Wednesday 23 September 2009

UN climate forum “a propagandistic exercise” says Czech President Vaclav Klaus [updated]

Vaclav Klaus gets it When you get the largest gathering of the world’s political leaders in all history, what are the odds of hearing anything sensible? Czech President Vaclav Klaus has just bucked those odds.

Speaking to the collection of international frauds gathered at the home of international fraudulence, the UN, Professor Václav Klaus used his time at the podium [in the words of Luboš Motl]

“to teach his students, other politicians, something about the society, economics, politics, and their interactions with science, taking the global warming hoax as the main example. But most of them are bad students so they were far too distracted by thoughts of climate porn so they didn't learn almost anything.”

As Klaus told his audience of politicians, as they are heading further and further towards “consensus” on global warming, scientists are heading in the other direction.

"It was sad and it was frustrating," said Klaus, one of the world's most vocal skeptics on the topic of global warming. "It's a propagandistic exercise where 13-year-old girls from some far-away country perform a pre-rehearsed poem," he said. "It's simply not dignified."

UPDATE: Before the beanfest Klaus gave an interview to the Washington Times, in which he

    “repeated his view that global warming was ‘humbug’ and ‘nonsense.’
    “He spoke a day before attending a summit in New York about climate change, which most other nations and politicians view as a significant threat to the environment and human and animal life.
    “’This is a undefendable position,’ Mr. Klaus said. "I am convinced of the nonsense of global warming’.”

Earlier in the week he spoke at the National Press Club, where he told America’s political journalists”

"The current [economic] crisis has not been caused by capitalism and definitely not by too much capitalism. It was caused by the lack of capitalism, by suppressing its normal functioning, by introduction of policies that are not compatible with capitalism, of policies that undermine it. In a standard economic terminology, we witness a government failure, not a market failure as some politicians and their fellow-travellers in the media and academia keep telling us."

And he delivered these two gems:

"Markets cannot be constructed they must evolve."

"Communism wasn't defeated...it melted down."

He speaks at the Cato Institute this morning.  Oh to be a fly on that wall.

18 comments:

Rimu said...

Here is a list of some reputable organisations that DO NOT think climate change is a hoax http://www.grist.org/article/global-warming-is-a-hoax

You can see that it includes every major scientific institution that there is, BP and Shell

Peter Cresswell said...

I see you got your talking points from Frog Blog this week, Rimu. Sorry that Klaus doesn't quite fit any of them -- that must have made it difficult for in choosing precisely which "talking point" to use.

Clunking Fist said...

"You can see that it includes every major scientific institution that there is, BP and Shell"

So what are BP and Shell doing about CO2 emissions, shutting down production and refusing to sell petrol? Yeah, as likely as Green MP's giving up the aeroplane to get around our lovely country.
Rimu, it's a game, in which useful idiots are being played for suckers.
And before you ask "Doesn't that include Clunky", my side's agenda is clear: get as rich as possible because being poor and living in mud huts is, quite frankly, shit.

Anonymous said...

Rimu

Global warming seems to be absent in the last 30-40 yrs in NZ. EG

Mean airport annual trends NZ stations.

Auckland 0.0086c/yr (extrapolating to 120 yrs + 1c)
Wellington 0.0016c/yr (extrapolating to 610 yrs+ 1c)
Christchurch -0.00649c/yr (extrapolating to 160 yrs- 1c)
Invercargill -0.076c/yr (extrapolating to 13 yrs -1c)

Clearly the southern inhabitants are experiencing a spell of "global cooling,

Maksimovich

Barry said...

The average temperatures in NZ have increased during the last 40 years.

The article below argues that climate change will be accompanied by less temperature variation rather than more. So there is no agreement on that climate change critique.

"Rebetez, M. 2001. Changes in daily and nightly day-to-day temperature variability during the twentieth century for two stations in Switzerland. Theoretical and Applied Climatology 69: 13-21."

Clunking Fist said...

"two stations in Switzerland"?

Jaysus, extrapolate that to the whole world? How have those 2 stations been affected by urban heat island effect?

Peter Cresswell said...

"The average temperatures in NZ have increased during the last 40 years."

Well, no, they haven't. You just made that up.

Fact is, there's been no warming signal at all in the New Zealand temperature record. See.

Barry said...

I didn't make it up. It is based ion NIWA research from the same readings that were used in the paper Maksimovich quoted:

"New Zealand’s average surface temperature increased by 0.9°C between 1908 and 2006. This increase is consistent with the increase in average global temperature of 0.76°C in the past century. The average minimum temperature has increased by 1.2°C and the maximum has increased by 0.7°C over the same period for New Zealand. Frost frequency has decreased since the 1950s."

