Thomas Edison gets the boot

Here.

Global Warming Hoax: In the Sea of Misinformation

Here.

Scroll to the end--that is a very link-rich post...

Bali Global Warming Conference: 2027

Here.

More CO2 (or more argon, or fewer pirates, or maybe even more solar activity) needed in Georgia

Excerpt from this article:

Albany -- The freezing temperatures in South Georgia the last three days have been miserable for people, and their cars.

Wrecker service companies and auto repair shops have seen their business skyrocket, as the cold weather causes many cars and trucks to freeze up and break down.

Cold weather causes deaths in Eastern Europe

Excerpt from this article:

In Moscow, three people have died over the last 24 hours because of the freezing conditions. This brings the capital's death toll from the cold this winter to 67.

Ancient Greenland mystery has a simple answer, it seems

Here.

Excerpt:

Did the Norse colonists starve? Were they wiped out by the Inuit – or did they intermarry? No. Things got colder and they left.

IPCC: “Lively Interchanges” as a Form of Due Diligence

Here.

"PROOF! Global warming caused by argon!"

"Big Argon" may try to deny it, but check out the proof here.

(Lots of other good stuff is also at the post above--just keep scrolling).

In addition to this bombshell about argon, it's also hard to ignore the correlation between global warming and lack of pirates.

Three important new posts at World Climate Report

Here, here, and here.

Resolutely ignoring the actual data

The first sentence at this post is pretty typical of current alarmist claims:

Throughout 2007 the signs of global warming became inescapable and a realization that the world climate is changing much faster than ever imagined has started to sink in.

Contrast that claim with the actual data and graphs presented in this updated Reference Frame post, entitled "2007 warmest year on record? Coldest in this century".

Studying some Antarctic penguins

Excerpt from this article:

The focus of Matthew’s trip was a study of the local wildlife, particularly the habits of penguins and the effect of global warming on their habits and numbers.

He said: “We visited a colony with over 10,000 penguins, where no one had ever been to work on before. We did GPS readings, mapping the area and compared it to older readings.”

Matthew’s team found some of the habits of the penguins had adapted to changes in the area’s climate, but that their numbers had not been affected.

"Species protection dooms development"

Here.

Low-energy bulbs 'could cause skin cancer'

See the Telegraph article here.

A related article is here.

"Victims of the bitter cold"

Excerpt from this news item from Bulgaria:

Four more are the victims of the bitter cold weather and the snow-cover that in some regions reaches to 2m.

Global Hot Air from the BBC

Here.

The first official sunspot of solar cycle 24

Here.

An interesting graph from David Archibald is here.

Excerpt from the above comment:

The significance is that we are somewhere between three and eighteen months from the month of solar minimum.

Sequel to Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' Announced: 'The Path to Survival'

Here.

Update: Some suggested film titles are here.

"UC San Diego begins trading greenhouse gas credits on Chicago Climate Exchange"

Here.

Current members of the "Chicago Climate Exchange" are here.

Faith-based climatology

Lubos Motl provides some links and reaction to what was supposed to be The Great Climate Debate last month here.

Evidently because of local phone problems, realist Tim Ball couldn't participate. This left us with a rare opportunity to hear, straight from the horse's "mouth", how an alarmist scientist (Andrew Dessler) justifies his position (you can currently listen or download an MP3 here).

Boiling down Dessler's non-answers to many specific questions, the answer emerged--Dessler believes mostly because he has faith in other "experts" who believe.

He doesn't seem to have much faith in models; he evidently doesn't think recent warming is particularly unusual; and he seems to admit that the IPCC's "90% confidence" figure was pulled from the air rather than calculated.

His reasoning seems to be that until he's convinced that recent warming is caused by the sun or other natural factors, the null hypothesis (it's caused by CO2) must stand.

If Dessler was surrounded by scientists that believed the sun was the major driver of current warmth, I highly doubt that Dessler would look at our current evidence and disagree with them.
----
Not long ago, I think many people viewed the IPCC like some all-knowing Wizard of Oz. That Summary for Policymakers was scientific Truth itself, representing a complete consensus of 2,500 scientists that unchecked human carbon dioxide emissions would result in catastrophe.

We couldn't ever actually look behind that curtain, but if we did, we'd be assured of seeing 2,500 climate experts back there, all wearing horn-rimmed glasses, standing by counters with bunsen burners and beakers, and probably flanked by an enormous wall of complicated-looking blinking lights. All have independently checked the evidence, and most importantly, all are in agreement.

It's becoming more and more clear that the reality is stunningly different. There's actually a vast amount of disagreement back there, and it's looking like a very large percentage of the "consensus" folks, like Dessler and this guy, mostly believe because they have faith that someone else has done the thinking.

Stinging criticism of the IPCC

See the 2005 comment from Steve McIntyre here.

