Food Free Fridays Coming?

Cartoon: By Jerry Holbert  

Another Issue of "Carbon Sense” prepared by The Carbon Sense Coalition. 
 

Once again, the high priests of the UN/IPCC have forecast world starvation unless we mend our wicked ways. 



According to them, unless we curb our use of oil, gas, coal and meat, the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will soar, the globe will heat up, and food production will plummet. 



This is just a rerun of their previous failed forecasts based on academic theories and computer models. 



They should have asked practical nurserymen, farmers and meteorologists. 



Nurserymen would tell them that if you pump carbon dioxide into a greenhouse the plants grow faster, bigger, more drought-tolerant and more heat-tolerant. Therefore more carbon dioxide will produce more food. 



See this Time-Lapse video showing effect of carbon dioxide on plant growth: 


Farmers would tell them that plants grow faster in the warmth of spring and summer and slower in winter. Any warming by carbon dioxide would tend to warm the higher latitudes so the snow line will shift, thus creating more arable land. It would also tend to produce warmer nights, thus reducing frost damage to crops and opening more land to frost-sensitive crops. 



Meteorologists would tell them that if global temperatures increase, evaporation from the vast oceans must also increase. What goes up with more evaporation must come down as more rain or snow. While some areas may become drier, a warmer world is on average a wetter world, producing more food. 



There is also no evidence that extra carbon dioxide and warmth will make weather more erratic – in fact the reverse should occur as the global temperature gradient, which drives winds, and storms will be reduced with more warming at the poles. 



Finally, there is no evidence that their climate scares will occur “much earlier than expected”. With global temperatures flat for 17 years, how can warming occur faster than in their previous failed forecasts? 



There is no rational basis for claims that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will add to world starvation – history and science tell us that it would produce a productive green and bountiful world. It is global cooling we have to fear. 


Image: By Steve hunter

 On the other hand, there is no doubt that foolish climate POLICIES will produce less food. Policies on ethanol, biomass, carbon-credit forestry and the Kyoto bans on regrowth control, either directly consume food, or reduce the land available for food production. 

Encouraging and protecting trees at the expense of grasslands is threatening the production of low-cost food from marginal grazing lands and water restrictions are driving irrigators out of business. 

And to top it off, their taxes and regulatory wars on carbon energy will push marginal farmers and fishermen out of production. The world may indeed see hungry years, but carbon dioxide will not be the cause. 



Already they advocate “Meat-free Mondays”. Their anti-food anti-carbon policies will soon result in “Food-free Fridays”. 




If you would like to read more see: 



The Beneficial Effects of Global Warming for the Biosphere: 


Blaming mankind for floods: 


The Food production lies of the IPCC: 


Alarmists admit that they exaggerate damage caused by climate change. It’s OK to lie: 

Climate change will reduce crop yields sooner than we thought: 


Grass, Trees, Climate and Food: 


The Twilight of Abundance with the Cold Sun?


If you would like to comment on this article: 


Coal not Candles

By Viv Forbes, Chairman, 

The Carbon Sense Coalition. 

The Carbon Sense Coalition today claimed that coal not candles should be the symbol of Earth Hour.

It was coal that produced clean electric power which cleared the smog produced by dirty combustion and open fires in big cities like London and Pittsburgh.

Much of the third world still suffers choking fumes and smog because they do not have clean electric power and burn wood, cardboard, unwashed coal, rubber and cow dung for home heat.



It was coal that saved the forests being felled to fuel the first steam engines and produce charcoal for the first iron smelters.



It was coal that powered the light bulbs and saved the whales being slaughtered for whale oil lamps.



It was coal that produced the steel that replaced shingles on the roof, timber props in the mines, wooden fence posts on the farms and the bark on the old bark hut.



In Australia today, coal provides at least 75% of our lighting, cooking, heating, refrigeration, rail transport and steel. Without it, we would be back in the dark days of candles, wood stoves, chip heaters, open fires, smoky cities, hills bare of trees and streets knee deep in horse manure.



