Aletho News

A Hell Week For Global Warming Alarmists: Crumbling Consensus, Inconvenient Data And Policy Rejection

By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | November 5, 2015

It hasn’t been a good week for the global warming alarmists. Three events have rocked the movement and caused alarmists to go into a state of alarm.

Putin calls global warming “a fraud”

The first event Russian President Vladimir Putin, who used to play along with the issue, has come out and called global warming science “a fraud,” one that is “designed to restrain industrial development.” According to the New York Times, Putin’s skepticism is based on Russian scientists having done “very, very extensive work trying to understand all sides of the climate debate” and that it is “clear that the climate is a complicated system” and that “the evidence presented for the need to ‘fight’ global warming was rather unfounded.”

NASA satellite measurements refute preposterous PIK models

The second event is described at the Swiss online daily Tagesanzeiger which presents a vivid example as to why people like Putin don’t believe the wild climate alarmism: There’s a huge chasm between the scary model projections coming from “leading” climate institutes and the real observations themselves.

The Swiss daily begins by writing that the Germany-based Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) projects that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could “rapidly disintegrate” and cause sea levels to rise 3 meters, all based on “their own model simulations,” which incorporate “feedback effects.” The Tagesanzeiger writes, however, that the PIK was unable to provide “a reason for the loss of stability in West Antarctica.” The Swiss online daily in effect presents a PIK theory that is fraught with assumptions, and is ultra-lean on recorded data.

To illustrate that there is a total lack of consensus with respect to Antarctica, the Tagesanzeiger brings up the latest NASA study by Zwally et al, citing Breitbart : “Antarctica is not shrinking – it is growing,” and writes that the NASA study “completely contradicts” the PIK model projections. The Tagesanzeiger continues:

A satellite survey by NASA tells a different story. It contradicts a number of other studies, which are mostly based on rough estimations and assumptions.”

Poland refuses to ratify Kyoto treaty in Paris

The third set of bad news to come out over the past week is that Poland’s new president, Andrzej Duda, refuses to extend the UN Kyoto Treaty until 2020 and that this “blocks the ratification process” just a month before the UN climate summit in Paris (COP21). Duda is requesting “a more detailed analysis of the climate matter,” writing in a statement:

Binding Poland to an international agreement that will affect Poland’s economy and the therein connected social costs should require a detailed analysis of the legal and economic impacts. These impacts have not been sufficiently explained.”

Greenpeace Poland called Duda’s announcement a “bad sign” which threatens to stall Europe’s movement on emissions limitation.

Asia moves ahead with coal power plant expansion

Also the news tell us that many, especially poorer, developing countries aren’t taking PIK climate science seriously at all. The London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation here writes that “in Asia alone this year power companies are building more than 500 coal-fired plants, with at least a thousand more on planning boards.”

November 5, 2015 - Posted by aletho | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Science and Pseudo-Science