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Every one of Gillard’s green jobs costs $1 million | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt BlogJulia Gillard announces her future is green - but it means spending more than $500 million of taxpayers’ money on a private project to create just 500 jobs - and overpriced electricity
BBC News - New jobs at Edinburgh Centre on Climate ChangeMore than 80 new jobs have been promised at the Edinburgh Centre on Climate Change following a £1.6m injection from the Scottish government.
An end to global warming? | Nolan Finley's BlogHow tragic will it be if we destroy our economy, throw people into poverty and denigrate our lifestyles and the earth ends up cooling itself without our help?
My submission to NOAA integrity review | ScottishScepticSo, I sincerely believe that even if everyone in climate science had acted with the utmost integrity, it was likely that some form of groupthink – some self-reinforcing consensus – would develop: based not one what the data actually showed (as it changes so little), but on what the “consensus” was as to what it did show. Once the consensus starts, those with power tend to be those who accept the consensus, which again tends to reinforce the consensus and ostracise those who are not part of the consensus. This self reinforcing hierarchy of groupthink being detached from real evidence due to the slowness of the climate to provide anything new eventually looks in on itself for evidence until as we have seen for the last decade, the “consensus” is that it is warming irrespective of the fact that this last decade has not shown a warming trend.
This is the real danger of climate science.
Guardian alarmist in chief funded by Auto trader | ScottishScepticTHE HYPOCRITES!!!!!
Mark Lynas? Not the same eco activist Mark Lynas who once threw a custard pie in Bjorn Lomborg's face and was responsible for advising the Maldives cabinet to pose for that nauseatingly disingenuous publicity shot where they're all under water (because, like, the Maldives are being drowned due to global warming: except, of course they're not)? Yep, that one.
Moving to the Right | Dissident Voice I don’t think that we will be able to solve the “global warming” problem: “global warming” is likely to continue, and intensify, resulting in the virtual extermination of our species; our only hope lies in some of us somehow being able to escape extinction
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Al Thompson works (data management) for an engineering (avionics) firm in Milwaukee. His e-mail address is: A.Thompson@Astronautics.com
City of Houston Wins Mayors' Climate Protection Award (DALLAS th June 17, 2011) Today, the U.S. Conference of Mayors announced that the City of Houston's Mayor Annise Parker has received the 2011 U.S. Conference of Mayors' Climate Protection Award. The Awards ceremony is being held in conjunction with the U.S. Conference of Mayors' annual meeting.
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Houston launched a first-time Energy Efficiency Incentive Program for participating building owners and managers. The $3 million program provides incentives to offset 20 percent of up-front implementation costs ( up to $200,000 ) for an energy efficiency project. Over half the funds have been set aside for Class B and C buildings, and buildings with projects less than $500,000.
Up, up and ahoy thereTHREE decades after Blade Runner depicted cars flying around the streets of Los Angeles and James Bond plunged his amphibious Lotus Esprit into the Sardinian sea, prototypes for cars that can do both - and more - are being touted as vehicles of a future where climate change has altered the landscape.
With fears that global warming will cause sea levels to rise to heights that will inundate roads and rail lines, car designers are letting their imaginations soar and the resultant vehicles look like they belong on a film set.
Blog: Taking the Longer, Unsettled, View...What caught my eye here was not the minor increment added by the scientists but that comment that global land masses are rising because they are still rebounding from the ice age. Think about that for a moment; a geo-climatic event nearly 20,000 years in the past is still having physical, measurable effects on our planet. Yet we have Al Gore and his chicken-little Warmbats screaming hysterically that we should be alarmed that mankind's activities of the past couple of decades may have drastic and irrevocable global effects on the future of the planet.
Bonn climate change talks break up without agreement - Monsters and CriticsBonn, Germany - Fresh talks between the world's environment ministers have been called for Berlin next month, after two weeks of talks broke up in stalemate Friday in Bonn.
Thousands of officials attended the United Nations conference but failed to negotiate any progress on cutting carbon emissions.
Next month's event, on July 3-4, will be jointly chaired by Germany and South Africa, which is to host the next climate summit this year in Durban.
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Officials are already dubbing the planned Berlin meeting Petersburg II. The Durban summit is set to begin November 28.
Climate Resistance » Fun Finding the Eco Lobby’s FundingSo the WWF enjoyed gifts of €8,794,595 from the EU. Actually, it got more. It was a joint beneficiary on over €28million euros of EU funds, but I’ve only listed the direct payments from the EU to the WWF.
There’s a lot more. For instance, the Climate Action Network Europe received €1,514,720. in total, then, three searches reveal €13,319,560.
But here we have something quite different. Here we have a government funding environmental organisations campaigning and researching efforts, and we can see a direct effect of that campaigning and research in policy. In an era of ‘evidence-based policy-making’, if you only fund the evidence-making that suits the policy you’ve already determined, then we can only call it ‘policy-based evidence-making’.
Climate change deniers spreading misinformation: Environmental groupsIn the same decade, climate related disasters reported a dramatic ten-fold increase since 1950. Last year alone, we saw catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, wildfires and extreme temperatures in Russia, severe rain, floods and landslides in China and unprecedented flooding in Australia. Rainfall broke records in India too and flash floods left around 200 people dead in the sparsely populated Leh region.
In its 2007 reports, the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had warned of precisely such disasters.
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Unfortunately, rather than restrict the spread of such misinformation campaigns by climate deniers, the government actually encourages them.
The April 2008 launch of "Civil Society Report on Climate Change" was presided over by none other than Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the Deputy Chairman of India's Planning Commission.
Even Jairam Ramesh, India's Environment and Forests Minister has accorded legitimacy to climate deniers. In a letter to the European committee reviewing IPCC procedures in March 2010, Ramesh suggested that the panel's draft report should be sent to all known "climate sceptics" during the review process.
