NRDC's efforts to "pull the polar bear back from the brink of extinction"

Here.

Wisconsin Legislature votes to overturn ban on heated sidewalks

Here.

Excerpt:

After the second snowiest December on record in the state capital - and with temperatures hovering around 20 degrees Tuesday - the Legislature abolished a statewide ban on heated sidewalks, stairs, entrances and pedestrian walkways.

Biofuels 'do more harm than good'

Here.

Lunacy from Philip Pullman

Excerpt from an interview with Philip Pullman:

Now, [polar bears] are all going to be extinct if there's no ice left, unless they put them all in zoos or round them up and put a fence round them and throw them a seal or two from time to time. But that's no life.

If the polar bears leapt from the pages of my fiction into reality and saw what was happening, they'd eat us. Eat as many of us as quickly as they possibly could. And good luck to them.

AS: Do you think there might be a less carnivorous solution?

PP: One less drastic solution we hear talk of is a tradable carbon ration. If you have unused credit, you can sell to somebody else. I think that's wrong. We should have a fixed limit and that's it. This is a crisis as big as war and you couldn't trade your ration book in the wartime.

You were allowed three ounces of butter a week, or whatever, and that was it. And this is what it should be like with carbon. None of this carbon trading. We should have a fixed limit and if you use it all up in October, then tough, you shiver for the rest of the year.

Top Ten science-based predictions that didn’t come true

Here.

Locals delve into global warming debate

See a story from Kansas here.

Eco-conscious Sundance turns deeper shade of green

Here.

Excerpt:

...almost everything at the key gathering for independent film backed by Robert Redford's Sundance Institute has gone eco-friendly, eco-conscious or just plain eco-crazy.

That idea is true not only for movies, such as director Josh Tickell's "Fields of Fuel" about U.S. dependency on fossil fuels and the potential of bio-diesel to replace gasoline, but for a host of marketers hawking products from environmentally friendly boots to hybrid cars.

Backers of green technologies like Tickell see nothing but upside potential to being at Sundance amid the crush of television and newspaper reporters that turn out annually for the stargazing in this mountain town east of Salt Lake City.

"Sundance is really not about 'Fields of Fuel,' per se. It is about generating awareness in the media about what is possible" to combat global warming, Tickell said.

Don't fear global warming, call in the 'weather hedge' experts

Here.

One of the pioneers in the "online eco-fashion business" is shutting down

I wonder how much this will affect Earth's climate...

From the Pangaya blog:

It is with great regret that I announce that Pangaya will be winding down operations. We first developed the notion of a high-end online retailer of environmentally-friendly women’s clothing in late 2003 and launched our online store in the summer of 2004. Since that time we have realized incredible growth, seen the industry mature in a way we never imagined, and had an incredible ride.

However, as with all businesses, the time and capital invested must provide a meaningful return for the effort to be justified. At this time, it simply no longer meets that most basic criteria.

Pangaya's 'About Us' page is here.

CBS News to preempt 60 Minutes for global warming special Sunday Jan 20th

Here.

Media campaign to silence global warming skeptics failing

Lots of great stuff is up at Greenie Watch today.

One of the linked articles is here.

Excerpt:

While the skeptiphobics have been celebrating their excesses, the skeptics have managed to bypass mainstream media and find their voices in a patchwork of new media venues created through the Internet and on other platforms.

Thumbing their collective noses at mainstream media, they have successfully turned to the ballooning mass of blogsites. Increasingly the bloggers are eclipsing the old media and beating them at their own game with more accurate and trusted content than ever before.

Minnesotans *For* Global Warming rally

Here.

Excerpt:

We believe that manmade Global Warming is a myth, and that climate change is a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity throughout the ages.

"The CO2 Song" is here.

"Dingell: Climate legislation 'impossible' this year"

Here.

My prediction: Over the next year, expensive efforts to "stop" climate change will receive dwindling support from Americans.

A Green Party "End Global Warming" poster contest

Here.

Biofuels 'are not a magic bullet'

See the BBC article here.

Deep "thinking" from Air America host Thom Hartmann

Excerpt from this article:

Hartmann’s main argument is that oil (stored sunlight) has allowed untrammeled population growth. Nowadays, it takes about 12 years to add one billion people to the global population. So, sooner or later we face the uncomfortable transition from the population level that peak oil production can sustain, to the level current sunlight (think “renewable energy”) can sustain.

Hartmann suggests this population is somewhere between a quarter of a billion and one billion people.

Note that the current world population is somewhere around 6.6 billion people.

John McCain and Climate Change - Dispatch from SC

Here.

Excerpts:

When he was in New Hampshire, McCain was all about talking about climate change - and educating the philistines (Barnett’s word, not mine) in the audience who still thought it was a myth. When students with global warming signs would show up the crowd, McCain would point them out, talk about cutting carbon, and ask the audience to give us a round of applause for “working on something important, something bigger than themselves.”
...
Well, that was New Hampshire. It’s a little bit different down here in South Carolina.
...
So instead of McCain talking about cutting carbon in New Hampshire apple-orchards, we get events like the one I went to this afternoon in Charleston, SC. Now, I’ve been to a lot of candidate events in the last 6 months, but never one on an aircraft carrier...But for McCain, it was a perfect opportunity to play up his military record and shout about, “Chasing Osama to the gates of hell!” And in the meantime, completely avoid the issue of climate change - he didn’t event talk about energy independence.

List of Climate Change Skeptics Continues to Grow (Part 4)

The spectacular public implosion of Al Gore's "consensus" continues here.

Excerpt:

5. Nuclear Physicist and Chemical Engineer Dr. Philip Lloyd, a UN IPCC co-coordinating lead author on the Technical Report on Carbon Capture & Storage, was in charge of South Africa’s Chamber of Mines’ Metallurgy Laboratory and was a former professor at University of Witwatersrand where he established a course in environmental chemical engineering. Lloyd has served as President of the South African Institution of Chemical Engineers, the Federation of Societies of Professional Engineers, and the Associated Scientific and Technical Societies of Southern Africa. Lloyd, who has authored over 150 refereed publications, currently serves as an honorary research fellow with the Energy Research Centre at the University of Cape Town.

