En Passant

Just passing the old blog and felt I had to make mention; lots of Volcanic and Earthquake activity over the past year. Chaiten, all the volcanic rumblings and eruption around the Aleutian Island chain. Haiti and Peru with big Earthquakes which seem to be easing their way up the American side of the Pacific rim, and now Iceland with an event some are already comparing with the 1783 Laki Event.

Could be interesting. Certainly a correlation with low sunspot activity, but then, correlation is not causation. What with all the Sulphur in the particulates, and a chance of Hydrofluorine, some form of acid resistant clothing might be politic for our European cousins.

All those spanking new windmills and solar panels might prove a waste of time though.

To paraphrase the bard...

I see the zealots are at it again on the BBC with more dogma driven drivel. We're all going to die the heat death of the universe blah-de blah ad nauseum. With a solar minima shaping up, and Earth's global temperature dropping (Although not by that much, but it is unseasonably chilly outside) you'd think the 'climate change' guilt-trip mob would give it up. Little or no correlation with rising CO2 (Should be good for the plants when things finally get round to warming up), Polar Bears fine; coral reefs in fine fettle; currently a bit too much arctic ice, but then that's just me. So where's the warming? Apart from inside incomplete computer models and the heads of the 'true believers'?

To paraphrase William Shakespeare in his Scottish play;
"And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: man made climate change is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.."

Demonstration of failure

I'm not normally a combative sort, and generally speaking would walk ten miles rather than pick a fight, but there are some people who just sit up and beg to be taken down a notch. Today's stressor were a bunch of noisy people who marched into the Bay store at the Woodgrove Mall, North Nanaimo shouting "Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! How many animals died today!" loudly and repeatedly as they paraded around the ground floor waving lurid placards of skinned animal carcases (Yes I did see, and no, they didn't impress me) amusing the staff, and giving security the runaround.

This was a demonstration by supporters of PETA, generally referred to by those who know what goes on at one of their 'animal shelters' as People for the Elimination and Termination of Animals. I think because the Bay store occasionally sells a fur coat, the six or seven people who marched around the store with one person yelling the same tired slogan over and over thought they were justified in doing so.

Now I'm a keen supporter of free speech and the unfettered (Within reason) right to make your point publicly, but quite frankly these few people made the organisation and cause they purported to hold dear look like a bunch of right unwashed wallies. They startled around a dozen shoppers, because that's all there were in the store at that time. As demonstrations go, it was pathetic, both in numbers and effect. Had there been a hundred people outside the store protesting, now that would have made their point far better. However, knowing Nanaimo, with it's relatively high proportion of hunting and fishing types isn't quite ready to be included in the confused muddle of modern metropolitan thinking. Did the demonstrators wish to end the wanton slaughter of animals? If certain web sites are to be believed, then the members of PETA would be better off visibly demonstrating that their own house was in order before further campaigning devalues their cause further.

However, these demonstrators did succeed in one aspect; they made me want to go all Clint Eastwood on them with a 12-guage.
"Get off my lawn!" Great line. Must go see Gran Torino.

New MSS

Have begun work on a new MSS while the interminable wait for Agents and Publishers to actually read what I've sent them goes on. Frankly I've gotten past the point where I'm worried about how good any of the MSS samples and screenplay I despatched are; that's all old news as they say. I'm busy on the next one in the series.

In 'Falling through the stars' I'm busy outlining a post apocalypse northern Europe and the survival of one of the novel's key characters; this time it's the younger sister of the lead character in 'A Sky full of stars' and her journey out of the remains of the Gaian European prison-state to find her elder brother, a now publicly disgraced North American Space Corps pilot. There is another sister in the story arc, but I won't bring her into the tale until the demands of narrative warrant her appearance. Tell the story, and let the characters play their parts.

Back in the outside world, I see that the eco-insanity proceeds despite the climate and weather naysaying every argument the Warmista's put forward. Face it guys, the Earth isn't doomed, but humanity might be if the media keep regurgitating the statist soviet-like agenda of the boneheaded greenies. How many times does humanity have to try the 'top down' approach and find it failing? Idiots.

