"For US, Carbon Dioxide Ranks Last Among Climate Factors and is Decreasing"

Here.

Ten Global Warming Myths

Here.

"Global Warmists Exploit the Holocaust"

Here.

Blacksburg cyclist blames "global warming-induced cold" for blue fingers and toes

Here.

"Coldest winter in years" forecast in Canada

Here.

"Why should grape growers worry about a cold phase PDO?"

Here.

"CBS News Seeks ‘Hip’ Environmental Reporter, No ‘Knowledge of Enviro Beat’ Necessary "

Here.

"Al Gore Saved the Ethanol"

Here.

Tiny Tim Storms

Here.

Excerpt:

Frankly I was surprised. There are 52 storms on the list.That’s 52 out of the 252 storms in the official record, or 20% of the total. That’s 20% of the modern storms which lack a single classical (ship or shore) report of storm winds. Wow.

The obvious question is: how can one compare these satellite- and aircraft-based storms, which left no ship or shore evidence, with pre-1945 records which were based solely on ship and shore observations?

"2007 Hurricane Season ends quietly"

Here.

Excerpt from the linked site:

The 2007 Atlantic Hurricane season did not meet the hyperactive expectations of the storm pontificators. This is good news, just like it was last year. With the breathless media coverage prior to the 2006 and 2007 seasons predicting a catastrophic swarm of hurricanes potentially enhanced by global warming a la Katrina, there is currently plenty of twisting in the wind to explain away the hyperbolic projections. The predominant refrain mentions something about “being lucky” and having “escaped” the storms, and “just wait for next year”.

"The Death of Environmentalism?: Questions for Ted Nordhaus and Michael Schellenberger (and Newt Gingrich!)"

Here.

" The Ethanol Con"

Here.

UN Rejects [Bali] Press Credentials for Representatives of US Newspaper

Here.

"Is ‘global warming’ the ultimate example of a faith without works?"

From a post by Philip Stott:

“Japan, Italy and Spain face fines of as much as $33 billion combined for failing to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions as promised under the Kyoto treaty.

The three countries are the worst performers among 36 nations that agreed to curb carbon dioxide gases that cause climate change.”

[May I remind you that this is the Japan after which the Kyoto Protocol is named, and the Italy which recently threatened India with trade sanctions if if didn’t accept European Kyoto-style emission targets. The arrogance is outrageous.] And the reason for the failures:

“’They’re looking at a huge bill now,’ said Mike Rosenberg, management professor at the University of Navarra’s IESE Business School in Barcelona. ‘That is because none would pay to reconvert factories, power plants and paper mills’ to trim gases blamed for the planet-warming ‘greenhouse effect.’”

"Global Warming Fear? Less Than Zero"

Excerpt from this post:

We don't know the Earth is broken. We don't know how to fix it. So we are going to fix it.

"Biofuels Are No Cure for Climate Change"

Here.

Excerpt:

Biofuels sound green. They’re made from things that were once green—corn, palm oil, sugar cane and other agricultural products. And they’re being touted as green. A Department of Energy’s resource page for biofuels says, “Hey students! Biofuels such as bioethanol and biodiesel can make a big difference in improving our environment.”

But don’t judge a climate cure by its color. Give it a rub, and you’ll find that the term ‘biofuels’ is actually obscuring an insidious reality. For that reason, many people, especially in the global South, have taken to calling them “agrofuels.”

Consider this statement from the Landless Worker’s Movement in Brazil in March, where biofuel production is skyrocketing: “We can’t call this a ‘bio-fuels program.’ We certainly can’t call it a ‘bio-diesel program.’ Such phrases use the prefix ‘bio’ to subtly imply that the energy in question comes from ‘life’ in general. This is illegitimate and manipulative. We need to find a term in every language that describes the situation more accurately, a term like agro-fuel. This term refers specifically to energy created from plant products grown through agriculture.”

And it’s this agricultural production that has so many people worried. Biofuels need land, which means traditional food crops are being elbowed off of the field for fuel crops. Biofuel production is literally taking the food out of people’s mouths and putting into our gas tanks. Already, increased food costs sparked by increased demand are leaving populations hungry. The price of wheat has stretched to a 10-year high, while the price of maize has doubled.

Need more land? Clear cut some forest. Is there a word beyond irony to describe a plan to mitigate climate change that relies on cutting down the very trees that naturally remove carbon from the atmosphere? Stupidity, perhaps? The logic is like harvesting a sick patient’s lungs to save her heart. Huge tracks of Amazon rainforest are being raised to the biofuels alter like a sacrificial lamb, and the UN suggests that 98 percent of Indonesia’s rainforest will disappear by 2022, where heavy biofuel production is underway.

Still need land? Just take it. The human rights group Madre, which is backing the five-year moratorium, says agrofuel plantations in Brazil and Southeast Asia are displacing indigenous people. In an editorial published on CommonDreams last week, Madre Communication Director Yifat Susskind wrote, “People are being forced to give up their land, way of life, and food self-sufficiency to grow fuel crops for export.”

If this climate cure had a prescription bottle, the side effects would read: “Biofuels may cause drowsiness, headaches, human rights abuses, land deforestation, water depletion, worldwide hunger, and climate change.” Wait, climate change? That’s right; this cure is actually a cause. Biofuels themselves may have a small carbon footprint, but the energy used to grow and process the fuel make for one large bear paw in the mud. Biofuels depend on the manufacturing of fertilizers, fuel used to power equipment, and fuel used to transport crops and fuels, which can offset any gains made in using biofuels. An October study by the Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen determined that usage of nitrogen fertilizers causes biofuels to contribute more to global warming than petrol.

The Department of Energy (DOE) says biomass products, of which biofuels are derived, are “often more environmentally benign than their petroleum-derived counterparts.” If the DOE was a betting man, how much would it wager on ‘often?’

The movement against biofuels has grown from a groundswell to a tidal wave. In January, more than 220 organizations worldwide appealed to the European Parliament to abandon their mandatory biofuels target. Even the International Monetary Fund is feeling nervous. In October, an IMF research team posted an article on the IMF’s website which noted, “Until new technologies are developed, using food to produce biofuels might further strain already tight supplies of arable land and water all over the world, thereby pushing food prices up even further.”

Hat tip: China Confidential

"2007 Atlantic hurricane season: below forecasts"

Excerpt from this Reference Frame post:

In 2007, the number of named storms, hurricanes, major hurricanes was 14, 6, 2, close to the average values of NOAA which are 11.0, 6.2, 2.7. Both major hurricanes managed to become category 5 hurricanes but the number of category 5 hurricanes is not among the quantities that are normally being forecast. All the three standard numbers 14, 6, 2 are higher than virtually all forecasts.

To see that in detail, let us see what various teams predicted at various moments (if no year is specified, we mean 2007):

* Reality, 11/30: 14, 6, 2
* CSU, 12/8/06: 14, 7, 3
* NOAA 5/22: 13-17, 7-10, 3-5
* CSU 5/31: 17, 9, 5
* UKMO 6/19: 9-15, N/A, N/A
* CSU 8/3: 15, 8, 4
* NOAA 8/9: 13-16, 7-9, 3-5
* CSU 9/4: 15, 7, 4
* CSU 10/2: 17, 7, 3

You see that every single prediction of the number of major hurricanes was overshot: instead of the consensus value around 4, we only saw 2. Every single prediction of the total number of hurricanes was overstated, too. Also, most predictions for the total number of named storms were overestimates.

I would like to claim that this science might be sophisticated and interesting but it is not yet sufficiently mature to make useful predictions. If a scientific team chose the 1951-2005 average to be their prediction, it would be shown more accurate than virtually every single team that tried to predict what would happen, both in 2006 and 2007.

Brutal cold in Canada on the eve of the Bali "global" warming conference

Here.