Lloyd rejects man-made climate fears. “I have grave difficulties in finding any but the most circumstantial evidence for any human impact on the climate,” Lloyd wrote to EPW on January 18, 2008. “The quantity of CO2 we produce is insignificant in terms of the natural circulation between air, water and soil. I have tried numerous tests for radiative effects, and all have failed. I have tried to develop an isotopic method for identifying stable C12 (from fossil fuels) and merely ended up understanding the difference between the major plant chemistries and their differing ability to use the different isotopes. I have studied the ice core record, in detail, and am concerned that those who claim to have a model of our climate future haven't a clue about the forces driving our climate past,” Lloyd wrote. “I am particularly concerned that the rigor of science seems to have been sacrificed on an altar of fundraising. I am doing a detailed assessment of the IPCC reports and the Summaries for Policy Makers, identifying the way in which the Summaries have distorted the science. I have found examples of a Summary saying precisely the opposite of what the scientists said,” he concluded.

Cold weather affecting Utah's moose population

Excerpt from this article:

HUNTSVILLE, Utah (ABC 4 News) - The cold weather and deep snow is not only affecting people; it's affecting the moose. They're coming down to lower elevations in record numbers this year.

"Long live the cynical public!"

Check out the comments here.

If you look around the Internet, there's no escaping the fact that a growing number of people are scoffing at global warming.

(Via Climate Science)

"How do people come to the conclusion that another side is needed?"

Check out the pseudo-science from supposed Nobel Prize winner Steve Running here.

Excerpt:

The lingering argument which disputes planetary warming as a man-made phenomenon centers on “natural variability,” maintaining current temperature changes are part of natural fluctuations in the earth’s climate.

But that line of thought doesn’t hold, Running said. If that was the case, there would be more deviation in temperatures. Some areas would cool while others heated up. Scientists can’t find evidence that things are cooling down, anywhere, he added.

“Then that isn’t natural variability.”

Save the Polar Bears!

Here.

Excerpt:

Say it with me, populations are at reasonably high-levels and holding steady, which is a nice euphemism for wholly unaffected by climate change as far as anyone can tell.

Reality Confronts European Union

Here.

The wine flowed like melting ice caps

Here.

Seattle PI Still Screaming About Sea Levels and Hurricanes

Here.

It's Water Vapour, Stupid

Here.

Excerpt:

One of my intuitive objections to the theory of global warming has been the role of carbon dioxide as a trigger mechanism, the driver of changes in the earth's atmosphere. Yes I recognize that levels of carbon dioxide have risen from around 260 ppm to 360 ppm, but I still can't grasp how a gas that represents less than 0.04% of the atmosphere dictates the climate for the whole planet.
...
So why would a trace gas be so crucial? And when did carbon dioxide go from irrelevant to the dominant driver of climate? (For example: past geological records indicate carbon dioxide levels in excess of 7,000 ppm and no correlation with temperature; Gore's famous graph where carbon dioxide lags behind temperature changes by 800 years; and, the more recent disconnects of carbon dioxide levels from temperature changes throughout the past century).

Valleywag's green issue

Here.

Excerpt:

Carbon offsets? A lovely market for Wall Street to trade on. But do they make any difference? No. They don't actually reduce carbon emissions; they just shuffle them around. Anyone who thinks buying a carbon offset actually solves global warming likely thinks they're going somewhere when they walk on a treadmill in the gym, too.

An Inconvenient Democracy

Here.

Public stiffs green cars at Detroit auto show

Here.

Excerpt:

Ignoring the PC-hybrid, electric plug-in, and hydrogen concepts salivated over by the press just days before at the celebrated “press preview,” a panel of 100 Detroit News readers gave their Best-in-Show awards to big, sexy, gas-guzzling products like the 600 HP Corvette ZR-1, the 20 mpg Chrysler 300C, and the towering Ford F-150 pickup. Not a green car made the list, except for the Honda Civic Hybrid — and only as answer to the News’ “Most Earth Friendly” vehicle category.

Climate Crusaders Reunite: Inside Al Gore's Climate Project (Part II)

Here.

Excerpts:

At one point, we all stop and take a look at what we are fighting for -- our favorite things that we love and remember from childhood. We are the North East regional group, we come from Portland and Tidewater and Montreal and Brunswick and Wilmington and Buffalo and Oyster Bay and Baltimore and Concord and Jersey City and SoHo and Back Bay. And what will we miss the most? Maple syrup and cranberry juice and fall foliage and sledding in Central Park and Long Island lobster – these and many more regional delights, the things that make us special and keep our economy booming, these are the things that are at risk, and we’re just not ready to give them up.
...
This whole movement is growing globally, and we just have to try to keep it together for one more year.
...
We have already set the climate for our children. Now we want to set the climate for our grandchildren.

Sorry, Katie, but Al's whole movement is fading, not growing.

Publishing NASA Data at Realclimate

Here.

Chalke: Climate change already slipping down list of Australian priorities

Excerpt from this article:

But when it comes to climate change, one observer, Chalke, says his research is showing that it is already slipping down our list of priorities. Why? "Because Kevin went to Bali and fixed it," he says. We are only prepared to go so far in terms of personal sacrifice to save the planet, says Chalke, who is a lone voice on the matter; other researchers are predicting greater action and awareness by ordinary Australians. "There is a sense that my trying to jam four kids into a Ford Focus is not going to save the planet," he says, in a precis of the response of some of his panel members.

The quote is from social analyst David Chalke, of the cultural change monitor AustraliaSCAN. The article says Chalke is "one of a small band of analysts whose job is to locate and then keep their fingers firmly on the pulse of 21st-century Australia".

"Need to Understand Global Warming before Trying to Fix It"

See the press release here.

Excerpt:

I'm still not convinced that the science and the economics of the issue are settled. I know a lot of people want to move on and look at solutions, but I don't think we can have a very good chance to develop an optimal solution if we don't really understand the problem. There are a large number of skeptics still out there about what causes global warming and what mankind can do about it.

See also this section at the link above:

It's all happened before: An explanation from psychology of why the global warming cult shows little response to contrary evidence

Climate Legislation: Push for This Year or Wait for Next?

Key excerpt from this post:

All social and political movement in the last few years has been in one direction -- greater concern, greater priority. We're supposed to think it's going to just drop off the radar if politicians wait until next year?

I think that the alarmists vastly overestimate public support for their position. If everyone in your own social circles seems to agree with your alarmism, I think it's easy to wrongly extrapolate that you've got a mandate from voters.

Some reasons to think that the "high water mark" of the current hysteria has already passed:

1. Public support seems to have already peaked.

Gore may have won over the most gullible quarter of the American public, but expanding that number will be very difficult.

2. The idea of "scientific consensus" seems to be fading.

3. Support from the media also seems to be waning.

Scores dead in Afghan cold snap

Here.

