Africa: "Earlier this year, a draft position paper was circulated in government circles arguing that global warming was a hoax invented by Western governments who had invested too much in green industries for them to fail"

Tottering Western idols only confirm African suspicions - Times LIVE

The suspicion that expertise belongs to those who are hostile to us, and is being used to hurt us, crops up periodically. Earlier this year, a draft position paper was circulated in government circles arguing that global warming was a hoax invented by Western governments who had invested too much in green industries for them to fail. The position paper seems to have died a quiet death, but it is interesting that it was written at all.

Lots more declines unhidden: Maybe this is why they didn't want us to see the data

The Reference Frame: HadCRUT3: 30% of stations recorded a cooling trend in their whole history

In this sense, the warming recorded by the HadCRUT3 data is not global. Despite the fact that the average station records 77 years of the temperature history, 30% of the stations still manage to end up with a cooling trend. The warming at a given place is 0.75 plus minus 2.35 °C per century.
...
Imagine, just for the sake of the argument, that any change of the temperature (calculated as a trend from linear regression) is bad for every place on the globe. It's not true but just imagine it. So it's a good idea to reduce the temperature change between now and e.g. the year 2087.

Now, all places on the planet will pay billions for special projects to help to cool the globe. However, 30% of the places will find out in 2087 that they will have actually made the problem worse because they will get a cooling and they will have helped to make the cooling even worse! ;-)

Because of this subtlety, it would be an obvious nonsense to try to cool the globe down even if the global warming mattered because it's extremely far from certain that cooling is what you would need to regulate the temperature at a given place. The regional "noise" is far larger than the trend of the global average so every single place on the Earth can neglect the changes of the global mean temperature if they want to know the future change of their local temperature.

The temperature changes either fail to be global or they fail to be warming. There is no global warming - this term is just another name for a pile of feces.

Now warmist polar bear researcher Ian Stirling wants to blame Al Gore for polar bear hysteria?

Suspended Polar Bear Researcher Defended by Advocates - ScienceInsider

Other scientists, impressed with Monnett's work, are also unsure where any allegations of a lack of scientific integrity could have arisen. In an e-mail to ScienceInsider, Ian Stirling, a polar bear researcher at the University of Alberta in Canada, calls the 2006 paper a "very valuable observation … properly written up and published in a respected peer reviewed journal".
...
Al Gore's movie, Stirling feels, overinterpreted Monnett's observations. "I still think it is a good piece of work, puts a limited number of observations in a solid context, does not overinterpret, and does not say this was caused by climate change."

Flashback: Polar Bear Presentation at Brookfield Zoo

The presentations will give insight into what biologists predict could happen to polar bears by the end of this century: the species could be extinct.
...
Dr. Stirling is an adjunct professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta, Canada. His long-term studies of polar bears in Western Hudson Bay, one of the world's most southerly populations, confirmed the negative effects of climate change.

Rajendra Pachauri is back to tell us: Trust me - Telegraph

One of the more bizarre episodes of the week was the arrival in London of Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as part of what appears to be a concerted bid to rehabilitate the IPCC after the deluge of scandals that assailed it last year. The line he took in several cosy interviews, with the BBC and others, was that the IPCC’s 2007 report made only “a single mistake” – its prediction that the Himlayan glaciers might all have disappeared by 2035. Otherwise, we are asked to believe, the IPCC’s reputation as a fount of utterly reliable, “peer-reviewed” science survives unscathed.

What this campaign is trying to erase, of course, is the memory of just why those scandals so damaged the IPCC’s authority that it can never be recovered.

NJ Figures in Dispute Over Cap-and-Trade Success - ABC News

There also is an excess of available permits, which are selling at just under $2 per ton — the absolute lowest allowed at the quarterly auctions where permits are sold. The number of bidders is steadily decreasing, from 82 at the first auction to just 47 at the most recent one in June. That eliminates any incentive for power companies to lower their own emissions so they can sell unused permits to other companies at a higher price.
...
"The whole system is not working as it was intended to work. It's a failure," Christie said in announcing New Jersey's pullout.

Not enough CO2-induced fires in Yosemite?

Yosemite to cut down thousands of trees that are blocking views - latimes.com

Thousands of younger pines and cedars will be cut down this fall to restore many of the park's original scenic vistas that in previous decades were managed by natural and controlled fires.

India's tiger population 'has increased by 20 per cent' - Telegraph

India's threatened tiger population, once feared to be facing extinction, has increased by 20 per cent in the last four years, according to official figures.

2010: Tigers threatened to near extinction due to climate change : TerraCurve.com

“If we don’t take steps to address the impacts of climate change on the Sundarbans, the only way its tigers will survive this century is with scuba gear,” said Colby Loucks, WWF’s deputy director of conservation science and the lead author of the study Sea Level Rise and Tigers: Predicted Impacts to Bangladesh’s Sundarbans Mangroves.

Don't miss this: Climate hoax promoters Mann and Pachauri are among NOAA's "Pillars of Climate"

NOAA’s Pillars of Climate « Climate Audit

Obviously US federal spending is under a lot of pressure given budgetary problems. In the course of cutting curtailing federal spending, there will be great pressure to curtail even the most worthy programs, such as NOAA’s sponsorship of the display Pillars of Climate at the recent American Meteorological Society’s Applied Climatology and Climate Change Adaptation conference in Asheville. Other sponsors are the University of North Carolina, NOAA, ARC, ArtPLex Solutions and Monotour Productions.

Spencer & Braswell’s new paper | Climate Etc.

I disagree with Gavin Schmidt that paloeclimate data is more robust than the satellite data

Carbon Tax needs a sunset clause | Watts Up With That?

the C-Tax should be scrapped immediately the global temperature falls below the 30 year average temperature, indicating the start of global cooling.

As the sun has gone quiet, and Queensland has just had its coldest autumn for at least 60 years, this looks likely to happen soon.

A Concise Slice of Climate-Science History - William Pentland - Clean Beta - Forbes

In 1954, Harrison Brown, a highly-regarded geoscientist at the California Institute of Technology, published a book that suggested solving world hunger by pumping massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to stimulate plant growth.

The New Nostradamus of the North: Increasing doubts about aid to corrupted Kenya

There is, of course, the question whether development aid to Africa - even under the best kind of circumstances - in reality does more harm than good. But even those who still believe in the usefulness of foreign aid, should abstain from giving to corrupted regimes and countries. It is also worth noting that the likelihood of corruption increases with more and more of e.g. EU aid going to fighting (imaginary) human caused global warming/climate change.

Der Spiegel On Monnett – Shoddy Scientist Who Is A Victim Of An Intrigue

Finally, past the half way point of the piece, Der Spiegel points out that Monnett’s scientific work was indeed sloppy and grossly lacked data:

Indeed the hated scientist had to admit last winter in a hearing that hardly any documentation for viewing the dead polar bears exists. There were no clear photos. The animals also did not show up in any official datasets of the expedition.”

Der Spiegel also noticed that the peer review was everything but rigorous, the paper sailed through the process with hardly any scrutiny:

In the publication of the Polar Biology article, it appears no one was disturbed by this. Even in-house reviewers in Monnett’s office as well as three anonymous peer reviewers of the journal simply waved the paper through with only slight modifications.”

C3: Leftie-Green Extremists Keep Pushing Jon Huntsman As GOP Presidential Contender - Why?

The environmental radicals that abhor businesses and decry Americans having access to low cost energy solutions see a win-win in a Obama vs. Huntsman 2012 election. No matter which of these candidates win, the green-left's nirvana of economic strangulation, UN-world governance and dictatorial EPA-style of regulation initiated by Obama will continue.

650.org | Real Science

As CO2 has increased, the number of US hurricane strikes has decreased. At 650 ppm hurricanes cease to exist!

295.org | Real Science

Dropping CO2 back to 295 ppm would make the climate stable again, like the one they had during the Black Plague and the Potato Famine.

480.org | Real Science

As CO2 has increased, the number of F3-F5 tornadoes has decreased. Extrapolating the trend, we can see that at 480 ppm there would be zero severe tornadoes.

1914 : Joe Romm’s Great Grandfather? | Real Science

The world is drying up! We are all doomed.

