The Global CO2 Paranoia Cult Strikes Again

Lennart Bengtsson, former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, was forced to resign from the Board of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (an organization skeptical of the predictions of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming) due to political pressure from academic followers of the Global CO2 Paranoia Cult. Here is the reaction from GWPF and the letter of resignation:

Comment from GWPF:

Lennart Bengtsson Resigns: GWPF Voices Shock and Concern at the Extent of Intolerance within the Climate Science Community
    •    Date: 14/05/14 The Global Warming Policy Foundation
It is with great regret, and profound shock, that we have received Professor Lennart Bengtsson’s letter of resignation from his membership of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council.
The Foundation, while of course respecting Professor Bengtsson’s decision, notes with deep concern the disgraceful intolerance within the climate science community which has prompted his resignation.
Professor Bengtsson’s letter of resignation from our Academic Advisory Council was sent to its chairman, Professor David Henderson.  His letter and Professor Henderson’s response are attached below.
Dr Benny Peiser, Director, The Global Warming Policy Foundation

Letter of resignation from the GWPF:

Dear Professor Henderson,
I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.
I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.
Under these situation I will be unable to contribute positively to the work of GWPF and consequently therefore I believe it is the best for me to reverse my decision to join its Board at the earliest possible time.
With my best regards
Lennart Bengtsson

Reply from GWPF's David Henderson:

Dear Professor Bengtsson,
I have just seen your letter to me, resigning from the position which you had accepted just three weeks ago, as a member of the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Academic Advisory Council.
Your letter came as a surprise and a shock. I greatly regret your decision, and I know that my regret will be shared by all my colleagues on the Council.
Your resignation is not only a sad event for us in the Foundation:  it is also a matter of profound and much wider concern. The reactions that you speak of, and which have forced you to reconsider the decision to join us, reveal a degree of intolerance, and a rejection of the principle of open scientific inquiry, which are truly shocking. They are evidence of a situation which the Global Warming Policy Foundation was created to remedy.
In your recent published interview with Marcel Crok, you said that ‘if I cannot stand my own opinions, life will become completely unbearable’. All of us on the Council will feel deep sympathy with you in an ordeal which you should never have had to endure.
With great regret, and all good wishes for the future.

Yet another stupid idea motivated by CO2 paranoia: burning biomass to produce electricity

Burning biomass to produce electricity is uneconomical without subsidies and it is highly polluting too as it is not subject to the same emission controls that coal plants are required to comply with. A veritable who-is-who of US ecologists, including the much estimated Edwin O. Wilson, has written a letter to the UK's Secretary of Energy and Climate Change to protest against UK's biomass energy subsidies and (forced) consumption requirements that are decimating forests in the Southeastern USA. The letter points out that:

1) Wood pellets are not a “carbon neutral” process as is usually claimed.
2) It can take new trees up to 55 years to offset the carbon released from burning wood pellets.
3) Logging, by disturbing the soil, may result in a much greater release of carbon to the atmosphere, than previously thought.
4) There is no guarantee that new forests will be planted to replace harvested trees.
5) Planting of new forests is happening anyway, and acts as an important carbon sink. To claim this benefit for biomass would be double counting.
6) Trees that die off naturally return the carbon to the soil, and therefore are another carbon sink. Burning this wood instead diminishes this sink, whether new trees are planted or not.
7) Other serious environmental problems are created by the destruction of these forests.

Paul Homewood points out that biomass plants set up between now and 2019 in the UK will receive a guaranteed Strike Price of £105/MWh, at 2012 prices, and indexed linked, for 15 years. The current wholesale price of electricity is about £50/MWh, so clearly the subsidy is the only thing that makes biomass operation economically viable.


(H/t to  Paul Homewood )

Facts versus Fiction in White House Climate Report

Steven Goddard has an excellent compilation of climate facts that thoroughly debunk the claims by the White House climate report that the USA is suffering through extreme weather caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions:

1. Global sea ice area is near a record high for the date
2. Antarctic sea ice area is at a record high for the date
3. No global warming for almost two decades
4. Last two years were the quietest on record for US tornadoes
5. Last year was a near record low season for Atlantic hurricanes
6. Nine years without a major US hurricane (category 3-5) strike – longest on record.
7. Obama’s presidency has had the fewest hurricanes of any presidency
8. US cooling since 1940
9. Coldest year on record so far in the US
10. Record springtime ice on the Great Lakes
11. Northern Hemisphere winter snow cover since 2004, was the highest decade on record
12. US winter temperatures have been plummeting since 2000

The fictional National Climate Assessment report

Another work of science fiction has been produced by global warming alarmist "scientists" and is being bandied about by President Obama in bid to convince us to commit economic suicide. It is the newly released National Climate Assessment which manages not only to contradict decades of climatic data collected by NOAA and its predecessors but also contradicts the report on climate extremes released last year by the alarmist UN-IPCC. One of its statements is that droughts in the USA are getting worse. So visiting NOAA's historical database on droughts one scan see how much worse it has gotten (sarcasm alert!). In July of 1934 most of the country was in a drought state varying from severe to mild:

In July of last year (2013) the situation was much different:

The evidence for worsening droughts is missing, probably lost in the deep ocean, together with the missing heat.