back to article Boffins say hot air makes Antarctica colder

The Antarctic anomaly – that it's warming slower than the rest of the world – could actually be driven by climate change, according to new modelling from the Australian National University (ANU). The research also suggests that southern Australia, particularly in the west, will get less rain as a result. Climate change denier …

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  1. itzman

    Warming more slowly=getting colder.

    Another failed attempt to explain why the 97% of scientists that settled the science years ago (allegedly are desperately trying to save their models their reputations and their grant funding.

    1. BigFire

      Re: Warming more slowly=getting colder.

      The Climate Change Causes EVERYTHING. It even causes the rise of the Boko Haram to kill and kidnap schoolgirls.

    2. Steve Knox
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Warming more slowly=getting colder.

      Care to counter science with science instead of mindless repetition of talking points based on a complete misunderstanding of the economics of scientific research?

      1. Dr. Ellen

        Re: Warming more slowly=getting colder.

        Mark Twain noted that everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. We're halfway there. Now all we need is for everybody to shut up.

        1. Thought About IT

          Re: Warming more slowly=getting colder.

          Perhaps more apposite, in the context of AGW denial, is this quote from Mark Twain:

          "Never argue with a fool. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience".

      2. Dr. Ellen
        Pint

        Re: Warming more slowly=getting colder.

        Mark Twain noted that everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. We're halfway there. Now all we need is for everybody to shut up.

    3. Keith 21
      FAIL

      Re: Warming more slowly=getting colder.

      I'm sure the scientific community at large will welcome the results of your detailed scientific study and analysis which disproves this latest hypothesis, itzman.

      What's that? You don't have any research to back up your ideological position?

      Funny, that.

    4. Psyx

      Re: Warming more slowly=getting colder.

      Hey, at least this one wasn't a Lewis article!

    5. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Re: Warming more slowly=getting colder.

      That's the same line of reasoning as "spending more makes you save more !", or the beancounter view that earning less means losing money.

      Warming more slowly is not getting colder. Getting colder is when temperatures drop, not when they rise less quickly.

  2. Grikath
    Facepalm

    there's a lot....

    of other Publications that do not get quoted here that simlpy say "welllll... there's something going on, but we're not sure yet.." in worthies such as Nature, Science, etc...

    Let's turn this thing around: I was born 3.2 (!) meters below sea level in in 1968 in a country that has coped with rising stuff that has nothing to do with anything other than Natural Causes ( Roman to late medieval) , and a hell of a lot of man-made boo-boo's since then .

    You know what we did? We built Rotterdam, Amsterdam.... Hell... the word "polder" is exclusively ours.

    I really cannot understand your yapping about a mere meter rise of sea level. We coped with it with spit and flint, and we got what nowadays?

    Get a bloody grip.....

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: there's a lot....

      Err... you are missing the point.

      The reason why you have coped, cope and contiue coping is that the politicos in Holland have learned that some stuff just needs to be done and should not be part of "playing politics". Canals need to be dredged, pumps need to be maintained, farmland needs to be in "sacrifice" mode, any building on flood plains must have at least 3m of hardcore dumped on site first to elevate it and so on.

      Compare this to the UK - it has two regions originally brought from under the sea by Dutch in the 17th century (East Anglia and Somerset Levels). The difference is that they are not getting Dutch maintenance.

      * Canals are not being dredged because that is not policitcally expedient. You get an occasional charity cleaning a couple but that is about it. There is no mandatory annual expenditure on dredging.

      * The pumps are maintained only when the region voters vote for the "right party" - for example Tony Bliar revoked the maintenance on the main East Anglia/Norfolk pumping station after he won power and it did not get a single penny for maintenance until he got the boot. By that time out of 4 units on the site only one was fully operational.

      * The developers build on flood plains as they like and how they like.

      So as an end-result you get the nice picture of Britain under water as it was this winter. You also get the first and only case where a whole region won from the sea by Dutch has been lost back to the sea (the Somerset Levels).

      You are correct - with _LONG_ _TERM_ ongoing investment a rich developed country can successfully counter the effects of climate change. The problem is that there is just about only one country in the world where doing this has become the norm and where stuff is being done on an ongoing basis and not as a one-off after a particularly disastrous year. You are using that country as an example. Unfortunately the rest of the world is not that country. There the politicos are running around banging drums and at the same time doing diddly squat.

      1. P. Lee

        Re: there's a lot....

        I don't believe it! Common sense and global warming meet!