Alarmists Need To Get Their Personal Attacks Synced Better | Real Science

Dessler says that Spencer’s model matches the data, but it is still wrong.
...
Arthur Smith says that Spencer mismatches the data by a few trillion degrees.

Twitter / @Revkin: Building on his own PV exp ...

Building on his own PV experience, Jim Hansen runs US & global numbers & pops the renewables-as-cliimate-fix balloon: j.mp/JHrenew

Week in review 7/30/11 | Climate Etc.

Alarming(!) news

Yahoo.news posted a story from the Associated Press entitled “Northeast Braces for Temperatures Near Boiling Point” (h/t Angela Fritz.) It seems that the confused 100F with 100C. Here’s a book idea for Chris Mooney: “Unscientific reporters and editors”

Emissions fraud police are necessary: PM

A defiant Prime Minister Julia Gillard has returned to the carbon tax roadshow, saying tough penalties for emissions fraud are needed so that Australians are not ripped off.

She also vowed to explain the government's carbon pricing scheme for years to come.
...
But opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey said the need for "a whole new police force" was an admission by the government that some businesses would exploit the carbon tax.

How much would it cost to hire enough police to ensure that no one cheats in transactions involving large sums of money and a commodity that is invisible?

Study on how much heat cloud cover causes sparks debate, criticism from climate scientists - Warmist SETH BORENSTEIN

A study on how much heat in Earth's atmosphere is caused by cloud cover has heated up the climate change blogosphere even as it is dismissed by many scientists.
...
"This is a very bad paper and is demonstrably wrong," said Richard Somerville, a scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. "It is getting a lot of attention only because of noise in the blogosphere."

Kerry Emanuel of MIT, one of two scientists who said the study was good, said bloggers and others are misstating what Spencer found. Emanuel said this work was cautious and limited mostly to pointing out problems with forecasting heat feedback. He said what's being written about Spencer's study by nonscientists "has no basis in reality."

How we know we're causing global warming in a single graphic

[Sorry, I'm still not convinced that this isn't the largest scientific fraud in human history]

Deluded climate hoax promoter Lewis Pugh looks back at his comically failed "kayak to the North Pole" effort

‪Remember back in 2008, when Lewis Pugh tried to kayak to the North Pole, only to become stuck in ice after traveling only 10% of the distance to his goal?
Related posts here, here, here, and here.
Now he remembers being *shocked* at how melted the ice was, and remembers that his kayak story helped inspire the British Prime Minister to enact climate hoax legislation.

Lewis Pugh Interview.mp4‬‏ - YouTube

I will never forget the first time I saw a polar bear. I was in awe of its absolute beauty. I realised at that moment that I may be one of the last people to see them alive.

He says in 2008, he tried to kayak to the North Pole. Pugh: "I didn't get all the way there but I was so shocked by what I saw, that I got on the phone, I was out in the Arctic, I got on the satellite phone and I called Downing Street and I spoke to the Prime Minister Gordon Brown and I said to him: 'Prime Minister, we have wholly underestimated the speed of climate change.' I remember in 2007 when I was in the Arctic, the majority of the ice north of Svalbard was about 3m thick. Just about 13 to 14 months later, it was barely a meter thick. And standing there on the sea ice, describing this to the Prime Minister, I think it made an impact on him. Very very shortly afterwards, he enacted legislation which went to the British Parliament cutting our carbon emissions in Britain by 80% by 2050."

SunspotGate: Warmist Kevin Trenberth admits in an email that sunspots are an external forcing of our climate system; Romm publishes this admission, then deletes it

Tom Nelson

[After I wrote the post at the link above, a reader pointed out that Romm evidently deleted this interesting paragraph from warmist Kevin Trenberth from Romm's original post] In addition, I find the whole discussion to be out of touch with reality. The external radiative forcing of the climate system is mostly well known and comes from the changes in atmospheric composition (greenhouse gases) and the sun spot cycle etc. The part not so well known is the pollution (aerosol), but that is small. Nearly all of the variations in water vapor and clouds, except for those affected by aerosol, are a response to the weather and climate variations; they are NOT a forcing. This is a major error that continues in Spencer’s work.

The deleted paragraph currently still lives on here and here.

More settled science: Polar bears can only swim up to 100 miles, and they can also swim 426 miles

2011: More polar bear cubs die as Arctic ice melts | Reuters

There were 50 long-distance swims over those six years, involving 20 polar bears, ranging in distance up to 426 miles

2005: Polar bears drown as ice shelf melts - Times Online

“We know short swims up to 15 miles are no problem, and we know that one or two may have swum up to 100 miles. But that is the extent of their ability, and if they are trying to make such a long swim and they encounter rough seas they could get into trouble,” said Steven Amstrup, a research wildlife biologist with the USGS.

RealClimate: “Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedback”

Guest commentary by Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo
...it is evident that this paper did not get an adequate peer review. It should not have been published.
...
The bottom line is that there is NO merit whatsoever in this paper.

Oregon: Carbon dioxide allegedly makes plant roots smaller; also allegedly makes spring Chinook runs *later*

Northwest Tribes See Changes In Sacred 'First Foods' · OPB News

Lewis says he's also hearing from tribal women that the roots they harvest for ceremonies are changing, too.

"They are very small, and their numbers are dwindling, as well. So, it affects a lot of our roots today, this climate change."
...
Government scientists agree that salmon returning from the ocean appear to be smaller than in the past. Hatcheries and fishing practices could be part of the reason. But Oregon Fish and Wildlife biologist, Kathryn Kostow says the way climate change is affecting the ocean could be responsible, too.

"It may be a change in ocean productivity, and it may be associated with climate change, but we still have a lot of work to do to decide that's true."

Scientists confirm that the spring Chinook runs have been late, recently.

2010: Sockeye salmon run sets record for Columbia River | OregonLive.com

the run of sockeye salmon up the Columbia River this summer is the highest since Bonneville Dam started operating in 1938.

Polar Bear Science and the Spin Cycle - NYTimes.com

The most succinct reply came from Melissa Schwartz, the deputy chief of staff and communications director for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management:

The agency placed Mr. Monnett on administrative leave for reasons having nothing to do with scientific integrity, his 2006 journal article, or issues related to permitting, as has been alleged. Any suggestions or speculation to the contrary are wrong.

Her statement doesn’t mesh well with the transcript [ya think?] of one of the investigative interviews conducted with Monnett in February — which goes through page after page of questioning on swimming and dead polar bears and statistics.

But it is so definitive that it clearly indicates to me that any interpretations of what’s going on here are premature.

Science? What science? « The Daily Bayonet

For most climate alarmists, it’s not about science and never has been. If it was about science, Weepy Bill McKibben would be laughed into oblivion for insisting that 350ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere is a ‘safe’ level, Joe Romm would be recognized as an emotional train wreck in the pay of a far-left organization and Michael Mann would probably be an unemployed lab tech with a grudge.

Yet to warmists, these guys are rock stars because they’re willing to spout nonsense that makes the incurious and the follower-set feel good about themselves. If it was about science, the debate might actually be over, but climate science is dodgy at best. No matter how many tears Weepy Bill sheds or how spittle-flecked the Rommper room becomes, as more and more evidence is collected, mankind looks less and less culpable for global warming. When there is any, that is.

Federal Official: Monnett suspension unrelated to “drowned” polar bears | Watts Up With That?

JUNEAU, Alaska — A federal official says the suspension of Alaska wildlife biologist Charles Monnett is unrelated to a 2006 article Monnett wrote about presumably drowned Arctic polar bears.

Michael Bromwich also says it’s unrelated to Monnett’s scientific work and instead a result of new information on a separate subject recently brought to light.

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: Scientists: You Are No Longer Politically Useful

One can imagine what would have been the reaction had this occurred in 2006.

For scientists, the lesson here should be clear -- your status with partisans is a function of your perceived usefulness to their political agenda of the day.

