Booker: Nasa is out of line on global warming

Nasa is out of line on global warming - Telegraph

It is still too early to suggest that the recent drop in temperatures shown by everyone but him is proof that global warming has stopped. But the fact is that not one of those vaunted computer models predicted what has happened to temperatures in recent years. Yet it is on those models (and Hansen's alarmist figures) that our politicians are basing all their proposals for irrevocably changing our lives.

"more data to indicate there is no link between the warming already and cyclones"

Rudd’s cyclonic hype | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

Diary of a planet-saver

Diary of a planet-saver | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

Do electric cars really cause "no pollution"?

Forum at Keystone College focuses on driving green | News | thetimes-tribune.com - The Times-Tribune

After putting 5,000 miles on it, all David Turock, Ed.D., has to do to service his 2003 Toyota Rav4 is rotate the tires and add windshield washer fluid. In fact, in terms of service, that’s all he will ever have to do to his electric vehicle, or EV.

“These cars cause no pollution, run about $40,000 to $50,000, need practically no service and go about 70 to 80 miles per charge,” Dr. Turock said.

Well, if this guy's getting electricity from Pennsylvania Power and Light, his car may be mostly powered by fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil:

Rudderless euphoria

Rudderless euphoria | The Daily Telegraph

The first Rudd-Swan Labor Budget was a net contributor to inflationary pressures and hardship for the average working family, but the real whack will come should the Government's draconian, ill-founded emissions trading system come to fruition.

ALthough Swan has indicated he expected unemployment to rise because of his first Budget, the numbers thrown out of work by Labor's ideological approach to the climate-change phenomenon will ensure that whole industries are laid waste and tens of thousands of jobs are shipped offshore to nations that couldn't give a fig for the Labor leadership's moral posturing.

China and India aren't going to take a skerrick of notice should Rudd, Swan and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong take the axe to the Australian economy to prove their green credentials to covens of doctors' wives and members of inner-urban Labor Party branches.

The populations of India and China aren't going to be persuaded that they should use less power or even green power.

They need more energy, they're determined to harness more energy, and their efforts to build their economies will swamp whatever piddling energy-reduction measures Rudd and his coterie force on the Australian public.

With the price of fuel oil still astronomical by historical standards, more coal-fired plants are being built in China and even across the oil-rich nations of the Middle East, despite Rudd's bleating to assorted world forums.

A caring government would be attempting to make things easier for the nation, not tougher.

MANGALORE: Brainwashed children express fear of trace amounts of natural atmospheric gas

Mangalorean.Com- Serving Mangaloreans Around The World!

MANGALORE July 27: When a fifth standard student K.C. Ninada expressed apprehensions abut the future of the earth during a road show on global warming organised by a school here, all eyes were glued to her. People, teachers and even media persons were stunned as she spoke about the issue.

Local television channels found her views to be worthy of recording and aired them thrice. This earth will not be available for next generation unless people control global warming, she said even as her facial expression suggested a genuine concern. She repeated the performance each time with equal concern.

A bit of reality intrudes on a puff piece about Chinese wind power

Khaleej Times Online - How China is backing the power of wind

Rising demand for electricity and tighter safety regulations in mines have driven up the price of domestic coal, which supplies 70% of China's energy needs. Domestic prices are now so high that many power plants in Guangdong and elsewhere in southern China import coal from Australia.­

This year, the big five utilities are bleeding money because coal costs have been steadily rising. They cannot pass costs on to their customers because of government regulation of power prices.­

Even so, wind energy produces a kilowatt-hour of electricity at about twice the cost of a Chinese coal-fired power plant. Even with the recent price rises, coal remains king in China. To meet the demands of the fast growing economy, power plants and factories burn two billion tonnes of coal each year, about a third of the world's total.­

This is why China has overtaken the US as the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and it is unlikely to fall back to second place for decades.­

Wind is also far less favoured than hydro-electricity. Take the dams out of the energy mix and renewables will barely manage 1% of all power generation by 2010 and only 3% by 2020 even in regions with well-developed grids. That is a low proportion compared with the world leader Denmark, which gets about 20% of its electricity from wind.­

More on "Burn Up"

The finger-wagging of Burn Up - Times Online

The finger-wagging about global warming was relentless and unabating, all couched in the comfy velour of the edge-of-history and watershed gibberish. The goodies were witty, brilliant, sensitive, imaginative, attractive, sexy and great dancers - rather, I suspect, like the scriptwriters. The baddies were, well,they were all American. This was film-making from the Soviet school of political subtlety, a childishly black-and-white premise, delivered with a patronising blog of a script, which overwhelmed the plot, pace, anything resembling a character and, finally, the audience’s sympathy. Last week, George Monbiot, The Guardian’s geography teacher, wrote that Channel 4 had done more environmental damage than any other organisation by showing its devil’s-advocate documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle. This was obviously before he’d seen this bloated, wasteful, gaseously hypocritical beached whale of a miniseries. Because it is this sort of toadying and special pleading that will poison the good intentions of the green movement. It’s not the arguments or the facts or the science that are in doubt, it’s the people doing the arguing. There is nothing like enough politically and socially committed fiction on television, but this dim, deaf drama was an object lesson in how not to make it; and the real inconvenient truth for the green movement is, as the old Jewish retail expression has it, in winning the argument they’ve lost the sale. They suffer the fatal flaw of being too smug to bear. There is a global resistance, not to the facts, but to environmentalists. It appears most of us would rather fry, drown or starve than be told what to do by a bearded git in sandals, and that’s a rather comforting and cussedly human truth.

Actually, there's a global resistance to the "facts" AND the environmentalists.

Very interesting stuff about BBC's "Burn Up" propaganda

Sinclair's Musings: Burn Up

In the first part of Burn Up, in particular, the Inuit are crucial to the story. A campaigner for their cause protests to the film's central character, Tom - head of Arrow Oil, and then, having lost in a legal case suing Arrow for climate change-related harms to the Inuit people, burns herself to death on the court's steps.
...
This film was shot through with anti-Americanism. The evil characters are portrayed wearing cowboy hats, getting teary eyed over faith healing TV and doing all the other things snobbish Europeans like to laugh at.

Their democratic process is portrayed as an utter joke. A Senate hearing falls to pieces in a flurry of sordid ad hominem. Their political parties have been bought by the oil firms. None of this reflects reality but it is a comforting way for Burn Up to write American resistance to the Kyoto-plus agenda off as venal. At the same time the programme potrays we British heroically promising to wreck our economy to satisfy the green agenda - at one point we even promise to send so much money to China that country will profit from restricting emissions.

Conspiracy theories

There are a breathtaking number of conspiracy theories in this film. The Department of Defense have a study that they're covering up which shows the harms of climate change and plans to take water from the Mexicans. The Saudis are concealing the fact they've pretty much run out of oil. Americans are killing anyone, even on the streets of London or in a hotel at the centre of a major international conference, who might let out the Saudi secret to prevent an oil shock.

However, the mother of all conspiracy theories is only revealed at the end. Apparently the reason the Americans aren't acting on climate change actually isn't an attachment to economic prosperity or even petty venality. Instead, they're hoping that climate change will kill all the poor people and then that will leave the Americans in a stronger geopolitical position. While it will hurt them they'll be the last ones standing.

Just when you think the Americans can't get any more evil it turns out they're actively plotting ecopocalypse! This is absolutely mad.
...
Burn Up is pure alarmist propaganda. If the Greens have such a strong case why do they have such a need to continually resort to such wild distortion?

Western States Economic Suicide Pact

Rob Kremer: Western States Economic Suicide Pact

A huge tax increase, the amount of which they will not estimate, with no pretense of even estimating how much or whether the tax would solve the problem that they claim requires the tax.

Madness!

Lots of good climate information

See the blogroll/etc on the right side here.

Obama on climate change: US needs to set example

Obama on climate change: US needs to set example - ExpressIndia.Com

Washington, July 26: Pointing out that an effective foreign policy requires building a consensus, the Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has said that a country like India will not look at the issue of climate change seriously unless the wealthy nations like the US are also looking at the matter similarly.

