American Thinker Blog: Calling out warmist bullies

The liberal media have taken upon themselves the role of enforcers of Al Gore's global warming con game, resorting to insults to dismiss legitimate questioning of what is, after all, only a theory, one that has not been proven. It is very important to stand up and confront these bullies, challenging them, to defend their insults. The one thing that warmists fear most is a serious scientific debate. That's why they always fall back on the phony claim of "consensus" - a claim that makes no sense, as science is not decided by consensus, and as more and more scientists stand up and puncture the claim.

Professor Campbell strikes me as a man worthy of his institution. And that is saying a lot.

In frigid Bismarck, ND, they're nearly sold out of snow shovels. Meantime, the library has all 5 of 5 copies of Gore's AIT available to check out

Meantime, a short walk to the Bismarck Public Library reveals that all five copies of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth that the library has are available to check out.

American Thinker Blog: Was there a 'scientific consensus' on this?

...Modeling the ecosystem of an isolated island is child's play compared to modeling the global climate. And the scope of the catastrophe possible when intervening to wreck the world economy based on questionable, unverified models dwarfs the damage done to Macquarie Island.

"Nature bats last," as the old bumper stickers used to read. When Al Gore or an editorial writer claim they understand the world's climate future well enough to tank the world economy to prevent a hypothetical disaster, remind them of this incident.

Big Stone II Pushes Clean-Energy Alternative

...But environmentalists worry that carbon dioxide emissions from the plant will contribute to global warming. That could cost ratepayers a lot more than renewable energy like wind power if, as expected, the incoming Obama administration levies a cost on carbon emissions to discourage the use of fossil fuels in energy production.

Under the latest proposal by the utilities, however, Big Stone II could be built as an "ultra-supercritical coal plant," meaning it would burn hotter and more efficiently than a conventional supercritical plant, using less coal and emitting fewer emissions, said Mark Rolfes, the plant's project manager.

The plant also could be built with extra space for "clean coal technology" that could be installed later, proponents said. Such equipment could trap carbon dioxide and send it in a pipe to oil fields in North Dakota or Canada. It could then be pumped underground and used to push up trapped oil, Otter Tail Power CEO Chuck McFarland said.

"It would be the hybrid car of power plants," Big Stone II attorney Todd Guerrero told the five commissioners.

More from James Hansen: 2008 Global Temperatures (PDF)

...let’s assume that the solar irradiance does not recover: in that case, the negative forcing, relative to the mean solar irradiance is equivalent to seven years of CO2 increase at current growth rates. So do not look for a new “Little Ice Age” in any case! Assuming that the solar irradiance begins to recover this year, as expected, there is still some effect on the likelihood of a near-term global temperature record due to the unusually prolonged solar minimum. Because of the large thermal inertia of the ocean, the surface temperature response to the 10-12 year solar cycle lags the irradiance variation by 1-2 years. Thus, relative to the mean, i.e, the hypothetical case in which the sun had a constant average irradiance, actual solar irradiance will continue to provide a negative anomaly for the next 2-3 years.