More detail on the First Green President's seventh recent fossil-fueled vacation

White House wanderers tour Acadia | The Morning Sentinel, Waterville, ME

Arriving in a small jet before the Obamas was the first dog, Bo, a Portuguese water dog given as a present by the late U.S. Sen Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.; and the president's personal aide Reggie Love, who chatted with Baldacci.
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Air traffic at the small Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport in Trenton was shut down for the presidential arrival. A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter patrolled the air in anticipation of the first family's touchdown, and a pair of local fire and rescue trucks stood ready on an otherwise empty tarmac at the private air hangar.

The Obamas then traveled onto Mount Desert Island in a motorcade of at least 16 vehicles. It was led by two Maine State Police cruisers and included five black Chevrolet Suburbans.
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Surrounded and trailed by five smaller, faster Coast Guard boats as well as other crafts, the president cruised around Bar Island and Sheep Porcupine Island but turned around to head back into downtown Bar Harbor as a thick fog began to roll in.

The climate hoax in a nutshell: You know that money that was supposed to save our grandchildren from CO2-induced hellfire? Sorry, we spent it on some other stuff

Climate change chief clueless on euro loan | The Philippine Star

MANILA, Philippines – Climate Change Commission vice chairman Heherson Alvarez said he was unaware of the disbursement of the 150-million euro (roughly P10.5-billion) French loan that was originally intended to enhance the Philippines’ capability to deal with climate change but was used instead to plug the yawning budget deficit.

Alvarez, a former senator, said he never received any information about the loan and he only learned of its existence on June 23 in a meeting with officials of the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), which facilitated the loan.

After the IPCC famously blocked access to data and blocked access to review comments, Pachauri writes about the IPCC's alleged "commitment to transparency"

Climate Panel Clarifies Its Media Plan - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com

[Climate hoax promoter Pachauri] While the media have at times been critical of the I.P.C.C., I have a profound respect for their responsibility to inform the public about our activities. A free flow of information is a fundamental component of our commitment to transparency.

2007: IPCC Review Comments Now Online « Climate Audit

Well, here is a small accomplishment that I think can reasonably be credited to climateaudit. As we approach the due date for the NOAA FOI responses, IPCC has now put the review comments online. Enjoy.

Climate Feedback: McIntyre versus Jones: climate data row escalates

Jones's response of 21/02/2005 to Warwick Hughes's request for Jones's raw climate data:
"Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it."

It's a gem, a real sparkler — a fitting ornament to climate science, as practised, it appears

The Age of Stupid - Watch the Documentary Film for Free

Runaway climate change has ravaged the planet by 2055. Pete plays the founder of The Global Archive, a storage facility located in the (now melted) Arctic, preserving all of humanity’s achievements in the hope that the planet might one day be habitable again. Pulling together clips of archive news and documentary from 1950-2008 to build a message showing what went wrong and why, Pete’s exploration surfaces compelling footage and complex issues facing us in our world today. He asks: Why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?

YouTube - Al Gore has staff block camera shots of documentary filmmakers at book signing.

The filmmakers, Phil Valentine and Shayne Edwards, of the coming documentary, "An Inconsistent Truth", showed up to film Al Gore doing a signing of his new book "Our Choice". While the camera operators were filming, Vice President Al Gore had his staff try to block the shots by standing between him and the cameras.

Twitter / David Roberts [For a guy who fears that CO2 may kill us all, he sure seems to do a lot of unnecessary fossil-fueled travel]

I'm at my fourth airport in two days. Vacation rulez!

[Unnecessary travel via fossil-fueled planes, motorcades and boats: For a guy who fears that CO2 may kill us all, The First Green President sure seems to do a lot of unnecessary fossil-fueled travel]

But after speaking to reporters about the spill Friday, Obama left those matters behind, flying to Bar Harbor for a short holiday in this famous summer refuge for the well-heeled and well-known.
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The Obamas began with ride along a secluded park bike trail next to Witch Hole Pond, then motorcaded up a switchback road to the summit of Cadillac Mountain - elevation 1,530 feet - to take in a breathtaking, sun-drenched view of Frenchman Bay.

After a stop for ice cream in Bar Harbor, the Obamas boarded a National Park Service boat for a tour of the bay - only to have it cut short when clouds and fog rolled in, and rain threatened.

educate 150 000 students about taking action on climate change. | Pepsi Refresh Everything - Canada

Lights Out Canada equips teachers and students with information, resources and ideas on how to take action on climate change in their schools, homes and communities. Participants are not only provided with a scientific backgrounder on climate change (that has been edited by Dr. Andrew Weaver, leading author of the IPCC 2007 Report on Climate Change), but also a plethora of ideas for projects that students can take on themselves.

Over 122 000 students participated in 2010 and our goal is to break this record by reaching 150 000 students in 2011. We will collect 500 commitments to action from students and publish them on an interactive website.

Because we are a project by youth for youth, we have received significant media coverage in the past

Chinese firms cashing in on EU carbon trade | EurActiv

European industries are subsidising direct competitors in China and India by buying international credits to offset their carbon dioxide emissions, an NGO said in a new report.

EU companies spent around €860 million last year buying 78 million international offset credits (CERs) in order to meet their emission caps under the EU's cap-and-trade scheme.

Al Fin: Praying for Doom: A Compulsion for Peak Oil

Many of these runaway doomers are also active in movements to block the development of fossil fuels resources. As if afraid that their visions of doom may not prove out on their own, they step in to actively bring these prophecies of scarcity to depletion through political means.

NOAA’s Jan-Jun 2010 Warmest Ever: Missing Data, False Impressions | Watts Up With That?

It is clear from the following sections that NOAA performs manipulations to create false impressions from the data, including assigning temperature increases were there is zero data.

- Bishop Hill blog - The police inquiry

One Climategate inquiry we still haven't heard about is the police investigation into the release of information from CRU. It is rather extraordinary that nine months or so into the investigation, there is still no news on what the nature of the offence, if any, actually is.
...
One would hope that having expended £55k they would have worked out the nature of the crime they are investigating.

[Settled science?]: RealClimate: Revisiting the Younger Dryas

Recently another hypothesis has been put forward: The Younger Dryas, instead of being a freak occurrence, is instead a key (and normal) part of the deglaciation process.

The Hockey Schtick: Dr. Roy Spencer: open to possibility a major error may have been made on CO2 causing warming

In a new highly recommended post today by Dr. Roy Spencer he states, "Adding more [CO2] “should” cause warming, with the magnitude of that warming being the real question. But I’m still open to the possibility that a major error has been made on this fundamental point. Stranger things have happened in science before."

Report on Chicago Field Museum climate [hoax] exhibit with photos

Download Articles

Downloadable report on Chicago Field Museum climate exhibit.

YouTube - Environmentalist Debunks Man Made Global Warming

This video is directed at those who believe in man made global warming, and is intended to show you an angle that you probably haven't heard in the debate so far. My position is based on logic and science, not blind belief, so if you disagree with my statements you will need to use logic and science to make your point. Please don't make comments claiming I base my world view on Fox news... I don't own a tv at all, so this would be a ludicrous, and failed attempt of a ad hominem attack. (I say this because I have seen the kinds of comments that are posted on videos like this in the past).

Global Warming Scam : 2010 is Not the Hottest Year | MND: Your Daily Dose of Counter-Theory

But aside from the normally expected counter-analysis to warmist claims from those who are actually scientifically competent, there is a particular phrase in the new promo that immediately catches my attention – on record.

What record?
...
One of the most important facts discovered in relation to Climategate was that East Anglia’s Phil Jones went to great effort to falsify temperature records throughout the world, asking its caretakers to replace their data with his fake data and for permission to present his fake data as original data from them. The United States, NOAA included, was not on the very short list of countries that said no. (And while we’re at it, NASA – i.e. the godfather of the global warming hoax James Hansen at Columbia – is also not on that list.)