Climate [Junk] Scienists Debunk Latest Bunk by Denier Roy Spencer | ThinkProgress

[Dessler] To understand this paper, you have to understand the difference, between a “forcing” and a “feedback.” Forcings are imposed changes to, the climate, while feedbacks are processes that respond to changes in, the climate and amplify or ameliorate them. So the addition of carbon, dioxide to the atmosphere by humans is a forcing—it is simply an, imposition on the climate. Water vapor, on the other hand, is a, feedback because the amount of water vapor is set by the surface, temperature of the planet. As the planet warms, you get more water, vapor in the atmosphere, and since water vapor is itself a greenhouse, gas, this leads to additional warming.

The canonical way to think about clouds is that they are a feedback—as, the climate warms, clouds will change in response and either amplify, (positive cloud feedback) or ameliorate (negative cloud feedback) the, initial change.

What this new paper is arguing is that clouds are forcing the climate, rather than the more traditional way of thinking of them as a, feedback. This is not, in fact, a new argument.
...
Thus, his paper is not really intended for other scientists, since they do not take him seriously anymore (he’s been wrong too many times). Rather, he’s writing his papers for Fox News, the editorial board of the Wall St. Journal, Congressional staffers, and the blogs. These are his audience and the people for whom this research is actually useful — in stopping policies to reduce GHG emissions — which is what Roy wants.
...
[Trenberth] In addition, I find the whole discussion to be out of touch with reality. The external radiative forcing of the climate system is mostly well known and comes from the changes in atmospheric composition (greenhouse gases) and the sun spot cycle etc. The part not so well known is the pollution (aerosol), but that is small. Nearly all of the variations in water vapor and clouds, except for those affected by aerosol, are a response to the weather and climate variations; they are NOT a forcing. This is a major error that continues in Spencer’s work.

Snow in the south

Australia has had a record-breaking start to its winter

Farron Cousins | GOP Congressman Warns That EPA Could Be On The Chopping Block After 2012 Elections

If the current trends continue, there might not be an EPA left to dismantle after the 2012 elections.

Here’s What Livescience Doesn’t Want You To Read « The Unbearable Nakedness of CLIMATE CHANGE

A comment of mine “disappeared” from Liescience. Surprise, surprise! Here it is then

Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » Using Computer Models To Launder Certainty

For a while, I have criticized the practice both in climate and economics of using computer models to increase our apparent certainty about natural phenomenon.   We take shaky assumptions and guesstimates of certain constants and natural variables and plug them into computer models that produce projections with triple-decimal precision.   We then treat the output with a reverence that does not match the quality of the inputs.
...
This is the clearest, simplest example of certainty laundering I have ever seen. If there is not sufficient data to draw conclusions about how a system operates, then how can there be enough data to validate a computer model which, in code, just embodies a series of hypotheses about how a system operates?

A model is no different than a hypothesis embodied in code.

Fallout from Our Paper: The Empire Strikes Back « Roy Spencer, Ph. D.

Kevin Trenberth’s response to our paper, rather predictably, was:

“I cannot believe it got published”

Which when translated from IPCC-speak actually means, “Why didn’t I get the chance to deep-six Spencer’s paper, just like I’ve done with his other papers?”

Finally Gavin Schmidt claims that it’s the paleoclimate record that tells us how sensitive the climate system is, not the current satellite data. Oh, really? Then why have so many papers been published over the years trying to figure out how sensitive today’s climate system is? When scientists appeal to unfalsifiable theories of ancient events which we have virtually do data on, and ignore many years of detailed global satellite observations of today’s climate system, *I* think they are giving science a bad name.

THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: Deep ocean 'missing heat' causing sea levels to rise 1/5 of 1 inch per century

A paper published online today examines temperature measurements of the deep oceans that have been performed 2 or more times at 28 sites between 1980 and 2010. The paper concludes that warming of the global deep ocean abyss is contributing 0.053 mm/yr or 1/5 of 1 inch per century to global sea level rise.

Alarmists such as Kevin Trenberth et al claim the "missing heat" generated by greenhouse gases has somehow gone to the deep ocean, bypassing detection by satellites in the atmosphere or by thousands of ARGO floats monitoring the upper 1000 meters of the oceans. If the "missing heat" has teleported to the deep oceans, this paper suggests it is causing a trivial influence on global sea levels.

Breaking: Warmist Brad Johnson suggests that Yahoo! News is part of "the right-wing climate disinformation media machine"

Climate scientists blow gaping hole in ‘NASA data’ paper | Grist

This case is an excellent example of how the right-wing climate disinformation media machine works. Roy Spencer, one of the handful of publishing climate scientist ideologues, gets his work into an obscure journal. Then James Taylor, an operative for a fossil fuel front group, claims it is "very important" on Forbes.com, a media website owned by a Republican billionaire. The Forbes blog post was redistributed by Yahoo! News, giving the headline "New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism" a further veneer of respectability, even though the full post is laughably hyperbolic, using "alarmist" or "alarmism" 15 times in nine paragraphs.

Jon Huntsman may be setting himself up as Republican green kamikaze | Suzanne Goldenberg | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Huntsman actually uttered the words climate change only once in the 20-minute speech.

Dear skeptics: Here is more climate data than you can handle | Sarah Laskow

This might make it harder for scientists to get shared data in the future, since people don’t always like it when you give away their work for free, but it is worth it just to shut you up.

Happy now? Oh, what, you actually have no idea how to interpret this raw data?

Twitter / @slaskow: Conservative, white dudes ...

Conservative, white dudes most likely to think they're smarter than science. bit.ly/nL6fVN

Steve Valk: Huntsman's Climate Stand Smarter Than You Think

Huntsman can own the moderate vote in the Republican party

[Warmist Phil Plait:  We get to call you deniers; you don't get to call us alarmists] | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

It’s clear after reading just a few words that this article is hugely biased. The use of the word "alarmist" and its variants appeared no fewer than 14 times, 16 if you include the picture caption and the headline. The word "alarmist" is pretty clearly slanted against the overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that the Earth is warming up, and that humans are the reason*.
...
* Mind you, of course, I use the word "denier" quite a bit when discussing this topic, but in this case the shoe fits. When you deny overwhelming evidence, you’re a denier. Scientists trying to tell people what the science is telling them aren’t alarmists. They’re scientists. And as you can see from what other climate scientists are saying, what the Forbes article is based on apparently isn’t good science.

Go Easy on the Polar Bear Fraud | Climate Skeptic

There is no room for fraud because the study was, on its face, facile and useless. The authors basically extrapolated from a single data point. As I tell folks all the time, if you have only one data point, you can draw virtually any trend line you want through it. They had no evidence of what caused the bear deaths or if they were in any way typical or part of a trend — it was all pure speculation and crazy extrapolation. How could there be fraud when there was not any data here in the first place? The fraud was in the media, Al Gore, and ultimately the EPA treating this with any sort of gravitas.

Collide-a-scape » Blog Archive » Collide-a-scape >> Nature, Redefined

Because as ecologist Daniel Botkin writes in the postscript to his pioneering book, Discordant Harmonies:

Nature in the twenty-first century will be a nature that we make; the question is the degree to which this molding will be intentional or unintentional, desirable or undesirable.

She's behaving like a rich old American Caucasian stupid ideological evil Christian gun-clinging cousin-marrying right-winger: India environment minister protests grandchildren-saving climate swindle

India protests carbon tax on Europe flights - Hindustan Times

Come January, your airfare to London will cost €6 (Rs 380) more, thanks to a new carbon tax the European Union (EU) has decided to levy on the aviation sector. This tax will cost India $1 billion (Rs 4,500 crore) a year and with China and the United States, will help Europe make a neat $10 billion a year.
...
It's not the money but the intention of rich nations behind the tax that has irked emerging economies like India and China
...
Environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan lodged a formal protest with the EU this week, terming the decision an "unfair" trade practice.

[Must be a bunch of evil old conservative rich racist Caucasian stupid males who hate their grandchildren]:  Mont. tribe renews bid to tap 9B ton coal cache | AP Texas News

BILLINGS, Mont. — Montana's Crow tribe and an Australian company on Friday renewed their bid to tap into the reservation's huge fossil fuel reserves, with a scaled-down proposal for a coal-to-liquids plant and the new pursuit of coal exports to Asia.

Reality as a Failed State | Beyond The Beyond

“What many techno-scientists fail to understand - and thus find most frustrating - about dealing with climate change deniers is that the denier has no real interest in engaging at the scientist’s level of reality.