This cold spell was most likely caused by too many Canadians simultaneously heeding sage advice to unplug their beer fridges?

"Al Gore, global warming and convenient untruths"

Here.

Excerpts:

When Nobel laureate Albert Gore, Jr. collects his Peace Prize in Oslo on Dec. 10, he should tell the gathered Norwegians exactly what he meant when he remarked about global warming:

"I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are," Gore said in the May 9, 2006 Grist Magazine.

"Over-representation?" Is that anything like misrepresentation?
...
Since 1970, previously whitewashed temperature sites have been painted with semi-gloss latex. Because it absorbs more heat, Heartland Institute scholar James Taylor wrote in November's Environment & Climate News, "latex paint at official temperature stations may account for half of the U.S. warming reported since 1970." Thus, America could reverse half the detected post-1970 warming that aggravates climate activists, simply by stripping this latex paint and whitewashing these observation structures.
...
University of california Santa Barbara emeritus professor Daniel Botkin recently lamented in the Wall Street Journal that some of his warming-oriented colleagues believe "the only way to get our society to change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe, and that therefore it is all right and even necessary for scientists to exaggerate...'Wolves deceive their prey, don't they?' one said to me recently."

Oslo's applause notwithstanding, egregious errors, distortions, and lies have no place in what is supposedly unbiased scientific inquiry regarding one of Earth's most controversial questions.

About that "Bali communique"

I've got a number of questions about some AP climate propaganda here.

Excerpts:

The hastily prepared petition drive, coordinated through the environmental office of Britain's Prince Charles, is signed by leaders from mainstream powerhouse companies such as Shell UK, GE International, Coca-Cola Co., Dupont Co., United Technologies Corp., Rolls Royce, Nestle SA, Unilever, British Airways and Volkswagen AG.
...
In the three weeks that the business leaders circulated the petition, primarily in the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States and Australia, more than 80 percent of the giant firms contacted agreed to join in, said petition coordinator Craig Bennett, of the University of Cambridge's Programme for Industry.

The story refers to a "Bali communique" here.

Some questions:

1. Why does the word "drastic" appear three times in the AP link above, while appearing zero times in the actual communique?

2. Why was the petition drive "hastily prepared"? Were the business leaders actually the driving force behind the creation and circulation of this petition? Which companies declined to sign the petition?

3. The communique claims that the "scientific evidence is now overwhelming". Could any signer of the petition explain specifically what that evidence is, in his or her own words?

4. The wording of the communique seems to be typical feel-good lip-service. Of the businesses signing the petition, how many have taken the real-world drastic action of banning private jet travel for their executives?

Ethanol shakeout has begun

Here.

Excerpts:

[Subheading] Ethanol producers to merge as the industry deals with too much supply, scrapped projects and slumping stock prices.
...
The shakeout in America's ethanol industry has begun, and corn-rich Minnesota was at the epicenter Thursday.

With ethanol prices faltering because of burgeoning supplies and its stock trading at about half the level of a year ago, Inver Grove Heights-based US BioEnergy Corp., the nation's fourth-largest ethanol distiller, agreed to be acquired by VeraSun Energy Corp. of Brookings, S.D., the country's third largest producer.
...
The deal comes as profit margins for ethanol have shriveled over the past year, and some plans for ethanol plants have been taken off the table.

Since 2000, total U.S. ethanol production has more than quadrupled to 7.2 billion gallons from 1.6 billion gallons. An additional 6.2 billion gallons of capacity is expected from plants under construction or expansion, according to the Renewable Fuels Association.

In Minnesota alone, 17 ethanol plants already produce 680 million gallons of the fuel, but four massive plants scheduled to go live next year will add another 400 million gallons of production capacity.

"The number of plants under construction is truly frightening," said Ralph Groschen, a senior marketing specialist with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture who closely watches the state's ethanol development. The country could go from 7 billion gallons of capacity now to 12 billion gallons, or about roughly 10 percent of U.S. gasoline capacity, in a few years, according to Groschen.

"Alarmist Hurricane Predictions Take a Beating"

An article from 2006 is here.

Quote from CEI Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis, Jr:

...it is disingenuous for activists to claim that a hurricane-warming link justifies changes in U.S. energy policy. Indeed, hyping the hurricane-warming link can be counterproductive. If people seek protection from hurricanes in climate change policy, they are apt to neglect the preparedness measures that can actually save lives.

Instapundit on weather inflation

Here.

Excerpt:

A lot of people seem to be interpreting this as global-warming hype, but it's probably just bureaucratic mission creep. If you're the National Hurricane Center, you need hurricanes to stay in business. If hurricanes fall off, you're tempted to cook the books just a bit. Ditto for the rest of the weather establishment. Blizzards are okay, tornadoes good for a bit of quick fun, but hurricanes are the real money-maker, combining intense fearfulness with multiday longevity like nothing else.

"It's the Sun, Stupid"

Here.

Excerpts:

If sunspot activity continues to be so markedly low, then we should prepare for the possibility of a significant global cooling trend that could reduce agricultural yields and bring on the sort of food shortages that occurred during the Little Ice Age.
...
Finally, let’s not forget about last year’s experimental validation of the sun’s impact on cloud cover. That research indicated that climatic impact of sun-influenced cloud cover during the 20th century could be as much as seven times greater than the alleged effect of 200 years worth of manmade carbon dioxide. So while the global warming crowd parties in Bali amid its plotting and planning to subjugate western economies to global government based on a dubious hypothesis about trace levels of invisible manmade gases acting as some sort of atmospheric thermostat, the sun will be there shining down on their folly.

Would it be too much to ask for someone to look upwards and see the light?

"A Catholic view of climate alarmism"

Here.

Excerpt:

Consider, for example, the environmental alarmism in the 1960s that said that DDT was poisoning bird populations - a supposition about which the scientific community had yet to come to a genuine consensus. Exaggerated propaganda about a "Silent Spring" devoid of birds led to an ill-considered ban on DDT as a means of controlling malarial mosquito populations in tropical countries.

Over the ensuing years, cases of malaria in Africa and the Indian subcontinent rose substantially, causing millions of preventable deaths before finally, almost 40 years later, the scientific community decided that DDT wasn't as pernicious as originally feared.

Fear and uncertainty are a recipe for bad decisions. Good solutions require accurate, relatively complete data, and they require thoughtful, long-term, holistic planning. Alarmists claim that we don't have time - that we have to do something drastic, and we have to do it now or the planet is going to die. The result is that both time and money get wasted on projects that have little impact or even that have a negative impact overall.

The practice of pushing ethanol-based fuels is a good example: These fuels must be moved by trucks because they corrode pipelines. The cars that burn the fuel may have a moderately reduced "carbon footprint," but the cost, in carbon dioxide exhaled by transport trucks, more than offsets the gain.

Problems like this are foolish, but they are not cause for moral concern. If ill-conceived environmentalism was the only risk, we could let the alarmists go on tilting at windmills and wait for the responsible scientists and statesmen to come up with better solutions. After all, ad hoc environmentalism is unlikely to do any serious damage to the planet or to society.

Unfortunately, the climate change alarmists are, predictably, allied with the population control advocates. The sloppy thinking on this matter is absolutely typical: If human beings are radically increasing their carbon emissions with every passing year, and the human population is growing to levels never before seen in history, then the easiest way to reduce carbon output is to eliminate large numbers of human beings. "Population limitation should," according to the British-based Optimum Population Trust, "be seen as the most cost-effective carbon offsetting strategy available to individuals and nations."

In other words, once we have realized that a human being is not an exciting new creation, a person who will share in the trials and joys of earthly life, and enjoy the chance to join the heavenly hosts in the life of the world to come; that, on the contrary, a human being is nothing more than a pesky producer of unwanted carbon dioxide, we can get down to the real business of cleaning up this planet.