        However, I fear that you are missing the point of AGW. It's supposed require A WAR ON AGW with freedoms being given up, vast amounts of cash being spent on politicians conferences and the creation of a new market in carbon allowing particular kinds of people to get rich.

        You can't go around spoiling it by telling people to use a dredge. Fortunately, that kind of common sense will be utterly ignored while we wait on the next study.

        Humphrey, I don't think we should rush in until we have all the facts!

        Yes minister.

      2. Vic

        Re: there's a lot....

        There the politicos are running around banging drums and at the same time doing diddly squat.

        They aren't doing diddly squat - they're using the whole Climate Change thing as a way to increase taxation and feather their own nests, thus removing the funds trhat could be used to do something productive and using them for something that isn't.

        In short - "diddly squat" would be a whole lot better than what we actually get :-(

        Vic.

    2. Charlie Clark Silver badge
      Thumb Down

      Re: there's a lot....

      @Grikath

      What about 1956? I've been to the delta works and impressive as they are, there are limits to them. The rise in sea level itself isn't so much a problem for them as would be a combination of lots of meltwater / rain in the alps and strong winds and high tides in the Channel, similar to the conditions of the coast of Schleswig-Holstein a few months ago.

      1. Stoneshop

        Re: there's a lot....

        What about 1956?

        Surely you mean 1953? Because that was the flood that set off the Deltawerken construction. Parts of which have been improved since, and there have been additions.

        In 1993 and 1995 we've had what you mention, flooding due to extreme runoff from upriver. We're busy allowing for more of such events.

        1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

          Re: there's a lot....

          Yes, sorry, I meant 1953. :-/

          I know about the ability to flood polders because of the rain. The real point is that higher sea levels can lead to tides bigger than the defences can cope with. In an ideal world you don't massive runoff and exceptionally high tides and West winds but climate change theory suggests that such combinations are more likely.

          However, the Netherlands is less likely to be affected than other places (such as the east coast of America) due to the way any rise in sea level is spread unevenly around the world.

          1. Grikath

            Re: there's a lot.... @ Charlie Clark

            It's not the polders, those are only meant to take peak loads, and are preferably not used as it's ( really rare nowadays over here) prime arable land. The real clincher in dealing with upriver debit is in being able to reinstate the Old Ways, and let water flow upriver...

            The problem is that from the 50's on the water coming from Germany and Belgium has been, mildly put, pure poison. The Germans have seriously cleaned up their act ( after a couple of floodings and heavy metal/carbohydrate/persticide/nitrate counts in places where they didn't want them to end up...).

            At the same time the Germans, as Volan pointed out above, took the English Attitude to Irrigation Management, and ended up with riversides that could not cope, at all.. Since then they've cleaned up their act, and the water coming in from the Rhine is "clean" enough to be allowed to run off into the other waterways we have, which amount to Quite a Bit of Volume, without poisoning the bits we use for growing Stuff we live on. The Belgians/French still treat the Meuse like an open sewer, so that's still cordoned off, and as a result has a very funky debit/water level nowadays, including flooding "new" fancy developments bought by peeps who never paid attention in primary school about the difference between "summer" and "winter" dykes, and why you do not etc.....

            As for the east coast of the US... you don't defend it in the way the Dutch do.. It's impossible. But a couple of well-placed levies, and simply forgetting about the hurricane-swept SWAMP ( there, I said it...) that is Florida, and a bit of work around the mississippy should alleviate a lot of Ärger, at least up to a full yard of sea level rise.

            But yeah... Like in Holland... it means Taxes and Decication...

            As for our Delta Works and associated defences: The situation that caused them to be built ( the flood of 1953) is so rare that nowadays the authorities involved use any excuse to actually lower the Gates, simply to give the bearings an airing. That flood was Fukushima-level and there's precious little chance that particular set of circumstances will repeat itself in our lifetimes, even if global warming increases the chances on it happening ( worst estimates are a whole factor, so from one in a hundred thousand to one in ten thousand. years. I'm not holding my breath for that one...the one before 1953 was 1421, and that was because people at the time sort of forgot why the long heaps of earth were there for... The one before that that can be proven archeologically was around 300-ish AD... ( no dykes at all at that time..))

            It still comes down to my original...attitude.. "Get a grip..." . The Iron Age sea level rise was a *lot* worse than this, and peeps coped, and built whole nations, and Did Stuff. And even though we're so much more advanced technologically, about 90% of the techniques have not changed. And you're not going to tell me that at this day and age, we can't cope with a bit of rising water. To me, it simply doesn't fly.

