Agmates

Geoff Brown treasurer of The Climate Sceptics writes to the Australian Museum re their Climate Change Exhibition:

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I am surprise that you would mount an exhibition on Climate Change for three reasons.

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1) It is a fact that throughout the history of the Earth, climate has been continuously changing and man can not change that.

2) Is “Climate Change” a euphemism for Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW)? Why not then call the exhibition by its true name?

3) To me, it seems to be outside the objects of the trust to predict future events.

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Stated Objects of the museum Trust

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(1) The objects of the Trust are to propagate knowledge about the natural environment of Australia and to increase that knowledge.

(2) When acting in pursuance of its objects, the Trust shall give particular emphasis to propagating and increasing knowledge in the natural sciences of biology, anthropology and geology.

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While we are looking at the objects, did you discuss AGW with any Geologists?

For instance Professor Ian Plimer, who has just published a book “Heaven and Earth.” Professor Plimer is critical of greenhouse gas politics and argues that extreme environmental changes are inevitable and unavoidable.

Human Induced Climate Change -- Ian Plimer

(part 1 of 5)

Then there is Professor Robert Carter.
Bob Carter is a Research Professor at James Cook University (Queensland) and the University of Adelaide (South Australia). He is a palaeontologist, stratigrapher, marine geologist and environmental scientist with more than thirty years professional experience, and holds degrees from the University of Otago (New Zealand) and the University of Cambridge (England). He has held tenured academic staff positions at the University of Otago (Dunedin) and James Cook University (Townsville), where he was Professor and Head of School of Earth Sciences between 1981 and 1999.

He would also advise that man and CO2 are both not guilty.

I was distressed to read the item in the description of the exhibition that said:

Melt the ice caps and see which parts of Sydney flood first.

This will scare the living daylights out of children and for what purpose? Scientists record that the ice in the Arctic is greater now than 1980 and Antarctic has been continuously building.

There has been some scare-mongering about the melting of the West Antarctic Peninsula’s Wilkins Ice Shelf. (Same story over several years)

By definition an Ice Shelf is floating Ice and as all scientist know, if floating ice melts there is no increase in sea levels.

Why scare kids unnecessarily?

Today we read that the chief AGW scare monger who was worth $2Million when he lost his bid for president, is now worth more that $100million and is headed to become the first climate credit billionaire. All this and a portion of a Nobel Peace Prize when his InCONvenient truth movie had 41 Inconvenient lies.

You should at least present some balance to your exhibition by showing the other side of the Anthropogenic Global Warming debate.

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Independent Senator for South Australia Nick Xenophon writes:

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The Federal Government’s decision to delay the introduction of its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and to provide further support for major polluters will not receive my support in the Senate.

The Government’s CPRS is fundamentally flawed, their model is unfixable and the changes announced today are simply window dressing.

If you give a lame duck a hair-cut, it is still a lame duck.

The government’s proposed scheme is ‘all stick and no carrot’, and the scheme will see tens of billions of dollars churned through government coffers. The emission reduction targets proposed by the government are far too low.

Climate change is real and we need a scheme that will effectively tackle this global crisis. Te government’s CPRS doesn’t do that. The flawed design will tank the economy and not fix the problem of global warming.

The government must provide greater incentives for industry, the farming sector and households to find additional ways to reduce carbon emissions.

There are things we can do right now independent of the CPRS. The government must not put all its eggs in the CPRS basket.

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END

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Agmates Episode 3.

Today: Swine Flu ….  Save the Pigs ….. Conspiracies ….. Kevin Rudd ….. Global Warming ….. Anna bligh ….. Peter Garrett ….. Media Paranoia

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Have Your Say Below!

President of The Climate Sceptics Leon Ashby [pictured] writes:

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On Saturday 28th March the new political party, The Climate Sceptics held their first public meeting in Singleton NSW   explaining the science and the economics of the misguided belief that CO2 is the cause of Climate change and an Emission trading Scheme will save the planet.

Secretary of the Climate Sceptics, Newcastle Lawyer Anthony Cox gave the presentation to 25 people and explained how CO2 cannot be the cause of decadel changes in the earths temperature which has been both warmer and cooler in the past centuries before any CO2 emission of consequence began being emitted 60 years ago.

He also showed how Global temperatures have started decreasing since 1998 which again is evidence CO2 is not effecting the climate.

The first meetings we have will no doubt be modest affairs as we have a huge job in re educating the public about the facts that run counter to the brainwashing being done on the subject.  This meeting was held on the day the media was hyping up Earth hour without questioning the proponents for evidence CO2 actually causes climate change.

As well as presenting science evidence for The party`s position on climate change, we will be highlighting the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will cost each taxpayer $4,550 per year from 2010 and steadily increase to $91,000 per year in 2060.

