DAVID ROTHBARD & CRAIG RUCKER - The Washington Times

As the United Nations wrapped up its recent climate conference in Bonn, talks organizer Christiana Figueres proclaimed that climate change is the “the most important negotiation the world has ever faced.” Faced with real problems – financial meltdowns, unemployment, war and genuine human suffering – the world no longer agrees.

It’s a good thing human productivity doesn’t threaten the global thermostat the way the U.N. would have us believe. If it did, we’d be cooked. Countries rich and poor are backing away from commitments they made years ago during rosier economic times, before the public became aware of Climategate, renewable energy costs and genuine debate.

The Kyoto Protocol, the only binding international agreement signed since the global warming scare began, expires after 2012. Canada, Russia and Japan have declared they will not renew; China and the United States never signed it, and the U.S. has made it plain it is not about to. And poor countries are becoming less enamored about signing on, as they realize hard economic times mean there will be little climate “mitigation” and “restitution” money coming their way from (formerly) rich countries.

Even die-hard warmists increasingly recognize that bureaucratic solutions hatched at these conferences are rife with waste, fraud and abuse. They may enrich a few, but they are powerless to control Earth’s climate.

In March, German investigators reported that 850 million euros disappeared when shady companies swarmed into carbon trading, emissions and energy businesses.Criminal enterprises raked in tens of millions, fended off regulators with delaying tactics and then announced bankruptcy or vanished. An Italian sting operation resulted in arrests of wind-farm developers who billed the country for subsidies but never produced a kilowatt of electricity.

London’s liberal Guardian newspaper was aghast to learn that the World Bank’s Biocarbon Fund had arranged to pay European “entrepreneurs” $1 million to establish a system under which 60,000 Kenyans would restrict themselves to farming under rigidly controlled, inefficient, “sustainable” techniques. For that they will receive $1.4 million over 20 years.

That’s right, the beneficent World Bank will enrich more Europeans so 60,000 Kenyans can receive $23.83 apiece for 20 years of drudgery, poverty and misery – a princely $1.19 a year.

Even the European Union finally understands how little bureaucracy and energy deprivation dictates the climate. “It is not enough for the EU to simply sign up for another commitment period,” EU climate representative Jurgen Lefevere admitted. “We only represent 11 percent of global emissions.”

Burning fossil fuels contributes only a fraction of total annual atmospheric carbon dioxide buildup, and the EU contributes just 11 percent of that. The EU’s commitment to slashing CO2 emissions by 20 percent invites corruption, has no control over Chinese or Indian emissions and has no effect on the climate.

The biggest divide evident in Bonn was between the United States and large emerging economies. Even Obama administration officials who are thoroughly committed to man-made global warming catastrophe claims finally recognize the fraud problem. In Bonn, the U.S. insisted that all countries subject their emission reduction claims to verification.

However, China will accept only an agreement that lacks verification – and guarantees the right to cheat. Meanwhile, the Chinese are happy to be “the world’s leader” in manufacturing wind turbines – 95 percent – which they gladly sell to guilt-ridden Western countries.

China and other nations support the notion that prosperous countries owe the world restitution for the “sin” of engaging in the Industrial Revolution and becoming prosperous. We can only hope some nation’s representative will have the courage to remind China and its fellow climate travelers that the West never forced them to spend 50 years mired in communism, bureaucracy and stagnation.

While it is encouraging that the global warming camp no longer has things entirely its own way, celebration would be premature. For all the gnashing of teeth and complaining about corporate influence we hear from global warming bureaucrats and campaigners, the truth is that, today, the warmists are the establishment.

Billions are being redistributed to researchers, developing nations, carbon speculators, alternative energy investors and other carbon profiteers – who would like to turn billions into trillions. Pity the poor carbon traders whose markets expire with Kyoto. Not all have their villa in the sun yet.

But rest assured, they will do whatever is necessary to get theirs. Big Warming will not surrender its hold on Western taxpayers without a fight.

The warmist camp plans to retake the initiative at the December U.N. conference in Durban, South Africa. It intends to turn back the clock to the time when the media would attribute any weather or nature event to global warming, without question or critical examination. Al Gore’s recent RollingStone diatribe essentially calls on the media to censure climate disaster skeptics and adopt a one-sided man-made warming narrative.

The NewYorkTimes may go along, but the huge and growing alternative media will not. This week’s Heartland Institute international conference of climate-alarm skeptics in Washington will only reinforce the lack of evidence for man-made Armageddon, and the disastrous consequences of staying the current U.N. course.

