CBC Ivory-bill story

(I don't know when this aired).

"Record Antarctic Sea Ice Sinks Cruise Ship"

Excerpt from this post:

The southern hemisphere winter of 2007 was particularly cold and harsh. Antarctic sea ice was the highest ever recorded--and MS Explorer out of Toronto has paid the ultimate price for underestimating the ice.

Ethanol production's effects on South Dakota pheasant habitat

Excerpt from this March '07 article:

Pheasant hunting and related tourism is just one example of a major economic boon to not just South Dakota, but many other U.S. states. And a huge percentage of this money -- not to mention a huge percentage of the wildlife -- is facilitated by privately owned lands that are part of the CRP land restoration program...

But now, because of booming demand for a fuel product that's driven by misguided notions about its environmental benefits, a lot of this land may soon be in jeopardy. According to an Associated Press article from Feb. 7, President Bush's latest budget proposal would back burner CRP, freezing new enrollments in the program through 2008.

The USDA expects this move to result in an 8% decline in CRP acreage nationwide over just the next 21 months as farmers eager to capitalize on the ethanol-charged price of corn revert this acreage back to croplands. The agency predicts corn will top $3.60/bushel this year, an 80% increase over 2005's $2/bushel price.

And since Congress' 2005 energy bill stipulates that the U.S. nearly double its production of ethanol by 2012, this price will only keep going up. So will the number of acres that are pulled out of CRP's protection and converted back into waterway-polluting, erosive, wildlife-barren, pesticide-laced cornfields.

Charlie Munger on ethanol

Excerpt from this blog post:

When asked by a shareholder about ethanol, Charlie Munger made the following statement:
"Running cars on corn is about the stupidest thing I ever heard of. Our government is under tremendous political pressure [to keep pushing and supporting corn ethanol] even though it makes no sense." He goes on to state an unpopular view in Nebraska, "More energy is used producing ethanol than it creates and that's without considering the damage to the topsoil producing fuel when we could be producing food." Munger further states that it's silly to drive up the price of food in order to provide an uneconomic fuel, as well as a dumb government policy.

"Ethanol's Bottom Line"

Excerpt from this Wall Street Journal article:

...in all the decades ethanol has been subsidized, Washington has never rigorously applied cost-benefit analysis to ethanol's myriad preferences.

A study I authored with Caroline Cecot, just released by the AEI-Brookings Joint Center, attempts to fill that gap. The results, based on a recent Environmental Protection Agency report on the economics of mandating the production of alternative fuels, strongly suggest that that the case for ethanol is lacking.

We used EPA numbers to calculate the environmental benefits of ethanol, along with the security benefits linked to its potential to reduce oil imports. We then compared these benefits with the direct costs of producing and distributing ethanol, the environmental costs associated with its manufacture and combustion, and the cost of the slew of incentives offered to refiners and corn farmers.

If annual production increases by three billion gallons in 2012 -- a plausibly modest number when the EPA made its own calculations -- we estimate that the costs will exceed the benefits by about $1 billion a year. If domestic production reaches the more "optimistic" Energy Department projection for that year, net economic costs would likely top $2 billion annually.

Our analysis is deliberately weighted to give ethanol the benefit of a doubt. For example, we assume that, on balance, ethanol from corn reduces greenhouse emissions, even though recent science suggests that substituting ethanol for gasoline might actually have a negative impact (it increases emissions of nitrous oxide, a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide). Ethanol distilled from grasses and waste materials has a better environmental payoff, but has much higher direct production costs.

Even if ways are found to make alcohol cost-effectively from otherwise worthless sources of carbon, the process would undermine local air quality as it slowed global warming. Though ethanol is likely to reduce tailpipe emissions of carbon monoxide and toxic hydrocarbons including benzene and formaldehyde, the extra nitrogen oxides react in sunlight to form smog.

"Hansen: power plants = extermination camps"

Here.

"Tree Rings Don't Indicate Past Temperatures"

Excerpt from this link:

One of the reasons I doubt that the climatologists who talk of global warming are scientists is the claim that tree rings provide precise evidence of past average temperatures that can be compared to thermometer measured temperatures.

Craig Loehle has published a study in National Council for Air and Stream Improvement indicating that trees rings are not reliable for determining past temperatures. Loehle focused on the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) (1000 - 1400) which is not shown in tree rings, but is apparent using other so-called proxies.

Loehle notes that tree ring width respond to temperature in an inverse parabolic manner to temperature with growth increasing up to some optimal temperature and then decreasing with further temperature increases. In other words narrower rings could actually indicate higher temperature rather than lower temperature. Loehle suggests that higher evaporation rates at the higher temperatures may slow growth. Tree growth responds to changes in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by increasing growth as CO2 increases.

Colorado letter to the editor

Here.

An excerpt:

I, and many of my colleagues in the field of meteorology, have expressed our doubts as to the "human" effects. I don't doubt that some warming is going on, particularly if one chooses (cherry picks) certain areas to support that thesis. However, any student of paleoclimatology can quickly point out numerous changes in the global climate dating back millions of years. The global climate has always been changing and always will. However, the odd thing is that people adapt to changes, and technology will keep advancing and vitiate any human effects. If the hysterical anti-nuclear crowd hadn't used their bully pulpit to scare the average American about the dangers of nuclear energy, we, like France, would be getting 70-80 percent of our electricity from nuclear power plants.

Speaking of nuclear power, an interesting podcast is here:

Dennis talks to Gwyneth Cravens, science writer and novelist. She has worked as an editor for both The New Yorker and Harpers. Her latest book is Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy. An admitted liberal and environmentalist, she has written a formidable argument for nuclear power.

From the Amazon page for Cravens' book:

There are three ways to provide large-scale electricity—the kind that reliably meets the demands of our civilization around the clock. In the United States:

* 75% of that baseload electricity comes from power plants that burn fossil fuels, mainly coal, and emit carbon dioxide. Toxic waste from coal-fired plants kills 24,000 Americans annually.
* 5% comes from hydroelectric plants.
* Less than 1% comes from wind and solar power.
* 20% comes from nuclear plants that use low-enriched uranium as fuel, burn nothing, and emit virtually no CO2. In 50 years of operation, they have caused no deaths to the public.

When I began my research eight years ago, I'd assumed that we had many choices in the way we made electricity. But we don't. Nuclear power is the only large-scale, environmentally-benign, time-tested technology currently available to provide clean electricity. Wind and solar power have a role to play, but since they’re diffuse and intermittent, they can't provide baseload, and they always require some form of backup--usually from burning fossil fuels, which have a huge impact on public health.

My tour of the nuclear world began with a chance question I asked of Dr. D. Richard ("Rip") Anderson. He and his wife Marcia Fernández work tirelessly to preserve open land, clean air, and the aquifer in the Rio Grande Valley. Rip, a skeptically-minded chemist, oceanographer, and expert on nuclear environmental health and safety, told me that the historical record shows that nuclear power is cleaner, safer, and more environmentally friendly than any other form of large-scale electricity production. I was surprised to learn that:

* Nuclear power emits no gases because it does not burn anything; it provides 73% of America's clean-air electricity generation, using fuel that is tiny in volume but steadily provides an immense amount of energy.
* Uranium is more energy-dense than any other fuel. If you got all of your electricity for your lifetime solely from nuclear power, your share of the waste would fit in a single soda can. If you got all your electricity from coal, your share would come to 146 tons: 69 tons of solid waste that would fit into six rail cars and 77 tons of carbon dioxide that would contribute to accelerated global warming.
* A person living within 50 miles of a nuclear plant receives less radiation from it in a year than you get from eating one banana. Someone working in the U.S. Capitol Building is exposed to more radioactivity than a uranium miner.
* Spent nuclear fuel is always shielded and isolated from the public. Annual waste from one typical reactor could fit in the bed of a standard pickup. The retired fuel from 50 years of U.S. reactor operation could fit in a single football field; it amounts to 77,000 tons. A large coal-fired plant produces ten times as much solid waste in one day, much of it hazardous to health. We discard 179,000 tons of batteries annually--they contain toxic heavy metals.
* Nuclear power's carbon dioxide emissions throughout its life-cycle and while producing electricity are about the same as those of wind power.
* Nuclear plants offer a clean alternative to fossil-fuel plants. In the U.S. 104 nuclear reactors annually prevent emissions of 682 million tons of CO2. Worldwide, over 400 power reactors reduce CO2 emissions by 2 billion metric tons a year.

