An antidote to Bali

I really cannot bring myself to write about the Bali junket – other than to observe that the only thing that has been agreed is a "roadmap" which, we are told, "sets out a clear and comprehensive agenda for negotiations and a timetable ending in 2009". Plenty more junkets on the way then!

By way of an antidote to this madness it is worth reading a short commentary in the Canada Free Press on how global warming is affecting sea ice in the Arctic (not), and how misinformation is used to rack up the scare. Here is a taster:

In 2005 we heard that an area of Arctic ice the size Texas melted more than in 2004. Horrors! Catastrophe! The polar bears will be dead very soon. But what is the reality? Well this melt is well within natural variability and a very small portion of the total annual melt. Every single summer approximately 10 million square kilometers of ice melts in about 3 months. This is an area equal to the United States. Texas is approximately 681,089 square kilometers or 6.8% of the total land area. Suddenly it is not so dramatic. It is even less so in a historic context. The same scare technique was used in the 1970s. We were told, "The ice cover in the Northern Hemisphere increased by 12 percent in 1971 - an increase equal to the combined are of England, Italy, and France. This added ice has remained."

Basically, ice melts in summer and the sea freezes in winter, the change each year being variable. Wow!

Nevertheless, one is slightly encouraged by a report that the Greens are "in despair".

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