An excerpt:

But in the climate field, and for multiproxy work in particular, I am really struck by the extraordinary prevalence of defects in the work of the most influential authors. While I’ve opined about MBH, IMHO the work of Jones, Briffa, Crowley etc. has equally glaring defects, which I’m in the process of documenting. I really don’t see how the corpus of present multiproxy work can be used to develop a valid scientific “consensus”. It seems odd that competent people should have adopted and applied such weak papers or that the replication effort should be so nonexistent, suggesting that there is a very strong ideological component or bias to the widespread acceptance and use of this weak material.

One clue may be in the IPCC process itself. One of the curious features of this process is the vast number of meetings at various relatively nice places all over the world, at which the scientists attempt to reach “consensus”. Yet for all the money and time spent on this, they make no attempt to do any engineering-quality due diligence. Most civilians assume that IPCC carries out engineering-quality due diligence rather than this type of negotiation.

In general, I prefer dealing with the particular rather than the general. In this case, the IPCC process, with its emphasis on a political form of process rather than an engineering audit, seems to result in a type of mutual reinforcement and excitement more characteristic of market phenomena and fads, than what I take to be the more usual scientific process where there is no attempt to negotiate and institutionalize a “consensus”. Thus the IPCC itself may be distorting the lens.

Even among college students, little panic over global warming

From the survey results here:

* 42% of respondents said social issues carried the greatest weight when considering candidates; 33% of which named healthcare as their primary social concern, followed by education (20%)
* 26% of respondents said the economy was their greatest concern; 18% of which cited recession as their top economic concern
* 24% cited foreign policy as the biggest issue; with the Iraq War as the top concern for this category (27%)
* Only 9% gave the environment the greatest weight; 59% of which voiced global warming as their primary environmental issue

Again, I think public panic over global warming is remarkably low, considering the intensity of the "greatest crisis" marketing that's already been done.

"Bali's Smog of Self-Delusion"

Excerpt from this post:

The history of every millennial movement starts out quietly enough. At first only those who have heard voices or received messages by moonbeam come stumbling in through the tent flap. Shortly they are followed by academics who have finally found someone who understands their theories and will popularize them. Then, as the crowd swells, come the curious, lost, desperate, and heartbroken. Soon follow the peddlers who sell peanuts, popcorn, and crackerjacks to the rapt crowd; then the pickpockets, hangers-on, con artists, and small-time grifters. In the latter stages come the political entrepreneurs, demagogues always on the lookout for ready-made crowds ripe for the leading. Finally come the lawyers, regulators, and venture capitalists to turn it all into an industry. Too bad George Monbiot didn’t see which one Al Gore would turn out to be.

Environmentalism has become the political lifeboat into which the survivors of the socialist shipwreck have crammed themselves.

"Carbon sequestration via wood burial"

Here.

The paper estimates that this would cost about 250 billion dollars annually, which it says is "only" about 0.5% of 2006 world GDP. Two million workers would be required.

For starters, here are three quick questions:

1. If implemented on a massive scale, what's the projected delta in global temperature?

2. Even if your calculated answer to (1) is correct, how do we know that the resultant temperature is "better" than the temperature resulting from not doing any wood burial?

3. Would you recommend doing this anywhere within the range of the Spotted Owl or the North American Lynx?

Also, if we employed two million people full-time burying wood around the world, would this affect the price of lumber?

"I prefer scientific hypotheses that can be falsified within a reasonable timeframe"

Excerpt from this Al Fin post:

Notice that the Russian academician makes predictions which can be falsified within the next ten--even five years. Contrast that level of confidence with computer models giving predictions for 90 or 100, or 1000s of years in the future. Long distance forecasting is too much like Nostradamus. I prefer scientific hypotheses that can be falsified within a reasonable timeframe. Whatever you may call unfalsifiable theorising--using computers or not,--it is not science.

"A CONVERSATION ABOUT GREEN SOCIALISM"

Here.

Excerpts:

Derek: Well ecosocialism is by no means a losing ticket, a socialism that respects the planet and has a libertarian edge, gets a lot of support. Ecosocialists when they have got active have had a pretty good record of putting their ideas forward and winning elections. William Morris was pretty popular, that other great ecosocialist EP Thompson was the leading figure in the peace movement in the 1980s and I would see Hugo Chavez as an ecosocialist, albeit one glued at present to the contradictions of a petroeconomy. Hopefully my election means the Party retains a radical edge, despite the single leader vote.
...
My work in what ever role is to campaign for ecosocialism, I still think Marx summed up radical green politics when in Capital III he noted:
“From the standpoint of a higher socio-economic formation, the private property of individuals in the earth will appear just as absurd as the private property of one man in other men. Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not owners of the earth, they are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations, as boni patres familias” [good heads of the household].