Hat tip: Greenie Watch

How not to measure temperature, part 40

Here.

Excerpt:

While it’s likely the BBQ grill is not used daily, one has to wonder just how much bias it’s proximity imparts into the temperature record.
...
The recently released paper from LaDochy et al. showed that “urban” stations warmed at a rate of 0.20°C per decade while the “non-urban” stations warmed only 0.08°C per decade, with the lack of attention to the measuring environment such as we see here, is it any wonder?

Another potential solution to "global" warming: convince Canadians to drink warm beer

Excerpts from the story linked here:

The government-commissioned study says the old, inefficient "beer fridges" that one in three Canadian households use to store their Molson and Labatt's contribute significantly to global warming by guzzling gas- and coal-fired electricity.

"People need to understand the impact of their lifestyles," British environmental consultant Joanna Yarrow tells New Scientist magazine. "Clearly the environmental implications of having a frivolous luxury like a beer fridge are not hitting home. This research helps inform people — let's hope it has an effect."

"Influence of Solar Activity Cycles on Earth's Climate"

Here is an interesting Technical Report from The Danish Space Center. It's a 136-page, 8MB PDF file.

"Ivory-bill" reality finally setting in at the National Audubon Society?

From Bootstrap Analysis here:

As has been announced on every other bird-related blog, the National Audubon Society and American Bird Conservancy have rolled out the 2007 WatchList of our most imperiled birds. Kudos for not including the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in the top 20. It is on the main list, but the population is given as "maybe 1, not more than a few," and it is diplomatically noted, right off the bat, that there have been recent reports but "independent video analysis and a lack of further confirmed sightings have brought a deepening sense of disappointment."

Nicholas Stern's entry in the "most outrageous climate hype" derby

Excerpt from this article:

"We risk damages on a scale larger than the two world wars of the past century."

In my humble opinion, his statement could be enhanced by a claim that carbon dioxide will soon kill over eleventy-zillion people.

Lots of new ice forming in the Arctic

I found this graph here:



I wonder where the red line has traveled over the last three weeks.

"Carbon Emissions Don’t Cause Global Warming"

Here.

Excerpts:

Our scientific understanding of global warming has gone through three stages:
1. 1985 – 2003. Old ice core data led us strongly suspect that CO2 causes global warming.
2. 2003 – 2007. New ice core data eliminated previous reason for suspecting CO2. No evidence to suspect or exonerate CO2.
3. From Aug 2007: Know for sure that greenhouse is not causing global warming. CO2 no longer a suspect.

The paper discusses how the ice core changes, missing greenhouse signature in the real data and the recent waning of the warming all suggest that carbon emissions are not behind the changes we have experienced in recent decades.
...
The IPCC 2007 report (the latest and greatest from the IPCC) is based on all scientific literature up to mid 2006. The Bali Conference is the bureaucratic response to that report. Too bad that the data has changed since then!

Osama Bin Laden endorses the Kyoto protocol and global warming alarmism

Here.

Cynically selling "viable hope" in Wattensaw

From CLO's '06'-7 "Ivory-bill" search report:

Although no single detection was definitive, the concentration of potential encounters during a short period of time in the relatively small Wattensaw WMA justifies follow-up search efforts. In 2007–08 we plan to conduct thorough searches of Wattensaw WMA and surrounding private lands, including cavity inventories and associated deployments of Reconyx cameras.

If you read the report, you'll see that Alan Mueller personally recorded no fewer than seven "Ivory-bill" detections in the Wattensaw area in April and May 2007.

Note that Mueller has been described as the "avian conservation project manager for the Conservancy".

Let's say your name is something like Martjan Lammertink or Ken Rosenberg. If you seriously believed that Mueller might be encountering actual Ivory-bills week after week, would you:

a) haul yourself down there post-haste and do a massive amount of serious searching

or

b) choose to spend your time doing completely unrelated stuff like looking at warblers in South Carolina or New Jersey?

I don't see any evidence that Lammertink, Rosenberg, Fitzpatrick, etc chose "a".

Check out the April 27 entry by Lammertink here:

On this last on-site day we are racing against the clock with data entry and packing up. Tomorrow Chris will depart for his home in Oregon where he will resume work with Spotted Owls. Utami and I will head for Arkansas where we will store gear for the summer, then return to Ithaca. Nathan left a few days ago for his spring and summer job studying Pileated Woodpeckers in northern Louisiana. This is our final travel log entry.

In reading that paragraph, I don't get a sense of great excitement over Mueller's alleged recent Ivory-bill detections.

It's clear to me that many CLO insiders no longer believe their own Ivory-bill propaganda.

When they no longer believe and yet continue to sell the Arkansas "Ivory-bill" story, I think they've crossed the line separating foolishness from fraud.

Someone from Cornell needs to exhibit the guts and integrity to finally pull the plug on this thing. Just do it--apologize, retract the Science paper, delete ivorybill.org, etc.

----

It seems odd that the report is dated "September 2007", yet wasn't released until the end of November. Possibly this delay was inserted so that the public wouldn't have the report's information before the October 22 comment deadline for the completely insane, multi-million dollar Ivory-bill Recovery Plan?

Extracting oil from tar sands

Here.

Excerpt:

THAI promises much better efficiencies for tar sands recovery which converts to better profitability for investors. The huge deposits of tar sands in Canada and Venezuela dwarf the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. For tar sands, the future is now.

Your standard light bulbs are causing our poor ski conditions

Here.

"Decisions to name storms draw concern"

Here.

Excerpt:

With another hurricane season set to end this Friday, a controversy is brewing over decisions of the National Hurricane Center to designate several borderline systems as tropical storms.

Some meteorologists, including former hurricane center director Neil Frank, say as many as six of this year's 14 named tropical systems might have failed in earlier decades to earn "named storm" status.

"They seem to be naming storms a lot more than they used to," said Frank, who directed the hurricane center from 1974 to 1987 and is now chief meteorologist for KHOU-TV. "This year, I would put at least four storms in a very questionable category, and maybe even six."

Most of the storms in question briefly had tropical storm-force winds of at least 39 mph. But their central pressure — another measure of intensity — suggested they actually remained depressions or were non-tropical systems.

"More Evidence of the Ethanol Folly"

Excerpts from this Cornell press release:

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Turning plants such as corn, soybeans and sunflowers into fuel uses much more energy than the resulting ethanol or biodiesel generates, according to a new Cornell University and University of California-Berkeley study.

"There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel," says David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell. "These strategies are not sustainable."

Pimentel and Tad W. Patzek, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Berkeley, conducted a detailed analysis of the energy input-yield ratios of producing ethanol from corn, switch grass and wood biomass as well as for producing biodiesel from soybean and sunflower plants. Their report is published in Natural Resources Research (Vol. 14:1, 65-76).

In terms of energy output compared with energy input for ethanol production, the study found that:

* corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced;
* switch grass requires 45 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced; and
* wood biomass requires 57 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.

In terms of energy output compared with the energy input for biodiesel production, the study found that:

* soybean plants requires 27 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced, and
* sunflower plants requires 118 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.

Hat tip: Coyote Blog

"Walking to the shops ‘damages planet more than going by car’"

Excerpt from The Times here:

Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.

Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.

The sums were done by Chris Goodall, campaigning author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef production. “Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere,” he said, a calculation based on the Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.

“The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”

Mr Goodall, Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford West & Abingdon, is the latest serious thinker to turn popular myths about the environment on their head.

Catching a diesel train is now twice as polluting as travelling by car for an average family, the Rail Safety and Standards Board admitted recently. Paper bags are worse for the environment than plastic because of the extra energy needed to manufacture and transport them, the Government says.

"An Inconvenient Fact"

Excerpt from Philip Stott here:

The Energy Information Administration (EIA), U.S. Department of Energy, Washington, DC, yesterday released the following information (November 28): ‘U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Declined 1.5 Percent in 2006’.