Coal is fossil sunshine as clean as the green plants it came from, and less damaging to the environment than its green energy alternatives.



Earth Hour candles are green tokenism for rich applause-seekers and nostalgic dreamers.



We should spend Earth Hour saluting the real people who produce the coal on which most people on earth depend.



Extreme cold blamed on global warming

Image: Courtesy, Breitbardt

We are becoming accustomed to being berated by warming frantics over any uncomfortable weather event being the result of ‘man made climate change’, global warming, or whatever term is deemed appropriate these days.  These include droughts, floods, bushfires, and now, cold winters.

Recently a group of grandstanding warmists attempting to revisit Mawson’s 1911 expedition inadvertently revised Shackleton’s ‘Endurance’ trip by getting trapped in sea ice.  One of the explanations offered was that because of global warming the excessive melting of Antarctic ice had freshened the seawater to the point where it froze into sea ice at a higher temperature.

We have since been offered a similar sounding explanation for the lull in temperature rise over the past seventeen years.  Apparently GW has caused stronger trade winds, which have turned the oceans over, burying the warm water underneath and bringing cooler water to the surface.

Now Charlie Rose of CBS is claiming that global warming has caused the record low temperatures in North America:

… Guest Michio Kaku, a physics professor from New York City College--not a climatologist, but a physicist--claimed that the "wacky weather" could get "even wackier" and its all because of global warming. "What we're seeing is that the jet stream and the polar vortex are becoming unstable. Instability of historic proportions. We think it's because of the gradual heating up of the North Pole. The North Pole is melting," professor Kaku said. 

"That excess heat generated by all this warm water is destabilizing this gigantic bucket of cold air... So that's the irony, that heating could cause gigantic storms of historic proportions," the prof explained. 

This was all because of global warming, Rose insisted. …

The excuses are getting sillier and are running out.

Global warming induced asteroid fly-bys

One of the great things about the end of the year is the tendency of the media to do their nostalgia pieces on the year that was. While most of them are rubbish, there are some gems among them, especially the ones that deal with the sillier parts, and in particular, the more absurd claims of global warming frantics.

Even better and more idiotic than that, are the efforts of the liberal media ‘sophisticates’ who are ever anxious to show off their belief in the new trendy GW religion, with claims that everything bad is GW related.

Deborah Feyerick makes the effort here with a question of the ‘weather guy’ Bill Nye, about an asteroid fly by and whether it might be induced by climate change:

 This is somewhat like some of the movie scenes where the piss is taken from media anchors, except you just can’t make this stuff up. Note the deliciously threatening ‘only fifteen minutes from disaster’ statement from Nye.

 Warnings of near earth fly bys gives NASA a reason to feel relevant and scientists a source of government money to ‘study’ this phenomenon with an eye to finding a defense mechanism. This in turn gives the government a chance to appear to be doing something about it.

 The best chance we have at present seems to be Bruce Willis in his role in ‘Armageddon’ where he destroyed one, however thirty years in the drilling industry has made me a little skeptical of that possibility.

 The most you can hope for otherwise is that the good people of NASA will either not find an earth destroying asteroid, or if they do, will be able to issue you with a warning in time to give you the opportunity to kiss your arse goodbye.

The Environmental Multinationals have lost their Way.

By Viv Forbes, Chairman,

The carbon Sense Coalition 

Many groups have much to lose as the theory that humans are driving dangerous and accelerating global warming is progressively exposed as science fiction.

Those in most danger are the multinational environmental empires and the politicians who have supported them.



Once upon a time the World Wildlife Fund was mainly about saving wildlife – now its pre-occupation seems to be how to destroy the coal industry in order to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is the gas of life, and the additional carbon dioxide is known to be fuelling the green revolution which has caused increased growth of all green things. WWF is thus now anti-green.



Greenpeace also has forgotten the green bit and is now more interested in saddling us with a tax on carbon, the key element of all life.



And instead of working for refugees, Oxfam was prominent among the dozens of “charities” acting more like stop-work agitators at the climate grabfest in Warsaw. (Yes it was a grab-fest – most of the attendees were there hoping to grab a big heap of cash from a few western bunnies for “Climate Compensation”.)