Many believe the last-minute appearance by dozens of world leaders crippled the Copenhagen climate conference. But with the big names absent from Cancun, Mexico, and now Bonn, the U.N. wants them back.

Ms. Figueres capped the Bonn conference with a call for “high-level political attention.” If she succeeds, just imagine the mischief a gathering of heads of state, foreign ministers, bureaucrats, researchers, green campaigners and carbon profiteers can do at an African beach resort.

Then imagine how nearly impossible it will be to repair the harm they inflict. Action must be taken to avert such a result.

David Rothbard is president of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. Craig Rucker is CFACT’s executive director.

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This morning CFACT & EIKE presented a scientific briefing at the UN conference on climate change in Bonn, Germany.  The briefing was introduced by Wolfgang Müller of EIKE and Berlin’s Manhattan Institut and featured Professor em. Friedrich Karl Ewert a geologist from Paderborn University and Dr. Horst Borchert of the Johannes-Gutenberg Universität in Mainz.  The presentations build upon the analysis of Professor S. Fred Singer and provide information on the geological record, solar activity and the big question — is our climate governed by man or nature?

Holger Thuss, Executive Director, CFACT Europe

The UN climate conference in Bonn opens today and CFACT has partnered with EIKE to send a delegation led by Dr. Holger Thuss.  The UNFCCC is banking on these subsidiary conferences to set the stage for major agreements in Durban South Africa in December.  The global warming scare and the inept and corrupt nature of proposed solutions have fallen far out of favor with the public and policy makers are taking notice and defecting.  CFACT has scheduled a  UNFCCC hosted press conference for Wednesday, 14:00 CET in the Hotel Maritim’s room Haydn.  The press conference may be webcast live by the UN.  Stay in touch with CFACT Europe for further updates from Bonn.

French wire service AFP reports that Russia, Japan and Canada have all indicated that they will cease following carbon limits agreed to under the Kyoto protocol.  In addition, President Obama stated at a dinner Thursday night that he does not intend to bring the U.S. into Kyoto.

The global warming folks are desperate to obtain a renewal of Kyoto at the UN conference on climate change in Durban, South Africa in December.  The expiration of Kyoto places the hopes and dreams of carbon profiteers in peril as their carbon trading markets are set to expire along with the protocol.  The expiration of Kyoto also places the fortunes of those seeking to cash in on offset, subsidy and other raids upon the treasuries of developed nations in jeopardy.  We suggest the UNFCCC create a fund to support career counseling and the transition of global warming campaigners and profiteers into constructive endeavours.

Which nation will be next to abandon the global warming scare?

READ MORE at French Expatica

In a recent speech the former German Chancellor and Socialist leader said that he was concerned, “by the phenomenon of global warming and its alleged consequences. We know that there have always been naturally occurring ice ages and warm periods; what we don’t know is how significant the human-induced contribution to present and future global warming is and will be.

The climate policy adopted by many governments is still in its infancy. The publications provided by an international group of scientists (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC) have encountered skepticism, especially since some of their researchers have shown themselves to be fraudsters (Betrüger). In any case, some governments’ publicly stated targets are far less scientific, but rather politically endorsed.

It seems to me that the time has come that one of our top scientific organisations should scrutinise, under the microscope, the work of the IPCC, in a critical and realistic way, and then present the resulting conclusions to the German public in a comprehensible manner ….”

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CHURCHVILLE, VA—It’s nice when people validate your work. Fred Singer and I—co-authors of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years—are currently basking in the glow of a new paper that affirms the earth’s long, moderate, natural climate cycle. The study is by Dr. U.R. Rao, former chair of India’s Space Research Organization. He says solar variations and cosmic rays account for 40 percent of the world’s recent global warming.

Dr. Rao says the data between 1960 and 2005 show lots fewer cosmic rays hitting the earth, due to a periodic expansion of the sun’s magnetic field. The bigger solar magnetic field blocked many of the cosmic rays that would otherwise have hit earth. Fewer cosmic rays hitting the earth meant fewer water droplets shattering in our atmosphere, and thus fewer of the low, wet clouds that deflect solar heat back into space. So the earth warmed.

Fred and I tried to tell the world in 2007 that the moderate 1500-year Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle was the cause of the warming since 1850, based on historic and paleoclimatic evidence. The cosmic ray linkage was put forth in 2008 by Henrik Svensmark of Denmark. The UN’s panel on climate change dismissed that whole approach, claiming the variations in the sun’s irradiance were far too small to account for the rapid warming from 1976–98.