The Climategate conspirators have all gone back to work as if nothing happened. Warmers are once again using their products as talking points for government take-overs. Are they really expecting the rest of us to believe any of it? (Keywords: “hockey stick”, “trick”, “hide the decline”)

Ethanol gets skewered by recent CBO assessment | Grist

In its calm and measured way, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just delivered a blistering assessment of the environmental value of corn-based ethanol.

The CBO had been charged by Congress to calculate just what the public is getting for its investment in ethanol production: specifically, the $0.45/gallon tax credit that gasoline blenders get for mixing ethanol into the fuel supply. In 2009, 10.8 billion gallons of corn ethanol got used in such a manner, costing the federal Treasury $5.16 billion in reduced tax revenue.

What did we get for that fat wad of cash, in environmental terms?
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1. Subsidizing corn-based ethanol is an mind-numbingly expensive way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Using the friendliest assumptions possible (note that some prominent researchers argue that ethanol actually generates more GHG emissions than gasoline), CBO reckons that by supporting ethanol through the tax break, taxpayers are shelling out about $750 for every metric ton (2,205 pounds) of carbon kept out of the atmosphere by ethanol.
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2. Corn-based ethanol is really just a clever way to convert natural gas and coal into car fuel.

The CBO report states the case bluntly: "Because the production of ethanol draws so much energy from coal and natural gas, it can be thought of as a method for converting natural gas or coal to a liquid fuel that can be used for transportation."

The CBO is referring to the fact that it requires lots of energy to convert a bushel of corn into engine fuel, and most ethanol plants are powered by natural gas; the rest by coal. And that doesn't account for the vast amount of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer needed to grow the corn in the first place. Synthesizing nitrogen, too, requires huge amounts of natural gas.

Al Gore Saved The Ethanol

[Gore] "I was also proud to stand up for the ethanol tax exemption when it was under attack in the Congress -- at one point, supplying a tie-breaking vote in the Senate to save it. The more we can make this home-grown fuel a successful, widely-used product, the better-off our farmers and our environment will be."

YouTube - Survival Stories from the Front Lines as Journalism Migrates from the Front Page to the Home Page

[One hour video] Andrew C. Revkin is one of the most respected and influential journalists covering climate change and other global environmental issues.

One More Look at the Coming Cooling « An Honest Climate Debate

[Joe Bastardi video]

The Climate Sceptics Party Blog (AEC Registered): Climate Movie for Young People

Joanne Nova (http://joannenova.com.au/ ), an experienced science communicator, will be the principal script writer and the anchor person. The documentary will feature Lord Monckton, Prof. Ian Plimer, Prof. Peter Ridd, numerous other Australian and overseas experts as well as some teenagers and older “young” people. We will use animated graphics and humour to keep young viewers interested.

Emissions talk set to be lively | New Zealand

The scheme has also drawn a wide variety of response from several Timaru Herald letter writers, who have labelled the scheme, a "scam" and a "con".

[Left-winger]: Don’t Worry About The Utility-Only Cap: It Can’t Pass Anyway | FDL News Desk

If you have no faith in the environmental community to protect clean air, and believe they will sell out to get something they can call a carbon cap, I have good news for you: there’s no way it can pass. Republicans are heavily invested in opposing what they call a “cap and tax” program, and now we learn that Ben Nelson will join them. He’s probably not alone on the Democratic side – the coal-state Senators aren’t going to like anything that singles out their industry, even if a few utility companies support it. I think the utility-only cap represents a last gasp to get some kind of price on carbon, but there’s just no appetite for it.

American Pulse(tm) Survey

While President Obama continues to talk about climate change, the issue isn't as high on the radar of Americans as the economy, jobs and border security (22.2% say it's an important issue) so consequently, 55.2% say resources should not be allocated towards Cap and Trade, rather they should be focused on getting the economy back on track. (29.7% say resources should be concentrated on the issue and 15% don't know.)

Dishonest attack ads a growth industry in battle for hearts,minds

Those who deny the evidence don't present counter-evidence of their own -- they launch attack ad campaigns filled with discredited arguments and disinformation.

The "C02 is Green" campaign trots out the old chestnut that the climate is cooling, not warming. According to real, empirical evidence, it's warming. On Thursday, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, stated that "last month's combined global land and ocean surface temperatures made it the warmest June on record and the warmest on record averaged for any April-June and January-June periods."

The campaign's web page also repeats the misleading argument that more C02 in the atmosphere is good for plants. It's true that plants need carbon dioxide for growth and that increased levels of C02 will help some plants grow faster. But it's a simplistic argument that ignores the droughts, floods and extreme weather events that come with climate change.

Novelist Ian McEwan says Americans are 'profoundly bored' by climate change - Telegraph

“Some of [the critics] were moaning that the novel had no plot and was formless, someone else was moaning that there was way too much plot. I think, though, that I caught America in a mood of profound boredom about climate change. They just didn’t want to hear about it any more, they were sick to the teeth. I think there was a strong element of that.”
...
“At the same time, there are some very good sceptics out there. Sceptics are completely different from ideologically-driven deniers, who have no evidence but have interests to protect. It’s a very important distinction to make. Some of my best friends are climate change sceptics. The denial camp are really not scientists at all, they are very well-funded, particularly in the States, and they have specific agendas.”

Sorting Bangladeshi disasters from the fact or myth of climate change | The Australian

Rising floodwaters and other evironmental problems cannot be simply blamed on the impact of man-made climate change

Dru's Vues, too: Tennessee Democrats forgo Jackson Day chicken to fund campaigns

Biden elicited wild applause when he said of Al Gore, "He is making as significant a contribution to the world as any man in the United States of America."

Global Warming’s Golden Moment Has Passed - HUMAN EVENTS

Environmental fads falling out of fashion are nothing new. Overpopulation yielded to acid rain, which yielded to saving the ozone layer, which yielded to preserving the rain forest, which yielded to global warming. Each succeeding cause provided its advocates a redemptive, world-saving mission, and tautologically, depicted its opponents as devil figures bent on allowing the destruction of the planet. The self-flattery inherent in the causes, more so than the science behind them, explains their widespread popularity.

What has separated global warming from its trendy antecedents has been its staying power. Global warming became the subject of congressional hearings and magazine cover stories in the late 1980s. Whereas proponents of the green cause of the moment, once it had been sufficiently discredited, could quickly move on to the next fleeting cause without losing face, global warming, because of its multi-decade endurance, is different. The likes of former Vice President Al Gore, NASA’s James Henson, and Hollywood’s Laurie David, as they say in poker, are “all in.” Evidence against the theory becomes an acid test calcifying the commitment of the true believers.

[Arctic sea ice update: Where's that death spiral?]

2007: Warming "expert": 'Arctic is screaming' - Seth Borenstein - msnbc.com

WASHINGTON — An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years.

Air Conditioners Banned in the Global Warming Nanny State - by James M. Taylor

Sure, the Washington Post article claims, people used to make it through summers without air conditioning in years past. People also used to make it through life without electricity, indoor plumbing, and anesthetic – but that doesn’t mean we should welcome a return to those times, either.
...
Give the article points for honesty, though. There is no way intermittent solar and wind power, which requires huge amounts of land development to produce only a small amount of unreliable electricity, can power our modern society. Cutting carbon dioxide emissions 83 percent, or anything even remotely approaching 83 percent, will require Americans doing much more than merely paying the exorbitant price increases required by solar and wind power. It will require a fundamental and foreboding restructuring of our entire way of life.

- Bishop Hill blog - The Guardian debate [very long and detailed report]

Atomic Hairdryer has produced this report of the Guardian debate.
...
He pointed out during Oxburgh interviews with Jones and Briffa, no transcripts or minutes were taken, and the very short time between their interviews and the report being written and published. He said post publication, a reliable source had informed him that Jones admitted during interview that "it was probably impossible to do the 1,000 year reconstructions with any accuracy". This comment was not included in the Oxburgh report, despite it being the most contentious issue wrt the Hockey Stick debate. Steve contacted Oxburgh to ask for this to be included, getting the response that "the science was not the subject of his inquiry". He then spoke of Phil Willis reaction to altering the terms of reference and accusing the university of "sleight of hand"

Suzuki: You know that cause that I've dedicated my life to? *Nothing* would please me more than to have it exposed as complete BS

[Climate hoax promoter David Suzuki]: Science delivers repeated blows to deluded deniers

Meanwhile, evidence that fossil fuel emissions contribute to dangerous climate change just keeps building.