Population "expert" Paul Ehrlich: Still crazy after all these years

'We Are Running Out of Environment' - US News and World Report

You say that our energy supply is adequate. So what's the problem?
---
We're not running out of fossil fuels—we're running out of environment. We could go a long time if we could just burn up fossil fuels and dump the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We'd be in good shape at least for long enough to carefully consider our future. But when you see what's happening with the climate, you realize we can't do that. One of my colleagues went to Norway recently. She said it was horrendous to see global warming actually in action. Almost all the lakes they used to ice skate across in summer are gone. Everything is just melted. We don't have the time to continue what we're doing now and hope to change later.
---

Al Gore and the Crisis of Global Stupidity

Global Warming? Al Gore and the Crisis of Global Stupidity « Start Thinking Right

...“Global warming” is very likely not a serious problem for mankind (believe me, it’s a LOT better than an ice age!), but the real and growing threat of “global stupidity” looms larger than ever. And there seems to be no answer to this crisis.

Penn & Teller Expose What's Behind Environmentalist Hysteria

Penn & Teller Expose What's Behind Environmentalist Hysteria | NewsBusters.org

Particularly Lame 'Debunking'

XDA: Particularly Lame 'Debunking'

If you believe, as I do, that CO2 is merely an innocent bystander to natural warming and cooling, then there is no mystery, no reversal of cause and effect to be explained. Only if you believe, and your ilk have so programmed the models on which you rely for all the explanation, that CO2 increase must cause warming, is there a problem and, here, a half-assed explanation, which really comes down to 'because we say so.'

Sorry, no sale.

CSIRO heavy: don’t trust CSIRO’s scares

CSIRO heavy: don’t trust CSIRO’s scares | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

Art Raiche, former Chief Research Scientist of the CSIRO, says the organisation’s fear-mongering over climate change can’t be trusted...

Eden really was great, wasn't it?

Chance to know more and play smarter - National News - National - Sport - The Canberra Times

Global warming and changing weather patterns are things that previous generations didn't have to worry about...

Global Warming loon coming to St. Paul

Anti-Strib: Global Warming loon coming to St. Paul

Dr. James Hansen, the radical climate alarmist scientist behind Al Gore, is coming to speak at a seminar in the Twin Cities in a couple of weeks. It saddens me to see a respected institution like our Science Museum implicitly endorsing the man behind the greatest fraud in the history of Science. I plan to be there to present an opposing view during the Q&A. The event is Monday evening, August 11 at 7:30 PM at the Science Museum of Minnesota.
I might have to reconsider my support for the institution. I have supported the SMM for years.

The Latest Bogus Climate Change Study

Cheat Seeking Missiles » The Latest Bogus Climate Change Study

First, these are not real scientists. Matthias Ruth has a PhD in geography and is now working as an economist. He doesn’t have a clue about what causes climate change (or doesn’t), what its extent and duration will be, or what its probable impacts are - heck, he’s even using the much-discredited hockey stick model as the core data for each of the studies’ identical primers on climate change.

In short, he’s just a paid lackey who’s merely accepting other people’s models as true and running them through his own economic models and asking us to believe him because he works for a university think tank for hire. His colleagues on the study? Graduate assistants.

(Via Greenie Watch)

Forced to join the hollow dance

Forced to join the hollow dance - Opinion - smh.com.au

Not the least interesting thing about this is the shifting role of Professor Garnaut. He was brought onto the carbon train before the election to demonstrate Kevin Rudd's passionate commitment to fighting greenhouse emissions. But now Rudd is in government and Garnaut is pushing major action that might upset industry and voters, the professor is starting to look like an extremist. Before long, the Prime Minister will be able to position himself as the moderate and talk about saving us, not from climate change, but from Garnaut.

Wind turbines 'are ruining our quality of life'

Wind turbines 'are ruining our quality of life' - Telegraph

The majority of people living near wind turbines believe that the noise they make is ruining their health and quality of life, a report has revealed.

Neighbours also claim that the constant hum and the loud "whooshing" sound made by the blades in high winds is destroying the value of their homes.

A survey of people whose homes are situated within 1.2 miles of turbines has shown that three-quarters of them feel that the noise has damaged their quality of life while four out of five say it has affected their health.

"Climate and Weather" betting at Intrade

Click on "Climate and Weather" on the left side here.

"I was appalled at the blatant misuse of statistical data."

Think About It-Global Warming campaign - Billerica, MA - Billerica Minuteman

During this past school year my son had a block or session on global warming as part of his High School instruction. The instruction consisted of watching Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” video. No other material was addressed during the course of instruction. The fact that no opposing views were addressed during the instruction intrigued me. So I went down to our local Blockbuster store and rented Al Gore’s video and my family and I watched it together. As a person that has spent decades conducting research and studies I was appalled at the blatant misuse of statistical data.
...
In the case of global warming and the current Global Warming Solutions Act awaiting a vote in the House I would need far more information on what it really does and how it may affect the economy before I can support this initiative. Given the lack of serious scientific data and the current politicization of Global Warming I am very skeptical of the motives of any group that advocates the institution of new laws to address Global Warming.

A healthy dose of skepticism should be in order when encountering those collecting signatures and soliciting volunteers for the Environment Massachusetts campaign to stop global warming.

Homeowners living near windfarms see property values plummet

Homeowners living near windfarms see property values plummet « Blowing Our Tax Dollars on Wind Farms

Thousands of homeowners may see the value of their properties plummet after a court ruled that living near a wind farm decreases house prices.

In a landmark case, Jane Davis was told she will get a discount on her council tax because her £170,000 home had been rendered worthless by a turbine 1,000 yards away.

Estate agents have said no one is likely to buy the Jones's house, which was worth £170,000 before the wind farm was built - Homeowners living near windfarms see property values plummet

The ruling is effectively an official admission that wind farms, which are accused of spoiling countryside views and producing a deafening roar, have a negative effect on house prices.

It means many other families living in the shadow of the giant turbines could see thousands wiped off the value of their homes, as the Government pushes ahead with plans to build 7,000 more wind farms over the next decade to meet ambitious green targets.

Dennis Miller on Al Gore

FOXNews.com - Dennis Miller on Al Gore, Obama's Mideast Trip - Bill O’Reilly | The O’Reilly Factor

DENNIS MILLER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: He seems like a genial guy. He seems like a great husband, father, all of the things that really matter. He just seems politically insipid. And I'm always amazed at his ability to adjust the size of his pond.

You know, given his chance when he ran for the presidency in a time of peace and prosperity — and I think I screwed up all the "R's" there — America looked at him and found them wanting, so he adjusted the size of the pond that he speaks to and the caliber of the plankton. And now all of a sudden, he's an oracle. He's like the guy in the Tarzan movies or "Mutiny on the Bounty" who would, you know, amaze the locals with shiny objects or something.

But I just find it a little irresponsible what he does. When he said the debate was over as far as global warming, I stopped listening to him. He seems like a nice guy. I have no doubt he feels bad about the Tony Snow-Daily Kos thing. But I just find him to be a bit fatuous, politically.

O'REILLY: OK. Now, do you have any problems with his lifestyle vis-a-vis the global warming crusade? We got a ton of mail from people who live near him in Tennessee and say, hey, look, the guy drives around in an SUV. He's gas guzzling. He does the private jet thing. He's got a big boat that he whips around on a Tennessee lake. His house, as we all know, is a humongous house that uses a tremendous amount of energy. Do you have a problem with him in that regard?

MILLER: You know what? I don't think Al Gore believes in global warming to the extent that he — people think he does or even he might think he does. If he believed in it to the extent that he advocates and he flew — listen, I fly in a private jet whenever I can. You know, if somebody offers, I'm there, but I don't believe in global warming. Or I don't believe man's culpable in it. So if Gore really believes that, and he's still leading this lifestyle — and this is why I don't think he believes in it to the degree that people think — he would be a monster. And I don't think he's a monster.

O'REILLY: But if he doesn't believe in it, that makes him even worse. Because then he's profiting, by one account — I don't know. I can't possibly know this. He's made $100 million himself by the books and the movies and the lectures and all of these things of global warming. Now, if you're telling me that you believe that he doesn't even — you know, he's hyping it and is not as emotionally engaged as he appears to be, that would be even worse, would it not?

MILLER: No, not to me. It would be worse if he really believed he was doing the planet in, leading the lifestyle that he's living, and he still went ahead and did it. That's monstrous. This is just shallow. He's a bit of a shallow guy. Maybe the oceans should rise a little, because he's a little shallow, Al.

