The group says the world has not been heating up in the past decade and that there’s no urgent need for action to tackle global warming.

But the group’s view is being rubbished by Australian climate scientists who say action to curb carbon emissions is urgently needed.

Hayden Cooper has our report.

HAYDEN COOPER: The Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal added petrol to an already flaming debate on Friday when it printed the headline: “No need to panic about global warming”.

The article that followed was a letter signed by 16 scientists who believe the rush by governments to act is a mistake.

WILLIAM KININMONTH: Well, a number of us have been discussing this issue over many years, the fact that there is this alarmism about global warming which we believe is unjustified and so the opportunity came to put something to the Wall Street Journal which we did and we are quite happy to put my name with it.

HAYDEN COOPER: William Kininmonth is the former head of the National Climate Centre at the Bureau of Meteorology.

He’s one of the 16 voicing their dissent.

WILLIAM KININMONTH: We are certainly not against climate research. What we are suggesting is that the alarmism that is being put out about carbon dioxide is unfounded.

HAYDEN COOPER: William Kinninmonth’s opinion isn’t newly formed – he’s long been sceptical of the scientific argument on global warming.

In this letter he and his colleagues argue that carbon dioxide won’t destroy civilisation and that in the past decade the temperature of the globe in fact hasn’t been rising.

WILLIAM KININMONTH: That is certainly one of the points in the letter that over the last decade there has been no significant change in temperature of the globe.

HAYDEN COOPER: But 2010 and 2005 were the warmest years on record weren’t they?

WILLIAM KININMONTH: That depends on which sort of numbers you take. The set that was initially established by the intergovernmental panel on climate change which is from the climate research unit certainly show that 1998 was still the warmest year in their records.

HAYDEN COOPER: Is it true that 2011 was the 35th year in a row in which global temperatures were above the historical average?

WILLIAM KININMONTH: Well, the fact is we’ve had warming over the last century. There is no doubt about that and so one takes the end of that trend-line, yes, you’ll find that it is a warmer year. But that doesn’t mean to say that the trend is going to continue on forever.

TIM FLANNERY: Well, it clearly has warmed. The science is incontrovertible on that. Anyone can look at the figures and see that the world is warming and continues to warm and that is just observational data.

HAYDEN COOPER: Tim Flannery is Australia’s chief climate commissioner – the man appointed by the Government to prosecute the case for cutting pollution.

TIM FLANNERY: The essence of their argument is that if you are an elected politician, you don’t need to worry about acting on climate change and it is not surprising again to see that coming out in the middle of a Republican race when there is a chance that one of the Republicans may decide that climate change doesn’t need addressing. There has been no rethink on the science of climate change. There is broad public acceptance globally of the need for action.

You know it is only in Canada, the US and Australia that there is even a political debate really at all.

HAYDEN COOPER: As ever in this perennial dispute there’s the none too subtle barb directed at the qualifications of the opposition. This time by Tim Flannery.

TIM FLANNERY: They are not all scientists. There are some engineers, there are astronauts. It sort of a bit of mix actually as well as a lot of retired scientists in there so no, this sort of thing doesn’t really surprise me.

ELEANOR HALL: That is Australia’s chief climate commissioner, Tim Flannery ending that report by Hayden Cooper.

Researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, who first discovered the Arctic ozone hole now say that the ozone layer may be at a tipping point.

“We found that further decrease in temperature by just 1 degree (Celsius) would be sufficient to cause a nearly complete destruction of the Arctic ozone layer in certain areas,” says Dr. Björn-Martin Sinnhuber, main author of the study.

Observations during the past thirty years indicate that the stratosphere in cold Arctic winters cooled down by about 1 degree Celsius per decade. Sinnhuber said further increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will warm up the bottom air layers near the ground due to the reflection of part of the thermal radiation by the bottom layer of the atmosphere towards the earth’s surface, but also result in a cooling of the air layers of the stratosphere above, where the ozone layer is located.

In a chemical reaction already well-known from Antarctica, chlorine compounds originating from chlorofluorocarbons and other pollutants are converted chemically at temperatures below -78 degrees Celsius. These chemical conversion products attack the ozone layer and destroy it partly. One of the main statements in the study: If the trend to colder temperatures in the stratosphere observed in the past decades will continue, repeated occurrence of an Arctic ozone hole has to be expected.

