Australian Senator Steve Fielding Opposes Cap-and-Trade

Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Speech – 25/11/2009

Here we are today debating the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation, which is one of the biggest pieces of legislation ever to come before the parliament, and the Rudd government wants to ram it through the Senate. The CPRS is a multibillion dollar tax that will affect every single Australian. Just a few hours ago the Rudd government put forward changes to its flawed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, and now it wants the Senate to agree to them without proper scrutiny and debate. This is irresponsible and reckless behaviour and, to me, it is an attack on what a democracy is all about. The Senate should not be voting on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme until at least after Copenhagen and until after we know what the rest of the world is going to commit to.

It is economically reckless to commit Australia to a carbon pollution reduction scheme before the rest of the world commits to similar schemes themselves or one with at least the same targets. Why is the scheme economically reckless?

Here are some important facts the Rudd government does not want Australian families to hear:

1. The cost of doing business in Australia will go up under the government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme;

2. The competitive position of Australia will plummet, as other countries have less stringent targets or no scheme at all;

3. One of Australia’s biggest competitive advantages, low-cost electricity, will be lost; and

4. Australian families will pay more for their groceries and see their power bills soar.

And what does Australia gain for increasing the cost of doing business in Australia and wrecking Australia’s competitive position? In fact: nothing. And what does the environment gain from increasing the cost of doing business in Australia and wrecking Australia’s competitive position? Again, nothing. The rest of the world emits more than 98 per cent of the total global carbon dioxide emissions. So, if you believe the Rudd government, and that carbon dioxide is the problem, then clearly there will be no environmental benefit unless the rest of the world also agrees to at least the same targets as Australia. This is one fact that everyone can agree on. Clearly, it is economically reckless to commit to an ETS prior to a global agreement at Copenhagen. For any political party to agree to commit Australia to a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme before any global agreement is economically reckless. My real concern is that families and small business will end up footing the bill for this multibillion dollar carbon tax, with no benefit to Australia or to the environment.

I say to the Prime Minister: first you told us the CPRS you put forward was perfect, then you released another version, with amendments, and told us it was perfect too. Which is it, Mr Rudd? Which one is the best? Or are they both bad, and have been decorated to suit your political agenda? But, even worse, the coalition lost any economic credibility they ever had. No wonder Mr Costello got out when he did. Mr Costello knew the coalition were a rabble, and this is proof. Today the coalition sold out Australian families and sold out businesses. But I think the Nationals are even worse than that. The Nationals sold out the bush when they sold Telstra. The Nationals sold out the bush when they agreed to allow the coalition to negotiate with the Rudd government on a CPRS before Copenhagen. They allowed that to happen. All regional and rural areas know the Nationals cannot really be trusted in looking after the bush after these two issues. From bakers, to butchers, to farmers they will be worse off under this CPRS. And the Nationals will allow the coalition to negotiate with the Rudd government. Why did the Nationals stand by and go silent on the fact that the coalition were in negotiations to agree to an ETS prior to Copenhagen? If the Nationals had any backbone they would resign from the coalition today. The CPRS is the biggest betrayal of the bush, the biggest betrayal of rural and regional Australia and the biggest betrayal of small business. The coalition today have lost any economic credibility, but the Nationals have lost the respect that they held within rural and regional communities. How can any National MP remain in the coalition given that the coalition has committed to a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme? You stand with the bush; at the same time you stay in partnership with a party that has sold out the bush and small business. The Nationals are frauds if they stay in the coalition. The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is the biggest betrayal of the bush and rural and regional communities.

Turning to my home state of Victoria, the CPRS will be devastating to the state of Victoria. Under a CPRS thousands of jobs in Victoria will be lost. Under a CPRS the electricity prices will escalate for families and small businesses. Under a CPRS the coal mining region of the Latrobe Valley will be devastated. Under a CPRS dairy and cattle farmers will be facing skyrocketing electricity prices to produce their milk and beef, adding to the overheads that are currently eating into their profits. Will the Rudd government’s new amendments stop Victoria being threatened by the CPRS? I doubt it. But we sure as all hell need more than a few short hours or a few days to determine the real impact on Victoria and Australia. Giving the Senate just a few short hours to have a look at these amendments is irresponsible and is not in the national interest. The Australian public expect a lot more from their elected representatives, rather than just a brief look at the biggest tax this country has ever seen. This is making policy on the run and it will be Australian families and small businesses that will end up paying the price. This is turning the Senate into a rubber stamp, with families and small businesses footing the bill for the CPRS.