Barone: A Step Back From Enviro Lunacy

Michael Barone :: Townhall.com :: A Step Back From Enviro Lunacy

The time may be coming when our lunatic environmental policies are swept away by a rising tide of common sense.

This is supposed to be alarming, right?

Climate action in the Arctic | Acrtic, Climate change, Wildlife | TerraPass: Fight global warming, promote alternative energy

We set out by ship from Svalbard, a three-hour plane flight from Oslo, Norway — the closest land to the North Pole. There are no trees or bushes, even grasses on Svalbard — just lichens, mosses, and low-to-the-ground flowering plants. Plants raise their heads at their own peril given the Arctic winds and temperatures. We were there at the optimum time to see them flower. We saw many in bloom including the Svalbard poppy and the Compass plant. The top few inches of the tundra were unfrozen in July, though I don’t think the temperatures ever reached 40 degrees during our stay. The ground was a wonderful spongy carpet of brilliant colors.

We saw many polar bears that depend on summer sea ice, which is vanishing. One bear, having gorged a seal, was in a food coma, seemingly oblivious to the ship’s presence, sprawled out with his bear-belly hanging off him and onto the ice. We heard about another bear that was starving and weighed less than 200 pounds at one point. Luckily, she was caught months later and is now up to 1,000 pounds. We saw many caribou (also called reindeer). We saw cliffs with thousands of sea birds, seemingly all talking in unison. The sun never set on our entire exploration, which made for many late night discussions — helped along by a midnight feeding provided by the crew.

The sad decline and fall of "Voodoo Science" author Bob Park

What's New by Bob Park - Friday, July 25, 2008

4. UNCOOL: LOT OF HEAT FROM GLOBAL-WARMING DENIERS.
Suppose, I asked myself, that the deniers are right and the CO2 thing is a mistake? What will happen if the world takes the CO2 thing seriously, adopting common sense measures to counter anthropogenic warming and there never was any warming in the first place? 1) there will more non- renewable resources to leave to our progeny; 2) we will breath cleaner air and see the stars again, the way we saw them half a century ago; 3) we could stop paving over the planet, and 4) cut down on the number of billionaires. If we're wrong we could have a party. We could have a party either way.

Note how Park smeared climate realists here:

The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change held in New York, ended Tuesday. No, no, it wasn't that government thing; this one was sponsored by the Heartland Institute. No, I have no idea what the Heartland Institute is, or where it gets its money, but I can guess. Don't feel bad if you missed the meeting; a lot of people did. One third of all the scientists at the meeting thought the chilly temperatures in New York this week were evidence of climate cooling; one third thought it was just cold weather, and the other one said he had no opinion.

Also note how Park, evidently completely unable to debate Monckton on the science, instead went ad hominem on Monckton here:

1. GOOD LORD! GLOBAL WARMING DENIERS VANDALIZE APS.
Science is open. If better information becomes available scientists rewrite the textbooks with scarcely a backward glance. The Forum on Physics and Society of the APS exists to help us examine all the information on issues such as global climate change. There are physicists who think we don't have warming right, I know one myself. It is therefore entirely appropriate for the Forum to conduct a debate on the pages of its newsletter. A couple of highly-respected physicists ably argued the warming side. Good start. However, on the denier's side was Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, who inherited his father's peerage in 2006. Lord Monckton is not a scientist, his degree is in journalism and he's a reporter for the Evening Standard, an English tabloid. Whatever it is that Viscounts do, he may do very well, but he doesn't know squat about physics and his journalism suffers from it. Worse, somebody fed the media the line that Monckton's rubbish meant the APS had changed its position on warming; of course it has not. Few media outlets took the story seriously.

Salutations From the UK

LewRockwell.com Blog: Salutations From the UK

Writes Toby Baxendale: "Anyone under the age of 40 in the UK was taught at primary and senior school that we were going through a global Ice Age. Temperatures were all falling from the start of the last century to 1975-88 when I was at school. A map used to be shown to us how the glaciers of the last Ice Age of 10,000 years ago used to stop about 75 miles north of London. I was brought up thinking 'thank God, we may be in for a cold one, but at least I will be living in my own home.'

"So I seek advice: should I wait for the global Ice Age to happen before the impending Global Warming, or is the Global Warming going to happen first?

More from Andrew Bolt

Er, what super cyclones? | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

Why censor what you say is easy to disprove? | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

Nelson does his job. Now for the media | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

More links

Veepstakes

One alarmist on the ticket — and Sen. McCain is certainly that, as is Gov. Pawlenty, even if he seems to do it more as an image thing (which can't be said for McCain) — and the Republican base can probably hold their nose and pull the lever. But two of them, in my opinion, would cause an appreciable number of those voters to choke.

The Carbon Curtain - Forbes.com

So does the climate computer have a real audience, or is it really just another bag lady muttering away to herself in a lonely corner of the intellectual park? That the computer is heard in Hollywood, Stockholm, Brussels and even some parts of Washington is quite beside the point--they have far less global power and influence than they vainly imagine. Vinod Dar is right: "Contingency planning should entail strategic responses to a warming globe, a cooling globe and a globe whose climate reverberates with laughter at human hubris."

Planet Gore on National Review Online

The dust-up between Noel Sheppard and the humorless Gavin Schmidt continues.

Noel has the latest over at NewsBusters. Kevin Williamson covered the first round over on the Media Blog.

Rachel Carson - climate change expert (1950)

Who knew? Rachel Carson - climate change expert « Watts Up With That?

NOTE: For those of you who don’t know, Rachel Carson has often been hailed as the “mother of the environmental movement” due to her book, Silent Spring, which is said to have resulted in the banning of the pesticide, DDT, worldwide. Before that book, she wrote another, The Sea Around Us, in which she proposes mechanisms for climate change.

What is most interesting is that, unlike with DDT, there is no placing blame on climate change to human influence. The mechanisms she proposes are all natural, all cyclic variation. No human created chemical influence (CO2) is mentioned. I wonder what she’d say today? Would she flip-flop and go with the flow of the current CO2 movement?

Green Obama's Carbon-Fueled Trip

Planet Gore on National Review Online

The gas-powered Mercedes S600 gets 14 mpg. The kerosene-powered Boeing 757 guzzles 1,100 gallons per hour. We look forward to Obama’s next trip abroad aboard the solar-powered O-Force One.

Hansen oven unveiled

(Via Jim Peden)

‘The only certain thing is that the science is uncertain’

spiked | ‘The only certain thing is that the science is uncertain’

Lord Lawson on the difficulty of publishing a contrarian book on global warming and why huge cuts in CO2 emissions would be ‘madness’.

Is T. Boone Pickens 'Swiftboating' America?

JunkScience.com -- Steven Milloy, Publisher

Pickens told the National Journal that, "I think I would be for Al Gore for energy czar [in an Obama administration]."

Pickens said that he and Gore agree on about 95 percent of their respective energy plans.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited Pickens to speak before the Democratic Caucus.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says that, while Pickens was once a "mortal enemy," they are now friends because of the oilman's conversion to alternative energy.

Then there's Carl Pope, the head of the Sierra Club, who not only flies in Pickens' private jet but writes paeans about him on the liberal Huffington Post blog.

"T. Boone Pickens is out to save America," Pope wrote on July 3.

It would have been more accurate, perhaps, for Pope to write that "Pickens is out to make billions of dollars for himself and to save the Sierra Club's anti-coal, anti-oil, anti-natural gas agenda."

Lastly, the New York Times rhapsodized about Pickens in an editorial this week.

Pickens' involvement in the alleged swiftboating of John Kerry seems to have been forgiven and forgotten by the paper. But the Times went absolutely over-the-top when it observed that the billionaire Pickens wasn't in it for the money because "he doesn't really need it."

It's too bad we can't generate electricity from such hilarity, half-truths and hypocrisy. Pickens and his new friends could power us — as Buzz Lightyear might say — to infinity and beyond.

Milwaukee: Hot Air Tour Tomorrow At Miller Park

Boots & Sabers - The blogging will continue until morale improves...

At our event you will also learn about the serious threat global warming alarmism poses to our prosperity, including legislation being considered by Congress that would more than double gasoline prices.