The aim of an ETS is to rid our society of using fuels or cheap coal generated electricity. An absurd idea since there is no evidence CO2 effects climate.

The attached graph shows a comparative cost of the ETS with todays Global financial crisis (where Australia is going into debt $42 billion this year)

Even if it costs Australia $200 billion to get out of this financial crisis this is very small next the the ETS which will cost Australia approx $1,000 billion per year by 2060

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This Green tax will not effect climate change (because Climate change is caused by natural factors.) but it will make our society go backwards and give us all a lower standard of living.

The evidence Climate change is effected by natural factors is the correlation between the sunspot cycle length and the earth`s global temperature (see slide 2 attached)

Several of those attending the meeting were surprised at the evidence presented. Subsequent meetings are now being planned in other towns

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For more details Contact

Leon Ashby
President “The Climate Sceptics”
PO box 721, Mt Gambier, SA 5290
(447 Chambers Rd Mt Gambier SA 5290)
Ph 0887259561 or 0887235550

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Do you remember the article in Brisbane’s Courier Mail on December 3rd last year:

White Possum said to be first victim of global warming

SCIENTISTS say a white possum native to Queensland’s Daintree forest has become the first mammal to become extinct due to man-made global warming.

The white lemuroid possum, a rare creature found only above 1000m in the mountain forests of far north Queensland, has not been seen for three years.

“It is not looking good,” researcher Steve Williams said.

It is a big one, and a big one to bang the drum over. It is equally as shocking as losing an iconic marine species like a whale or the dugong.

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At the time Agmates awarded the Courier Mail a Bullshit award for this article. Just 4 months later the entire story has been exposed as a complete global warming hysteria beat up.

In fact just 8 weeks ago the Courier mail rehashed the whole sorry article: -

Rare white possum may be first local climate change victim

That facts are the entire story is a beat up. From the Australian this week:

Reports of white lemuroid ringtail possum’s extinction premature
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A RARE possum said to be the first Australian species wiped out by global warming appears to be clinging to survival.

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Hang on, it was just 4 months ago that James Cook University researcher Steve Williams and the Courier Mail were saying:
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It is a big one, and a big one to bang the drum over.

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Another piece of global warming hysteria trashed. We should be hoping that this type of sham will put red faced scientists and environmental reporters on the job endangered list . The story at the time gained international press coverage.

Of course there is no sign of a correction article in the Courier Mail.

When does the ‘boy who cried wolf’ parable cut in with these people? How can either Williams (odd they both have the same last name) have any credibility left after this disgraceful beat up?

END

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“Introducing (though to many he needs no introduction) Agmates member Allan Yeomans.

I have tremendous respect for Allan and personally regard him as  of the great contemporary “thinkers” in world Agriculture. I approached Allan last week to see if he would share some of his wisdom, knowledge and insights with our online community.

Like all of us here at Agmates Allan has a burning passion for the betterment of the rural industry. Although this piece is twice as long as what I’d normally publish, it is an absolute cracker -

Your Agmate -Steve”

Allan [pictured below] writes.

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To fix global warming: is improving soil better than planting trees? We have to decide.

Back in the late 1980s I proposed the concept that we could combat global warming by sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide from the air and converting it into soil organic matter.

Thankfully the idea has spread and is beginning to be considered seriously by those knowledgeable in soil science and atmospherics. But sadly not fast enough.

The Keyline System of soil land management was designed and developed by my father P.A. Yeomans on our family farms at North Richmond N.S.W. in the late forties and early 1950s.

Keyline management includes techniques for the rapid enhancement of soil fertility. Keyline is now taught in agricultural colleges and universities around the world. I’m a moderately competent meteorologist as my sport is flying and racing gliders. I’ve also lectured on meteorology.

Putting the two disciplines together presented an unusual concept. Soil enhancement, on a world scale could beat global warming; and all the climate change horrors would stop.

Regrettably the concept receiving exclusive government support and copious media attention is not soil; it’s the planting of trees.

So let’s compare, let’s first look at soil.

In my writings and lectures and in my book “PRIORITY ONE Together We Can Beat Global Warming” I argue we can restore the atmosphere to normal by increasing the organic matter in the world’s soils directly under man’s control by 1.6 percentage points (That’s a one percentage point rise in actual carbon).

The terms humus and organic matter are somewhat interchangeable. Both are the stuff that makes rich soil black. Organic farmers often exceed that 1.6 figure tenfold. It’s not hard to do.