Such support for climate deniers by the government is not only unfortunate but also questions the legitimacy of their claims that they are serious about tackling climate change. For the government to seriously address climate change it must first accept the scientific consensus behind it. By Sanjay Kumar
Greenpeace ship departs Arctic as campaign shifts gear - DominicanToday.comGreenland.– The International Executive Director of Greenpeace, Kumi Naidoo, has been arrested and is being flown to Greenland after breaching an exclusion zone and scaling a controversial Arctic oil rig 120km out to sea.
At 6.45am this morning an inflatable speedboat carrying Naidoo was launched from the Greenpeace ship Esperanza. The rig's operators Cairn Energy used powerful water cannon to try to prevent him climbing a 30 metre ladder up the outside of one of the rig's giant legs, but Naidoo braved the freezing jets and made it to the platform.
Soaking wet he demanded that Cairn immediately halt drilling operations and leave the Arctic.
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As the helicopter that was sent to collect Naidoo and his fellow activist, Ulvar Arnkvaern, departed the rig, Ben Stewart onboard the nearby Greenpeace ship Esperanza said: "After over a month of non-stop action to stop dangerous deep water drilling in the Arctic, which has seen 22 Greenpeace activists including Kumi arrested after braving freezing seas to protest against Cairn's reckless drilling, it is time to move the campaign up a gear and out of the Arctic."
Greenpeace Australia Pacific » Blog Archive » Why DOES the Esperanza have a diesel electric motor?Once again the Esperanza is ‘fuelling’ debate about Greenpeace sustainability. It’s a question we’re often asked on open boat days: “why does the Esperanza run on diesel? Isn’t that hypocritical?”
Ask Airtel to switch off Diesel | Greenpeace IndiaGreenpeace activists are painting ‘Switch off Diesel’ across Airtel’s head-office building in Gurgaon.
Department Of Energy Makes $150M Bet On Solar Tech"There are two main areas of concern: price and value," said Brian Keane, president of Smart Power, a green energy marketing group. Keane explained that the primary "value" of solar "is that it's good for the environment. But quite frankly, no American actually thinks that's good value."
Keane says that U.S. consumers need to be convinced that solar is a viable proposition. "The perception is that solar is an idea from the 1970s that just didn’t work. They think it’s not strong enough to power their lives, compared with oil, coal and nuclear power."
As climate talks sputter, UN scientists vet 'Plan B'At the sci-fi end of the scale is a proposal -- which exists, for now, only on paper -- for a sunshade positioned at a key point between Earth and the Sun that would deflect one or two percent of solar radiation, turning the planet's thermostat down a notch.
Why do we pretend to understand climate change?The cold weather experienced in Europe and North America in the late 17th and early 18th centuries is all the more fascinating for having coincided with a period in which astronomers noted an almost complete absence of sunspots.
EDITORIAL: U.N. climate propaganda exposed - Washington TimesClaims of balance are hardly credible when the process is infiltrated by ideologues and industry insiders looking to apply the veneer of science to their craven grab for other people’s cash. Fortunately, the days when leftists could get away with passing off their global-warming scare stories unchallenged are over. Skeptics smell blood and closely examine every document, frequently identifying gaping holes in logic and credibility.
The wit and wisdom of ‘Real’ Climate scientist Dr. Ray Pierrehumbert | Watts Up With That?“We’re drawing attention to the vast body of literature accumulating, which says when it comes to global warming, we may not be just looking at a different climate, but one that is more variable from year to year than our present climate. Think about what would happen if one year we had 105-degree heat waves, then the next decade we had unusually cold winters, and then we had 50 years of drought. It would be very hard to adapt to that kind of climate.”
Lost in desmogAs of just before press time, desmogblog -the perpetually agitated website that can find Exxon Mobil and other corporate conspirators behind the slightest criticism of climate policy or science -had not yet acknowledged Climategate 2, namely the Greenpeace/IPCC/ Pachauri/renewable energy industrial complex takeover of IPCC energy policy.
Algore Endorses Mitt on Climate[Rush Limbaugh] There isn't any warming -- and even the polling data shows the American people now are up to speed. The vast majority of the American people now don't believe that there's manmade global warming and are questioning the whole process by which they were led to believe that there is. "'Looking at long-term patterns since 1980, indeed, extreme climatological and meteorological events have increased,' said Thomas R. Karl, director of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. 'But in the early part of the 20th century, there was also a tendency for more extreme events followed by a quiet couple of decades,'" meaning this isn't unique. It's all happened before. We thought that manmade global warming and the extreme weather it spawns was "settled science," but they continue to make the point that even what they believe is not etched in stone.
Gillard to fight on despite poll gloomPrime Minister Julia Gillard has vowed to push on with plans for a carbon tax, despite Labor's approval rating hitting a new low.
The latest Nielsen poll showed Labor's approval was just 27 per cent, the lowest for any federal government in nearly 40 years.
NYT 2004 : Unnatural Drought Not As Bad As Natural Drought | Real ScienceA glimpse into the spectacularly disordered mind of warmists :
- Bishop Hill blog - A rising tide of controversyThe story seems to be that the land is rising, increasing the carrying capacity of the oceans. This would effectively reduce the amount of sea level rise expected, and we couldn't have that - hence the "adjustment". The effect of the adjustment appears to be small when put against the projected rises, but is certainly material against the actual changes recorded (although these are, per Morner, wrong).
- Bishop Hill blog - The Economist on the IPCCIf the authors were not assessing the material critically and nobody picked this up in the review process, and nobody was in a position to get the author team to change anything then it is a pretty damning indictment of the IPCC process. I should add a word of caution here though - as one correspondent has pointed out to me, the authors are chosen by national governments and anyone can be a reviewer. The IPCC process is clearly bust, but who is to blame?