"Food Miles Stupidity"

Another good post from Warren Meyer is here.

An excerpt from a linked New York Times article:

...scientists reached surprising conclusions. Most notably, they found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit.

"USFWS Ivory-billed woodpecker plan defies logic"

Here.

Excerpts:

What is uncommon is the leap of faith the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has made on behalf of a bird species that many smart and conscientious people believe doesn’t exist.
...
...Waterfowl managers don’t have the dollars to conduct banding work and other scientific evaluations on at-risk waterfowl species like lesser scaup, let alone devoting funding for a bird species that reasonable people agree we¹re still searching for.

This is crazy, my friends...

I don't know about you, but over the last couple of years, I've noticed a definite trend towards Ivory-bill skepticism in mainstream media coverage.

I predict that the above article will join NBC's recent "Fleecing of America" Ivory-bill coverage in not being mentioned on Cornell's "Ivory-bill in the News" page.

"Warm words"

Check out this document called "Warm Words".

A comment about that document is here:

For anyone who hasn’t come across ‘Warm Words’, its a spin doctor’s manual for convincing the public that they face a climate catastrophe, but without the inconvenience of having to use anything like robust scientific evidence. It’s truly spine-chilling in its blatant cynicism, but even worse, it was commissioned by the UK government and seems to be used by them as the template for all communications on this subject.

An excerpt from "Warm Words":

Much of the noise in the climate change discourse comes from argument and counter-argument, and it is our recommendation that, at least for popular communications, interested agencies now need to treat the argument as having been won. This means simply behaving as if climate change exists and is real, and that individual actions are effective. This must be done by stepping away from the ‘advocates debate’ described earlier, rather than by stating and re-stating these things as fact. The ‘facts’ need to be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken. The certainty of the Government’s new climate-change slogan – ‘Together this generation will tackle climate change’ (Defra 2006) – gives an example of this approach. It constructs, rather than claims, its own factuality. Where science is invoked, it now needs to be as ‘lay science’ – offering lay explanations for what is being treated as a simple established scientific fact, just as the earth’s rotation or the water cycle are considered.

For readers familiar with the Ivory-bill fiasco--this "acting as if you've won the argument" approach may remind you of John Fitzpatrick's approach here:

By February 2005, Fitzpatrick recalls, he realized that "we need to begin to act as though the Luneau video plus sightings plus sound is going to be enough."

"CARBON IS THE WORLD'S BEST FRIEND"

Check out the article by David Bellamy and Jack Barrett here.

Excerpt:

Please remember that the main reasons for soil erosion, salination, floods, droughts, famines, the collapse of coral reefs and the extinction of species are habitat destruction, overgrazing and over-fishing -- not a 0.9 % rise in trapped radiance.

Carbon dioxide is not the dreaded greenhouse gas that the global warmers crack it up to be. It is in fact the most important airborne fertiliser in the world and without it there would be no green plants at all. In fact, a doubling of the levels of this gas in the atmosphere would bring about a marked rise in plant production -- good news for everyone, especially those malnourished millions who can't afford chemical fertilisers. Perhaps the time is ripe to really start worrying (again) about the fact that for the last 200 million years the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has been falling. Indeed it dropped to dangerously low levels during recent ice ages. The Plant Kingdom responded to this potentially catastrophic (no carbon no food) situation by producing the so-called C4 plants that can survive low CO2 by using sunlight more efficiently.

"Climate consensus and the end of science"

Here.

An excerpt:

Global warming science by consensus, with appeals to United Nations panels and other agencies as authorities, is the apotheosis of the century-long crusade to overthrow the foundations of modern science and replace them with collectivist social theories of science. "Where a specific body of knowledge is recognized and accepted by a body of scientists, there would seem to be a need to regard that acceptance as a matter of contingent fact," writes Barnes. This means that knowledge is "undetermined by experience." It takes us "away from an individualistic rationalist account of evaluation towards a collectivist conventionalist account."

In short, under the new authoritarian science based on consensus, science doesn't matter much any more. If one scientist's 1,000-year chart showing rising global temperatures is based on bad data, it doesn't matter because we still otherwise have a consensus. If a polar-bear expert says polar bears appear to be thriving, thus disproving a popular climate theory, the expert and his numbers are dismissed as being outside the consensus. If studies show solar fluctuations rather than carbon emissions may be causing climate change, these are damned as relics of the old scientific method. If ice caps are not all melting, with some even getting larger, the evidence is ridiculed and condemned. We have a consensus, and this contradictory science is just noise from the skeptical fringe.

Jasper McKee, professor of physics at the University of Manitoba and editor of Physics in Canada, asked recently: "Is scientific fact no longer necessary?" Apparently it's not. "In the absence of hard scientific fact or causal relationships, a majority vote of scientists can determine scientific truth."

Perhaps, says Mr. McKee, the great scientific revolution begun in the Renaissance of the 17th century is over and the need for science is gone. "The prospects," he says, "are alarming." In the end, though, real science can only win. If real science produces truth that the consensus method cannot, any consensus will inevitably fail to hold...

Hat tip: Climate Science

"Radiation is not too deadly"

Check out this post from Lubos Motl.

An excerpt:

...In all cases, it is found that the actual effects of "radiation illness", including birth defects and delayed deaths, were several orders of magnitude below the description available in the media.

Laughable claim from Ralph Keeling

An excerpt from this article:

In [UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Ralph] Keeling's mind, the debate is over. Global warming was discussed in the scientific community long before it became widely known to the public.

“There was a consensus in the late '70s that the world was going to get warmer, and lo and behold, it's happened,” Keeling said. “The community as a whole moved on long ago. We're through debating this.”

Keeling's claim seems to find very little support in articles written in the 1970s, which despaired of continuing global *cooling*.

One example:

International Team of Specialists Finds No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend in Northern Hemisphere

January 5, 1978, Thursday

By WALTER SULLIVAN

...

DISPLAYING FIRST PARAGRAPH - An international team of specialists has concluded from eight indexes of climate that there is no end in sight to the cooling trend of the last 30 years, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.

Can you really help prevent hurricanes by involving more servers in your Google searches?

Read about the Carbon Neutral Search Engine here.

Excerpt:

How does it work, and how exactly will this help in the battle against adverse climate change? It's really very simple. Everything you do emits carbon, even something as simple as a search engine query. It might just be a fraction of a gram, but there is an emission, nonetheless. When you use the Carbon Neutral Search Engine your query, each and every query, will be offset a minimum of 100 grams of carbon dioxide.

Hurricane Katrina now supposedly a *cause* of global warming

Excerpt from this link:

As if Hurricane Katrina's wind and water hadn't inflicted enough damage, a group of researchers led by a Tulane University biologist has found that the monster storm may well have accelerated global warming.

As Katrina roared through coastal forests in August 2005, it destroyed thousands of trees. As those trees decompose, the carbon they release will be enough to offset a year's worth of new tree growth elsewhere in the United States, said Jeffrey Chambers, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. The team's report has been published in the peer-reviewed journal Science.

Evidently the solution is to plant more immortal trees, because left undisturbed, ordinary trees have a distinct tendency to eventually die and decompose?

Basing important personal decisions on bad science

Here.