We use the term deniers deliberately. People who deny overwhelming scientific evidence without providing any compelling evidence of their own and who remain steadfast in their beliefs even as every argument they propose gets shot down do not demonstrate the intellectual rigour to be called skeptics.
...
Of course, the deniers will ignore the evidence. Nothing would please us more than if they were right. Life really would be easier if fossil fuels like oil and coal did not cause environmental damage or pose risks to life on our small planet. But this is the real world, with real scientific evidence pointing to the urgent need to make changes in the way we live and get energy.

Precious stuff from believers Revkin and Flatow on NPR: They suggest that climate realists are "conspiracy theorists" who are "immune to evidence"

[...and maybe climate realists have brain problems, and maybe they believe the Grand Canyon was caused by Noah's Flood!] : NPR

Mr. REVKIN: Well, you know, for those who are dead set to oppose any restrictions on greenhouse gases, Climategate will never be over. They're going to keep - that reverberating echo chamber of the blogosphere will keep asserting that this episode fundamentally eroded understanding, you know, the idea that we have a clear picture of a human warming climate. And that's all -that's not going to change, just because there are people who are immune to evidence.

In many corners of polarized discourse these days, people pick the evidence that suits - or sometimes manufacture evidence that suits an agenda. Unfortunately, there were enough snippets within this body of stuff, you know, several megabytes of emails and other things, to provide conspiracy theorists with lots of fare(ph) for a long time to come.
...
Jim: My question is, has the hockey, the so-called hockey stick graph, has that been discredited?

Mr. REVKIN: ...the main thrust of that work has been repeatedly replicated by other groups of scientists.

So the idea that we're in a period of unusual warming in the last 50 years has not been erased.
...
FLATOW: And, you know, people, I think naysayers, they have a left brain -what they call a left brain, right brain problem, you know? The political side of their mind is now clashing with the logical side. You know, they could see you up in the North Pole pictures of you showing there's no ice anymore up there in the summertime and say, wait a minute, but my political side says that shouldn't happen.
...
FLATOW: Yeah. I've always thought that to be true, you know? If you believe that the Grand Canyon was caused by Noah's flood, not much anybody's going to tell you, you turn you around? You'll find the data.

Temperatures plummet across Argentina

BUENOS AIRES PROVINCE, Argentina (CBS) - A polar air mass settled in Argentina the week of July 13, pushing temperatures down across the country and causing rare snowfall in the Buenos Aires province.
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Street vendors ran a swift trade in hats, scarves and gloves as rumors floated around that snow might fly in the capital. A snow in 2007 in Buenos Aires, the first in 89 years, touched off euphoria amongst residents.

Energy Bill Down From The Sky - IBD - Investors.com

Democrats have radically scaled backed their hopes for a comprehensive greenhouse gas bill, to the point where it is iffy that the legislation will limit emissions at all.

In fact, the tide has rolled so far against their efforts that they are now mulling requests from utilities for regulatory exemptions — in other words, rolling back provisions of the Clean Air Act.

Iraqi Veterans Join Environmentalists in the Oiled Gulf - TIME

Think Al Gore or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just made up global warming? Then listen to Pentagon, which is already preparing for a warmer world.

How Obama can wean the country off oil without help from Congress | Grist

The stimulus package passed in 2009 included $32.7 billion for the Energy Department to tackle climate change, and some of that money is now being dispersed to business and federal agencies.

Twitter / Andy Revkin

RT @scifri: @revkin suggests as #agw primer the online book "The Discovery of Global Warming" by Spencer Weart http://bit.ly/eXq41

Twitter / Kate Sheppard

"The only person in America not running from the heat this summer is LeBron James." -- Ed Markey, on record heat this summer.

Lake Tahoe ski areas report 2nd busiest season in history

The resorts cited the increases to the copious amounts of snow of snow that fell (more than 600 inches in some cases) which also allowed some of the areas to operate starting around Halloween and running through the Fourth of July.

The Global Warming Guessing Game - IBD - Investors.com

Though they were exonerated by probes that whitewashed their lack of honesty and openness in their research, it's clear the climate scientists whose e-mails were made public last fall were engaged in an effort to perpetuate the man-made global warming myth. The politics of the climate change issue is the only plausible explanation for their behavior.

Al's Journal : [Fraudster from Nashville takes fossil-fueled trip to LA; watches a movie]

I had an opportunity to see when it premiered in Los Angeles last Tuesday: "Inception".

Do yourself a favor and see it! It is, in my opinion, a real work of genius by the writer and director, Chris Nolan, with brilliant performances -- especially by my friend and fellow environmentalist, Leo DiCaprio -- incredible special effects, and a truly great musical score by Hans Zimmer.

Warner Brothers devoted the proceeds from the "Benefit Premiere" to the Alliance for Climate Protection -- so you could say I am biased.

The Flying Prius - Newsweek

the International Air Transport Association says many “modern aircraft” already have gotten to the point where they get 3.5 liters per 100 kilometers per passenger, while one person driving alone in an actual 2010 Prius will burn up 3.8 liters to travel the same distance.

EU Referendum: Not irony

A wind turbine at an Olympic sailing venue in Dorset, we are told, has blown over in high winds. The turbine, in the car park of the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy in Portland, collapsed early on Thursday as high winds hit the coast.

Dorset, it seems, is not having a happy time with its windmills. Not very long ago, Southwell Community Primary School in Portland was forced to turn off its machine after it developed birdicidal tendencies and slaughtered at least 14 birds in the past six months.
...
McLeod said they had tried everything to stop the carnage but had no choice but to shut the turbine down. He said: "We've got the ideal location for wind power but unfortunately seagulls kept flying into it." And he can't even get rid of their bird chopper. Because of the grant conditions, it has to stay on site for five years or the school has to repay the money.

Climate Change Fraud - Why Are Climate Alarmists Getting More Alarmed About CO2?

Clearly, these folks are making assumptions that give them what they want ... and ... they get it when they want it. Thus, their results should not be trusted, especially when they provide the primary reason for altering the way the entire world produces the energy that is required to run the engines of industry that support the planet's modern civilizations.

That stuff that makes roses grow and bread rise: It's allegedly like a chronic disease, and also like nuclear waste, and like cheesecake!

[More nutty claims at "Scientific" American]

The average temperature of the planet for the next several thousand years will be determined this century—by those of us living today, according to a new National Research Council report which lays out the impact of every degree of warming on outcomes ranging from sea-level rise to reduced crop yields.

"Because carbon dioxide is so long-lived in the atmosphere, it could effectively lock Earth and future generations into warming not just for decades and centuries, but literally for thousands of years," atmospheric scientist Susan Solomon of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who chaired the report, said at a July 16 press briefing held to release it. She compared CO2 to cheesecake: "If I knew that every pound of cheesecake that I ate would give me a pound that could never be lost, I think I would eat a lot less cheesecake."
...
Regardless, the report notes that the planet has entered a new era, dubbed the Anthropocene, "during which the evolution of the planet's environment will be largely controlled by the effects of human activities, notably emissions of carbon dioxide." Hayhoe, for one, compares this report with a doctor's visit for Earth—the chronic disease being human-emitted carbon dioxide. "Many of us have had the experience of going to the doctor and receiving advice on how to improve our health by making wise lifestyle choices," she notes. "It's up to us to decide how much we are willing to change."

[In case you missed it]: Report claims that trace amounts of CO2 may lower US corn yields by 15%

“We have to think about [carbon dioxide] much more like nuclear waste than, like say, smog or acid rain,” explains one of the world’s top atmospheric scientists, Susan Solomon, Senior Scientist for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

Cha-ching: Another $55 million to be blown on the climate hoax

UCSD, partners get $55M for climate research - SignOnSanDiego.com

Scripps Institution of Oceanography, long a leader in studying changes to the climate, will get six state university partners as part of a new $55 million federally funded push into research about global warming and coastal ecosystems.