The Value Of Paleoclimate Records In Assessing Vulnerability to Drought

Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group News » The Value Of Paleoclimate Records In Assessing Vulnerability to Drought: A New Paper Meko et al 2008

The significance of these observational findings is that the regional multi-decadal predictions based on the current generation of IPCC models should not be used by the impacts and policy making communities. The IPCC models fail to skillfully predict climate features such as drought, as exemplified in the figure from the Meko et al paper.

Q&A hosts a mass for global warming believers

Q&A hosts a mass for global warming believers | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

That’s debate, ABC style. A panel of four believers, asked questions by a host who is a believer, too.

"Democrats: White House must publish 'chilling' climate change document"

Nice choice of words by Barbara Boxer

Boxer decried the White House's decision not to release the full EPA proposal to the public.

"It is clear. It is chilling. It is detailed," she said to colleagues yesterday. "That information belongs to the American people and we must get it to them. Then they will decide whether we should act to prevent this coming crisis or sit on our hands."

Some Day Climate May Be A Big-Boy Science

Climate Skeptic: Some Day Climate May Be A Big-Boy Science

It would simply be bizarre for someone in physics, say, to argue that their findings were beyond question simply because it had been peer reviewed by a cherry-picked review group and to refuse to publish their data or detailed methodology.

Global warming: Half of you are skeptics.

SciGuy: Global warming: Half of you are skeptics.

I'm genuinely curious about the global warming views of my readers. Generally the comments here run toward skepticism. However, this being a science blog, one might just as easily assume a silent majority that wholeheartedly accepts the IPCC reports.

To find out I conducted a survey, and more than 400 of you responded.

Turns out there are more skeptics (51.4 percent) than those who accept global warming theory (35.6 percent). And 13.3 percent professed agnosticism. I suppose skeptics could be more prone to fill out such a survey, but since this is non-scientific anyway, let's just accept the results for what they are. And to me, they're interesting.

Former Greenpeace Founder: Wind and Solar not Feasible

Maggie's Notebook: Former Greenpeace Founder: Wind and Solar not Feasible

Wind and solar are inherently intermittant. We cannot run our hospitals and schools and factories on power sources that disappear for 3 or 4 days at a times.

John Pasquarelli: Big Brother’s big bucks for Global Warming cargo cult

The PRODOS blog » Blog Archive » John Pasquarelli: Big Brother’s big bucks for Global Warming cargo cult

The billions spent globally so far on espousing the apocalyptic predictions of global warming explains the involvement of so many scientists and large chunks of the media - this stuff is big bucks and makes New Guinea cargo cults and Nigerian scams look pretty small beer.

Being a sceptic attracts ridicule and even vilification and we are where we are without a proper and balanced debate. The man who was so drunk has left Penny Wong carrying the can on this one but the penny won’t really drop until those big domestic power and water bills come rolling in.

While we dither, it’s business as usual for China and India.

Hennessy: Who Else Believes Hansen a Fraud?

Who Else Believes Hansen a Fraud?

Hennessy: Northwest Passage Today

Northwest Passage Today

Labour Blues: ‘Green’ Taxes Scotched

Global Warming Politics 

In truth, ordinary folk are absolutely fed up to the voting booth with the Government raising taxes and costs in the name of airy-fairy ideas about ‘managing climate’; with so-called ‘green’ taxes that are retrogressive on the poor; with ill-judged retrospective taxes; and with self-righteous calls from the rich for everything to cost more. As the Glasgow East by-election so starkly demonstrates, the political outcome of all this carbon claptrap is inevitable, and it is quite amazing that Gordon Brown can’t see it...

Global warming and the lighter side of certain death

Opinion: RON HART: Global warming and the lighter side of certain death | death, warming, global : TheDestinLog.com

Here is a tip for anyone who has to deal with global warming zealots who try to convert you to their religion.

When they say that the Earth has warmed a half degree in the last 50 years or so, simply ask “Then what is the optimal temperature that you think the earth should be?”

For dramatic effect, I like to get out a pen and act like I am going to write down their number. Do not leave until they give you a number. Perhaps they get all Goldilocks and say that 59 degrees Fahrenheit is too hot, yet 58.7 is “just right.” This silly discussion will point out the absurdity of the global warming alarmists, and it mocks the myth that defines them.

My skepticism comes from two reasons.

First, I lived in Memphis for a long time where the Great Ice Age formed the Mississippi River, when glaciers melted and moved toward the Gulf of Mexico. This is the reason the Delta is so flat and such fertile farm land. The glaciers’ melting lasted from 75,000 to 12,000 years ago — well before Al Gore invented the Internet.

Oddly enough (and I can double check this), it was also well before SUVs roamed the land.

Second, these are the same environmental wackos of my youth who protested nuclear power as dangerous, thus keeping us from building any new plants for 30 years. By sheer incompetence and fear of challenging “science” as espoused by leftists, we ended up with all the coal-fueled plants we have now.

Swamps ("Wetlands") a ticking 'carbon bomb'

GREENIE WATCH

These guys send themselves up. After we hear what a bomblike disaster it is to destroy swamps, we read: "About 60% of wetlands worldwide have been destroyed in the past century". So how come nobody noticed the bomb going off?

A brief account of an aborted contribution to an ill-conceived debate

- Prometheus: A brief account of an aborted contribution to an ill-conceived debate Archives

"Labour faces being kicked out of office by angry motorists"

Motorist 'demonised' by ministers in drive to cut pollution, says top government advisor | Mail Online

Labour faces being kicked out of office by angry motorists if it continues to 'unfairly demonise' the car, a top Government adviser warned today.

Families are 'rebelling' against unfair car taxes, restrictions on their freedoms, and attacks on 4X4s and luxury cars by politicians and campaigners driven by 'ideological dogma' rather than hard-facts, Richard Parry-Jones claimed.

Anchorage may be facing 'coldest summer ever'

Gloomy summer headed toward infamy: Life | adn.com

The coldest summer ever? You might be looking at it, weather folks say.

Right now the so-called summer of '08 is on pace to produce the fewest days ever recorded in which the temperature in Anchorage managed to reach 65 degrees.

That unhappy record was set in 1970, when we only made it to the 65-degree mark, which many Alaskans consider a nice temperature, 16 days out of 365.

This year, however -- with the summer more than half over -- there have been only seven 65-degree days so far. And that's with just a month of potential "balmy" days remaining and the forecast looking gloomy.

(Via Marc Morano)

Peiser: A green miscalculation

A green miscalculation

Labour's fundamental miscalculation has been to bank on the strength of the environmental movement and climate change anxiety in an attempt to "modernize" its agenda. Labour's climate policy, however, is now backfiring, turning into one of its biggest political liabilities. A recent survey suggests that more than 70% of British voters are no longer willing to pay higher taxes to fund climate change initiatives. In fact, two-thirds of those surveyed believe that the green agenda has been exploited in order to increase taxes.

Britain's Labour government may believe that its climate policies are saving the planet. But in the process they are destroying the foundations of the party.

Bad luck, not global warming to blame

Bad luck, not global warming to blame - BostonHerald.com

It’s been odd, destructive and deadly, but climate experts say you can’t blame the brutal weather that has slammed New England on your neighbor’s SUV.

CO2 is racist

Medill Reports: Global warming more harmful to low-income minorities

WASHINGTON – Blacks are more likely to be hurt by global warming than other Americans, according to a report issued Thursday.

David Archibald sees cooling ahead

ICECAP

This is a Jan Janssens graph that I have annotated. Solar Cycle 23-24 minimum is tracking along with Solar Cycles 11 to 14 from the 19th Century. A 13.6 year length for Solar Cycle 23, equivalent to Solar Cycle 4, is within the realms of possibility. The reason why we are interested in the month of solar minimum is because it is the first physical sign of the potential amplitude of Solar Cycle 24, which in turn has climate consequences. It is apparent that Solar Cycle 23 is a long one. I agree with Jan Janssens’ spotless day-derived result of month of minimum being July 2009. If Solar Cycle 24 is as weak as I think it will be, then it will have a slow ramp up - much slower than the late 19th century cycles used for comparison.

