The Canadian National Newspaper: Climate Change: Scientists can now control the weather

We now believe that American and Russian scientists can and do control our weather. They can and do create much of the disturbances seen in nature for at least the past several decades.

10 Stupid Ideas that led to the Global Economic Meltdown – Telegraph Blogs

2. The Climate Change Act. This is arguably the most expensive, suicidal and pointless piece of legislation in British parliamentary history. Its attempts to “decarbonise” the UK economy are based on junk science (the connection between anthropogenic CO2 and runaway global warming is nothing more than threadbare conjecture) and, by the government’s own estimates (so double it, at least, for the real costs) will cost the British taxpayer £18 billion every year for the next forty years. It will do nothing to stave off global warming, just further cripple an already ailing economy and impose higher energy costs on people who can ill afford it.

3. “The Limits to Growth” delusion. I examine this in a lot more detail in my book Watermelons. One of the key tenets of the green religion is that economic growth is in and of itself a bad thing, and that we’d all be much healthier and happier if only we could learn to live sustainably in yurts or pretty riverside cottages on organic, home grown mung beans, wearing patched up chunky-knit sweaters and travelling by bicycle. In the abundant 90s, this “we’ve had it too good”, Sunday colour supplement lifestyle fantasy was an affordable luxury. Not any more it’s not. “Sustainability” is not going to get out of this mess. Only consumption and the free market will.
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5. Activist scientists. Sir Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society, recently told a fawning New Statesman interviewer that he doesn’t believe it’s a scientist’s job to be impartial: (H/T Haunting the Library)

Nurse’s undergraduate socialist spirit is still alive and well: he wouldn’t be against scientists getting involved in activism. “We are citizens, and citizens should be involved in politics, and I think those that have a strong view should be involved in party politics,” he says. “I’m happy to see fellows of the Royal Society politically engaged, if that’s what they see as right.”

Problem is, as we learned in Climategate what happens when scientists abandon objectivity in pursuit of their ideological ends is corruption, distortion and (incredibly expensive) junk science. If scientists like Nurse expect the taxpayer to pay their salaries – and they do – then it’s about time they showed a bit more humility, gratitude and integrity. In this new age of austerity when we pay for science what we have a right to expect is science, not dodgy sixth form sub-Marxist agitprop of the kind endorsed by the head of what used to be Britain’s most distinguished science institution.

Source of “hide the decline”? New paper finds that tree height shrinks with increased temperature | Watts Up With That?

Clearly, there’s more to tree growth than a simple linear relationship with temperature

American Wind Industry Association: Circling the Wagons — MasterResource

Until the end of 2010, the American Wind Energy Association’s annual reports were in the public domain. The details of their business now go to members only.

What has changed? What information has the lobby organization decided to share only with insiders? And why?

Severe Drought in 1709 1718 1725 and 1734 Dried Up The Danube And The Seine | Real Science

The author suggests that the droughts were due to the laws of nature, rather than the intervention of man.