Forgive me, but I just don't think it's completely prudent to get yourself sterilized in response to the temperature data in this graph:

Should fireplace fires be banned in San Francisco?

Here.

THE SANE MAN OF EUROPE SPEAKS

Excerpt from this post:

An email from Roger Helmer [roger.helmer@europarl.europa.eu], Conservative Member of the European Parliament

You may be interested in the letter below which I sent today to the Environment Editor of the Daily Telegraph, Charles Clover:

Dear Charles,

I was surprised to read in your piece in the DT yesterday that "no politician from a British party would side with the flat-earthers" (in your charming phrase) in the climate debate. I am afraid you are wrong. I myself have been campaigning against climate alarmism for some time. Only in April I conducted a major and very successful conference presenting the case against global warming hysteria, here in the European parliament in Brussels. My key-note speaker was former Chancellor Lord Lawson of Blaby, who shares my view on the issue. I also took the issue to a packed fringe meeting at the Conservative Party Conference in October.

The evidence shows that climate drives CO2 levels, not vice versa. And as an erstwhile mathematician, I know that the climate forcing effect of atmospheric CO2 is not linear, and certainly not exponential (as hinted at in Al Gore's mendacious disaster movie). It is logarithmic. We are already well up the curve, and further increases in CO2 levels will have a marginal effect on climate.

In the eighteenth century William Herschel showed that sunspots drive the price of wheat. We can now explain this phenomenon -- sunspots lead to an increase in the Sun's magnetic field, which reduces the cosmic ray flux in our upper atmosphere and reduces cloud formation, leading to warmer weather, higher crop yields and lower grain prices. Yet now you describe those who recognise that the Sun drives climate as "flat-earthers".

You would do well to read your fellow columnist Jan Moir in today's paper. "I've yet to meet the person, politician or otherwise, who takes carbon emissions seriously". This is my experience. While organisations, companies, political parties and the media buy into climate alarmism at the official level, I am astonished by the large numbers of well-informed people who admit privately that it's nonsense. This is a scare like the Millennium Bug. We shall look back from the cold winters of the 2020s and be astonished at our gullibility.

To be fair, the Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph have given a good platform to the other side of the debate. But I am disappointed that you personally seem to see no need to report in a balanced way, but have chosen to act as a cheerleader for the alarmists.

Interesting questions about geoengineering

Check out this post by Lubos Motl.

Know the Past and Understand the Future

Excerpts from this piece by meteorologist Art Horn:

...Global warming was not exactly new. There had been magazine articles dating back to the late 80’s warning that humans were adding too much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and this could cause long term warming and big problems. But the whole thing never really caught fire until the early 2000’s. Part of the reason for this was the need for another crisis. With the shocking impact of 911 mostly gone or fading and the ensuing war in Afghanistan and then Iraq over on the other side of the world there was a void to be filled here in the USA. To fill that hole more and more stories about this global warming thing began to appear. The beauty of the story was that it could be pulled from the right field bullpen at any time the starting pitcher (the daily news stories) began to weaken.

Add to this an ex vice president that was stomping the county with a slide show predicting that the ice caps were going to melt, sea level was going to flood cities, polar bears were dying. That just helped to reinforce the whole storyline. Environmental groups did not let the opportunity to capitalize on the global warming phenomena pass by either. The environmental websites were all ringing the global warming alarm bells louder and louder. After all these organizations are all about saving the planet from ourselves, who better to lead the way to a greener future free from global warming than them? These groups need money to carry out their mission just like other companies do. If you could ring the global alarms loud enough people might feel compelled to donate to these environmental groups to save the planet.

It all came to a head when our former vice president made a movie. It is of course is called “An Inconvenient Truth”. The film was truly inspirational, despite the numerous errors, half truths and scientific omissions. It inspired those who do not believe that climate change is caused by human activity to speak up and be heard. I don’t think this is what Al had in mind. Thousands of scientists around the world are making their opinions known, mostly through the internet. It has been difficult to get much air time or print space due to the fact that the media is committed to selling the scary story of global warming Armageddon. Remember the way to get the ratings up and sell more newspapers and magazines is to tell a scary story. What’s a mass murderer to a newspaper man? A man who sells newspapers of course! Global warming fits the formula very nicely if you can craft the tale properly. Don’t get me wrong here, there is nothing wrong with telling a scary story or selling newspapers or getting better ratings, that is business and we all need our businesses to do better. That is called growth and that is the American way.

Rich Guthrie on BIRDCHAT

Here.

Excerpt:

I'm surprised and somewhat disappointed that Ivory-billed Woodpecker isn't on more wanted lists.

They do exist. And they are right here in the USA.

I know - I saw one.

More discouraging news for the IPCC

Check out the poll figures here.

Winter Likely to Be Colder than Most Forecasts Tell You

Here.

Chasing another will-o'-the-wisp

Excerpt from this article:

There were some questions following the talk, and Lindzen was asked if it wouldn't be better to sign Kyoto and follow-on agreements just to be on the safe side. Lindzen said no. Combating a hypothetical problem would waste resources, human more than material, which could be much better devoted to other ends, such as improving public health.

But the further problem with making global warming the object of a huge and highly political international project may be that every action has an equal and opposite reaction; that when the theory is inevitably discredited and dismissed, possibly after a few bad snowstorms, the whole package of environmentalism will be discredited too, along with all the worthy parts involving the reduction of harmful pollutants and preservation of wildlife habitat.

We'll have squandered much by chasing a will-o'-the-wisp -- a term in folklore for a floating ball of light. Most people believe a will-o'-the-wisp is -- fittingly, in this case -- a phenomenon related to methane, a greenhouse gas.

UN climate panel co-head pessimistic about progress in Bali

Excerpt from this article:

The co-head of the UN climate-change panel that shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize said Thursday he was pessimistic about progress at next month's global environmental summit in Bali.

The world may have to wait until the Copenhagen summit two years later before governments summon the political will to budge, said Martin Parry, co-chair of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But wait a minute--isn't the IPCC supposed to be non-political?

Check out this related link:

Tempo Interaktif reports that Angkasa Pura - the management of Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport are concerned that the large number of additional private charter flights expected in Bali during the UN Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) December 3-15, 2007, will exceed the carrying capacity of apron areas. To meet the added demand for aircraft storage officials are allocating "parking space" at other airports in Indonesia.

Forget the Earth, Now We are Killing the Universe

Check this out.

Excerpt from the linked article:

New Scientist reports a worrying new variant as the cosmologists claim that astronomers may have accidentally nudged the universe closer to its death by observing dark energy, a mysterious anti gravity force which is thought to be speeding up the expansion of the cosmos.

The damaging allegations are made by Profs Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and James Dent of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, who suggest that by making this observation in 1998 we may have caused the cosmos to revert to an earlier state when it was more likely to end. "Incredible as it seems, our detection of the dark energy may have reduced the life-expectancy of the universe," Prof Krauss tells New Scientist.

Become a "locavore", save a polar bear?

Here.

Excerpt:

This year, one must practice "local eating for global change," said Canadian-based cookbook author Alisa Smith.

If the turkey, veggies, breads and other holiday menu staples are not grown or produced within 100 miles of home, forget it. Such items require too much fossil fuel to get them from field to table, Ms. Smith reasoned — but her logic has serious impact on granny's traditions. Cinnamon and nutmeg are verboten in the pumpkin pie, for example; both spices are imported. And unless a bog is down the block, cranberries can be on the no-no list as well.

Her notion of a "100-mile Thanksgiving" has riveted foodies in New York, Colorado, California, New Hampshire, Virginia and elsewhere; converts will blog about their consciousness-raising meals in the next 48 hours, according to Ms. Smith.

It's all part of being a holiday "locavore," a term coined by San Francisco chef Jessica Prentice two years ago. The word has since become so pervasive in the popular press that it was named "word of the year" earlier this month by the New Oxford American Dictionary.