How pleased environmentalists should be that the U.S. has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol. In stark contrast, emissions continue to rise in most of the countries that so self-righteously did.

Everything is Caused by Global Warming

Here.

Interesting discussion of CO2 levels

At Climate Audit here.

Excerpt:

Leif Svalgard writes:

In 2006 less CO2 was added to the atmosphere than in 1983. In 1980 more CO2 was added to the atmosphere than in 2004. Why is that? I’m sure that the world’s human population has increased its output of CO2 significantly since the 1980s. Where did it go? Why does the growth rate change from year to year? Biology? Algae in the sea? I don’t know, just asking. And why does nobody else ask this?

"Why doesn't he just say eleventy-zillion?"

Tim Slagle compares Al Gore to Pat Robertson in a comedy video available here.

The Ideal Average World Temperature

Excerpt from this post:

Nigel Lawson gave an insightful address to the group who gathered for the Institute of Public Affair's 2007 HV McKay Lecture in Sydney on Monday. He spoke on the politics and economics of climate change and commented:

"Is it really plausible that there is an ideal average world temperature, which by some happy chance has recently been visited on us, from which small departures in either direction would spell disaster? Moreover, while a sudden change would indeed be disruptive, what is at issue here is the prospect of a very gradual change over a hundred years and more.

In any case, average world temperature is simply a statistical artefact. The actual experienced temperature varies
enormously in different parts of the globe; and man, whose greatest quality is his adaptability, has successfully colonized most of it.

Two countries at different ends of the earth, both of which are generally considered to be economic success stories, are Finland and Singapore. The average annual temperature in Helsinki is less than 5ºC. That in Singapore is in excess of 27ºC — a difference of more than 22ºC. If man can successfully cope with that, it is not immediately apparent why he should not be able to adapt to a change of 3ºC, when he is given a hundred years in which to do so."

Excerpt from this comment section:

"The Ideal Average World Temperature," however that might plausibly be quantified and rendered somehow measurable, would be that of the "Medieval Optimum."

The "Medieval Optimum" is so universally considered optimum that it gains its name from that optimality.

One need only compare conditions during that period to the worldwide misery and deprivation encountered during the "Little Ice Age" to conclude that warmer is better than colder.

And, as the Medieval Optimum is considered worthy of its name, the planet needs to warm between 1.5 and 2.2 degrees C before we reach that optimum.

"Peat bog destruction emissions reached 40pc of global total"

Note the claims in this Telegraph article:

The destruction of peat bogs in Indonesia, partly to grow supposedly "green" bio-fuels, releases more carbon dioxide every year than all of India or Russia, and three times as much as Germany.

According to recent research by Wetlands International, a conservation group, "the emissions in 1997 alone, which was a particularly bad year, were estimated to have reached 40pc of global CO2 emissions."

Hat tip: Climate Science

"How not to measure temperature, part 39"

Yet another interesting post from Anthony Watts is here.

Excerpts:

One of the most surprising things I’ve learned from the surfacestations.org project is that for some odd reason, there are a number of climate monitoring stations of record in the USA at sewage treatment plants. If you’ve ever driven by one of these in the wintertime, they tend to look like steam saunas. They are localized heat bubbles from the waste-water processing.
...
The real question is: What are we actually measuring at this location? Are we measuring temperature as an indicator of climate change or are we measuring waste heat from increases in sewage processing that mirrors local population growth?

"Tide is Turning Against Unclean Biofuels"

Check out the extensive roundup of media coverage here.

The UK ‘Global Warming’ Racket

Excerpt from Philip Stott:

What politicians and divines fail to grasp is that ‘global warming’ has become a portmanteau excuse for bad land-use planning on the ground. Ill-judged land management over the last 60 years - since the serious flooding of the late-1940s - has guaranteed an increase in damaging floods, climate change or no climate change. We have consistently reduced the ability of both urban and rural landscapes to act as a ‘sponge’, while building poorly-constructed housing on flood plains (some 80 per cent of the housing experiencing flooding this summer was built since the 1970s). By glib recourse to ‘global warming’ explanations, we let politicians and planners off the hook, while forgetting that Britain has a fundamentally wet climate.

In essence, it is immensely difficult to relate local weather patterns to ‘global warming’, which is about a long-term, small, average change in the climate worldwide. On the other hand, our abuse of the landscape as a rainfall ‘sponge’ is another matter. Housing on flood plains, too much tarmac, every garden concreted over for the car, water meadows built-over, and winter wheat on the hills will all inevitably lead to disaster, whatever the climate.

And, if we don’t improve our land management, we will need even more SUVs to save folk from the floods. ‘Global warming’ is too 'wet' an explanation - a nice excuse for failing politicians.

The truth is more down-to-earth.

So let’s drop the ‘global warming’ racket. “Game, Set, and Match!”

CLO '06-'07 "Ivory-bill" Project Final Report

Now available here.

ENSO Variation and Global Warming

Here.

Excerpt:

Superimposed on the alternation of La Niña and El Niño are longer term variations in the frequency and intensity of El Niño and La Niña. A period of more frequent and intense La Niña between the mid forties and 1975 followed by more frequent and intense El Niño between 1976 and 1998. The pattern appears in centuries of proxy data - that is in tree and coral rings, sedimentation and rainfall and flood records.

Global surface temperatures have a similar trajectory. Falling from 1946 to 1975, rising between 1976 and 1998 and declining since.
...
ENSO variation goes in both directions. The indications are that ENSO variation added to global surface temperatures between 1976 and 1998. It has been almost 10 years since temperatures peaked in 1998. The planet may continue to be cooler over the next few decades as a cool La Niña phase of ENSO emerges.

More on local warming in California

Here.

Excerpt:

...LaDochy et al. show that the warming is strangely confined to the growing urban areas, and they find little to no warming in the rural stations. Heaven forbid, but 41% of the stations had no significant warming and 6% actually had cooling. Despite the undisputed buildup of greenhouse gases from 1950 to 2000, almost half of the stations in California showed no significant warming!

(click to enlarge)

"Ethanol Now Uses Nearly 40% of Nebraska's Corn"

Here.

"Ethanol Craze Cools as Doubts Multiply"

Another Wall Street Journal article is here.

Excerpt:

Little over a year ago, ethanol was winning the hearts and wallets of both Main Street and Wall Street, with promises of greater U.S. energy independence, fewer greenhouse gases and help for the farm economy. Today, the corn-based biofuel is under siege.

In the span of one growing season, ethanol has gone from panacea to pariah in the eyes of some. The critics, which include industries hurt when the price of corn rises, blame ethanol for pushing up food prices, question its environmental bona fides and dispute how much it really helps reduce the need for oil.

A recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development concluded that biofuels "offer a cure [for oil dependence] that is worse than the disease." A National Academy of Sciences study said corn-based ethanol could strain water supplies. The American Lung Association expressed concern about a form of air pollution from burning ethanol in gasoline. Political cartoonists have taken to skewering the fuel for raising the price of food to the world's poor.

Last month, an outside expert advising the United Nations on the "right to food" labeled the use of food crops to make biofuels "a crime against humanity," although the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization later disowned the remark as "regrettable."

The fortunes of many U.S. farmers, farm towns and ethanol companies are tied to corn-based ethanol, of which America is the largest producer. Ethanol is also a cornerstone of President Bush's push to reduce dependence on foreign oil. But the once-booming business has gone in the dumps, with profits squeezed, plans for new plants shelved in certain cases, and stock prices hovering near 52-week lows.

If you eat that Twinkie, will a polar bear die?

Check out this post.

Excerpts:

Perhaps the key to both global warming and the obesity epidemic may be in living, working and eating local.

"Farm Paid"

An interesting Forbes article on farm subsidies and biofuels is here.