Volcano Alerts

Having a look at the current status of volcanoes around the world, and found this handy page.
Chaiten in Chile is erupting away at Red or level 5 status
Redoubt in Alaska, not so far from the currently quiescent Mt Kasatochi to the West that blew it's top in 2008, is at watch alert Orange (Eruption due soon)

Other, less newsworthy eruptions are as follows.
Galeras 01.22N 077.37W COLOMBIA LEVEL III E
Karangetang 02.78N 125.40E SANGIHE IS. ALERT LEVEL 3 E
Soufriere Hills 16.72N 062.18W WEST INDIES LEVEL 4 E
Yasur 19.53S 169.44E SO. PACIFIC ALERT LEVEL 3 E

A quick google at about 3pm PST turned up nothing in the English language media for the Galeras and Yasur eruptions (Well it has been erupting almost continually for the last 800 years), and nothing at all for Karangetang.

Hmm. will be adding geology.com to the sidebar as well.

Another set of isolated weather events

Snow in Saudi.

Hail and snow in Dubai last night.

Did someone say it was getting warmer?

Reality bites.

Update: Oh yes, and it snowed this morning outside our house. All melted by midday.

The debate is not over

"Science should be an open debate, with all valid research getting equal display. Consensus can't be claimed when many questions continue unanswered. Silencing those who question popular culture does not benefit the truth sought by science." Baltimore Examiner.

"With statistics you can make numbers go to almost any conclusion you want. It saddens me to see members of the scientific community do this for media coverage." H/T Anthony Watts.

I've said it before; man made climate change is a political phenomenon, not a real one. The world has warmed, but now it appears to be cooling. Driving the populace into penury on the back of a politically popular fiction therefore promises to create more problems than it solves.

To get old testament for a moment, Pharaoh's dream interpreted as seven good years followed by seven lean years would appear to be an object lesson. Hunker down, it's a-gonna get chilly round here.

We're all doooomed (Not) again

Forgive my scepticism, but that's becoming more and more of a conditioned reflex. If it's not one thing it's another. Was pootling around my reading list and had a look at Anthony Watts blog, which carried the following headline:“The good news is, if this sucker blows, global warming is not going to be a problem.“ About news items regarding the recent swarms of earthquakes in the Yellowstone Caldera. Previous observations in 2004 indicate that a similar bout of Earthquake 'swarms' were due to the movement of Hydrothermal fluids rather than Magma. Doomsday looks like being postponed again. Ain't that a bitch?

I seem to recall a Horizon 'Documentary' on the BBC back in 2000 which gave you the impression that Armageddon was but a heartbeat distant. Had the programme makers faithfully reported what the USGS researchers at Yellowstone were saying they would have gotten a slightly less than sensational story; but the headline 'World might end one day - but not just yet eh?' might not be conducive to increased viewing figures. Just like that other load of complete and utter garbage 'An inconvenient truth'. The Western world passed the edge of an all time gullibility event horizon with that pile of deeply flawed crap. You can tell I wasn't impressed with the movie or its 'science' can't you?

What is it with all these 'the world is going to end' scenarios? There is so much good stuff going on out there in life that we have to ill wish and frighten ourselves into misery just for a change? Like teenagers going to watch schlocky horror movies. This is the part of the human condition I've never been able to fully comprehend; so many people would rather believe a thousand over sensationalised negative fictions rather than one rather mundane positive fact. 'Millions of people no longer starving'; 'Living standards better than twenty years ago'; 'Fewer than ever not dying of infectious diseases'. Maybe the people who regurgitate negative nonsense just want to make themselves look important. In the words of the old Cole Porter song;

Have you heard,
It's in the Stars,
Next July we collide with Mars

Stuff it; I have other things to do, and a nice large measure of Malt Whiskey beckons. Time to feed Wife a sizeable Vodka and Orange. She's earned it for putting up with an old grouch like me.

Al Gore to be sued?

A classy action.

Outlook changeable

"There do be a change in the wind me hearties. A change do be a comin'" (In my best Geoffrey Rush impersonation). Well not so much in the weather, as that always manages to catch you off guard on the Island. Sudden thick snow shower this afternoon had a number of people (Including us) forced to make a quick dash into the big Canadian Tire store, several making sharp wisecracks about "this goldarn global warming eh?" as sleet and snow began liberally coating everything in sight.

I just had to laugh. Wife has often told me off for being an "obsessive old grouch" about the whole issue, and I've been forced to silence by my dear spouse upon pain of torture. This is not a vain threat. Wife knows where all my sensitive little places are, and kitty has sharp little claws. Ow.