After initial discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in the mid-1980s, CFCs were rapidly identified to be the cause and their use was prohibited by the Montreal Protocol of 1987. However, it will take decades until these substances will have been removed completely from the atmosphere.

“Future cooling of the stratosphere would enhance and extend the impacts of these substances on the ozone layer,” Sinnhuber said.

The studies continued this year with flights in northern Sweden, where the researchers again detected  extraordinarily low temperatures. However, they said they can’t yet predict whether temperatures will be low enough over a longer term to cause a comparably large degradation of ozone in this winter.

A team from Queen Mary’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, which went to Iceland to study a set of geothermally-heated streams, came up with these findings.

The streams provided them with a unique environment to isolate the effects of temperature from other confounding variables found in nature, the journal Global Change Biology reports.

Explained Queen Mary’s Daniel Perkins who led the study: “The streams in Iceland are all very similar, in terms of their physical and chemical environment, but maintain very different temperatures to each other all year round.

“This enabled us to explore how temperature, both past and present, affects the rate at which respiration responds to temperature in ecosystems,” he said in a statement.

Perkins said when the team exposed the organisms found in streams to a range of temperatures, “the rate at which carbon was respired increased with temperature as expected, but surprisingly the rate of increase was consistent across streams”.

Said co-author Gabriel Yvon-Durocher, also from Queen Mary: “Our findings demonstrate that the intrinsic temperature sensitivity of respiration is the same across a diverse range of organisms, adapted to markedly different temperatures.

“This result is important because it will help us build more accurate models to predict how rates of carbon dioxide emission from ecosystem will respond to the temperature increases forecast in the coming decades.”

Marcia Macedo of Columbia University and colleagues analyzed trends in deforestation and soy production from 2001-2010 in Mato Grosso, a state on Brazil’s agricultural frontier where more than a third of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon has occurred since the 1980s. They found that during the first half of the decade about 26 percent of increased soy production was the result of cropland expansion into forest areas, accounting for about 10 percent of total deforestation during the period. During the second half of the decade (2006-2010), soy expansion amounted to only 2 percent of deforestation. 91 percent of the production increase in the late 2000s occurred on previously cleared cattle pasture. Surprisingly, the researchers found little evidence of “leakage” whereby soy expansion was displaced from forest areas to the savanna-like cerrado.

The authors say the decline coincides with several trends and developments, including “fluctuations in commodity markets and the implementation of several high-profile policy initiatives aimed at restricting credit for deforesters, improving monitoring and enforcement, and excluding deforesters from the supply chains of major exporters.” Notably, the 2005-2010 period included a prominent campaign by Greenpeace, an international environmental activist group, which pressured major soy crushers and traders to adopt a “moratorium” on new forest clearing for soybeans; the “blacklisting” of high deforestation municipalities, which restricted access to credit and subsidies; and the launch of a near-real-time satellite-based deforestation tracking system which facilitated a crackdown on corruption in the environmental enforcement agency IBAMA and other agencies.

The authors argue these factors helped mitigate forest clearing for soya once commodity prices recovered in the aftermath of the worst of the global financial crisis.

“The land-use transitions observed during the postboom period—and the case of 2009 in particular—suggest that when market conditions favored expansion, producers expanded into areas previously cleared for pasture rather than forest areas. These patterns are consistent with the outcomes expected by many of the recent policy interventions, providing some support for the hypothesis that they have helped to suppress deforestation.”

The results seem to offer hope that the combination of private and public sector initiatives have the potential to disaggregate agricultural production from deforestation. But the authors nonetheless warn against complacency. They note that increased investment in infrastructure projects and new technologies will make larger areas of Amazon forests accessible for intensive agricultural production, while proposed reform of the Forest Code which limits how much land a property-holder is allowed to clear, could undermine some of the policy gains for forest conservation.

Macedo and colleagues suggest that policies which encourage more efficient use of degraded, non-forest land could help meet future demand for food, without destroying forests.