  3. Faux Science Slayer

    Chicken Little has ACORN proof of Falling Sky !

    OMG....enough with the endless climate alchemy LIES.

    As for ICE CORE DATA proving wind patterns over thousands of years....these ANU nitwits have extrapolated their proxy hypothesis beyond any credibility.

    When your opponent refuses reason....resort to ridicule.

    See the Satire tab at FauxScienceSlayer for....

    "New ! Amazing ! Wrongco Proxy Crock !"

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Nurse ! He's lost his meds again !

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Polar amplification.

    "The Antarctic anomaly – that it's warming slower than the rest of the world – could actually be driven by climate change, according to new modelling"

    The Antarctic anomaly is only an anomaly because global warming was supposed to lead to polar amplification and the poles warming faster. Which hasn't been observed. Hence the need for a new theory that tries to explain why the opposite has been observed, but still link it to global warming and thus keep the cash rolling in. The 'denier' sites pointed out the problems with the alleged science not matching the observations years ago.

  5. Tom 7

    Any comment that mentions cash rolling in is obviously null and void

    shit!

  6. David Pollard
    IT Angle

    Whence come the trolls?

    Given that El Reg is about IT and stuff it might be expected that readers will generally have at least some basic knowledge of electronics even if they never studied science or mathematics. It's surprising that quite a few seem incapable of understanding the notion of feedback loops.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Yes, but in electronics feedback loops are easier to identify and comprehend.

      1. Swarthy

        Also in electronics, you can tell weather (sorry) it is a positive, or negative feedback loop. In climate, it's a bit tricky.

  7. Your alien overlord - fear me

    First to admit I'm no climate scientist but

    even I know hot air rises and cold air sinks. Therefore the bottom of the planet will be colder than the top.

    It's not rocket science folks.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: First to admit I'm no climate scientist but

      surely you mean the places of highest gravity and further from the sun are colder...... the world is a spheroid, it has no top or bottom....

      1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

        Whoosh !

  8. codejunky Silver badge

    This is an interesting view

    I wonder if the models will be correct or somewhat correct on this one. I hope the results comparing the observed reality and the predicted model will be put up on the reg too when the time comes.

    I have been missing lewis page's articles. Richard posts the believers point of view but it was nice to have balance on this highly theoretical and very misunderstood topic. Following the climate debate from both sides is interesting.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: This is an interesting view

      > it was nice to have balance on this highly theoretical and very misunderstood topic

      When 99.95% of scientists agree(*) on a topic, it isn't "balance" to give the sole dissenter half the airtime. Here's a lovely bit by John Oliver on the topic: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/12/3436771/john-oliver-climate-change-debate/

      (*) In the video JO uses the more conservative 97.1%. That is the fraction of scientists who are convinced that climate change is happening AND that it is anthropogenic.

      1. codejunky Silver badge

        Re: This is an interesting view

        @AC

        "When 99.95% of scientists agree(*) on a topic, it isn't "balance" to give the sole dissenter half the airtime."

        When it is 99.95% of a subset of a subset of a cherrypick of a pre-screened group etc etc etc. Just as 100% of scientists dont believe in MMCC co2 theory as long as you exclude the others. And be aware of the 97% certainty which is an intangible and subjective thing while it is still well known that we dont understand a lot of how climate works yet.

        Add to that the crazies given air time who absolutely believe MMCC co2 theory and are certain X, Y and Z will happen only to be shown as idiots and it shows that we need quality science not selective belief. And since the believing group have yet to have a working theory the field is still wide open.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: This is an interesting view

          "When it is 99.95% of a subset of a subset of a cherrypick of a pre-screened group etc etc etc."

          Do you have numbers to back that up because that looks a lot like blatant misrepresentation?

          From Wikipedia:

          "The scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth's climate system is unequivocally warming, and it is extremely likely (at least 95% probability) that humans are causing most of it through activities that increase concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as deforestation and burning fossil fuels. In addition, it is likely that some potential further greenhouse gas warming has been offset by increased aerosols.[1][2][3][4]"

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

        2. evs

          Re: This is an interesting view

          Additional to that, as a denier, you should really stay away from using term MMCC (at least if you mean "man-made climate change"). It hurts your argument because micro- and meso-scale anthropogenic climate change is absolutely certain and easily proven by anyone with $4 and a bit of patience.