BP Shares Held In 'Socially Responsible' Funds - WSJ.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704682604575369283220573508.html

But the BP incident highlights big differences in how socially responsible funds prioritize various causes. Some of these managers considered BP's stance on climate change a strong positive. "BP was the first to break the logjam on climate change policy" and had been a leader on alternative energy, says Mark Regier, director of stewardship investing for MMA Praxis.

Deutsche Bahn blames heat nightmare on climate change | Germany | Deutsche Welle | 16.07.2010

Rail operator Deutsche Bahn blamed global warming for the air-conditioning problems on its older ICE trains on Friday. But critics have pointed the finger at misfiring plans to float the company on the stock market.

Killing the green wave | Lorrie Goldstein | Columnists | Comment | Toronto Sun

Most people understand what an independent public inquiry is.

Except climate scientists and politicians.

Goodwin Opposes Cap-and-Trade Bill « The Washington Independent

Carte Goodwin (D-W.Va.) hasn’t even been sworn in as a U.S. senator, but he’s already making waves. First, his colleague-to-be announced that he’d be voting for the long-delayed unemployment benefits extension. And now Goodwin has come out against the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, saying the House bill and the Senate climate efforts “are simply not right for West Virginia.”

If climate change didn’t exist, Obama would've had to invent it - The Globe and Mail

Mr. Obama is not and never has been another Al Gore. While the environment has figured among his issues, at least since his emergence on the national scene, it has never ranked foremost.

Consider, for example, The Audacity of Hope, the schematic presentation of his political program composed while he was in the Senate. Mr. Obama worked hard on the book (so hard his aides worried about him) and it remains the foremost exposition of his thought. It contains nine chapters, each devoted to a key theme. There is no chapter on the environment. Indeed, the very thorough index lists just seven references to “environmental issues,” of which six prove to be mere mentions in passing. It surprised me, as I suspect it would most readers.

27,000 Potential Leaks

[Fraudster Al Gore] These are 27,000 potential environmental catastrophes waiting to happen. We need action now - not only to make sure these wells are safe, but also to move away from fossil fuels, so no more wells need to be drilled.

Department of Energy and Climate Change reveals £34m cuts to low-carbon tech programme | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Wind, geothermal, bioenergy, and low-carbon buildings fund all have budgets cut as Whitehall faces squeeze

Britons urged to count trees to fight climate change

ONDON (Reuters) - A British museum is urging the public to record trees in parks, streets and gardens as part of a three-year survey to uncover how climate change is affecting the environment.

Tom Toles - Unthinking cap

For everyone else, the climate debate has been for decades now about the degree of conclusiveness of the evidence, measured against the practicalities of reducing carbon output. Now, the evidence [what evidence, specifically?] is massively supportive (the scientists' e-mail "conspiracy" has been debunked, please be aware). But because the pro-carbon people are still unprepared to reduce carbon in ANY meaningful way, they are cornered into a position where they have to argue that there is NO compelling evidence. And so that is the position they take.

So let me be the first to haul out the heavy artillery of WWII analogies on this issue and call the climate legislation obstructionists the Neville Chamberlains of the planet. We have SUV's in our time. If there is a current issue on which people are absolutely discrediting themselves, in a way that current science and future calamities will hold them accountable for, this is it. "If this is responsibility, I'll take it!" Well, you've got it. --Tom Toles

'Brown Dogs' complicate climate [hoax] plan - POLITICO.com

President Barack Obama’s next big legislative priority — a comprehensive energy and climate bill — sits in limbo in no small part because of wavering senators from his own party.

About a dozen Democrats — from the Great Plains, Midwest, Appalachia and the South — continue to resist the idea of putting a cap on greenhouse gas emissions.
...
“I’ve never been a huge fan of cap and trade or call it what you want,” Pryor told POLITICO on Thursday. “What I’ve told everybody is that I would at least wait and see what they get on paper before I make a decision, but I do have concerns about it.”
...
“I don’t see it,” said Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska. “You never say never here because somebody may change their mind. But I won’t be one of those people changing my mind.”
...
“How many times over the past years have I said that these particularly newly elected Democrats aren’t really excited about going home and saying, ‘Aren’t you proud of me? I voted for the largest tax increase in history,’” said Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and a skeptic on the science linking man-made emissions to global warming.
...
Still, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a longtime advocate of climate legislation, said Thursday that raw politics have convinced her that the votes won’t be there this year.

Obama Showers Green Stimulus. . . on Corporate Korea? - Planet Gore - National Review Online

Detroit – In the latest stop on his “Recovery Summer” tour, rock star President Barack Obama landed in Holland, Michigan, on Thursday, insulted its congressman, handed American stimulus dollars to a Korean corporation, and proclaimed Obamanomics a success even as Michigan has lost 94,000 jobs since his Recovery Act was enacted.

All in all, another day in the life of an increasingly unpopular president who seems to be living in an alternative universe.

Exceptional year for western Sierra Nevada wildflowers

A combination of a high snow pack and a late spring has resulted in wet meadows, dry slopes and stream sides exhibiting simultaneously exceptional floral displays this year.

On the effect of a new grand minimum of solar activity on the future climate on Earth

[Alarmist Stefan Rahmstorf] The current exceptionally long minimum of solar activity has led to the suggestion that the Sun might experience a new grand minimum in the next decades, a prolonged period of low activity similar to the Maunder minimum in the late 17th century. The Maunder minimum is connected to the Little Ice Age, a time of markedly lower temperatures, in particular in the Northern hemisphere. Here we use a coupled climate model to explore the effect of a 21st-century grand minimum on future global temperatures, finding a moderate temperature offset of no more than −0.3°C in the year 2100 relative to a scenario with solar activity similar to recent decades. This temperature decrease is much smaller than the warming expected from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the century.

Global warming: Our Readers conduct Part 2 of the interview with John Christy

J.C. Regarding the Hockey Stick, I indicated on the record in 2001 that I thought it was not a good representation of NH temperature over the past 1000 years. I am even more convinced of that statement now that studies have shown it was based on a poor mathematical technique which inappropriately gave weight to proxies which were not good representatives of temperature (among other problems.)
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Q: What is your best guess for the percent of global warming seen in the 20th century due to CO2 and aerosol emissions from humans?

J.C. CO2 acts to warm the atmosphere and aerosols act to both warm and cool the atmosphere. I can only guess (I say guess because no one knows - i.e. there is no thermometer that can measure the cause of a temperature change). Using the UAH temperature trend of +0.14 C/decade since 1979 I would guess a quarter to a half of that amount is due to the net of CO2 and aerosols.
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Q: How would you change gov. funding for climate research?

J.C. Observations, observations, observations. Reduced emphasis on modeling.

Van Jones: 'Higher Energy Costs Are Unavoidable'

Of course, Jones loves hyperbole like the other climate change prophets. “If we do nothing, the ensuing climate catastrophe will wreck our economy — including wreaking havoc on our food production systems. All credible scientists agree on this point.”

Instapundit » Blog Archive » [With no oil spill in the Gulf, how many dead animals would have been found?]

ANIMAL AUTOPSIES IN GULF yield a mystery. “The vast majority of the dead animals that have been found — 1,866 birds, 463 turtles, 59 dolphins and one sperm whale — show no visible signs of oil contamination.”

Climate Lessons: Wiping the Floor with Albert Gore: sensible DVDs or videos on climate for use in schools

It is a criminal offence to show Gore's propaganda piece, 'An Inconvenient Truth' in schools in England or Wales, without at the same time pointing out some of its more blatant errors or deceptions (1). Elsewhere in the world, there may be no such protection afforded to pupils and staff.