Excerpt:

But biofuel subsidies aren't really about the largely mythical Midwestern family farm. In the U.S., 80% of farm subsides go to massive agribusinesses like Archer Daniels Midland, General Mills, and Cargill. Biofuel subsidies give politicians the rare opportunity feed the maw of the agribusiness lobby while at the same time painting themselves "green" for the environmentally concerned voter. Perversely, biofuel subsidies harm both the environment and the hungry in poor nations. The sooner we stop this madness, the better off we all will be.

"Why the public shrugs at global warming"

Check out this Wall Street Journal opinion piece.

Excerpts:

The secretary-general of the United Nations, upon issuing yet another global-warming report a couple of weeks ago, announced that "we are on the verge of a catastrophe." Kevin Rudd, Australia's just-elected prime minister, has said that fighting global warming will be his "number one" priority. And Al Gore, propelled by his Nobel Prize, still travels the world to warn of doom. His latest stop was the Caribbean, where earlier this month he told a gathering of the region's environmental officials that rising seas, the result of melting polar icecaps, would threaten their island paradise.

And yet the public does not seem to feel all that heatedly about the warming of the planet. In survey after survey, American voters say that they care about global warming, but the subject ranks quite low when compared with other concerns (e.g., the economy, health care, the war on terror). Even when Mr. Gore's Oscar-winning film, "An Inconvenient Truth," was at the height of its popularity, it did not increase the importance of global warming in the public mind or mobilize greater support for Mr. Gore's favored remedies--e.g., reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by government fiat. Mr. Gore may seek to make environmental protection civilization's "central organizing principle," as he puts it, but there is no constituency for such a regime. Hence even the Democratic Party's presidential candidates, in their debates, give global warming only cursory treatment, with lofty rhetoric and vague policy proposals.

There is a reason for this political freeze-up. In "Break Through," Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger argue that Mr. Gore and the broader environmental movement--in which Mr. Gore plays an almost messianic part--remain wedded to an outmoded vision, seeing global warming as "a problem of pollution to be fixed by a politics of limits." Such a vision may have worked in the early days of environmentalism, when the first clear-air and clean-water regulations were pushed through Congress, but today it cannot mobilize enough public support for dramatic political change.

New Group Rejects "Kyoto 2"

Here.

Excerpt:

“Kyoto 2 is the wrong solution. Such a treaty would harm billions of poor people, making energy and energy-dependent technologies, such as clean water, more expensive, and would perpetuate poverty by retarding growth”, said Kendra Okonski, Environment Programme Director of International Policy Network, one of the 41 organisations who published the report.

“Given that nations are having trouble complying with the relatively small emissions cuts required under Kyoto, the economic and social consequences of a Kyoto 2 Treaty could be devastating”, added Ms Okonski.

The Civil Society Report argues that adaptation is the best way to enable people to deal with a changing climate. That means:

• Enabling people to utilise technologies capable of reducing the incidence of disease, such as clean water, sanitation, and medicines.

• Deploying technologies – e.g. flood defences, roads, sturdier houses, and early warning systems – that reduce the risk of death from weather-related disasters.

• Removing barriers to the use of modern agricultural technologies, which would better enable people to adapt to changing conditions.

• Eliminating subsidies, taxes, and regulations that undermine economic growth – thereby enabling people better to address current and future problems.

Other conclusions in the Civil Society Report on Climate Change include:

• Over the course of the past century, deaths and death rates from weather-related natural disasters have declined substantially. It appears that the main drivers of this reduction have been improvements in wealth and technology.

• Mortality from extreme weather events is far more strongly affected by the technologies deployed by humans – such as the construction of houses, roads, and dams – than by climate.

• Human ecology and human behaviour are the key determinants of the transmission of infectious disease. Obsessive emphasis on climate is unwarranted because, given suitable economic circumstances, straightforward strategies are available to ensure the public health.

• If adaptation is not unduly restricted, production of food and other agricultural products, as well as forestry products, will keep pace with growing human demands.

• Foreign aid is being used as a ‘carrot’ to induce poor countries to restrict their emissions. But aid has mostly been wasted or even counterproductive. While there is a case for refocusing aid on projects that have a stronger chance of providing net benefits, increasing aid would do more harm than good.

• Finally, the stick of trade sanctions have been threatened as a means of enforcing the global cap – yet such sanctions harm both parties; a clear lose - lose scenario.

Global warming blamed for Jakarta flood

Check out this AP story.

Excerpt:

Indonesia's environment minister said Tuesday that global warming was to blame after the capital of Jakarta was partially flooded, forcing thousands of people to flee homes and cutting off a highway to the international airport.

Authorities used pumps to lower water levels, which reached six feet in the worst-hit areas and washed more than a mile inland Monday, said Iskandar, an official at Jakarta's flood crisis center. At least 2,200 houses were inundated, some with chest-deep water.

"I haven't seen it this bad in several years," said Toki, a police officer who was directing traffic around a flooded area near Sukarno-Hatta airport, where thousands of passengers were stranded.

Just think--without the scourge of human-caused global warming, the unfortunate people dealing with a horrendous six feet of flooding might instead be enjoying only 5.9 feet of flooding.

"Local" warming in California

Here.

Excerpt:

The three researchers found that "most regions showed a stronger increase in minimum temperatures than with mean and maximum temperatures," and that "areas of intensive urbanization showed the largest positive trends, while rural, non-agricultural regions showed the least warming." In fact, they report that the Northeast Interior Basins of the state actually experienced cooling. Large urban sites, on the other hand, exhibited rates of warming "over twice those for the state, for the mean maximum temperatures, and over five times the state's mean rate for the minimum temperature."

From the comment section:

Not only is it blindingly obvious that the Urban Heat Island effect is responsible for recording higher minimum temperatures, it is also responsible for many weather stations that were previously well sited to become mini-urban heat islands as parking lots and buildings and air-conditioners encroach on those sites and significantly skew the temperatures being recorded... both higher lows and higher highs... and, presto, global warming!

"Global Temperatures are Uncorrelated with Carbon Dioxide Trends This Last Decade"

See the text and graphs here.

One blogger's position on global warming

Here.

Excerpt:

The Global Warming theory -- or as it's more accurately put, the Anthropogenic Global Warming theory, has been a God-send ... or rather, a "Gaia-send", for this environmental religion. It has become the lightning-rod rallying point to justify action on practically every cause the faithful believes in. It gives them a powerful tool to curb industry, force conservation and preservation to their standards, stop drilling, curb human population and economic development. It is a powerful tool for socialists to put a regulator on capitalists to blunt the competitive advantage capitalism brings. It helps justify general loathing of the U.S. It argues for increased government regulation of our activities. And it just makes people feel good about themselves to feel like they are among the enlightened few telling everyone else how much better they are for caring. After all, who is going to argue for a hot, poisoned, dirty, ugly environment?

It appears from looking at actual data that the theory that even a small amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has a very large impact on Earth's average temperature is just wrong. It was an interesting hypothesis, perhaps even a respectable theory. But theories need to be backed up by testing and corroboration. Despite volumes of research, the main evidence for environmental catastrophe caused by increased CO2 levels is model output. And as Things I Know #3 states, models are not reality. Models are mathematical expressions of belief.

If your theory dictates that CO2 drives climate, then that belief will be expressed in the math of the model. It should be no surprise, then, that the model will predict that more CO2 will produce higher temperatures. Every year, however, the predicted massive increases in temperature are pushed farther and farther into the future as the data doesn't back the alarmism.

After years of the data not bearing that theory out, and research into the relationship between CO2 and global temperature in the past refuting that premise, a rational person would abandon that belief and look for one that fits reality better. But as is the case with most of the religiously over-zealous, Environmentalists don't. Because it's a matter of faith.

Mr Ki-moon, tear down that wall!