"Is climate anxiety to be a permanent imposition?"

Excerpt from this post:

Without a standard advent, or indeed a comprehensive and observable meaning, it is impossible to answer if or when global warming as a physical phenomenon will ever have ended, but the question does lead to the more relevant problem of whether global warming as a political and rhetorical implement has a perceptible best-before date. How many years of ordinary survival and non-cataclysm, for example, would it take before politicians and activists might possibly abandon years of countless trade restrictions, caps and bans, artificial market schemes, conferences, advertising and general alarms as just so much fruitless agony and opportunism, not to mention untold billions of dollars of wasted wealth. Or is climate anxiety to be a permanent imposition?

North Atlantic Warming Tied To Natural Variability

Here.

Excerpt:

A Duke University-led analysis of available records shows that while the North Atlantic Ocean's surface waters warmed in the 50 years between 1950 and 2000, the change was not uniform. In fact, the subpolar regions cooled at the same time that subtropical and tropical waters warmed.

This striking pattern can be explained largely by the influence of a natural and cyclical wind circulation pattern called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), wrote authors of a study published Thursday, Jan. 3, in Science Express, the online edition of the journal Science.

Winds that power the NAO are driven by atmospheric pressure differences between areas around Iceland and the Azores. "The winds have a tremendous impact on the underlying ocean," said Susan Lozier, a professor of physical oceanography at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences who is the study's first author.

Other studies cited in the Science Express report suggest human-caused global warming may be affecting recent ocean heating trends. But Lozier and her coauthors found their data can't support that view for the North Atlantic. "It is premature to conclusively attribute these regional patterns of heat gain to greenhouse warming," they wrote.

"The take-home message is that the NAO produces strong natural variability," said Lozier in an interview. "The simplistic view of global warming is that everything forward in time will warm uniformly. But this very strong natural variability is superimposed on human-caused warming. So researchers will need to unravel that natural variability to get at the part humans are responsible for."

Global Warming Editorial Cartoons

Here.

"Weather Alarmism As A Noble Strategy"?

More from John Tierney at his New York Times blog is here.

Excerpt:

I hope we don’t spend the new few decades watching dueling entrepreneurs trying to turn every weather anomaly into an argument about what humans are doing to the climate. It would be nice to think that we, unlike the ancients who propitiated the gods with human sacrifices, could accept the fact that it’s natural for unusual weather to occur — that the weirdest year of all would be one in which no record was set anywhere. Indulging our superstitious impulses isn’t going to help us deal with the scientific uncertainties ahead.

2007 warmest year on record? Coldest in this century

See the whole post from Lubos Motl here.

Excerpts:

In January 2007, we were informed that 2007 was either likely or certain to surpass 1998 and become the world's warmest year on record by most media...One month ago, we noticed that November 2007 was the coldest month since January 2000. Well, the RSS MSU satellite data show that December was even cooler. The December anomaly was -0.046 °C, compared to -0.014 °C in November. That means that December 2007 was also cooler than the average December from 1979...The RSS MSU linear trend extracted from the 1998-2007 interval is -0.48 °C per century of cooling! Numerically, it's the same trend that we assign to the 20th century but with the opposite sign!

The Sun's Connection to the Earths Climate

Here.

Excerpt:

Radiation from the Sun ultimately provides the only energy source for the Earth’s atmosphere and changes in solar activity clearly have the potential to affect climate. There is statistical evidence for solar influence on various meteorological parameters on all timescales, although extracting the signal from the noise in a naturally highly variable system remains a key problem.

Who Will Control Your Thermostat?

Here.

Excerpt:

If the state "shaves" peak loads by adjusting your thermostat during "price events," generators will not receive the higher prices. This effect will reinforce electrical shortages much like rent control discourages apartment building.

"Carbon dioxide emissions linked to mortality"

See the article and comments here.

Update: Here is a related Bloomberg article, with headline "Increased Carbon Dioxide in Atmosphere Will Kill More People".

I would point out this paragraph from a Discover magazine article:

For Europe as a whole, about 200,000 people die from excess heat each year. However, about 1.5 million Europeans die annually from excess cold. That is more than seven times the total number of heat deaths. Just in the past decade, Europe has lost about 15 million people to the cold, more than 400 times the iconic heat deaths from 2003. That we so easily neglect these deaths and so easily embrace those caused by global warming tells us of a breakdown in our sense of proportion.

Global Warming Articles Need Data

Here.

Excerpt:

Data, numbers, graphs, trends, etc., are generally missing in supposedly scientific reports on global warming. These articles are usually long on opinions and short on hard data. Phrases such as "scientists agree that ..." scientists doubt that ..." do not belong in a scientific article.

There are more data in Michael Crichton's novel "State of Fear" than in all the global warming articles combined that I have read.