More remarkably, the Greenpeace chap in question seems to want us to think that he would have loved the rest of the authors to ignore his paper but was forced to toe the line by the sheer number of people in opposition
The Climate Sceptics (TCS) Blog: Is Maurice - Strong on Man-made Global WarmingAs Tim Ball told 2GB's Alan Jones:
"He very deliberately did it. He set up the United Nations Environment Program and then he worked through that with the World Meteorological Organisation and the IPCC was set up by them. That meant that every government weather agency around the world was involved in the IPCC. They appoint the scientists that they want to be on it and they also of course provide the funding and that has meant that the funding has only got to one side of the debate and Strong knew this. But this is why he organized it that way through the WMO..."
So, was the whole AGW movement started as a plot for great wealth? Follow the money trail - Strong, Gore, Goldman Sachs....
STRONG-man or Crook?
Lawrence Bender: Congress: Stop Denying An Inconvenient TruthI'm particularly proud to have worked alongside NWF to carry this message to youth through An Inconvenient Truth in the Classroom and a corresponding website, Climate Classroom, designed for teens. Today's kids will inherit the climate crisis -- we must equip them with the knowledge to solve it.
Sadly, the message of An Inconvenient Truth still rings true today: Climate change is real and urgent. It should be addressed now.
Yet Congress is in denial.
The signals become more compelling with each passing day. The film predicted some of the extreme weather events that have become all too common this year across the country. Communities have been battered by: severe flooding, heat waves, fires, droughts, rainfalls, tornadoes and hurricanes. And we are barely into hurricane season.
The climate is sending us a message. Congress seems deaf.
1000 Days | Real ScienceIt has now been 1000 days since any hurricane hit the US, the longest spell since before the Civil War.
Why do we pretend to understand climate change?For years the global warming lobby has acted as if there was only one thing which drives climate change: man-made carbon emissions. This is the basis of all the mathematical models that have tried to predict the climate 100 years and more into the future. The IPCC report treats Earth’s climate as if it can be controlled like a thermostat: if we cut carbon emissions by such a percentage we will limit the rise in global temperatures to 2C and so on.
It ought to be obvious that this is nonsense: Earth has undergone huge changes in climate, many of which such as the onset of ice ages have occurred incredibly rapidly – and all before mankind started burning fossil fuels. We don’t understand why these ice ages occurred, nor why Earth seems to have warmed up for a few centuries during the Middle Ages so why does anyone preclude the possibility that the recent global warming has a natural cause?
We should be sceptical too of the theory that the sunspot cycle drives Earth’s climate. Accurate temperature records only go back a century or so. Neither do we have a great deal of data on sunspots before 1611. While climate scientists naturally know more about the climate than the rest of us do the truth is that they too know next to nothing.
Lateline - 17/06/2011: Climate change will end economic growthFormer Greenpeace chief Paul Gilding and columnist Thomas Friedman say economic growth is dead in a post-climate change world.
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THOMAS FRIEDMAN: You know Ali, my last book on this was called Hot, Flat and Crowded and whenever I talk to people about that I always, I'll hold up the book and say, well maybe you don't believe in hot, maybe you don't believe in climate change and global warming, no problem. That's between you and your beach house. But please, please believe in flat and crowded
...Well Ali, basically what's going on right now is we're all sitting around waiting for the perfect storm and the perfect storm is a storm that is big enough to finally end this debate but not so big to end the world. That's basically what we're sitting around waiting for.
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...when Mother Nature does your dental work that's like having a caveman remove your tooth with stone tools. He'll get it out but there's going to be a lot of blood on the floor along the way.
[Gilding]
The reason sceptical science is going on so strongly now is because the evidence is so strong you have to actually deny physics you know, to actually oppose what the climate scientists are saying.
Science Policy in Unexpected Places | Netroots NationJohn Abraham
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Dr. Abraham frequently gives public lectures on the science of global warming. He is the co-founder of the Climate Science Rapid Response Team which works with media outlets to ensure accurate science is communicated to the broader public. [Why don't media outlets go to Lord Monckton when they want accurate science information?]
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Heidi Cullen
In addition to her responsibilities as Director of Communications, Dr. Heidi Cullen serves as a research scientist and correspondent for Climate Central - a non-profit science journalism organization headquartered in Princeton, NJ. Before joining Climate Central, where she reports on climate and energy issues for programs like PBS NewsHour, Dr. Cullen served as The Weather Channel’s first on-air climate expert and helped create Forecast Earth, a weekly television series focused on issues related to climate change and the environment.
Another panel at Netroots Nation this year: Where Crazy Comes From: Reckless Republicans in State LegislaturesIt's not just Wisconsin and Ohio; Republicans in state legislatures all around the country are bringing serious right-wing craziness into the mainstream. This panel will encourage participants to help expose these shenanigans, push back on the insanity and share input and ideas on countering the crazy before it spreads. Panelists will provide examples of extremist Republicans in the states and how progressives have fought back. Through a moderated discussion, attendees will be encouraged to share stories of their own and discuss tactics for pushing back and exposing right-wing extremism in its nascent stages.
Netroots Nation: Information from Answers.comNetroots Nation is a political convention for American progressive political activists, originally organized by readers and writers of Daily Kos, a liberal political blog. It was previously called YearlyKos
Front line in the climate trenches « JoNova: Science, carbon, climate and taxCommenters wish Mark [Lynas] well (as do I), and Rick Bradford sums it up:
Mark,
If you didn’t know before what happens to people who leave a cult, you’re about to find out.
Best of luck.
The EDGE: NASA'S 2011 Innovations In Global Climate Change Education AwardsWASHINGTON -- NASA has awarded $7.2 million in cooperative agreements to 14 minority-serving organizations across the United States to enhance learning through the use of the agency's Earth Science resources. The selected organizations include colleges, universities, nonprofit groups and a community college.
YID With LID: Scientists Agree, Salon Is Making Fake Claims To Spread Climate Change HoaxI would never make the claim that I am a scientist, or a science expert of any kind, but I can read. Based in that ability I would make the simple proposal to the people at Salon that, before they make claims about global warming, climate change or whatever the moonbats are calling it this week, maybe they should try to gain proficiency at the reading thing. Because if someone like me, who's science training consists of watching Mr. Wizard on a 19 inch black and white television 40 years ago can find scientific information which proves their claim to be nothing but hype and lies they could do the same thing. And while I appreciate the material (especially now that Anthony Weiner resigned) sending out false alarms to the public is usually not the best tactic for a self-described, "award-winning online news and entertainment Web site."