Susan Solomon thinks you're stupid: Report claims that trace amounts of CO2 may lower US corn yields by 15%

Near-Term Emissions Decisions and Long-Term Climate Impacts: Research Council Report Released

NEAR-TERM EMISSIONS CHOICES COULD LOCK IN CLIMATE CHANGES FOR CENTURIES TO MILLENNIA; REPORT ESTIMATES IMPACTS FROM VARIOUS LEVELS OF WARMING

WASHINGTON — Choices made now about carbon dioxide emissions reductions will affect climate change impacts experienced not just over the next few decades but also in coming centuries and millennia, says a new report from the National Research Council. Because CO2 in the atmosphere is long lived, it can effectively lock the Earth and future generations into a range of impacts, some of which could become very severe.
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* 5 percent to 15 percent lower yields of some crops, including U.S. and African corn and Indian wheat, per degree Celsius of warming.
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Susan Solomon* (chair)

CO2 in the atmosphere: It's *not* "long-lived"

The correct evaluation of the CO2 residence time -- giving values of about 5 years for the bulk of the atmospheric CO2 molecules, as per Essenhigh's (2009) reasoning and numerous measurements with different methods -- tells us that the real world's CO2 is part of a dynamic (i.e. non-static) system, where about one fifth of the atmospheric CO2 pool is exchanged every year between different sources and sinks, due to relatively fast equilibria and temperature-dependent CO2 partitioning governed by the chemical Henry's Law (Segalstad 1992; Segalstad, 1996; Segalstad, 1998).

[Iowa State: Ideal temperature for corn growth is 93 degrees F)

The crop grows according to an "S"-shaped curve depending on temperature, with the ideal temperature for crop growth, if everything else is satisfactory such as nutrition and water availability, being somewhere around 93 F (34o C)

Flashback: Irreversible Warming

“We have to think about [carbon dioxide] much more like nuclear waste than, like say, smog or acid rain,” explains one of the world’s top atmospheric scientists, Susan Solomon, Senior Scientist for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Solomon is leading the research team. She adds, “What we’re doing with carbon dioxide is forever.”

It's Inevitably Going to Get Hot Around Here, Says National Academy of Sciences - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine

Just one observation, climatologists still hotly dispute (adverb, bad as it is, intended) whether or not the planet was 2 to 4 degrees warmer on average than it is today during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, some 6,000 to 9,000 years ago.

Some of The Edited Part from the Guardian Panel « the Air Vent

As always they only clip the fun stuff. Doug Keenan’s opening remarks in pdf . h/t Barry Woods and Bishop Hill. Warning, straight talk.

b100714[1]

Twitter / Andy Revkin

On @scifri 3:30 p.m. eastern to talk about next steps for climate science and IPCC. #climate #agw

Climate Depot's full statement to USA Today on 'Hottest' Year And Arctic Ice

Jay Lawrimore, (chief of climate analysis branch at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center) should be ashamed of himself. (Jay.Lawrimore@noaa.gov) Cherry picking one month out of the Arctic when Arctic ice rebounded significantly in 2009 from the low of 2007. (by an area more than one and half the size of Texas in 2009) Even the low point of Arctic sea ice extent in 2007 was not caused by CO2 driven warming. Multiple peer-review papers found it was due to high pressure days, ocean currents and “unusual winds.”

Michael Kieschnick: What Next After the Impending Collapse of Climate Change Legislation?

It is a tragic truth that here is no constructive environmental legislation that can pass in the current context. Republican and special interest obstructionism have been brilliantly successful in stopping progress at utterly no political cost.

EIA Says Climate Bill Cuts GDP $452 Billion By 2035 - BusinessWeek

July 16 (Bloomberg) -- Proposed Senate legislation to limit greenhouse gases from power plants, refineries and factories would cut U.S. gross domestic product by $452 billion, or 0.2 percent, between 2013 and 2035, the Energy Information Administration said today.

Alaskan glacier detaches itself from seafloor, goes rogue - CSMonitor.com

The Columbia Glacier had been continuously calving so that ice was always flowing down toward the sea, creating icebergs roughly every hour.
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Scientists have no idea how to put the different types of calving into a sea level rise model, O'Neel told OurAmazingPlanet.

North reports the Press Complaints Commission to the Press Complaints Commission – Telegraph Blogs

I’d say North’s case is watertight. What the PCC did was force the Sunday Times to apologise for running a true story and then force it correct it with an untrue one. At the very least the PCC ought to force the Sunday Times to apologise for its apology.

Shouldn't We Be Worried About Global Cooling? - Minnesotans For Global Warming

Nobody can dispute that there has been some global cooling in this last decade. Even though the land temperature charts aren't reliable, because the number weather stations keeps changing and the stations are all at major airports or in parking lots. If the IPCC had their way I'm sure they would measure the entire earth's temperature from one weather station at LAX, just like they measure the entire planet's CO2 level from one station on top of a volcano in Hawaii.

Proof that CO2 is dangerous?: In midsummer, ice melts in Washington, DC

[Very few people show up at alarmist event]: CNN Video on "Climate Deniers" Ice Sculpture at the Capitol | WWF Climate [Fraud] Blog

...the youth coalition Consequence staged an event at the U.S. Capitol yesterday (15 July 2010) that featured a giant "Climate Deniers" ice sculpture that rapidly melted in the Washington, DC, heat and humidity. See CNN's video on the event.

Twitter / Van Jones: Small quake this morning near DC: maybe Earth demanding action on climate bill?

Cold wave in Argentina forces shutdowns in gas powered industries — MercoPress

Cold weather also worsened the operational conditions for Argentine manufacturing with companies already exposed to a 50% supply cut, informed that the service will be formally cancelled, as long as the situation persists.
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“Until Wednesday the gas supply cuts were capped at 50%, however big industrial consumers have been informed that until Friday included, cuts will be total”, said a member from the UIA board.

Buenos Aires: Coldest day of the year brings about snow in several provinces

What the SMN national weather service had forecasted finally was proved right: today has been the coldest day of the year so far, with extreme low temperatures reaching below zero levels in several provinces and bringing about blankets of snow in several provinces such as Jujuy and Salta.

In Buenos Aires city, the polar wave impacted on the wind chill factor, which dipped to -2.5C°.

Giant Ice Sculpture to be Unveiled Outside U.S. Senate

Youth groups and climate experts highlight melting of mis-information campaign by climate deniers

Washington — With record-breaking temperatures along the East Coast and multiple investigations clearing scientists involved with the stolen “Climategate” emails, the coordinated smears campaign by climate deniers is melting away. As the Senate decides what to do about global warming, come see the giant ice sculpture and watch the lies of the climate deniers melt before your very eyes.
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SPEAKERS: Benton Strong, Consequence
Dan Lashof, Director, Climate Center, Natural Resources Defense Council
Brenda Ekwurzel, Climate Research and Analysis, Union of Concerned Scientists
US Senators (TBA)

1. How do we know that this ice at this spot wouldn't have melted just as fast on this date in 1810, 1010, or 4,010 BC?

2. Was the ice produced and transported using fossil energy?

US climate bill falls short of Obama's Copenhagen promise | Environment | guardian.co.uk

As senators and lobbyists met behind closed doors, some environmental groups placed an ice sculpture outside the Senate. The three-tiered piece depicting a globe over the words "climate deniers" rapidly melted in the Washington heat.

Videos: Unveiling of Climate Deniers Ice Sculpture Outside U.S. Senate » Consequence

Dan Lashof, Director of NRDC’s Climate Center, told the crowd: “We are facing our last, best chance to prevent a meltdown of the environmental systems upon which all of us depend.”

1. How many people showed up at this event? Judging from the quiet "crowd", the always-tight camera angle that showed only a handful of people, and the sparse clapping, it was very poorly attended.

2. The above announcement suggested that Senators were supposed to speak. If any showed up, where are the videos?

COP16 The Next UN Climate Change Scam Will Be Cancun « Tory Aardvark

To a climate change denier like Aardvark one of the most amusing sights after Gordon Brown leading Al Gore into a broom cupboard at Copenhagen was the sight of Barack “The Science Is Settled” Obama having to rush back to the USA before all airports became closed due to the snow.