Lomborg: Paint it white

Here.

Excerpt:

While celebrity activists focus entirely on cutting CO2, we could do much more - and at much lower cost - if we addressed urban heat islands. Simple solutions can make a vast difference to temperatures.

Cities are hotter than the land around them because they are drier. They lack moist green spaces and have drainage systems that efficiently remove water. In London, the air around the river Thames is cooler than it is a few blocks away in built-up areas. If we plant trees and build water features, we won't just beautify our surroundings, but we'll also cool things down - by upwards of 8C, according to climate models.

Moreover, although it may seem almost comically straightforward, one of the best temperature-reducing approaches is very simple: paint things white. Cities have a lot of black asphalt and dark, heat-absorbing structures. By increasing reflection and shade, a great deal of heat build-up can be avoided. Paint most of a city and you could lower the temperature by 10C.

France: horses may replace buses and trucks

Here.

"Carbon Footprint of UN Conference"

Here.

Hysteria’s History: Environmental Alarmism in Context

Excerpt from this paper:

...there was, as we have seen, a more sinister and tragic response to the hysteria generated by Silent Spring. Certain developing countries, under significant pressure from the United States, abandoned the use of DDT. This decision resulted in millions of deaths from malaria and other insect-borne diseases. In the absence of pressure to abandon the use of DDT, these lives would have been spared. It would certainly have been possible to design policies requiring caution and safe practices in the use of supplemental chemicals in the environment, without pronouncing a death sentence on millions of people.

A major challenge in developing appropriate responses to legitimate problems is that alarmism catches people’s attention and draws them in. Alarmism is given more weight than it deserves, as policy makers attempt to appease their constituency and the media. It polarizes the debaters into groups of “believers” and “skeptics,” so that reasoned, fact-based compromise is difficult to achieve. Neither of these aspects of alarmism is healthy for the development of appropriate policy.

Further, alarmist responses to valid problems risk foreclosing potentially useful responses based on ingenuity and progress. There are many examples from the energy sector where, in the presence of demands for economy, efficiency, or less pollution, the marketplace has responded by developing better alternatives. That is not to say that we should blissfully squander our energy resources; on the contrary, we should be careful to utilize them wisely. But energy-resource hysteria should not lead us to circumvent scientific advancement by cherry-picking and favoring one particular replacement technology at the expense of other promising technologies.

Environmental alarmism should be taken for what it is—a natural tendency of some portion of the public to latch onto the worst, and most unlikely, potential outcome. Alarmism should not be used as the basis for policy. Where a real problem exists, solutions should be based on reality, not hysteria.

PROBLEMS WITH SURFACE TEMPERATURES-Dr V Gray

Here.

Excerpt:

It is quite impossible to obtain a statistically or scientifically acceptable estimate of mean global temperature or its variability over time, from readings on the earth’s surface, for the following reasons:

• Random distribution of measuring equipment is impossible, and thus, so is a truly global average of known accuracy.

• Continuous temperature measurement in any one location has only been possible recently. For a longer record “Mean Daily Temperature”, must be used. This consists of the mean of the maximum and minimum temperature over a variable 24 hour period, which does not even usually refer to a standard day. Such a measurement gives only a biased average, of unknown accuracy, even at a single site.

• There is no quality control system for weather station and ship-based measurements. Few aspects of the process are standardized, even within a single country. Differences and changes in instruments, shelter, location, distance from buildings and vegetation are seldom studies or allowed for. Personnel are often voluntary (as in the USA), poorly paid or unpaid (even as prisoners), and of variable qualifications or training. The administration can change frequently and even change nationality. Visits to sites may be infrequent, and impractical by those processing international data. Some instruments are on top of buildings, within a few meters of them, or situated on asphalt or concrete or occasional snow. A recent study in the United States has shown that even the “approved” sites in that country are non standard -- if judged by World Meteorological Office recommendations [Dave and Pielke Sr 2005].

• Measurement sites suffer from discontinuity of location and variability in numbers and thus in the extent of global coverage (100 weather stations in 1850, 8000 in 1980, 3000 today), as well as gaps in records.

• Attempts to correct for some of these sources of error are largely confined to the continental USA. In most countries there are too few sites for comparison purposes, and methods developed in one country may not be valid elsewhere.

• The oceans constitute 71% of the earth’s surface but temperature measurements at sea have even greater potential errors than measurements on land.

• Weather data are considered commercial and are often not generally available to the public without a fee. The details of processing of the data are not made available to independent observers or “peer reviewers.”

A whole host of additional difficulties have been identified by Gray (2000) and have been expanded in recent papers by Pielke Sr et al [2007], Runnalls and Oke [2006], Pielke et al [2007b], and D’Aleo et al. [2007]. They include the high and variable thermal gradient at the surface, the effects of discontinuities in number and location of sites, instrument calibration and change, land-use changes, water vapour effects, political changes, wars, gaps in the data….

A set of measurements widely regarded by the IPCC to show that urban effects are negligible [Jones et al 1990] gave the opposite results with a selection of the same data in a paper that included two of the same authors, in the same year [Wang et al 1990].

Another paper, also much quoted as proof that urbanization effects are negligible, even includes the words “No Difference Found” [Peterson 2003]. The actual paper,however, found a difference of 0.31ºC between the urban and rural sites. But so many errors and “corrections” were necessary that when these were made the urban/rural difference could no longer be “found."

"Spotty Science"

Check out the latest from Philip Stott here.

"IS INCREASING CO2 A DANGER OR A BENEFIT?"

Excerpt from this link:

An email from Prof. Bob Carter [bob.carter@jcu.edu.au], Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia

David Whitehouse has contributed another insightful essay [See immediately below], and I am confident that most of your readers will agree with the thoughts that he expresses. However, I must take exception to one sentence, which is:

"Clearly the Earth’s natural state is not to have so much CO2 in its atmosphere and it would be prudent to reduce it".

The Earth has no "natural" level of CO2 for Earth's atmosphere. It is estimated that past CO2 levels have varied up to 20 times the present level, and there is no evidence that higher levels (and especially moderately higher levels such as doubling) have been ecologically "damaging".

Quite the contrary, in fact. As you and David will be well aware, atmospheric CO2 is a stimulant to plant growth and to more efficient plant use of water. Additionally, extra CO2 probably has a mild (NOT dangerous) warming effect, which on the precautionary principle is a definite benefit at this stage of the natural climate cycle.

In summary, (i) there is no such a thing as a "natural" level of CO2 in the atmosphere, and (ii) while no one can predict exactly all the consequences of increasing atmospheric CO2, the odds strongly favour it being beneficial. From which it follows that claims that reducing human CO2 emissions would be "prudent" are false.

Finally, anyone with doubts as to the benefit of mild warming might like to consult the views of the people in the southern hemisphere who have just experienced an extremely harsh winter, or those persons in the northern hemisphere who appear to be about to receive the same.

"Bee acquittal stings journal"

Here.

"It'll make world war look like heaven"

Here are a couple of specific examples of completely ridiculous global warming hype:

1. Check out the infamous "Angry Kid" video from YouTube:


Note the "About this Video" text from Greenpeace:

Climate change is changing our world. Within the lifetimes of children being born today, it may challenge our survival as a species.
The Earth is hotter than it has been for at least one thousand years. By the end of this century, if current trends continue, the temperature will likely climb higher than it's been at any time in the past two million years. The consequences of this drastic rise, caused by burning fossil fuels, are likely to be catastrophic: mass extinctions, droughts, hundreds of millions of refugees.

2. Check out the quotes from John Edwards (at Bennett College, March 13th, 2007) here:

'This is an emergency' 'It's a frightening thing' 'It'll make world war look like heaven'

To keep the panic in its proper perspective, don't forget this graph:

"How not to measure temperature, part 35"

Another update from Anthony Watts is here.