An open letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon:

We're constantly told that about 2,500 of the world's "top climate experts" have reached an IPCC consensus that global warming is a crisis.

This alleged consensus is communicated to us in an extremely odd fashion.

In essence, a massive IPCC report is thrown over a wall to us, with a note saying that there really are 2,500 scientists on the other side of the wall; they're all climate experts, and the "overwhelming majority" of them agree that global warming is a crisis.

This process is unacceptably opaque. An unspecified group of 2,500 people supposedly collaborated to write the report, with another unspecified group helpfully boiling things down to a "Summary for Policymakers".

To compound the problem, we then have you, Mr Ki-moon, standing outside the wall emitting sound bites like this:

"These scenes are frightening like science fiction movies.But they are even more terrifying because they are real and reversing these threats is the defining challenge of our age."

and this:

Today the world's scientists have spoken, clearly and in one voice.

Well, we've already had a peek behind the wall in the form of the publicly available IPCC comments here, and what we have seen completely contradicts your "clearly and in one voice" claim.

As the scientific message goes from the actual scientists through the lead authors to the IPCC report, then is transformed by another group to the "Summary for Policymakers", then is relayed to the press by you, I think we've got a high-stakes version of the children's "Telephone Game".

In this particular process, I'm absolutely certain that critical information is being lost or altered.

This puzzling "Telephone Game" approach should be completely unnecessary if there really are 2,500 climate experts behind that wall who believe that global warming is a crisis.

So, Mr Ki-moon, just tear down that wall: just put up a simple web page containing the names, titles and affiliations of the 2,500 scientists that allegedly agree that global warming is a crisis, along with their role (author? reviewer? which chapter?) in creating the most recent IPCC report.

If you can do this, it will go a long way toward convincing the world that thousands of real IPCC scientists actually do agree with your alarmist rhetoric.

If you can't do this, I think you've got some serious explaining to do.

Regards,
Tom Nelson

Viewer’s guide to rooting out propaganda in future CBC climate coverage

Here.

Excerpt:

Countering today’s hysteria is a huge well of common sense in people. This was apparent even in the Fifth Estate’s own discussion group. While seven of the first ten comments from the public supported The Denial Machine, support dropped quickly among the 40 comments that came in until only two of the last ten comments supported the programme. Perhaps not surprisingly, the CBC then quickly closed the discussion group, blocking any further contributions from the public even though the show had last been broadcast the night before and the discussion board had been open only eight days (other programme discussions have been left open for months on Fifth Estate Web pages). Even the postings that were allowed by the network clearly demonstrated a growing trend in Canada – the public are becoming suspicions that they are being duped as science increasingly demonstrates that the thesis of human-caused climate catastrophe is simply wrong.

Lieberman-Warner Climate Bill 'Running into Resistance'

Excerpts from this post:

The Lieberman-Warner global warming cap-and-trade bill continues to meet growing opposition. In a November 19 article, Bloomberg News called efforts to promote the bill a "vain pursuit," and weighed in with a breakdown of the growing "resistance" the bill faces.
...
The article quoted Ralph Izzo, chief executive officer of Newark, New Jersey-based Public Service Enterprise Group Inc., owner of the state's largest utility, stating: "I think there's less than a 20 percent chance that anything will happen in this Congress on climate change."

This just in: the Sun still heats the Earth

Here.

Since your SUVs cause all human misery, you must give us $40 billion

Here.

It's getting more and more difficult to distinguish between "serious" global warming coverage and Onion-style parodies.

"Climate change crisis: why the planet needs socialism now"

Excerpts from this insane piece:

Climate change affects everyone, but it will disproportionately affect working-class people and poor countries. This is why the planet needs socialism.
...
There are more workers than capitalists. The only difference is that most of the workers are not organized and do not realize our own power. If we unite, we can overturn this irrational capitalist system and begin to build socialism—a rational system based on economic planning.

Under socialism, the workers’ state can impose mandatory emissions controls and implement emissions reduction technology in a coordinated fashion. The worst case scenario of global warming can be averted.

In a socialist society, like Cuba, the government run for and by the people can impose mandatory emissions controls and implement emissions reduction technology in a coordinated fashion.

Capitalism cannot save the planet. In fact, if it continues it will likely destroy it.

Socialism is an alternative that is real and necessary—for working people and the world we live in.

Ok, let me get this straight: based on small rises in temperature data measured in places like this, we should get sterilized AND overturn capitalism?

Batten down the hatches – Climate fear-mongering to get worse

Excerpts from this piece:

Today’s Commonwealth leaders are generally beyond hope when it comes to developing sensible climate policy, except, that is, in a few areas, one being the need for improved adaptation to climate change. On this topic the final communiqué of the event called for “increased financial flows for adaptation, and their improved effectiveness.” Yet, even this uncommonly sensible conclusion didn’t meet with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s approval. “I am not for adaptation, to adapt like the beaver adapts to winter in Australia.” exclaimed Museveni. “I think climate changes can be reversed.”

Of course, reversing ‘climate changes’ makes about as much sense as beavers having to adapt to survive Australia’s mild winters (if, that is, beavers were actually found in Australia, which they aren’t – they are indigenous to North America and Europe only). Humanity has no chance of ‘stopping climate change’ and, like the ‘Australian beaver’, ‘reversing climate changes’ falls completely into the realm of science fiction.
...
Scares of hypothetical “tipping points”, run-away sea level rise, massively increased storms, floods, pestilence and drought are simply that, unjustified and unjustifiable scares. Of course, that won’t stop the UN from issuing even more sensationalist claims of impending disaster in Bali next week. But then, there’s nothing to stop sensible people from completely ignoring them either.

Al Gore buddy owner of sunken ship that left huge carbon footprint on Antarctic Ocean floor

Excerpts from this article:

You’d never read this in the mainstream media: The owner of MS Explorer that sank, leaving a huge carbon footprint at the bottom of the Antarctic Ocean Friday is an acolyte of teensy-weensy carbon footprint crusader Al Gore.

G.A.P. Adventures CEO and Explorer owner, Bruce Poon Tip and Gore have similar ideals, “filling their schedules with speaking engagements on environmental change to educate global audiences.” And that’s straight off of www.gapadventures.com. In fact, as recently as last April, both Poon Tip and Gore gave presentations at the Green Living Show in Toronto.

Bruce Poon Tip and Al Gore“I expressed my admiration for Mr. Gore’s commitment and leadership which spans more than 20 years,” commented Poon Tip. “I also invited him aboard our legendary polar expedition ship, the MS Explorer to visit the Arctic.”
...
Good thing Gore was otherwise occupied when 154 passengers and crew had to be rescued at sea when their eco-cruise ship struck ice in the Antarctic Ocean and started to sink early Friday morning. (None of the eco warriors aboard MS Explorer were identified in weekend media coverage).
...
There was little mention in the mainstream media that the passengers were comprised of eco warriors or that they had spent thousands of dollars to see ice at a much closer range than they ever dreamed.
...
As the Los Angeles Times described it: “The first cruise ship built to ply the frigid waters of Antarctica became the first to sink there Friday. The red-hulled Explorer struck ice, taking water as 154 passengers and crew members scrambled to safety aboard lifeboats and rafts. The ship later went to the bottom.”

"The scoop on satellite temperature data"

See the graphs and text here.

Excerpts:

Temperatures in the lower troposphere (for non weather geeks, that is the portion of the atmosphere where we live) have shown a series of ups and downs since 1979, mostly in a ±0.4oC band, with negligible trends over that period. This contrasts with the near surface temperature record that shows a warming during the same period of time.

"2007 WILL NOT Rank as Warmest Year for the Northern Hemisphere"

See the graph and text here.

Excerpt:

The recent cooling of the Pacific together with the looming solar decline warrant concern that temperatures have indeed peaked and a cooling either has begun or will soon begin and accelerate. A major cooling of the earth portends far more problems for mankind than the benign climate we have enjoyed for the last few decades.