Notwithstanding, all of a sudden the 'Global warming' bandwagon looks like the wheels are finally beginning to come off. Dishonesty and / or outright incompetence from unregulated 'Carbon trading' companies. Articles in the mainstream and online media casting doubt upon the dogma of man made climate change springing up like Hydra's teeth. It's not just the long time sceptical commentators like Christopher Booker. The climate change bubble bursts as the weather refuses to comply with the doomsayers predictions.

Couple of additions to the sidebar along with a little tidying up. Roy Spencer, Climatologist, Author, and former NASA scientist, and Skeptics Global Warming. Oh, and a dog, named Kyoto of all things.

What I'd like to see now is all those scientists and other people who have had their careers ruined by the warmista's shrill demands given some form of recompense, and some long overdue impartiality returned to academia. Perhaps the jailing of a couple of the leading lights for the fraud they have attempted to perpetrate upon us all. Which would be poetic justice after their calls for "denier's" to be treated like criminals and locked up. Although, he said thoughtfully to himself, I won't be holding my breath. I'll just be happy when all the extra 'green' taxes are dropped.

Back to Sci-fi MSS editing. Second draft almost finished. It's looking good.

Good gosh a mighty

Well flabber my ghast and pass the Wellington boots! The media worm appears to be turning; at least where it comes to the UK Daily Telegraph. For over the past 12 months a writer called Christopher Booker has been giving mainstream coverage to those who have serious misgivings about the doom mongering dogma of CO2 driven man made climate change. Now other columns in the same newspaper have elected to voice the doubts often fervently echoed in the comments. Particularly this report.

I stand ready to be toppled by the gentlest caress of avian plumage.

A chat with real people

Been talking to the neighbours of late, and what they've said about the local climate and weather rather fits in with my own, albeit anecdotal, observations. Cold snaps like the one we're currently experiencing seem to happen in approximate 10 and 20 year cycles. Mostly they're not as intense, but it still forms a pattern. Working backwards from 2007 / 2008 the colder weather was noted in 1996 & 1998, before that 1987 / 88, 1978 was supposedly cold and wintry, 1971 was one of those 'All Canada' events, rather like the early 1960's and 1950's. Before that we have no local information, and the Airport Weather records only go back to 1979.

This got me thinking. In the UK we had an exceptionally cold winter in 1947, I've no information on the 1950's to hand, so I can't include that, but I recall trudging to school through heavy snow in 1967. 1977 was particularly cold and snowy. 1981 / 82 was pretty rough where I lived. 1987 had a cold snap that saw our household cut off from power, water, everything for three complete days. 1997 had a few snowfalls if I recall correctly, but nothing too exceptional, yet 2007 / 2008 have been distinctly chilly.

Again; this is all anecdotal based on memory so the years may be out, but the approximate 10 and 20 year cycles are definitely there. I'd have to check some impartial temperature records to be sure, along with precipitation measures etc. These cold weather events appear more driven by solar activity and major volcanic events than anthropomorphic causes.

Funny what a bit of a gossip with people whose memories go back further than the official temperature records will turn up.

The next person...

The next media idiot to reiterate the claim in my vicinity that all this bloody snow is to do with their farcical 'global warming' theory is going to get some nice icy 'global warming' stuffed forcibly down the back of their fashionable Gore-Tex jacket.

I've got to the point where, when I heard some Environmental advocate had died of Cancer today, all I could think was "Good. That's one less of the bastards." This is most unlike me. I am mostly a gentle soul without an ounce of malice in my heart.

"Weather is not the climate", according to some of the pro AGW whack jobs, but I would like to point out that Climate is the sum of the Weather. So there. Like geology is not about sedimentation, but a lot of sediment eventually makes rocks. Like the ones in the Pro AGW advocates heads.

Some snow is fine, but if I'd really wanted to experience a heavy Winter I'd have gone and got a job in Alberta. I've been digging through fourteen plus inches of snow since half past nine this morning and my temper is slightly frayed. I need tea.

Has Honda cracked it?

Perusing my reading list of blogs as usual and came across this little gem from the UK's Top Gear TV programme.
The item was about the Honda FCX clarity, a Hydrogen fuel cell car currently only available in California for 2009 under certain conditions.

*Subject to limited availability, in designated, limited California market regions, to approved lessees by American Honda Finance Corp. Closed end lease for 2008 FCX Clarity, for qualified lessees meeting specific use and operation requirements. Not all applicants will qualify. No purchase option. Zero capitalized cost reduction. Taxes, license, title fees, liability insurance extra. Monthly payments of $600.00 for 36 months. Total monthly payments $21,600.00. No mileage limitation or excess mileage cost.