Shifting Blame: Climate Change Now Responsible for Fish Declines

Here.

Wildfires added to climate change hysteria

Here.

Chaos as cold weather grips Europe

Excerpt from this article:

A bitterly cold winter storm has gripped parts of Europe, leaving at least three sailors dead and thousands stranded at airports, on snowy mountain roads and in remote villages.

A related story is here.

Deaths Reported in Mexico Cold Snap

Here.

"James Hansen is close to passing sanity's 'tipping points.'"

Here.

"Highest December Southern Oscillation Index Since 1975"

Here.

Excerpt:

This is the highest December SOI value since 1975, an indication of the strength of the ongoing Pacific cold event.

Al Gore's speaker's contract

Here.

UK's Met Office: "2008 is forecast to be cooler than any of the last seven years"

But of course, they say this "does not mean that global warming has gone away".

Details are here.

The Real Climate Debate--Check It Out

Here.

Check out some scientific "thinking" during the 1970s global cooling scare

Here.

Some ideas were discussed for achieving this goal: "transforming the Arctic into an ice-free ocean".

You can read the actual 1971 source text here.

"The Biggest Whopper of 2007"

Here.

Excerpt:

Though Greenland’s and Antarctica’s ice rests in deep bowls, Hansen declares them inclined planes. Then despite ice cores that show little to no movement for the past 400,000 years (including the warm periods), he shamelessly states that these gigantic ice sheets are slip, slidin’ away and the world will be flooded.

"The 20 most-read climate change stories this year"

In this Times Online list, note that this skeptical article was the #1 most-read.

"Global Warming Kills Alaskan Oil Workers in New Horror Film"

Here.

"WARMENING EVERYWHERE"

Here.

More on feedback

See the post and comments here.

Excerpts:

Essentially assumptions about feedback are what separates trivial nuisance levels of warming from forecasts that are catastrophic...scientists don't even know the SIGN of the most important feedback, ie clouds.

"First UK coal plant in 30 years clears hurdle"

Here.

Update: A related blog post from Phil Stott is here.

Minnkota Power newsletters

A climate alarmist provides links to some Minnkota Power newsletters here.

I took a look at a few of the newsletters, and I think the climate change views in them will look increasingly correct with each passing year.

Yet another problem with surface temperature measurement

Here.

Excerpt:

This means that a significant warm bias exists in the 2007 IPCC Report on the trends of the global average radiative forcing, since they base their estimate on a surface air temperature trend that includes minimum temperatures over land. This bias, which occurs whenever the nighttime surface boundary layer is stably stratified over land and the winds are light is, therefore, very significant at high latitudes in the winter, where much of the warming is reported to have occurred. This error in the IPCC construction does not mean that no warming has occurred, but it does mean that they have significantly overstated global warming in their report.

Wind chills a bit nippy in Florida this morning

Death toll rises to 90 in Indian cold wave

Here.

The complete madness of Al Gore

From this page:

The seven-point pledge announced by Al Gore to rally support against global warming:

I pledge

1. To demand that my country join an international treaty within the next two years that cuts global warming pollution by 90 percent in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy earth;

Signing such a treaty would be a mistake of truly monumental proportions.

Note that banning all airline travel might get you a 3% reduction from current levels. Has anyone seen a specific plan from Gore that shows the math of a 90% reduction?

"Bali Highs"

Here.

Excerpt:

More than week after the big U.N. Climate Change Conference wrapped up in Bali last month, Ms. Henny-Penny, founder and now Recording Secretary of The Holy Order of The Sky is Falling, is finally back from that fabled isle herself. "I was so exhausted from that wonderful conference, I just had to rest for several days," she told us when we caught up with her this morning.

"A cold spell soon to replace global warming"

See the whole thing here.

Excerpt:

Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface. The latest data, obtained by Habibullah Abdusamatov, head of the Pulkovo Observatory space research laboratory, say that Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer.
...
Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change. Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind. Man’s influence on nature is a drop in the ocean.

About the author:

Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, is staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute.

THE DEADLY TOLL OF WIND POWER

Here.

Excerpt:

...the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area is also a symbol of the wind industry's biggest stain - the killings of thousands of birds, including majestic golden eagles, by turbines. The result has been a wrenching civil war among those who are otherwise united in the struggle to save the planet and its creatures.

AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein backs away

Check out Seth Borenstein's article today, entitled "Nature and Man Jointly Cook Arctic".

Excerpts:

There's a natural cause that may account for much of the Arctic warming, which has melted sea ice, ice sheets and glaciers, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Nature. New research points a finger at a natural and cyclical increase in the amount of energy in the atmosphere that moves from south to north around the Arctic Circle.
...
"If we didn't have the little extra kick from global warming then we wouldn't have gone past the threshold for the change in sea ice," said Overland, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's lab in Seattle.