Excerpt:

The number of people who have died due a cold snap in Afghanistan has risen to 200, government officials say.

Four large provinces in the western part of the country have been especially badly hit. Tens of thousands of livestock have also perished.

Local people are saying the winter conditions have been the most severe in decades. The cold spell is also affecting neighbouring countries.

A related story is here, entitled "Misery for millions as temperatures plummet across the Middle East":

THE Middle East is shivering amid exceptionally low temperatures that have left at least ten people dead in Saudi Arabia alone and killed countless livestock and damaged crops across a region usually associated with sun-baked deserts.

Some have had cause to cheer. Children in several countries have been enjoying days of fun after icy temperatures forced the closure of schools. And snow has fallen in Baghdad for the first time in living memory.

But the severe cold snap, caused by a weather system spawned in Siberia, has mostly brought misery. Faulty gas heaters have claimed the lives of about 90 people in Iran where temperatures have plummeted in places to -24C.
...
Temperatures in Saudi Arabia reached their lowest point in 30 years this week, plunging to -2C in the capital, Riyadh, and to -6C in mountainous regions blanketed by snow.

"Bali: The Mother of All No-Deals"

A climate alarmist writes:

Let us cut through the histrionics of the Bali conference to understand that as far as an agreement is concerned, the world has not moved an inch from where it stood on climate some 17 years ago, when negotiations began.
...
We know that the us (and Japan, Canada and New Zealand) leading with many hiding at the back have insisted for 17 years that they will not do anything till emerging big polluters like China, India, Brazil and South Africa are asked to cut emissions.

At Green Baby, environmental concerns rank #3

Excerpt from this interview:

SP: So when parents come to your shop, what do you think their main green concern is? Is it climate change, is it chemicals or is it something else?

JB: The latest research showed the environment is really about third. Health and quality are the top two. Most people are saying we're all concerned and we all want to do our bit, but I think health is something -- especially with children -- that is more at the forefront.

Treehugger notices the bitter cold in Israel

Excerpt from this post:

Israel is passing through an unbelievably cold, cold-spell. Pipes are bursting in people's homes all over Jerusalem, and millions of shekels of crops have been lost in greenhouses in the desert.

A trial for climate change "activists"

Here.

Excerpts from the reports:

10-04-2007: Today a group of people inspired by the Camp for Climate Action have disrupted the operation of Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station by locking themselves to machinery. Direct Action was taken to target the 3rd largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the UK.

One of the group said "the threat of climate change is so huge and the government so complacent that the people themselves are now acting in proportionate response to this and targeting the root causes of climate change. It's not enough to reduce emissions individually – we need to act together to challenge fossil fuel consumption."
...
After 2 and a half hours we were removed by police.
...
According to calculations made equating quantities of CO2 emissions, to the resultant deaths, she believes that the action of shutting down the burning of coal for the duration of the occupation had directly saved 10 lives.

Negative attitudes of Americans towards the "green imperative"

Here.

Note that according to this survey, only about a quarter of Americans side with Al Gore on the environment.

How About Those Caribou?

Here.

Excerpt:

Remember when the Alaska Pipeline was going to kill off all the caribou? Yep, it was going to hinder their migration and do all sorts of terrible things that would ultimately lead to the extinction of the noble caribou, according to the envronmeddlist "experts" who tried to derail construction of the pipeline.

From the Alaska Department of Fish and Game:

In the 1970s people were concerned about the effect of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, expanding oil development, and increased disturbance from use of aircraft and snowmobiles on caribou. Although there was some displacement of caribou calving in the Prudhoe Bay oilfield, in general, caribou have not been adversely affected by human activities in Alaska. Pipelines and most other developments are built to allow for caribou movements, and caribou have shown us that they can adapt to the presence of people and machines. As human activities expand in Alaska, the great challenge for caribou management is for man to consider the needs of our caribou herds and ensure that they remain a visible, healthy part of our landscape.

A Global Warming Weekend

Here.

"They can take a hint, kind of…"

Here.

Excerpt:

After an outcry of objections, the California Energy Commission withdrew its proposal to require new buildings in the state to have radio-controlled thermostats that, in a power emergency, could be used to override customers’ temperature settings.

Hansen GHG Concentration Projections

Here.

Global warming rally in Annapolis

Here.

Excerpt:

Almost 500 global warming activists are expected to wave signs and unveil a long green carpet at 11 a.m. tomorrow (1/17/08) on Lawyers Mall outside the State House in Annapolis.

Their goal: convince state lawmakers to stroll down the symbolic rug and endorse a law that would reduce global warming pollution by 25 percent by 2020 and 90 percent by 2050.

Update: According to this article, the turnout seems to be much less than expected:

ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- Even as more than 200 environmental activists gathered Thursday outside the State House to call for action to confront global warming, state officials indicated that a proposal to adopt a carbon emissions cap faces a tough road in the Legislature.

Posts mocking the rally are here and here.

Another update: Check out the article entitled "Global warming protest frosted with snow" and comments here. (This one claims an attendance of "about 400".)

Manmade Antarctic Melting, Indeed

Here.

Excerpts:

While Rignot did use satellite observations of Antarctica’s coastline to estimate melting, he compared this real-life data to computer model estimates of Antarctic interior snow accumulation. So the western Antarctic appears to losing mass only when compared to computer models that, when it comes to global climate, are of questionable relevance to the real world.

At JunkScience.com, we label these sorts of computer modeling exercises as “PlayStation® climatology.”
...
It’s quite possible that the reported Antarctic melting is manmade -- but the “man” may be Eric Rignot, as opposed to the term’s broader connotation.

My turn: Beware 'precautionary principle' in climate change

Here.

Excerpt:

When told that average annual temperatures at least since the turn of the century have been flat, Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told Reuters news service, "One would really have to see on the basis of some analysis what this really represents." He added, "Are there natural factors compensating?"

Well, duh.

Global Cooling: Tipping the Delicate Balance

Here.

Excerpt:

Something is badly wrong with current climate models--the very models upon with policy-makers are basing their disastrous plans. What will it take--and how long will it take--for them to understand how badly they have been misled?

"...learning how to politely deflect contrarians and skeptics"

Learn about Al Gore's "climate crusaders" here.

Excerpts:

"...to date, more than a million people have seen that slide show, personally delivered around the world!"