This leads to another point. Solar cycles generally have four years of rise and seven years of decline. Solar Cycle 5 (the first half of the Dalton Minimum) had 6.9 years of rise and 5.4 years of decline. If Solar Cycle 24 mimics Solar Cycle 4 in this way, then year of maximum will be 2016, four years after the latest estimate from NASA’s solar prediction panel. There is another interesting parallel with the late 18th century. Solar Cycle 3 was an ultra short one at 9.2 years, much the same as Solar Cycle 22 at 9.6 years.

Climatic Impact: Each day’s passing of anemic Solar Cycle 24 sunspot activity reinforces the imminent cooling.

From a related Reference Frame post:

Rain in Perth. Who’d have thunk?

Rain in Perth. Who’d have thunk? | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

Have you noticed a pattern of the world refusing to do as the global warming models predict?

Johnny Depp to Power His Island on Solar Hydrogen System

Johnny Depp to Power His Island on Solar Hydrogen System | TakePart Blog Network

Four years later, Depp is now third in line to receive an independent solar hydrogen power system designed by New Jersey inventor Mike Strizki. The first two Strizki systems were the inventor’s own home, which sports a system that cost approximately $500,000 and a client in the Cayman Islands whose system will cost about half that. There’s no word yet on how much it will cost to fit Depp’s 35 acre island with the system. You can see a video about Strizki’s solar hydrogen power system below...

What if northern Illinois were to get as warm as southern Illinois is now?

Warming trend to cost Illinois billions, completely worthless study projects -- chicagotribune.com

If climate change is left unchecked, the costs to Illinois from flood abatement, water treatment, shipping, farming and related goods and services will skyrocket to at least $43 billion annually by the 2030s, according to a study released this week.

If only all the world could live like the Ethiopians

icSolihull - Small families 'more eco-friendly'

Universal access to contraception is needed to help fight climate change, it has been claimed.

A spiralling global population, with an annual increase of 79 million people, is driving up greenhouse gas emissions, John Guillebaud of University College, London, and GP Pip Hayes of St Leonard's Practice, Exeter, said.

And in an editorial in the British Medical Journal they raised the question of whether people in the UK should be told that stopping at two children is "the simplest and biggest contribution" that can be made to saving the planet.

The doctors said every person born adds to greenhouse gas emissions, with demand for food, fossil fuels, water and forests outstripping supply. And they pointed to research from the Optimum Population Trust which said that each new birth in the UK will be responsible for 160 times more greenhouse gas emissions than a birth in Ethiopia.

Coyote Blog: I Would Love to See This Happen

Coyote Blog: I Would LOve to See This Happen

San Francisco has a ballot initiative this November to seize all PG&E transmission lines and assets in the city such that all city power comes from a new government owned utility. Further, the initiative would require that this new entity get 100% of its power from renewables, particularly wind and solar, by 2040. It is similar to a 2001 initiative.

All due respect to PG&E's private property, but I would love to see this happen. If I were governor, I would be seriously tempted to encourage them to proceed, with the only proviso that no one else in California be allowed to sell electricity to San Francisco on the hugely unlikely possibility that there might be a day without sunshine in San Francisco. (I find it hilarious that San Francisco's solar future is trumpeted in the "fog city journal.") This might actually be a big enough disaster that even the media would have trouble ignoring its spectacular failure. It would also do wonders for the Arizona and Nevada economy, as major industries would move our way.

Canada: STÉPHANE DION’S grand environmental plan has failed to capture the public’s attention

Nova Scotia News - TheChronicleHerald.ca

...though his grand environmental plan has failed to capture the public’s attention – or imagination – so far.

According to an online poll, conducted for Canwest News Service and Global Television, and released earlier this month, only one-third of Canadians had even heard of Mr. Dion’s proposal, and 60 per cent of those were negatively disposed towards it. "Fewer than two in 10 named the carbon tax (as a key element). Only 2% heard that it’s a tax that is supposed to help the environment or stop climate change. And two big features of the plan – that it would be revenue-neutral and used to lower income taxes – were cited by 3%," the National Post reported.

New York Times, 1969: Expert Says Arctic Ocean Will Soon Be an Open Sea

NYT: Expert Says Arctic Ocean Will Soon Be an Open Sea « Watts Up With That?

Turnbull changes emissions trading stance

Turnbull changes emissions trading stance - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Malcolm Turnbull has abandoned his support for a 2012 start-up date for an emissions trading scheme, now falling in line with the Opposition Leader's position.
...
Speaking from Port Douglas in Queensland, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd again took the chance to label the Liberal Party as climate change sceptics.

"The problem with the Liberal Party is not its personalities, it goes to the core of its policies," he said.

"The Liberal Party's policies on climate change are rooted in one thing - denial."

Idiot may blow up a $60,000 S.U.V. "To Save the Planet"

Blowing Up a $60,000 S.U.V. To Save the Planet | Autopia from Wired.com

Ryan Mickle seems like a sane guy. He’s well spoken, intelligent and pretty successful. He’s also environmentally conscious, to the point that he realized he didn’t need his two-year-old Range Rover Sport when his job relocated him to San Francisco.

But that wasn’t enough for Ryan. Tired with what he calls an “incremental approach to addressing climate change,” he wants to make sure nobody else makes the same mistake he did: buying an inefficient car totally unsuited to his needs. A self-professed “believer in the wisdom of the crowd,” he launched onefewer.org to let online voters decide the fate of his car. Mickle promises his gas-guzzler will be taken off the road, never to emit another hydrocarbon.

Report from this morning's McCain campaign teleconference

Marathon Pundit: Report from this morning's McCain campaign teleconference

(McCain will) commit to using coal, our most abundant natural resource, burning it cleanly and sequestering the carbon. He's committed to building 45 new nuclear power plants in the United States between now and 2030, to provide a stable source of energy for not just those electric vehicles, but for small businesses and households that are going to face higher heating costs. And, over the long term, he's committed to an environmentally respectful policy of cap-and-trade, which will bring the United States into global leadership on the issue of global warming.

"So his policies are ones which recognize the real economic duress that people feel right now, take bold actions to address them right now and for the foreseeable future, relieve us forever of our reliance on imported oil...

"Stupidifying" Global Warming

Gotham Gazette - The Wonkster » Blog Archive » ‘Emotionalizing’ Global Warming

JWT New York, an ad team, has proposed leaving all of the lights on at night on the eighth floor of every building on Park Ave. “If both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melt, sea levels will rise 80 feet, or, in city terms, eight stories,” the group said in its proposal. The idea, which they dub “The Datum Line,” was the winner of the “Concepts” category of I.D. Magazine’s Annual Design Review. (Via Razor Apple)

"How insane are we that this scheme of Rudd’s is still being taken seriously by some?"

Rudd’s green plan will leave us in the dark | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

FOUR out of five power stations in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, both coal-fired power stations in South Australia and several generators in NSW and Queensland could close down under an emissions trading regime designed to meet even a modest greenhouse reduction target…

Even the lower target of a 10 per cent cut would push the price of carbon emissions to levels that would close down 15 per cent of the nation’s electricity generating capacity on the east coast and require $33billion in new investment in replacement clean energy generation, such as wind, solar, combined cycle gas turbine and geothermal power.

Kemm: India challenges global warming fears

India challenges global warming fears

India has issued a report challenging global warming fears. This is dramatic. The Indian Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change said that India would rather save its people from poverty than global warming, and would not cut growth in order to cut gases.

Referring to claimed changes in climate attributed to human activity, the report declares: "No firm link between the documented charges described below and warming due to an anthropogenic climate change has yet been established."

The report goes on to state: "It is obvious that India needs to substantially increase its per capita energy consumption to provide a minimally acceptable level of wellbeing to its people . . . India is determined that its per capita greenhouse-gas emissions will at no point exceed those of developed countries."

The Australian Herald noted that this declaration "means India won't stop its per capita emissions (now at 1,02 t) from growing until they match those of countries such as the US (now at 20 t)."

This Indian report was music to my ears. I have constantly said that developing countries cannot afford to let their school children do homework at night by candle light rather than by electric light, in an effort to save on electricity production, on the basis of the flimsy evidence presented in favour of man-induced climate change.

