John Stapleton | November 29, 2008
Article from: The Australian

EUROPE is shivering through an extreme cold snap. One of the coldest winters in the US in more than 100 years is toppling meteorological records by the dozen, and the Arctic ice is expanding. Even Australia has been experiencing unseasonable snow.

But the stories about global warming have not stopped, not for a second.

In May last year, The Sydney Morning Herald breathlessly reported that climate change had reduced the Southern Ocean’s ability to soak up carbon dioxide, claiming that as a result global warming would accelerate even faster than previously thought.

The story was picked up and repeated in a number of different journals around the region.

But this week the CSIRO suggested the exact opposite. “The new study suggests that Southern Ocean currents, and therefore the Southern Ocean’s ability to soak up carbon dioxide, have not changed in recent decades,” it said. This time the story got no coverage in the SMH, and was run on the ABC’s website as evidence the Southern Ocean was adapting to climate change.

CSIRO oceanographer Stuart Rintoul, a co-author of the study, said it did not disprove global warming and he did not believe its lack of an alarmist tone was responsible for the poor coverage.

But the story is being pointed out as an example of media bias on global warming. Critics argue that the ABC and the Fairfax media are the worst offenders.

ABC board member Keith Windschuttle said yesterday the national broadcaster was in breach of its charter to provide a diversity of views. “The ABC and the Fairfax press rarely provide an opportunity for global warming sceptics to put their view,” Mr Windschuttle said. “The science is not settled.

“We are seeing an increasing number of people with impeccable scientific backgrounds questioning part or whole of the story. I don’t believe the ABC has been reflecting the genuine diversity of the debate. Under its own act, the ABC is required to produce a diversity of views.”

Bob Carter of James Cook University, one of the world’s best-known climate change sceptics, said there was no doubt Windschuttle was correct.

“With very few exceptions, press reporters commenting on global warming are either ignorant of the science matters involved, or wilfully determined to propagate warming hysteria because that fits their personal world view, or are under editorial direction to focus the story around the alarmist headline grab — and often all three,” Professor Carter said.

National Climate Centre former head William Kininmonth said coverage of global warming had been hysterical and was getting worse, with a large public relations effort inundating the media with information from the alarmist side.

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Here is an interesting example from 2003. The paper reported on is here. Compare for yourself the claims of dogmatism against the actual arguments provided in the paper. What’s interesting, though, is that CO2Science were good enough to make a prediction:

Projecting ahead, therefore, if anomalous events such as those recorded in the 1990s continue to occur at similar intervals, the global atmospheric CH4 concentration should continue to rise – but only very slowly – for just a few more years, after which the declining background CH4 growth rate, which has already turned negative, will have dropped low enough to have the capacity to totally overwhelm any short-term positive impacts of periodic anomalous CH4 spikes. Then we should be able to see an actual decline in the atmosphere’s global CH4 concentration, which should gradually accelerate in the negative direction, as subsequent anomalous CH4 spikes fail to penetrate into positive territory.

Turns out that methane’s on the rise again. How long that will continue for we can’t say, but I think we can reject CO2Science’s simplistic extrapolation-based prediction.

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Thanks. Have a look at these:

The best source of scores of papers arguing against catastrophic global warming is:

http://www.co2science.org/

A secondary site:

http://climatesci.org/

A useful site that highlights the bizarre range of catastrophic consequences being attributed to global warming.:

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

It would be difficult for a rational person to read all the
items on this site and still take global warming catastrophism seriously
given the number of contradictions.

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“How else do you do the crossword?”

While texting and driving through rush hour traffic, of course – you know us urbanites.

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Sitzpinkler?

How else do you do the crossword?

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Geography is the analysis of local conditions, whether that be physical or social – nothing wrong with that! Rah!

Sitzpinkler?

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There are plenty of peer reviewed papers which show that 400 ppm or more was not uncommon prior to 1945.

So it’s back to Beck.

Very old peer-reviewed papers.

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Getting the AGW propaganda straight from VUW politbureau?

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