“The point, for the climate denier, is not that the truth should be sought with open-minded sincerity – it is that he has declared the independence of his corner of reality from control by the overarching, techno-scientific consensus reality. He has withdrawn from the reality forced upon him and has retreated to a more comfortable, human-sized bubble.

“In these terms, the denier’s retreat from consensus reality approximates the role of the cellular insurgents in Afghanistan vis-a-vis the American occupying force: this overarching behemoth I rebel against may well represent something larger, more free, more wealthy, more democratic, or more in touch with objective reality, but it has been imposed upon me (or I feel it has), so I am going to withdraw from it into illogic, emotion and superstition and from there I am going to declare war upon it.

“So, from this point of view, we can meaningfully refer to deniers, birthers, Tea Partiers and so forth as “reality insurgents”

[Let them ride bikes]: Carbon tax will hit rescue choppers Local Gold Coast News | goldcoast.com.au | Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

THE green tax could ground the Gold Coast's rescue choppers if the Federal Government refuses to give them a break over the carbon levy.

Layers and layers of fact-checking fail again at The Guardian: Goldenberg claims that Polarbeargate researcher suggested 25% of swimming bears *drowned*; he actually suggested that only 25% of them *survived*

As I understand it, this guy saw four polar bears swimming, then claims that sometime later, after a storm, he saw three polar bears dead in the water.

Arctic scientist questioned on polar bear toll | Warmist Suzanne Goldenberg | The Guardian

It was the first time government scientists had recorded drowning deaths of polar bears, Monnett told investigators. He and Gleason published their observations in 2006 in the journal Polar Biology.

The paper used the number of polar bear carcasses observed on the flight to suggest 25% of bears had drowned swimming between solid sheets of ice.

From the infamous dead polar bear paper:

Limiting data to bears on transect and not considering bears seen on connect and search segments, four swimming polar bears were encountered in addition to three dead bears. If these bears accurately reflect 11% of bears present under these conditions, then 36 bears may have been swimming in open water on 6 and 7 September, and 27 bears may have died as a result of the high offshore winds. These extrapolations suggest that survival rate of bears swimming in open water during this period was low (9/36=25%).

Heartland Replies to Nature - by Joseph L. Bast

Roger Pielke Jr., the fifth and final critic quoted by Tollefson, is admirable for his ability to stay suspended in mid-air for years between the two camps of alarmists and skeptics. One of these days, he’ll need to plant his feet in one camp or another, and because he’s a good scientist, I believe it will be in ours.
...
Finally, the editors declare they are in pursuit of “a theory that can explain observations of the world,” whereas the skeptics seem content to point out gaps in that theory. “The Heartland Institute and its ilk,” they say, “are not trying to build a theory of anything.” Well, where to begin?

I am not a scientist, and it certainly is not my place to tell the editors of such an esteemed publication as Nature what they ought to be about. But it is my understanding of the scientific method that it proceeds by the falsification of hypotheses, not their defense by every means possible, which is what Nature and regrettably other leading science journals have resorted to in the case of man-made climate change. The goal ought not to be to defend a hypothesis, but to test it, and if it fails, to consider competing hypotheses and test those just as rigorously.

Nature, it seems to this nonscientist observer, has lost its way. Until the journal opens its eyes, it will not be a serious voice on climate science.

We need a free market in climate science « JoNova: Science, carbon, climate and tax

GOVERNMENTS across the world have paid billions to find links between carbon dioxide and the climate, but very little to find the opposite, and that’s a problem.

Teams of professionals have searched high and low for any possible hint that CO2 poses a threat, and that is all very well, but no one has been paid to find otherwise. CO2 has been convicted without a defence lawyer.

Obama’s CAFE fairy tale - By Henry Payne - Planet Gore - National Review Online

“We’ll agree to anything that’s 15 years out,” a highly placed auto industry insider told me today about the fairy tale 54.5 mpg-by-2025 mandate for America’s auto fleet that Barack Obama and Big Auto execs will finally — officially — announce Friday in Washington.

The rule has no grounding in reality. An engineering rule of thumb is that gas engine efficiency improves by 1.5 percent a year (a gain that, in the cheap gas U.S. market, has traditionally gone to power upgrades rather than mpg improvements). The EPA’s rule will mandate that light trucks gain 3.5 percent a year and cars, 5 percent. Really.

It might as well mandate that the sun rise in the west three days a week.

Germany’s 2011 Summer Will Be On August 2 From 1:30 PM Until 3:30 PM

Germany over the last weeks has been gripped by unusually cool and wet weather, and so many are wondering whatever happened to summer. The forecast for the days ahead according to the English-language The Local doesn’t look good either as rain and cool with temperatures stuck in the 60s remaining the rule.

Hmm: Warmist Richard Black suggests that global warming may cause more cold snaps, which will cause more coal use, which will cause more global warming and even more cold snaps

[Not just weather?]: BBC News - US heatwave raises climate complexity

In the last couple of Northern Hemisphere winters, with temperatures plummeting across tracts of North America and western Europe, "belief" in man-made global warming - it was widely reported - took a bit of a dip.
...
The inference that any day's weather is related to the slow progress of global warming is one of the things that scientists find most frustrating - although comedian Bill Maher probably expresses that frustration more pithily than most scientists, commenting that not believing in climate change because it's snowing "is like saying the Sun might not be real because last night it got dark".

This is why columnist Thomas Friedman advocates the term "global weirding" rather than "global warming", because it includes the apparently contrary impacts that can result from an overall increase in global temperatures, such as cold snaps.
...
Which basically leaves the US more and more dependent on coal for the electricity it is going to need in greater and greater quantities as the economy recovers and the population increases.

Throw in the potential for additional demand from more frequent heatwaves or cold snaps or both, and you have one of several human-mediated positive feedback loops for the climate.

Sometimes it rains in Seoul and sometimes it doesn't; CO2 blamed

When climate changes, city must too - INSIDE Korea

These are all signs that a subtropical climate is creeping up the Korean Peninsula. And as Seoul saw this week, as it got hit by historic amounts of rainfall, climate change requires very real changes in cities and how they deal with the weather, such as water control systems. Because the systems in Korea’s cities were built for a bygone climate.

Two Centuries of Precipitation and Drought Data from Seoul, Korea

In viewing the results depicted above, it is obvious that the only major multi-year deviation from long-term normalcy is the decadal-scale decrease in precipitation and ensuing drought, which phenomena each achieved their most extreme values (low in the case of precipitation, high in the case of drought) in the vicinity of AD 1900. Hence, it would appear -- in fact, it is very clear -- that the significant post-Little Ice Age warming of the planet had essentially no effect at all on the long-term histories of either precipitation or drought at Seoul, Korea, which observation adds to the growing body of such findings from all around the world, as may be seen from perusing the materials we have archived under the headings of Weather Extremes (Drought and Precipitation) in our Subject Index.

Polarbeargate researcher on key global warming hoax statistic: "Oh, well, that’s just a mindless thing"

William M. Briggs, Statistician » Reading Spencer’s Radiation Paper; Polar Bears Flap: Scientist Under Investigation

One point of contention is where Monnett said, “These extrapolations suggest that survival rate of bears swimming in open water during this was period was low (9/36)=25%).” That’s the statistic that was picked up by Al “Buy My Carbon Offsets” Gore, and which Gore used to prove that most polar bears would soon be dead.

In a hilarious exchange with investigator Eric May, Monnett tries to deny that the 25% statistic was a statistic:

ERIC MAY: Did they comment at all about any of the stats or –

CHARLES MONNETT: Uh, there’s no stats in [the paper].

ERIC MAY: Well, calculations, for, for example, the 25 percent survival rate.

CHARLES MONNETT: Oh, well, that’s just a mindless thing. That’s in the discussion. Um, that is not a statistic. Um, that’s a ratio estimator. It’s a it’s a fifth grade procedure. Do you have kids?

Additional Information On The “Ocean’s Missing Heat” By Katsman and van Oldenborgh 2011 | Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr.

