A Warming Planet is Helping Humans !

You wouldn't believe that title statement if you went by a leaked draft report by the infamous Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change peddling this monstrous scare. It's amazing that here we are in third week in October and the disgraceful alarmism continues. Last month the IPCC begrudgingly admitted that there was no warming over the past 15+ years and predicted a mild warming over the next 100 years. Well, yes you may argue, but what about all the weather disasters caused by climate change? Entirely mythical so far! The IPCC report has been admirably frank about this, reporting ''no significant observed trends in tropical cyclone frequency over the past century and lack of evidence in small-scale severe weather phenomena such as hail and thunderstorms. They said their additional warnings of rising seas, melting ice, devastating droughts  were far too extreme. (See October 4th posting IPCC Now Cooling on Warming!)

Yet in conjunction with Australia's new-fired Climate Commissioner and warmist fanatic, Tim Flannery, they forecast that thousands of people expected to die in Sydney from heat that will triple (!) by the end of the century. Another 800,000 people will fall ill from contaminated food and water -- while more than 270,000 homes will be a risk of collapsing into the ocean from rising sea levels. The unreleased draft report also warns that $226 billion worth of coastal assets including homes, rail and road infrastructure are a risk with just a 1.1 meter rise in sea levels. This conflicts with the latest IPCC report projecting sea level rise this century of between 26 and 80 centimetres. And yet the respected National Geographic has on the front cover of their September issue showing a half-submerged Statue of Liberty and touting an article on the devastating world-wide rise in sea level.

Let's get the facts:  Sydney residents 87 years from now will be much richer and more technologically advanced, and therefore more able to afford life-saving air-conditioning if even this preposterous prediction eventuates. Suggestions that another 800,000 a year of Sydney's residents will be sickened by bad food and water s also preposterous. No democracy will our wealth would tolerate that kind of sickness, that's similar to Third World problems. And no country with the technology we have by 2100, would allow 270,000 homes to collapse into the sea. Low-lying Holland doesn't; we won't. Over decades, many assets at risk will inevitably need replacing, and adaptations to meet expected changes in sea level will be made to avoid losses.

Let's get a reality check:  Climate change has done more good than harm so far and is likely to continue doing so for most of this century. Sure, there is a slow warming trend (the accent on slow) as the earth is coming out a the Little Ice Age of the 1550-1850s. Professor Richard Tol of Sussex University reviewed 14 different studies of the effects of future climate trends and calculated that climate change would be beneficial up to 2.2 C of warming from 2009 (when he wrote the paper). The latest estimates of climate sensitivity he suggests that such temperatures may no be reached till the end of the century....if at all.

Now Prof Tol has a new paper which concludes that climate change did indeed raise human and planetary welfare during the 20th century. By how much?  He calculates by 1.4% of global economic output, rising to 1.5% by 2025. The chief benefits of moderate warming include: saving at least four times more lives than it costs, given that cold weather is deadlier than hot; lower energy costs, better agricultural yields; fewer droughts, a richer biodiversity. The greatest benefit from climate change comes not from temperature change but from carbon dioxide itself. It is not pollution, but the raw material from which plants made carbohydrates and thence proteins and fats. As it is an extremely rare trace gas in the atmosphere -- less than 0.04% of the air on average -- plants struggle to absorb enough of it.

The increase in average carbon dioxide levels over the past century, from 0.03% to now, has had a measurable impact on plant growth rates. As Dr Ranga Myneni of Boston University has documented, using three decades of satellite data, 31% of the global vegetated area of the planet has become greener (See July 8 posting: Deserts are Greening from the Rising in CO2!). It's showing that Old Mother Earth is returning to her more likeable self. This was just revealed in some retreating glaciers in Alaska that unveiled a frozen forest - remnants of a time when the climate was warmer and more-human friendly. The Mendenhall Glacier's recession (above) is revealing the remains of an ancient forest that have remained frozen beneath the ice for up to 1200 years ago called the Medieval Warming. That coincides with what I've mentioned in previous posting in the past 3 years, that at the time of the VIKINGS in 900AD the temperature was 3 degrees warmer than it is today and they managed very well in their exploring, raping and pillaging activities. Greenland was green then too.



Alaska's Frozen Lost Forest

The Way I See It.....our Earth has taken the human race on a rollercoaster ride of climate change that has shown how resilient we all are to adapt to her whims, but now climate policy is already doing harm. Building wind turbines, growing biofuels and substituting wood for coal in some power stations -- all policies designed explicitly to ''fight'' climate change -- have had negligible effects on carbon dioxide emissions. But they have driven people into fuel poverty, made many industries uncompetitive, driven up food prices, accelerated the destruction of forests, while wind turbines have killed rare birds of prey and divided communities.

To name just name some of the worst effects, how's this? It is estimated that globally nearly 200,000 people are dying every year, because the idiot Greens have us turning 5% of the world's grain crop into motor fuel instead of food (remember the Mexican Taco Riots?) and that pushes people into malnutrition and death. Christine Liddell of the University of Ulster, states that 65 people a day are dying because they cannot afford to heat their homes properly, yet the British government, following David Cameron's wishes to make his government ''the Greenist ever'', is planning to double the cost of electricity by 2030 !