See: Green groups walk out of UN climate talks


And how do Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club accept the massive environmental destruction caused by thousands of bird-killing bat-killing wind turbines with their spider-webs of roads and transmission lines? The wind mania will collapse as soon as its subsidies disappear. Who is then going to clean up their mess? Will we see volunteers from FOE dismantling derelict windmills and rehabilitating their access tracks and transmission lines and towers?



Solar Panels Frying Birds Along Major Migration Path:


Wind Turbines slaughter rare birds: 

 Image Source: 

And why should these economic vandals be assisted by tax concessions while they spend much of their time and energy locking-the-gate on activities that could generate tax revenue such as exploration, mining, grazing, land development, irrigation, fishing, tourism and forestry? Green extremists have lost sight of their once-worthy aims to now become forces of pointless obstruction and destruction of all human activities.



And why should the CSIRO be funded lavishly by tax payers while they waste billions trying to prop up failing climate theories, models and scares?



The ice caps have not melted, the oceans are not overheating, sea levels are just fluctuating, the polar bears are thriving and the Sahara is regaining vegetation. It is foxes and cats that are destroying native wildlife, not drilling for gas. And real human pollution of the oceans, rivers and atmosphere gets little attention while green dreamers in parliament are focussed on maintaining the carbon tax.

Cartoon: Steve Hunter  
(PS. Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Gas and Big Government have been quite stingy lately with grants to Carbon Sense so Steve has not been paid. Send us some subscriptions or we will both starve.)



All manias unravel, and the climate mania has started down this road. Already supporters are jumping ship as the reaction accelerates.



Politicians too have played a dangerous game with energy supplies.



The icy tentacles of yet another cold winter are once again sneaking down from the ice-covered Arctic and causing shivers on the northern plainsof Europe and America.



Sometime soon, on a still winter night in Northern Europe, snow will drift down silently, covering the German solar panels with a cold white blanket, and quietly surrounding the motionless British wind turbines like skirmishers ahead of the invading vandals. Green power will fail, the lights will flicker, the heaters will go cold, and some people may start to recognise that reliable heat, light and power from coal, oil, gas and nuclear is humanity’s greatest asset after all.



Next morning, the BBC will report the record high temperature reached at Marble Bar in summertime Australia.



But later in the day, awkward questions will be asked in Parliament. 



And, at the next election, heads will roll.

The Gore effect rules

Cartoon: By Glenn McCoy 

The “Gore effect” is an amusing phenomenon (at least to climate rationalists), which seems to bring record cold weather, sleet, ice, hail, and extreme discomfort to GW frantics during events where Al Gore is present, or are called to discuss ‘dangerous’ global warming.  ‘Respectable’ or government-financed scientists dismiss it as just a hell of a lot of unfortunate coincidences.

Climate Depot has a list of events affected by it here. 

Now the weather is once again taking the piss during a conference in California by the American Geophysical Union.  The event during which many aspects of Global warming were discussed, was marred by records being smashed for low temperatures: 

… In a classic case of the Gore Effect, these global warming presentations occurred in a month seeing record cold in the city of San Francisco. Temperatures in San José fell to a record-shattering 30 degrees Fahrenheit--so low that it has caused deaths by hypothermia in the area. The cold also caused serious issues with black ice on roads, not something with which the usual Bay Area driver must contend. The cold weather was not limited to the Bay Area, however. Over 2,000 temperature records were shattered nationwide. 

The scientific community has faced increased problems in explaining the slowing of the global warming trend in the past several years when their numbers appeared to have predicted a much steadier increase. Even reports by the IPCC--a group present at the AGU conference--demonstrate that the globe failed to reach the temperatures expected due to carbon dioxide emissions this year, as well as how the benefits of an increase in plant life and crops from a steadying warming trend would outweigh the harm of climate change. Some studies have even speculated that humans have a much smaller impact on climate change than previously believed. 

