UPDATE: I’ve been getting e-mails, especially from skeptic Swedes, who warn of citing people like Fransson…saying that the origins of the SD and some of the planks in its political platform are questionable, and that in doing so it is damaging the skeptic position rather than helping it. Myself I’m not familiar with Swedish politics and posted the story solely on the merits of the science.
NTZ does not necessarily support or endorse the political positions of any persons featured here, and in all cases detests all extremist views. -PG
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First there was sea level rise expert Nils-Axel Mörner, then top Swedish climatologist Lennart Bengtsson breaking ranks with the IPCC.
Now the Swedish online nyheter24 here has a commentary by Parliamentarian Josef Fransson (photo) of the Sweden Democrats (SD) party, who fires sharp criticism at IPCC climate science and the policymaking based on it.
Photo: sdpartille.wordpress.com.
First, before looking at his commentary, Wikipedia describes the Fransson’s SD party as a “far-right populist and anti-immigration party“. But readers need to keep in mind that nowadays in Europe anyone who challenges the IPCC, or expresses the need for governments to clean house of all their entrenched political cronies gets labeled a right-wing extremist…a hater. We see this smearing kind of treatment already with the UKIP party and Germany’s AfD. So don’t put much stock in Wikipedia’s biased political characterizations.
There’s just no tolerance for dissent any more.
Science gone awry
At the online nyheter24, Janssen comments that climate science resembles more a religion, noting that even the Swedish Church now devotes more time to activities on climate alarm than Christian preaching. He writes, “The climate debate in Sweden has gone awry and is anything but scientific.”
CO2 a factor on the margins
Fransson writes: “We know a lot about the factors that have an impact on the climate, such as dust particles, cosmic rays, the Earth’s axis inclination, Earth’s distance from the Sun, on altered land use, changes in wind and ocean currents, etc., and to all this there’s also the vital greenhouse effect, which is due mainly to water vapor and water evaporation, cloud formation, and precipitation. On the margin there is carbon dioxide and methane.”
Janssen then reminds Parliamentarians that the climate is a system of great complexity, fraught with great variability and that “CO2’s role is overhyped“.
No correlation
He explains how CO2 poorly correlates with global temperature: “1910-1940 we had a rapid global temperature rise at around 0.5°C although the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were stable….Since that time greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise […] but still we have not been able to see a temperature increase for almost 18 years.”
Fransson also labels projections of 4°C warming and a sea level rise of one meter by the end of the century as outliers, calling them “very improbable scenarios“.
Fransson explained how climate has always changed in the past and that 1000 year ago the Vikings had settled and farmed on Greenland, and that during the ice ages Sweden was buried under a “several kilometers thick glacier“. And now that the planet has been enjoying a warm optimum for the past 11,500 years, he reminds that in general “we are living on borrowed time“.
Wide uncertainty
Fransson also reports that “mapping the past climate is complicated detective work and the farther back in time one goes, the coarser the assumptions become“. He reminds us that even computing today’s mean global temperature with our vast network of measurement stations is a formidable task.
Then he compares the oceans to the atmosphere, saying that the oceans’ heat capacity is “1000 times larger” than that of the entire atmosphere, and thus can have profound impacts on future projections.
At the end Fransson writes higher CO2 concentration in the atmosphere so far “has been a blessing to our world. Carbon dioxide, which are all plant food, has made the world greener and increased crop yields“.
Politicians making “farcical” promises
Frannson calls the promises made by politicians in tiny Sweden to save the climate “farcical”, reminding that the sparasely populated Nordic country represents only 1/1000 of the globe’s CO2 emissions and that every year China increases its emissions an amount that is equivalent to the total annual emissions of 12 Swedens.
At the end, Fransson says it gets down to the needs of the poor: “After China there is a long list of countries in line to go from extreme poverty to more decent conditions.”
Gee, I guess he’s against foreigners…just look at how he wants to push policy that will make energy for the poor in developing countries affordable.
“every year China increases its emissions an amount that is equivalent to the total annual emissions of 12 Swedens”
We don’t do calculations in the EU. Calculations are rational and correct and can therefore not be politically correct; which is the opposite of correct.
EU starts proceeds against Germany because Germany is late in enforcing EU orders to reduce energy consumption by 20%.
http://de.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idDEKBN0GD1AQ20140813
The usual Hegelian political comedy: The same people in the EU commission and in Berlin; now the “elected” politicians can blame the “unelected” ones for “forcing” the “elected” ones to do something against the interests of the people and the economy. But “unfortunately”, the alternative to obeying the orders would be the end of the EU! And that would be horrible wouldn’t it!
I guess that means if Sweden eliminated all their Co2 emissions, it would take China only a month to wipe out all the effort.
Let’s not even talk about India -who showed Greenpeace the door- and Africa – which is in rapid development due to Chinese-built infrastructure projects in exchange for raw materials – and the coming BRICS development fund (or …bank) – which will steamroll all over the IMF.
“He explains how CO2 poorly correlates with global temperature…”
But CO2 does correlate perfectly with libcultists hunger for absolute POWER, and of course their desperate desire for a rationale to aquire that power. CO2 corresponds perfectly with that.
Actually CO2 does correspond historically rather well with temps, but always as a lagging indicator.