All that I am asking for is nothing more than basic due diligence. Whether we like it or not, due diligence takes time. Most people who are going to buy a house will first do some simple checks to make sure that everything is okay. That is due diligence. So how much more due diligence should be undertaken with the CPRS, which is a multibillion dollar tax? Surely Australia should spend a couple more months performing proper due diligence on the amended CPRS, not just a few hours. What is the rush? Two months delay is not going to cause any environmental problems. The Rudd government delayed this whole thing in the first place.

Australians should think very hard about what the Rudd government is saying and doing—except they are not being given the chance. Let us say you have a salesman telling you that you have negotiated a good deal, but you have some serious concerns. What is the next step of the salesman? Does the salesman do the right thing and give you all the time you need to make the right decision or not? We all know a shady salesman would give you no time and put unrealistic deadlines on the deal. Well, guess what? The Rudd government is acting like a shady salesman, putting unrealistic demand times on the CPRS deal. There is no real policy imperative to sign the CPRS deal prior to Copenhagen, other than for Mr Rudd to look good. It is politics that is driving the Rudd government to act like a shady salesman—not the national interest, as the Prime Minister tries to spin. Rather than ramming the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme bills through the Senate this week, why don’t we allow other experts, and the general public, to have a look at the CPRS deal and come back in February and conclude the CPRS debate?

Now I want to turn to the science. Earlier this year, like most Australians at the time, I simply accepted without question that increasing carbon dioxide emissions was the major driver of climate change. I believed the media when they told me repeatedly that human-caused carbon dioxide emissions were to blame for the changing temperatures on this planet. In fact, I listened to radical environmentalist groups when they protested about the damage we were causing to this earth and to our future generations. I remember the enthusiasm surrounding former US Vice-President Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth. All of a sudden climate change hit centre stage, and carbon dioxide was the main actor. Carbon dioxide was the new villain which needed to be caught and punished.

Throughout the whole debate one thing was missing, and that was genuine debate on whether the science behind climate change being a result of human activity was even correct. I am not saying that no-one ever questioned whether climate change was caused by something other than carbon dioxide emissions, but many experts have called for a proper debate on the issue because of serious questions in the science that climate change alarmists have relied on. Until now, the scientists who believe that carbon dioxide emissions are not the major driver of climate change have been labelled ‘sceptics’ and dismissed out of hand without real debate. To question the science has meant public ridicule. It has carried a stigma and had you labelled as a sceptic. That is not the way to conduct a debate. Scientists who question the science behind climate change have been maligned in the media as fear-mongers and as being backwards. Their views have been treated with contempt. Anyone who dares to so much as even question human induced climate change is shouted down and discredited. Free and fair debate, the very thing which we as a democracy thrive on, has been stifled on the climate change issue.

So when it was raised with me that carbon dioxide emissions have skyrocketed since 1995 but global temperatures have remained relatively steady I was left dumbfounded. How could I as a federal senator, or anyone, vote for something that will carry such a high price for all Australians and have such significant consequences without being able to answer a simple question— if carbon dioxide is a problem, why have global temperatures not been going up as predicted by the IPCC in recent years? I went out and spoke to a cross-section of scientists and quickly began to understand that the science on this issue is by no means conclusive. I went on a self-funded trip to Washington to investigate further the science and facts behind climate change, and I listened to both sides of the debate. I heard views which challenged the Rudd government’s set of so-called ‘facts’—views which could not be dismissed as mere conspiracy theories but were derived using proper scientific analysis. I went on a journey to discover the truth about climate change. It is a journey that other Australians have now also gone on, perhaps not in a physical sense but certainly in an intellectual sense.