“Observations of the sea water temperature show that the upper ocean has not warmed since 2003. This is remarkable as it is expected the ocean would store that the lion’s share of the extra heat retained by the Earth due to the increased concentrations of greenhouse gases..."

Jennifer Marohasy » Natural Gas, More Polluting than Coal? Only According to the IPCC. A Note from Cementafriend

METHANE is the major component of natural gas (>94 percent) and coal seam gas, which are claimed to be good clean fuels on the basis they have a lower carbon content than coal or oil.

Is this the same methane from the backsides of farting cows that is considered to be a bad greenhouse gas and 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide? And the same methane that when escaping as a fugitive (lost through leakage) gas from coal mining is considered bad?

This is contradictory.

Shock News : A Trillion Tons Of Ice Was Lost From Greenland Last Year! | Real Science

Greenland’s surface area is more than 2 trillion square metres. The average annual snowfall is one metre. That means that two trillion cubic metres of snow falls every year, which compacts to about one trillion cubic metres of ice. In order to remain in equilibrium, one trillion cubic metres of ice has to move into the sea.

If this didn’t happen, the ice sheet would rise past the top of the troposphere in 20,000 years. So next time some climate moron starts throwing around numbers about billions of tons of ice being lost, remind them that they need to go back to primary school and start over with their maths, science and basic thinking skills.

In This House, We Obey The Laws Of Thermodynamics | Real Science

Energy received from the Sun either accumulates in the oceans or goes back out into space. If the oceans aren’t warming, that means that the amount of heat going back into space is equal to the amount being received from the Sun.

Global warming proponents talk mindlessly about the atmosphere “trapping heat” – but this concept is ridiculous. The heat capacity of the atmosphere is very small, as indicated by the fact that it can cool 50 degrees over the desert, just a few hours after the sun sets. If the oceans aren’t warming, global warming isn’t happening – period.

Canadian Scientists and the World Wildlife Fund « NoFrakkingConsensus

In December 2009 hundreds of Canadian scientists really did choose to publicly align themselves with a left-leaning advocacy organization. They actually thought this was a smart strategy – that this is how you persuade a Tory national government to take action on climate change.
...Whatever the explanation, the leaders of no less than 12 bodies that are described by the WWF as scientific organizations were incapable of figuring out that scientists are respected by the public because they’re perceived as being above the fray.

It apparently occurred to none of these PhDs that the fastest way to squander your scientific authority is to stride noisily onto the political stage under a huge, flapping WWF banner. Here’s the yes-our-judgment-is-impaired list

'Missing heat': Is global warmth vanishing into space? • The Register

It's gone away somewhere, that's for sure

Drowning Polar Bears And the Return Of Ursus Bogus - Patrick Michaels - Climate of Fear - Forbes

Maybe the problem is that enough polar bears aren’t drowning. Populations are booming, especially in the Canadian arctic.

It’s a fact that people just can’t get enough of polar bears. If they are drowning in droves, where are the pictures? Where is the evidence for dramatic population declines?

Branson says the Virgin succession issue is still up in the air | The Australian

Sam Branson lives a more low-key life. Current Sponge is his production company, an offshoot of Al Gore's youth-oriented Current TV. He has described himself as a writer-producer-presenter, aiming to educate people his age about climate change.

Drill, Bebé, Drill - Coral Davenport - NationalJournal.com

Sometime over the next three months, if all goes according to plan, Cuban workers on a Chinese-built, Spanish-owned rig will start drilling for oil in the mile-deep waters just off the north coast of Cuba, 70 miles from the Florida Keys.

If the drill hits a major oil deposit—and all geologic signs indicate it will—the discovery will unleash a cascade of developments with profound political, environmental, and economic consequences.

Junk Science Unravels - Investors.com

Climate Change: The scientist who claimed that global warming threatens polar bears is under investigation. There's a hole in Earth's greenhouse. A cooler era lies ahead. That hiss is the hot air coming out of alarmists' balloon.

The global warming fraud is coming apart faster than the alarmists can repackage and rebrand their fairy tale. Their elaborately constructed yarn can't hold together much longer. There are just too many loose ends:

Wet, cold weather hurts North Shore businesses

Weather gurus are claiming that summer in Metro Vancouver has only been slightly cooler than normal, but North Shore businesses are feeling a major difference.

Virtually any company that relies on sunny days has been affected, some a lot more than others.

"We have been hit so bad this year. This is the worst year by far," says Gary Nedergard, manager at North Vancouver's Northlands Golf Course.

Data pours more cold water on the warmists' claims | Herald Sun

The "science is in"? Who says so lies, and until I see Flannery move to high ground, clutching cats for warmth, I'd say he secretly thinks so, too.

DailyTech - Study Finds "Huge Discrepancy" Between Hard Data and Warming Models

Professor Spencer deserves to be commended for his thorough analysis and outstanding work. It takes a bold man to defy some of one's colleagues when they're clearly perpetrating a factual inaccuracy.

Global Warming Industry Rocked by Polar Bear Fraud - Global Warming - Fox Nation

Jo Chandler | Feeling the heat | Clouds parted on the data debate

Drawing on her experiences in the Antarctic, Great Barrier Reef and Wet Tropics, Chandler describes the grinding work that is scientific research - freezing hours spent collecting ice cores bearing bubbles of fossilised air, evidence of climates past; trudging out at night to document minute changes in the behaviour and position of creatures. These stories, and the eccentrics that inhabit them, are the minutia edited out of the big picture of global warming, to produce climate science pared of blisters and bruises, frostbite and effort.

Mountain goat season opens Aug. 1 in Unit 4 | Juneau Empire - Alaska's Capital City Online Newspaper

The release stated harsh winter weather in 2006 and 2007, with deep snow and a late, persistent spring snowpack, contributed to the decline in the goat population on Baranof Island. The decline has reversed the trend of population range expansion observed up to 2004.

Is It Over For The Climate Alarmists? : Stop The ACLU

He’s completely correct on that: it is strictly a political debate. No amount of science will ever change the minds of the Warmists. Ever. Like cultists, they are stuck in rigid dogma, and think that Someone Else should be forced to change their lives. Then they jump in their big SUV after the globull warming rally to go pick the kids up and run some errands before hosting a cocktail party.

Lorne Gunter: CO2 just not capable of trapping dangerous heat | Full Comment | National Post

Never give up on a theory that’s made you famous (and in some cases rich). Should it become hard to maintain the theory in light of
contradictory real-world evidence, simply make up unprovable excuses for why your hypothesis isn’t coming true and stick with it.

The more likely explanation is that carbon dioxide simply isn’t as capable of absorbing solar energy as first thought.

The US and China will not accept EU climate charges for their airlines

Connie Hedegaard, quite rightly thinks that "it is unfair to demand emission certificates only from European airlines". The anwer is quite simple: Remove the useless certificates also from European airlines! It´s just as simple as that.

Is It Over for Global Warming Alarmism? | Power Line

If these data hold up, the alarmists and their political supporters will owe the realist scientists one of the biggest apologies in the history of science.

CapitalClimate: Climatologists Acting Weird; Meteorologists, Too

Strange behavior in the climosphere, from The Onion

Al's Journal : Jellyfish Soup?

An impact of the climate crisis on the UK’s coastline:

“Holidaymakers have been warned to be vigilant this Summer as Britain's coastal seas could to be turned into 'jellyfish soup'.”

Indian study shows climate change is probably caused by natural factors

I agree entirely with Rao that climate change is probably caused by natural factors.

The report brought out by Rao says that human-induced global warming is much less than is claimed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and that, in fact, most of the observed temperature fluctuations could be attributed to cosmic rays, in particular Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs).

My climate views are ungaggable: Turnbull

"Nobody has gagged me, I'm ungaggable I assure you," he told reporters in Sydney today.

"I'm beyond gagging."
...
But Mr Turnbull toed the Coalition line when asked about the federal government's clean energy regulator policed by "carbon cops".

"I'm sure it will be heavy-handed because there's obviously going to be a very tough enforcement mechanism," he said.

Morrissey: Killing Animals Worse Than Norway Massacre

English singer Morrissey says what happened in Norway is "nothing compared" to what happens to animals killed for fast-food chains, reports say.