McCain: Ethanol still calls the shots - The Hill's E2-WireWhile voting to end the ethanol blender’s credit and import tariff, the Senate rejected — 41-59 — McCain’s amendment to kill federal funds for installation of ethanol pumps and storage tanks at gas stations.
“It lost because of the influence of the ethanol lobby,” McCain said on Fox News Thursday, alleging ethanol “is probably the greatest rip-off that I've seen since P.T. Barnum.
“It is one of the most outrageous examples of the influence of special interests,” McCain said.
The Solar Bubble’s Growth Only Worsens the Inevitable Burst The steel industry exists because people want to buy steel, while the solar industry exists only by the grace of favorable politics. That is, without taxpayer giveaways and Soviet-style production quotas, there would be no solar industry in America. The same is not true for the steel sector.
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For as long as the solar industry is a function of government favoritism—and not market forces—it will remain one unfavorable vote away from bankruptcy. It is a bubble, and a precarious one at that. As such, the industry’s growth is no cause for cheer. It only increases the harm that will be wrought when the taxpayer money spigot is turned off, as eventually must occur.
GISS Extrapolations Are Crap | Real ScienceGISS extrapolated that the entire region north of 80N was more than 2C above the 1958-2002 average in May, despite the fact that they have essentially no data there.
DMI actually has data north of 80N, and they showed May as below the 1958-2002 average.
Global Warming Whiners Wouldn’t Have Survived June, 1934 | Real ScienceAll regions of the country were over 100 degrees.
80% of the US was experiencing drought.
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1934 used to be the hottest year – before USHCN and GISS worked their magic.
Pfeiffer: Obama's sorry about unfulfilled '08 campaign promises President Barack Obama is sorry he couldn't get cap-and-trade legislation and some of his other top 2008 campaign promises signed into law, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said Friday.
“If he could wave a wand and have them done, he would absolutely do that in a second," Pfeiffer said of climate change, immigration reform and worker rights proposals during an appearance at the Netroots Nation conference in Minneapolis.
Clown – Or Criminal? | Real ScienceHansen has been running around talking about catastrophic warming, hottest year ever, multi-metre sea level rise, death trains, extinction, end of the world as we know it…….etc.
Yet, but his own measures temperatures are below scenario C – which he considers safe. How can the climate be both catastrophic and safe at the same time?
An Added Benefit of Cut, Cap, and Balance — It Would Make Enacting Climate Legislation “Virtually Impossible”Socialism is such fun — until the other guy’s money runs out. At that point, even spendaholics may sober up and make tough choices. Irony of ironies, Washington’s fiscal excesses may put the final nail in the coffin of cap-and-trade.
A new study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities finds that GOP proposals to address the nation’s fiscal crisis, all of which cap federal spending at some percentage of GDP, would make climate legislation — whether cap-and-trade or a carbon tax — “virtually impossible to enact.”
UN climate chief calls on world leaders to step inWorld political leaders must step into climate negotiations in the next few months to unlock disputes over reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the U.N.'s top climate official said Friday.
U.N. climate talks make scant progress to save Kyoto - chicagotribune.comAdvances in Bonn were largely on technical issues, such as working out new ways of sharing clean energy technologies or setting up a green fund to aid developing nations. Little headway was made on broader issues of emissions cuts or cash.
U2's The Edge loses battle to destroy the Malibu coastline | Music | Newswire | The A.V. Club In fact, the agency’s director called it “one of the three worst projects that I've seen in terms of environmental devastation.”
A Bad Week for Climate Change Alarmists* - Hit & Run : Reason MagazineClimate researchers are reporting results which many claim will require vast economic adjustments. Naturally, a lot of vested interests will push back against these findings. If climate researchers want to be believed, they must be completely transparent about their results and methods.
Oodles of Cash « NoFrakkingConsensusIn other words, the EU not only writes these people multi-million-dollar cheques, it then invites them to draft the guidelines that will govern their own industry. At the same time that this is taking place, the EREC produces a report with Greenpeace that later becomes a centerpiece of an IPCC document – of which a Greenpeace employee happens to be a lead author.
Evidently there are multiple connections between Greenpeace, the renewable energy sector, and governments – the latter of which is represented by both the EU and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. An incestuous group of people are, in a variety of venues, promoting an approach to energy generation that will end up costing the rest of us a ton of money.
U2 guitarist the Edge loses bid for Malibu mansion - Yahoo! NewsThe Edge had touted the proposed complex of mansions as an environmentally sustainable undertaking that would boast such features as solar energy panels, a rainwater catchment system and on-site electric vehicle charging.
The IPCC and Greenpeace: Renewable outrage | The EconomistDr Petersen won’t be drawn on the appropriateness or advisability of Dr Pachauri writing a foreword to a Greenpeace report, one which praised it as rigorous while not specifically endorsing its findings and noting that some experts would disagree with them. But at the Brussels meeting, Babbage put the question to Dr Pachauri himself. Here’s the exchange:
B: Some people are saying the IPCC is too close to Greenpeace
RP: I think that has no basis at all. The IPCC has had industry, we’ve had authors from Exxon Mobil. We keep a balance, going by the level of expertise of people, whether they’re in Timbuktu or this organisation or that organisation.
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RP: I talk to industry groups all the time, I advise industry groups, I don’t think there’s any imbalance there whatsoever. And I think being chair of the IPCC it’s for me to reach out to every section of society and to encourage debate, to encourage discussion irrespective of where it takes place. And I’m not taking any positions.