So in essence we switch to an agricultural system that generally approaches that used by organic farmers. Keyline is itself such a system. We either stop using or drastically minimise the use of agricultural chemicals such as pesticides, fungicides, most herbicides and particularly ammonia based fertilisers. Those chemicals kill soil friendly earthworms as well as the friendly bacteria and fungicides that convert dead plant material into rich humus.

We re-adopt the old practice of crop rotation that sustained agriculture and food production for centuries.

And we also stop the practice of “turning the soil”. Turning a clod of soil upside down plays havoc with the specialised life cycle of our friendly soil bacteria, earthworms and fungi.

A hectare of soil 30 cm, a foot or 3 hands-width deep weighs about 4000 tonnes. A 1.6 percentage point increase in soil organic matter content is thus about 64 tonnes per hectare or near 40 tonnes of carbon. And to create that increase in soil fertility extracts 145 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air.

An organic farmer, in the first few years will often sequester 150 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air while massively enriching his soil and simultaneously producing huge quantities of healthy, tasty and nutritious crops. Production costs and yields for large scale organic farming are surprisingly similar to conventional based agriculture.

About three quarters of a hectare of agricultural land, grazing land, cropland, golf courses or whatever is every human’s individual foot print on our Earth. Remember that number.

Now let’s look at trees.

A reasonably productive forest, from planting the seedling to the maturity of the forest produces about 20 cubic metres of wood per hectare per year, which equates to about nine tonnes of carbon.

Generally forests can be considered to reach maturity in about 20 years. At which time the forest releases carbon dioxide as fast as it is sequestering it and the forest thus becomes completely and utterly, global warming neutral and note that global warming protocols (e.g. Kyoto) mandate no harvesting nor clearing for 100 years,

Let’s say we planted enough trees to sequest the carbon dioxide we produce.

Every human in a modern western society would need about three quarters of a hectare of new forest to sequest the carbon dioxide produced from the burning of the coal, gas or oil to cover that person’s footprint of power requirements, and another three quarters of a hectare to cater for the car she or he might drive.

Within 20 years we would need another three quarter hectare of new plantings for each human and each car. If we all had a reasonable lifestyle and standard of living then, most unfortunately, within 20 years there would be no agricultural land, no grazing lands, no golf courses and absolutely no place anywhere on Earth to grow any food whatever. Those lands would be all forests. And yet more forests would need to be planted.

That’s the arithmetic of the trees.

Additionally if you’ve ever grown trees from seedlings you’d know the trouble, care, the watering and nurturing it takes.

Tree seedlings have a high attrition rate so would need to plant between 400 and 4000 seedlings per hectare. So depending on the tree type and variety you would need to plant anywhere from 300 to 3000 seedlings in your three quarter hectare plot every twenty years.

So why have trees become flavour of the month to beat global warming? Sherlock Holmes told Watson “Look for those who will benefit”. And I don’t think the planet will.

The agrochemical people believe more chemicals produce more food per hectare, and food demand is constant. So take some agricultural land out of production and the rest needs more chemicals.

Then “wasting” the land left on growing biofuel becomes antisocial. That’s good for the oil people.

Have concerned citizens preoccupied with trees and they’re successfully blindsided. That’s good.

So I say to you, “first get understanding”.

I’m Allan Yeomans

END

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Australian prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been busy over his summer break writing an 8,000 word manifesto advocating  “A New World Order”.

KEVIN RUDD has denounced the unfettered capitalism of the past three decades and called for a new era of “social capitalism” in which government intervention and regulation feature heavily.

As we all know PM Rudd  is also a global champion of establishing the Al Gore inspired Global Carbon Constrained Economies. Come hell or high water he plans to introduce an emissions trading scheme in Australia in June 2010.

Yesterday at the Global economic forum in Davos Switzerland Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus squarely took aim at Gore and the Global warming camp.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus

“I don’t think that there is any global warming,” said the 67-year-old liberal, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Union.

“I don’t see the statistical data for that.”

Referring to the former US vice president Al Gore, who attended Davos this year, he added:

“I’m very sorry that some people like Al Gore are not ready to listen to the competing theories. I do listen to them.

Environmentalism and the global warming alarmism is challenging our freedom. Al Gore is an important person in this movement.”

For an insight into what Klaus was referring to by “challenging our freedom” lets turn to a Quote by President of the Czech Republic included in May 2007 paper by Prof Bob Carter from Townsville University:

“As someone who lived under communism for most of my life I feel obliged to say that the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is not communism or its various softer variants.

Communism (has been) replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism … The environmentalists consider their ideas and arguments to be an undisputable truth and use sophisticated methods of media manipulation and PR campaigns to exert pressure on policymakers to achieve their goals.

