Recently in Climate Category

Tony Watts:

Using a well-accepted metric called the Accumulated Cyclone Energy index or ACE for short (Bell and Chelliah 2006), which has been used by Klotzbach (2006) and Emanuel (2005) (PDI is analogous to ACE), and most recently by myself in Maue (2009) , simple analysis shows that 24-month running sums of global ACE or hurricane energy have plummeted to levels not seen in 30 years.

This should be good news.

UPDATE: A hurricane version of the Gore Effect?

UPDATE: Killer tornados down by 2/3, 2009 deaths only 17% of last year's total...

Breitbart:

LONDON (AP) - Giving contraceptives to people in developing countries could help fight climate change by slowing population growth, experts said Friday. More than 200 million women worldwide want contraceptives, but don't have access to them, according to an editorial published in the British medical journal, Lancet. That results in 76 million unintended pregnancies every year. If those women had access to free condoms or other birth control methods, that could slow rates of population growth, possibly easing the pressure on the environment, the editors say.

First, here's the original Lancet article (reg req). (Where did they get the "76 million unintended pregnancies" number?)

Huge progress has been made since 1950 in both contraception and service delivery, but much remains to be done, especially in Africa. Worldwide, around 200 million women wish to delay or prevent pregnancy, but are not using effective contraception. Meeting their needs would cost about $3·9 billion a year, and could prevent 23 million unplanned births, 22 million induced abortions, 142 000 pregnancy-related deaths (including 53 000 from unsafe abortions) and 1·4 million infant deaths.135

Anna wants to know what Christians should be so afraid of about climate change agendas. Well, does one really need to put a fine point on what are "other birth control methods" and "contraception and service delivery"?

And then there's this pesky problem: Population control doesn't equate to greenhouse gas reduction.

Climatists roundly criticize industrialized nations, not the developing world, for contributing to excess atmospheric CO2. As the World Bank chart at right declares, "Individuals' emission in high-income countries overwhelm those in developing countries." At the same time most of these same countries allegedly contributing most to climate change are actually seeing a decrease in either growth rates or actual population.

And then there's China, famous for it's one-child policy. It currently holds the title of world's worst greenhouse gas emitter. With such a policy in place for the past 40 years shouldn't China be on the bottom of the list?

Dean Ohlman lays out - correctly, I think - the real issue which is not how many but where and what we're up to. Again, I agree with Anna and Ed and others that encourage us to all walk with much smaller footprints, including a smaller carbon footprint. But the population control and climate change agendas are quickly becoming indistinguishable. Even Rome is struggling with this.

Finally there's this whole matter of "unintended pregnancies." Other than the thousands of couples out there diligently trying to overcome childlessness, who defines when a baby is "unintended?" Be honest here - how many of you parents out there weren't surprised at the arrival of you kids? If they were unintended to you and your spouse, how about to their Creator?

Christians are being drawn into believing that every additional baby boy or girl born on earth is not a life created in God's image, but an unforgivable carbon spewing burden on the planet. The one spreading that belief is not a friend of mankind.

If there's anything I fear, Anna, that's it.

Interesting overview of Arctic temps here, and this video via the link.

MORE: From the comments, "Hard to believe that such scattered surface sources could be used to create an Arctic temperature average accurate enough to guide trillion dollar policies."

Guardian:

In the first case of its kind, an employment tribunal decided that Nicholson, 41, had views amounting to a "philosophical belief in climate change", allowing him the same legal protection against discrimination as religious beliefs.

Interesting:

Splicing data sets is a virtual necessity in climate research.  Let’s think about how I might get a 500,000 year temperature record.  For the first 499,000 years I probably would use a proxy such as ice core data to infer a temperature record.  From 150-1000 years ago I might switch to tree ring data as a proxy.  From 30-150 years ago I probably would use the surface temperature record.  And over the last 30 years I might switch to the satellite temperature measurement record.  That’s four data sets, with three splices.

Why is that important?

A number of the more famous recent findings in climate have coincided with splices in data sets.  The most famous is in Michael Mann’s hockey stick, where the upward slope at the end of the hockey stick occurs exactly at the point where tree ring proxy data is spliced to instrument temperature measurements.  In fact, if looking only at the tree ring data brought to the present, no hockey stick occurs (in fact the opposite occurs in many data sets he uses).   The obvious conclusion would have been that the tree ring proxy data might be flawed, and that it was not directly comparable with instrumental temperature records.  Instead, Al Gore built a movie around it. 

Read the whole thing. Interesting to see how data splices may be causing mayhem in the climate debate.

Speaking of mayhem... Apparently a number of climate change temperature reporting stations are in terrible locations (hot asphalt, etc) and pushing out bad data. Anthony Watts has set up a website that you can use to check the condition of your local site.

Now's your chance to really get involved in climate science, instead of just getting cranky about reluctant politicians.

Investor's Business Daily:

Already 20,000 overnight hotel stays that had been reserved for the December United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen have been canceled. Either a lot of people are losing interest — or they're thinking it will just be too cold.

Always appreciate Dean Ohlman's thoughtful approach to ecology. He's the nature writer for RBC Ministries, and he's good at it. He's got a series up called "Questions Evangelicals Ask About the Environment." Today's installment is on climate change, the evidence for it as put forth by Christian scientists, and how the Church should respond. MIT's Richard Lindzen says the IPCC's estimates on how CO2 impacts climate change are overdone.

This week the Heritage Foundation published a detailed report on the significant negative financial impacts climate change legislation will likely have on those living and working in each of our 50 states. The Brookings Institute reports that climate legislation will either have a net positive effect or little impact at all.

Climatists say the cost of not acting will swamp the cost of this legislation in the long run. Others say that the climate is warming but there's nothing we can do to stop it at this point and that the best way to spend the money is helping people adapt. Still others believe that warming is a good thing with benefits that should be accounted for, but aren't.

Even UN Foundation leaders who have led the charge for climate change legislation are shaking their heads at what politicians are doing with climate taxes in D.C.

As I chew on all of this on a Friday morning, I'm grateful for a Savior for whom the whole world is a footstool, and to whom we can go for wise counsel.

InsideEPA.com:

The House-passed climate cap-and-trade bill would prohibit EPA from using the PSD program to regulate GHGs, but Jackson has said that if Congress fails to pass a bill then EPA will use its air act authority to issue CO2 rules—though Jackson and other administration officials say their preference is for congressional action.

PublicIntergrity.org - "Agriculture, Higher Ed, Natural Gas, You Name It. Everyone’s Got a Lobbyist"

Numerous religious groups, from Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America , to the National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, have been lobbying on the bill over the past year. In the second quarter, another advocacy group joined in: the Americans United for Separation of Church and State, concerned about possible subsidies to “faith-based” organizations for energy system retrofitting.

Because, you know, subsidizing the cost of double-pane windows in churches clearly establishes government religion.