Alarmist's shock admission: "We lost. It's over. Forget it"

Expert: Win climate change debate by easing off science | PostIndependent.com

The battle to get Americans to accept the science behind climate change has been “lost,” an expert at the Aspen Environment Forum declared Wednesday, but there's still a way to win the war to reduce carbon emissions.

Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, said leaders on climate change need to concentrate on changing behavior in ways that appeal to people — and also happen to reduce carbon emissions.

“Climate scientists — stop talking about climate science. We lost. It's over. Forget it,” Foley told a surprised audience during a featured panel discussion on the last day of the three-day forum.
...
About 10 percent of Americans will align with you if you rally around climate change, he later added, but 70 percent will be on your side if you talk about energy security.

Not that there's anything wrong with that?: Researchers suggest that trace amounts of CO2 may feminize southern Alberta fish

Gender-bending fish on the rise in southern Alberta

"The situation for native fish will likely get worse as the concentration of organic contaminants will become more concentrated as a response to climate change and the increase in human and animal populations," adds Jackson.
...
Researchers tested a native minnow, longnose dace (Rhinichthys cataractae), and found that at nearly every site, 14 out of 15 locations, males showed elevated levels of a protein, hepatic vitellogenin, which is normally only found in the blood of females and is used by females to produce eggs.

World Climate Report » Recent News from Antarctica

Had these scientists from these three articles found accelerated melting (or any melting), how many headlines would have covered their stories across the globe? They find a gain of ice mass in the Horseshoe Valley and a historically low amount of melting around the coastlines, so you had to come to World Climate Report to hear all about it.

What if we banned the internal combustion engine, then discovered that it was still hot in the summer in cities?

More frequent, more intense heat waves in store for New York — Science Blog

Data collected by City College’s New York City Meteorological Network (NYCMetNet), indicate that during the first July heat wave overnight low temperatures ran 10 to 15 degrees (Fahrenheit) higher in Manhattan than in Long Island or in western New Jersey, while daytime highs were roughly the same.
...
Another research thrust is the role played by aerosols, which are fine particles of solids or liquids in the atmosphere. Urban areas tend to generate aerosols, and the resulting humidity could modify precipitation patterns by interacting with clouds and affecting the energy balance, Professor Gonzalez explained. “The presence of pollution could increase or diminish rainfall. It could change the frequency and severity of storms, as well.”

Within a typical alarmist story, CNN quotes a number of climate realists

Study: Climate change 'undeniable' - CNN.com

But the report nonetheless remained the target of scorn for skeptics.

Myron Ebell, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in the US, said the new report would not change people's minds. "It's clear that the scientific case for global warming alarmism is weak. The scientific case for [many of the claims] is unsound and we are finding out all the time how unsound it is."

Pat Michaels, a prominent climate skeptic, ex-professor of environmental sciences and fellow of the Cato Institute in the US, said the NOAA study and other evidence suggested that the computerized climate models had overestimated the sensitivity of the earth's temperature to carbon dioxide. This would mean that the earth could warm a little under the influence of greenhouse gases, but not by as much as the IPCC and others have predicted.

"I think it is the lack of frankness about this that emerged with Climategate, and that seems to continue [that make people doubt the findings]," he said.

Steve Goddard, a blogger, said the conclusion that the first half of 2010 showed a record high temperature was "based on incorrect, fabricated data" because the researchers involved did not have access to much information on Arctic temperatures.

David Herro, the financier, who follows climate science as a hobby, said NOAA also "lacks credibility".

$1.5m for climate [hoax] chiefs

THE five climate change experts Julia Gillard hopes to inform public opinion on the issue will be paid an average of $300,000 a year.

DECC spent £300k on search engines - Public Service

More than £300,000 was spent by the Department of Energy and Climate Change on "search engine biasing" last year, climate change minister Gregory Baker has said.

Global Temperature And Data Distortions Continue

Recent reports claim June was the warmest on record, but it seems to fly in the face of reports of record cold from around the world.
...
In the southern hemisphere reports of cold have appeared frequently but rarely make the mainstream media.

Polar ice: Less in the Arctic, more in the Antarctic | CAIVN

Arctic sea ice is at its lowest level in thousands of years...
...clearly, something is happening. The Arctic is becoming ice free. This is new. And the Antarctic is becoming icier. However, there’s a good reason that ‘climate change’ is a better term than ‘global warming’. It implies that the results will vary depending on where you are. Everything doesn’t get warmer. Some areas will get colder.

Flashback: November 2nd, 1922. Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt. | Watts Up With That?

Cold snap in South America: 100,000 euros of emergency aid for victims of the cold weather in Peru and Bolivia

Bonn, 29.07.2010 Welthungerhilfe is providing 100,000 euros of emergency relief aid to help the victims of the current cold snap in South America. A large part of the funds is being provided by the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin. In view of the unusually severe winter, the aid agency is also asking the German population for donations.
...
"This extreme winter is again hitting the poorest and most vulnerable people the hardest", explains Jeannette Weller, Welthungerhilfe's Regional Director in Lima, "and that means desperate hardship for many poor farmers in high-altitude remote districts and that old people and children are in immediate danger."

Where next for the wrecked US climate [scam] bill? | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Sitting with Al Gore in an empty hotel café, I asked him to contemplate this very moment. "If the United States doesn't act," he replied, "if the Senate defeats the legislation or waters it down to a point where it is not even worth having a bill, that is an event horizon beyond which it is difficult to see."