As it says on Honda's own dedicated web site.

The video tells part of the story, but on the face of it this particular car may have part of the answer to the transport / emissions conundrum. The production of sufficient Hydrogen and development of a refuelling infrastructure may follow if the trial programme is practicable. The price of Hydrogen is the other matter. Can it be economically produced in sufficient quantity to supply demand? I hope so.

Another more cynical, thought emerges; will this category of technology shut the Eco freaks up? Personally, I think not. Certain of these guys want the whole concept of the car and the liberty it gives to the rest of us to die and be buried deep. They hate anything above the level of the horse and cart and subsistence agriculture. They hate liberating technologies because they do not understand why people need it, and what they cannot understand they fear. Simply cruise the Internet for any tin foil hattery about a specific technology. The lies are out there, and I regret to say they've got the facts outnumbered.

My predictions if this fuel cell technology takes off? There may be spurious stories about Hydrogen causing Cancer / Lung Disease etc bandied around by the media, perhaps even direct action against Hydrogen production facilities. Next thing you know, the water vapour from the exhaust of a fuel cell powered vehicle will end up in the same category as CO2, classed as a cause of 'Global Warming' (Some of which would come in handy around about now, it's minus six celsius outside my house, and that's without wind chill). No dopubt some future politician will build a whole 'Eco vote' campaign around it, similar to the one currently based around CO2 emissions. (Engage Sarcasm mode) We must 'save the planet'. Yeah, right (Sarcasm mode off).

I like the Honda concept, it has possibilities. Providing of course that the law of cock-up doesn't get in the way. However, Honda have a good track record of delivering technical solutions, so I will remain guardedly sanguine about the future. Even if it isn't going to become mainstream until 2018.

Global 'Cool it' Video

Although I don't agree with the "It's all CO2" argument, and that the climate changes with or without human influence, I like this video and what Bjorn Lomberg has to say. Especially his approach to the arithmetic of the situation. Loved his explanation that 'saving' one Polar Bear (Maybe, maybe not) a year in fifty years time with Carbon tax was pointless because 3-500 Ursus maritimus are shot per year for making a nuisance of themselves. Want to prevent 'heat deaths'? Some air conditioning might be a good idea. Oh, and what about the cold related death toll? Which is ten times any caused by heat.

As Bjorn points out, if you want to make a difference, increasing the albedo of urban areas and planting more greenery seems like a far more sensible idea than the economic seppuku of 'cap and trade' and 'carbon taxes'. More money for energy R&D would be good too. Put some more cash into projects which can bring positive results, like jobs in technology research and production. More efficient Solar panels? Maybe? Cleaner, and more efficient power production? Yes, good idea. Cleaner and more efficient cars? Definitely. Money into Fusion power research? Yes, a priority.

We need research and development. Anyone who has been in business knows that a healthy, well managed R&D department underpins a companies ability to keep producing better products and so keep making a profit. Bjorn makes his points well. Spend less on the 'climate' and more on adaptation.

H/T Theo Spark

Sea Lion surprise

Took time out from the day job to take Dog for a good walk along the sea front and came across this piece of waterfront theatre macabre, a decidedly deceased Sea Lion. Possibly a Steller because of the lighter coat colour and wider, flatter snout. It's also over the maximum size (2.5m) for a California Sea Lion. The one in the pictures I took is 2.74m long as close as I could measure.
The scale in the picture can be ascertained by the tape measure, which is stretched out to twelve inches in the top picture (305mm) and twenty four inches (610mm) in the picture below. As you can see, the corpse is pretty fresh and despite the gulls having pulled the eyes out, is in pretty good condition. Another couple of tides will change things though. My smaller walking staff as seen in both pictures is 50 inches (1.27m)long to give a further idea of scale.

Now this is the third dead marine mammal I've come across in the last four months or so on the same hundred metre piece of waterfront. On this one there were two blemishes in the pelt that could possibly be bullet holes, but I can't be sure because I've only ever seen bullet holes in people before now (Long story, one I'll save for another day. Suffice it to say I didn't cause the holes in the people).

Two dead seals and a Sea Lion washed up within four months on the same stretch of shoreline? That I think pushes the envelope of coincidence a bit too much. Has someone been potting the local Pinniped population? I'm told that it happens. Possibly as a measure to protect the local Salmon population, which is currently at a low.