The wealth redistributionists at the UN are taking no chances of massive snowfalls disrupting future COP scams, as after Mexico the next 2 locations are South Africa and Asia.
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The huge number of private jets, the extra limos having to be shipped in from Sweden and Germany all reinforced that Climate Change is for us, not the Al Gores, Barack Obamas and anyone involved in the UN. The sheer arrogance and disregard for the crock of shit they are trying to flog us is astounding.

Air travel is supposed to be killing the planet, but don’t worry there is an entire page on the site listing airports and countries, just for the occasion the UN have made Cornwall a country.

Poll: Which Of The Following Would You Be Willing To Do To Prevent GLOBAL WARMING? | Green houses, plastic

Answer
turn off ur mobile charger and not in use. keep ur inbox wit just imp mails and keep deleting useless one...having too many mails also leads warming so start from now

RT @TEDchris

RT @TEDchris: Johan Rockstroem falls off the stage at #TED to show the risk earth is facing from climate. Brilliant talk!

I Apologize « the Air Vent

This morning, I listened to the whole 98 minute ‘thing’ from the guardian.
...
The whole process of listening to the ‘thing’ was a torturous nightmare. It was a combination of agreement on ‘doing something’ for climate change, and claims of climate panels having exonerated UEA or innuendo of perhaps not completing the job satisfactorily.

David Appell: Quark Soup: Why I Might Quit Reporting on Climate

So while climate science is interesting, I'm not sure it's any longer that relevant, news-wise. It's a done deal. There's no longer any scientific basis for criticizing it, just personal gossip type stuff. Kind of desperate, and kind of boring.

Science Blogging Talkfest 2010 « Alarmist Andy Russell - Our Clouded Hills

“Climategate” was raised at one point but wasn’t really discussed much. Despite my interest in climate science, I think that not dwelling on the UEA emails was probably for the best. No-one that’s spent much time on that issue has come out of it well (apart from those fantasists that now have a fragment of reality to associate with their conspiracy theories). One point that I should have made was that it’s all very well flinging mud and picking at the science from the edges but until the “sceptic” bloggers face the same scrutiny as those they attack (both in the press and scientific journals) there’s no level playing field here and this, in my view, needs resolving.
...
...the bigger point, which Mark Henderson raised, was that the volume of science blogs is not necessarily a good thing as a lot of these blogs are written by, for example, climate change deniers and quacks. Well, nice point but a shame that The Times’ science supplement Eureka put one of the top climate change “sceptic” sites – Watts Up With That? – in its Top 30 Science Blogs earlier this year!

The Reference Frame: Pachauri orders IPCC members to shut their mouth

It's kind of stunning that similar people can stay - literally for years - in the top jobs of the U.N. institutions of the early 21st century. Some people try to deny that the IPCC is a political institution in which the member-scientists are nothing else than prostitutes paid and controlled by the actual leaders - political activists and "renewable" investors.

World "sizzles" to record for the year - USATODAY.com

Heavy snow, like the record snows that crippled Baltimore and Washington last winter, is likely to increase because storms are moving north.
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Marc Morano, a global-warming skeptic who edits the Climate Depot website, says the government "is playing the climate fear card by hyping predictions and cherry-picking data."

Joe D'Aleo, a meteorologist who co-founded The Weather Channel, disagrees, too. He says oceans are entering a cooling cycle that will lower temperatures.

He says too many of the weather stations NOAA uses are in warmer urban areas.

Guardian Censors their Climate Debate | guardian.co.uk

Some parts of the debate have been edited out for legal reasons.

[Land ho!]: Did GISS discover 30% more land in the Northern Hemisphere? « JoNova

In fact as late as 1995, the NH line still ran at around 40% land area. But somewhere post 1995 – 1999 for some reason the average tracks closer to the 70% line.
...
Lansner also finds this particular graph, which, rather like Sherwood 2008, uses an “unintuitive” scale.
The graphic below from Hansen and Lebedeff 1987,  shows the temperature trends from 1940-65. At a glance you might guess that things have become a little warmer. But the color of -0.5 to 0 C is a yellow, rather than a cool green, and it covers vast tracts of the world (most of Africa, Western Europe, North America, the North Atlantic, Siberia, and India). For the world to “look warmer”, it only needs to cool by less than half a degree. The “turning point” in the color scheme is at -0.5, not zero. This makes it look like cooling is only occurring in a few isolated spots.

Climate change [hoax] a hot issue for councils

More than a quarter of councils have already completed a risk assessment off their own initiative which identified over 7,000 risks to their operations from climate change, including water shortages, warmer temperatures, a longer fire season and rising sea levels.

GOP governors state their case at the Aspen Institute | Aspen Daily News Online

[Rick] Perry also said he is a “global-warming skeptic” and said proposed “cap and trade” legislation to reduce carbon emissions was not necessary and that “incentive-based regulations” were the answer to reduce pollutants.

“The fact of the matter is, we need to not be distracted on this issue of man-made global warming,” Perry said.

When asked his position on global warming, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell gave an apparently sarcastic answer.

“I’m pretty worried about climate change,” McDonnell said. ”My first month in office, we had three blizzards and 60 inches of snow in northern Virginia.”

The line drew a laugh and applause from the crowd...

A Puzzling Collapse of Earth's Upper Atmosphere

"This is the biggest contraction of the thermosphere in at least 43 years," says John Emmert of the Naval Research Lab, lead author of a paper announcing the finding in the June 19th issue of the Geophysical Research Letters (GRL). "It's a Space Age record."

The collapse happened during the deep solar minimum of 2008-2009—a fact which comes as little surprise to researchers. The thermosphere always cools and contracts when solar activity is low. In this case, however, the magnitude of the collapse was two to three times greater than low solar activity could explain.

"Something is going on that we do not understand," says Emmert.

Lorne Gunter: Don’t forget Climategate just yet | Full Comment | National Post

During his tenure at British Shell in the mid-2000s, Lord Oxburgh told the BBC he saw “little hope for the world” unless carbon dioxide emissions could be “dealt with.” Climate change, he admitted, made him “very worried for the planet.”

Not for a second do I doubt that Lord Oxburgh is one of the world’s leading geologists, as claimed. Still his past stance on climate change (and the very real, current possibility of him personally profiting from it) make him an odd choice as chairman of a supposedly objective review into a scandal that threatens to shatter the scientific basis for concern about global warming.

Nelson says no to climate [scam] vote - POLITICO.com

Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska said Thursday he would not support a procedural vote later this month to begin debate on a climate bill that includes a cap on electric utility emissions, a declaration that underscores the tough climb that Majority Leader Harry Reid will have in trying to cobble together a 60-vote supermajority on the controversial issue.

“A carbon tax or trade piece would significantly increase the utility rates in Nebraska for businesses, agriculture and individuals,” the Nebraska Democrat told POLITICO. “I don’t think that’s an appropriate way to go. And while I’d usually vote for a motion to proceed, this is so extraordinary, that I just can’t bring myself to do that.”

Sask. crops still one to two weeks behind normal development

"We're a week to two weeks behind province-wide and we're still needing some heat,'' said Grant McLean, a cropping management specialist with the Agriculture Knowledge Centre in Moose Jaw.
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"In most cases, these storms that are rolling through are causing isolated damage — wind, hail and rain. But the one thing in the back of producers' minds is the f-word,'' McLean said, referring to frost.

Man without heating lay dead for days | Irish Examiner

AN elderly man who lay dead in his home for at least two days did not have central heating and died of hypothermia during a cold snap in January, an inquest heard yesterday.
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Last night, Age Action Ireland spokesperson Eamon Timmins, said elderly people needed to be made aware that when room temperature drops below 16C, there is increased risk of respiratory illness such as pneumonia. When room temperature drops below 12C, the blood thickens, and there is increased risk of a cardiovascular event such as heart attack or stroke.