Their argumentation is based on the spreading of fear and panic by declaring the future of the world to be under serious threat. In such an atmosphere they continue pushing policymakers to adopt illiberal measures, impose arbitrary limits, regulations, prohibitions, and restrictions on everyday human activities and make people subject to omnipotent bureaucratic decision-making …

Man-made climate change has become one of the most dangerous arguments aimed at distorting human efforts and public policies in the whole world.”

Is anybody else out there starting to join the dots.

Australian PM Kevin Rudd championing a “New World Order” ………….. and leading the rest of the western world into an Emissions Trading Scheme.

I have actually come to believe that Australia enacting an emissions trading scheme has nothing to do with the environment.

(Thanks to Agmate Bev for the Bob Carter Extract)

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This is what happens to in Australia if you are dare speak out against the global warming religion. You may remember Jon Jenkins adjunct professor of virology specialising in computer modelling at Bond University QLD Australia that we featured in our Falt Earthers Series.

For his opinion, Professor Jenkins received an official reprimand from the Bond University Registrar and then was informed last Friday that his adjunct status had been revoked.

That opinion piece appeared in the Australian Newspaper  on Jan 6th. Three weeks later he loses his job. It’s no wonder scientists and academics will not speak out. They too have mortgages to pay.

How badly does this reflect on Bond University – As blogger Janamara wrote on Jennifer Marohasy’s blog :

“but what do you expect from an institution that is named after one of the biggest corporate crooks in Australian history.”

(thanks to Agmate – Jeff)

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All over Australia in today’s media news headlines are touting a new scientific report that shows the Antarctic is warming faster than the earth and that the western half of the cap will melt.

Australian Global Warming Alarmist Professor Barry Brook [pictured] has seized on the report, in the words of Bob Dylan -

And the newspapers, they all went along for the ride.

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That’s bad news if you live near the Australian coast,” Prof Brook said.

“In some areas where you’ve currently got housing, you’d probably have to abandon those areas.”

He said the sea would penetrate up to 1km inland in flat areas like South Australia’s lower lakes. Large areas which don’t see flooding now would get flooded by king tides.

House prices for coastal areas would probably drop, Prof Brook said.

Scientists already knew, he said, that the massive ice sheets of western Antarctica were melting, but the study showed they would melt more quickly.

The study, contained in today’s issue of Nature, was also bad news for climate change in general, Prof Brook said.

It had been thought Antarctica’s cooling would help restrain global warming by acting as a “cool pack”, but this did not appear to be the case.

Has Professor Brook reviewed the report? Here is what world renown and respected climatologist Dr Roger Pielke Snr [pictured] has written after being asked to review the report. Dr Pielke is not a climate sceptic, he’s a respected academic.

In terms of the significance of their paper, it overstates what they have obtained from their analysis. In the abstract they write, for example,

“West Antarctic warming exceeds 0.1C per decade over the past 50 years”.

However, even a cursory view of Figure 2 shows that since the late 1990s, the region has been cooling in their analysis in this region. The paper would be more balanced if they presented this result, even if they cannot explain why.

Please let me know if you would like more feedback. Thank you reaching out to include a broader perspective on these papers in your articles.

Regards, Roger

If Professor Brook had reviewed the report why, being a respected academic,  could he not have seen the same thing, namely that the report showed the area has been cooling for the past decade.

No doubt if property prices along the Southern Coastline of Australia plummet due to his widely reported comments today, there would ample reason and opportunity for those property owners to sue the arse off him.

Not very smart Barry.

Have Your Say.

NSW farmer and Chairman of the Australian Beef Association (ABA) Brad Bellinger [pictured] writes:

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The ABA Board had met last week and decided to oppose any form of Emissions Trading. The Australian Government will be acting like speculative fools, if it goes down a path of trading something that cannot be accurately measured.

Since the 1997 Kyoto Summit, we have seen the UN try to run a Clean Development Mechanism, – with no success. We have seen the European Commission try Carbon Permits. They got their sums wrong and the large power and oil companies made fortunes at governments’ expense. The people are taxed – as they will be in Australia if we go down this mad path.

We have seen the World’s bankers make complete fools of themselves and bankrupt millions, as they trade in derivatives, which they haven’t completely understood. Now, Emissions Trading will be even worse, as people trade an unmeasurable commodity, as if in a gambling casino run by the unknowing. To see it even considered as the recession deepens; – makes one wonder.

The members of ABA try to make a living from raising cattle in a harsh environment. They have their feet on the ground. They hold in contempt the speculative airheads who are pushing unscientific hot air drivel onto Australians. These people have already demonstrated their utter impracticality in their inability to even sort out our major water problems.

ABA gives its full support to Barnaby Joyce and anyone else in Parliament who has the courage to point out the bleeding obvious – Emissions Trading is a con- act.

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