          If, for whatever reason, you need to continue to instill doubt in the climate change argument, you need to get very specific about quantities that are relatively hard to measure. For example, "anthropogenic global warming" (only 95% consensus) is good because the average temperature of the surface of the Earth is a sort of soft number (hard to measure accurately and involves dimensions, processes and time scales that are hard to understand for the average bloke at the bar).

          Think of it like selling a perpetual motion machine. You can't just spin up a gyroscope and say it's a perpetual motion machine. Any idiot can see that it isn't, just as any idiot can see that the interior of a city is warmer and drier than the surrounding countryside (though you might be surprised by the reasons). If you want to sell a perpetual motion machine or climate change denial, you need to make the machine complicated enough and hard enough to see what's going on that some sucker who really wants to believe that perpetual motion is possible can believe.

          1. codejunky Silver badge

            Re: This is an interesting view

            @ evs

            "Additional to that, as a denier"

            Actually I am not a denier. A denier ignores the science and is certain that man made climate change is definitely either happening or not. The denier ignores the lack of understanding in science and assumes a conclusion backing it up with XFactor style consensus and herding. But since there is a lack of knowledge and the little that is known doesnt account for the problems of prediction and lack of reliability/capability I have to laugh when the term denier is used on those who dont blindly follow either way.

            "If, for whatever reason, you need to continue to instill doubt in the climate change argument"

            Actually its the corruption from the start to push this into the limelight and the fact that instead of being a scientific problem it is now a bit political football with all the lies and corruption that comes with that. That is a lot of corruption and muck for something claimed as so important. Doubt comes from the lies and politics being played instead of facts and solutions.

  9. Chubbymoth

    RE: there's a lot....

    Ehm,.. Grikath,

    Coming from the same place, I happen to have some insight into the cost of effort to keep those polders from flooding and the expected rise of those cost due to climate change. Now fortunately our fears of the speed of sea level rise seems to have been over estimated earlier, but we all know that if a Hurricane of type Katrina were to hit our area, some 60% of the country would get soaked and some sadly ignorant rants would drown in their polders.

    Some seem to have forgotten why we build all those sea defenses in the first place and why we upped the ante after 1953. I would suggest you take a close look at the map of our country and start to wonder why all the big gaps are in it. We're far more worried about having more extreme weather patterns that are a result of climate change. Once in 10.000 years can be tomorrow as well, just like the chance of throwing a six on a dice is only once in 6.

    Maybe you and all the deniers here should get their heads around the idea that science is increasingly convinced of climate change and is finding explanations for the counter intuitive effects global warming has on local weather patterns. Or you just eat your hot soup without blowing over it? See, science made easy to understand for you. Hot air transferred from you to the surrounding area to cool down something warm. Man made climate change in a nutshell.

    "Beter te hard geblazen dan de bek gebrand." Is what I'll add to that for you.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Funny how they only discover these things after the data makes it clear

    I'd be a lot more impressed with the ability of these models to predict anything if they were able to predict unexpected results like this BEFORE it happens.

    It is easy to tweak your model until it shows what you want to see (global warming) along with what has been observed (lack of warming in the south pole) but it does little to impress one that the model is anything other than designed to be able to model the last 50 years of climate.

    When the hockey stick fails to materialize, it is "oh wait, we found some data errors when we investigated why our model didn't work". When the earth fails to warm up all that much in the past 15 years, it is "let's tweak our models to assume that heat is getting absorbed by the oceans, though we can't explain why that only started happening recently"

    This is why some people are rightly skeptical of AGW. It isn't that we doubt stuff like "CO2 is a greenhouse gas", but the climate is extremely complex, and I just don't buy at all that we're able to effectively model it when we don't even understand how it works. All we're doing is forever tweaking models to feed them old data and come up with reasonable answers, and hope that means they'll come up with reasonable answers for the future.

    Just look at the graphs that correlate the declining number of pirates from 1600 to 2000 with rising temperatures. One could feed that into a model and it would predict the temperature over the last 400 years based on the number of pirates, but there's no reason to expect it will continue to be correct just because we've made our model fit the data from the past. When a surprising event occurs, like bands of penguins taking to piracy of tourist boats trawling around Antarctica, the model will be adjusted to not count penguins amongst the number of pirates, but it would be far more impressive if the model predicted that penguins would turn to piracy.

