Since the IPCC admitted last year telling huge porkies about the dangers from Himalayan glaciers, dozens of greenies have clearly been sent there to prove that they were right after all. Last month, for example, Richard Black faithfully reported, on a sample size of 10 out of 54,000 glaciers, that ‘ice loss was accelerating’, underlining the need for massive new taxes at the Durban climate talks. It was rubbish, of course. Now Mr Black’s colleague-in-arms, Jonathan Amos, has filed a Boxing Day tale of woe as part of the IPCC’s continuing campaign. His worry is that near the Cho Oyo peak, a new ‘enormous’ meltwater lake called Spillway (who called it that, I wonder?) could – because of undoubted warming – bring menace:
The concern is that this great mass of water could eventually breach the debris dam and hurtle down the valley, sweeping away the Sherpa villages in its path. The threat is not immediate, but it’s a situation that needs monitoring, say scientists.
As usual, despite the uncertainty that he clearly acknowledges, it’s a onesided rant about impending peril. The source of it appears to be mainly Ulyana Horodyskyj, from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado in Boulder, US. And her qualifications? She’s reading for her doctorate in geological sciences. Well golly gosh, our future is in safe hands.
The rest of the piece is larded with claims such as that that the region is like Swiss cheese and that this is an ‘exponential (meltwater) growth area’.
Put alarmist greenies guzzling on fat research grants into an area, and they will find a problem. And the BBC will be faithfully there to report it.
I was trekking in the Annapurna region in March. No sign as far as I could see of any less snow and ice compared with my last visit in 2004. But then I am an amateur, not a geology post-grad needing funding for an alarmist story for a PhD dissertation.
Our porter was a very experienced Gurung aged 50. Over the 10 days we were trekking together, I asked him more than once whether – with all his knowledge of the Annapurna region and also the Everest region – there was any worry among local peoples of the mountain tops melting more quickly, of heavier flows in the big rivers running off the mountain ranges, of glaciers retreating. He was confused at first, could not see why I was asking. He assured me that no-one he knew thought things were changing. If anything, he said, the water levels in the main river we followed were a bit lower this spring. The avalanches from the 20,000 foot peaks were much the same as ever.
But things always changed a bit, he told me – they are fatalistic about the climate which harshly rules their localities but also very observant.
…………………………..
And as usual – for all the money that had gone in aid through NGOs etc to upland Nepal, if anything things were worse than I remember – more power outages, villages which previously had power now had little or no power. We stayed before and after the trek at a small lodge in Pokhara which also runs a relief scheme for local orphans – a private charity. The owner had some rich comments about foreign aid that was syphoned off in the capital and never reached the people who really needed help, and he scorned the NGOs that swanned around doing very little good to anyone except the NGOs themselves.
“The owner had some rich comments about foreign aid that was syphoned off in the capital and never reached the people who really needed help, and he scorned the NGOs that swanned around doing very little good to anyone except the NGOs themselves.”
When I was boy, my father (Deputy Commissioner of Calcutta Police) took me into a warehouse in West Bengal and said, “See all these blankets on the shelves? They’re supposed to be aid for flood victims. They’re being sold by the governor. It’s called corruption, son”.
Fifty years leter it’s still the same. “Foreign Aid” is poor people in rich countries giving money to rich people in poor countries.
More lefty mumbo jumbo with plenty of could’s maybe’s and possibles.
‘What gets up my nose is being infantilized by governments, by the BBC, by the Guardian that there is no argument, that all scientists who aren’t cranks and charlatans are agreed on all this [global warming stuff], that the consequences are uniformly negative, the issues beyond doubt and the steps to be taken beyond dispute.’
Michael Buerk
http://www.thefifthcolumn.co.uk/the-agitator/michael-buerk-on-the-climate-summit/
Those 3 minutes by Michael Buerk are superb ! Very stinging remarks about the Guardian and the BBC (for whom he is a (freelance ?) presenter.
When people like Buerk and Sissons speak out, maybe the debate is changing ? Maybe people are realising that the whole Global Warming thing is a house of cards – built on shifting sands such as the Mann/Jones lies about the global temperature record.
Buerk calls it for what it is: a religion. It has all the hallmarks, and all the dangers.
Mchael Buerk?…Jon Holmes?…maybe a few worms in the Blue Peter garden are turning now that they are being transported in sealed vans up to sunny Salford!
Thanks for your continual expertise Robin…and your mention of grants makes me wonder if you might put a proposal into UEA for testing my latest hypothesis.
I made ice cubes all of 1 inch dimensions( say 2.4cm if that helps me!)
I then timed the rated of disappearance in 100ml of Baileys and Southern Comfort…I repeated this experiment many times over the holidays, with all other variables constant-except the recording of the results which did tend to random over time.
I reckon that climate change might be a salient factor in the rapid disappearance of ice cubes in relation to Baileys and other copied brands of same.
Could you write me a grant application so I will be able to appear with Harrabin/Black at a Honolulu summit for this time next year. Confirming of course that “it wos global warmin` wot did it… yeh?”
!0% consultancy fee alright for you?
Oddly we have been conducting similar experiments with gin & tonic; results may follow…
The fear-mongering industry, which includes the bBC, hard at work issuing press releases, announcing results of studies, issuing new reports. If you track the flow of funds (as JoNova did) it is usually some arm of Government recycling taxes to academics to generate a green-smokescreen behind which to raise more taxes “for our own good”.
For some reasons politicians (of all parties) seem scared to raise taxes on our direct incomes for fear of being held to account at the ballot box. Instead they do it behind our backs – air passenger duty is a classic – to save the planet, protect the environment, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, any old bollocks rather than look us in the eye and say “we want more of your money, and here is why we want it”. In their hearts they know we would not agree with the reasons why, but they want to do it anyway.
No shade of difference between the parties, as the anarchists were wont to say, whoever you vote for the Government always gets in.
Thank you, Robin, for this piece. The complete non-problem of glacial retreat continues to be wheeled out as some kind of mascot to symbolise the alarmist’s bogus agenda. The fact countless, independently-minded scientists have refuted and disproven such moronic claims about glacial retreat seems to have left no impression on determined climate zealots. I guess if the science doesn’t fit you just ignore it and keep hammering away on the agreed manifesto until you can get everyone to accept the lie.
And meanwhile, despite the hopes, wishes, and prayers of Big Green the Maldives stay resolutely (and inconveniently) above the ocean.
Naughty, naughty Maldives >:o
Just as well, as I am thinking of going there next year!
You’ll be fine, David.
Peer reviewed.
“Abstract
Novel prospects for the Maldives do not include a condemnation to future flooding. The people of the Maldives have, in the
past, survived a higher sea level of about 50–60 cm. The present trend lack signs of a sea level rise. On the contrary, there is
firm morphological evidence of a significant sea level fall in the last 30 years. This sea level fall is likely to be the effect of
increased evaporation and an intensification of the NE-monsoon over the central Indian Ocean.”
from:
New perspectives for the future of the Maldives
Nils-Axel Mo¨rnera,*, Michael Tooleyb, Go¨ran Possnertc
a Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics, Kraftriket 24, Stockholm University, Stockholm 10691, Sweden
b Geography and Archaelogy, University of Durham, Durham, UK
cThe Angstrom Laboratory, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
Received 4 December 2001; accepted 7 May 2003