This article represents a significant change in tone for Borenstein. Just over three weeks ago, Borenstein produced this panicked piece on the very same subject, entitled "'The Arctic is screaming' — summer sea ice could be gone in five years".

Excerpt:

"The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming," said Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal. "Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines."

It is the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels that produces carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, responsible for man-made global warming. For the past several days, government diplomats have been debating in Bali, Indonesia, the outlines of a new climate treaty calling for tougher limits on these gases.

Coupled with John Tierney's skeptical New York Times piece earlier this week, this has been a watershed week for climate skepticism in the mainstream media. This hysteria's long crumbling process has clearly begun.

The Times -- They Are A-Changin'

Here.

Excerpt:

Climate Change: Skepticism about man-induced global warming has reached the science pages of the newspaper of record. This suggests the debate not only isn't over, but that it's also finally newsworthy.

Some warming deniers must have slipped a body-snatching pod under the bed of New York Times columnist John Tierney. Or at the very least the accountants at Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) must have put more than a lump of coal in the stocking hanging over Tierney's fossil fuel-burning fireplace.

In his first column of the new year, Tierney writes that the deniers of truth are in fact Nobel Laureate Al Gore and those who ignore both scientific evidence and the historical record in their prophecies of doom. 2008, says Tierney, will be no exception.

Pure climate insanity

Here.

Excerpts:

Bloom wants people to realise that the world is on a path that could possibly lead to a future where just a few hundred million people survive in specially-designed cities in the Arctic. Originally he imagined this might happen 500 years from now. But scientists tell him it could happen far sooner than that.
...
Wind farms, for example, could easily replace all of the U.S. energy produced by coal and oil, he says.

"Socialist Climate Change Charter"

Here.

Update: Climate Skeptic debunks some of this charter's "science" here.

Who are all of these big money interests who [allegedly] pay the deniers the big money?

Here.

"Green autos: Is public opinion shifting - or being pushed?"

Here.

"it's difficult to take Al Gore seriously"

Here.

Glacier Retreat and Water Availability

See the thread here.

From the first comment:

As of today, increases in Antarctic sea ice are 2 to 3 times larger than decreases in Arctic sea ice (on an anomaly basis). The fact of the matter is the Antarctic is freezing much faster than the Arctic is melting.

Fabulous timing

This gloomy "E, the Environmental Magazine" cover story bemoans the lack of snow in New Hampshire and Aspen just as all-time December snowfall records were announced in both places.

"Today's Global Warming Updates"

Here.

"THE CREDULOUS INQUIRER"

Here.

Excerpt:

"The Skeptical Inquirer" was once a useful publicaltion that debunked magicians, frauds and scientific quacks. It has however now joined the ranks of those it once tried to police -- as police often do. It has become an evangelical promoter of the Warmist religion.

Yet another "non-consensus" paper has been published

Here.

Excerpt:

This analysis, as well as other studies such as the McKitrick and Michaels JGR paper, should be a wake up call that erroneous information is being communicated to policymakers and others on the actual radiative imbalance of the climate system. The 2007 IPCC ignored assesing these unresolved issues which, as a consequence, result in a warm bias in their conclusions on the magnitude of global warming.

"If only Microsoft could argue its competitors hurt the environment"

Here.

Excerpt:

Just like that--like flipping a switch--Congress and the president banned incandescent light bulbs last month. OK, they did not exactly ban them. But the energy bill passed by Congress and signed by President Bush sets energy-efficiency standards for light bulbs that traditional incandescent bulbs cannot meet.

The new rules phase in starting in 2012, but don't be lulled by that five-year delay. Whether it's next week or next decade, you will one day walk into a hardware store looking for a 100-watt bulb--and there won't be any. By 2014, the new efficiency standards will apply to 75-watt, 60-watt and 40-watt bulbs too.

Why won't Al Gore debate?

Here.

Excerpt:

When Al Gore ran for U.S. senator from Tennessee he debated – repeatedly.

When he ran for president he once more debated frequently.

Why is it that as a recipient of the Nobel Prize for his theorizing about global warming Mr. Gore has refused repeated and prominently published challenges to debate this issue with scientists?

Is it possible Al thinks that the Nobel (also awarded to the late Yasser Arafat) makes him morally and scientifically impervious?

Or does he believe it would be unbearable for a Noble Prize winner to lose a debate on the issue for which he was awarded?

Editorial: Global warming 'consensus' a fiction

Check out the Orange County Register editorial here.

State of Ill. Sponsoring Kids Global Warming Poster Contest

Here.

New Year cold snap kills 23 in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar

Here.

Excerpt:

LUCKNOW, India (Reuters) - A spell of cold weather has killed at least 23 people in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in the last few days, most of them homeless, government officials said, as temperatures dip close to freezing point.