The flaw in the UN reasoning is clear, however. The alarmists claim the global warming since 1976 has been too rapid to be caused by natural forces, and therefore must be man-made. However, the earth’s Industrial Revolution went global after 1945—releasing the first big flush of CO2 emissions. That burst of greenhouse gases should have sharply boosted the earth’s temperatures. Instead, the earth’s temperature declined from 1940–75.

Commenting on Rao’s paper, V. Ramanathan of the U.S.-based Scripps Institute of Oceanography says, “The observed rapid warming trends during the last 40 years cannot be accounted for by trends in [cosmic rays].” But didn’t earth’s warming from 1915–1940, too early to blame on CO2,  move just about as fast for just about as long as the “unnatural” warming from 1976–98?

Did human greenhouse emissions account for the other 60 percent of our Modern Warming? Well, a modern city is fully capable of warming its own temperatures by 7 degrees C or more through expanded brick and blacktop and lost greenery. A huge number of rural weather stations have been dropped from the rolls in recent years, putting our thermometers still more heavily in debt to Urban Heat Islands.

A study by Dr. Eugenia Kalnay of the University of Maryland says 40 percent of our net temperature increase since 1940 was actually caused by expanding urban heat islands and land use changes. Since the official net warming over that period is only about 0.2 degree C, that doesn’t leave much for Al Gore to deplore.

Nor do these studies offer much support for the EPA’s recent finding that global warming presents “public endangerment.” One of EPA’s own senior scientists produced a contrary evaluation, but he’s been retired and his paper has been ignored up by the government and the mass media.

India may be the most scientifically advanced country that refuses to agree the current global warming is man-made. Dr. Rao’s paper has just been accepted by India’s most prestigious science journal, Current Science.

Sources

1) The Hindustan Times, January 21, 2011.
2) E. Kalney and M. Cai. “Estimating the Impact of Urbanization and Land Use on U.S. Surface Temperature Trends: Preliminary Report,” Nature 423 (29 May 2003): 528-31.

In the never ending debate on what really triggered WWI, an interesting observation is that August 1914 was one of the warmest months in Europe, during the last century. With no AC, politicians simply went bananas.

Naturally, the underlying factors were multiple; trigger happy, sometimes very old, politicians and officers, negligence to the risks involved in a full scale war with the still new military technology, old alliances, you name it. But the observation is still interesting, and probably correct at least for some of the major players.

In a recent issue of Science, the authors try to take a climate approach to the fall of the Roman Empire, arguing that the Germanic tribes finally invading Rome, were driven south by severe draughts caused by climate change.

Again, there’s probably some sense to this. At the same time, empires tend to fall for multiple, often combined reasons, such as corruption, uncontrollable expansion or just plain discontent, or incompetence among the rulers.

For some reason, the authors in Science find it necessay to point out that today’s warming is unprecendented. Really? As far as I know, the history of the world has always been rather turbulent, both concerning politics and science. And climate.

Applying an alarmist perspective to the Roman Empire gets complicated indeed, given that you really believe that climate can’t vary without human intervention. Did the northern tribes eat too much meat, or did the vicious Romans bomb them with CO2? Was this extraordinary technology of warfare then hidden until 1914,  later to be exposed by the IPCC, or has it been the well kept secret of a mysterious society, the Knights of Climate Control, based on a non-discovered island and devoted to fight civilization wherever it should appear.

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How can we ever forget the Climate-gate scandal that erupted right in time for the Copenhagen debacle. Or fail to note that, interestingly enough, some of the more stunning revelations – Holland-gate etc – were made just after the conference.

Now, during the count down for Cancun, it’s worth the effort to try to recall the events of  the past year, and what Climate-gate was really about. My admirable colleague, Professor Ingemar Nordin recently posted a reminderon the Climatescam site. Definitely worth reading. Nordin tracks back to some of the more peculiar early mail conversations revealed.

- Few have read the email from 2005 where Phil Jones writes John Christy, “The scientific group would no doubt come down on me if I had said that the world has cooled since 1998. OK, it has it but there are just seven years of data and it is not statistically significant “. Or where he concludes “As you know, I am not political. If anything, I hope that climate change occurs so that science will prove to be right, regardless of consequences.This is not to be political, just to be selfish. “

Comments not necessary. The Climatrescam site also provides weather forcasts for Cancun. Looks sunny.

Sent to us by our friend Drieu Godefrid*

[translation from the original French via Google].

____________

Today the Academy of Sciences released its report on the climate in which it validates the whole three thousand pages of the latest IPCC report and its conclusions, it is time for the masks to fall. I am ashamed.

This is the confession of a climate prostitute.