BP Oil Spill Undermines SunPower, Vestas as Energy Bill Trips - Bloomberg

To gain support from Republicans, lawmakers said they next may strip a climate-protection provision to pass an energy bill that would require utilities to get 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2021.

Cold Wave Blamed for 5 Deaths in Argentina, Uruguay

BUENOS AIRES – The cold wave affecting the Southern Cone of Latin America has killed at least five people and forced the closure of major highways, authorities in Argentina and Uruguay said Thursday.

Talks inch ahead as political sands run on climate bill - The Hill's E2-Wire

The scope of the measure and the limited time has prompted Lieberman to suggest letting the debate spill over into September, after the recess.

Out in the cold : Nature : Nature Publishing Group

The parlous state of the US icebreaker fleet could soon put a freeze on the country's polar research.
...Scientific interest in both polar regions is increasing rapidly — not least because of the profound changes being triggered there by global warming.

Climate talks progress - POLITICO.com Print View

Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), said today he didn’t approve of the closed-door nature of the negotiations, especially after his boss was criticized by environmentalists earlier this year for working with industry lobbyists on a resolution that would have stripped EPA of its authority to write rules to control greenhouse gas emissions.

“No one calls Dems on the fact that environmental and electric utility lobbyists – which are both special interest groups – are negotiating major climate legislation, with potentially huge economic consequences for this nation, on behalf of the majority leader?” Dillon said in an e-mail. “Senate staff weren’t even in the room? This is bullshit.”

A Climate Absolution? - WSJ.com

More like a 160-page evasion of the real issues that confront global-warming science.
...
Yet it's hard to understand how researchers who were nothing if not meticulous in avoiding the FOI requests could have been unaware of their importance. In one now famous 2008 email, Mr. Jones wrote Penn State's Michael Mann as follows: "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [the 2007 IPCC report]? Keith will do likewise." Good thing for these gentlemen that they didn't work for, say, Enron.

Bad science: Global-warming deniers are a liability to the conservative cause | Alarmist Jonathan Kay  | National Post

Most climate-change deniers (or “skeptics,” or whatever term one prefers) tend to inhabit militantly right-wing blogs and other Internet echo chambers populated entirely by other deniers. In these electronic enclaves — where a smattering of citations to legitimate scientific authorities typically is larded up with heaps of add-on commentary from pundits, economists and YouTube jesters who haven’t any formal training in climate sciences — it becomes easy to swallow the fallacy that the whole world, including the respected scientific community, is jumping on the denier bandwagon.
...Impressionable conservatives who lack the numeracy skills to perform long division or balance their checkbooks feel entitled to spew elaborate proofs purporting to demonstrate how global warming is in fact caused by sunspots or flatulent farm animals.

World Climate Report » Solar Control on Tibet’s Climate

Certainly there is a strong solar control on the climate system, and at the timescales from decades to centuries, the solar influence on global and regional climate can be profound. Clear examples of this can be founding the results from the Zhao et al. teams, who headed off to Tibet, cored a couple of lake bottoms, analyzed carbonate levels, shells from crustaceans, and pollen spores from plants, and what jumped out at them was the solar control on the climate of their study area.

The Associated Press: Obama touts investment in Michigan battery plant

HOLLAND, Mich. — Seeking to boost economic spirits, President Barack Obama on Thursday hailed the construction of another car-battery plant as a symbol of a made-in-America rebound from desperate times.  [Remember when we needed to drive electric cars to save our grandchildren from CO2-induced hellfire?]
...
After his remarks, Obama got a look at an electric Ford Focus and a Chevy Volt, the two cars that will use batteries manufactured at this plant. The president climbed into the driver's seat of a silver Volt, and then he took a turn inside a bright orange Focus. Upon emerging from the Focus, he told reporters: "I'm telling you, guys, I recommend them. I wouldn't have minded tooling around in this when I was 20 years old."

UK, France, Germany In New Push For EU To Cut Emissions 30%

LONDON -(Dow Jones)- The U.K., Germany and France Thursday launched a new push for the European Union to commit to a bigger reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 in a bid to help economic recovery and shore up energy security. [Again, where's the part about preventing CO2-induced catastrophe?]

Record Cold Set At Antarctic Station « P Gosselin – NoTricksZone

FOCUS online is quick to point out that this record cold is not a sign of climate change, but rather it is a local regional weather phenomenon (only warm events are signs of climate change).

Melanie Phillips on Prince Charles: Frankly, more sense is spoken by his plants

Perhaps the most mind-twisting example of psychological projection is the claim that the people you victimise are actually victimising you – even while it is you who dominate and receive an uncritical reception on media talk shows, who get grant-funding to subsidise your professional career and whose books are prominently displayed in bookshops, while your opponents are kept off or are given a hard time on the talk-shows, receive precious little grant funding and can hardly get their books published. But as soon as those opponents finally make their voices heard to point out that you are in error, you start screaming that you are being victimised.

The fact is that the proponents of AGW have been rumbled as having perpetrated one of the biggest pseudo-scientific frauds of all time – and they know it. Hence the Royal scream. It's over, Your Royal Highness -- and you were on the wrong side.

The formerly popular Al Gore - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Forty-four percent isn't the worst approval rating for a pol in the year 2010, but if you're an environmentalist, and you've spent two decades waiting for comprehensive energy legislation to pass, how much does it hurt to have your most powerful advocate knocked on the mat (by his own punch) with a few short months left to pass that legislation?

An Alaska pilot speaks out against the EPA avgas ban

...the EPA wants to outlaw the fuel that 95 percent of all Alaskan commercial planes HAVE TO USE. In Alaska 82 percent of our settlements cannot be reached by the use of the national road system, according to the Alaska Department of Transportation, so airplanes matter more to us than to folks in any other state of the union by an order of magnitude.

Audio: The Guardian's 'climategate' debate in full | Environment | guardian.co.uk

The entire recording [MP3] of the Guardian's 'climategate' debate, presented by George Monbiot

Global Warming Theory: False in Parts, False in Totality

There are so many variables ignored, underreported or simply not understood in climate science and especially in the computer models that purport to simulate global climate, that they destroy any pretence we know or understand weather and climate. But don’t take my word for it. Consider the comments from proponents of anthropogenic global warming including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Global Warming Hoax Weekly Round-Up, July 15 2010 « The Daily Bayonet

Hippie Dave gets mad at skeptics again, the IPCC gags scientists for their own good and Ontarians are rising up against a new eco-fee stealth tax.

Barrow, Alaska - [Still cold]

There are freezing temperatures on an average of 324 days per year.

[We're saved!  Now at least one of over 700,000 Sydney cars is electric]

SYDNEY, Australia, July 15, 2010 (ENS) - The City of Sydney has secured one of 40 Mitsubishi i-MiEVs for its vehicle fleet, the first production electric vehicle to be released in the Australian market.

"When I attended the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen last December, I committed to working with other C40 cities to help expand the uptake of electric vehicles. Today we prove our commitment, joining other green leaders in trialling the i-Miev in Australian conditions," Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP said Thursday.

"Each day more than 700,000 cars travel throughout central Sydney, significantly contributing to smog, greenhouse gas pollution, congestion and noise," said the mayor.

Bolam wind farm plans scrapped, Teesdale Mercury

PLANS for a controversial wind farm in Teesdale have been scrapped, it was announced today.

Following information from the Ministry of Defence (MoD), about a radar at RAF Leeming, the company behind the proposals for a site near Bolam, decided to withdraw the application.

Yeah, good luck with that: Eighteen years after trying to shut down the global warming debate, Fraudster Al tries it again

Al's Journal : Climategate Scientists Vindicated

Over the past few weeks, the lies and distortions surrounding the Climategate scandal have largely been debunked
...
It's time to stop debating settled science and work together to solve the climate crisis.

Flashback: They call this a consensus?

"Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis. The time for debate is over. The science is settled."

So said Al Gore ... in 1992. Amazingly, he made his claims despite much evidence of their falsity.