More than a million served. It seems like an amazing statistic to the group, who are stunned to hear that there are now 1,700 trained presenters working in a dozen countries – over a thousand in the U.S. alone – and that the next big training session is scheduled for India in March.
...
We are not scientists. We are priests and teachers and mayors and professional athletes and country-western singers and software programmers and just plain folks, and the science can get pretty deep out there in the trenches when the nay-sayers jump up in the back of the room and scream that Antarctica is actually cooling, so global warming must be a hoax perpetrated by liberals!

So Jeremy and the other science advisors to The Climate Project are here with the data to re-focus us and make sure we get the story right – fearlessly and confidently, without backing down.

Is it fair to ask how this is funded?

More on that Northwest Passage misinformation

In this article dated 1/17/08, I noticed a number of qualifiers in this sentence:

The sea-weary crew of six with Dave Thoreson of Okoboji was halfway into the 73-day trek on the edges of the Earth, trying to become the first American yacht to travel east to west through the Northwest Passage.

The article also says this about last summer:

...six boats attempted passage - four successfully, although one was later lost in Alaskan seas.

Remember, last fall it was widely claimed that in 2007, the Northwest Passage was open for "the first time ever". So were the four boats in 2007 really the first ever through the Northwest Passage?

The answer appears to be "yes, except for maybe about 106 other boats".

Note these excerpts from a 9/19/07 BBC article:

In 1905, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first person to successfully navigate the Northwest Passage, in a wooden sailboat.
...
But since then, about 110 boats had successfully completed the trip, said Mr Semotiuk. Thirty of those were recreational boats, most of which completed the journey in the past decade.

More on this topic is here.

Google trend comparison

As a climate skeptic, I'm encouraged by the graph below, considering the massive push that "An Inconvenient Truth" should have gotten from all the favorable media hype, the Oscars, Al's Nobel Peace prize, etc.



Links to "The Great Global Warming Swindle" are here.

Sea level rise of 6 inches by 2050 in Puget Sound

Here.

Global Warming: The Coming Skeptic’s Revival

Here.

But maybe existing children could be "grandfathered in"?

Learn about "saving the world" by not having children here.

"New Energy Source May Turn Cars into Cash Cows!"

Here.

Any questions?

Climate Talk’s Cancellation Splits a Town

Here.

Excerpts:

Those who complained misunderstood the content of the talk, Mr. St. John said, but there was no time to explain to all of them that Dr. Running was a leading scientist rather than an agenda-driven ideologue.
...
...his presentation, “The Five Stages of Climate Grief,” ... was sponsored by the Sonoran Institute, an environmental group.

The first two of the five stages are denial and anger, Dr. Running said in the phone interview, so he understands the opposition to his addressing the students.

Google.org Announces Core Initiatives to Combat Climate Change, Poverty and Emerging Threats

Here.

A previous post on Page and Brin’s 'gargantuan personal Boeing 767' is here.

Peta says: Tax Meat!

Here.

Excerpt:

...the truth is that the meat industry is the leading cause of global warming.

Hubbard Glacier refuses to fade away

Here.

Excerpts:

As you read this, a rogue glacier is again threatening a small town.
...
Hubbard Glacier has been thickening and advancing since scientists first measured it in 1895.

(Via Junk Science)

The world according to Jim

Here.

Excerpt:

Certainly the further Jimmy and the lads extrapolate the warmer they can make the world seem but is there any point in pretending we can tell the temperature 1200 Kms from the nearest thermometer? That’s the equivalent of taking New York, New York’s temperature with a thermometer in Atlanta, Georgia.

Satellite-derived data suggests the world is at or near “average” while HadCRUT3, if their December result is consistent with the year’s trend, will come in at about 1 or 2 tenths above the 1961-1990 average. Meanwhile Jim guesses about temperatures 1200 Km from the nearest measurement and comes up with numbers 3-6 times higher.

For this kind of “science” we should re-engineer society? Seriously?

Global warming hysteria fading in Canada?

The subheading on this story caught my eye:

Almost half of those surveyed also endorse a carbon tax to fight climate change

Couldn't that also be written as "more than half of those surveyed do not endorse a carbon tax to fight climate change?"

Note the environment's 25 to 17 percent drop in six months here:

In Ontario, 16 per cent of those surveyed say the economy is the most important issue, just one percentage point behind the environment in importance.

Six months ago, only 5 per cent of Ontarians considered jobs and the economy No.1, compared with 25 per cent who pegged the environment as their first concern.

Now note the change over time in the "environmental issues" line the latest survey here (click to enlarge):



Note that "An Inconvenient Truth" was released in mid-2006.

Now check out the survey from about a year ago, which was entitled "State of Canadian Public Opinion: The Greening of Canada". Note the heavy emphasis on global warming, including the nugget that 73% of those surveyed thought that global warming was the result of human activity.

Why weren't those same global warming questions asked again this year?

Update: According to this survey, only about 25% of Americans agree with Al Gore on the environment.

Feel good air quality purchases can be costly

Here.

The rhetoric of climate and slavery

Check out the post and comments here.

Cold in Greenland and Israel

See this Greenie Watch post.

Excerpts:

While the rest of Europe is debating the prospects of global warming during an unseasonably mild winter, a brutal cold snap is raging across the semi-autonomous nation of Greenland. On Disko Bay in western Greenland, where a number of prominent world leaders have visited in recent years to get a first-hand impression of climate change, temperatures have dropped so drastically that the water has frozen over for the first time in a decade.
...
As the country contends with a cold wave that has left at least two people dead from hypothermia, Israel Electric reported this week that demand for electricity hit an all-time winter high of 9,900 megawatts late Sunday evening. The electric power station in Hadera is being pushed to capacity by the recent cold wave.

This prompted fears among consumers that IE may initiate a series of rolling blackouts to prevent the power system from shutting down. "I have a newborn baby at home and the thought of losing power in this cold weather is very unnerving," said one IE customer.

The End Of European Industry?

See the whole thing from Phil Stott here.

Excerpt:

We are coming to the crunch. Are we really going to wreck our economies for some computer games played by a small group of scientists? Boy, will they owe us if their Lara Crofts have got it all wrong!

Podcasts From AccuWx On Climate Change

Linked from here.

Statisticians global warming plea: don’t forget about us!

Here.

More on the upcoming global warming "Teach-In"

Here.

A previous post on this subject is here.

Murky world of carbon trading awaits an unsuspecting B.C.

Here.

Some details on carbon trading's failure in Europe are here.