Yes, I confess, I wrote a book discussing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) under false pretenses;

Yes, I confess, my motives were not disinterested;

Yes, I confess, I’m sold to lobbyists, for reasons both financial and ideological;

Yes, I confess, global warming seemed a potentially lethal threat to the global capitalism that I idolize;

Yes, I confess, my work on the IPCC is an order of a cartel of companies, including oil, especially in Europe, whose publication was intended to open up the columns of newspapers and television to reach the general public;

Yes, I confess, the many “forums” and I gave interviews to mark the release of this book are only variations on the same theme that the IPCC is a false political organization;

Yes, I confess, I never thought through a quarter of the nonsense that I stirred;

Yes, I confess, whole chapters of my book were “blown away” by agencies and foreign think tanks;

Yes, I confess, I have extensively studied the precepts of Gramsci and Bernays (Propaganda, 1928) and the strategy developed by the tobacco lobby in the sixties and later to counter the first scientific studies attesting to the harm of smoking;

Yes, I confess, I have therefore exploited the noble concept of doubt to discredit the scientific work of the IPCC — I am a merchant of doubt;

Yes, I confess, I never doubted global warming or its anthropogenic origins, although these issues are beyond my very modest skill;

Yes, I confess, I have distinguished the debate about the IPCC’s climate debate itself so as to insinuate doubt into the minds of citizens;

Yes, I confess, though imperfect like everything that is human, the IPCC is indeed scientific, not political as vilely I tried to make believe;

Yes, I confess, I fear my safety forbids me to say more;

Yes, I confess, I am not a prostitute, but an intellectual climate realist.

(*) Author of Le GIEC est mort, vive la science! (The IPCC is dead, long live science!)  (Texquis, 2010), a book funded by dirty money.

Note from CFACT:  If you don’t “get it” click here and here.

Follow Drieu at the Hayek Institute.

Original French after the jump.

Confession d’un prostitué climatique

par Drieu Godefridi (*)

Aujourd’hui que l’Académie des sciences a publié son rapport sur le climat, dans lequel elle valide globalement les trois mille pages du dernier rapport du GIEC et ses conclusions,  il est temps que tombent les masques. J’ai honte.

Ceci est la confession d’un prostitué climatique.

Oui, je le confesse, j’ai rédigé un ouvrage critiquant le Groupe d’experts intergouvernemental sur l’évolution du climat (GIEC) sous de fallacieux prétextes;

Oui, je le confesse, mes motifs n’étaient pas désintéressés;

Oui, je le confesse, je me suis vendu à des lobbys, pour des raisons à la fois financières et idéologiques;

Oui, je le confesse, le réchauffement climatique m’est apparu comme une menace potentiellement léthale pour ce capitalisme mondialisé que j’idolâtre;

Oui, je le confesse, mon ouvrage sur le GIEC est une commande d’un cartel de compagnies, notamment pétrolières, notamment européennes, dont la publication visait à m’ouvrir les colonnes des quotidiens et les plateaux de télévision pour toucher le grand public;

Oui, je le confesse, les multiples « tribunes » et interviews que j’ai données à l’occasion de la sortie de ce livre ne sont que des variations sur le même thème mensonger du GIEC comme organisme politique ;

Oui, je le confesse, je n’ai jamais cru au quart des sornettes que j’y agite;

Oui, je le confesse, des chapitres entiers m’en ont été « soufflés » par des officines et des think tanks étrangers;

Oui, je le confesse, j’ai longuement étudié les préceptes de Gramsci et de Bernays (Propagande, 1928) et la stratégie développée par le lobby du tabac dans les années soixante et suivantes pour contrer les premières études scientifiques qui attestaient de la nocivité de la cigarette;

Oui, je le confesse, j’ai dès lors instrumentalisé le noble concept de doute pour jeter le discrédit sur les travaux scientifiques du GIEC, je ne suis qu’un marchand de doute;

Oui, je le confesse, je n’ai jamais douté du réchauffement climatique ni de son caractère anthropique, bien que ces questions soient très au delà de mes modestes compétences;

Oui, je le confesse, je n’ai distingué le débat sur le GIEC du débat climatique proprement dit que pour insinuer le doute dans l’esprit des citoyens;

Oui, je le confesse, bien qu’imparfait comme tout ce qui est humain, le GIEC est bel et bien un organisme scientifique et non politique comme j’ai vilement tenté de le faire accroire;

Oui, je le confesse, j’ai peur et ma sécurité m’interdit d’en dire davantage ;

Oui, je le confesse, je ne suis pas un intellectuel mais un prostitué climatique.

(*) Auteur de « Le GIEC est mort, vive la science ! » (Texquis, 2010), un livre financé par de l’argent sale.