Activists don't speak for meIf people want to go around believing in catastrophic global warming and thinking we can "fix" it by running empty buses and using twisty light bulbs, they are perfectly entitled to do so. They can believe in leprechauns too for all I care, but the rest of us shouldn't be expected to finance their delusions, no matter how much money is being made off this ridiculous scam or how many votes go to politicians who pretend to believe in it.
Cuba: Seas to rise more than 30 inches by 2100 - FoxNews.comModels predict the sea will rise 10.6 inches (27 centimeters) by 2050, and 33.5 inches (85 centimeters) by 2100, Abel Centella, scientific director of the country's Meteorological Institute, was quoted by Communist Party daily Granma as saying.
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International scientific studies have projected sea levels will rise between 30 and 75 inches (190 centimeters) by the end of the century, fed by melting glaciers and ice caps.
Global warming sharply reduces crop output – The Express TribuneGlobal warming is not only playing havoc with lives of people but also damaging agriculture badly as a one degree rise in temperature reduces wheat yield by seven per cent and rice production by 10 per cent.
Rajan's Take: Climate Change: Increasing temperatures will take a toll on rice production in Asia: Rogue “Peer Review” Study Why temperatures thwarting rice production is complete nonsense
FAOSTATS - Global vs. Asian Rice Productivity
Even a cursory glance of the FAO graph should make it evident that all individual country trends are up. This so, even in the case of lowly Cambodia occupying the bottom rung. Simply put, in all Asian countries the predominant trend is that rice yields are all increasing in an environment wherein both temperature and CO2 have been rising in the period the graph depicts. Such a perfect correlation is An Inconvenient Truth, as they really need to ask why rice productivity is rising at all when it is supposed to decline according to the AGW theory. Proved wrong, they now have the cheek to ask why it is not rising fast enough?
Climate Critics That Won’t Muzzle ThemselvesMark Lynas is digging in his heels and standing up for principle, or, if you’re inclined to view this escalating controversy over IPCC process and ethics, he’s being a handmaiden for the Dark Side in the endless climate wars.
Electric car range - The Washington PostAfter weeks of driving various kids’ sports carpools in production Leafs, Chevrolet Volts and a prototype Mitsubishi i around Northern Virginia, it quickly become apparent that the ability to keep the battery at or near full capacity might be the most important characteristic for an EV. So the ability to quickly recharge during the hectic period between arriving home after work and leaving to drop off or pick up for music/dance/sports practice is key.
Lorne Gunter: The IPCC loses its last credibility | Full Comment | National PostImagine the reaction, for instance, if a government had produced a fossil-fuel friendly report based on work by an oil sands engineer, without revealing the source, and had paid the same engineer to write its own summary of his initial work.
That is what the IPCC has stooped to in this case and it eliminates any credibility the organization had left on the climate file.
Bonn climate summit diary | John Vidal | Environment | guardian.co.ukAfter 14 days in Bonn, interminable hot air, and the snail pace of the negotiations, there can't be many here feeling much beyond weariness and resignation.
Climate denier says solving global warming could cause Black Plague | Grist For anyone else who, like Taylor, didn't make it past the 13th century in school: Plague is actually not caused by cold? It's caused by these teeny tiny creatures, so small you can't see them, called Yersinia pestis. You probably understand that, because it's Latin and you are from the Middle Ages!
NC Media Watch: What climate change can we expect from a Grand Minimum?The last time sunspots vanished from the sun for decades was during the Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1700 AD was marked by drastic cooling of the climate and the maximum cold of the Little Ice Age. Millions starved to death as crops failed around the world.
If you are truly interested please read The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850, by Brian Fagan, especially the chapters on the Maunder Minimum.
An opening mind. Part II | Climate Etc.Journalists for the most part have dropped the ball on the climate change issue, and the watchdog/accountability role has been ceded to the blogospheric auditors, notably Steve McIntyre. There are very few mainstream journalists behaving in a true investigative way on the climate change issue.
Gas Up « The Daily BayonetShale gas will inevitably end the current fad of subsidizing inefficient renewables for the simple reason that businesses and consumers will punish any politician that keeps raising energy prices when an affordable alternative exists. Transformation to shale gas will happen, but it will happen against a background of howling screams from the green left who want anything but affordable, abundant energy.
Uncertainty and the IPCC | Climate Etc.Given the complexity of the climate problem, expert judgments about uncertainty and confidence levels are made by the IPCC on issues that are dominated by unquantifiable uncertainties.
Climate Common Sense: They are sending these Turkeys out Again after This BS Report!I have never seen such an impressive report about absolutely nothing. Two hundred of the Climate Scam's finest brains trying to write a report on how marine life is coping or not coping it seems with at huge temperature change of .06 of one degree Celsius over 25 YEARS . Following such a successful trip and brilliant research showing the devastation immeasurable changes in temperature has wrought on wee marine beasties these mighty intellects have been rewarded with another ocean cruise paid for by the EU which obviously has plenty of money to spend on this nonsense even when a large number of their members are technically insolvent.
Easterbrook on the potential demise of sunspots | Watts Up With That?The announcement that sun spots may disappear totally for several decades is very disturbing because it could mean that we are headed for another Little Ice Age during a time when world population is predicted to increase by 50% with sharply increasing demands for energy, food production, and other human needs. Hardest hit will be poor countries that already have low food production, but everyone would feel the effect of such cooling. The clock is ticking. Time will tell!
Mark Lynas: Home » climate change » Questions the IPCC must now urgently answerHere’s the scenario. An Exxon-Mobil employee – admittedly an energy specialist with an engineering background – serves as a lead author on an important IPCC report looking into the future of fossil fuels. The Exxon guy and his fellow lead authors assess a whole variety of literature, but select for special treatment four particular papers – one produced by Exxon-Mobil. This paper heralds great things for the future of fossil fuels, suggesting they can supply 80% of the world’s energy in 2050, and this headline is the first sentence of the ensuing IPCC press release, which is picked up and repeated uncritically the world’s media. Pleased, the Exxon employee issues a self-congratulatory press release boasting that his paper had been central to the IPCC effort, and urging the world’s governments to get on with opening up new areas to oil drilling for the benefit of us all.