Excerpt:

...the core issue really is that it hasn't reduced emissions. So, in the first year of it working, for example in the UK, emissions covered by the emissions trading scheme have actually gone up by 3.6 percent. So I mean that's the core of why it's failing and if you look at the reasons behind that, well, there are some reasons which are specific to the European scheme. But also over the last couple of years of experience in Europe it's become apparent that there are actually some pretty fundamental difficulties about running a cap and trade system. And I'm slightly concerned that a lot of the people who are advocates of cap and trade in the U.S. don't really realize how difficult it is to make these things work.

Gas giants' green windfall

Here.

Excerpt:

Just to add to the burden on British consumers, for the first time this quarter they will be able to see the impact of British and European climate change taxes on their bills.

This has added £64 to the bills at NPower, which was the first to increase its prices by 17.2% for electricity and 12.7% for gas.

Out of the green tax of £64, some £30 is the result of an EU fudge over carbon trading units and will add an astonishing £9bn a year of income to the big energy companies.

Ok, so there's a specific example of the cost of a global warming "solution". What, specifically, is the "benefit" to the world's climate?

Food fear beats climate change

Here.

Excerpt:

A WORSENING global food shortage is a problem far more urgent than climate change, top Australian scientists have warned.

So maybe we shouldn't burn our food in a ridiculous attempt to control the climate.

New test for developers in Maine: climate change

Here.

(Via the Junk Science blog).

New Paper on Normalized Hurricane Damages

Here.

Thoughts on Hansen et al 1988

Here.

Penn Gillette: Bill Gates Cares About Children, Not Global Warming

Here.

Climate Change Bill Faces Big Obstacles

Here.

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON — Energy industry officials on Wednesday said the biggest near-term obstacle to a federal climate-change bill is the huge sum _ trillions of dollars, by their estimates _ that will need to be invested to reduce the country's emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Russians Brace For The Big Chill

Here.

Excerpts:

Moscow, Russia (AHN) - Russians are bracing for temperatures of as low as minus 55 degrees Celsius (minus 67 degrees Fahrenheit) in Siberia as Russia's emergencies ministry warns on Wednesday of its impending dangers in the coming weeks.
...
Bloomberg reports that worst hit will be the Siberian region of Evenkiya, while neighbor Georgia, whose climate is subtropical, already plunged to as low as minus 35 degrees Celsius. Lake Paliastomi in the western Georgia froze for the first time in 50 years, reports Rustavi-2 television.

NR’s Goldberg: Global Warming Alarmists Tactics Akin to Fascism

Here.

Research tracks arctic warming's correlation to 'dirty snow'

Here.

Excerpt:

As much as a third of the warming trend in arctic regions is caused by "dirty snow," not by greenhouse gases, UC Irvine researchers say, a finding that could have implications for pollution control efforts across the Northern Hemisphere.

"Climate change, is democracy enough?"

Here.

Excerpt:

We are going to have to look how authoritarian decisions based on consensus science can be implemented to contain greenhouse emissions.

Update: A related post is at Coyote Blog here.

Excerpt:

...Anyone who makes this statement is WELL grounded in reality:

All this suggests that the savvy Chinese rulers may be first out of the blocks to assuage greenhouse emissions

LOLOLOL. They are building a new coal plant, what, every three days or so in China?

European Parliament Urges Three-Year Delay in Implementing Vehicle CO2 Targets

Here.

"Even the cheapest global warming bill ain't cheap"

Here.

Suffering from 'eco-anxiety'

Here.

Excerpt:

NORTH CAROLINA -- Former Vice President Al Gore isn’t the only one concerned about the environment, as more and more people are starting to become aware of global warming and experiencing ‘eco-anxiety.’

"People are afraid of the future, they're afraid of what's going to happen,” said licensed therapist Melissa Pickett, saying of one patient, "She brought up during the course of our session that she had just read an article about the polar bears and the loss of habitat and she started crying … she said 'I just don't understand this.'"

Pickett said fears about the environment are sending some people into a panic. The mental health disorder has grown enough to gain the ‘eco-anxiety’ name.

"It's causing them to feel anxiety, it's causing them to feel depression, it's causing them to have insomnia,” said general practitioner Cynthia Knudsen of patients.

More of U.S. grain crop to be consumed by family car

Here.

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Almost a third of the U.S. grain crop next year may be diverted from the family dinner table to the family car as fuel, putting upward pressure on food prices, a leading expert warned on Tuesday.
...
[Lester] Brown said that an SUV with a 25-gallon tank filling up with ethanol would use enough grain, about 560 pounds (254 kg), to feed the average person for one year.

Scientists see natural causes for greater hurricane activity

Here.

Obama to end climate change!

Here.

Afghanistan: Over 140 killed, dozens injured as winter bites

Here.

Excerpts:

Heavy snow and extremely cold weather have killed at least 140, mostly children and elderly people, and injured many others in different parts of Afghanistan, over the past two weeks, according to the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authorities (ANDMA) and provincial authorities.
...
Figures compiled by ANDMA show that almost 30,000 farm animals died in Ghor, Faryab, Saripul and Herat provinces.

Mother Nature Will Win

Here.

Excerpt (see the post for links):

In some crazy violation of Boston Globe editorial policy, this article (via TJIC) discusses weather without mentioning global warming. But it does demonstrate how crazy it is to declare that the condition of the Earth circa 1950 was "normal," and any change is somehow abnormal. The article highlights that change itself is the norm.

Looks like more than three feet to me

Will carbon dioxide emissions (from cell phone charger use?) really cause San Francisco to flood as shown here?

Computer Models Fail to Predict Climate

Here.

Excerpt:

Douglass and his colleagues write, "Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs."

"Incidental" middle school band music lends air of "importance and urgency" to alarmist press conference

Here.

The End of The World. Coming soon

See the Greenpeace video here.

Chicago Temperature Station Riddled with Problems

Here.

Excerpt:

In 1958 the station used a standard Stevenson Screen and mercury max-min thermometers. Today it is a completely different set of equipment in a completely different location in completely different surroundings.

Perhaps most important in determining whether the station's readings are comparable over time, the temperature station is now in proximity to a much larger and busier airport.

"Enviros cool to climate bill"

See the stories here and here.

It’s Water Vapour, Stupid

Don't miss the whole thing here.

Excerpt from a new paper:

...it seems probable that the larger water cycle controls the much smaller carbon cycle, not vice versa, and other limitations to plant growth, such as atmospheric carbon dioxide, nutrients, and temperature are likely superimposed phenomena.

"MoveOn Complains: 'Not Enough Global Warming Coverage!!!'"

Here.

It's Summer in the Southern Hemisphere - Time to Wheel Out the Melting Antarctic Ice Scare

Here.