The Guardian ClimateGate “Debate” 14 July 2010 by Piers Corbyn « An Honest Climate Debate

There were the expected wishy-washy meanderings and praise of whitewash by George Monbiot, Prof Trevor Davies pro-vice chancellor of the University of East Anglia, Prof Bob Watson former head of IPCC, and Fred Pearce environment apologist, which seemed to amount to insistence that fraud isn’t fraud if you only select rather than change data!

One can only wonder if the Guardian take the same view of tax fraud when a banker or politician only declares 25% of his income stream for tax purposes?! [“With regret we note their somewhat non-transparent procedures”, they would doubtless rage.]

Magnetic apocalypse 2012 | Opinion & analysis | RIA Novosti

[Q] Does this mean that climate change is not necessarily man-induced?

[Ph.D. Anatoly Levitin, head of the geomagnetic variations laboratory at the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radiowave Propagation of the Russian Academy of Sciences] Exactly; climate change is a physical process. Climate is in fact like the Earth’s energy budget. The Earth receives most energy from the Sun and some energy from its depths – as we see in earthquakes and other reactions taking place deep inside the Earth. That energy warms the oceans that store the warmth on the Earth’s surface. This is a kind of energy budget consisting of elements that come and go.

[Q] If mankind is not to blame, why spend billions of dollars on the problem?

[A] The energy mankind generates is so small compared to that overall energy budget that it simply cannot affect the climate. However, the energy budget is very under-studied because there is only a small range of observations used to measure it. This is a very complicated process.

'Climategate' debate: less meltdown, more well-mannered argument | Damian Carrington | Environment | guardian.co.uk

• Steve McIntyre, editor of ClimateAudit: It was hard to reconcile the much-demonised McIntyre with the open and avuncular Canadian on the stage. Despite being the highest-profile critic of CRU, he pointed out none of the three enquires had asked him to give evidence. He ducked a question on how much the Earth was warming – "I don't know" – he was convincing in saying his motive had always been wanting the temperature data only because he felt it was important and should be available. He noted that if he was running a government, he would be taking action on climate change. Hardly a classic sceptic.

Scientists Create Improved CO2-Absorbing Crystals - ABC News

"Porosity is a way to do a lot with little," said Yaghi, a chemistry and biochemistry professor, in a statement. "Instead of having only the outside surface of a particle, we drill small holes to dramatically increase the surface area."
...
"They can be used for the short-term storage of CO2 (carbon dioxide) or fuel gas storage. I think it is practically possible," said Kim, adding that hydrogen could also be stored.

[Is this intentionally misleading? Are they trying to suggest that 1/4 of global energy is generated via wind turbines and solar panels?]

July 15 (Bloomberg) -- Wind, solar and other forms of renewable power accounted for more new electricity generation than fossil fuels in the U.S. and Europe for a second year in 2009, the United Nations Environment Program said.

Clean energy accounted for 60 percent of new capacity in Europe, and more than half of new power generation in the U.S., UNEP said today in an e-mailed statement. Alternative power now accounts for about a quarter of global generating capacity, or 1,230 gigawatts out of 4,800 gigawatts, the group said.

[We're saved! Obama administration attempts to prevent tornadoes by spending over $8 million to convert cars from one fossil fuel to another fossil fuel]

[USDA press release] Baker Equipment's work converting cars to run on propane is part of the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy's Paving the Way with Propane: The AutoGas Corridor Development Program, which received an $8.6 million Recovery Act grant to build the infrastructure to encourage public and private vehicle operators to convert existing vehicles from conventional gasoline to clean propane [a fossil fuel].

The grant is having an important impact on both job creation and clean energy efforts:

* The project has already resulted in 47 new jobs. [only $180,000 per job!]
* The 1189 vehicles funded by this project will displace roughly 16 million gallons of gasoline.

How much warming? | The Australian

PROFESSOR Neville Nicholls tells us that global temperatures have risen inexorably since 1970 (Letters, 14/7). It is also true that they must have risen inexorably from one decade to the next over much of the time since the Little Ice Age of the 17th and 18th centuries (and, of course, for successive decades as the Earth has emerged from past ice ages).

But do climate scientists have a generally accepted explanation(s) for these earlier periods of risintemperatures, including reliable scientific explanations for the beginning and ending of past warming and cooling periods?

New York Revs Up for Plug-Ins - Green Blog - NYTimes.com

New York City has just unveiled the first of about 100 electric vehicle charging stations to be installed under a national program that aims to have nine metropolitan regions ready when automakers begin rolling out some electric vehicles later this year.

The public car-charging station, at an Edison Properties parking facility on Ninth Avenue between 35th and 36th Streets in Manhattan, is part of ChargePoint America, a federally sponsored program that promotes the quick adoption of electric cars to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create jobs. The program envisions 4,600 public and home charging stations around the country by October 2011.
...
Richard Lowenthal, chief executive officer of Coulumb Technologies, the company installing the chargers, said the stations accept credit cards just as a gas pump does. But it can take one to four hours to charge a car, he said.

“For every hour you get about 30 miles,” he said. “The expectation is that you leave your car there when you go to work, or overnight.”

Coalition to combat climate change? | Ekklesia

2. Why do you personally think climate change is such a crucial issue?

[energy and climate change Chris Huhne] It is the most important issue facing society. Uncontrolled climatic change has the potential to make the planet uninhabitable for humans.

ClimateGate 'Whitewash' Helps 'Clear' Scientists, U.S., International Media Claim | NewsBusters.org

"And when speaking to those alleged to have done wrong, they chose not to ask them questions at the heart of the matter, like, did you destroy documents like you said?" Horner explained. "It's pretty easy to claim no wrongdoing when you only speak with the accused, and then fail to ask them if they actually did wrong."
...
The 160-page Muir Russell report conclusions made no mention of the more damaging Harry_Read_Me.txt file that was leaked along with the e-mails. That 247-page file "describes the efforts of a climatologist/programmer" at the CRU to update an enormous database of climate data and temperature records that in his own words were in a "hopeless" state.

The "Read Me" file included admissions to making up data, as well as references to hiding the temperature decline by using different data after 1960.

U.N. calls for holistic climate effort - UPI.com

MEXICO CITY, July 15 (UPI) -- A strong partnership between the public and private sector is needed to address the challenges presented by climate change, officials said in Mexico.

An advisory group assessing energy and climate change issues for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met in Mexico City to examine the holistic work needed to tackle climate-related issues.

EU chief fears rift developing with US

LONDON: Europe's love affair with Barack Obama appears to have cooled dramatically, with the European Union's most powerful figure making an unprecedented call for refreshed trans-Atlantic relations.
...
Mr Barroso's comments follow significant disagreements between the EU and the US over how to deal with critical policy issues such as climate change and the global financial crisis.

Chris Matthews still believes

Hardblogger - A word about the yahoos

No matter how much information is accumulated on climate change, it's okay in the Republican Party to simply deny it, this despite the fact that the Nixon Library just released a memorandum from Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1969 warning of the impact of climate change. Four decades of science is simply rejected. Not a single Republican Senator is now ready to take action on climate change.

Sarah Palin likes to talk about being a "common sense conservative." Where's the common sense in all this refusing to use your brain?

Cuccinelli warms to his task of climate change denial | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

Mann has been investigated quite thoroughly by several panels...Cuccinelli has made it clear he’s a climate change denier. The Progress calls him a skeptic, but a real skeptic looks at the evidence fairly and objectively. I don’t see much evidence of that; which is why I think the term denier fits better. I have little problem with climate change skeptics — someone who fairly and scientifically looks at the data to come to a reasonable conclusion. Technically, I’m a skeptic as well, since I have looked into the issue as best I can.

The difference is, the evidence I have seen all points to the Earth warming up. [What evidence, specifically, proves that human CO2 emissions are the cause of the recovery from the Little Ice Age?] I have to rely on the experts, of course, since this isn’t my chosen field, but as a scientist myself I can look at the data and understand the processes involved in analyzing it. So when I say I think climate change/global warming is real, it’s not based on faith or politics or anything like that.

It’s based on evidence.