I’d vote for any party that puts this climate realism in their manifesto, and declares that it would decline to sign-up to global policies based on the IPCC gas-jar version of climate science.
Sweden is a very stremlined society politically speaking, and this party, which takes up subjects that are normally swept under the political consnesus carpet, which in Sweden is vey thick indeed, is something of a pariah in “Folkhemmet” (“People’s Home”).
SD is regularly called racist, and a very large part of media and the politically correct classes try to keep them out of the public debate. No doubt SD has some rather extreme points of view, therefore their increasing support sends shivers of fear down the spine of mainstream politicians of all stripes.
But for the Swedish climate skeptics, it may be a problem to be openly embraced by SD, it opens for all kinds of stigmatisation.
“No doubt SD has some rather extreme points of view”
Like? Preserving a Western culture in Sweden?
Extreme indeed!
You have swallowed the Orwellian word definitions of the Left wholesale – well you sound like you ARE a leftist – and confuse their FALSE definition of racism with the intent of preserving a democratic culture and rejecting a non-democratic culture coming from outside.
Oh dear, once again a person who knows all about someone else. Please cut the personal attacks, and then MAYBE there will be an answer.
Leftist is a personal attack for you? Hey okay replace that with social democrat if you like that label better.
In other news -but very related-: Swedish Game Developers put their money where their mouth is:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2014/08/13/Shoot-Racist-Tea-Partiers-in-Battlefield-Hardline
“Sweden is a very stremlined society politically speaking” indeed.
Gents; this IS a real novum in the Swedish parliament, which btw is proven by the almost total censuring in the pseudo-public-service and major MSMs. Yet, it’s a ‘small step for man, but giant one for the Swedes’… 😉
Big thanx for bringing this to attention, Pierre ! 😀
//TJ
As expected, there was a lot of reactions from Sweden, this is very touchy stuff. SD threatens to rock the boat of Swedish political consensus, and this party has a certain function as a pressure escape for many voters who feel that any non-PC opinions are neglected by the established parties. In this way, SD is very much a protest party, and their success har scared the shit out of the country’s elite. Probably a healthy corrective to a highly “uniformed” society.
Mr. Fransson’s views about climate seem to be well founded and formulated, quite impressive for a politician. Naturally, he too feels to the need to play safe, and not go against every alarmist claim. This is only to be expected.
Most of the MPs comments on climate are reasnable, except maybe some exaggeration of the heat capacity of the oceans relative to the atmosphere.
I have seen the figure 268 as the ratio of the mass of the oceans to the mass of the atmosphere. We know that the specific heat of water is 1 calorie/gram °C = 4.186 joule/gram °C. This is the highest specific heat known.
But it is difficult to compare the specific heat of water with the atmosphere.because the specific heat varies by a factor of about 50% depending on whether you take constant pressure or constant volume and also depending on both the actual volume and the actual pressure.
I think we can give this guy the benefit of the doubt and allow his claim that the heat capacity of the oceans is 1000 within +/-50%, between 500 and 1500 times.
He seems well-informed. For a politician.
“and in all cases detests all extremist views”
Pierre, I would respectfully submit that amongst many people in the Western World (belive me, I know.. I live in Suzuki-Land), being skeptical of the claims of Man-Made Global Warming is an extremist view.
Thanks George, but here I’m talking about free-speech, openness to other ideas, open discussions, etc. The warmists with their intolerance to other views are the extreme ones.
Media has exposed videos etc that show how racism and sexism are still alive inside SD though party has tried to polish its imago less rasistic. In 2012 swedish newspaper Expressen showed video film where party members Almqvist, Westling and Ekeroth used n-words etc. They were suspended but this is not just one scandal case. Many members have had past history in (neo)nazi party or sympathies.
Here in Findand we have “sister party” True Finns (often climate change denialistic and against immigration, too). But its chairman has tried to keep long distance to that doubtful swedish party.
President Obama’s own Democrat party was the big supporter of Segregation in the south just some decades ago. One has to be careful about labeling people and denying them a voice just because they may come from a bad family or neighborhood. I posted on Fransson’s commentary based solely on his climate position.
Well, I don’t think the incidents that our friend from Finland referred to, happened some decades ago. So, while one may welcome SD as a refreshing force in Swedish politics, and regret the widespread boycott they are the victims of, there are also troublesome elements within or at least connected to this party which makes it possible for the alarmists to associate skeptics with extreme right-wing politics.
Every politician should of course be judged by their individual merits, and while I have a great respect for what Mr. Fransson has said about the climate, it also may lend support to the alarmist stereotyped picture of skeptics as basically a right-wing movement.
See here for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace Of course the Democrats today would like to forget this ugly chapter…
I wonder what kind of Winter we’ll have in Europe. Any early forecasts yet? Temperatures have cooled down a lot here in Belgium. It definitely looks and feels like Fall already. But perhaps September will be nice?
See: http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfs_fcst/images2/euT2mSea.gif, Looks to me like NOAA expects a normal fall, winter. I’d interpret their forecast as they’ve decided to sit on the fence.
Lisa, about the leg cramps (I read it on your blog) . I used to have some and thought it was Magnesium deficiency, so I took some pils but nothing changed. Then I added more salt to my diet and they went away. It was a Sodium deficiency – I often don’t add salt at all to my food so my intake wasn’t sufficient to compensate for losses by sweating.