“Our results suggest that preventing deforestation over the long term will require parallel efforts to modernize the cattle sector and create strong new policy incentives that promote efficient use of degraded lands,” they write. “Recent efforts to model Brazil’s low-carbon development alternatives indicate that the implementation of existing technologies to restore degraded lands and increase pasture productivity could free enough additional land to accommodate projected growth through 2030, although achieving this would be challenging and require substantial private and public investments.”

As no steps have been taken by the government to provide necessary compensation to the affected farmers, they are unhappy. Some have given up growing of tuber crops due to the losses caused by wild boars.

Wild boars are omnivorous and live by eating roots, shoots, fruits, berries as well as small mammals and reptiles. “Deforestation has caused paucity of food availability in the forest and has forced the wild boars to enter in areas near to human settlement,” says Valpoi range forest officer Vishwanath Pingulkar.

On December 23, 2011, three wild boars were rescued from a well in the mining village of Shirgao. They were released in the forests of Chorlaghat, later. On December 30, 2011, a wild boar fell into a well at Naneli in Sattari. In both cases, wildlife activist Amrutsingh and his volunteers played a crucial role in rescuing the wild boars.

Uday Volvoikar from Surla-Bicholim said, “Incidents of wild boars destroying agricultural and horticultural crops have become common in our areas. We are fed up with the destruction caused by the wild boars.”

Last year, two incidents occurred wherein scooterists suffered injuries after wild boars suddenly crossed their paths at Mayem and Sarvan villages in Bicholim.

Mukund Morajkar from Pelavade-Ravan said, “Wild boars relishing on tuber crops is not new. Since the last two decades, these incidents are on the rise. Till date, we have not received any compensation for the losses done by the wild boars.”

It is no secret that the EU wanted the Durban Platform to be about developing either a protocol or another legal instrument. India wanted to add ‘a legal outcome’ as a third possibility. The EU felt this was too weak. At around 3:00 am on Sunday, December 11, the South African presidency of the conference asked the EU and India, plus other interested parties, to ‘huddle’ together and sort out our differences.

India’s environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan and I agreed on the formula of “an agreed outcome with legal force”. While protecting our respective interests, we both gave a bit of ground to get a good result for the global community. That is what UN negotiations are about. This is what a successful outcome for almost 200 different parties looks like.

The EU believes the new global framework must be legally binding because this provides the strongest possible signal that countries will follow through on their commitments. This is vital to give confidence that all will deliver and to enable all of us to increase our commitments to the level of ambition science requires. A voluntary ‘pledge and review’ system would not provide these assurances.

Of course, developed countries must do more, and earlier. But in today’s interdependent world, what all countries promise to do must have equal legal weight. The EU fully recognises that commitments to curb emissions should be differentiated in line with the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” enshrined in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

In stating that the new global climate framework will be placed under the Convention, the Durban Platform ensures that this principle will continue to apply. The EU fully supports that, but it must be applied in a way that takes account of the world as it is today, not as it was 20 years ago.

Today, majority of emissions come from developing countries, and all the projections point to this share continuing to increase. This means that we will simply not succeed if the major emerging economies are not on board too. This would also not be in India’s interest given its great vulnerability to the effects of climate change.

The agreement reached on the Durban Platform allowed the EU to agree to a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, as India and the rest of the developing world had demanded. We are keeping our side of the bargain. But it should be clear to everyone by now that Kyoto is not going to save the planet. It covers too small a proportion of global emissions to prevent dangerous climate change. The EU accounts for 11% of emissions. With the others that may join, the second period will cover at most 15-16%.

Fortunately, Kyoto is not the only game in town. The result of the Copenhagen conference in 2009 and the Cancun conference in 2010 mobilised significant action across the globe in the form of emission limitation or reduction pledges for 2020 from some 90 countries.

These include important action by India and other developing countries. India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change is being implemented, and this could enable India to overachieve its Copenhagen pledge for limiting its emissions intensity. We also understand that sustainable growth will be among the objectives of India’s new Five-Year Plan to be adopted in early 2012. This is encouraging.

But we also know that despite the efforts from the EU, India and many others, the sum of emission reductions for 2020 resulting from our collective efforts is insufficient. The Durban Platform explicitly recognised this and launched a work plan to enhance our collective ambition and explore ways to close the ‘ambition gap’, both before and after 2020.