So if NIWAs readings were "wrong" then so were Maksimovich's which claimed cooling. Can't have it both ways.

Barry said...

Clunking Fist:

It is nice that you try and critique the methods employed in a scientific article without even having seen the methods actually used used to collect the data.

Nevertheless, the literature review cites dozens of scientific studies and concludes with the following:

"In considering this entire body of research, it is evident that air temperature variability almost always decreases when mean air temperature rises, be it in cases of temperature change over tens of thousands of years or over mere decades, or even between individual cooler and warmer years when different ENSO states are considered. Hence, it should be clear to all that the climate-alarmist claim that global warming will lead to more extremes of climate and weather, including more extremes of temperature itself, is just plain false."

The point is that reduced variability in temperatures is not necessarily disproving climate change at all. Merely putting into doubt one of it's purported effects.

I would take 66% of readings in NZ incraesing over the past 100 years as being stronger than the 33% of readings that did not.

Climate change is an OVERALL increase in temperatures.

Dunedin may well get colder while africa dries out completely and sand storms hit Sydney everyweek and Australia can no longer grow crops due to an extremely hot climate.

No one says that EVERY place will warm the same or even warm at all. But the point is about an AVERAGE warming which is going to have disastrous effects in SOME parts of the world - not necessarily Nelson or Christchurch or Invercargill. More likely the larger continents and places with encroaching deserts...

Peter Cresswell said...

Barry, there is no NZ station continuous 1908 through 2006 that shows warming. Not one. Go take a look -- I provided the links for you at the post I linked to above.

Barry said...

It is wierd isn't it PC. That two groups can look at the same data and come up with different results.
Especially since the data is publicly acessible you wonder how there can be disagreement over a simple trend.

NIWA says the exact opposite to you. Have a read of this page:

http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resources/clivar/pastclimate

What basis is there to exclude NIWA's calculations and accept the calculations you supported?

Peter Cresswell said...

Barry, I didn't mention calculations since there's none to be made.

Just go through the temperature records for stations continuous 1908 through 2006 (there's few enough of them) and tell me what you find.

LGM said...

PC

Betcha a chocolate milkshake he won't.

LGM

LGM said...

If you don't like chocolate milkshakes, how about a pint of beer instead?

LGM

PS I'm still bet he won't do as you asked. Are you still on?

Barry said...

PC: I had a look at the date from the original source which was NASA. It seems that the site you linked to only whoed highlights that supported its aims.

When you browse through all the sites in NZ which have data to 2009 it is quite likely that combining these data sets could come up with average warming.

And that is just with the naked eye. I cannot understand why you seem so sure that there isn't data to support average warming. Especially since the source you quote does not give ALL the data available.

Peter Cresswell said...

Barry, the source I link to IS all the data available: it's not from NASA, it's the temperature record for every single station in New Zealand, for every year for which they've compiled records.

So like I suggest, just go through the temperature records for stations continuous 1908 through 2006 (there's few enough of them) and tell me what you find.

Anonymous said...

Barry said...

"I didn't make it up. It is based ion NIWA research from the same readings that were used in the paper Maksimovich quoted:"

This is the reported temperature data. not the "modelled" data and is reported from NZ met service to the wmo.

Airport data is very accurate since the 1980.s for T and barometric pressure etc for obvious reasons,and international aviation regulations.

EG here is the Wellington data series.

http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh133/mataraka/wgtntemeraturetrend.jpg

Maksimovich

Barry said...

PC: I went to the links that you suggested.

Firstly, I went to "What The Stations Say" at John-Daly.com which said:

"This data originated with the NASA Goddard Institute (GISS) in the USA and the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,"

So that is how I found myself at the NASA GISS website where I saw more measurements than are quoted on the "what the stations say" site. Is he hiding something. He is complaining about how only cliff notes are presented by authorities so why present cliffnotes himself. He weakens his argument.

At the NASA GISS website I found that their data set originates from:

"...surface air temperatures measurements from the following data sets: the unadjusted data of the Global Historical Climatology Network (Peterson and Vose, 1997 and 1998), United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) data, and SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) data from Antarctic stations."

Here is the problem:

The data sets at "what the stations say" include only

Chatham Island
Christchurch & Invercargill
Hokitika
Campbell Island & Macquarie Island

...whereas The Stats on GISS include:

Christchurch
New Plymouth
Gisbourne
Hokitika
Chatham Is
Invergargill
Kaitaia

I guess one of the reasons these other stations were not inlcuded in the page you referenced were because they didn't "fit" with the argument you were making.

If one looks at the data sets in summary is easy to see how a warming trend can be calculated from those figures.