Well. You can imagine the furore this would cause at Greenpeace. The IPCC would be discredited forever as an independent voice. There would be pious banner-drops by Greenpeace activists abseiling down Exxon HQ and harshly criticising the terrible stranglehold that fossil fuel interests had achieved over supposedly independent science. Campaigners everywhere would be up in arms. Greenpeace would feel doubly justified in taking direct action against new oil wells being opened up in the Arctic, and its activists could demonstrate new feats of gallantry and bravery as they took on the might of the world’s oil industry with some ropes and a rubber dinghy somewhere near Greenland.
How is the Exxon scenario different from what has just happened with the IPCC’s renewables report? And why – when confronted with this egregious conflict of interest and abuse of scientific independence – has the response of the world’s green campaigners been to circle the wagons and cry foul against the whistle-blowers themselves? That this was spotted at all is a tribute to the eagle eyes of Steve McIntyre. Yet I am told that he is a ‘denier’, that all his deeds are evil, and that I have been naively led astray by him. Well, if the ‘deniers’ are the only ones standing up for the integrity of the scientific process, and the independence of the IPCC, then I too am a ‘denier’.
YouTube - I'm A DenierIt's a parody of "I'm a Believer" written by Neil Diamond and performed by the Monkees. This version was written by Elmer Beauregard and Brian D. Smith and performed by Elmer and the M4GW players.
Analysis: Gas is killing green energy in price war | Reuters(Reuters) - A widening shale gas revolution is killing the economics of renewable energy, even as falling costs allow wind and solar to overtake fossil fuels in niche areas, say energy executives and analysts.
Solar panel prices are down about 10 percent this year, but chasing a moving target as discovery of cheap shale gas spreads beyond the United States, experts told Reuters energy and climate summit.
Even big renewables investors, such as French energy company Total, see solar as a tiny part of the picture decades out, compared with gas. Total paid $1.4 billion for a majority stake in U.S.-based SunPower Corp.
"You have one energy that represents today more than 20 percent of the energy mix, and solar today is close to zero and will represent maybe 1 or 1.5 percent in 20 years from now," said Jean-Jacques Mosconi, Total head of strategy.
Call for votes to spur climate talks faces hurdles | Reuters(Reuters) - A proposal by Mexico and Papua New Guinea to kick-start U.N. climate talks by shifting to voting on major decisions from an ill-defined need for consensus may face insurmountable hurdles, experts say.
"We want to break this process where the slowest is allowed to hold everyone else up," Kevin Conrad, of Papua New Guinea, told Reuters of the proposal on the sidelines of U.N. negotiations in Bonn from June 6-17.
He acknowledged the call to allow a 75 percent majority vote "as a last resort" scared many delegates at the 180-nation talks which are deadlocked over issues such as the fate of the Kyoto Protocol for curbing emissions.
"There is a fear factor. Most countries are afraid that the vote is going to be used against them," he said.
2008 Flashback - Bali Climate Talks - Kevin Conrad - Papua New Guinea - NYTimes.comMr. Conrad, 39, was born in the United States to Papuan parents but grew up in Wewak on New Guinea’s northern coast. He studied finance at top American universities, worked in investment banking and lives with his family in the New York City area. Besides representing New Guinea in climate talks, he runs the Rainforest Coalition, a group formed by tropical countries seeking compensation for the benefits of not cutting their forests.
Climategate part 2? A worrying conflict of interest | Oliver Wright | Independent Eagle Eye BlogsMany who follow the subject – and not just the usual climate change deniers – expressed concern that the IPCC, a body set up by the UN to provide scientific evidence for government decisions, had allowed itself to appear compromised by association.
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So does all this matter? Well yes. Whether it likes it on not after Climategate the IPCC needs to be seen to be transparent or you just give succour to those who believe that global warming is one great conspiracy of the green movement.
Where possible those writing key sections of IPCC reports should have no real or perceived conflicts of interest even if that means reducing the vast numbers of people who currently contribute to such tomes.
Where it is not possible such conflicts need to be flagged up – and that means in the press release as well as in the footnotes.
It must never be dragged kicking and screaming out of the small print as has happened this time.
Cook Terrified By The Possibility Of No Climate Crisis | Real ScienceWow, all it took was 0.3 degrees to freeze over the Thames.
Bedbugs and BureaucratsBedbugs are finding their way from more and more hotels into more and more homes. One way to get rid of them is to wash infested bedding and clothes in hot water. Hot means at least 118 degrees F; a warm water wash of only 104 degrees will kill only ten percent of the critters.
An extended bout of high-temperature drying is also recommended.
But with laundry machines and dryers coming under increasingly stringent federal energy efficiency regulations, sufficiently hot wash and dry cycles are becoming a thing of the past.
Ineos Says U.K. Carbon Floor Price May Force Manufacturers Out - BloombergNew U.K. rules setting a minimum price for carbon dioxide from power generation are unlikely to cut greenhouse gas emissions and risk driving manufacturers abroad, chemicals company Ineos Group Holdings Plc said.
Scientists See More Deadly Weather, but Dispute the Cause - NYTimes.com But [government scientists] were careful not to blame humans for this year’s rash of deadly events, saying that in some ways weather patterns were returning to those seen at the beginning of the last century.
“Looking at long-term patterns since 1980, indeed, extreme climatological and meteorological events have increased,” said Thomas R. Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. “But in the early part of the 20th century, there was also a tendency for more extreme events followed by a quiet couple of decades.”
Presenting a new NOAA report on 2011 extreme weather, Dr. Karl said that extremes of precipitation have increased as the planet warms and more water evaporates from the oceans. He also said models suggest that as carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere and heats the planet, droughts will increase in frequency and intensity.
“But it is difficult and unlikely to discern a human fingerprint, if there is one, on the drought record of the United States,” he said.