To have a chance of holding global warming below 2° C compared to the temperature in pre-industrial times, the global community is going to have to pull together. That is why a new framework for truly global action is needed. The EU fully acknowledges that while India is now one of the biggest emitters in absolute terms due to the size of its population, its per-capita emissions are very low compared to those of the developed world and other major emerging economies.

We also respect that India’s contribution will reflect the tremendous development challenges it faces, not least the need to eradicate poverty and provide energy access to all. Nobody denies the absolute priority given to meeting these challenges and that this will mean that India’s emissions will continue to grow in the near future – even on a low-carbon development pathway. On the contrary, the EU is convinced that the best way forward is through a coherent sustainability strategy that addresses these challenges and the climate challenge together. Our desire is to design a legally-binding multilateral framework that helps India to do this.

While once again confirming India’s role as a major player and defending her country’s interests, minister Natarajan ensured in Durban that the world can move forward in tackling one of the greatest challenges facing mankind today. For this, minister Natarajan has my sincere appreciation, and she deserves no less from others.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com

Almost every map of the decadal trends in the satellite data is centered on the Equator and looks like this:

But much more interesting things are going on around the poles, where the climate action is.

For a number of reasons, computer models with added atmospheric carbon dioxide preferentially warm the mid-and high-latitude land areas of the northern hemisphere that are ice-free, which also enhances summer melting of the relatively shallow ice in the Arctic Ocean. That, in turn, results in an increased absorption of solar radiation by the darker ocean surface, which also contributes to warming.

Here’s a view from over the North Pole,  with vision down to 60°N:

The warming of high-latitude North America and the adjacent Arctic Ocean is the largest of any on the planet.  Note that there tends to be less warming over the massive Greenland ice cap.

That’s because Greenland is kind of a miniature Antarctica, where things are much different than they are in our hemisphere.

Here’s the view from over the South Pole:

Antarctica is surrounded by a very cold and turbulent ocean, whose massive thermal capacity (compared to land) drastically reduces warming, compared to what we see in our hemisphere. But, even a tiny warming of the huge Southern Ocean must increase the amount of moisture in the air around Antarctica which can only result in more clouds and snow over the continent.  Indeed, interior Antarctica can conceivably cool with a modest “global” warming. Warming doomsayers conveniently ignore the fact that even the UN’s models (current version) forecast that Antarctica will gain ice this century.

A lot of interior Antarctica (and a big patch of the southern ocean, for reasons I think no one understands) is getting colder.  There are some pockets of decent maritime warming right near the coast, which almost certainly are increasing snowfall substantially when the wind blows onshore.

Here’s the lukewarm part:  The bipolar behavior is pretty close-in pattern-to what theory and models say should be happening.  But the models aren’t even close  in the amount of warming.

The average warming trend in the one-third century of satellite data is 0.14°C per decade, but the warming rate in the UN’s midrange climate models is 0.25°.  This differential has been pretty constant ever since the satellite data was corrected for orbital and sensor issues.

There’s no reason for that not to continue.  In other words, the UN’s average forecast of 3.2°C of warming this century is off by about 40%, which should spell the victory of the lukewarmers and the death-knell of apocalyptic global warming.  Indeed, it is not the heat, it’s the sensitivity, which looks to be quite a bit lower than what’s in those computer simulations.

Source: http://www.forbes.com

While they flew in with highly ‘eco-unfriendly’ business class airplanes towards Durban’s King Shaka Airport, then taking a BMW to the conference, little actually happened over there.

The changes to the climate were discussed in great depth, however at the end of the day our distinguished politicians achieved in doing just about nothing. The decisions that were taken can be regarded as the best nothing that money can buy. There are other places however where nothing is also done to curb climate change, most notably in the South African parliament, the United Nations, the European Union and the US congress. Politicians and scientists elaborate the causes, the effects and the almost certain doom that mankind, but at the end of the day, a little bit more than nothing was done in the form of ‘regulations’ or ‘resolutions’.

So while it is common knowledge that human beings heat up this planet, how then can we change our actions to help it? Firstly lets look at how mankind contributes to global warming, yes climate change is a natural phenomenon – before anyone argues that. However we do contribute towards global warming at a tremendous rate.