Am I a conspiracist?

Well until I read that not believing in ‘global warming’ could make you a conspiracy theorist, I would have thought it quite reasonable to assume that someone was promoting the ‘cause’ against hard evidence. Never even considered that I was a conspiracy nut. Now, according to the UK Daily Telegraph, believing that there must be some kind of agenda for promoting the idea of Anthropogenic climate change makes you a whack job conspiracy theorist. Admittedly it is number 29 on the list, but to put it ahead of ‘Chemtrails’? Oh come on guys, get real.

Real conspiracy theories are based on a strange logic that can leap tall buildings (and factual evidence) in a single bound. A really good one is that all those who do not believe in Anthropogenic climate change are in the pay of ‘Big oil’. Funnily enough, the amount garnered in funding from the oil companies and other sources (Under $10 million) is dwarfed by the absolutely wodges of dosh being chucked around to promote the opposing view (An admitted $300 Million and then some). Kayaking to the North Pole to 'prove global warming', and being stopped by ice a good four degrees of latitude earlier than Nansen's attempt in 1893. Yet he was lauded for his 'success' at 10 Downing Street. Go figure. That's flying in the face of historical evidence for you. Despite being told that the Polar Bear is declining, more reputable sources say that the population has undergone a fivefold increase since the 1960's. It has all the hallmarks of a conspiracy, but I don't think the people promoting 'the end is nigh' are clever enough for that.

The facts are out in the real world. Not in the distorting mirror of certain media outlets editorial policy. CO2 is not the answer. It's an excuse.

In academia it’s been almost a running joke for several years that sticking ‘and the effects / influence of climate change’ into the title of your research proposal is a guaranteed way to get funding. People who take the contrary view are denied a media platform. This is not conspiracy, it's actually happening.

When 31,000+ people (Meteorologists and Climatologists included) with high level degrees (Over 3000 with Doctorates) sign a thing called the Manhattan declaration, does that not give it more validity than the 2,500 claimed to have contributed to the latest IPCC report? Although according to several sources, only four actual papers were quoted from in the IPCC's 2007 report. Yet the IPCC report is given credence, even when the figures it relies on have been cherry picked from a very small data sample.

Even when temperature figures have to be adjusted using an obscure methodology which GISS won’t publicise and doesn't match the more accurate Satellite data. McIntyre successfully debunked Manns ‘Hockey stick’ graph showing that you could put almost any data you pleased, and the damn thing would still put out the distinctive sudden upward trend. Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre forced NASA's GISS into a 2007 'climbdown' over the statement that the 1990's was the warmest decade on record (It's actually the 1930's, a period of industrial decline). Temperature measurements are taken from recording stations in hot spots on car parks, and by other local heat sources which give false positives on temperature data. See surfacestations.org for the results. What’s not to get?

To suggest that Earth’s temperature increases are all mankind’s fault, or that the days are sunny / rainy / snowy / whatever is not only hubris but downright irrational when you actually look at the evidence. Did stone age man go into paroxysms of guilt believing his camp fires had caused all the ice to melt and kill off the Mammoths? Get a grip. This planet could lose mankind tomorrow and within a hundred years you’d be hard pressed to find any trace of us as a species.

Additionally, Eco-journalism is the fat teat upon which many humble scriveners have set their metaphorical lips. I don’t blame them. There’s lots of money in it and we all have to eat.

Every company that makes Nuclear, Wind or Solar generation equipment has something to gain by promoting the ‘End is nigh unless you do something about it by purchasing our products’ viewpoint. The EU is actively promoting ‘carbon trading’. That isn’t conspiracy; it’s bloody cold hard fact. There’s serious money to be made. Providing of course everyone is happy to pay extra to the 'carbon traders' for the necessities of everyday life (Goods need transport, transport needs fuel, a 'Carbon levy' on fuel will drive the price of transported goods up).

No wonder any contrary view is being demonised. No wonder the ice cap increase in Antarctica and the near record Arctic ice growth is studiously ignored in the mainstream media, yet every sunny day is supposedly a ‘symptom of global warming’. Every cold day too. They get you coming and going. Oh and the 'warmest on record' reporting isn't worth a damn if your records only go back thirty years. When it comes to climate, you need centuries of data to 'prove' a trend. This isn't just me, there are some quite eminent people out there saying it too. Funny how so many are 'retired'and no longer have to worry about jobs or funding isn't it? People in the media or politics who speak out against the CO2 theory are being sidelined or even sacked. This too is incontravertible fact. So where's the flaming conspiracy?