During my trip to the US I met not only with scientists who were questioning the science but also with climate change experts on the other side of the spectrum. This included members of President Obama’s administration who are driving the US’s climate change policies. As an engineer, I have been trained to listen to both sides of the debate on the science in order to make an informed decision, in this case about climate change. Any scientist worth their salt will tell you that in order to form a conclusive view about any topic you need to properly explore all available possibilities. All of this is nothing more than due diligence.

When I came back to Australia I had a meeting with the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Wong; the Chief Scientist; and Professor Will Steffen. I put to them three questions about climate change that I believed needed to be answered in order to establish that climate change is a direct result of human-made carbon dioxide emissions. They are three questions that every senator needs to be able to answer. They were not designed to trick anyone; they were simple questions which went to the heart of the climate change debate. My three questions, along with the minister’s response, are on my website at www.stevefielding.com.au, for all of you to evaluate for yourselves.

One of the questions is key to the whole debate on the science. It was based around a global temperature chart that was incorporated into Hansard back in August this year. This is the chart that was incorporated into Hansard, quite clearly showing—

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Trood)—Senator Fielding, I think you know the rules about the use of props.

Senator FIELDING—It is in Hansard. That is a chart that the Australian public want to see. It is a chart that clearly the Rudd government does not want people to see. It shows that carbon dioxide emissions have skyrocketed, yet global temperatures have not increased the way the IPCC predicted. To help people with the chart, imagine the black line is CPI and the red line is your salary. You are going backwards. Quite clearly you would be very unhappy if that was your salary. The government wants to make you believe that the science is conclusive. I think we still need to have this chart further debated. It is based on 15 years of records. The global temperature chart may be an inconvenient fact to those that refuse to have an open mind on climate change, but to many Australians this global temperature chart is helpful and it allows them to engage in a technical debate. For those people watching who find charts hard to understand, as I said, think of the red line as if it was your salary and the black line as if it was CPI.

Even if you put aside the science, the Rudd government does not seem to acknowledge that its CPRS is a multibillion-dollar carbon tax. It is economically reckless to agree to any CPRS before the Copenhagen climate change conference, where the rest of the world will make up its mind on how to deal with climate change. There are some estimates that the government’s carbon reduction tax would be the equivalent of raising the GST by 2½ per cent. But wait—it gets worse. Not only will we be paying more tax; there will be more people without jobs. Frontier Economics predicts 68,000 Australians will not be employed in rural and regional Australia if the government’s plan goes through.

Who knows what the proposed amendments will do? According to the government’s own numbers this new tax amounts to more than $12 billion per year for industry. This is a cost which will be passed on to ordinary Australians. It was reported in the Business Spectator recently that the current legislation would have an $8 billion adverse impact on four Latrobe Valley power generators which is offset by $2 billion in current credits— a net enterprise value reduction of $6 billion. State governments too will face a massive hole in their budgets as a result of the scheme and will be $5.5 billion worse off by 2020. That means less money for schools, less money for hospitals and less money for the social services which so many Australians rely on.

Australian families will also be hard hit under the Rudd government’s proposal. Electricity prices are still forecast—as I heard this morning in Victoria—to double in Victoria. What will that do to households and small businesses in Victoria? Council rates will also be affected and will go up under the current plan. The Rudd government’s ETS has the potential to cripple our economy and send families with their backs already against the wall tipping over the edge. It is the sheer arrogance of the Rudd government that is driving this debate at the moment; it is not sensible public policy.

The Rudd government is playing politics with the lives of millions of Australians by voting again on this issue now and trying maybe to force an early election. Someone needs to tell the Prime Minister that there are no prizes for going first on implementing an emissions trading scheme—only losers! We are not playing a game here. We are talking about a multibillion-dollar tax that will impact on real people’s lives and jobs. There is a lot more at stake than the government seems to realise.

