Climate Change Scare continues down-under.
Story submitted by Tarun Singh
I thought it might be worthwhile to highlight another alarmist propaganda being peddled for science.
The below excerpts are from a news item warning on “climate change”
A LEADING Australian disease expert says prompt action on climate change is paramount to our survival on Earth.
Australian National University Epidemiologist Tony McMichael has conducted an historical study that suggests natural climate change over thousands of years has destabilised civilisations via food shortages, disease and unrest.
“We haven’t really grasped the fact that a change in climate presents a quite fundamental threat to the foundations of population health,” Prof McMichael said.
“These things have happened before in response to fairly modest changes to climate.
“Let’s be aware that we really must take early action if we are going to maintain this planet as a liveable habitat for humans.”
I would like to highlight a few things that I noticed :
a- There is no mention of the Paper’s title or reference provided. I went through the online website of PNAS at http://www.pnas.org/content/current#BiologicalSciencesEvolution and couldnt find a refernce to Tony McMichael , so unless I missed somthing most readers like me can’t verify what is IN THE PAPER.
b – The article has an underlying theme that paints “Climate change” , as a variable that can be controlled by Human interference , there is ample evidence against it as not all variables are understood regarding the different climatic changes.
c- The author concedes that this has been happening for thousands of years yet says “”Let’s be aware that we really must take early action if we are going to maintain this planet as a liveable habitat for humans.” early action to mitigate what ????
At this point the narrative proceeds:
“With the exception of a few downward spikes of acute cooling due to massive volcanic eruptions, most of the changes have been within a band of about plus or minus three-quarters of a degree centigrade,” he said today.
“Yet we are talking about the likelihood this century of going beyond two degrees centigrade and quite probably, on current trajectory, reaching a global average increase of three to four degrees.”
This is just plain wrong if not deceptively misleading and alarmist.
It has now been accepted that MWP was warmer than now.
The second statement of reaching average increase of three to four degree in a decade , well that just goes to show the authors ignorance or ideological bend. As we all know that the 3 – 4 degree estimate is based on IPCC projections based on postive feedback which has scince been argued in various papers (lindzen and choi).
The falsehoods and misleading continues with myths then quoted :
“Warming also leads to an increase in infectious diseases as a result of better growth conditions for bacteria and the proliferation of mosquitoes.”
The entire above statement can be categorically dismissed as alarmist hyperbole. However lets save the laughs for the next:
“Drought can also result in greater contact with rodents searching for scarce food supplies.”
The prof then goes on to explain what he considers important. Prof McMichael has been examining the impact of climate change on population health for 20 years and says it’s not easy to raise awareness of the risk.
“Most of the attention has been of a more limited shorter-term kind relating to things around us like the economy, our property, infrastructure and risks to iconic ecosystems and species.”
So in other words, people are stupid to argue about economy, personal property , infrastructure etc when it comes to CLIMATE CHANGE as its all for GREATER CAUSE.
Isopropyl alcohol freezes at -89C. If someone can find the phase diagram for isopropanol, you have people in AK mix up alcohol-distilled water cups and take pictures of which on freezes as evidence of reaching -80C.
“expert says prompt action on climate change is paramount to our survival on Earth”
Here in Europe, it seems paramount to our survival to get rid of some millions of unproductive public sector employees in various countries, including Germany. I see that as the root cause of our problems. The CAGW scientists at the PIK are some of the most harmful of those legions, but after all, CAGW is only a weapon that the public sector has created to justify its ravenous appetite for money.
MAGB says:
January 30, 2012 at 7:03 pm
“McMichael is usually a sensible academic ”
He is probably a rational, self-serving, intelligent being who just needs to push the old grant mill some more to be able to maintain his lazy, luxurious lifestyle; i.e. a rent-seeker. When he’s flush with cash, he’s probably willing to do honest research for a while until cash runs out again.
I currently live north of the 47th parallel in the interior of Washington State. Many folks I know head for the Phoenix, Arizona area for 5 months during the cold season here. There in the warmth, they must be in great danger. Is it my duty to inform them of their self-imposed hazard?