    1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

      Re: Funny how they only discover these things after the data makes it clear

      Climate modelling is ludicrously complicated, and as models are created new feedback loops and effects are discovered. It is impossible to model such a complicated system from the start taking into every effect. You have to start a model somewhere. So when something is observed but they're not sure why then this is still modelled and the understanding is that later this can be improved upon.

      The only perfect model will be one that looks back as to what happened. By then it's too late of course and even that model would not be perfect for predicting future events, it'll be a start but that's it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Funny how they only discover these things after the data makes it clear

        @Nick, the strange thing is that industry can produce models that do predict what will happen in the future - maybe the fact that the modellers livelihood depends on them getting it right has something to do with it. Yet climate modellers, being part of the academic community, don't have that imperative to be correct.

        The other thing with climate models we never hear the modellers say that they got their early models wrong or even admit that it is impossible to model the climate, but still those incorrect models are used to extort high taxes from the public.

        1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

          Re: Yet climate modellers [..] don't have that imperative to be correct

          Climate modellers are also dealing with the single most complex field of science : thermodynamics. And they are trying to create a model that not only deals with that science, but does it on a planet-wide scale.

          I have no beef against scientists, their job is one of the most demanding and unrewarding that can be. What I disagree with is the gravy train that has sprouted up around the existing flawed models, and what I am incensed by is the so-called scientists that are guilty of massaging the data to fit the conclusion that lays the tracks for said gravy train.

          No one with a brain can deny climate change. It's happening all the time. What I can deny is the need to go Chicken Little about it and approve throwing gobs of money at ill-conceived schemes that 1) are not renewable, 2) do not actually have results compatible with being eco-friendly and 3) give their greatest benefit only to the people that are actively involved in the scheme.

        2. Psyx

          Re: Funny how they only discover these things after the data makes it clear

          "Yet climate modellers, being part of the academic community, don't have that imperative to be correct."

          You might want to let the Met Office know that, and that they don't need to spend so much money on expensive supercomputers.

          1. Fading

            Re: Funny how they only discover these things after the data makes it clear

            I probably wouldn't use the MET office as an example for super computer predictive excellence - their model has been shown to run "hot" pretty much consistently. Their predictive accuracy has been shown to be less than a random walk model and the amount of howlers they have published concluded with them no longer publically releasing their long term forecasts (though HM gov still gets a copy).

          2. Scroticus Canis
            Unhappy

            Re: "Met Office ...... expensive supercomputers"

            Yes very expensive and the Met Office always get it right, right? We all know the answer to that one.

            The way the East Anglia Uni AGW brigade originally cherry picked data to produce their hockey stick graph and discarded and hid data sources which didn't back their theory, as well as all the double dealing e-mails, poisoned the chalice long ago. So why is it surprising if intelligent, thinking people now treat all the chicken little claims with scepticism until they are better researched and verified?

            The climate has always changed and always will, with or without AGW effects. Building windmills won't stop it so think of better ways of adapting to it or join the Neanderthals. Continuing to build your homes on flood plains and wooden houses in the tornado alleys does not make a good indication of intelligence and learning.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: "Met Office ...... expensive supercomputers"

              Building houses in areas prone to flooding is one thing, as floods that occur once are statistically likely to occur again within the lifetime of a typical structure, but if you avoided building houses in tornado alley a quarter of the US would be unhabitable - including the most productive agricultural land in the world!

              The odds of a tornado striking a particular house are so low that it really doesn't matter much whether you build in the most or least tornado prone areas, risk-wise. Your house is much more likely to burn down in a fire caused by faulty wiring, natural gas explosion, etc. than it is to be destroyed by a tornado.

          3. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            @Psyx

            "Yet climate modellers, being part of the academic community, don't have that imperative to be correct."

            You might want to let the Met Office know that, and that they don't need to spend so much money on expensive supercomputers.

            ..

            It isn't that they don't have the imperative to be correct, it is more that in order to receive funding they have a strong incentive to show results that match the current belief in the climate community regarding global warming.

            Ideally science in blind, but in reality it is difficult to overcome the scientific establishment to present new theories. There are countless examples of this, such as plate tectonics to name just one case. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as there should be a higher burden of proof to overturn the status quo.

            The problem is that climate science was very unimportant field, comparable to archaeology in funding and importance to the academic world, but global warming changed all that. It is much harder to get published or get funding (that isn't seen as tainted by its source) if a climate scientist tries to go against the status quo belief in AGW. What's more, if it could be proven that humans were not affecting the climate, climate scientists would go back to being unimportant guys in the basement with the archaeologists, instead of guys getting funding to buy supercomputers. You can't deny human nature, few people are pure enough that they aren't affected by the prestige, or potential loss of prestige.