The 52-year-old vegan, who is a vocal supporter of animals rights, made the remarks to concertgoers at a performance in Warsaw, Poland, on Sunday night, the Daily Mirror reported.
...
He also expressed his unhappiness that British Prime Minister David Cameron was a fan of the Smiths as the Conservative leader had hunted stag in the past.

"I don't think I would," he told a BBC program in April when asked if he would greet Mr Cameron if he came to his dressing room.

"It's a moral issue. Killing a stag is like killing a child. What's the difference?"

Is Physicist Stephen Hawking Overrated?

I hope that Hawking is simply repeating something he's been told, but hasn't taken time to examine. If Hawking took the time to examine both sides of the debate over global warming he would realize that global warming is based on a long discredited 19th Century theory that is inconsistent with the laws of thermodynamics. The so called greenhouse effect represents a form of perpetual motion machine that is inconsistent with accepted thermodynamic theories

Jean Baptist Joseph Fourier claimed in 1827 that greenhouses worked by allowing in sunlight and then trapping the infrared radiation produced inside to heat the greenhouse. R. W. Wood disproved this theory in a 1909 experiment that indicated no significant difference in temperature between a greenhouse that "trapped" IR and one that was transparent to IR. In fact in the initial run of the experiment the transparent greenhouse heated faster because the one that reflected IR reflected incoming solar IR back into space.

‪Polarbeargate‬‏ - YouTube

Polarbeargate could become the new Climategate. The global warming alarmist movement is completely discredited -- but there's startling new evidence that man-made climate change is threatening to wipe penguins off the face of the earth, that is if you are suckered by Al Gore's cartoonish, mindless, baseless propaganda.

Weather records broken in July - national | Stuff.co.nz

During the cold snap of July 25 and 26, records were broken.

The lowest ever daily minimum temperatures in July were recorded in parts of the country, including 2.7 degrees in Leigh, the lowest since 1966.

In Whangaparaoa, the mercury fell to 3.4 degrees, the lowest since 1982.

The minimum temperature in New Plymouth (the coldest since 1944) was -2.6 degrees, while in Westport the mercury sank to -1.5 degrees, the lowest since 1937.

Coldest morning in 17 years - Local News - News - General - The Canberra Times

Canberra has gone into a deep freeze, experiencing its coldest night in 17 years according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

‪Black By Color Only/Global Warming‬‏ - YouTube

We are in the middle of summer and it's hot outside so, what else is new?

Flashback: Conservative, white men more likely to be climate change sceptics, study shows | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Now comes a study of sex, skin color and political ideology that suggests it pretty much sums up how some white male conservatives in the United States respond to climate change.

Balancing climate pragmatism with moral clarity | Grist

The right has quite deliberately, with enormous assistance from a self-contained media ecosystem, created an atmosphere in which standing behind climate reality brands one an "advocate," a (gasp) liberal. Lots of people, for whatever reason, are extremely keen to be seen as reasonable, common-sense folk, not like those ideologues, certainly not like those hippies. (I have called them, somewhat awkwardly, "characterological centrists.") They have a very visceral personal aversion to taking stances that get them labeled as partisans. So they are recoiling from climate change now. If it is polarizing, they've concluded, let's drop it and emphasize things that aren't.

The Murdochs had nothing to do with 'Climategate' email hacking | @mjrobbins | Science | guardian.co.uk

Attempts by Climate Progress to link the UEA email hacking to News Corp have little basis in fact, and make advocates of climate action look silly
...
Leaving all that aside, the e-mails emerged not in a News International publication, nor in any other mainstream media organ, but in the blogosphere. There they were pushed by hard-of-thinking internet eccentrics like James Delingpole, until proper journalists eventually took notice and began covering the news. It seems like a pretty circuitous way to break a story, like the Telegraph getting hold of the MPs' expenses documents and handing them over to Guido Fawkes.

"Cool Dudes", Hot Temps; The Climate Change Battle Will Get Us Nowhere | Risk: Reason and Reality | Big Think

The solution is obvious, though hardly easy. We have stop making climate change a zero sum if-you-win-I-lose battle. We have to frame the issue in ways that work within everybody’s underlying cultural/tribal perspectives. We have to realize that answers are more likely to be found, and solutions are more likely to be reached, if the goal is finding common ground, to one of the most serious threats humans - all of us - have ever faced.

Revkin "looking into" Polarbeargate

TwitLonger — When you talk too much for Twitter

This @PEERorg report has Bush-era feel: "ARCTIC SCIENTIST PROTESTS WITCH HUNT ON POLAR BEAR PAPER — Studies Disrupted as Supervising Federal Scientist Suspended from Duties." Looking into it. http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1503

ARCTIC SCIENTIST PROTESTS WITCH HUNT ON POLAR BEAR PAPER

IG interview transcripts do reveal, however, that –

The probe is being conducted by criminal investigators with no scientific training or background, who, based upon their questions, have little grasp of the scientific issues they are investigating;
They have rifled through all of Dr. Monnett’s e-mails and seized his papers and equipment, impeding his ability to work even before he was ordered to stay home; and
The investigators are seeking a link to former Vice President Al Gore, who referenced the polar bear paper in his book and movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

Saint Nancy | Real Science

Nancy spent the last four years leading the charge to spend the US into oblivion, and yet she imagines that she is saving the planet. There must be some sort of anti-psychotic medication which would help.

Just how much power over us do warmists want? | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

Attacks on free speech, threats to censor sceptical newspapers, laws to regulate your behaviour… It’s increasingly clear that the even more dangerous than the carbon dioxide tax are the authoritarian measures taken to crush resistance against it and force you to comply

2007 vs 2011 | Real Science

People are asking the right questions. The blink comparator above flashes between ice loss during the past week, and how much needs to disappear during the next four weeks to match 2007. As you can see, the weather would have to make a very dramatic change for that to happen.

Cool dudes | Climate Etc.

JC conclusion: This article is notable primarily for coining the term “cool dudes” in the context of climate change “denial.” My main reaction to this is to question how social scientists, who actually study this, can be so clueless about the whole thing. Perhaps someone needs to develop a demographic and behavioral theory about social scientists who write about climate change “deniers.” I look forward to the reactions of the “cool dudes” to these ideas.

Spencer and Braswell on Slashdot | Watts Up With That?

This is how Slashdot breaks the news from Forbes article: “New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism”. When it hits Slashdot, you know it has gone viral.

In Science, The Majority Is Always Correct | Real Science

If you pay a group of people to find a particular answer, more than 50% of them will normally find that answer. As long as you continue paying them to find that answer, it is likely that the majority will continue to find that answer.

‪From Helsinki to Saint Petersburg sailing through iced Baltic Sea‬‏ - YouTube

Sailing from Helsinki to Saint Petersburg on a ferry boat during one of the coolest winters of the last 30 years.  [Via Steven Goddard]

Quadrant Online - Green politics bad for climate

The composition of the carbon tax package is a clear demonstration that the Greens political agenda – without the support of the values embraced by the bulk of neither the electorate, nor it seems, key parts of the government – is driving change, based on ideology rather than science or evidence.

Transcript of Monnett being grilled about his polar bear claims, with three attorneys/legal fellows representing him

Never Yet Melted » Charles Monnett

The Inspector General interview transcript (excerpts) had me, for instance, in stitches....

What is downright scary is the way these bozos think that dressing up wildly extravagant theories resting on baseless extrapolations of insignificant anecdotal-level observations with jargon and a few formulae in order to reach preconceived and intensely desired conclusions is perfectly legitimate scientific activity.

If anybody wonders how junk science can become established science and the accepted basis for fabulously costly governmental programs and polices, just look at the work of Dr. Charles Monnett and at PEER.

Jon Huntsman touts environmental credentials - chicagotribune.com

Playing down environmental issues hasn't stopped attacks from conservative critics. Outside the Capitol Hill hotel where he was speaking, a truck with an animated anti-Huntsman billboard circled the block. Apparently the work of climate-change critic Steve Milloy, it derided him as "Utah's Al Gore" and a "climate whiner."

Huntsman, who resigned this year as U.S. ambassador in Beijing, said that when he saw the billboard, "I thought, it's nice to be in the United States of America. Because, when I gave a speech in China, those protesters, for whatever reason, they never showed up."