First of all, there are a lot of human beings on this planet. While resources aren’t used up linearly, more human beings will ultimately use up more of the worlds resources. The second one is pollution, mainly from the hydration process of cement and those released by burning natural resources, they all release carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere that leads to the greenhouse effect. The last one of course are our politicians – who pretend to understand global warming better than our scientists. As a personal bias I do not have a lot of respect for politicians mainly because they only earn their living by taking from the population through taxation – a form of legalized plunder. However as it may be, against my own wishes, politicians have a big say in how to run our lives.

So how do we deal with this problem, lets look at the places on earth with the most pollution. Cities in places such as China, India, Russia and Peru tops the list and of course infamous Chernobyl comes to mind. Now why is this that these places are more polluted than others? The answer is simple, all these places are places where strict property rights are not enforced. In fact the pollution in Russia and Chernobyl is mainly because not so long ago, government controlled most of the industries over there – there were no property rights in the soviet union back then.

If you enforce strict property rights then corporations should be liable if their activity causes damage to your property, this will create a market incentive for them to produce cleaner and better products, also at cheaper prices. The initial stop would be to get government out of our industries – as they are the biggest polluters, privatize the industries. I bet Eskom would be much cheaper if it is privatized and most definitely more efficient.

It won’t help if we try and regulate these industries, because regulations do not work, they always have unintended consequences, either the same corporation that is suppose to regulate takes over these regulatory bodies (as is the case with ICASA and Telkom), or these regulations cause a big job loss and eventually leads to other forms of pollutions. Furthermore the money allocated from regulators never go towards helping the environment, this is evident after Europe passed laws to reduce its carbon output not so long ago, however they have not come up with good long term alternatives – the taxpayer however felt this burden heavily, no one really knows what happened to the tax money however.  Similar forms of miss-allocation of money occurred when Solyndra – an Obama ‘greener’ initiative went bankrupt earlier this year.

Lets look at some alternative resources, wind power simply doesn’t generate enough energy, wind turbines are very expensive and they also do use oil (anything that has a motor requires some sort of lubrication, therefore this will not stop pollution at all, it only shifts it from the coal station to the oil refinery.). There is also not enough sun to generate solar heating – those panels are very expensive.

How about nuclear power, it is cleaner than coal generated and what is best, South Africa is not a heavy earthquake prone country like Japan – so we can safely avoid having another Fukushima over here.  I’m afraid however that the same greenies who are against ‘coal’ stations, are against nuclear stations – talk about wanting your bread buttered on both ends. If we didn’t need electricity this would be a totally different argument, however humanity has to weigh up benefits and losses any every decision it takes. It is usually more efficient to go towards more technological alternatives. For example we went over from lead based fuel to unleaded fuel, we no longer have to burn wood every night since we have electricity. Technological improvements have moved us toward a cleaner environment – we just don’t realize it because there are more people on this planet today than 150 years ago. If we all still burned wood, then we wouldn’t have forests left by now.

The last solution is so simple, however I didn’t even see it being suggested once at the cop17 conference – plant more plants. Basic biology tells us that plants take in co2 and produce Oxygen. Wouldn’t it curb global warming a helluva lot if every city in the world looked like Johannesburg with almost 10 million trees? If there is anything we should do to fight global warming, just plant enough trees that were destroyed by deforestation. It is really simple instead of all the alternative nonsense that governments have tried – which obviously haven’t achieved anything more than ‘nothing’ by now.

Meteorological society members will hear the presentation from 7 to 9 p.m., Jan. 25, at the Portland Airport Shilo Inn Convention Center Ballroom, 11707 N.E. Airport Way.

The gathering will discuss the question of whether science supports the idea that humans caused global warming. Guest speakers are former state climatologist George Taylor, meteorologist Chuck Wiese and physicist Gordon Fulks. Taylor, Wiese and Fulks will talk about what they consider to be problems with the theory of human-caused climate change. They will also present climate forecasts for the next decade, century and beyond.

A public question and answer session is planned at the conclusion of the meeting.