Where is the evidence for catastrophic climate change from human action?

A piece by Dr Chris de Freitas is here.

Excerpt:

The robustness or otherwise of the science underpinning the role of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is the key to assessing the risk from human induced climate change issue. But seldom if ever are the uncertainties of the science discussed.

Seldom if ever is the question asked: Where is the evidence for catastrophic climate change from human action?

Rather than search for the evidence, groups like Greenpeace defer to authorities, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a political entity which appears to have a monopoly on wisdom in global warming matters.

Rather than debate the issues, they attack those who disagree, using defamatory labels. Yet the opposite of scepticism is gullibility.

The fanatical name calling and personal attacks expose the strong ideological elements that drive global warming alarmist thinking. It's as if the depth of passion is overcompensation for doubt and uncertainty.

Why else would environmentalists squander so much effort trying to discredit individuals and organisations who disagree?

Few scientists are willing to put their head above the parapet, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that, to paraphrase Voltaire, it is dangerous to be right when the authorities are wrong.

"Jolly and Green, With an Agenda"

Check out the New York Times article here.

"Andrew Revkin asks James Hansen about holocaust"

Here.

"New Sources of Domestic Hydrocarbon Fuels"

Here.

Excerpt:

Several other interesting technologies for producing new hydrocarbons include energy from garbage (landfills), oil from discarded automobiles (tires, foams, plastics etc.), oil from biowaste (with catalysts, T, P) and oil from synthetic micro-organisms. Many more ingenious energy technologies are in the pipeline. $100 a barrel oil is a powerful incentive for innovation.

As I have stated before, I am a firm believer in photovoltaics, wind energy, micro hydro, OTEC, tidal energy, geothermal, and other clean forms of energy. I am also a proponent of using safe nuclear energy as a way of easing the transition from dirty oil and coal to cleaner, sustainable power.

It is time for the pop media and other influential but unserious voices to stop promoting false images of doom such as CAGW and Peak Oil. We need to outgrow these childish tendencies to promote dishonest scare tactics just to get attention. We need all the brainpower we have to effect a fairly smooth transition to long term clean energy, while also working to bring about the next level.

More from Cyberthrush

Here.

"A Summary of My Position on AGW"

Check out this blog post by Craig James.

Excerpts:

They [RealClimate] are well aware that CO2 does not cause the initial warming but they say it does amplify the warming once underway. The interesting thing to me though is what causes the warming to stop, even though CO2 is still RISING?
...
Another issue I want to emphasize has come about because of all of the concern regarding the low Arctic sea ice extent measured this fall. I can’t state this strongly enough… THERE IS NO CORRELATION BETWEEN ARCTIC AIR TEMPERATURES AND ARCTIC SEA ICE!
...
The air temperatures in the Arctic were warmer in 1940 than now. The sea ice extent began to diminish in 1950 as air temperatures were going DOWN.

"Biofuel and diet sow seeds of farm crunch"

Here.

As Charlie Munger has said, it's silly to drive up the price of food in order to provide an uneconomic fuel, as well as a dumb government policy.

"Even among Democratic voters, ‘global warming’ is less than nothing politically"

Here.

Gore visits Vienna in style

Here

"Harper dubs Kyoto accord a mistake at end of Commonwealth summit"

Here.

Excerpts:

[Canadian Prime Minister] Stephen Harper concluded a Commonwealth summit Sunday by bluntly describing the Kyoto accord as a mistake the world must never repeat.

The prime minister characterized the landmark climate change deal as a flawed document and served notice that Canada will not support any new international treaty that carries its fatal flaw.

Harper said the key error of Kyoto was slapping binding targets on three-dozen countries but not the rest, including some of the world's biggest polluters like the United States, China and India.

So Canada will enter key negotiations on a post-Kyoto deal next month with a relatively simple position: all major polluters must be included, or there's no deal.
...
Harper's remarks on Kyoto offer the latest in a series of public stances he has taken on the treaty, which demands six per cent emissions cuts below 1990 levels by 2012.

Five years ago he described it as a money-sucking socialist scheme and ridiculed the science of global warming when the previous Liberal government ratified the treaty.

More recently, he's simply described its targets as unattainable because of the Liberals' well-documented failure to cut emissions, a view that was reflected in his government's policy-setting throne speech.

On Sunday, he suggested Kyoto was flawed all along.

It looks to me as if many politicians have concluded that their best personal strategy is to give lip service to Gore et al's hare-brained ideas for immediate, drastic carbon emissions cuts.

When the world-wide cuts inevitably fail to materialize, they can plausibly blame other countries for not signing on to an all-or-nothing approach.

"Concerning the Current Consensus on Climate Change"

Here.

Excerpt:

As a prime example of important paleoclimatic evidence that has been largely ignored by the IPCC, we cite the stunning results of the many studies we continue to identify and analyze in our Medieval Warm Period Project, where each week we highlight the findings of a different paleoclimatic study that reveals the time domain and various climatic characteristics of this probably warmer-than-present century-scale period of a thousand years ago, when the atmosphere's CO2 concentration was only about 70% of what it is today. A repeat performance of whatever caused that earlier warm period (it was clearly not a spike in the air's CO2 concentration) may well be what brought about the Little Ice Age-to-Current Warm Period transition; and its possible full or partial reversal some time over the next 93 years could well result in the mean global air temperature in AD 2100 being equal to -- or even less than -- today's mean air temperature. Likewise, an example of a poorly understood phenomenon of truly huge climatic significance is the means by which small changes in solar activity are able to bring about significant changes in climate. As Lean (2005) describes it, "a major enigma is that general circulation climate models predict an immutable climate in response to decadal solar variability, whereas surface temperatures, cloud cover, drought, rainfall, tropical cyclones, and forest fires show a definite correlation with solar activity."

In a display of open-mindedness uncharacteristic of most climate alarmists, Oppenheimer et al. go on to suggest that "a special team of authors could be instructed to examine the treatment of unlikely but plausible processes," stating that such analyses might even be conducted by "competing teams of experts." Unfortunately, past findings of the IPCC are already driving massive political and governmental actions throughout the world; and backtracking -- which is what the implementation of Oppenheimer et al.'s suggestions would effectively constitute -- simply cannot be tolerated by those who have invested so much political and economic capital in the reigning climate-change paradigm of CO2-as-global-warming-demon ... unless, of course, people suddenly come to their senses and begin paying attention to all of the pertinent scientific literature, as we attempt to do here at CO2Science.

"Carbon Trading Open Invitation To Fraud"

Here.

Excerpts:

Back in the real world, Leyland summarizes trenchantly the potential dangers of carbon trading, again as reported in the Scoop story:

“So, to my knowledge, carbon trading is the only commodity trading where it is impossible to establish with reasonable accuracy how much is being bought and sold, where the commodity that is traded is invisible and can perform no useful purpose for the purchaser, and where both parties benefit if the quantities traded have been exaggerated.

It is, therefore, an open invitation to fraud and that is exactly what is happening all over the world."

...
All along I have argued that carbon trading will actually increase carbon dioxide emissions while lining the pockets of the traders. It is an ‘open sesame’ for abuse and corruption.
...
And, as Tom Hagen would surely have said: “There’s more money potential in global carbon trading than anything else we’re looking at.”

This could prove to be the classic example of Obese Capitalism eating up its Greens.

And the impact on climate? You might as well have Prohibition.

"UN climate circus rolls in on CO2 cloud"

Excerpt from this Sunday Times article:

The UN has also recently received thousands of new registrations from groups campaigning for the environment or fighting against poverty. WWF, one of the largest, is sending more than 32 staff to the meeting.

Thousands more are coming from businesses, especially the burgeoning carbon trading sector, which already carries out global transactions worth £12 billion a year and has an acute interest in the outcome of Bali.

