"Following a press release last week it seems that several of the leading industrial companies in Israel are going to enter the wind business. These are deeply connected to leading politicians.

Our ministry of environment is quite hopeless. The future seems bleak."

From Gibraltar, from Sicily, from the US, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and now from Israel, day by day more bad news come in from the main bird migration flyways of the world. For windfarm developers think nothing of erecting their wind turbines in migration bottlenecks. Wind speed and maximisation of profit is their main concern.

Birds are killed by the large blades, whose tips revolve at speeds exceeding 100 mph while deceiving the victims by an appearance of slowness. In Sweden, one wind turbine is reported to have killed 895 birds in one year - ref : California Energy Commission, A Roadmap for PIER Research on Avian Collisions with Wind Turbines in California, Dec. 2002, quoting Benner et al. (1993). 

Declining frog populations have once again made their way into the news, but this time, it is because new research concludes that global climate change IS NOT the reason behind their disappearance.

While this seems to be big news for some, we have been telling you this ever since the stories that attempted to link amphibian declines to global warming first appeared.

The biggest climate-change-is-killing-frogs story was published in Nature magazine in 2006 by Alan Pounds and colleagues titled “Widespread Amphibian Extinctions from Epidemic Disease Driven by Global Warming.” It claimed a link between climate change and the rapid declines to near extinction of various toad and frog species across Central and South America. It quickly made headlines worldwide.

Concurrently, we pointed out just how weak the conclusions of Pounds et al. really were and we wondered aloud as to just what had become of the peer-review process at the prestigious Nature magazine.

Now, a new study proves that we were smack on the mark, and the news media is now scrambling to cover itself.

Dr. Karen Lips from the Department of Zoology at Southern Illinois University and colleagues just published the results of their review of the evidence linking climate change to amphibian declines in Central and South America. Here are their goals and conclusions:  Read rest of story...

MSNBC claims there has been a massive 37°F warming at the Antarctic Peninsula in the past 50 years. Turns out the crack science staff over at MSNBC can't convert from Celsius to Fahrenheit. But all math aside we've gone over this issue before and there is no massive melt down at the Antarctic. In fact there is record ice.

ScienceDaily Article

"The Antarctic Peninsula is an area of rapid climate change and has warmed faster than anywhere else in the Southern Hemisphere over the past half century. Climate records from the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula show that temperatures in this region have risen by nearly 3°C during the last 50 years -- several times the global average and only matched in Alaska."

"The Antarctic Peninsula has warmed faster than anywhere else in the Southern Hemisphere; temperature records show that the region has warmed by over 37 degrees Fahrenheit during the past 50 years — several times the global average and only matched in Alaska." 

Ok, caveats first.  1. I know little about bees other than what I know from a couple of biology courses and Internet research. I claim no expertise in Entomology or in beekeeping. 2. I’ve stumbled across what I’m writing about below, and I’m posting it only as a catalyst for discussion. I could be totally wrong, but I see significant coincidences that merit discussion.

Colony Collapse Disorder in honeybees has made the news worldwide in this past year, while there are some junk science explanations out there, such as “Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?” it would seem that explanation is unlikely.

A little book ‘Rough Guide to Weather’ by Robert Henson states that:

1. The most prevalent greenhouse gas is water vapour
2. As temperatures rise, the oceans warm up and release extra water vapour
3. This water vapour then absorbs energy and radiates some of it to the ground, thus helping global temperatures to rise even more

So the idea is that the warming effects of carbon dioxide will be amplified by increasing water vapour.

But this is NOT what the latest data from the latest satellite shows.

Data from NASA’s Aqua Satellite, which was only launched in 2002, shows that water vapour and high altitude cloud cover don’t necessarily increase when there is warming. Rather weather processes limit the total greenhouse effect in proportion to available sunlight. This can happen in a variety of ways through the hydrological cycle, for example low level clouds release water vapour from the atmosphere when it rains.

The new data from the Aqua Satellite was probably the most important issue discussed at the recent ‘2008 International Conference on Climate Change’. The new findings were part of a presentation by Roy Spencer who leads the team analysing all the data from NASA’s Aqua Satellite.

I have previously mentioned these findings in a blog post and a recent article in OLO but the importance of the finding for climate change science and policy seems to not be understood – or ignored.

These findings are not being disputed by the meteorological community and will require an overhaul of current UN IPCC climate models.

I will talk about this issue this afternoon in an interview with Michael Duffy on ABC Radio National’s Counterpoint at 4pm Sydney time (about 5 hours from now). Those in other parts of the world can listen through the internet - find out how at the Counterpoint link here. Source

Related:
Global Warming for Dummies (Part 1)

The graph above is from a report (PDF) of the UK government's National Audit Office, which explains some of the difficulties in accounting for carbon emissions at the national level.

The report has received some attention for this figure and what the following passage means for emissions reduction targets currently under consideration by the UK Parliament:

Figure 13 demonstrates that there have been no reductions in UK carbon dioxide emissions if measured on the basis of the Accounts rather than on the basis of the IPCC/Kyoto reporting requirements.

One point worth making is that the difference between UK Environmental Accounts and Kyoto accounting stems from international aviation and shipping (not included by Kyoto) and the treatment of tourists and nonresidents in the UK. These sort of issues obviously play a large role in the ability of countries to meet Kyoto targets. One wonders what the effect on the ability of countries to meet Kyoto targets if carbon emissions were accounted for on an UK Environmental Accounting Basis.

It would seem that the passage of ambitious targets and timetables for UK emissions reductions has been made less likely by this report.  Source