I recently read an article of a similar nature:
“Denying the links between greenhouse gas emissions and man-made climate change “is akin to denying the links between HIV/Aids and unprotected sex, smoking and lung cancer, or alcohol consumption and liver disease”, according the the UK Climate and Health Council.”
http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=20299
“”””” @ur momisugly Doug Cotton
Yes, the whole Earth plus atmosphere system looks like a blackbody from outer space and some average radiating temperature could be calculated by remembering that it is a spinning sphere, not a flat disk as warmists treat it as being. But whatever temperature is calculated is merely an average temperature somewhere in the atmosphere. “””””
Not true. If the earth WAS a black body, each element of the surface would be radiating a Planckian spectrum characteristic of the Temperature of that particular surface element. The combined global spectrum, would be a summation of the Wien shifted spectra from each surface element, so it would NOT have ANY black body isothermal Temperature spectrum, but some broader peaked spectrum based on the Temperature distibution. in general it would be difficult or not possible to extract some effective BB Temperature from that.
The 70% of the surface that is ocean could be reasonably black body like, but the land areas typically have a much wider range of spectral radiant emissivities; so the whole can’t be a BB in any sense of the term.
It’s just that we’ve got the world’s biggest carbon tax due to start this July and the Prime Minister is on the nose. They are still hoping to convince the electorate that the tax is necessary. I expect lots more silly stories.
The source of the article may have been a burning bush so… listen up sinners and better throw a few more witches on the fire just ot be sure.
“The second statement of reaching average increase of three to four degree in a decade , well that just goes to show the authors ignorance or ideological bend.”
I think this was misread, this was for the century and the statement and article doesn’t contain the word “decade”.
Here is ABC radio’s move along, nothing to see here in response to the 16 scientists in the WSJ.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3418512.htm
They only mention one by name and Tim Flannery is interviewed for “balance”
The Sydney Morning Herald is excellent material for the bottom of bird cages. It is so far to the left that it will soon appear on the right as it has nowhere else to go. It is not taken seriously here in Australia except by those who take themselves seriously.The same characters who scream for police protection when people receive dangerous items in the mail and they do not! (Why have I been left out? Do the senders of these items not know who I am?).
This McMichael chap was a runner up for the Australian of the Year 2010 and is described by the Sydney Morming Herald as ” One of Australia’s intellectual giants” (Probably because they know he reads their paper!).
Oh folks, so sorry…
It grieves me to my soul when people in my profession come out with drivel like this.
‘He is in receipt of my disgust.’
Dear Tony,
“And right now I don’t care if they are lampooned.”
I have to live in this world, and I’d rather it not be as an embarrassed Australian.
How much has the Government paid you to make an absolute fool of yourself? Was it worth it?
Idiots like you cause disquiet amongst men.
You have serious issues Sir, and we intend to oust you.
Markus Fitzhenry.
To me, the hoot lies in the fact that, not only is public money lavished on combating “climate change”, but a second massive chunk of money is “invested” in seeking and attempting to communicate with other populated planets. Get this straight, SETI: If the mean temperature of any planet that attracts your attention is more than half a degree adrift of that of earth, the place would be a skeleton-strewn, lifeless void. And if CO2 exceeds 390 ppm by volume – Unimaginable! Further consideration would be absurd. Talk of the left hand being out of touch with the right hand!
Geoff Alder
Where I live temperature varies even by 10C in 24 hours, while it varies by some 35C between summer and winter. This guy is warning us of a degree C or two change in decades or centuries?
Meanwhile we are being warned of 3 or 4 c cooling due to solar antics. But then, writing reports on CAGW brings in lots of grant gravy.
IMHO, CAGW must bere some of the responsibility for the flood events that happened in QLD a year ago, and when I say CAGW I mean the the hysterical scare campaign surrounding it, and the warmers promoting it, as the weather will do, what the weather will do.
As someone living in the area I can tell you that we had been (and still are ) confronted on a daily basis with unfounded, baseless, illogical, and scientifically unsound stories if impending doom.