Ice caps in the crocodile empire

Here.

Excerpt:

Needless to say, such a finding implies that the estimates of possible sea level rise - even in the case of hypothetical insane alarmist warming - would have to be scaled back a lot.
...
Let me add one more new article. In Journal of Geophysical Research, Petr Chýlek and three co-authors argue, among other things, that the Greenland melt is now actually slower than it was in the 1900s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. The available data see no signal - a man-made deviation from the normal natural rates.

The “curious transformation” of CO2 from a “cooling factor” to a “warming factor”

Here.

"Government is The Biggest Barrier to Alternative Energy"

Here.

Excerpt:

By the way, as a sense of scale, after 35 years of subsidies and mandates, renewables (other than hydro) make up ... about .27% of US generation.

Helpful dietary advice from a UN bureaucrat

See the whole juicy thing here.

Excerpts:

PARIS (AFP) — Don't eat meat, ride a bike, and be a frugal shopper -- that's how you can help brake global warming, the head of the United Nation's Nobel Prize-winning scientific panel on climate change said Tuesday.

The 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), issued last year, highlights "the importance of lifestyle changes," said Rajendra Pachauri at a press conference in Paris.

"This is something that the IPCC was afraid to say earlier, but now we have said it."
...
Since the Nobel was awarded in October to the IPCC and the former US vice president Al Gore, Pachauri has criss-crossed the globe [on a bike?] sounding the alarm on the dangers of global warming.
...
Pachauri also sees cause for optimism in the fact that, for the first time since the world's nations began meeting over the issue of global warming in 1994, "nobody questioned the findings of the IPCC."

Environmental control

See the Denver Post piece here.

Excerpt:

If light bulb bans and government-controlled thermostats are acceptable, why not the rationing of gas? Why not "manage" the times Americans vacation abroad? Why not dictate how many miles a person can live from his or her job? Why not decree that we all use public transportation? Why not mandate that businesses use teleconferencing instead of attending those conventions in the Bahamas or Las Vegas? Why are you living in such a large house? Do you really need all that space?

Solar heaters freeze in J'lem due to cold wave

Here.

Excerpt:

Hundreds of Jerusalem residents found themselves with no hot water or with water flowing through their apartments after the solar panels on their roofs froze over, a city plumber said Tuesday.

Kiefer Sutherland on global warming

Video here.

Update: If you can't view the video at the link above, try this one.

Try to pick out the storms that were caused by SUVs

(click to enlarge)


(Source: The Top 10 of Everything, 2007)

According to Wikipedia, the confirmed death toll from Hurricane Katrina was 1,836. That would imply that in terms of human lives lost, 20 simultaneous Katrinas wouldn't be disastrous enough to make the top 10 list above.

Comparison of volume of “Paris Hilton” vs “Britney Spears” vs “Climate Change” searches

Here.

Snowfall and freezing weather claim 120 lives in Afghanistan

Here.

Excerpt:

KABUL, January 15 (RIA Novosti) - The number of deaths caused by freezing temperatures and heavy snowfall in Afghanistan in the past few days reached 120 on Tuesday.

Heavy snowfall resumed today across the mountainous south Asian country, including in areas that have seen no snow for over two decades.

A total of 13 people died during the night, most of them buried under avalanches in the Daykundi and Ghor provinces in central Afghanistan. Two children froze to death in the northern province of Faryab.

Cold weather also caused an outbreak of an unidentified lung disease in Badakhshan, where 11 children died of breathing problems.

Odd claim by André Bornemann

Excerpt from this article:

...the planet is heating much more rapidly today than during the Cretaceous Period...

In my humble opinion, that statement is patently absurd.

There's wide disagreement over just how much (if any) the earth is heating now; how can anyone claim to measure decadal temperature fluctuations over an 80 million year period starting maybe 150 million years ago?!

The Ethanol Fallacy: Op-Ed

Check out this Popular Mechanics piece.

Excerpt:

It’s great that our politicians have discovered the need for new energy technologies. But it appears that Washington is determined to put its money—our money—on the wrong horse. Right now, researchers are studying a host of energy solutions, including hydrogen, high-mileage diesel, plug-in hybrids, radical reductions in vehicle weight and cellulosic ethanol (made from cornstalks, switchgrass or other nonfood crops). It is far too soon to say which of these holds the most promise. But, instead of promoting experimentation and competition to find the best solutions, politicians seem ready to declare ethanol the winner. As a result, our nation could wind up with the worst of both worlds: an “alternative” energy that is enormously expensive yet barely saves a gallon of oil.

(Via Coyote Blog)

Cost for Public Records on CD: $1,381.40

Here.

Excerpt:

They said the cost for their time in researching, reviewing and compiling was $44, but the "duplication costs" account for $1,337.40.

The Gates Foundation and global "warming"

I just read the Fortune article "Melinda Gates Goes Public" here.

There's a lot of talk about solving real world problems, but I didn't see any mention whatsoever of carbon dioxide, global warming or climate change.

See the "Where the Gates Money Goes" graphic here. Again, "global warming" or "climate change" are nowhere to be seen.

Why is that?

With assets of about $37 billion, the Gates Foundation is the world's largest. Note also that Warren Buffett has pledged to contribute another 40-odd billion dollars to this foundation.

You hear a lot about people lobbying to spend Other People's Money on global warming "solutions", so why aren't the two richest people in America buying into this? It seems quite unlikely that they've been paid off by Exxon, or that their "awareness" hasn't been raised, or that they just don't care about world problems.

Here's what I think: Buffett and Gates are too smart to swallow the media's ridiculous global warming hype.

NO to Wind Farm - appeal bid thrown out

Here.

Bold prediction from David Archibald

See the whole thing (dated June 2007) here.

From the summary:

The Sun drives climate change and it will be colder next decade by 2.0 degrees centigrade.

(Via Climate Science)

What can we learn about global warming from poor reporting?

Here.

EU considers banning the import of certain fuel crops

Here.

Excerpt:

PARIS: In a sign of shifting attitudes toward biofuels, European Union officials are proposing to ban imports of certain fuel crops whose production could do more harm than good in fighting climate change, according to a draft law seen Monday.

"Fred’s Footprint: When shooting bears is OK"

Here.

John McCain: Dim Bulb on Global Warming

The Big Question: Can biofuel help prevent global warming, or will it only make matters worse?

Here.

"Reality Deniers"

Here.