Indonesian officials say the final tally could reach 20,000 — and fear it could stretch the resort’s infrastructure to the limit. About 90% of the emissions will be generated by delegates flying thousands of miles to Bali, with the rest coming from the facilities they will be using.

Chris Goodall, a carbon emissions expert who did the calculations for The Sunday Times, estimated that each person flying to Bali would, on average, generate the equivalent of 6.48 tonnes of CO2. If 15,000 people attend, this adds up to over 97,000 tonnes of CO2. To this must be added about 13,000 tonnes of CO2 from the conference venue and hotels — a total of 110,000 tonnes.

Goodall, author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, said: “One wonders how many people would have gone if the conference had been held in a wet October in Pittsburgh.”

The preparations are acquiring the feel of a huge party, with the Indonesian government seeing it as a chance to revive Bali as a tourist destination after terrorist bombings in 2002 and 2005 saw visitor numbers plummet.

Britain has tried to ensure its delegation is one of the smallest among the leading developed nations. Three ministers — Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, Phil Woolas, junior environment minister, and Gareth Thomas, junior minister for international development — will attend accompanied by about 40 civil servants.

Woolas, however, is still embarrassed by the increasing scale and opulence of such gatherings. “It’s like a circus,” he said. “It’s not just Bali. There are now more than 500 environmental treaties and conventions taking place around the world. It’s a morass of Byzantine proportions. The UN oversees world governance on these issues and we urgently need to streamline it.”

Three ministers in the British delegation are staying in £330-a-night suites at the Westin Resort Nusa Dua hotel, each with their own bedroom, living room and dining room. Such apparent luxury is justified, say aides, by their need for somewhere to hold private meetings.

One of the biggest delegations is being assembled by the European Union, which is expected to send Stavros Dimas, the environment commissioner, and 90 officials. In addition, all 27 EU countries are expected to send separate national delegations. Germany has one of the biggest, with around 70, and France follows close behind with 50. Even Latvia will be represented by four delegates, while Malta, an island populated by 400,000, will have two.

We do live in remarkable times.

Note that key data underlying this circus was collected from places like this:

Article on Bobby Harrison

Here.

"All in a Good Cause"

A great piece by Orson Scott Card is here; you should read the whole thing.

Excerpts:

Mann and Santer didn't do it for the money, though grants do flow in their direction.

They did it for the cause. It's a noble cause. And even though the data don't actually say what they wanted them to say — in fact, they say the opposite — they are untroubled by that. Because the government actions that are being taken are the Right Thing.

Santer and Mann are true believers. They don't need evidence. Evidence is just something you create to persuade other people.

Here's the amazing thing about Mann's original report: He's not the only researcher working in this field. In fact, it's the job of many hundreds of researchers to refuse to accept his data at face value. After all, his findings disagree with everyone else's. Before they accept his results, they have a duty to look at his software, look at his data, and try to duplicate his results.

But nobody does it. Not a soul.

Nor, when it goes public, does anyone in the press check the results — because they want him to be right, too.
...
The Hockey Stick Hoax should be a scandal as big as the discovery of the Piltdown Man Hoax. Bigger, really, since so much more is at stake.

Is it really time for a "US Societal Re-education Campaign"

Check out the insanity here.

Elaborate cocktails and private jets for UN bureaucrats; sacrifices for the little people?

Excerpt from this link:

Next month the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will be held in Bali. It goes on for two whole weeks; it would be a shame for the bureauweenies to fly all the way to Indonesia and not get a chance to enjoy the beaches for awhile.

In addition to sipping elaborate cocktails with umbrellas sticking out of them and working on their tans, U.N. officials hope to effect "a breakthrough in the form of a roadmap for a future climate change deal" now that they have already "put the reality of human-induced global warming beyond any doubt." In other words, somewhere between sunbathing and hors d'oeuvres, they would like to undermine national sovereignty and impose worldwide poverty in the name of a discredited hoax.
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It's not easy having to deal with issues like where to park the private jet while deciding on the sacrifices to be imposed on us little people in the name of the global warming power grab.

"We are set on a course of 'planet saving' madness"

Excerpts from the Telegraph here:

The scare over global warming, and our politicians' response to it, is becoming ever more bizarre. On the one hand we have the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change coming up with yet another of its notoriously politicised reports, hyping up the scare by claiming that world surface temperatures have been higher in 11 of the past 12 years (1995-2006) than ever previously recorded.

This carefully ignores the latest US satellite figures showing temperatures having fallen since 1998, declining in 2007 to a 1983 level - not to mention the newly revised figures for US surface temperatures showing that the 1930s had four of the 10 warmest years of the past century, with the hottest year of all being not 1998, as was previously claimed, but 1934.
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First, it was the year when the scientific data showed that the cosmic scare over global warming may well turn out to be just that - yet another vastly inflated scare.

Second, it was the year when the hysteria generated by all the bogus science behind this scare finally drove those who rule over us, including Gordon "Plastic Bags" Brown, wholly out of their wits.

"Bali Hoo Is Calling"

Excerpts from this Philip Stott post:

As you will no doubt all know by now, the U.N. Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be descending on the lovely (and normally peaceful) island of Bali from December 3-14. It is estimated that up to 15,000 (some say 20,000) delegates and camp followers will jet into the small Indonesian island. 7,000 Indonesian armed troops, complemented by UN Forces, will be on duty to protect the jet-setting hoards.

With the UNFCCC located at Bali’s Nusa Dua Complex, all land and sea access to that area will be heavily fortified. A ‘security sterilization’ of the area has already been introduced, starting from mid-November.
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On one calculation, flying in the 15,000 politicians, civil servants, green campaigners, and television crews will generate the equivalent of 100,000 tonnes of CO2, which represents the annual emissions of some African states, such as Chad.
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The hypocrisy is mind-blowing. Can’t these big wigs, from Al Gore through film stars to government ministers, understand how ordinary folk view the Grand Canyon of a credibility gap? With derision.
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Thus, as the Bali jamboree approaches (just count the number of such jamborees since 1987), I shall examine the hypocrisy further, and analyse precisely how echochondria plays out on the world stage through mass hysteria by proxy.

"Loser ethanol may be out the door"

Here.

"IPCC: separating fact from fright"

Here.

Excerpt:

The reason the IPCC matters so much in public debate is not because it provides us with a summary of current climate science (which the workgroup reports do attempt to do, for better or worse), but because it provides leaders, commentators and activists with something else entirely: ‘The Science.’ This product may look like a set of scientific statements, but is in many ways the exact opposite of science. ‘The Science’ is ‘unequivocal’ rather than sceptical and cautious in its conclusions; ‘The Science’ is built on an artificial consensus rather than on a real battle of competing ideas that admits the possibility that current thinking could be completely wrong; ‘The Science’ very strongly implies a particular direction for policy (greenhouse gas emission reductions) which is apparently above politics, rather than merely informing a political debate about how we take society forward on the basis of human need and desire.

Carbon dioxide evidently not driving temperature in Switzerland

Excerpts from this article:

No one has forgotten about climate change but the recent low temperatures and heavy snowfalls have at least temporarily shelved the gravest fears.
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The latest snowfalls - up to one metre in resorts in northern Switzerland - have come as an immense relief.
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"We forecast temperatures to fall below normal next week and slightly below average for the three following ones," says Jacques Ambühl, a Swiss meteorologist. "Although the arctic air will be relatively dry, we expect about 30cms in new snow."

In common with other experts, Mr Ambühl is unwilling to suggest weather patterns have returned to some sort of normality after last year's unseasonably warm winter, when temperatures were about 3ºC above the long-term average. He is factual about events so far.

"Last week's snowfalls were certainly quite extreme. We have no record, especially at mid altitudes, of such an event in the past. So far, this winter shows no signs of being a repetition of last year," he says.