The believers are foul, Julie, but appreciate the sceptics

The believers are foul, Julie, but appreciate the sceptics | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

...But check Bishop’s blog again. See how many sceptics have written there? And note also the following: they are lucid and quote evidence, against the believers who are abusive and quote none. Even more interesting is that this is a debate being held on the blog run by The Age, which until a month ago would not even report the fact that the world hadn’t warned over the past decade. Some readers there say it’s indeed only over the past few weeks, having finally heard sceptics’ arguments, that they reconsidered their support for the theory of man-made global warming.

Reason can win this debate, at least among reasonable people. The problem so far is quite simple: not enough people have stood up to the warming alarmism and given courage - and facts - to the rest.

I’m glad that Bishop, with the help of The Age’s business editor, Michael Short, are now defying the mob. Would that more scientists did so.

More links

Heliogenic Climate Change: "Democrats' history of "no" on ANWR"

Two myths run through the Democrats’ ceaseless mantra. First is the “only six months" supply claim. They know this is a gross distortion. In fact there is oil equal to 16 years of imports from Saudi Arabia — more than enough to affect world petroleum prices. Second, it only takes 10 years to get the oil because of absurd permitting processes. We could, otherwise get the oil much sooner. The Alaska pipeline, an engineering marvel, was built in just 3 years."

Penn & Teller to mock climate fears and Gore on Showtime Thurs.

Consider it a certainty that the Climate Police will lock up Penn & Teller after Thursday's show. Not only does it feature interviews with some scientists who aren't totally sold on the idea that the Earth is toast, it whispers an even more inconvenient truth: A lot of the scariest global-warming tales are told by people who stand to make a buck by scaring you.

How about an atmospheric trust to slow global warming?

It's called an "earth atmospheric trust" or a "sky trust," and here's how it would work:

# Set up a worldwide organization, a trust, that implements a cap-and-trade system to control greenhouse gas emissions.
# Auction off the permits allowing greenhouse gas emissions, with revenues going to the trust.
# The trustees distribute some fraction of this sum back to the world on per-capita basis. This would give political cover to countries like India and China, while simultaneously giving them incentive to use the most climate-friendly energy sources possible. (It would also, it should be pointed out, provide for a wealth transfer, possibly a big one, from industrialized countries to developing countries.)
# Use the rest of the money raised to install renewable energy sources like wind in solar in economies where they might otherwise be judged too expensive.
...
...the sky trust would deliver a check for hundreds of dollars a year to every citizen of the world.

Megan McArdle (July 23, 2008) - Gored!

I know I'm late to the party, but I was on the beach this weekend with a malfunctioning wireless broadband modem, and by the time I was ready to make fun of Al Gore, Andy Revkin had done it for me. Don't get me wrong, I think that Al Gore has a hobby. I just think it's a pity that hobby is making a fool of himself in public. His speech on global warming is full of misstatements, exaggerations, and outright untruths. What's worse is that I'm sure he believes every word of it.
...
...when bold passes into lunatic, I think most sensible people just stop listening.

ecoEnquirer: NASA Satellite Discovers Massive Vegetation Die Off

(Greenbelt, Maryland) A new sensor on a NASA Earth-orbiting satellite has for the first time observed a global-scale die off of vegetation, a new article in Science magazine reports this week.

"We were amazed at the continental scale that this die off occupied", said Dr. John Jorgenson of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The relatively rapid change in vegetation characteristics was observed from late summer through the fall, when the multi-million dollar NASA instrument recorded a distinct change in vegetation color from green to various shades of yellow, brown, orange, and red.

Obama, tin foil hat firmly in place, addresses the Germans in Berlin

DRUDGE REPORT FLASH 2008®

As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.
...
This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands. Let us resolve that all nations -- including my own -- will act with the same seriousness of purpose as has your nation, and reduce the carbon we send into our atmosphere. This is the moment to give our children back their future. This is the moment to stand as one.

Africa: Summer frost blamed on global warming

allAfrica.com: Africa: Link Between Crop Failure And Climate Change Often Missed (Page 1 of 1)

Another consequence of climate change that affects food security in Africa is the increasing frequency of extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, hail and heat waves. These can be fatal to crops.

"A couple of years ago, I was in Lesotho during December. A sudden spell of frost destroyed much of the country's maize harvest," Ziervogel told delegates. "This is unusual for summer."

This Google search turns up a few more things blamed on global warming.

Moonbattery and Elitism

Planet Gore on National Review Online

It might be called the tree worshipping tradition. Modern global warming alarmism is a variation, and can be seen most clearly when proponents let slip the fact that it doesn’t matter whether it’s true because it will make us do the right thing: de-industrialize, adopt simple rural lifestyles, save the forests or re-forest, etc. What has happened is that Monbiot was earlier seen as a perfect caricature, but now is seen as an exemplar, even though he hasn’t changed at all. As O’Neill correctly notes, by once again claiming to be scientific the movement is becoming mainstream among the chattering class.

"Evidence of variability of atmospheric CO2 in the twentieth century"

Heliogenic Climate Change: "Evidence of variability of atmospheric CO2 in the twentieth century"

Ernst-Georg Beck: "Conclusion: Atmospheric CO2 concentration varies with climate, the sea is the dominant CO2 store, releasing the gas depending on multi-decadal changes of temperature."

Senate GOP hands Dems oil ultimatum

TheHill.com - Senate GOP hands Dems oil ultimatum

Senate Republicans have threatened to block nearly all other bills pending before the August recess if Democrats refuse to vote with them on expanding offshore drilling.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said bills that do not pertain to energy can wait until after the August recess, with gas prices now surpassing $4 per gallon. McConnell and top Republicans indicated Wednesday they would oppose any procedural votes to take up other legislation, which require 60 votes to succeed.

“We think there is nothing more important that we can do right now than to deal with the Number One issue of the country,” McConnell said. “This is the biggest issue since terrorism right after 9/11. People are pounding on their desks, saying, Why don’t these people get together and do something about this problem?”

The hardball tactics reflect Republican confidence that they can pull off a major election-year victory with gas prices at record highs, after they have been battered at the polls and have lost on several recent high-profile legislative battles.

(Via Heliogenic Climate Change)

Dismal sales for magazine "Green Issues" this year

Moonbattery: Green Fad Finally Running Out of Gas

Look for politicians to figure out sometime around 2012 that everyone stopped listening to bogus global warming sermons in 2008.

Climate Scientists Ready to Kill Polar Bears

Climate Scientists Ready to Kill Polar Bears | Skeptics Global Warming

It just doesn’t get any better than this. Climate change scientists on an expedition to the polar regions of Earth were given a crash course in shooting and a rifle in the event of a polar bear attack. Two problems with this: one, if the debate is over, why are we still drilling for core samples from the poles to study the climate over the last 100,000 years and two, if polar bears are the poster children of global warming, why even disturb their habitat because of reason number one?

Working the Green Corner

Planet Gore on National Review Online

So when you hear the cheerleading in support of legislation like Lieberman-Warner (or Lieberman-Murkowski, as the betting has its moniker for next year) — that “some of America’s greatest corporations support this!” — remember what they’re really saying. Like T. Boone Pickens, they have merely discovered the world’s second-oldest profession: making money off of policy favors from government, while redirecting resources from productive uses — at your expense and, often, at the environment’s as well.

"energy policy has emerged as the most potent issue in the [US Presidential] race"

McCain gains ground on Obama in Minnesota, poll finds

John McCain has gained ground on Barack Obama in Minnesota, while Sen. Norm Coleman is widening his lead over Democratic challenger Al Franken, according to a new poll.

A Quinnipiac University poll released today found that Obama leads McCain 46 percent to 44 percent among the state's likely voters, a statistical tie. That tossup result is at odds with other recent polls showing Obama with an average lead of more than 5 percentage points. A Quinnipiac poll last month found a whopping 17 percentage-point Obama lead.
...
In all four states, energy policy has emerged as the most potent issue in the race, outstripping the importance of the war in Iraq.

By a 49 percent to 41 percent margin, likely voters in Minnesota say a candidate's energy policy is more important than his policy on the war in Iraq. And voters say 34 percent to 26 percent, with 40 percent undecided, that Obama has the best energy policy.

Twelve more years to live

Twelve more years to live | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

Just 12 more years before we all start dropping from global warming diseases, thunders the Medical Observer...