Excerpt:

I am astounded by the naiveté of those folks who seem to think there is some magic, non-polluting energy source out there that “Big Oil” has been hiding from us until all of the petroleum runs out. As these reality deniers continue to drive cars and fly in airplanes, they deny the fact that mankind’s dependence on oil is not out of choice, but necessity.

It makes me cringe when I see bloggers and pundits say things like, “What’s the downside of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions? Even if we’re wrong about man-made global warming, we’ll end up with better energy technologies and cleaner air. And if we’re right, we’ll save the planet!”

The only problem is, no matter how serious you think global warming will be, our current renewable-energy technologies and conservation will make virtually no difference to future global temperatures.

Record lows from Saudi to Syria, Iran and Iraq

Here.

Alleged Antarctic meltdown

Here.

Verification of IPCC Sea Level Rise Forecasts 1990, 1995, 2001

Here.

Excerpt:

The fact that the IPCC has been unsuccessful in predicting sea level rise, does not mean that things are worse or better, but simply that scientists clearly do not have a handle on this issue and are unable to predict sea level changes on a decadal scale.

Saying “No” When Everyone Else Is Saying “Yes”

Here.

Kentucky Legislator Warns Against Rash 'Solutions' to Global Warming

See the whole thing here.

Republican Lawmakers Skeptical About Global Warming Report

Here.

Excerpt:

HELENA (AP) – If the Legislature is to adopt any of the proposals in a state global warming report, it appears it is first going to have clear some skeptics.

The Climate Change Advisory Council's recommendations, 54 in total, received some pointed criticism Monday from some Republican lawmakers on the Environmental Quality Council.

"I don't think the state of Montana is the cutting edge that is going to fix this global warming crisis, if one exists," Rep. Craig Witte, R-Kalispell, told the head of the state Department of Environmental Quality.

James Hansen on One Year's Temperature

Here.

Puzzling stuff from William Calvin

I just happened to stumble across these paragraphs from William Calvin:

Back in 1968, when I first heard about global warming while visiting the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, almost everyone thought that serious problems were several centuries in the future. That's because no one realized how ravenous the world's appetite for coal and oil would become during a mere 40 years. They also thought that problems would develop slowly. Wrong again.

I tuned into abrupt climate change about 1984, when the Greenland ice cores showed big jumps in temperature and snowfall, stepping up and down in a mere decade but lasting centuries. I worried about global warming setting off another flip but I still didn't revise my notions about a slow time scale for the present greenhouse warming.

Greenland changed my mind. About 2004, the speedup of the Greenland glaciers made a lot of climate scientists revise their notions about how fast things were changing. When the summer earthquakes associated with glacial movement doubled and then redoubled in a mere ten years, it made me feel as if I was standing on shaky ground, that bigger things could happen at any time.

I'm sorry, but I just don't see any obvious relationship between American SUVs and Greenland earthquakes.

You really should check out his "Path To Climate Restoration" graph here.

See also his article "The Great Climate Flip-Flop" here.

Excerpt:

When 'climate change' is referred to in the press, it normally means greenhouse warming, which, it is predicted, will cause flooding, severe windstorms, and killer heat waves. But warming could also lead, paradoxically, to abrupt and drastic cooling — a catastrophe that could threaten the end of civilization.

Canada Inuit rap U.S. greens for polar bear campaign

Here.

Excerpt:

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Leaders of Canada's Arctic Inuit people denounced U.S. environmentalists on Monday for pushing Washington to declare the polar bear a threatened species, saying the move was unnecessary and would hurt the local economy.

Updated Chart: IPCC Temperature Verification

Here.

Sparsely-attended global warming protest in "chilly" Detroit

See some details at two different blogs here and here. (Note that both blogrolls contain "RealClimate" but not "Climate Audit".)

Some photos are here.

A couple of comments:

1. It seems a bit odd that they admit driving cars to an event that was supposed to send this message: “We refuse to drive cars that are driving global warming.”

2. If you're going to demand "100 mpg cars" or "zero emissions", I think you should also provide some technical expertise on just how this should be done. Sadly, I just don't think that Moore's law applies to automobile mileage.

Which Group do you Fall into?

Here.

Global Warming Skeptics Prepare for International Conference in New York

Here.

Excerpt:

Many of the presenters will provide written papers to supplement their presentations, which will be collected and edited for publication following the event. Other follow-up activities include planning for a follow-up conference in London in 2009, the launch of a scholarly journal, and publication of a rebuttal to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's recently released Fourth Assessment Report.

FTC Carbon Offset Investigation Previews Cap and Trade’s Imminent Failure

Here.

Excerpt:

Since virtually all economic activity produces some carbon, any effective cap and trade system would require legions of skilled technicians to monitor carbon reductions. These technicians simply do not currently exist. Furthermore, the leading seller of carbon credits last year was China and it is highly doubtful that if millions of scientists were ever trained, that they would have the access and freedom of movement necessary to do their job adequately.

Without the monitoring necessary to make sure carbon credit benefits are actually being produced, any cap and trade system will ultimately prove ineffective as unverifiable projects flood carbon credit demand with unverifiable supply. The only winners of a cap and trade system will be the lobbyists in Washington who rake in millions finding loopholes for their clients.

A typical day in the Stevenson Screen Paint Test

Check this out.

GM's ethanol play

Here.

Excerpt:

In an audacious move Sunday, General Motors demanded that the federal government step in and create a national ethanol fuel station infrastructure at the same time the company announced that it has invested in Coskata, a cellulosic ethanol startup company.

Australia's centre-Left government to fund a home-grown "green" car

Here (keep scrolling for some other good stuff).

Excerpt:

What a laugh! But half a billion dollars down the drain is not so funny. It's a prime example of how Green/Left governments are completely out of touch with business realities

Lutz: New fuel rules will hike GM vehicle prices by an average $6,000

Here.

Excerpt:

DETROIT -- General Motors Corp. Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said Sunday the new fuel efficiency requirements imposed by Congress last month would add $6,000 to the price of an average GM vehicle by the end of the next decade.

That's a more precise estimate than the one Lutz gave at the New York Auto Show in April.

"We've done even more research and it's going to be in the range of $4,000 to $10,000 with an average of about $6,000," Lutz said. "This is going to be a net average of cost of $6,000 per vehicle which will have to be passed onto the consumer. The good news is it won't come all at once, because 35 mpg doesn't kick in all at once."

"UK's top supercomputer to study climate change"

Here.

"EU rethinks biofuels guidelines"

See the remarkable BBC article here.

Excerpt:

Europe's environment chief has admitted that the EU did not foresee the problems raised by its policy to get 10% of Europe's road fuels from plants.

