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March 2014
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FOS MEMBERSHIP QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER
No. 41
"FOS is dedicated to providing the public with insight into Climate Science"
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
Our 11th annual luncheon will be held in Calgary on May 13th, 2014. Dr. Ross McKitrick, Professor of Economics at the University of Guelph, will be our guest speaker. The title of his talk is "The 'Pause' in Global Warming: Climate Policy Implications". Please check our website for further details and to purchase tickets.
Two new books well worth reading have recently been published by two famous authors that we are all familiar with. Dr. Tim Ball’s recent book, “The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science”, may not be available in your local book store, but it is available through Amazon in either the Kindle version, or the print version. Open his website at www.drtimball.com to read about the book and order it through Amazon. He covers the silencing and politics that he has personally endured over the last 40 years.
Bruno Wiskel, author, speaker, climatologist, geologist, arborist, etc., recently wrote “The Sky is Not Falling – Putting Climate Change on Trial”. He combines science and humour, demonstrating that mankind is not causing climate change. It is a less scientific publication than his earlier one, “The Emperors New Climate.” To order, go to his website http://www.mrvs.net/ Mr.V’s, The Place For Trees, and scroll to Books By Bruno.
According to our Alberta provincial government information, the World Economic Forum were to hold a conference on Energy and Climate Change at Lake Louise April 24-25. Their representatives, who come from numerous countries worldwide, are stating that catastrophic climate events are imminent, that extreme weather/climate events are increasing and that these are caused by human industrial activities. It probably appeared to them that Alberta would be a prime target for them to attack.
Perhaps they fear being in the same province as the ‘tar sands’, where reclamation is the law, while enjoying the most beautiful, pristine spot on earth at Alberta’s Lake Louise. Or perhaps they were afraid of seeing Calgary, ranked #5 in the world for 'liveablity' for best quality of life, cleanest, most family friendly, renowned for its Calgary Stampede white-hatted western hospitality. This would destroy the myth of dirty old, greedy tar sands miners that the world’s ENGOs have foisted upon us.
We had planned to become involved in several ways, to publicly express our position concerning climate change, however it now appears that the conference will not proceed as they have not made the necessary bookings and do not reply to enquiries from the government. We decided to continue with one part of our campaign which was underway, a huge digital super billboard near the airport, which will be seen by all arriving passengers. To view the press release we did on this as well as all of our latest releases, visit the link here.
FoS are pleased to report that Troy Media is now distributing some of our articles and commentaries. Many newspapers choose Troy for guest commentaries and diverse perspectives. Suzuki and Pembina Institute have been widely distributed through Troy; we are now providing an important alternate perspective. One of our articles was picked up by the Toronto Sun here. Our first Troy Media article on the 97% Deconsensus report can be viewed on our website here and our most recent article is here.
We have found that it is proportionately very expensive to do press releases in Canada via the mainstream distribution channels. Troy Media commentaries appear to be a possible means of reaching out to audiences in Canada while we maintain our regular releases through PRWeb which primarily goes to US Markets - though we find our material there resurfacing and recycling months later through the world-wide web. We try to make cost-efficient use of donations. Thank you for making these out-reach efforts possible.
Revenue Canada is finally awakening to the political activities of several high-profile environmental groups, including the David Suzuki Foundation, Tides Canada, Environmental Defence, the Pembina Foundation, Eqiuiterre and the Ecology Action Centre. They have begun to audit them, reviewing their charitable status, which will hopefully affect the tax benefits that their huge donors take advantage of. It is rather incredible that the Rockefeller Foundation and other mega organizations based outside the country have been allowed to pour money into Canada to slow or halt the development of needed resources such as petroleum. Just about everyone in the lib-left mainstream media of both Canada and the U.S.A. are crying foul because of Revenue Canada’s audit. They can’t seem to understand that they are harming ordinary citizens since resource production is a very significant revenue source to the government, which is required to fund needed programs such as universal health care, education, infrastructure, etc.
In our previous Newsletter, we advised of the UN’s Green Climate Fund, an agreement to divert an additional $100 billion per year from the treasuries of developed countries to those of developing nations to help them “take action on climate change”. This unfortunate plan and the ramifications involved are explained and discussed on the Chorus Radio Network, AM 640, as Tom Harris of the International Climate Science Coalition is interviewed on the Roy Green Show here.