Up untill late 2010 we had been though a nasty and extended drought, the kind that hit the region a hundred or so years before, this was NOT unusual, but with a much larger population and a complete lack of infrastructure improvements for over 30 years, things were getting tough. At one stage our dams were below 10%, in Toowoomba where I live the enviromentalists and far lefts saw this as a golden opportunity to force their ideals upon us, we were told by Tim Flannery ( Australia’s answer to James Hansan) and others that drought was the new norm, that we would never see regular rains again, and that our dams would never fill again and could no longer be relied upon for water supply,
Heres an example:In 2007,
Flannery predicted cities such as Brisbane would never again have dam-filling rains, as global warming had caused “a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas” and made the soil too hot, “so even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and river systems … “.
Our mayor, pushed by the head water engineer and encouraged by the state Government saw fit to declare our new water supply would be to recycle our sewerage and pump it into one of our pristine dams, this is not the place to go into that, I could write a whole book on the scandels that surrounded the issue, including mis-appropriation of funds, vested interests, lies, manipulation, defamation, use of the terms, “flatearthers”, “deniers”, “ludites” etc, secrecy, figure “adjustment”, (sounding familiar?). Anyhow Toowoomba thankfully rebelled and stopped the project, but the hype didn’t stop there, it continued to Brisbane where a recycled sewerage plant was built against the populations will along with desal plants etc etc. Big green had managed to whip our dumb pollies into a state where they were convinced that they were literally saving our lives and that they were going to be held up as saints. The State of Queensland was in total AGW meltdown and when we finally started to get rain in 2010 it was considered to be too good to be true, while the final results from the enquiry are yet to be aired, it is almost certain this fearmongering lead to the decisions made on January 10 and the events that unfolded.
Toowoomba is in the basin of an extinct volcano, basically a bowl with a little hole that drains north west, we really didn’t get THAT much rain on that day, 4-8 inches depending on who you ask, but it fell very fast, and our drains could not hold it as there had been no allowance or improvements to cope with the massive number of new homes and drainage required for all the extra hard surfaces. But lets face it, it was NEVER going to rain again, Tim Flannery said so, why waste money on that?
I was at work that day, we had experienced minor flooding in our home workshops a week before so I was watching the local radar closely, when I noticed a massive rain event develop, during the morning I rang my wife and said do what you can to divert water, we are going to cop it and brisbane is going to flood, I have never made a prediction like it before and I have never seen a rain event like it in my life. NO one working in meteorology could have missed it. But it was ignored. The Dam above Brisbane (Wivenhoe), built after the 1974 floods was designed to be part water supply and part flood mitigation, but it was already above full water storage capacity and wasn’t being drained fast enough, by the time everyone realised ( later that evening) it was too late, Wivenhoe is a packed earth dam with a concrete “face lining” which works fine untill it’s full, if water flows over the edge it erodes the wall and the dam colapses, by the time action was taken the dam had to have all flood gates opened to prevent “brimming” and a total failure of the dam, Wivenhoe was no longer flood mitigation as the outflows matched or exceeded inflows, something went horribly wrong and people died as a result, IMHO the fear caused by CAGW had a definite role to play, and while the event was natural, and infact nowhere near the biggest flood we have had, the actions of a few resulted in a magnification of the effects and a “needlessly large disaster”
Climate disaster can apparently be man made, we just haven’t been looking at it right.
If the climate keeps warming, then the health risk we are faced with are much the same the people of the Middle Ages were faced with: robust good health.
But, if the climate heads the other way into another LIA, then we are faced with similar risks those alive during the LIA were exposed to. .
I know which risks I prefer!
Perhaps the Gentleman concerned should also consider, as an epidemiologist, the effect of the forthcoming food shortage caused by the reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere. As a worshipper at the altar of CAGW, he will be aware that the draft agreement tabled by the UN at Durban targetted 300 ppmv CO2 eq as the desirable level of greenhouse gases. [ para 24(h) ]
388.8ppmv CO2 plus 1.774 x 25 CH4 plus 0.319 x 298 N2O = 531.5 ppmv CO2 eq
Reducing that to 300 ppmv is a 43.55% reduction.