I’m just amazed anybody believes in the anthropogenic viewpoint any more.

Me, I'm fed up of the whole AGW business and only go commenting to counter the outright falsehoods and misrepresentations. The politicians who see the hype and jump on the bandwagon to raise taxes to buy votes for themselves. The companies who use the palaver simply to promote their products. The mainstrean media outlets who use it to sell copies. Panderers all. If the proposed taxes only affected them and not me I'd blithely sail on by and snigger behind my hand at all the fuss. It's Piltdown Man all over again. Paley's watchmaker fallacy.

Belief in the Anthropogenic CO2 (man made CO2) theory of climate change / global warming is symptomatic of everyday people's inability to understand technology, post millennial anxiety if you will. It is a natural reaction for people to fear what they do not understand, that much is hard wired into most humans as a survival strategy. Ergo they take comfort in various religions and other anti technological belief systems, of which Man made climate change is one. Believing in Aliens from outer space is another.

To conclude; I'm not mad. There isn't a conspiracy. It's just a massive cock-up and I'm genuinely pissed off with being lied to. That is all. Now I have better things to do.

And in closing.......

What doesn't it cause? From Numberwatch via Climate-Skeptic, Tom Nelson and Marc Morano.

Right, this is the phenomenon that's got the current President elect of the USA all steamed up. He promises 'action' on climate change. Seems like it won't be only Bush that people will be calling stupid in the future. Glad the Harper administration north of the 49th parallel doesn't seem so keen on economic suicide. Canadians know about cold.

A climate confession (Or Why I became a 'denier')

Once I believed in the theory of global warming. I thought, quite sincerely, that mankind was going to destroy life on Earth with an excess of CO2.

Being of an enquiring mind, I began to look at the figures and theories to gain a greater understanding of the subject to see if there was more I could do. What actually happened was that all my researches gave me quite a large reality check. The physics just didn't stack up. The increased CO2 levels actually lagged, not led an increase in temperature. There were proper, peer reviewed scientific papers about ice cores which proved this beyond all reasonable doubt.

Then I began to look at the history of climate over the past few millennia. Ice (or frost) fairs on the Thames? Greenland with thriving agricultural communities? Vineyards in northern England? Northwest passage ice free? All of these things are well recorded throughout our history. All well before human mass industrialised society. What on Earth was going on?

I looked at the effect of volcanic eruptions upon regional climate. I looked at the sunspot cycles, magnetosphere variations, the cosmic ray correlations of cloud formation, and then had a second long cool look at the original theory of CO2 climate change. In order to 'work' the theory needs an infinitely thick atmosphere, which planet Earth doesn't have. In addition, CO2 only trapped sunlight in two specific wavelengths. This was a bit of a revelation to me. My own amateur research, designed to gain a greater understanding of man made climate change actually led me to a change of heart.

The doom laden predictions in the media also made me pause for thought. Then I began to look at the old 'new ice age' predictions from the 1970's. Industry was on the decline in the Western hemisphere and people were already talking about a 'post industrial society' as early as the 1980's. So where was all this extra CO2 coming from? Cars alone? Yes, but improved engine technology is resulting in cleaner air. I remember what walking along the streets could be like before cleaner burning car engines became commonplace. The diesel fumes alone used to give me massive migraine type headaches. The same for jet engine technology. Power stations were becoming more efficient, and fluidised bed technology and reclaim technology was resulting in air cleaner than I could remember. Especially in the cities. Smog is less common than it was, and I remember how downright dirty the air in Birmingham, England could be back in the 1970's. In the late 1990's I genuinely thought we were winning the war on human produced air pollution.

Then there were the long range forecasts. My faith in those disappeared back in the 1980's after a series of weather events were gotten completely wrong by no less august a body than the UK Meteorological Office. They weren't just wrong, they made the opposite prediction. Likewise, all the predictions of global catastrophe I've been reading since the 1970's all have one major factor in common; they haven't happened.