Al Warms To Mitt - Investors.comThere is something disquieting, however, about a liberal like Gore issuing a public bravo for the Republican front-runner. Could it be that Democrats fear Romney's more ideas-focused rivals for the GOP nod?
The New Nostradamus of the North: The Danish led Climate-Industrial complex tries to stop the shale gas revolution in EuropeThe Climate-Industrial lobby is masquerading as a partner in the (dubious) fight against global warming. The real purpose of its lobbying is to safeguard the taxpayer financed subsidies, without which the wind power companies would not make any profits at all. Poland, the US and all other sane forces must prevent the Climate-Industrial lobby from succeeding in its efforts to prevent the shale gas revolution from becoming reality in Europe!
Lawrence Solomon: NASA scientist reverses sunspot prediction, bolstering global cooling theory | FP Comment | Financial PostFive years ago, NASA’s David Hathaway, one of the world’s leading authorities on the solar cycle, predicted that the Sun was about to enter an unusually intense period of sunspot activity. Referring to Solar Cycle 24, the 11-year period that we’re now in, Hathaway predicted that it “looks like it’s going to be one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago.”
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Today, Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, believes his earlier prediction was wrong. Rather than hitting a peak of 160 sunspots, and possibly 185, as he predicted in 2006, he now believes that the Sun’s activity will decline dramatically. The current prediction, to less than half that of 2006, “would make this the smallest sunspot cycle in over 100 years,” he now states.
“Sceptic at Large” launched in London « Roger Helmer MEPThe room was packed, with many standing at the back, and the assembled throng included MPs
Climate Consensus on a T-shirtI was immediately taken with the idea of climate geeks walking the streets with the 97% scientific consensus on their chest. Okay, not quite a fashion statement that will attract the opposite sex, it might even get you beaten up in the schoolyard, but certainly a creative way to get the climate message out there. So I've set up a Skeptical Science CafePress store and the scientific consensus on climate change is now available as a T-shirt
Minnesota construction jobs bounce back, but still down for count (updated) - Finance & CommerceThe Associated General Contractors of Minnesota plans to conduct a study on why the state construction industry appears to be lagging behind the nation on jobs, said David Semerad, the group’s chief executive officer. Semerad guesses that an unusually harsh winter set building projects back.
I, Global Warming Skeptic | SkeptoidDump Al Gore. Even if you don’t think the man is a buffoon (I do, and I’m far from alone) you have to admit that he’s hyper-political. He’s clearly looking to ride global warming to greater wealth and power. A spokesman with his carbon footprint isn’t an ambassador, he’s a hypocritical liability.
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Look at the data. That skepticalscience.com site is a good resource.
UN climate talks will collapse without EU leadership, thinktank warns | Environment | guardian.co.ukUN climate talks are on the brink of unravelling and will collapse within months unless the EU shows global leadership by committing to a second phase of the only legally binding international treaty for cutting carbon emissions, a leading thinktank warned on Thursday.
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So far, only Norway and Sweden have said they will definitely sign up to a second round of Kyoto.
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"This is the crunch time. If the EU says, yes, the conditions are fulfilled, then there is some hope. Then Japan, Russia and Canada could be attracted back. But if the EU says no, then the whole thing unravels and the international climate system collapses. It is unthinkable," said Khor.
Revkin.net - Scientists see sunspot hibernation but no Ice Age[jtotheizzoe] Despite semi-hysterical reports you may be hearing in the media, sunspot experts want to make this very clear:
We may see sunspot activity go into a short hibernation (called the Maunder Minimum), but this does not mean we are going into a mini-Ice Age. I want to ram that point home, because as back-asswards as some of our climate policy is these days, I’d half expect there to be calls to pump extra CO2 into the atmosphere to give us some extra warmth. Ahh, the warm wool blanket of fossil fuel exhaust, just what a maybe-frozen Earth needs.
Ok, so if you hear someone mention this, smack them with a knowledge stick and say “Not so fast!”
It's Okay To Be Smart • About [jtotheizzoe]I’m a biology Ph.D. student, and I’m prone to loud music and stiff drinks.
If the sun goes into ‘hibernation,’ it won’t stop global warming | GristIf Solar Cycle 25 doesn't appear until 2022 (or 2092) it won't change the fact that if we keep listening to the disinformers and taking no action to reduce emissions, we will ravage human civilization. Sure, it might allow some disinformers to say that warming was not occurring as fast as the worst-case scenarios, but the more profound reality would be that even with a grand solar minimum, we'd still be seeing record warming decade after decade.
A serving of dim sun - The National"The solar cycle is maybe going into hiatus, sort of like a summertime TV show," said Frank Hill, an associate director at the National Solar Observatory. "We'll have a wonderful experiment that will determine whether the sun has any effect on global warming."
On The Hijacking of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) | Watts Up With That?We AMS members have allowed a small group of AMS administrators, climate modelers, and CO2 warming sympathizers to maneuver the internal workings of our society to support AGW policies irrespective of what our rank-and-file members might think. This small organized group of AGW sympathizers has indeed hijacked our society.
Fall-off In Rocky Mountain Wildflowers - Irish Weather Onlinet’s summer wildflower season in the Rocky Mountains, a time when high-peaks meadows are dotted with riotous colour. But for how long?
How is climate change really taught in our schools?- Businessgreen mobile "Climate change crops up in geography and science, yes, but it also crops up in business studies, economics, English, politics and philosophy."
What's interesting about this is that climate change is not a topic mentioned on the curriculum of many of those subjects; teachers just use it as an aid because it is a relevant issue that pupils will have heard about.
Richard Littlemore | Skeptical Science launches interactive history187 papers are openly skeptical of climate change, its seriousness or its anthropogenic cause.
Flashback: Chris Mooney | Who 'Framed' Naomi Oreskes?Oreskes examined a sample of 928 peer reviewed articles on "global climate change," and strikingly, didn't find a single one that explicitly challenged the view that humans are driving global warming through their emissions.