Is the government aware that only a couple of weeks ago the US senate ruled out passing its own emissions trading scheme legislation before Copenhagen and ordered a five-week pause to review the costs of the legislation to the American economy? It is not one day, not two days and not a week; they are asking for a five week pause. This is why we should come back in February. The world’s biggest economy has voted to put its carbon tax legislation on ice and yet, incredibly, we are still being fed the line that we need to deal with this issue urgently. This whole CPRS bill is a disgrace and the Senate needs to do the only honourable thing and at least delay the vote till next year. Anything else would put Australian families, small businesses, rural and regional communities and our economy at risk, and that is reckless.

The coalition have got to think very carefully about how this will pan out over the next few hours and days and they have to think very carefully about seeing this thing rammed through the Senate. I think that having even a one-week Senate inquiry is still not long enough. The US senate quite clearly believes more time is needed. A multibillion-dollar tax needs time.

Let’s not treat the Australian public like mugs. Let’s not treat the Australian Senate like a mug. Let’s give this thing proper and due diligence. Time is important but we have got to get this right, not wrong.

CLIMATEGATE! Fox RIPS Global Warming Advocate!

Dr Tim Ball - Climate Gate

Hackers Say Scientists Manipulating Data

Scientific Scandal Appears to Rock Climate Change Promoters

Evidence has emerged from emails hacked out of the computers of Hadley CRU, Britain's weather watchdog, that scientists there are knowingly, deliberately and systematically falsifying the facts on "global warming."

If global warming were really caused by man-made carbon emissions, the elite that control our governments (and oil, coal and nuclear industries) could have switched the planet over to renewable energy years ago. They could have done it this year for the cost of the bank "bailouts" alone.

Instead, the myth of man-made global warm is being generated as an excuse to suck out yet more money from people's pockets in the form of carbon taxes to be paid to the bankster-controlled UN and also to impose yet more restrictions, surveillance and controls on our daily lives (carbon footprint).

This is one report on the global warming scam in which senior scientists, governments and the corporate media work together to systematically spread false information:

http://www.americanthinker.com

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun

November 20, 2009

Scientific scandal appears to rock climate change promoters

Clarice Feldman

There's big news for climate change students. A hacker has gotten into the computers at Hadley CRU, Britain's largest climate research institute and a proponent of global warming, and seems to have uncovered evidence of substantial fraud in reporting the "evidence" on global warming; the unlawful destruction of records to cover up this fraud ,conspiracy,and deceit in the entire operation.

While hacking into the institute's records is inappropriate if not illegal, the activities disclosed appear illegal and damaging to science and the economies of the world.

At first many of us were inclined to dismiss the posted emails from the Institute as fraud, but the head of the institute admits the records were hacked and the emails seem genuine.

Here is a sample of the purportedly hacked material (1079 emails and 72 documents) available online:

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@XXXX, mhughes@XXXX
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@XXX.osborn@XXXX


Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,


Once Tim's got a diagram here we'll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.


I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline. Mike's series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.


Thanks for the comments, Ray.


Cheers
Phil


Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone XXXX
School of Environmental Sciences Fax XXXX
University of East Anglia
Norwich
*******************************************


From: Kevin Trenberth
To: Michael Mann
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , "Philip D. Jones" , Benjamin Santer , Tom Wigley , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer


Hi all


Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming ? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low.


This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).


Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth's global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)

*******************************************


The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

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Dr Martin Hertzberg: The Scientific Hoax of the Century

source: summitdaily

Senate hearings on climate change were broadcast on C-span just recently. While watching, I realised that government officials were absolutely right to complain about our science education deficiencies. As they pontificated about the impending climate crisis caused by human CO2 emission even though they knew nothing about climatology, I kept shouting at the TV:

“Heal thy-selves, you bunch of scientific illiterates!”

It never ceases to amaze me how many otherwise intelligent people have been completely duped by the Gore-IPCC-Hansen clique of propagandists.