As most of our members know, the global warming crowd frequently accuses us of representing “big oil” and being primarily funded by them. This of course is absolutely false, and while we would welcome an occasional pittance from them, this simply does not happen. The petroleum and coal industries are constantly being hammered by numerous “environmental” groups concerning CO2 emissions. While Friends of Science has no contact or relationship with them, it is surprising that these industries do not utilize the vast amounts of scientific information that is available worldwide to counter the notion that carbon dioxide (the greenest gas on earth) is bad. With their huge technical and other resources, they could greatly assist in reversing the many bad decisions and costly ventures created by our various levels of government. Industry needs to do a much better job of studying and presenting the basics, rather than simply announcing that we produce less CO2 than China. Tom Harris does an excellent job of covering this topic in his interview on CFRA radio here.
Len Maier
President, Friends of Science
POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS
Towards Paris 2015
The UN and its global warming allies know that the 2015 climate summit in Paris will likely be their last chance to get the world to sign on to a second Kyoto-style climate treaty. If there’s another failure like the 2009 one in Copenhagen, the likelihood of restarting the treaty process again would be slim, and governments may even start to question the need for the UN climate process and its concomitant bureaucracy. Time is not on the side of the bureaucrats – people, and the mainstream media, are starting to notice that the climate’s no longer warming. There are a lot of well-paid jobs at stake.
For example, 500 people work at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Secretariat (located in Bonn, Germany). Why so many? Well, as the Secretariat’s web page explains, it has to support an increasing number of constituted bodies that serve the process (Fig. 1). The Secretariat also has a lot of meetings to organize: 42 this year alone.
Figure 1: Constituted Bodies Supported by the UNFCCC Secretariat
To find out what all the above bodies do, see here. Some of these bodies get created at the annual climate summits. For example, the 2011 summit in Durban produced the Ad-hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP). The ADP’s mandate is:
To develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention [the UNFCCC] applicable to all Parties, which is to be completed no later than 2015 in order for it to be adopted at the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) and for it to come into effect and be implemented from 2020.
In its two years of existence the ADP hasn’t done much, other than hold round-table discussions and workshops, and create two workstreams. Workstream 1 (the 2014 agreement) is the more important. It is charged with considering “elements for a draft negotiating text” for discussion at the next Conference on Parties in Lima, December 2014 (COP 20).
The ADP’s most recent meeting was March 10-14 in Bonn, with this agenda, which included seven sessions titled “Open-ended consultations on ADP item 3” (the new treaty.) Attendance at the meeting included 169 parties (with 676 participants), 91 NGOs and only 12 media people.
Despite the small media presence, some stories got published. As is usual at these events, this one began with wrangling over procedure, with differences between the US and the G77 group of developing countries led by China. Old splits emerged, as the Chinese delegation scorned the EU, calling its proposal to cut greenhouse gases 40% by 2030 “ten years too late.” China demanded that rich countries meet the 40% cut by 2020, as well as ponying up billions in climate aid. Brazil refused to discuss emissions limits, saying that the UK, Russia, the US and Germany had contributed more to temperature increases than “100 other countries.” As the meeting wrapped up, trade issues were the main concern for rich countries.
The UN’s closing press release for the Bonn meeting focused more on technical matters (finance, renewable energy, energy efficiency, international cooperative projects), than on any progress towards a new climate treaty. The next ADP meeting, also in Bonn, is scheduled for June 4-14. This one will concentrate more on what the ADP calls “mitigation ambition” (promises to cut emissions.)
Realizing that ADP process alone isn’t going to produce meaningful results, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on world leaders to attend a “must succeed” climate summit at the September 2014 opening of the UN General Assembly. So far, there have been no commitments by world leaders, as everyone waits to see who else is going. On a parallel track, the head of the UNFCCC Secretariat, Cristiana Figueres, is finding a silver lining (her words) in every weather event to push the UN’s case for action on climate change. When she says, “we are running out of time,” “we” means the UN bureaucracy, not the world.
Therefore, June and September will be crucial to the UN’s efforts. If there’s no progress on a negotiating text and commitments for emissions reductions, it’s going to be difficult to meet the Paris deadline.
Ian Cameron
Director, Friends of Science
SCIENCE NEWS
Solar Forcing of North Atlantic Temperature 1000 Years
A paper published in March 2014 reconstructs climate and solar activity over the past 1000 years and finds tiny changes in solar activity "have a considerable impact on the ocean-atmospheric dynamics in the North Atlantic, with potential effects on regional climate." The authors find low solar activity is associated with an increase in atmospheric blocking events and "modifies the flow of the westerly winds. We conclude that this process could have contributed to the consecutive cold winters documented in Europe during the Little Ice Age." See Here.