Assuming [ but unlikely ] that all greenhouse gases reduce proportionately, the desired CO2 level becomes 219.3ppmv. However, I suggest it likely that putting impervious covers over bogs for methane reduction, and culling methane-producing animals would hit strenuous resistance from the Green elements, so CO2 would have to be further reduced to compensate. For discussion, say 200 ppmv of CO2 would be necessary.
University of Illinois – 29 June 2006 – CO2 increase in open-field trials does show an increase in production, but not as much as enclosed volumes such as greenhouses.
Ohio State University – 3 October 2008 – CO2 is a mixed blessing in that crop plants did increase production under increased CO2 but, apart from legumes, did not take up nitrogen proportionately, so people and animals would have to eat a greater volume for the same nutritional uptake.
Peres-Lopez, in a defended PhD thesis studying barley, showed that CO2 increased crop production, increased resistance to saline environments { a curse of irrigation }, and reduced water demand by plants.
Gerhard & Ward, University of Kansas – Biomass reduction in C3 plants [ about 85% of all plants ] ranges from 40% to 70% if CO2 reduces to 180 – 220 ppmv, and as much as 92% at 150ppmv. The trials were carried out with all other plant requirements held at optimum.
Craig D. Idso – Centre for Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change – 8 June 2011 – is essentially a summary of trials, and a projection to 2050 when world population is expected to reach about 9 billion. The conclusion is that, as plant life is the foundation of the food chain, there is no way that 9 billion people can be fed without INCREASING carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere.
The question to be decide appears to me to be :- Do we allow a doubling of CO2 and adapt to the 1.25 degree temperature increase which the evidence seems to show, and have some chance of feeding the expected population, or do we proceed with mass starvation on a genocidal scale that Stalin, Hitler, Pol-Pot, et al could do no more than fantasise about ? I wonder if the Gentleman concerned would dare answer it.
This is the only McMichael paper I can find in PNAS web search with “climate” in the title:
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/21/9483.full
It’s dated May 2010, and is the same paper found by Gerald Wilhite above.
“Climate change: Heat, health, and longer horizons
Anthony J. McMichael and Keith B. G. Dear”
It appears to be just cliche-ridden commentary on a paper by Sherwood and Huber
—-
BB – good comment..
During the Dark Ages, after the Romans abandoned England in 400AD because it was getting colder and Rome was under threat, any small temperature change would spawn famine and pestilence but we have advanced since then and we do not live in mud huts without sewage disposal. ( Africa has millions living in these conditions but that is down to corrupt government not climate change)
We are now well able to adapt to climate change because of technology and knowledge gained since 400AD. There are more problems to sort out than climate change which will continue in its own natural way.
A healthy reminder that the AGW reaserch bucket is still deep and well filled and there are still lots of people looking to dip into it .
Surely if the Australians were really worried about climate change they would be thinking about its implications for cricket – or are your sports scientists still waiting to hear if their applications for grants for research in this area have been successful or not?
BB: January 30, 2012 at 11:31 pm …
BB, That was a heartfelt comment. Glad to have read it.
There’s a little known argument that the expansion of the bubonic plague and other diseases in the mediaeval period was more related to legal changes that anything climatological. The theory argues that prior to the plague most urban and riral settlements used wild harvested reed, fern and herb bedding and thatch. These crop came from unowned commons and comercial church or freeman run farms.
Reed thatch is rat and insect repellent. Fern and herb bedding either fresh or soaked and dryed is also insect and rat repellent. Over the years taxes were inposed on there’s wild crops and people switched hay wicth was not rat and insect repellant.
Kings etc also taxed rabit hunting and effecivily claimed ownership of such game, not just the kings deer. This was unenforcable without banning weases and stotes, both semi domesicated for the purpose. With these rat eating animals caged, banned or taxed the way was cleared for the rats speared carrying the plague. Where these laws were early the plague was early. Where they were late it was late. The laws became popular as the crisis made normal tax revenues plumite. The trade with the east was also inpart due to government interferance, exhaustive taxation of some europian markets forcing merchants to look to the middle east where the rats and the plague was already endemic. http://mises.org/daily/3861
Sorry I can’t find the main reference the theory was raised many years ago and it was obcure then.