JunkScience.com greets Huntsman, RINOs at dinner | JunkScience.com

You won’t want miss JunkScience.com’s pre-dinner welcome wagon…

The Reference Frame: HadCRUT3: raw data released

The candidness with which they admit that the alarmists are not interested in the observational data is striking. It's pretty clear that they must be proud about their lack of interest in the data.

At any rate, this is another victory resulting from the pressure that climate skeptics have exerted on the would-be official climatology.
...
I am kind of certain that I will eventually import it to Mathematica and create my own global weather record and other related things. If you know how to do it, you're invited to analyze the data, too. A simple task is to find a sufficiently long-lived weather station near your home and look what was happening with it over the (one or two or three) centuries.

Consensus?: "we may have got it all wrong" on ice sheet melting; Greenland's ice may be more stable than Antarctica's, which is "scary"; ice cube melts in a cup of warm water

Antarctica's Ice Less Stable Than Greenland's; New Study Predicts 'Scary' Collapse Anytime - International Business Times

Melting ice sheets of Greenland have been a cause of concern for researchers and climate change proponents, as previous studies on the ice sheet behavior projected Greenland's ice less stable compared to Antarctica's ice. But a recent study by scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, suggests that we may have got it all wrong.
...
New results published by geoscience assistant professor Anders Carlson and his team in the July 29 edition of "Science," are revealing surprising patterns of melting during the last interglacial period that suggest that Greenland's ice may be more stable and Antarctica's less stable, contrary to what many thought.
...
"The implication of our results is that West Antarctica likely was much smaller than it is today," and responsible for much more of the sea level rise than many scientists have thought, Carlson, a member of the Center for Climatic Research in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, says. "If West Antarctica collapsed, that means it's more unstable than we expected, which is quite scary," as the temperatures during the last interglacial period were similar to those expected by the end of this century.
...
"Ocean warming is very important compared to atmospheric warming because water has a much larger heat capacity than air," lead researcher, Jianjun Yin explained. "If you put an ice cube in a warm room, it will melt in several hours. But if you put an ice cube in a cup of warm water, it will disappear in just minutes."

Flashback: Antarctic Ice Growing, Not Shrinking - Science News - FOXNews.com

Ice is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.

Climate Change Debunked? Not So Fast | Space.com

New research suggesting that cloud cover, not carbon dioxide, causes global warming is getting buzz in climate skeptic circles. But mainstream climate scientists dismissed the research as unrealistic and politically motivated.

"It is not newsworthy," Daniel Murphy, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) cloud researcher, wrote in an email to LiveScience.
...
"He's taken an incorrect model, he's tweaked it to match observations, but the conclusions you get from that are not correct," Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, said of Spencer's new study.
...
Spencer sees it differently. He thinks that the whole cycle starts with the clouds. In other words, random increases in cloud cover cause climate warming. The cloud changes are caused by "chaos in the climate system," Spencer told LiveScience.
...
The study finds a mismatch between the month-to-month variations in temperature and cloud cover in models versus the real world over the past 10 years, said Gavin Schmidt, a NASA Goddard climatologist. "What this mismatch is due to — data processing, errors in the data or real problems in the models — is completely unclear."
...
"I cannot believe it got published," said Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Several researchers expressed frustration that the study was attracting media attention.

"If you want to do a story then write one pointing to the ridiculousness of people jumping onto every random press release as if well-established science gets dismissed on a dime," Schmidt said. "Climate sensitivity is not constrained by the last two decades of imperfect satellite data, but rather the paleoclimate record."

Spencer agreed that his work could not disprove the existence of manmade global warming. But he dismissed research on the ancient climate, calling it a "gray science."
...
Dessler, the A&M climatologist said that he doubted the research would shift the political debate around global warming.

"It makes the skeptics feel good, it irritates the mainstream climate science community, but by this point, the debate over climate policy has nothing to do with science," Dessler said. "It's essentially a debate over the role of government," surrounding issues of freedom versus regulation.

Draconian powers of new "carbon [dioxide] cop" | Australian Climate Madness

The idea of carbon cops has been around for a while (see here), but now it is set out formally in the draft carbon tax legislation. The powers are draconian and intimidating, with previously sacred rights, such as that of avoiding self-incrimination, being swept away:

A NEW carbon cop will be given sweeping powers to enter company premises, compel individuals to give self-incriminating evidence and copy sensitive records under a carbon tax package that will force about 60,000 businesses to pay 6c a litre extra for fuel.

Roundup: Posts on warmists who want us to believe that warm days are important evidence of human-induced planetary overheating, while cold days are meaningless natural variability

I've added a label called inconsistent_warmists.  

This could prove useful the next time we have a cold snap in the eastern US, when these people will once again toggle from arguing that weather is climate to arguing that weather isn't climate.

Tundra fires could accelerate climate warming

"This fire was a big wake-up call, and it can happen again, not just in Alaska but in other parts of the Arctic, like Canada and Russia," Mack said. "Suppressing a fire in the wilderness is costly, but what if the fire causes the permafrost to melt? We need to have that discussion."

Current TV CEO Mark Rosenthal Exits Struggling Network | The Wrap Media

Mark Rosenthal, CEO of Current TV, is leaving the company and co-founder Joel Hyatt is taking over as CEO.

Rosenthal, who was previously COO and President of MTV, succeeded Hyatt as CEO in 2009. He had previously served as COO and President of MTV.

Hyatt, who founded the network with Al Gore, resigned as CEO in 2009 after a failed IPO.

NAS Climate Panel Fails The Laugh Test - James Taylor - May 2011 - Forbes

Three environmental activists and a duck walk into a bar and start talking global warming with a dozen people who have no formal education in climate science. Sound like the beginning of a bad joke? Actually, it’s not. It’s what the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) would have us believe is an expert, objective, scientifically authoritative panel qualified to produce its latest report, America’s Climate Choices.
...
Indeed, when three environmental activists and a duck walk into a bar to discuss global warming with non-climate scientists, the duck is most objective, qualified source in the room. Too bad the duck was the only entity left off the NAS panel.

Researcher: Florida Keys could be underwater by 2100 | 11alive.com

A slow march upward 5-10 feet, says all the science, that will happen over the next 100 years or so.

Energy Tribune- T. Boone’s Windy Misadventure And the Global Backlash Against Wind Energy

Three years ago this month, T. Boone Pickens launched a multi-million dollar crusade to bring more wind energy to the US. “Building new wind generation facilities,” along with energy efficiency and more consumption of domestic natural gas, the Dallas billionaire claimed, would allow the US to “replace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports in 10 years.”

Those were halcyon times for the wind industry. These days, Pickens never talks about wind.
...he's also trying to find a buyer for the $2 billion worth of wind turbines he contracted for back in 2008...
Being dumped by Pickens is only one of a panoply of problems facing the global wind industry. Among the issues: an abundance of relatively cheap natural gas, a growing backlash against industrial wind projects due to concerns about visual blight and noise, increasing concerns about the murderous effect that wind turbines have on bats and birds, the extremely high costs of offshore wind energy, and a new study which finds that wind energy’s ability to cut carbon dioxide emissions have been overstated.

Yeah, that’s a long list of things. But the mainstream media rarely casts a critical eye on the wind industry.
...
A final point: whenever you hear people like Steve Chu complain about “NIMBYs” who don’t want wind turbines on their property, be sure to include billionaires on the list of NIMBYs.

You see, people like Boone Pickens are eager to have wind turbines and transmission lines put up on other people’s land, not theirs. In 2008, Pickens declared that his 68,000-acre ranch located in the Texas Panhandle, one of America’s windiest regions, will not sport a single turbine. “I'm not going to have the windmills on my ranch,” Pickens declared. “They're ugly.”

Polar Bear Scientist Has “Integrity Issues” - By Charlie Cooke - Planet Gore - National Review Online

Ah, there is that word “political” again. It is interesting how, when the science doesn’t do what the politics wants, the two are suddenly protected by a wall of separation. But when the science provides what the politics wants, it is evidence of a symbiotic call to action, and justification for billions of dollars in federal funding. Calls to Keep The Government Out Of Science are shockingly selective, bringing to mind the “irregular verbs” of which Bernard was so fond in the satirical TV show, Yes Minister: ”I have an independent mind; you are an eccentric; he is round the twist.”