In Uttar Pradesh, 12 people have died from the cold in the last two days, while eleven people have died in the last four days in neighbouring Bihar, officials from the states' disaster relief offices said.

Villagers in drafty huts, city slum dwellers and the homeless are the hardest hit in winter in northern India states as icy winds come sweeping down from the Himalayas.

In the capital and across the region, many thousands of people can be seen huddling around roadside bonfires come nightfall, and Uttar Pradesh government is ordering that more be lit until the cold weather passes.

"Misinterpreting the Weather? Only by the alarmists"

Here.

Global warming and the Great Disappointment

Excerpt from this post:

Time and again, the global warming faithful remind me of the Millerites of the 19th century. The Millerites were the followers of William Miller, a preacher who predicted that Jesus would return to earth in 1844 to begin the next stage of human existence. Clearly, that didn’t happen, though hundreds of thousands of people reported sold their homes and all their possessions in preparation for it. Miller’s embarrassment was called the Great Disappointment.

I can’t help but feel that, in coming years, the global warming alarmists (Gorites?) are headed for a “great disappointment” of their own. After all, the alarmists have been predicting pollution-induced doom for decades now, yet how many of their predictions have actually come true? How much has the reality of our climate and weather patterns over the last several years matched what they have told us it would be?

See the post for links.

"Global Warming and Pagan Emptiness"

You should read the whole thing by Cardinal George Pell here.

Note that Pell provides specific scientific details to support his skepticism. When we look back at this era from decades in the future, the basic correctness of Pell's views on global warming will seem completely obvious to most people.

Analysis of a century of natural disasters in Australia

Here.

Excerpt from the analysis:

The role of anthropogenic climate change is not detectable at this time.

"More Global Ice than Average"

Excerpt from this post:

Currently the world has more ice cover than normal. As shown here, there is currently around 1 million squared kilometers [more] ice on the worlds surface than normal. The webpage also shows no obvious increasing or decreasing trend since 1979. In other words, as the north decreased in ice, the south increased.

See the post for links and a graph.

"Predicting Cycle 24"

Here.

"OSHA Issues Cold Weather Alert for Workers"

Here.

A perspective from Russia

Here.

Excerpt:

Global warming, if it happens, will be a great boon to Russia. Huge areas of unusable land will become available for food production if temperatures continue to rise.

Most people here in Russia regard the western obsession with climate change as an example of self-interest being cynically presented as a global good.

"The Big VPIRG Climate Scare"

Here.

"RECORD BREAKING SNOWFALL IN ASPEN/SNOWMASS"

Here.

Excerpt:

Aspen/Snowmass, CO., Dec. 31, 2007 – Aspen/Snowmass has broken the all-time record for the most snowfall in the month of December. With 118 inches (300 centimeters) falling this month at the top of Snowmass – that’s nearly 10 feet of snow – the 1983-1984 record of 117 inches has officially been broken.

With last night’s storm dropping up to half a foot on Aspen/Snowmass slopes, the resort has received nearly triple the monthly average for snowfall.

Note that the Aspen Daily News ran a story yesterday essentially blaming global warming for poor snow conditions back in March. Again, I think it's pretty incredible that that story failed to even mention the massive December snowfall.

"Is a new Dalton Minimum approaching?"

Here.

" Climate Catastrophe: You Know You Want It, Baby!"

Here.

"Peer Review is not the holy grail of science, it is job protection"

Here.

"Uncertain science dogs climate debate"

Here.

Parking outside your home could cost more if you have a long car

Here.

"New York Times chastises Gore & alarmists"

See the whole thing here.

New Hampshire breaks 1876 record for most December snow

Here.

Surface Temperatures plotted over Troposphere Temperatures: A Note from Alan Siddons

Here.

"Climate cited for selling alcohol"

Here.

Excerpt:

A self-proclaimed environmentalist and “Al Gore clone” wants to reduce the emission of toxic gases in Sharp County by bringing in alcohol and reducing the drive drinkers must now take to purchase the spirits.

Montana opinion poll

A couple of vaguely-worded questions about global warming were included in a Montana opinion poll here.

Note that only 30% of those surveyed said that global warming will produce "many" adverse effects. I think that's a remarkably low number, considering the massive global warming hype of recent years.

"Cold weather claims two more victims"

Excerpt from this article:

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Two more local people were found dead yesterday in Taiwan, bringing the death toll from the cold front to six, according to the police.

Update: A slighter newer article is now here, with headline "Cold front death toll surges to 26".

Russ Steele's predictions for 2008

Here.

Excerpts:

1) More global warming skeptics will come forward as the weather turns colder, due to a shift in the Pacific Ocean to a cool phase. The satellite global temperatures will continue to decline, while the surface temperatures continue to increase due to urban heat island effects. These contaminated temperature records will continue to support claims of global warming, all the while the arctic sea ice will increase in 2008 and mountain glaciers will slowly start growing again.