They say that “greenhouse gases” absorb infra-red (IR) energy emitted by the earth and cause warming. Yet, in comparison to water in all its forms (polar ice, snow cover, oceans, clouds, humidity), human CO2 emission is as significant for weather as a few farts in a hurricane. The earth's IR energy absorbed by greenhouse gases is re-radiated to free space as soon as it is absorbed. The notion that the colder air above can radiate energy back to heat the warmer air below violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Heat flows spontaneously from a higher to a lower temperature, never the reverse. But the Senate can solve that problem and justify its proposed legislation by simply repealing the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!

In truth, this entire notion of a “greenhouse effect” was shown as early as 1909 to be devoid of physical reality; that is, it simply doesn't exist. Thus the greenhouse belongs in the outhouse: It is a load of crap!

Next, the infamous “hockey stick,” fabricated from tree rings with a phony computer program to show that current temperatures are higher than any experienced over the last 1,000 years: a curve that is shaped like a hockey stick. It was immediately accepted by the IPCC even though climatologists knew that the Medieval Warm Period (when the Vikings settled Greenland, and grapes grew in Scotland) was much warmer than today. The IPCC highlighted the fraudulent curve in its reports because it told them exactly what they wanted to hear.

Next, a recent study of the scientific literature revealed an equally fraudulent CO2 hockey stick curve, which fabricated the myth of a “pre-industrial” CO2 concentration of 280 parts per million (ppm) followed by a rapid rise to the current level of 390 ppm. The Gore-IPCC-Hansen clique then claimed the increase was caused by humans. They accepted unreliable ice core measurements in preference to the hundreds of more reliable direct measurements made by many distinguished scientists including several Nobel laureates. The real data show periods in the past 200 years where concentrations increased more rapidly than they did in recent years and that in several of those periods CO2 levels were higher than current levels. Knowledgeable scientists know that human CO2 emission does not correlate with changes in atmospheric CO2; that human emission is a trivial fraction of natural sources and sinks of CO2; that the oceans contain about 50 times more dissolved CO2 than the atmosphere; and that the recycling of CO2 from the tropical oceans where it is emitted to the Arctic oceans where it is absorbed, overwhelms human emissions. Data going back 500,000 years show temperature changes precede atmospheric CO2 changes by about 1,000 years. Thus temperature is driving CO2: not the reverse as the Gore-IPCC-Hansen clique contend. As oceans warm they emit CO2 and as they cool they absorb CO2. Millions of years ago CO2 levels were at least 5 times greater than current levels with only beneficial effects on plant and animal life.

Scientific evidence thus proves that the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is completely false. Recent data show the earth's temperature has decreased significantly for the last eight years. Arctic ice coverage has essentially remained unchanged for 20 years, with a slight increase over the last three. Sea levels rate of rise has declined significantly over the last three years, and its average rate of rise for the last 20 years is about the same as it has been for the last 15,000 years.

The AGW advocates are left with nothing but half-baked computer models totally out of touch with reality and have been proven wrong. As I indicated in my 1994 paper: “Unverified models do not realistically represent that radiative balance (between the sun and the earth) and it would be absurd to base public policy decisions on them.”

Well, welcome to “The Theatre of the Absurd”! The next performance is in Copenhagen this December. Fed by the anecdotal clap trap of know-nothing journalists and environmental lobbyists, a group of scientifically illiterate diplomats will be proposing draconian measures of world carbon control that will waste enormous amounts of money to solve a non-existent problem. Copenhagen will be “a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” The conclusions of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are fraudulent concoctions that should be thoroughly repudiated lest it continue to discredit the United Nation's legitimate functions: its programs to improve the standard of living of the underdeveloped nations; its programs to combat hunger and poverty; its support of the conventions against genocide and torture; and its World Court prosecution of war criminals.

Detailed references and an analysis of motives and forces behind the hoax are for a later article. In the meantime, ask yourself the important question: “cui bono?” ( who benefits?).

Lord Monckton Challenges Al Gore To A Debate On Global Warming

Carbon Dioxide the Miracle Gas

Many Experts Believe Global Warming Is Not A Crisis.

source: heartland.org

Sound, effective public policy begins with accurate information.
This Legislator's Guide to Global Warming Experts can help you identify, quickly and easily, scientists and economists who know the issue inside and out.  