Excerpts:

Here we have a USHCN station in the middle of a junk pile. Old storage crates and containers, a rusty metal trailer, and a disabled Winnebago. Most curiously, one piece of junk, a discarded solar mirror, has the potential for heating up the thermometer more than a few degrees under certain conditions. It’s hard to believe, but this is exactly how I found the site.
...
Note how the solar mirror is pointed right at the shelter, under some sun angles, I’d wager that this reflects sunlight directly on the shelter.

Click the link above to see the temperature record for this site.

It seems very likely to me that over the last century, the bulk of the recorded warming here had absolutely nothing to do with carbon dioxide.

Time Magazine on Drought, 2007 Versus 1974

Here.

"Al Gore is like Jim Jones, and we're drinking his Kool-Aid"

Check out this opinion piece from Al Gore's hometown of Nashville.

Cornell gets a wooden Ivory-bill

Here.

Digging up the roots of the IPCC

Here.

The Big Secret: Climate Bills Result in No Meaningful Impact on Global Temperature

Note this post at World Climate Report.

An excerpt:

Recall that EPA calculates that the climate bills will reduce future atmospheric CO2 concentrations by 23 to 25 ppm. That is about 60% of the reduction calculated by Wigley for his global Kyoto scenario. Since the temperature savings scales roughly with the CO2 concentration savings (especially at these small quantities), the climate bills “save” about 60% of 0.15ºC or just less than one tenth, that’s 0.1, degrees Celsius.

One tenth of one degree Celsius for an enormous economic hit—the EPA calculated that S.280 (Lieberman-McCain) would lower the U.S. GDP annually by 1.1% to 3.2% ($457 billion to $1,332 billion) by the year 2050. EPA’s analysis of the economic effects of the other bills has not been completed yet (see here for updates).

That’s a lot of lost capital to produce virtually no climate impact. No polar bears are saved, no droughts averted, no hurricanes tamed. Nada. Except, a lot less cash in the pocketbook.

When it comes down to it, these facts will make this a hard sell to the American populace at large.

Ban dihydrogen monoxide!

Excerpt from this page:

Each year, Dihydrogen Monoxide is a known causative component in many thousands of deaths and is a major contributor to millions upon millions of dollars in damage to property and the environment. Some of the known perils of Dihydrogen Monoxide are:

* Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.
* Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.
* Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.
* DHMO is a major component of acid rain.
* Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns.
* Contributes to soil erosion.
* Leads to corrosion and oxidation of many metals.
* Contamination of electrical systems often causes short-circuits.
* Exposure decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes.
* Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions.
* Given to vicious dogs involved in recent deadly attacks.
* Often associated with killer cyclones in the U.S. Midwest and elsewhere, and in hurricanes including deadly storms in Florida, New Orleans and other areas of the southeastern U.S.
* Thermal variations in DHMO are a suspected contributor to the El Nino weather effect.

A related YouTube video is here; another related link is here.

IPCC, the UN and Alarmism

From Chris Horner here:

Some of you may have noticed over the past few days the UN’s multi-tiered alarmism road show to push the “new” scary IPCC report. This actually happens to be a summary of the three summaries released in staggered, media savvy fashion over the past ten months, the window for work to be considered having closed well over a year ago. As such, it inherently cannot contain anything new or newsworthy without running afoul of the IPCC’s claim that the underlying work and claims made in the summaries has been “peer reviewed” (now proven to be an unsupportable claim, if one that's still made today).

As part of its campaign the IPCC has claimed that everything is happening faster than previously projected. Why, they’ve even claimed that greenhouse gases are increasing faster than predicted, which is really quite something given that the IPCC assumes, via its computer models, an annual rate of GHG increase that has been exposed as being twice as great as three decades of observations reveal.

Today's Al Gore links

1. From Fortune:

They argue that to halt global warming, nothing less will be required than a makeover of the $6 trillion global energy business. Coal plants, gas stations, the internal-combustion engine, petrochemicals, plastic bags, even bottled water will have to give way to clean, green, sustainable technologies. "What we are going to have to put in place is a combination of the Manhattan Project, the Apollo project, and the Marshall Plan, and scale it globally," Gore continues. "It'd be promising too much to say we can do it on our own, but we intend to do our part."

Does that sound grandiose? Sure. Will they be accused of being partisan? Probably. Is there something incongruous about globetrotting rich guys jetting between multiple homes and lecturing the rest of us about climate change? Of course.

2. From the Wall Street Journal:

Al Gore no longer needs to make claims about creating the Internet, because the former Vice President deserves much of the credit for creating an entire new industry -- the global warming business.

And like the energy barons of an earlier age, Mr. Gore has the chance to achieve enormous wealth after being named last week as a new partner at the famously successful venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. No fewer than three of his new colleagues sit on the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans. If Mr. Gore can develop market-based solutions to environmental challenges, we will cheer the well-deserved riches flowing his way. On the other hand, if he monetizes his Nobel Peace Prize by securing permanent government subsidies for nonmarket science projects, he'll have earned a different judgment.

3. From NewsBusters, "Global Warming Hysteria Could Make Gore Richest VP in History"; and "Was Gore Hired as Venture Capitalist or Venture Lobbyist?" here.

An excerpt from that second link:

Paul Gigot, Host: Wait a minute. You're saying that this is not necessarily all about venture capitalism, but it may be about venture politics in Washington?

Freeman: Well, as far as why they make certain investments and how, I'll leave that to experts, but what's absolutely clear is that the stakes are huge for the companies they've invested in, in the green tech space in the Washington energy bill, if it ever happens.

Gigot: What companies are those? Are they in ethanol, solar?

Freeman: Two companies in ethanol. Another company that is biofuels, claiming to be creating something even better than ethanol, which probably won't be hard. Whether it can be better than gasoline is the tough challenge. Then you have two companies in solar, another one in geothermal.

Gigot: Wow. So 60 votes in the Senate may be Al Gore's real game here if can he do something in Washington to get that energy bill through the Senate.

Was there a significant Medieval Warm Period?

The answer is "yes".


One way we know this is that in 1995, the IPCC itself admitted that the Medieval Warm Period existed (above), before someone evidently decided that it needed to be purged:

I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period."

A massive amount of supporting evidence is found at the CO2 Science web site.

From their Medieval Warm Period Project overview:

What is it?
Our Medieval Warm Period Project is an ongoing effort to document the magnitude and spatial and temporal extent of a significant period of warmth that occurred approximately one thousand years ago. Its goal is to ultimately provide sufficient real-world evidence to convince most rational people that the Medieval Warm Period was: (1) global in extent, (2) at least as warm as, but likely even warmer than, the Current Warm Period, and (3) of a duration significantly longer than that of the Current Warm Period to date.

Why is it?
The project's reason for being begins with the claim of many scientists - and essentially all of the world's radical environmentalists - that earth's near-surface air temperature over the last two decades of the 20th century (and continuing to the present) was higher than it has been during any similar period of the past millennium or more. This claim is of utmost importance to these climate alarmists; for it allows them to further claim there is something unnatural about recent and possibly ongoing warming, which allows them to claim that the warming has its origins in anthropogenic CO2 emissions, which allows them to claim that if humanity will abandon the burning of fossil fuels, we can slow and ultimately stop the warming of the modern era and thereby save the planet's fragile ecosystems from being destroyed by catastrophic climate changes that they claim will otherwise drive a goodly percentage of earth's plants and animals to extinction. Believing all of these claims to be false, we felt that disproving the first of them was the best way of refuting all the rest, or at least making them moot. The course of action we therefore take in this endeavor is to demonstrate that approximately one thousand years ago, when the atmosphere's CO2 concentration was approximately 25% lower than it is currently, earth's near-surface air temperature was equally as warm as, or even warmer than, it is today, demonstrating that today's temperatures are not unnatural and need not be due to the historical rise in the air's CO2 content. Indeed, these and other data covering a much longer timespan suggest that a more logical cause of our present warmth is the recurrence of whatever cyclical phenomenon produced the higher temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period.