The NIPCC:Climate Change Reconsidered
The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change's (NIPCC) report "Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science" was authored by 47 climate scientists and published in September 2013. The authors reviewed the scientific literature and produced a report that is comprehensive, objective, and faithful to the scientific method. Unlike the IPCC, it was not restricted to consider only human-caused climate change. The NIPCC report concluded:
"The Sun may have contributed as much as 66% of the observed twentieth century warming, and perhaps more. ... Any warming that may occur [due to CO2 emissions] is likely to be modest and cause no net harm to the global environment or to human well-being." See Here.
The IPCC Buried Evidence of Low Climate Sensitivity to CO2
A report "A Sensitive Matter: How the IPCC Buried Evidence Showing Good News About Global Warming" by climate scientist Nicholas Lewis and science writer Marcel Crok shows that the IPCC suppressed evidence that the climate is much less sensitive to greenhouse gas emissions than was previously thought.
"The clues and the relevant scientific papers are all mentioned in the full IPCC report. However, this important conclusion is not drawn in the full report – it is only mentioned as a possibility – and is ignored in the Summary for Policymakers (SPM)."
The average estimate of equilibrium climate sensitivity from climate models is 3.2 °C, "However, several recent studies give best estimates of between 1.5 °C and 2 °C, substantially lower than most earlier studies indicated." This result assumes that virtually all the warming over the last 150 years was due to human causes. If solar influences were includes, the climate sensitivity to CO2 would be much less. See Here.
CERES Satellite and Climate Sensitivity
The Transient Climate Response (TCR) due to double CO2 was calculated using the CERES satellite outgoing longwave radiation measurements and HadCRUT surface temperatures. TCR is the global warming caused by increasing CO2 determined at the time that the CO2 in the atmosphere doubles. This analysis by FoS Director Ken Gregory suggests that the temperature change from June 2013 to January 2100 due to increasing CO2 would be 0.20 °C (from HadCRUT3) or 0.39 °C (from HadCRUT4), assuming the CO2 continues to increase along the recent linear trend. The TCR to doubled CO2 is 0.38 +/- 0.54 °C using hadCRUT3, and 0.74 +/- 0.54 °C using hadCRTU4 data at 95% confidence. These values are much less than the multi-model mean estimate of 1.8 °C for TCR given in the IPCC 5th assessment report.
All studies of climate sensitivity that rely on long term observational data must make assumptions of the climate forcings, both natural and man-made, that caused the global temperature change. Most studies assume that essentially all the temperature change was man-made, with solar irradiance causing only a very minor effect. But hundreds of studies show that solar effects are much greater than just that caused by solar irradiance changes, so climate sensitivity studies that require an estimate of forcings are invalid.
Fortunately, the TCR can calculated without an estimate of total forcings by directly measuring the changes to the greenhouse effect (GHE). The GHE is the difference in temperature between the earth's surface and the effective radiating temperature of the earth at the top of the atmosphere as seen from space. The top-of-atmosphere temperature is determined from the CERES satellite data. The GHE is caused by longwave absorption of greenhouse gases. Other causes of climate changes, such as solar, aerosols and changes in albedo due to changing cloud cover are shortwave forcings and do not change the GHE during the CERES era when there was no change in global temperatures. TCR was estimated by comparing the changes in the GHE to the changes in greenhouse gas concentrations. See Here.
Ken Gregory
Director, Friends of Science
DONATIONS
To accomplish our goal of educating the broader public and policy makers on the diversity of views on climate change, and the important natural factors, we need financial help from our members. Thank you for your help to date. This debate matters, you are making a difference.
Please continue to make donations to Friends of Science. We can be a voice for your climate change issues – and we thank all of you who have given us tips on the misinformation they see in the marketplace. Donations made directly to Friends of Science will help us bring in quality guest speakers, expand our media presence and create a platform for informed debate. To make a contribution at www.friendsofscience.org; click on DONATE in the upper right of the home page. Alternately, you can mail donations to FoS at the following address:
Friends of Science
E-mail: contact (at) friendsofscience.org
Websites: www.friendsofscience.org www.climatechange101.ca
Where would you like to see our billboard? On the Statue of Liberty? The White House lawn? Davos? We'll virtually get it there for you....and tweet it to the world or to our facebook gallery. Might be around the corner at Olympic Plaza - or around the world in Antarctica...or even the high Arctic on a mid-winter's night. Send your requests and we'll see what we can do. Or send in your own innovations and we'll make a gallery of fun. AND...please Donate and help us be great!