The reality of such cold temperatures amid calls of potential disturbances thanks to record heat are certainly not ideal for climate scientists. However, what these record cold temperatures mean for climate change theorists is yet to be seen. Given that they occurred during this year's AGU meeting, we might expect a study by the fall meeting in 2014 that attempts to explain this precipitous temperature drop in the context of larger-scale climate change. …

The Climate See-saw.

Cartoon: by Michael Ramirez
By Viv Forbes, Chairmam,
The Carbon Sense Coalition

Anyone who looks carefully at radiation science and the thermodynamics of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will come to the conclusion that carbon dioxide alone cannot cause a global warming crisis. Even sensible warmists know this. There is a warming effect, but it is tiny and getting smaller as carbon dioxide increases.



So warmists invoke “positive feedbacks” or multipliers, which they say will tip earth into runaway global warming.

Their theory is that an initial small warming will increase evaporation of water from the oceans and methane from the tundra. These two “greenhouse gases” will then cause more atmospheric warming, progressively expelling more carbon dioxide from the warming oceans. “Oceans will boil” claimed warmist leader James Hansen. They also claim that after a postulated “tipping point”, Earth will never recover its balmy equilibrium.



However, they ignore substantial negative feedbacks that act to moderate any tendency to excessive global warming. For example, evaporation cools water bodies and carries surface heat into the upper atmosphere where it dissipates to space. Extra evaporation also produces more clouds that reflect heat and cool the surface. Also methane oxidises and extra plant growth absorbs more solar energy, water vapour and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.



Moreover, the long history of the Earth reveals periods when temperatures and carbon dioxide levels were far higher than today but life flourished and Earth always returned to cooler times – sometimes an ice age. Earth’s climate oscillates like a see-saw, with periodic changes in cycles in the sun and the solar system keeping the see-saw slowly oscillating.



There is no evidence supporting the theory of a global warming tipping point.



Today we live in a comfortably warm climate cycle but in the grand climate cycles, the barren hungry ice is always waiting its turn. Global cooling is a far greater danger to life on Earth than global warming.



Every human alive today is descended from a long line of smart and adaptable ancestors. Those who stay smart and adaptable will survive future see-saws of the climate.



For those who would like to read more: 

James Hansen claims oceans will boil: 


Here’s some alarming forecasts, bravely also specifying dates



But a well-known Australian global warmist rejects the tipping point scares:



Climate Forcings and Feedbacks. It is a well buffered and balanced system:


Quiet sun, and increasing ice:


Even the BBC feels the chill:

Finally, modern man (and woman) practicing how to cope with the ice:

The Consensus Fractures, and it’s now all about Money and Power.

By, Viv Forbes, Chairman,

The Carbon Sense Coalition 

The Global Warming Scare started when some rich western elites in their deep green bunkers saw it as a way of curbing what they saw as the wasteful and unsustainable life-style of western consumer society (that is, those other people). If they managed this “crisis” properly, they could make great strides in their long-held goals of controlling national and local governments, destroying private property and introducing an unelected elite with access to a world system of taxation and redistribution.



But, voters, consumers and scientists are destroying this green dream:


•                The 97% science consensus is busted. A survey of American Meteorological Society members found that “48% either questioned whether global warming is happening or would not ascribe human activity as the primary cause”.

•                A recent Australian election was won decisively by Tony Abbott on the clear promise to repeal the carbon tax.

•                Japan decided their emission targets were unsustainable and unilaterally increased them. Japan has also decided they would not sign any new Kyoto targets.

•                Canada upset the Warsaw climate claimants by refusing to support a massive climate compensation fund. Canada also withdrew from further Kyoto liabilities.

•                The US admitted there was no chance that their Senate would agree to fund “compensation” for past emissions.

•                UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, who once boasted that he led the greenest ever government, made a huge U-turn by ordering aides to “get rid of all the green crap” which is pushing up energy costs for consumers.

•                Carbon trading, once seen as a burgeoning industry, is evaporating in Europe with at least 10 banks in London alone scaling back or closing their trading desks.