Steve Pierce, Oregon American Meteorological Society president said the local group has no formal position on the issue of climate change. January’s discussion will be to “advance professional ideals in the science of meteorology and to promote the development, exchange and application of meteorological knowledge,” Pierce said. “To that end, we are planning to host a future meeting with the opposing side of this subject matter.”

A Balanced Presentation

OMSI officials caught some flak for their decision to uninvite the meteorological society discussion. OMSI Marketing Vice President Mark Patel said the science museum was willing to be associated with a debate on the causes of global warming, but not with a one-sided presentation on the hot topic.

“When we host something, people naturally assume we endorse it, so we want to make sure that it’s a balanced presentation,” Patel said. “We want to see more of a conversation than a one-sided presentation.”

In a statement, OMSI officials said they were worried the public would think the museum was the event’s host. “After a great deal of discussion and consideration, we came to the conclusion that it was not appropriate for OMSI to serve as a venue for the event without proper opportunity for our full involvement,” according to the statement.

OMSI has offered to host a future meteorological society discussion presenting all sides of the global warming issue.

The state Air Resources Board last week finished tallying and made public the list of the largest greenhouse gas emitters in the state, and two East Bay refineries sit atop the list.

The first-of-its-kind rankings show that oil refineries, power plants and cement plants lead all industrial facilities statewide in pumping out carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels that has been building up in the Earth’s atmosphere in increasing concentrations.

The largest California emitter last year was the Chevron oil refinery in Richmond, which emitted 4.8 million metric tons of greenhouse gases. The Shell refinery in Martinez was second, with 4.5 million metric tons, followed by the BP and Chevron refineries in Carson and El Segundo, near Los Angeles. Rounding out fifth place was the Dynegy Power Plant at Moss Landing, a massive 1950s-era structure on the Monterey Bay that burns natural gas to create electricity for much of Northern California. The Valero Refinery in Benicia and the Tesoro Refinery in Martinez were seventh and eighth, respectively.

“This shows a commitment by California to move forward with real action to address climate change,” said Stanley Young, a spokesman for the Air Resources Board. “We need accurate accounting to be sure we are getting the reductions that we are planning for.”

All data were compiled and submitted by the facilities themselves. The accounting is required under Assembly Bill 32, the landmark global warming law Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed in 2005.

Industrial sources and power plants make up 43 percent of California’s greenhouse emissions, with transportation at 36 percent. A separate California law requires all new cars sold statewide to reduce greenhouse emissions 30 percent by 2016.

Environmentalists praised the reporting rules.

“What are the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases? It’s important to know,” said Jim Metropulos, a spokesman for Sierra Club California. “We should focus on the largest sources first. Spotlighting, transparency and holding people accountable are important.”

The Air Resources Board worked to create uniform software for each industrial facility to tally its emissions. Verification by a third party — essentially a pollution accountant trained by the state — is also required under state law. Any industrial facilities that emit more than 25,000 metric tons a year of carbon dioxide or related greenhouse gases are required to report. In California last year, 605 facilities passed that threshold.

Five coal-burning power plants in Utah and Wyoming that sell electricity in California also are included, and topped all California industrial sources, including the Chevron Richmond refinery.

Young said the emissions totals will be used as a baseline as California prepares to launch a “cap and trade” market in 2012. Under such a market, which is used in Europe, companies are given a limit of the amount of pollution they can put out, and if they produce less, they can sell credits to other companies to help them meet their required amount.

A bill passed by the House in June and pending in the U.S. Senate would require similar mandatory greenhouse emissions limits and a trading market for the entire United States.

Oil industry officials said their facilities top the list because they use large amounts of natural gas to heat crude oil and convert it to gasoline, diesel and jet fuel — products Californians demand.

“We use about 45 million gallons of gasoline a day in California,” said Tupper Hull, a spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Association. “It’s easy to criticize refineries, but everyone forgets they produce the cleanest-burning gasoline on Earth and it is central to the economic vitality of the state.”

Hull said that the oil industry already is working to make its facilities more efficient and investigating research into storing carbon dioxide underground. The industry, he added, also will participate in California’s carbon trading market.

“The low-hanging fruit is to increase your efficiencies,” he said. “Any time you can get more use out of natural gas, that will result in reduced greenhouse gas.”