When I looked more deeply at the physics and geophysics, I realised the doom and gloom predictions couldn't happen. For example, one prediction was about the Gulf Stream grinding to a sudden halt. To understand why this cannot happen you have to look at the Earth's ocean currents as a whole. The northwards flowing Gulf stream has a correlating deep water sister that provides recirculation of arctically cooled water, and as warm water flows on the surface, this flows underneath it to rise southward in warmer tropical waters and be reheated to become the Gulf stream again. If you think how many cubic miles of water this shifts in a day, you begin to see how idiotic this specific prediction is. The Gulf stream, and North Atlantic drift are part of the global Thermohaline (THC) circulation of ocean waters. The energy level changes for such an event would require a massive freezing, not warming. As I have posited before, the Physics just doesn't stack up. The disaster predictions are, if viewed objectively, downright anti-scientific. They are almost without exception emotional, and have more to do with politics than science.

Now there is a warming effect from greenhouse gases. Without it the Earth would be much colder. This warming effect has a limit though, and can be thought of as a blanket around the Earth. This 'blanket' also radiates a varying amount of energy out into space. Like an actual woollen blanket it can only retain so much heat energy. Anyone who has actually spent a night sleeping under the stars can confirm this. It can get awfully cold, even in tropical climes at night, and that is exactly what half our little blue green home world is sitting in; night. Year in, year out. Out of the glare of the sun, the temperature of space is very cold. Minus two hundred and seventy six degrees Celsius cold. Cold enough to freeze the very oxygen in your haemoglobin, and then some. That is what Earth orbits in. Without the suns heat there would be no little blue green world at all, because all the complex systems that produce the water and air could not happen. This is a very simplified view of an extremely complex system, but for all that is nonetheless valid because it works as it does.

There was also the political aspect. Back in my activist days (Tree planting, campaigning against green belt development), it was all rather genteel; and apart from raised voices in meetings and threats of lying down in front of earth moving machinery, the Environmental lobby was a small and mostly local affair. In the 1990's however, I noticed new voices at the back. More strident, more extreme. Quite frankly what the more conservative of our number called "serious wierdo's" were joining the movement. Those who didn't baulk at using violent tactics. The extreme Animal Rights activists, previously a minority, became mainstream. As did the anti-roads protesters. In the face of the new extreme Environmentalism I felt sidelined, my more low key views about a balanced environment ignored. Gradually I stopped going to meetings and disassociated myself from the various causes. Then when GreenPeace started telling lies over Brent Spar that was the last straw for me and as I watched the other causes like the World Wildlife Fund and RSPCA become ever more politicised, I knew that they were not causes I could support any more.

Then there was Al Gore's film, 'an inconvenient truth'. That was so full of pseudo scientific nonsense that it actually made me actively disbelieve in man made climate change. It was partially because of the misrepresentations within that film that I became a 'climate change atheist'. Nothing to date has made me want to change that outlook. In fact as the pro man made climate change lobby grows ever more shrill and hysterical, calling people who don't agree with them 'Climate criminals', 'Climate change deniers' or in the pay of 'Big Oil' oh pur-leaze!, I grow ever more convinced that they have lost the debate. My reasoning is this, if they had truth on their side, they wouldn't need to call people names when they disagreed with them.

Someone is bankrolling these strident voices. Probably not directly, but there is a small number of very rich people who stand to lose big time if 'Carbon trading' doesn't pay off. Al Gore alone is reputed to have pumped three hundred million dollars into the cause of promoting the apocalyptic view. That's not loose change. It has been suggested that companies with a vested interest in 'Green' technology have been implicated in promoting the anthropogenic element.

This is my last word on the subject; any effect man has on the 'climate' is generally localised. CO2 alone can't be the culprit because it has both physics and history against it.

It's not that the climate doesn't change, it's just that any human element is minimal and overall, inconsequential. The climate changes without, and even in spite of humankind. Committing economic seppuku for something they had no control over will be a very sad epitaph for the Western democracies.

I like this man

Roger Helmer MEP, speaking in debate in the EU Parliament. A fuller version of his quite reasonable view that climate change alarmism is simply that; alarmism. Don't agree with everthing he says, but most is backed up by sound logic and calm appreciation of the facts, not the hype. Find it here. At 29 minutes and 18 seconds it's a bit of a long furrow to plough, but it had me nodding along in agreement.

H/T An Englishmans Castle

Where he and I fundamentally disagree is my contention that you have to have a vested interest, be economically and scientifically illiterate or have your head stuck up between your pert little buttocks to believe all the global warming climate scare stories. It's just weather, and to paraphrase a quote from the Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayyam;

“The moving clouds do rain, and having rained move on. Nor all thy clamouring nor all thy cries, can say that cloud was raining lies.”