From their Study Description and Results page, you can learn some details about related scientific papers. One example is here.

"CO2: The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Time"

Check out the paper by Zbigniew Jaworowski here.

Thomas Sowell on the Global Warming Swindle

Here.

Excerpt:

These climate scientists likewise debunk the mathematical models that have been used to hype global warming hysteria, even though hard evidence stretching back over centuries contradicts these models.

What is even scarier than seeing how easily the public, the media, and the politicians have been manipulated and stampeded, is discovering how much effort has been put into silencing scientists who dare to say that the emperor has no clothes.

Academics who jump on the global warming bandwagon are far more likely to get big research grants than those who express doubts -- and research is the lifeblood of an academic career at leading universities.

"UN Admits AIDS Hysterics"

Here.

Excerpts:

The United Nations grossly overestimated both the scope and direction of AIDS infections, its scientists will admit later this week. The actual numbers in almost every theater have proven to be much less than UN reports indication, in some places less than half of that asserted. Outside researchers say that their demands for government funding motivated them to essentially lie about the gravity of the situation.
...
Why should we trust their scientists on this when they've consistently fibbed about AIDS? They have a track record of hysterics and exaggerations for political purposes. They've turned themselves into an advocacy group for statist policies, and any UN report on impending disasters should come with a five-pound sack of Morton's Salt in the future.

Excerpt from a related post by Claudia Rosett entitled "It's a Growing Disaster! It's a Looming Catastrophe!! It's... UN Science!!!":

Could there possibly be a certain parallel here between past UN alarmism over a wildfire global AIDS pandemic, and Ban Ki-moon’s latest pronouncement that to stop the imminent, irreversible, dire, apocalyptic, overwhelming, total, unquestionable and abruptly looming climate catastrophe (he went and saw a melting glacier for himself — who are we to question what that means?), there must now be a titanic planet-wide wealth transfer, with the UN as fee-collecting broker and middleman? At the imminent UN climate conference next month by the warm beaches of Bali, where UN staffers will collect their per diems while UN eminences plan ways to chill our economy, will anyone dare to bring that up?

Nature piece endorses extinction of one particular species

Read about it here.

Lack of volcanism contributing to recent warmth?

An interesting paper by Joe D'Aleo is here.

"Global Warming, Or Global Con?"

Check out the Investor's Business Daily editorial here.

David Warren essay

Here.

Excerpt:

Hardly for the first time, I touched this last week on the strange conceit of the environmentalists, who are making an international campaign of “global warming.” (Have you heard?)

The puzzle is why they put almost all their effort into pushing a case that is so abstract and speculative, and which, as they ought to know from common sense, is as likely as the last few environmentalist scares to prove a crock. (Nuclear winter, the population bomb, global famine, etc.) Why do they dwell on the unproven long-term climatic effects of the atmospheric accumulation of carbon dioxide -- which is not itself a pollutant, but a necessary condition for life? Why not turn their rhetorical spears on what is tangible, material, demonstrable? On what is blowing out of the smokestacks and draining through the spillways of the filthiest and most poisonous industrial operations on the planet?

"How not to measure temperature, part 34"

Check out the latest from Anthony Watts here.

Excerpts:

Klamath Falls was one of those places where you have to wonder “what were they thinking?” when they placed a climate monitoring station. Imagine measuring the temperature in the middle of acres of asphalt combined with huge amounts of waste heat from electric power conversion. That’s’ Klamath Falls USHCN official climate station of record.
...
Can you imagine the heat from the transformers being transported by wind, or the heat from the massive asphalt in the service staging facility yard being pushed toward the sensor by the wind? Being almost exactly in the middle of the complex, it’s hard to imagine any bias free day there, wind or not. It’s a likely scenario, and one well suited for a study this coming summer where I may ask permission to place a sensor at the old measurement location, and position some temperature loggers around the facility to quantify the difference.

Another thing this location may have been doing in the long term is measuring waste heat generated by the transformers as a function of power usage demands. Historically, power use has not declined, so its safe to assume that this facility, its transformers, and capacity has been upgraded over the years to handle increased demand.

Yet we measure temperature there...

Richard Lindzen's "Climate of Fear" piece

Please read the whole thing here.

Excerpts:

There have been repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?

The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism. Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money into science--whether for AIDS, or space, or climate--where there is nothing really alarming? Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions.

But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.
...
And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an "Iris Effect," wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as "discredited." Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to actually find out how climate really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of the U.S. National Climate Plan urged a high priority for improving our knowledge of climate sensitivity, the National Research Council instead urged support to look at the impacts of the warming--not whether it would actually happen.

Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers.

Climate realist James M. Taylor speaks in Chicago

Excerpt from this article:

...he scorned the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC is a task force created by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization; its stated goal is “to provide the decision makers and others interested in climate change with an objective source of information about climate change.”

The IPCC was the co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, along with former vice president Al Gore, for its work in advancing people’s understanding of global warming. Taylor challenged the veracity of the IPCC’s reports, saying that it censors them by not publishing “tens of thousands” of criticisms of its contention that climate change is occurring. In his opinion, the IPCC’s omissions of critique render its claims irrelevant.

Nonetheless, whether it is because of the IPCC’s reports or Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, acceptance of global warming as a fact has spread, particularly in the mainstream media.

In Taylor’s view, the reason climate change has gotten to be such a hot story is simple: global warming sells. When comparing the “media’s unsupported assertions” with the body of evidence he marshaled, he concluded that these stories may sell, but they’re a bunch of hot air.

"Independent Summary for Policymakers"

Read all about it here.

One excerpt from the above link:

The IPCC involves numerous experts in the preparation of its reports. However, chapter authors are frequently asked to summarize current controversies and disputes in which they themselves are professionally involved, which invites bias. Related to this is the problem that chapter authors may tend to favor their own published work by presenting it in a prominent or flattering light. Nonetheless the resulting reports tend to be reasonably comprehensive and informative. Some research that contradicts the hypothesis of greenhouse gas-induced warming is under-represented, and some controversies are treated in a one-sided way, but the reports still merit close attention.

A more compelling problem is that the Summary for Policymakers, attached to the IPCC Report, is produced, not by the scientific writers and reviewers, but by a process of negotiation among unnamed bureaucratic delegates from sponsoring governments. Their selection of material need not and may not reflect the priorities and intentions of the scientific community itself. Consequently it is useful to have independent experts read the underlying report and produce a summary of the most pertinent elements of the report.

Finally, while the IPCC enlists many expert reviewers, no indication is given as to whether they disagreed with some or all of the material they reviewed. In previous IPCC reports many expert reviewers have lodged serious objections only to find that, while their objections are ignored, they are acknowledged in the final document, giving the impression that they endorsed the views expressed therein.

Weathermen cool to global warming

Check out this Feb. '07 article.

An excerpt:

One of the few turns to the serious came when Mr. Webster asked the panelists whether they considered global warming a real threat. (You might want to stop reading here if you’re a die-hard environmentalist or Al Gore fan.) None of the four felt global warming should be considered scientific fact.

Noting that reliable weather data has been collected for only about 100 years, Mr. Johnson said, “You tell me you’re going to predict climate change based on 100 years of data for a rock that’s 6 billion years old?” And citing a recent UN report in which more than 600 scientists said there’s a high likelihood that human behavior is negatively affecting the climate, Mr. Johnson said, “Consensus does not mean fact. … Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.”

Mr. Nolan said the Earth has periods where it heats up and when it cools, and it’s folly to look at short-term data to form long-term policy.