•                Germany, the heart of green Europe, has signalled it will slash the green energy subsidies and is proceeding to open 10 new coal fired power stations.

•                Russia, having milked the gullible west for carbon credits for closing the obsolete Soviet era industrial infrastructure, is no longer interested in emissions targets.

•                Poland sacked its minister in charge of the Warsaw climate gabfest, and intends to push ahead as quickly as possible on developing shale gas resources.

•                China led a block of 132 nations in a walkout from the Warsaw conference over "loss and damage” an ambit claim that developed nations should be legally liable for compensation when natural disasters strike developing poor nations. No one cared much.

•                Even the BBC was moved to comment that the sun’s behaviour may presage another cooling era.

•                Finally, Al Gore has sold most of his green investments because they were all losing money.


The climate scare is no longer about the realities of the climate, but about money – continuing subsidies for green energy, more funds for climate research and conferences, international compensation for natural disasters, the soaring costs of electricity, and the collapse of carbon trading. 

The community savings being spent or demanded by governments on the climate industry is staggering –

1.              EU plans to spend €180 billion domestically plus €15 billion in overseas climate aid in the next 6 years.

2.              USA has spent $6 billion overseas on “climate finance” over the last 2 years and more is committed.

3.              USA has spent $107 billion domestically on climate change since 2003 and spending is now running at about $9 billion per year.

4.              Africa is claiming $15 billion by 2020 to adapt infrastructure to cope with global warming.

5.              “Poor” countries like China, India, Brazil and South Africa are heading a claimant coalition of 190 nations demanding climate-aid guilt money of $100 billion per year.

6.              The Australian federal government has no idea how much is being spent in dozens of un-coordinated federal, state and local government climate programs, overseas climate aid and spending on overseas carbon credits but a figure of $20 billion has been mentioned.

7.              And all over the western world, consumers are being impoverished by soaring electricity charges, as green energy costs get passed on.


All we have to show for this spending are massive computers producing worthless forecasts, thousands of wind and solar plants producing trickle-power intermittently, millions of green jobs producing propaganda, many overseas trips for the climate bureaucracy and not much else.



Imagine if this deluge of money had been spent on flood-proof railways, roads and bridges, cyclone-proof power supplies, drought-proof water supplies, fire-fighting equipment, community shelters for fires, floods and cyclones, emergency helicopters and helipads and so on.

Instead, this money has been frittered away so that all western governments are in now financial distress, and soon will be unable to help even their own people.



At the same time, the same people behind the climate scare are manning Shut-the-gate movements all over the western world. Their prime target has been exploration for oil, coal, shale gas, coal seam gas and uranium, but they have also denied access to vast tracts on land and sea for exploration, mining, farming, forestry, fishing, water supply, railways, ports and pipelines.



Not since the days of the Aztecs has a priesthood inflicted such lethal sacrifice on its own people. They have vastly increased the costs to be borne by taxpayers and consumers, while at the same time crippling those industries that are the primary generators of real wealth.

Maybe some future historian will write a massive tome titled “The Decline and Fall of Western Civilisation – how a green-robed priesthood sapped a vibrant society of its desire and ability to feed and defend itself”.

Libertarians, who would have thought we were so powerful

 Image: SMH take on Abbott

Climate frantic, Ross Gittins is fretting about the election of the Abbott government and the subsequent move to abolish the climate tax.  Ross seems a bit down over this as he hopes to have grandchildren who will want to pay the tax: 

… Australians elected a government that wasn't genuine in its commitment to combating the effects of climate change, and that even abolished the main instrument economists invented for that purpose, I never accepted this complacency. 

Partly because that government's predecessors had done such a poor job of introducing effective measures - and even a party known as the Greens played its cards all wrong - the nation lost its resolve and allowed its original bipartisan commitment to decisive action to be lost. 

The minority of people who doubted the scientists' advice that the globe was warming combined with libertarians - who, as a matter of principle, oppose almost all arguments for intervention by government - to persuade the Liberals to break with bipartisanship.