        3. strum

          Re: Funny how they only discover these things after the data makes it clear

          >the strange thing is that industry can produce models that do predict what will happen in the future

          Oh, really? Care to name any process (anything like as complex as global climate), which 'industry' predicts better? The global economy, perhaps?

          >climate modellers, being part of the academic community, don't have that imperative to be correct.

          Not how science works. There is no final, 'correct' solution to anything in science - it's always open to examination, re-assessment and correction. Climate scientists are doing their job; constantly improving on a huge body of work.

          1. codejunky Silver badge

            Re: Funny how they only discover these things after the data makes it clear

            @ strum

            "Not how science works. There is no final, 'correct' solution to anything in science - it's always open to examination, re-assessment and correction. Climate scientists are doing their job; constantly improving on a huge body of work."

            It is wrong to call a tomato a vegetable. It is very wrong to call a tomato a suspension bridge.

            There are right and wrong answers even if we dont yet know what they are. Being certain of an answer before understanding the question is faith. Having the understanding as well as an answer is fact.

    2. Adrian Midgley 1

      models of the world are made from

      the world.

      Some of them suggest places to look and things to look for.

      Some of those suggest ways to make the model a bit better.

      Ever made a model of something?

  11. vahid

    no scientist but thought it was due to sun spots rather than climate change

    The current cooling pattern is due to fall of sun spots, they tracked this down on some CH4 program the other week.

    This caused Britain to go in a 50 year freeze the last time it occured in the 1640's and there was another one in the early 1900's in Charles Dickens times but not as prolonged as the 1640 mini ice age.

    So don't believe all the headlines hard to believe any headline that quotes Britain to be as warm as the caribean as they so claimed back in the earlier days of what was then known as global warming !

    Look here is the reality Man is ommitting green house gases but what to do ?

    Should we all stop living ? that would be one way of fixing it

    The truth is also that the third world and countries such as China/India have taken over the western world's manufacturing role, thus they are the ones actually omitting most green house gases

    The truth is also that Diesel cars are worst when compared to Petrol cars but hey we live in a society where the governments double tax us (when we work and as we get to work) so for most to pay for a petrol car that consumes more of our wages than diesel is not a wise decision when considering how must most people are left at the end of the month afterinng paying off their burdens.

    So as humans do we really want to fix this so called Climate change?

    if so lets get real

    Lets promote working from home (driving down the green house gases that is used to warm up large offices) the commuting fumes from cars/buses/trains.

    Lets focus on the actual countries causing green house gases and help them

    Lets do this from a superier level rather than yet more taxes on the average jo

  12. Jtom

    I didn't read past the assertion that Antarctica was grower warmer at a slower rate, and the term "denier".

    Antarctica has had a trend-rate of NEGATIVE 0.014 degrees K per decade for over thirty years. I guess negative warming is slower warming in AGW-speak. ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/graphics/tlt/plots/rss_ts_channel_tlt_southern%20polar_land_and_sea_v03_3.png

    The only denier here is the author, who is denying the clear data of observational science in favor of theories and models unsupported by real-world data.

  13. evs

    Massive Budgets

    I see a lot of talk about the massive climate change industry. Could someone supply some numbers because I just can't see it.

    The *entire* IPCC budget is $10M/yr of which almost half is travel expenses for conference attendees (at about $4000 a pop).

    By comparison, Charles Koch, an avowed denier who profits directly from the industries that are (allegedly) directly responsible for AGW, *individually* *nets* about $20,000M/yr.

    So, unless I'm doing something really wrong (and I'm open to being shown where) the "alarmist" budget seems to be in the ballpark of $100M/yr while the "denier" budget is closer to $4,000,000M/yr.

    1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

      Re: Massive Budgets

      Why when I think of Charles Koch do I think of the tobacco industry? Where it is has been repeatedly proven to be very damaging to health and later leaked that this was known by the tobacco industry even earlier. However they squashed this research, justified their entire business to themselves and carried on as long as they could. Follow the money.

      When it comes to climate change, so much damage has been done by those who are involved, including the green movement (nuclear power), governments (ignoring or adjusting reports as they feel fit and pandering to cronies) and I'd most definitely like to slap senseless the muppet (aka greedy economist) who came up with "carbon trading".

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