Category: General news
Managing director of Ebono Institute and major sponsor of The Generator, Geoff Ebbs, is running against Kevin Rudd in the seat of Griffith at the next Federal election. By the expression on their faces in this candid shot it looks like a pretty dull campaign. Read on
admin /20 January, 2010
The real Himalayan scandal
What’s really shocking about research into the glaciers of the Himalayas is how little there has bee
After the University of East Anglia’s email scandal, climate sceptics now believe they have another cause for celebration. Some British papers claimed this week that climate change “theories” are in doubt because of the retraction of an unfounded claim in an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report from 2007.
The item alleged that the glaciers of the Himalayas could disappear by 2035. It was drawn from a campaigning report by the WWF, which had taken it from an interview with an Indian glaciologist published years earlier in New Scientist. It was not based on peer-reviewed science and should not have been included in the IPCC’s fourth assessment report.
admin /20 January, 2010
Hedegaard says now is not the time for carbon tax
But carbon levy ‘could come later’ says candidate for future EU climate commissioner role. From BusinessGreen, part of the Guardian Environment Network
The debate surrounding the relative merits of carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes heated up today after Connie Hedegaard, leading nominee for EU climate commissioner and the chair of last year’s Copenhagen Summit, rejected calls for the introduction of a carbon levy.
However, she did not rule out the idea of a carbon tax completely, raising the possibility that an EU charge on carbon emissions could be introduced at a later date.
admin /20 January, 2010
Heated moments mar Monckton
IS it too much to ask for a measured climate change debate in 2010? Looking back at 2009, it’s hard to think of a more frustrating debate than the one about anthropogenic global warming.
One side says the science is settled and will not countenance dissent. Within that group sit the alarmists who preach death and destruction, those who define humanity as the problem and those who have long harboured an ideological grudge against Western progress. Those on the other side of the debate say man-made global warming is all bunkum. Though they describe themselves as sceptics, for many of them the science is equally settled: in their favour.
And in between is a far larger group of people, those who are open-minded and genuinely sceptical, who are trying to understand the debate as best they can. Yet frustration only grows at the extremism on both sides.
admin /18 January, 2010
Rightwing climate change deniers are all for free speech – when it suits them
Frank Furedi’s witchhunt comparsion exposes double standards when UK snow does not undermine global warming consensus
Read the piece on cold weather and global warming by George Monbiot and Leo Hickman
A road made impassable by snow in the Scottish Borders. Photograph: DAVID MOIR/REUTERS
Conservatives are no longer allowed to be wrong. As soon as you point out that someone on the right has made misleading claims, you are accused of pursuing a witch-hunt or behaving like the Inquisition. The delicate sensibilities of rightwingers somehow forbid debate: contradict them, point out their mistakes and falsehoods, and you are immediately charged with persecution.
admin /18 January, 2010
Ski property faces meltdown as global warming chills the market
Rental income will melt away if scientists are right about low-lying resorts in the Alps
Skiing in Chamonix, France. Photograph: Gavin Hellier/Corbis
There may be a global freeze on at the moment but Britons who own and let flats and chalets at ski resorts could face a threat to their investments – thanks to a long-term shortage of snow.
admin /17 January, 2010
THE peak UN body on climate change has been dealt another humiliating blow to its credibility after it was revealed a central claim of one of its benchmark reports – that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 because of global warming – was based on a “speculative” claim by an obscure Indian scientist.
The 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming, appears to have simply adopted the untested opinions of the Indian glaciologist from a magazine article published in 1999.
The IPCC report claimed that the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish inside 30 years.
But the scientists behind the warning have now admitted it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s report.
