Quick Reaction to IPCC's SPM

The Nobel Peace Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its Statement for Policy Makers, based on their 4th Assessment Report, late Friday night, making sure the news cycle wouldn't notice some of the items that seem contradictory to the AGW activism narrative.

First, we've injected so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, that even if we stop all industrial and commercial sources right now, as in zero emissions, the earth will keep warming. Second, with this current warming trend, the sea level will rise up to a maximum of 55 inches over the next thousand years. Not one hundred years, but one thousand years. This is assuming we will follow their estimate for increasing carbon dioxide emissions over the next 50 years. Third, they recommend emphasis on the mitigation plans for their predicted climate change: building sea walls, developing drought-resistant crops, and paving dirt roads in all the poorest nations.

Can we now stop with all the carbon-offset scams and carbon-credit trading? But those two schemes were a way for the poor nations to trade their unused carbon-banks (since they have no developed industries anyway), to con the rich countries out of their money to pay, supposedly, for the mitigation projects. Nevermind that those sea-wall projects were usually tied to huge seaside resort proposals. Plus, the anti-GM crop crowd won't like the IPCC's change in tactics either. And paving dirt roads will encourage vehicle use and spur industrial growth, not just keep roads from being washed away in the predicted super-floods, so the emergency response organizations can reach flattened villages. So, will we stop hearing about reducing carbon emissions? I won't be holding my carbon dioxide producing breath.

"Moral Superiority" Leads To Rationalizing Bad Behavior

I think almost all of the UN's peacekeeping operations in Africa seem to prove the gist of this story. Not to mention any social, economic, or environmental movement which couches their motivations in "moral" terms. No surprises here.

UN Advocacy Group Bad At Math

I've always wondered how those extinction numbers that get breathlessly tossed around are calculated. We have tons of stories written every year about how we keep finding new species, but, sometimes right next to those same articles, we have stories about thousands of species going extinct at the same time. How do we know, when we haven't even catalogued them yet? Again, the specter of computer modeling masquerading as reality appears to give us such fright.

First, allow me to highlight the bad math part, since this "divine doubling" is how the 0.3 degrees Celsius rise in the so-called global mean temperature over the last century has been turned into 0.6 degrees. Ahmed Djoghlaf, head of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, said,"Every hour, three species disappear. Every day, up to 150 species are lost. Every year, between 18,000 and 55,000 species become extinct." Um, okay. If every hour 3 species go extinct, then every day 72 species go poof, and then about 26000 species are gone in a year. But you see, the real numbers from the study are the 18,000 to 55,000 species per year. If you work the 55K number backwards, we get 6 per hour. Why did Ahmed suddenly take the low end of the estimate for the hourly loss? To prevent stupid reporters from catching him take the most extreme number and highlighting the alarmism.

So, why the factor of two between the two deltas? I'd have to say that's a pretty big margin of error. Empirically, we have catalogued "only 784 species driven to extinction since 1500," and the administrator of the "Red List" explains why the reality is so different from the UN study. Craig Hilton-Taylor: "The U.N. figures are based on loss of habitats, estimates of how many species lived there and so will have been lost. Ours are more empirical -- those species we knew were there but cannot find." There you have it, alarmist numbers based on estimates of species occupying habitats, and then just poofing them out of existence when a housing development goes up. Most of those species in the estimates are bacteria, then arthropods. Both of those phyla are highly adaptable, so I don't believe the hype that they just "go away."

None of those habitat loss simulations have been proven or disproven, so, from a scientific perspective, they're just hypotheses for whether the habitat algorithm is correct, not a prediction on actual species extinction. Of course, that doesn't matter to the UN advocates whose causes appear to be threatened only inside computer simulations.

EU: Climate Conference a Success - Nothing Done

When the EU calls something a success, you know that means everyone successfully took their turn to talk about something. So, good news for those who think that emission targets and carbon trading are socialist plots against successful capitalist economies: new emission targets were not set in Nairobi, and the poor countries came away empty-handed for their carbon credits. The poor countries did not get new funds, but they were happy that access to the Adaptation Fund was streamlined. Ever wonder why it's so important that global warming get blamed for everything? The Adaptation Fund under the Kyoto Protocol is for poor countries to cope with climate change. That sounds vague enough for all sorts of graft and corruption. "Preserving a coastline" means building a new beach resort. I'm not sure what the land-locked African nations would do with their funds except buy water, but warlords and dictators might have better imaginations than I do.

Agricultural Hypocrisy in Climate Change Debate

In another hot air release from the climate change conference in Nairobi, warnings of agricultural disaster due to increased drought conditions and water shortages from glacial melt, only hurting the poor in poor countries. Of course, anything we do now won't affect the climate for 30 to 50 years, meanwhile, drought conditions have been affecting African nations since the 1970's and that drought-resistant crops have been refused by aid organisations because they were genetically modified. True to form, the UN press release does not mention that the drop in agricultural aid over the past few years comes from UN pressure not to accept crops and agricultural technology from the United States. Monetary values are only given, I can assume, because it's easier to skim money than GM wheat.