2) The official start of Sunspot Cycle 24 will be delayed another year, indicating cycle 24 will be minimum cycle. Historically minimum cycles have produced cooler temperatures on earth, all thought the specific mechanism is not clear.

"The sayings of King David"

Here.

Prediction for 2008: Global Warming 'Consensus' Fades

Here.

Excerpt:

If 2007 was the Year of Al Gore, with his movie, Academy Award and Nobel Prize, 2008 just might be the year the so-called scientific consensus that man is causing the Earth to warm begins to crack.

The fissures started to show in 2007: Prominent French physicist Claude Allegre called Gore a crook and equates Gore's French followers with religious zealots. Weather Channel founder and meteorologist John Coleman said global warming is "the greatest scam in history." Gore continued to duck open invitations to debate his theory. More than 400 scientists disputed the global warming claims.

Though they were shut out of the meeting, dissenting scientists were able to get a bit of media attention at the December climate conference in Bali.

Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told us that it will take several years for the climate change scare to finally die. But the death spiral will begin at some point, and it looks like the spinning will start in '08.

Slightly non-balmy ski "weather" at Monarch Mountain

Here.

Excerpt:

The mountain received about 17 inches of additional snow from Friday through 4:30 p.m. Sunday.

Ralph said many skiers and snowboarders were taking breaks and packing the lodge because of the cold weather and wind.

Wind gusts reached 71 miles per hour at 9:34 a.m. Sunday, when the temperature was 7 degrees. The coldest recorded temperature was 9 below zero at 10:34 a.m. Friday.

Ralph said skiers and snowboarders are buying a lot of hot packs and glove liners.

Winter and Global Warming

Excerpt from this post:

One of the unfortunate consequences of Iowa and New Hampshire getting so much snow this December is that it has really muted the discussion of global warming. I've now been to enough campaign events to realize that the weather definitely affects political discourse. On a hot summer day, just about every presidential stump speech - and I'm referring here to the speeches of Clinton, Obama, Edwards and McCain - referred at least once to the prospect of global warming. However, when the outside world is coated in a thick slick of ice, I've found that presidential candidates tend to steer away from such direct references to hotter climes, and instead talk about rising gas prices and our dependence on foreign oil.

"Even Bono Is Sick Of Bono"

Here.

The post also includes this link about Sheryl Crow's antics.

"In 2008, let us challenge the Politics of Apocalypse"

Here.

"Ecophobes Caught with Pants Down"

Here.

This same author has written some reasonable stuff here and here about the IPCC's lack of transparency.

What if sea levels rise 20 feet (over the next 20 centuries?)

See the map here.

"Raped by Global Warming"

See the whole thing here.

"Global Warming, Storming and Conforming"

A review of Chapter 1 of Glenn Beck's "An Inconvenient Book" is here.

"Mountain Climbers and Global Warming"

Here.

Excerpt:

The Medieval Warm Period around 1000 was warmer than today with wine grapes growing in Greenland and Britain (and Britain also in Roman times). From the late 17 century to the early 19 century, the Little Ice Age afflicted the planet and glaciers grew. We have been warming our way out of this period ever since. As 'greenhouse gases' from industrialization increased in the 1940s through the 1970s, the temperature of the earth dropped so much that new Ice Age warnings were sounded and a notorious Time magazine cover visualized this fear.

Schizophrenic "global" warming coverage at the Aspen Daily News

From an article dated 12/31/07 in the Aspen Daily News:

The winter of 2006/2007 was the warmest on record worldwide, and one of the warmest on record in Aspen, with few below-zero days, sporadic snowfall, and a torrential spring thaw that began in March, a full month earlier than usual.

Strangely, in the article, I don't see any mention of current snow conditions.

From the 12/31/07 update at the Aspen Snowmass page:

Up to 6 inches of new snow overnight!

It's DEEPcember! More than 110 inches of snow has fallen this month.

More from the article above:

The Aspen Skiing Co. stepped up its "Save Snow" campaign promoting its environmental initiatives, including green-building efforts, energy-efficiency upgrades, carbon-offset tags and others as reasons to choose this resort over others.

But all the "green" hype surrounding these efforts led some to question how much good the frenzy of goal-setting is actually doing. In SkiCo's case, not as much as hoped for, SkiCo environmental director Auden Schendler confessed to Business Weekly magazine. For all its claims and effort, SkiCo's carbon footprint is still rising as the company pumps electricity into snowmaking and seeks ever higher skier numbers.

"How do you really green your company? It's almost f------ impossible," Schendler told the magazine, adding the caveat that minimizing damage and promoting awareness of global warming are still important ways the company can make a difference.