So, apparently that minority which is usually described as a small group of intellectually impaired ‘deniers’ or worse, has with the aid of libertarians managed to get the Abbott government to stop being bipartisan. 

While this may be a great comfort to Tony who has not been described as bipartisan in more than four years, it seems to hint that libertarians are much more powerful than we had previously guessed.  Liberals, like Gittins, tend to be creatures of the state who tend to believe that the reason that Labor went wrong was in failing to intervene in the economy and personal liberties in the same way as the LNP does.

This means that the small ‘climate denier’ base had to be massively enhanced by the entry of a huge influx of libertarians in order to form the critical mass to force Abbott to drop the climate tax.  Who would ever have guessed that we had those numbers?

Gittins assumes that the libertarian argument against big government and the nanny state is simply a matter of principle.  In other words, we are just a mob of rather bloody minded pricks determined to deny the state its fundamental role as he sees it, of running every aspect of our existence.

The reality is, that libertarians understand the basic principle as described by Ringo Starr, “Everything the government touches turns to shit.”

We do not accept the ‘consensus’ position that a government, which couldn’t insulate houses without burning them down and killing people, has the infinite wisdom to fix the climate.  Out in the real world, home insulation occurs every day without such dramas.

Nor would a libertarian be conned into the government idea of picking winners out of infancy technologies such as ethanol, wind power and solar.  These have a long way to go before they become economical, but owing to subsidies, and mandated usage, are only viable at massive cost to consumers and taxpayers.

Where a government would subsidize business to turn food crops into fuel and order that a certain percentage of all fuel has to be from this source, thus increasing taxes and consumer costs, the free enterprise system would drill more wells.

The libertarian position just makes more sense.

Climate accused of giving aid and comfort to skeptics

 “…but in the new approach, as you know, the important thing is to understand what you're doing rather than to get the right answer.” – Tom Lehrer, ‘New Math’

News of the increase in ice over the Arctic last year; which was supposed to be ice free by now under climate modeling, has left some climate frantics feeling (as Lehrer once described), “like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis.” 

The latest news of record levels of ice in the Antarctic seems to be leaving them with a feeling that the climate they love and want to nurture, has betrayed them.

Frantics have readily accepted the arguments that warming can result in extremely low temperatures, perpetual drought can be characterized by record rainfall, empty dams can be full, and that high temperatures are climate while low ones are weather.  Accepting that the Antarctic has more ice despite assurances that the overwhelming evidence is that the Southern Ocean is warming, may be a bridge too far.  

Far from disappearing, Antarctic ice levels reached a record high on Sept. 22. Climate alarmists are now being forced to reconcile this evidence with their unquestioning belief in global warming. 

The Washington Post’s Jason Samenow reported the National Snow and Ice Data Center’s findings that Antarctic ice had reached record levels. The previous record was set in 2012.In the same article, Jinlun Zhang, a University of Washington climate scientist, simply could not understand how this was possible: “Why would sea ice be increasing?” Despite this, Zhang contended that “[t]he overwhelming evidence is that the Southern Ocean is warming.” 

The rising Antarctic ice levels must have come as a shock to former Vice President Al Gore who blamed Antarctic ice melting on global warming in his 2006 book “An Inconvenient Truth.” Gore quoted scientist John Mercer: “One of the warning signs that a dangerous warming trend is underway in Antarctica will be the breakup of ice shelves on both coasts of the Antarctic peninsula.” … 

… Of course, the obvious answer is that Antarctic temperatures aren’t actually rising. On June 10, the New York Times reported that “[t]he rise in the surface temperature of the earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that. And that lull in warming has occurred even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace.” 

The broadcast networks paid no attention to this lull, instead repeatedly promoting climate change alarmism. CBS correspondent Mark Phillips acknowledged that global temperatures were not rising, but dismissed this fact as “ammunition” for climate skeptics on Sept. 26’s “Evening News,” saying that “another inconvenient truth has emerged on the way to the apocalypse.”

A better explanation is that the apocalypse is probably not happening.