“I’m not sure which is more arrogant — to say we caused (global warming) or that we can fix it,” he said.

Mr. Webster observed that in his dealings with meteorologists nationwide, “about 95%” share his skepticism about global warming.

Monetary rewards if you tie your research to global warming?

An excerpt from this link:

...Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist magazine, wittily explains the heady effect this had on many scientists: "If I wanted to do research on, shall we say, the squirrels of Sussex ... I would write my grant application saying 'I want to investigate the nut-gathering behaviour of squirrels, with special reference to the effects of global warming,' and that way, I get my money. If I forgot to mention global warming, I might not get the money."

Offset your cheating!

A video spoofing carbon offsets is here.

Some background information is here.

Heather Mills on global warming

Here.

A stealth move toward nuclear power?

Read the strange tale here.

Interesting claims from James Hansen

An excerpt from James Hansen's testimony in a recent Iowa coal case (October 2007):

...Humans now control global climate, for better or worse.

Another ice age cannot occur unless humans go extinct, or unless humans decide that they want an ice age. However, ‘achieving’ an ice age would be a huge task. In contrast,
prevention of an ice age is a trivial task for humans, requiring only a ‘thimbleful’ of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), for example.

(James Hansen is one of the best-known climate alarmists).

"IPCC and Policy Options: To Open Up or Close Down?"

See this Prometheus blog post.

Excerpts:

With the release of the IPCC AR4 Synthesis report last week, the IPCC made a dramatic statement that has thus far escaped notice. The IPCC has endorsed the Kyoto Protocol process, at once discarding its fig leaf of being "policy neutral" and putting its scientific authority on the line by supporting a policy approach that many people think simply cannot work.
...
The more that the IPCC resembles an advocacy group with a narrow political agenda tied to the Kyoto Protocol, the more it risks its credibility, legitimacy, and ultimately, its sustainability.

"Brown Least Mad On Climate"

An excerpt from this Philip Stott post (see the post for links):

[UK PM, Gordon] Brown’s words are full of waffling warmth, while the proposed action is either ludicrous or absolutely non-existent:

A ‘Green hotline’ and web site to advise people on how to be ‘good’;

A ban on one-use plastic bags. As it happens, I am personally in favour of this, but what it has to do with climate change beats me;

And some help to improve energy efficiency in poorer areas.

Er, that’s it!
...
Brown will do nothing to harm the British economy nor to hurt the disadvantaged. Indeed, in the end, he may prove to be the man for us climate realists. In practice, he is the least mad of all UK politicians over climate. I don’t think, at heart, he is really interested.

Storminess in Europe has not significantly changed over the past 200 years

Here.

MP3 of "The Great Global Warming Swindle" currently available

Here (17.5MB; 1 hour, 16 minutes).

Links to the video are available here.

Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

Check out this 2007 paper by Arthur B. Robinson, Noah E. Robinson, and Willie Soon.

An excerpt:

Atmospheric temperature is regulated by the sun, which fluctuates in activity as shown in Figure 3; by the greenhouse effect, largely caused by atmospheric water vapor (H2O); and by other phenomena that are more poorly understood. While major greenhouse gas H2O substantially warms the Earth, minor greenhouse gases such as CO2 have little effect, as shown in Figures 2 and 3 [below]. The 6-fold increase in hydrocarbon use since 1940 has had no noticeable effect on atmospheric temperature or on the trend in glacier length.

(click to enlarge)




Hat tip: NC Media Watch

Maryland’s secret global warming commission

Here.

Excerpts:

Maryland officials refuse to disclose documents about a secretive Pennsylvania-based environmental advocacy group that is helping them develop anti-global warming policies.

State environmental officials denied multiple Freedom of Information Act requests for documents and information on the work of the Center for Climate Strategies (CCS) for the Maryland Commission on Climate Change.

Gov. Martin O’Malley created the commission via executive order earlier this year and appointed members of the panel, which is tasked with recommending policies governing Maryland state government’s response to global warming.

CCS is an arm of Enterprising Environmental Solutions Inc., a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit that bills itself as “a unique public-private partnership” that provides policy recommendations, management expertise and professional advice to state environmental officials.
...
...Belying the claims to “no budget,” the aforementioned CCS draft memo says its process costs $460,000, which is consistent with its service charges in other states.

Also, as it has elsewhere, CCS promises to secure funds from “a group of private foundation donors” to pay for its work. Those sources remain a secret in Maryland’s case. But if you read CCS’ memo to Aburn, you’d think they have nothing to hide, because they say their “process is fully transparent.” Who are they kidding?

Desperately seeking record high temperature

If you're at all interested in the global warming debate, you should read this entire 2002 piece by the late John L. Daly.

Excerpts:

There is one all-time hot record that is the ultimate global prize: 58°C (136°F) set at Al Aziziya, Libya, in 1922. This was the hottest temperature ever recorded anywhere in the world and has stood for 80 years in spite of real or imagined `global warming". It is even noted in the Guinness Book of Records. But 1922 is a long time ago and the longer it stands, the less convincing are the claims about global warming in the eyes of the public.
...
In all of Death Valley, the ARC has chosen just about the hottest spot possible in the hottest valley in North America. They have in effect put it into a natural oven - and done so in the full knowledge of Badwater's topography. Now all they have to do is wait - wait for the inevitable day when the conditions will be just right - clear skies, still air, a blazing sun, and that instrument will heat up from the combined heating of the air, the immense heating from the nearby cliff only metres behind the instrument, the intense reflected heat radiation from the salt pan, and the mercury will very likely fall over the Libyan line and record the `hottest temperature ever measured on earth'.

Then we will see the champagne corks fly as the greenhouse industry will cry with righteous indignation, announcing the `new hottest temperature ever recorded on earth', how it's all due to global warming etc. etc. and all the time, the whole thing will be about as fake as a three dollar bill.

Even the wording on the plaque on the instrument betrays the real intent - the exclusive emphasis on the significance of heat, of global warming, of record-breaking temperatures, of the `hottest year ever' etc. The plaque speaks of little else. Even the opening words of the text are `Carbon dioxide released by human activities etc. ....'. Consequently, it is reasonable to conclude that record-breaking is the primary purpose of the instrument, not genuine climatic research.

"Swiss Snow Makes 50-year Record"

Here.

Excerpt:

According to the report, Switzerland has not received such a strong start to its winter ski season since 1952, with the amount of snow being swept to the southern areas by the wind cited as a particularly interesting feature of the weather.

On a related note, here's an excerpt from this link:

Ski resorts in Austria have displayed an exceptional performance in the early days of winter, it has been observed.

Some 26 resorts in the European ski centre are planning to open early this weekend after heavy snowfall laid the groundwork for snow sports sooner than expected.

The Ski Club of Great Britain’s Betony Garner told the Times that the conditions in Austria and most of the Alps are "fantastic".

"It has also been cold so the snow is staying and the resorts have also been able to make snow. This is a great start to the winter season," she said.

Ivory-bill items in the latest issue of Birding

A reader writes:

...I just got the latest issue of Birding and it contains a review of Hill's book by Mark Robbins. It is the most unforgiving review of that book and Hill's work that I have seen. It seems that we are at the stage now where there is no need to state things diplomatically, which is refreshing. (If it were possible to get the word "bullsh*t" past the editors, I'm sure it would have appeared several times in the article. Our loss there.) Unfortunately, ABA hasn't posted it on their website. There is also a brief mention of the checklist committee's decision regarding the IBWO in the same issue (which I believe is on the ABA website).

USHCN in the “ass end of nowhere”

Yet another thought-provoking post from Anthony Watts is here.

Excerpts:

Apologist Eli Rabett (Joshua Halpern) recently lamented that in order for dendrochronologists to update tree ring studies used in MBH98/99 (aka Mann’s Hockey Stick) that they “have to drive out to the ass end of nowhere”. It’s such an inconvenience for those that just perform data wrangling in the office, instead of going out to get their hands dirty, that a study used as the basis for legislation hasn’t had its data updated in almost 10 years!