Meanwhile, renowned global-warming activist Al Gore stopped through town to speak at the Aspen Institute, telling a crowd of hundreds that curbing the "planetary emergency" of global warming will ultimately "depend on what's in the hearts and minds of the people."

An Aspen Daily News article covering the speech drew more than 50 searing letters from around the country questioning both Al Gore's assertions about the validity of global warming and the integrity of the newspaper and its reporters, driving home the fact that, for some, the debate will never be dead.

Commentary: Worst CEOs of 2007 are Green

Here.

"Spencer on Cloud Feedback"

Here.

Excerpt from the comment section:

...what you need next to get to strong forms of AGW is feedback loops to amplify the CO2 effect. These are absolutely essential. So if I understand correctly, Spencer is suggesting that the water vapor feedback loops are an artifact of the measurement process, and that their existence is at best unproven. If true, and if the sort of measurement process he suggests proves either that they do not exist, are negative where theory says they should be positive, or that they are otherwise different from hypothesized, its a big bang. Its at least as big a bang as the demolition of the hockey stick.

You cannot have alarming AGW without feedback loops. This is going to get very interesting in the next little while.

"Global Warming To Eliminate Tourism in the Caribbean"

This poor fellow sounds completely panicked by the threat of ManBearPig.

Excerpts from the page above:

Recently, the Dominican government received a report detailing that, under their estimates, sea-level will rise by 6 meters under business-as-usual by 2050, eliminating the tourism industry and sending the country into complete chaos.

Ivory-bill buffs please note:

I've worked at Cornell to commit the University to climate neutrality...

"How Clean is Your Electricity?"

Here.

"Marc Morano uses facts to answer an "ad hominem" attack from an alleged scientist"

Here.

"Anthropogenic Global Warming is Nonsense"

Here.

Excerpt:

The point of my article is to show you that the theory of anthropogenic global warming needs to be exposed to criticism to ensure its health. If the theory has merits, then it has to be proved under the rigors of the scientific method, not through political campaigns. It is important for any subject, but especially one on a global scale with so much at stake, to be rationally discussed without the panic, hysteria, and sensationalist rubbish. People who try to suppress this debate are highly irresponsible and their motives should seriously be called into question. A lot of the responsibility for how this is handled rests on you and me. If someone tells you that the world is going to end in 100 years time because of the gases that come out your mouth and backside, you should have the intellectual fortitude to critically question that claim, and not treat like heretics those who do.

"'Green fatigue' leads to fear of backlash over climate change"

Here.

From Ireland: Cabinet committee on climate change met just twice

Here.

"Hatred of people and the subversion of climate science"

Don't miss the quotes here.

Excerpt:

“We have to get rid of that warm medieval period.” — Jonathan Overpeck, a Professor at U of Arizona and IPCC Lead Author in an email to David Deming, a professor at U of Oklahoma.

Inane discussion at The Long Tail

Here.

Excerpt:

So by this analysis dead-tree magazines have a smaller net carbon footprint than web media. We cut down trees and put them in the ground. From a climate change perspective, this is a good thing.

“Global Warming: Man-Made or Natural?”

An excellent piece by Fred Singer is here.

Excerpt:

The nations of the world face many difficult problems. Many have societal problems like poverty, disease, lack of sanitation, and shortage of clean water. There are grave security problems arising from global terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Any of these problems are vastly more important than the imaginary problem of man-made global warming. It is a great shame that so many of our resources are being diverted from real problems to this non-problem. Perhaps in ten or 20 years this will become apparent to everyone, particularly if the climate should stop warming (as it has for eight years now) or even begin to cool.

We can only trust that reason will prevail in the face of an onslaught of propaganda like Al Gore’s movie and despite the incessant misinformation generated by the media. Today, the imposed costs are still modest, and mostly hidden in taxes and in charges for electricity and motor fuels. If the scaremongers have their way, these costs will become enormous. But I believe that sound science and good sense will prevail in the face of irrational and scientifically baseless climate fears.

Global warming may cause future Australian shark attacks!

Here.

Excerpt:

He also warned that tiger sharks could start appearing in Victorian waters as sea temperatures rise.

Regarding sea temperature data, note the post here.

Excerpt:

In the last four years, the sea surface temperature average between 60N and 60S has cooled.

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"Footing the bill could become problem in woodpecker hunt"

Here.

Excerpt:

Skepticism has emerged around the ivory-billed sighting in Arkansas, with some experts disputing video of a bird in question.

No subsequent sightings have been confirmed.

The initial findings by Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology were published in a peer-reviewed science journal. But, Ron Rorbaugh, director of Cornell's ivory-billed efforts, acknowledges his work has its detractors.

"That's how science works," Rorbaugh said by phone recently. "Scientists collect evidence and interpret it, then other scientists interpret the evidence and may come to different conclusions."

Another allegedly interesting "image" from Arkansas is here.