"I’m not sure these eco-towns are demonstrating what was intended"

Not eco as in “economic” | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

Householders wanting to live in Gordon Brown’s pioneering eco-towns face service charges of more than £500 a year on top of their annual council tax bill.

Developers in several of the 13 proposed sites are planning to levy annual charges for subsidised bus travel and management costs to be paid to a local community trust.

The disclosure coincides with government proposals, to be published tomorrow, that only one person per household in eco-towns should drive to work. Developers will be expected to provide trams, buses, trains and jobs in a town to ensure that more than half of all journeys are made by bicycle, foot or public transport.

Residents would be expected to make a huge “behavioural change” to meet the targets and it is unclear who would fund the extra public transport.

Do Conservatives Hate Their Children?

David Strom :: Townhall.com :: Do Conservatives Hate Their Children?

The bottom line is pretty easy to understand: if the proponents of radically changing our economy get their way they achieve two of their most cherished goals: moving our economy dramatically toward socialism, and getting rich off of the inevitable government mandates and subsidies required at the same time.

So getting back to the original question: do conservatives hate their children? Of course not. But do liberals hate Conservatives' children? You be the judge.

April 2007: Greenpeace expert admits that CO2 is not the real target

MaddenPost: The Carbon Scrubber?

And proof this is a quote by a member of Green Peace: "There's no magic bullet to save us from the problem of global warming," said Kert Davies, a so called energy expert for Greenpeace USA in Washington, D.C. "Removing greenhouse gases so readily will not encourage people to develop alternate, renewable technologies, he said, and strive for energy efficiency."

The Global Food and Water Crisis

CO2 Science

Insanity is upon us, as real catastrophes lie at the doorstep, and as they are actually made worse by those who would fight imaginary ones. Truly, the situation is as described by an astute observer of some three-plus centuries ago:

The World ran Mad, and each distempered Brain, Did Strange and different Frenzies entertain

Michaels on Gore

Planet Gore on National Review Online

What is it with Al Gore? Why is he compelled to exaggerate climate change (excuse me, “the climate crisis”), and then to propose impossible policy responses? It’s like he’s inventing the Internet all over again!

OK, it’s pretty much standard rhetoric in Washington to say that if you don’t do as I say, there will be massive consequences. But to say, as Gore recently did: “The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk;” and: “The future of human civilization is at stake” — that’s a bit much, even for the most faded and jaded political junkie.

Here’s how Gore works. He’ll cite one scientific finding that shows what he wants, and then ignore other work that provides important context. Here’s a list of his climate exaggerations from his well-publicized July 17 rant, along with a few sobering facts...

Just be thankful it's "renewable"

What Would Happen if the Sun Disappeared? « Doug’s Darkworld

The Moral Case Against Global Warming Policies

The Moral Case Against Global Warming Policies

If all those who preach the gospel of global warming are really humanitarians, they would stop using government to do their bidding. The fact of the matter is that more people are going to be worse off and perhaps die due to our policies regarding an unproven scientific theory. Those who believe global warming is a crisis can act without using government force. Automakers have responded with hybrid vehicles, better gas mileage, and even all electric vehicles. No party is worse off because of these improvements and actions. That is the moral way to deal with global warming.

The World Is Powering Up While America Powers Down

Morning Bell: The World Is Powering Up While America Powers Down » The Foundry

While American oil consumption has grown only 15% since 1973, electricity use has shot up 115%. Right now the U.S. has 760 gigawatts of power to meet consumption. We will need 135 gigawatts of new capacity over the next decade to keep the lights on, but right now only 57 gigawatts of power are planned. No matter what Barack Obama and Al Gore tell you, alternative energy sources cannot meet demand. Solar is still only one-tenth as efficient as the cheapest fossil fuels. Today 97% of our electricity comes from fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro power. Wind provides 1% and solar .01%.

The rest of the world knows that green sources of energy are inadequate to keep their people out of poverty. That is why around the world, from Europe to South America to Asia, countries are building coal and nuclear power plants at a dizzying pace while also drilling for oil wherever they can find it. Meanwhile, the United States, crippled by an out-of-control environmental movement, is refusing to develop needed energy sources.

Vincent Gray: Evaluated computer models just invalid

Grow up, sceptics, see bigger picture | theage.com.au

As a result, the IPCC never "predicts" the future climate. It only "projects" it. A "projection" is a result of the particular assumptions made in a particular model, but it cannot be taken seriously unless it is actually successful. So far, no such model has ever been successful in predicting any future climate.

Obama's fossil-fueled campaign trip to Europe

Obama's fossil-fueled summer trip

A column of black BMW and Mercedes-Benz cars ferried the candidate to a private meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Overhead, a police helicopter kept watch. Some 700 police have been deployed during the visit, which lasts through Friday morning.

Couldn't this trip wait until it could be completely powered by wind or solar energy?

A related quote is here:

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said.

That's not leadership. That's not going to happen," he added.

(Via Pirate's Cove)

T. Boone is Getting on the Gravy Train

Hawaii Reporter: Hawaii Reporter

As with many other states Texas also has Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) as well as Renewable Energy Credits (RECs). These require electric utilities to have a fraction of its electricity (often 20%) be produced from “renewable” sources. This virtually assures under penalty of state law that T. Boone will have customers to buy substantial fractions of the energy he produces. Wouldn’t it be nice if all small businessmen had customers who, under the full force of state law, were required by law to purchase your goods and services. And they call it “free markets”. Windmill owners have such forced customers locked in by state law.

Another subsidy involves the remoteness of many wind farms and the subsequent need for additional transmission lines. Texas political leaders have mandated that additional transmission capacity will be built and that the costs be borne by electric customers in their monthly bills. This requirement amounts to another huge subsidy for the wind farm owners.

Texas has a wind mill arrangement similar to many other states that makes it hugely profitable for the owners, plus very costly to the customers, for an energy system which is notoriously and inherently unreliable. Because wind turbines are so unreliable, they cannot substitute for the reliable generating capacity required to meet growing electrical demand or to replace old generating units.

A nation which has an economy dependent upon the whims of low grade energy has an economy headed for collapse. Why would anyone want that?

Schleede properly concludes that the long list of huge subsidies of huge sums going to the wind mill owners who are only producing small amounts of unreliable energy, are very good reasons for eliminating the subsidies.

When the wind stops - the other side of the wind turbine argument

When the wind stops - the other side of the wind turbine argument - Telegraph

It is hoped that this article will do something to disperse the smokescreen put up by the BWEA and others.

One should bear in mind that individuals in the wind development companies and investors are making a considerable amount of money from over-subsidised onshore turbines.

They bear none of the incremental costs required to support an intermittent and, at times, virtually non-existent energy source.

This cost is borne by the consumers, as is the cost of the subsidy payments that make the investment returns for turbines so high.

It is little less than Government sponsored robbery of the poor for the benefit of the rich.

. Boone Pickens is hard-wired for subsidies

T. Boone Pickens is hard-wired for subsidies - FP Comment

If wind energy were a sensible economic investment, it would not need the lavish subsidies Pickens seeks

Uprising Against the Ethanol Mandate

Uprising Against the Ethanol Mandate - NYTimes.com

The ethanol industry, until recently a golden child that got favorable treatment from Washington, is facing a critical decision on its future.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is asking the Environmental Protection Agency to temporarily waive regulations requiring the oil industry to blend ever-increasing amounts of ethanol into gasoline. A decision is expected in the next few weeks.

Mr. Perry says the billions of bushels of corn being used to produce all that mandated ethanol would be better suited as livestock feed than as fuel.

Feed prices have soared in the last two years as fuel has begun competing with food for cropland.

“When you find yourself in a hole, you have to quit digging,” Mr. Perry said in an interview. “And we are in a hole.”

His request for an emergency waiver cutting the ethanol mandate to 4.5 billion gallons, from the 9 billion gallons required this year and the 10.5 billion required in 2009, is backed by a coalition of food, livestock and environmental groups.

Democrats Against Drilling

Democrats Against Drilling - WSJ.com

Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and other liberal leaders on Capitol Hill are gripped by cold-sweat terror. If they permit a vote on offshore drilling, they know they will lose when Blue Dogs and oil-patch Democrats defect to the GOP position of increasing domestic energy production. So the last failsafe is to shut down Congress.