Download PDF

Global warming is one of the most controversial topics of debate today. Is Earth’stemperature rising? If it is, how rapid is the increase and will it benefit or harm humanity and nature? Are human greenhouse gas emissions to blame? 

This guide for legislators presents brief biographies and email addresses for about 150 experts who believe global warming is not a crisis. They include some of the world’s most renowned and respected scientists, such as MIT’s Dr. Richard Lindzen, Princeton’s Freeman Dyson, and Harvard’s Sallie Baliunas.

These scientists aren’t on the “fringe” of the scientific community: More than 31,000 scientists signed the Oregon Petition, released in June 2008, saying “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

World Getting Cooler, Not Warmer, Insists Bellamy

WORLD-RENOWNED botanist and broadcaster Prof David Bellamy has predicted the world will get cooler over the next 30 years rather than warmer, as many climate scientists have predicted.

He said a period of global cooling had already begun, citing evidence that the Alps had more snow last winter than at any time for the last 26 years.

Prof Bellamy has been one of the best-known sceptics of man-made global warming, despite being an environmentalist. Yesterday, as patron of the Tree Appeal, he helped children at Cabinteely Community School to plant trees. The initiative aims to plant 100,000 trees in the UK and Ireland to encourage biodiversity and to act as a learning resource.

Prof Bellamy said temperature fluctuations are part of the natural process. “The argument [for man-made global warming] is going downhill. Climate change is a completely natural thing. It is based on the sun, and at the moment we are into the 24th sun cycle and there has been no sunspots for two years. The last time that happened, the Thames froze over.” 

Prof Bellamy said the climate conference at Copenhagen will fail, and that many countries were already trying to pull out of it.

He has been criticised repeatedly by the scientific community for his views. Prof William Reville, who writes in this newspaper, said changes in the sun had affected global temperatures in the past, but the correlation between the sun and climate ended in the 1970s while global warming continued.

Lord Monckton Speaking on the Climate Change (1h.35m)

A few of Lord Moncktons slides from his presentation for you to follow

Climate Chains

Climate Chains from Climate Chains on Vimeo.

An epic debate is underway in our country. Proposed climate legislation would have a far-reaching impact on our standard of living and give government a portal into every aspect of our lives. The affordable, dependable and abundant energy upon which any great civilization is built is about to be rationed.

In the current atmosphere of national and global panic, facts and the possibility of disastrous outcomes get overlooked in the irrational rush to pass climate legislation. Climate Chains is our effort to petition a reasoned and rational approach to the climate change policy debate.

The Truth About Arctic and Greenland Ice - by Leonard Weinstein, ScD

In this paper, former NASA Senior Research Scientist Leonard Weinstein, ScD uses the melting of Arctic and Greenlandish ice to show how CO2 can not cause catastrophic melting in the future. In fact, both areas are well within the norm of natural variation. 

 

One of the issues most harped upon by the media and the focus of Dr. Weinstein's analysis is the melting of the polar ice caps in relation to atmospheric CO2 content. Dr. Weinstein analyses and deflates each claim using proven scientific data from the area and focused reasoning instead of taking it at face value from the feeding hand of the societal grapevine. He reinserts many intentionally forgotten variables and factors into the hackneyed mass ice-melting formula we are all familiar with such as the reflectivity of the snow-cover, the axial tilt of the Earth, the emissivity of water, and other melt(and hysteria)-damping factors that are often swept from the public's view. 

 

The Truth 

 

There is an interesting story going around that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is resulting in unusual melting of the polar and near polar ice caps, especially the Arctic sea ice and Greenland ice cap, and this is going to contribute to the Earth’s problems in a big way (flooding, feedback temperature increase, etc.). In order to understand the issue, a few simple facts and recent observations need to be shown. The following discussion is restricted to the Arctic and Greenland, since these are the main regions of contention. It should be noted that the Antarctic is presently cooling (and has been for several years) and sea ice extent is expanding.