Cooler Earth: The Ice Age is coming... don't panic! | Mail OnlineThe Prime Minister has been deeply influenced by Senator Al Gore’s latest film, Ice Station Zebra, about the perils of global cooling. One memorable scene features a lonely zebra shivering to death in Tanzania.
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The spectre of mastedons, woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers wandering the streets of Tunbridge Wells in search of prey is very real, the Prime Minister warned.
Society being misled by proponents of human induced climate change [Nuclear physicist Kelvin Kemm] I believe that, in the future, when people look back at the history of current decades, they will wonder how a sophisticated, technological society could be so misled by proponents of human-induced climate change, when so much scientific evidence is available to show that clear logical alternatives are available to the hysterical incantations of the doom-and-gloom cult.
Peer Review And ‘Pal Review’ In Climate Science - Patrick Michaels - Climate of Fear - ForbesPeer review has become ”pal review.” Send a paper to one of the very many journals published by the American Geophysical Union–the world’s largest publisher of academic climate science–and you can suggest five reviewers. The editor doesn’t have to take your advice, but he’s more likely to if you bought him dinner at the last AGU meeting, isn’t he? That is, of course, unless journal editors are somehow different than government officials, congressmen, or you.
Or, if you get wind that someone is about to publish something threatening your gravy train, maybe you can cajole the editor to keep it out of print for a year while you prepare a counter-manuscript.
NSF awards CU-Boulder $5.9 million grant for [climate hoax] research "CU-Boulder has a worldwide reputation for monitoring global climate change from Greenland to Antarctica and its impacts on natural ecosystems and human populations," said Vice Chancellor for Research Stein Sture.
Clueless Easterner Says The West Is Burning Up | Real Sciencemost of the west has been amazingly free of fires this year.
The UCLA research team, led by assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences Curtis Deutsch, used a specialized computer simulation to demonstrate for the first time that the size of low-oxygen zones created by respiring bacteria is extremely sensitive to changes in depth caused by oscillations in climate.
a change by a single degree could spell disaster for us.
One of the central tenets of global warming theory is that warming of the atmosphere results in increased water vapor and thus precipitation, leading to alarmist predictions of increased flooding. A paper published online yesterday in the Journal of Geophysical Research counters this notion, showing that winter precipitation of the central Pacific coast has not increased over the past 105 years. Rather, a cyclical pattern of unknown etiology is found, which clearly shows no correlation to CO2 levels whatsoever.
Energy-saving pupils receive sweet reward (From Oxford Mail)PUPILS have been handed a year’s supply of chocolate for their energy-saving efforts.
The Sheriff of Oxford Jean Fooks yesterday gave out the 365 Fairtrade bars to youngsters at Matthew Arnold School, in Cumnor Hill.
The school saved 67 per cent of its energy bill by switching off unused appliances in a competition run by local charities Student Switch Off and People and Planet.
Pupil Arya Abaee, 13, said: “It was great fun to get all the chocolate and we’re all really pleased we managed to save so much electricity.”
People and Planet spokesman Jamie Clarke said: “The School Switch Off competition was a great way for schools to cut their energy bills, while students had fun tackling climate change.”
Stop Climate Chaos Coalition | People & PlanetWithout urgent action, climate change will devastate life on earth. Hundreds of millions of people, particularly the world’s poorest and most vulnerable will be put at severe risk of drought, floods, starvation, and disease. Up to one third of land-based species could face extinction by the middle of the century.
People & Planet is part of Stop Climate Chaos
IPCC as a knowledge monopoly | Climate Etc.However, the IPCC has certainly extended its remit; many have accused the IPCC of haughtiness; innovation is slow; quality may have declined; and the IPCC may have used its power to hinder competitors – all things that monopolies tend to do, and none of which is in the public interest. The IPCC would perform better if it were regulated by an independent body which audits the IPCC procedures and assesses its performance; if outside organizations would be allowed to bid for the production of IPCC reports and the provision of IPCC services; and if would-be competitors to the IPCC would be encouraged.
The New Nostradamus of the North: A new low from His Royal HignessClimate change/Global warming is most certainly a highly political question both in Australia and elsewhere. That is why the prince is clearly in breach of his duty to "remain separate from party political debate". Neither do his alarmist rants "act as a catalyst for facilitating debate". Maybe it is time for a STOP PRINCE CHARLES movement in the UK?
- Bishop Hill blog - Ideological money launderingWhat is surprising is the sheer scale of this shameless enterprise. We all knew that 'grey literature' -- non-scientific and non-peer reviewed 'research' -- found its way into IPCC reports. What surprises is the extent to which 'grey organisations' -- para-govermental institutions with public functions, but little or no democratic accountability or transparency -- are involved in the production of policy and evidence-making, benefitting a narrow industrial sector and serving a particular political agenda.
But what really grates is that to ask questions about this process is to identify oneself as a 'denier', in hock to fossil energy interests and 'well-funded' PR organisations. Pointing out the implications for democracy and the economy when self-interested NGOs and industry-associations enjoy such privilege from government is characterised as 'denying scientific evidence'.
Time for Democrats to do some wheeling and dealing on climate change | Other voices - The News TribuneGreen policies could be a nice fit here. One of the most appealing is a tax on carbon emissions. Those whose activities result in dangerous greenhouse emissions – things such as burning coal in power plants or mixing cement, with results that affect all of us – would have to pay something for them. This would raise lots of money – depending on the details, tens or hundreds of billions over a decade.
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Stephen Stromberg is The Washington Post’s deputy online opinions editor.
Geologists and Climate Change Denial | ThinkProgressWhen geologists bring up past climate change, they’re actually citing evidence for climate feedback. Dramatic swings in global temperature, dragging the planet in and out of ice ages, are possible because of these feedbacks. Renowned paleoclimatologist Wally Broecker sums it up beautifully: “The paleoclimate record shouts out to us that, far from being self-stabilising, the Earth’s climate system is an ornery beast which overreacts to even small nudges.”
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