Majority Leader Reid has decided that deliberation is too taxing for "the world's greatest deliberative body." This week he cut off serious energy amendments to his antispeculation bill. Then Senate Appropriations baron Robert Byrd abruptly canceled a bill markup planned for today where Republicans intended to press the issue. Mr. Byrd's counterpart in the House, David Obey, is enforcing a similar lockdown. Speaker Pelosi says she won't allow even a debate before Congress's August recess begins in eight days.

Climate Assessment Oligarchy - The IPCC

Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group News » Climate Assessment Oligarchy - The IPCC

Without new scientists leading the IPCC process as LAs and CLAs, the next IPCC report is doomed to continue to be completed by an oligarchy that is using its privileged position to advocate for a particular perspective on the role of humans within the climate system [the third hypothesis above]. The next IPCC report will not be a balanced assessment, but continue to be policy advocacy in the guise of a scientific framework.

There are signs the tide is turning against climate-change alarmists

There are signs the tide is turning against climate-change alarmists

If Premier Gordon Campbell's "green" gas tax succeeds in cutting carbon emissions, several readers have mischievously suggested, might it not trigger a devastating era of global cooling? Such a notion is entirely fanciful, since it would require evidence of the relationship between CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions and man-made global warming. And as we have seen, there is no such proof, merely a "consensus" about it.

Retired engineer disputes global warming threat

telegraphjournal.com - Retired engineer disputes global warming threat

SAINT JOHN - Global warming skeptic and retired chemical engineer Ian McQueen has spent the past 20 months trying to examine the veracity of the threat of global warming.

After sifting through reports for hours each day, he attempted to change the public's minds in a lecture at the Saint John Free Public Library Wednesday night.

"Carbon dioxide is not the bogeyman - there are other causes that are much more likely to be causing climate change, to the extent that it has changed," McQueen told a small audience.

McQueen was invited to speak by the Canadian Nuclear Society after letters and opinion pieces featuring his "moderately controversial opinions" ran in the Telegraph-Journal, society representative Mark McIntyre said.

"It's a challenge to everyone, to go home, do some fact-checking, and weigh both (former U.S. vice-president Al) Gore and Mr. McQueen's opinions," he said.

Bill Hennessy: "Dr. James Hansen of GISS is a Liar and a Fraud"

Dr. James Hansen of GISS is a Liar and a Fraud

Dr. Hansen purposely and with malice of forethought manipulates actual temperature observations in order to perpetuate a global warming hoax.

If I’m wrong, he can sue me. But he won’t, because he’s a fraud.

Glover: Scientists question climate change consensus

Whatever happened to the climate change consensus? | Features | The First Post

The trouble is that alleged scientific consensus has never been in more disarray. Not that we in Britain would know much about the increasing dissent in the international science community on climate change, because the British mainstream news media declines to report it.

The global warming debate heats up

The global warming debate heats up - Opinions from The Oregonian Columnists, Editorials, Letters, Blogs, Cartoons and More - OregonLive.com

Why, indeed. This past week witnessed the great breakup not of the icebergs, but of the global warming consensus. What's existed beneath the surface, apparent to those who dug, exploded into public view.

Save the whales by killing the whales to stop climate change that's killing the whales!

Greenpeace - Making Waves: Killing whales to reduce climate change? I don't think so...

However, the article does contain some interesting quotes, including one from Kunio Yonezawa, "a former IWC commissioner and now head of the Japan Overseas Fishing Association, also touts whaling as a green alternative to modern farming":

He claims "'it is a much better way ecologically in terms of climate change instead of (eating) land animals, particularly (when you consider) animal husbandry,'... To produce 1 kg of beef, it takes 18.4 kg of COe greenhouse gas emissions, whereas to produce one kilogram of whale meat it takes 2.9 kg of COe''.

Global warming Idiots: "Sunspot and temperature correlations do not prove causality."

Error Theory: Global warming Idiots: "Sunspot and temperature correlations do not prove causality."

They sure as hell do!

The claim that correlations between sunspot activity and global temperature do not imply causality comes from a pair of global warming religionists, enlisted by the American Physical Society to put down skepticism in the ranks about global warming dogma. It is a great example of how intellectually dishonest the eco-religionists are.

Sunspot activity leaves an isotope signature in the geologic record. So does temperature, allowing researchers to compare contemporaneous sunspot activity and temperature, going back many thousands of years. On every time scale, the level of solar-magnetic activity (aka sunspot activity, or the solar wind) consistently "explains" statistically about 90% of temperature variation. (The geological evidence is amassed for laymen in Fred Singer’s 2007 book Unstoppable Global Warming, every 1500 years, but none of this is new to professional climatologists.)

Do our religionists think that the temperature of the earth is somehow determining the level of solar activity? Do they imagine some mysterious third influence, driving both the solar wind and global temperature? Even when there is every reason to expect the solar weather to have all kinds of affects on global temperature? We literally live inside the sun's "atmosphere," its extended corona of solar wind. How could that NOT affect global temperature.

Even if the mechanism is not fully understood (though there looks to be a pretty good chance that Svensmark has it nailed), the existence and direction of causality are highly certain. This is as close to having "proof" as empirical science gets.

Hollywood's Carbon Footprint: Celeb Mag Slams Celeb Enviro-Hypocrisy

Debbie Schlussel

Union voices fears on carbon trade

Union voices fears on carbon trade | The Australian

AUSTRALIA'S biggest blue-collar union has raised concerns about the Rudd Government introducing a carbon emissions trading system without considering the likelihood of other nations lowering their emissions.

The 130,000-strong Australian Workers Union yesterday cast doubt on Kevin Rudd's "go-it-alone" strategy, after convening a special meeting with executives from high-emitting companies in Sydney to canvass a joint approach to climate change policy.

AWU secretary Paul Howes said his union remained deeply worried about the impact of an emissions trading scheme on local jobs if the response of companies facing financial penalties under a carbon reduction scheme was to shift their operations offshore.

Mr Howes said any scheme introduced for Australia should provide a special place for workers, even allowing valuable carbon permits to transfer to them if they were left unemployed after companies quit Australia.

Telepresence or no presence!

JunkScience.com -- Steven Milloy, Publisher

Yes! UK Environment Minister Attends Climate Change Summit in Sydney in the Morning -- and Is Back by Lunchtime - LONDON and SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - The UK Minister of State for the Environment, the Hon Phil Woolas MP, experienced time travel today as he delivered his keynote speech at the 2nd Annual Climate Change Summit in Sydney, Australia without leaving London. Appearing live in Sydney using telepresence technology, Mr. Woolas saved an estimated 60 hours of travel time and 6.2 tons of CO2 emissions on his air flight alone. (Marketwire)

We couldn't care less about alleged "carbon savings" but we thoroughly approve of the cost-saving example. In fact we think every climate conference and confab should be so attended by every attendee. Not only will this cut costs but it will virtually (sorry!) eliminate the perpetual holiday junketing to exotic locations of the rapidly expanding plethora of publicly-funded professional climate conference attendees.

JunkScience.com would like to propose an immediate ban on the physical attendance of these climate junkets.

Telepresence or no presence!

The Harsh and Inconvenient Reality of Gore’s Solar Power

The Harsh and Inconvenient Reality of Gore’s Solar Power « Global Warming: A Worn-Out Hoax

For the past half century, conversion of sunlight has been the future of electric power. In some die-hard circles (looney bins) conversion of sunlight will be the future of electric power, twenty years hence.

The utterly abysmal “efficiency” of photovoltaics is impressive, as long as
- there is no night
- the substantial energy to make the photovoltaic is paid for by government
- batteries are free and
- installation is free
- everybody lives at low latitude
- atmosphere at low latitude remains clear

For direct solar conversion, Arizona is nearly ideal, except for that nasty 34 degree offset (in North latitude) from the equator. (How unfortunate; we should all live at the equator). But solar conversion produces less than 1% of the electric power in Arizona, after 50 years of advanced scientific development.

Another essential ingredient to the success of photovoltaics in Arizona even WITH GOVERNMENT SUBSIDY is the invention of an efficient battery; and they’ve tried it all, including pumping atmosphere into a hole into the ground (popular especially among government bureaucrats who get a cut). Then there is the intermittency . . .