Recent reports have warned of rising food prices and rainforest destruction from increased biofuel production.

The EU has promised new guidelines to ensure that its target is not damaging.

EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said it would be better to miss the target than achieve it by harming the poor or damaging the environment.
...
"We have seen that the environmental problems caused by biofuels and also the social problems are bigger than we thought they were. So we have to move very carefully," Mr Dimas told the BBC.

HT: Jennifer Marohasy

A related story is here, entitled "Biofuels 'do more harm than good to environment' says Royal Society".

Excerpt:

Graham Wynne, of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said: “Today's report by the Royal Society makes it clear that these targets could fuel climate change, destroy forests and threaten livelihoods in developing countries. Our Government must take a lead in stopping this madness.”

Blame the greens when the lights go off

Here.

Verification of IPCC Temperature Forecasts 1990, 1995, 2001, and 2007

Here.

"Oh dear… Andy Revkin is still at it"

Don't miss this post at the Junk Science blog.

The "remarkable" resemblance between “Dr Thompson’s thermometer” and Michael Mann's hockey stick

Here.

"Survey shows eco-warriors are worst polluters"

Here.

"Anthropogenic Continental Drift: An Incoherent Truth"

See the whole thing here.

(Via Climate Skeptic)

"The Benefits of Global Warming?"

Here.

From the linked New York Times article:

When retired people move to a warmer state, their life expectancy rises dramatically. In fact, 8 to 15 percent of the increase in American life expectancy over the last 30 years comes from people moving to warmer climates, according to research done by two economics professors, Olivier Deschenes at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Enrico Moretti, at the University of California, Berkeley.

If life expectancy goes *up* in the case above, how can we explain the scary Washington Post graphic linked here?

NASA and the Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin team up on some shoddy climate reporting

Here.

Just a few comments:

1. Incredibly, the story makes no mention at all of satellite temperature measurements.

I completely agree with Climate Skeptic here:

It is just another reason why the surface temperature measurement system is crap, and we should be depending on satellites instead. Can anyone come up with one single answer as to why climate scientists eschew satellite measurements for surface temperatures EXCEPT that the satellites don't give the dramatic answer they want to hear? Does anyone for one second imagine that any climate scientist would spend 5 seconds defending the surface temperature measurement system over satellites if satellites gave higher temperature readings?

More on the non-alarming temperatures measured by satellites is here, here and here.



2. Note this odd claim:

While a 1-degree rise may not seem like much, it represents a major shift in a world where average temperatures over broad regions rarely vary more than a couple hundredths of a degree.

Where, when, and how was the data collected to back up that statement? Can we see this data?

3. At the top of the article, we see a picture of a ringed seal, with a note saying that its habitat is "threatened". Do we have any evidence that ringed seal populations are declining?

An excerpt from this page:

The most numerous subspecies is the Arctic ringed seal, P. h. hispida, found in all Arctic Ocean seas and in the Bering Sea, ranging as far south as Newfoundland and northern Norway. Estimates of the Arctic ringed seal population are difficult due to this species wide distribution, however rough estimates put the population between 2-7 million seals.

Note also that Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Extent is currently greater than it was last year.
---
Update: Two related posts are now up at Climate Skeptic.

1. "Isn't Gavin Schmidt Out on Strikes By Now?" here.

2. "Irony" here.

"Glaciers in the Greenhouse: Polar Ice Might Have Little to do with Global Warming"

See the DailyTech post here.

Subheading:

Researchers at Scripps find evidence that glaciers are tougher than we might think

What is the average lifetime of atmospheric CO2?

Excerpt from this post:

[See this story]

An emailed comment on the above:

Just incredible.

For one thing, where does Hansen get off calling PlayStation simulations "climate studies"?

For another thing - and this demands some focus - Hansen claims that a fifth of CO2 stays in the air for a thousand years. Okay, the IPCC puts each year's natural carbon emissions in the neighborhood of 200 billion metric tons. By Hansen's metric, this means that the oceans, dissolving rocks and plants will not see 40 billion of that till a thousand years have ended. Yet the IPCC also says that more than 98% of all carbon emissions - artificial and natural combined - are re-absorbed by oceans, dissolving rocks and plants each year.

So try to reconcile both of these models. Of the yearly 207 billion that go up (fresh), 166 come down (fresh and stale), plus 38, the tail end of the atmosphere's carbon contents before the First Crusade captured Jerusalem. Does that sound plausible?

What Hansen is implicitly foistering, of course, is that nature discriminates against artificial CO2 and leaves it in the air while the rest gets recycled normally. But nature would do just the opposite. Fossil fuels are rich in the very carbon isotopes that plants prefer, since fossil fuels are the remains of plants themselves. As for rocks, they'll dissolve under rainwater no matter which carbon isotopes it contains, and the ocean will continue to follow its complex cycles of CO2 absorption and emission.

10 years, more or less. Every empirical study puts that as the average lifetime of atmospheric CO2.

Snowfall and cold weather kill 52 in western Afghanistan

Excerpts from this article:

Recent snowfall and cold temperatures have killed more than 50 people in western Afghanistan, an official said Saturday.

"Today we got reports that 52 people have been killed and 17 others are missing just in Ghoryan and Shindand districts," said Farzana Ahmedi, spokeswoman for the governor of Herat province.
...
It was the first time in recent memory that snow and cold weather have caused such a high number of casualties in the province, Ahmedi said.

Another bit of global warming sanity from the New York Times

Excerpt from this article:

And nowhere is moralization more of a hazard than in our greatest global challenge. The threat of human-induced climate change has become the occasion for a moralistic revival meeting. In many discussions, the cause of climate change is overindulgence (too many S.U.V.’s) and defilement (sullying the atmosphere), and the solution is temperance (conservation) and expiation (buying carbon offset coupons). Yet the experts agree that these numbers don’t add up: even if every last American became conscientious about his or her carbon emissions, the effects on climate change would be trifling, if for no other reason than that two billion Indians and Chinese are unlikely to copy our born-again abstemiousness. Though voluntary conservation may be one wedge in an effective carbon-reduction pie, the other wedges will have to be morally boring, like a carbon tax and new energy technologies, or even taboo, like nuclear power and deliberate manipulation of the ocean and atmosphere. Our habit of moralizing problems, merging them with intuitions of purity and contamination, and resting content when we feel the right feelings, can get in the way of doing the right thing.

As an aside, the article mentions Norman Borlaug:

Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history.

Note that Borlaug is one of a large and growing number of skeptics on anthropogenic global warming.