 

We first need to examine the external energy balance for the Arctic. Due to the axial tilt of the Earth, the Arctic is in full dark about half of the year, and in partial to full Sunlight about half of the year. The maximum Sun angle at the North Pole is about 24 degrees above the horizon. This angle only occurs for a relatively short time, and smaller angles occur most of the daylight time. The maximum Solar insolation from this (due to the angle and atmospheric absorption) is about 400 W/m2. The high reflectivity of clean snow (always present on ice) results in only about 40 W/m2 being absorbed into the ice. The maximum air temperature near the surface is just a small amount above freezing, so the maximum thermal heat transfer from air to ice is generally just a few 10’s of W/m2. The ice (or snow) gray-body emissivity (about 0.9) is much higher than the low absorption (about 0.1) at the short wavelengths of Sunlight, so the re-emitted long wavelength radiation is about 280 W/m2. The result is that solid ice cannot normally melt from Solar radiation plus air warming from the top, even at peak summer. The rest of the year has even less energy input, so ice is strongly cooled all year long.

 

The actual cause of the significant melting of summer ice has been shown to not be possible from the top. However, there is considerable summer melting. It is clear from the physics that the summer melting has to have been caused by water flowing under the ice. The water flows from lower latitudes, so has a higher temperature than the ice. If the water is warm enough it melts the ice from below. However, if the ice is cold enough and the water cool enough, this flow will freeze and add thickness of solid ice to the underside. This is the source of new solid ice. Snow on the top also adds to the thickness, but is not solid ice.

 

The summer melting can result in some Arctic open water. Open water can absorb much more of the Solar insolation than ice or snow, but even at the maximum summer level, absorbs only about 350 W/m2 near the pole. The water emissivity is slightly higher than ice, and radiates about 300 W/m2. These result in a maximum excess of absorption in open water of only about 50 W/m2 for a very short part of the peak of summer, and a large net cooling over the full year. Thus to claim that a temporary full melting of Arctic ice (from underneath) will keep the ice from reforming is incorrect based on Solar insolation and reasonable air temperature variations.

 

The following figure is show as an example of the very rapid temperature rise experienced at the Artic in recent years. This is supposed to prove the model predictions of unusual temperature rise rates are valid, and that we are heading for big problems:

The figure shows a rise rate about 0.25C per decade. This looks scary. However if we look at records back to 1880, we get a different story altogether:

 

This longer time scale gives about 0.09C per decade if we use the starting and stopping points. However, it is clear that a straight line fit is a ridicules choice, as the temperature actually went up and down. In fact, the highest level occurred around 1940, not the present. It is also true that the temperature has been flat for several years after 2002, and has been falling for the last 2 or so years. The largest jump in temperature occurred from 1915 to 1940. This period predated most of the recent CO2 increase, and even the AGW advocates agree this period was driven by natural forces, not CO2. This demolishes the significance of the claim of the recent rise as proving anything.

The argument for the part of the Greenland icecap that is fully on land and at reasonable altitude has an even stronger argument as to why it will not melt. There is no water to melt the ice from below, and the cooling always exceeds the warming for solid ice at reasonable altitude. Since Greenland is at lower latitude than the pole, the Solar insolation can be significantly higher. If a strong enough warmer wind blows in from the sea, the sea ice and lower altitude edge of the Greenland ice sheet may melt, and has melted many times before (why do you think it is called Greenland). Ice melting at the very edge has led to scare scenes of massive melting, but it cannot happen at the higher altitudes (where almost all of the ice volume is located) at temperature variations that are happening, or that are even projected to occur by the scare models. The following is a temperature record over the last 11,000 years made from a typical ice core from the peak of the Greenland ice cap.

 

The temperature variations are shown relative to the temperature during 2000. The temperature has been as much as 2C higher than at present, and the last several years have a dropping temperature. The zero line actually corresponds to –30C, so even a temperature rise of 10C or even 20C would not even start to melt the ice.

The result is a clear demonstration that the present models and scare claims are not valid, and that using a short selected time history can give a very misleading indication of longer trends.