Back in the real world — where “integrity issues” are less euphemistically known as “naked lying” — it is worth noting that even the Obama administration, hardly known for its climate realism, considers reports of the polar bear’s extinction to have been premature.

THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: New paper shows 'dramatic slow down of ice loss in southeast Greenland'

A paper published online yesterday in the Journal of Geophysical Research finds "the loss rate in southeast Greenland for the more recent period has become almost negligible, down from 109 ± 28 Gt/yr of just a few years ago. The rapid change in the nature of the regional ice mass in southeast and northwest Greenland, in the course of only several years, further reinforces the idea that the Greenland ice sheet mass balance is very vulnerable to regional climate conditions." Global warming allegedly due to greenhouse gases would not be expected to cause such regional interannual variability in Greenland ice loss, thus pointing to shifts in weather instead.

Climate Kid video: More completely insane climate hoax propaganda from your UN

‪Climate [Hoax] Kid‬‏ - YouTube

Climate Kid is the world's first child to have fully evolved to deal with his ever changing environment. Or at least he will be in a few million years if we don't find ways to adapt to climate change. Watch this fabulously futuristic film we made with UNICEF narrated by broadcaster Jon Snow about an ordinary kid evolving extraordinary body parts to adapt to extreme climate changes.

United Nations Children's Fund: Definition from Answers.com

Special United Nations program for aiding national efforts to improve the health, nutrition, education, and general welfare of children. Its original purpose was to provide relief to children in countries devastated by World War II. After 1950 it turned to general programs for the improvement of children's welfare. It was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1965.

Warmist Ben Schreiber: You know what's a great idea? A $600+ billion climate swindle

Could a carbon tax help solve our budget woes? | Ben Schreiber - Grist

in addition to offering a potential solution to our budget problems, it can play an important role in protecting the public from the harmful impacts of climate change.

There are many ways a carbon tax can be structured. One example was provided in the carbon tax bill proposed by Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) in 2009, which would have taxed carbon dioxide emissions from coal, oil, and natural gas at an initial rate of $15 per ton, with the tax increasing in each successive year. The bill would have generated about $80 billion in the first year after its enactment, and created $600 billion in new revenues over 10 years. Other forms of a carbon tax could raise substantially more revenue.

Ben Schreiber on Grist

Benjamin Schreiber is the climate and energy tax analyst at Friends of the Earth. His focus is on the tax code with a goal of fighting tax incentives for greenhouse-gas intensive technologies and promoting tax incentives for technologies that reduce pollution. Ben came to Friends of the Earth from Environment America, where he worked as an energy advocate, fighting subsidies to dirty technologies, increasing fuel economy standards, and promoting renewable energy. Ben received a B.A. in sociology from the University of Chicago and a J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis.

Sign of the times: Blasphemy against the warmist religion in Nature magazine

THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: Nature review trashes new book titled 'The Inquisition of Climate Science', calling it 'a part of the problem'

From a new book review published in the August 2011 edition of Nature Climate Change:

"The central flaw of this book is that Powell fails to address the serious and coherent critiques of the climate change consensus. Where in this book are Judy Curry of Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Colorado's Roger Pielke Jr, the University of Alabama's John Christy, and others? All three are renowned academics, yet they each have been reasoned critics of the orthodox climate science canon, and of their fellow researchers, in specific areas...It seems that Powell left them out because they would complicate a simple story."

"The truth is we know less than we sometimes think about climate change....error bars remain disturbingly wide and are likely to widen further in the next IPCC assessment..."

"There are many reasons for scientists to be humble, and calling those who engage in debating such issues 'deniers' is foolish fundamentalism."

Warmist Randy Olson: Criticizing warmist Newt Gingrich is anti-American

#146) Marc Morano’s Sad Campaign Against the American Spirit of Compromise | The Benshi

To now come after the politicians who got talked into posing for their lame couch commercials is to make a loud statement against the entire notion of political compromise, which at this point really should be considered to be anti-American given our current dire financial straits.

MARC MORANO: FOSTERING A NATIONALLY DESTRUCTIVE SPIRIT
...
Of all these efforts, I think the crummiest one is to beat his drum over the commercials produced in 2008 by Al Gore’s fumbling  WE campaign. [I think Randy Olson is confusing some other lame non-Gore We campaign with the actual lame Gore We campaign]. Regardless of what the campaign stood for and did or didn’t accomplish (and btw, the PSA on their home page right now is so cliched it looks like it was produced by the makers of “South Park”), the fact is the forced, stilted, unfunny set of commercials they produced featuring political opposites sitting on a couch did symbolize something that is today the most sorely needed commodity in the country — political compromise — as in the willingness for the two sides to come together.

Flashback:  All Wee-Weed Up by Jay Nordlinger - National Review Online

After January 20, dissent will no longer be the highest form of patriotism.” We had heard that a lot during the George W. Bush years: “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” Many on the left thought they were quoting Thomas Jefferson; actually, the words apparently come from Howard Zinn, the contemporary leftist historian. And it’s a dumb thing to say: Certainly, dissent can be a form of patriotism. But the highest? Where does that put what Sergeant York and Audie Murphy did? For that matter, where does that leave George Washington?

Why Most Forbes Readers Know More About Global Warming than Most Climate Scientists - William Pentland - Clean Beta - Forbes

Despite the scale and scope of this complexity, it may surprise you to learn that perhaps the most controversial question in the “science” of climate change is remarkably simple – what “discount rate” should be used to estimate the economic damages potentially resulting from global warming?

Global warming? City climate has changed a lot - The Times of India

Professor Mahesh Desai of SVNIT said,"The city has become like an island. We are experiencing all weathers in a single day. On one side we have Ukai dam, at the other the sea and on the third side, the Narmada dam. Hence, the south-west clouds are coming to the region only as passing dignitaries."

He said, "Main clouds have just passed over the region without much rain this year. These are the effects of climate change and global warming."

Another grim milestone: It's now been four years since warmist Donald Kennedy's "Mission Accomplished" moment

Climate: Game Over

Editorial
...
Donald Kennedy is Editor-in-Chief of Science.

With respect to climate change, we have abruptly passed the tipping point in what until recently has been a tense political controversy. Why? Industry leaders, nongovernmental organizations, Al Gore, and public attention have all played a role. At the core, however, it's about the relentless progress of science. As data accumulate, denialists retreat to the safety of the Wall Street Journal op-ed page or seek social relaxation with old pals from the tobacco lobby from whom they first learned to "teach the controversy." Meanwhile, political judgments are in, and the game is over. Indeed, on this page last week, a member of Parliament described how the European Union and his British colleagues are moving toward setting hard targets for greenhouse gas reductions.

‪Andrew Klavan: The Facts of Life for Liberals‬‏ - YouTube

If someone from the government tries to put his hands on your money... run away as fast as you can and tell the nearest conservative.

THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: Nature editorial hits IPCC hard: 'It's time for the influential body to uphold its own neutrality standards'

An editorial published in the August 2011 edition of Nature Climate Change is highly critical of the IPCC's use of non-peer-reviewed "grey" literature [such as propaganda from Greenpeace] and that "a Greenpeace campaigner was put in charge of reviewing and highlighting his own work within Working Group III..." leading to the embarrassing and widely debunked claim that 80% of the world's energy could be supplied by renewable energy by 2050.

Pedaling Your Way to Environmental Nirvana - NYTimes.com

“It’s important that the machines don’t cost much more than regular machines, as the energy payback is only about 1 to 2 cents/hour!”

Debt of a Salesman: Obama, Democrats Poised to Embrace Deal that May Slash Energy, Enviro Spending for Many, Many Years | ThinkProgress

y salesman, but he was still for the most part pursuing those values and policies — at least until he walked away from the climate bill with nary a speech. Now, day in and day out he is a salesman for debt reduction.

1923 Article Linked Icebergs With Sunspots | Real Science

SUNSPOT CYCLE AGAIN PRODUCES TITANIC BERGS