Thanks to Mr. Pete and Steve McIntyre, a recent outing in Colorado to get updated core samples from the very same trees used in Mann’s study proved that it’s not so hard after all. In fact they were able to have a Starbucks in the morning, do the field work, and were back home in time for a late dinner. No futzing with grant proposals, no elaborate plans submitted for approval, just basic honest field science. The samples they collected are in a dendrochronology lab undergoing analysis.

In that same spirit, I decided to survey one of the hottest and most remote USHCN weather stations in the USA, Death Valley. I was able to have a Starbucks’s coffee that morning, complete the work, survey an additional station, and an oddball station and head off to dinner and my next destination all in the same day.
...
So in the hottest place in North America, both the historical and new thermometer are smack dab in the middle of the only island of human influence in a vast sea of desert. The visitor’s center wasn’t always there, the big parking lot wasn’t always there, and the RV parks surely weren’t there 50+ years ago. With such buildups, is it any wonder why the temperature trends are upwards at Furnace Creek?

How would the modern media have reported the Dust Bowl?

Check out this post from Climate Skeptic.

An excerpt:

Imagine for a moment that the industrial revolution occured 70 years earlier, and we were having this argument about global warming in the 1930's rather than the 2000's. How would the media have reported the great midwestern US droughts we refer to today as the dust bowl? Almost certainly, these events would have been blamed on man and CO2 combustion. Everyone from Al Gore to James Hansen would say that these droughts were most certainly caused by man-made global warming.

You should also check out his related "Is Climate Becoming More Extreme?" post.

Vaclav Klaus on BBC HARDtalk

President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus recently faced a BBC interviewer that treated him pretty much as if he was mentally challenged.

At the 11:08 mark, the interviewer asked a question about how Klaus' grandchildren would view their grandfather's views on global warming from the perspective of 2037.

Klaus' response:

I'm absolutely sure that in 30 years the issue of global warming will be forgotten. There will be a short period of hysteria; people will laugh at that time saying the people in the year 2007 were totally crazy to speak about global warming because we have now totally different problems...I suppose that in 30 years from now my grandchildren will not remember the issue as you might almost not remember the issue of global freezing, which was in the middle of the '70s the issue of the day...if they would remember, I'm sure they would say that grandfather was right in not putting us on a wrong track.

Hat tip: Lubos Motl at The Reference Frame

The IPCC under the spotlight

I just discovered this page, which links to a lot of very detailed criticism of the IPCC.

An excerpt:

It's high time people took a hard look at the organization whose charter requires it to "assess ... the risk of human-induced climate change".

That's right. If the IPCC declared there was no risk then its reason for its existence would disappear. Shouldn't that make you suspicious from the outset?

A wealth of detailed information about global warming hysteria

Check out this page at Popular Technology.

Hunting The Climate Change Snark

Another good post from Philip Stott is here.

An excerpt:

Our post-modern period of climate change angst can probably be traced back to the late-1960s, if not earlier. By 1973, and the ‘global cooling’ scare, it was in full swing, with predictions of the imminent collapse of the world within ten to twenty years, exacerbated by the impacts of a nuclear winter. Environmentalists were warning that, by the year 2000, the population of the US would have fallen to only 22 million [the 2007 population estimate is 302,824,000] and the average intake of the average American would be a mere 2,400 calories (would that it were!).

In 1987, the scare abruptly changed to ‘global warming’, and the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was established (1988), issuing its first assessment report in 1990, which served as the basis of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). The second assessment report was then issued in 1995, the third in 2001, and, of course, the draft fourth assessment report on Saturday.

In essence, the Earth has been given a 10-year survival warning regularly for the last fifty or so years. We have been serially doomed. So it comes as no surprise to note that the latest IPCC Draft Report’s panel yet again declares that action must be taken within a decade or so if we are to save the world from ‘global warming’.

Green hero slammed as climate heretic

An informative article about David Bellamy is here.

Excerpt:

Prof. David Bellamy is Great Britain's best-known environmentalist, and has been for most of the last four decades.

He has written and presented some 400 television programs on environmental issues, written 45 books, and published more than 80 scientific papers, in addition to holding down teaching posts in botany at two universities.

He has founded or been president of prominent national organizations such as The Conservation Foundation, The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, Population Concern, Plantlife International, British Naturalists' Association, and Galapagos Conservation Trust, in addition to numerous grassroots bodies operating at the local level.

Among his many honours has been the United Nations Environment Program Global 500 Award, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award for Underwater Research, Diver of the Year Award and the Order of the British Empire.

No mere academic and establishment man, this larger-than-life figure also has a striking record as an activist campaigner for green causes, starting with the 1967 Torrey Canyon supertanker disaster off the coast of England. He has led high-profile protests against needless road building and the loss of moors, and has been jailed for blockading the construction of a hydro dam that would have destroyed a Tasmanian rainforest.

But Prof. Bellamy is not green enough for much of Britain's environmental establishment, not since July 9, 2004, the day a full-page article by him appeared in London's Daily Mail, disputing the conventional wisdom on global warming. Prof. Bellamy has since been stripped of some of his prominent positions and become an environmental pariah to many.

The article, entitled "What a load of poppycock!," was written in Prof. Bellamy's characteristic no-holds-barred style: "Whatever the experts say about the howling gales, thunder and lightning we've had over the past two days, of one thing we can be certain. Someone, somewhere -- and there is every chance it will be a politician or an environmentalist -- will blame the weather on global warming," his article began. "But they will be 100% wrong. Global warming -- at least the modern nightmare version -- is a myth."

Some climate skepticism in college newspapers

Excerpts from this article (see the article for supporting links):

The more college newspapers I look at, the more I wonder if Nobel Laureate Al Gore and his global warming sycophants in the press have overplayed their climate alarmism.

First there was an editorial in the Harvard Crimson bashing Gore, then a positive article at the Stanford Daily concerning a luncheon address by global warming skeptic S. Fred Singer, followed by a marvelous piece at San Diego State's The Daily Aztec seemingly mocking those that believe we're all going to die because temperatures are rising.

What's the matter with kids today?

Coal is still going strong

Check out this article.

Excerpt:

Using coal to generate electricity produces more greenhouse gases per resulting watt than using oil or natural gas, but coal is cheap. In countries where there are no limits on emissions and where demand for power is growing rapidly, such as India and China, coal is booming. Energy lore has it that in China a new coal-burning plant is fired up every week. What is certain is that China has become a net importer of coal for the first time this year. India's imports have been growing steadily for the past 20 years. The International Energy Agency, an energy watchdog for rich countries, projects that demand for coal will grow by 2.2% a year until 2030—faster than demand for oil or natural gas. Coal-mining firms in Indonesia and Australia, the biggest exporters, are digging as fast as they can but are still struggling to cope with the surge in orders. Freighters are literally queuing up off Newcastle, Australia, the world's busiest coal port.

U.S. voters evidently not swallowing all the global warming hype

Excerpts from this article:

Three American political commentators do not see global warming as one of the defining issues for the upcoming presidential campaign. The next president will probably be chosen on the basis of personality and domestic issues unless there is a new terrorist attack before November 2008.

The three journalists, Rick Burke (NY Times), Carroll Doherty (Pew Research Center) and Jonathan Weisman (Washington Post) were invited to Brussels for a debate organised by the US German Marshall Fund.
...
Asked by different speakers from the audience about climate change, the three experts did not see Europe’s hot topic playing a major role in the campaign, although they admitted that all Democrat candidates are trying to present their special climate change plans. Energy security (and oil independence) could be more of an issue, said Weisman, especially if gasoline prices would go to 4 dollars a gallon.