not science . . . government employees will use it to negotiate changes and a redistribution of resources. It is not a scientific analysis of climate change," said Anton Imeson, a former IPCC lead author from the Netherlands. "For the media, the IPCC assessments have become an icon for something they are not. To make sure that it does not happen again, the IPCC should change its name and become part of something else. The IPCC should have never allowed itself to be branded as a scientific organisation. It provides a review of published scientific papers but none of this is much controlled by independent scientists."And of course the University of East Anglia emails showed that the so-called independent scientists manipulated data and tried to blacklist colleagues who did not accept the global-warmist hypotheses.
It's true that cold weather, while providing an occasion to mock global warming, does not disprove it. But the mocking would be far less effective had global warmists not spent the past quarter-century making a mockery of the scientific method.
But all the evidence points to the same conclusion: The Himalayan glaciers are as a whole diminishing. So let’s put that to rest right away. No debate. It’s melting. Get used to it.Since the end of the little ice age, the Earth has been warming at a rate of roughly 0.5°C per century. Since this has been going on for centuries, it seems clear that this is unrelated man-made CO2 which has only been significant only for a few decades. So, simple statements that things are warming, or that glaciers are melting, do not, in any way, prove that the warming is caused by man-made greenhouse gases or that such gases will lead us to imminent disaster.
After receiving a Masters in Architecture, Karl earned a LEED certification and created one of the green building industry's first web-based design tools, the GreenMatrix, later adopted in California by the county of Alameda. Realizing the power of the web to illuminate the complex world of "green" he helped launch several websites including EVO.com, developed a variety of social network widgets, and lectured internationally on the subject of digital media, technology and the environment. Karl has his own blog called Greendig: real dirt on the environment, and he consults with both nonprofits and corporations. His goal -- to leverage the power of the internet to bring about a new age of solar-powered enlightenment, one in which people and nature happily coexist.So, "global warming" is his business: he sells "green" solutions. Mr. Burkart is not the only one making a profit off of "global warming." It is well known that Al Gore has made a large fortune from global warming. Also, IPCC chairman appears to have used the Himalayan glacier scam to make a small fortune.
On matters of global warming, the legacy media grant the UN IPCC the same credibility that Catholics are supposed to give to the Pope when he speaks ex cathedra. At the (UK) Telegraph, James Delingpole, using information developed by Dr. Richard North, reports on today's global warmist scandal and the UN IPCC's now threadbare credibility:
So, two environmental activists, both non-scientists, make some wild speculation about the Amazon that is never reviewed by scientists and, maybe, they never even wrote it down. The UN IPCC, which pretends to be a source of "authoritative" "peer-reviewed" "settled" science, then presents this to the media and to the world's governments as if it were fact.It seems that, not content with having lied to us about shrinking glaciers, increasing hurricanes, and rising sea levels, the IPCC’s latest assessment report also told us a complete load of porkies about the danger posed by climate change to the Amazon rainforest.
This is to be found in Chapter 13 of the Working Group II report, the same part of the IPCC fourth assessment report in which the “Glaciergate” claims are made. There, is the startling claim that:
At first sight, the reference looks kosher enough but, following it through, one sees:
This, then appears to be another WWF report, carried out in conjunction with the IUCN – The International Union for Conservation of Nature.The link given is no longer active, but the report is on the IUCN website here. Furthermore, the IUCN along with WWF is another advocacy group and the report is not peer-reviewed. According to IPCC rules, it should not have been used as a primary source.
It gets even better. The two expert authors of the WWF report so casually cited by the IPCC as part of its, ahem, “robust” “peer-reviewed” process weren’t even Amazon specialists. One, Dr PF Moore, is a policy analyst ... and the lead author Andy Rowell is a freelance journalist (for the Guardian, natch) and green activist....
But the IPCC’s shamelessness did not end there. Dr North has searched the WWF’s reports high and low but can find no evidence of a statement to support the IPCC’s claim that “40 per cent” of the Amazon is threatened by climate change. (Logging and farm expansion are a much more plausible threat).
"I don't make comments based on redacted e-mails presented to me by people who values I don't trust.''
Writing in the New York Times, a former United Nations security officer describes what the UN did in Somalia in 1995, in response to a hostage situation.
In 1995, for example, the water supply for Mogadishu, the capital, was shut off by the United Nations humanitarian agencies until a hostage who worked for another aid organization was released. On the first day of the shutoff, the women who collected water from public distribution points yelled at the kidnappers; on the second day they stoned them; on the third day they shot at them; on the fourth day, the hostage was released.
Isn’t that interesting.
Imagine how the United Nations would react if Israel shut off the water supply to Gaza, in response to the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit.
With any luck, international bureaucrats will do as well with global warming as they did with oil-for-food.BANGKOK (Reuters) - Developing countries and environmental groups accused the World Bank on Friday of trying to seize control of the billions of dollars of aid that will be used to tackle climate change in the next four decades.
"The World Bank's foray into climate change has gone down like a lead balloon," Friends of the Earth campaigner Tom Picken said at the end of a major climate change conference in the Thai capital.
"Many countries and civil society have expressed outrage at the World Bank's attempted hijacking of real efforts to fund climate change efforts," he said. ....
As well as the obvious arguments about how much money will be needed -- some estimates run into the trillions of dollars by 2050 -- rich and poor countries are struggling even to agree on a bank manager.
At the week-long Bangkok conference, the World Bank pushed its proposals for a $5-10 billion Clean Technology Fund, a $500 million "adaptation" fund and possibly a third fund dealing with forestry.
However, developing countries want climate change cash to be administered through the existing United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), which they feel is much less under the control of the Group of 8 (G8) richest countries.
The world has always had "extreme [weather] events" and always will. This guarantees that Delju will see more "signs of warming" and this will assure job security for many UN bureaucrats, such as Mr. Delju. Looking for signs in the wrong places is not new. Tacitus lists the "signs" of worse times to come as observed in 54 AD:Delju said climate change ... would bring bigger swings in the weather alongside a warming trend that will mean more heatwaves, droughts, floods and rising seas.
"The more frequent occurrence of extreme events all over the world -- floods in Australia, heavy snowfall in the Middle East -- can also be signs of warming," he said
In the year of the consulship of Marcus Asinius and Manius Acilius it was seen to be portended by a succession of prodigies that there were to be political changes for the worse. The soldiers' standards and tents were set in a blaze by lightning. A swarm of bees settled on the summit of the Capitol; births of monsters, half man, half beast, and of a pig with a hawk's talons, were reported.In modern times, there have been attempts to attribute "swarm[s] of bees," or the lack thereof, to global warming but this has so far not stood the test of science.
So, US emissions grew more slowly (6.6%) than emissions from countries signing the Kyoto treaty (21.1%). This puts some perspective on the meaning of the Bali conference.
- Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%.
- Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
- Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
- Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.
RELATED: Gore panders.