He parsed the same issues then that climate campaigners are parsing now: "It may mean there is a fundamental flaw in the international political approach, but I'm not sure there is a good alternative. The reality is so dire that a new plan would have to emerge — but just now I can't imagine what it would be."
...Let's look for lessons by considering some of the culprits, starting with the most obvious.

1. The Professional Deniers. Gore and environmental leaders made a tactical error several years ago when they declared the science "settled" and refused to engage the forces of denial and delay. The basic science was indeed settled, but the resulting message vacuum was the perfect medium for those who sow doubt and confusion about global climate change. It shouldn't be surprising that so many Americans remain skeptical about global warming. For 20 years, this loose network of PR pros, working for industry associations and anti-tax think tanks, has spread doubt about climate science and fear about climate economics, claiming that any attempt to cap CO2 would wreck the American economy. Their disinformation, amplified via the Internet, helped poison the debate. To counter the deniers' campaign, President Obama needs to speak out forcefully, and champions of the clean energy economy must point to the new jobs that are already being created by the renewable energy economy and show Americans precisely where they fit into it.

Times Higher Education - Profits of doom

Climate change is serious business - in more ways than one. Martin Cohen describes how capitalist 'bootleggers' have co-opted the environmental 'Baptists' to fulfil their raison d'etre - making money. Thanks to the 'greenwash', the solutions could be worse than the problems

UPDATE 1-ANALYSIS-Action on global climate may drift for years | Energy & Oil | Reuters

"I suspect that we're in for a fairly long period of slowdown, you're talking about a two to three years' timeframe before you restore the political momentum," said Tom Burke of Imperial College London.

The global renewable energy market is tipped to have a record year in 2010, thanks to existing support and subsidies, but a climate deal would boost investment above the current level of about $200 billion annually.  [Why isn't that enough?]
...
A "State of the Climate report" published on Wednesday found that evidence from a wide range of sources including land, ocean and air temperatures as well as ice cover pointed to a warming world, culminating to make the last decade the hottest on record.

The report did not focus on the cause of warming but, when asked, contributors said humans were to blame.

"The consistent picture from numerous studies looking at that particular question is that you can only explain all these changes at the global and regional scales by invoking human causes," author and editor Peter Thorne told Reuters.

Bipartisan blame for Senate botching energy bill - opinion - Modbee.com

With Democrats controlling both chambers and a president promising to heal a planet in peril, locking down the support of majority-party senators should have been the easy part. But some Democrats wavered until the end, raising questions about possible defections.

Worse, Reid couldn't bring himself to put passing this legislation at the top of his to-do list. During the Democrats' 19 months at the helm, other issues routinely catapulted ahead the climate bill.

Report: oil company carbon liabilities are huge risk for investors - 29 Jul 2010 - BusinessGreen.com

Oil companies such as BP and Shell could be facing billions of pounds in future carbon liabilities as the cost of carbon rises, says the report, but lack of carbon reporting means many investors are unaware of these liabilities and the risk they pose.

Carbon [dioxide scam] liabilities, currently undisclosed, could become the sub-prime toxic assets of the future, says the report.

Thank god for climate science « the Air Vent

Gee, it makes sense then that IF a half degree of warming killed 40% of the phytoplankton, that the soft little phytos must fail to thrive at the equator because of the much higher water temps

Achenblog - The Anthropocene

We're in the Holocene, the epoch that began something like 11,600 years ago with a sudden warming event and the retreat of the glaciers. The Holocene has been an epoch of climate stability in the main. It's been pleasant around here. We like the Holocene. 

1. What caused this sudden warming event?
2. Why didn't positive feedbacks result in the planet becoming an uninhabitable fireball?
3. Why was the planet described as "stable" and "pleasant" after this warming, and after lots of glacial retreat?
4. If we get some more warming and some more glacial retreat, why won't the planet still be "stable" and "pleasant"?

Papua New Guinea: If this is really CO2-induced apocalypse, why are the people "fleeing" so very very slowly?

PM - [Alleged] Climate change refugees still waiting for help 28/07/2010

MARK COLVIN: The story of Papua New Guinea's sinking Carteret Islands has made headlines around the world.
...

CHARLES TSIVI (translated): I saw the population was increasing, as well as that strong winds blow the waves onto the land and spoils the food gardens.
...
LIAM FOX: A relocation process began a few years ago but so far only two families out of a population of 2,300 have moved to Bougainville. [So people aren't even "fleeing" fast enough to keep the local population from *increasing*? Over the last several years, have any families moved *to* the Carteret Islands?]

Ms Rakova says they need more land and more money.

URSULA RAKOVA: We plan to move, within the next three years, 83 families so we are looking at 830 people, and then within the next ten years at least move 1,700 people.

LIAM FOX: The Carteret Islanders have made headlines around the world over the last decade.

So many journalists have visited the islands that many locals are now sick and tired of having to accommodate them.

Anchorage Press > GOP hopefuls take a tilt at Senator Murkowski and Congressman Young

Miller doesn’t believe in man-made global warming and opposes cap and trade legislation that’s likely to be in an upcoming comprehensive energy reform bill. He’s also concerned about what we pay other countries for hydrocarbon fuels. “We have extraordinary resources in this nation untapped,” he says. “From a regulatory perspective, we need to loosen things so we can extract more of the resources we have.” To accomplish this, he believes states should be fully in control of what they do with their land—and he thinks the nearly two-thirds of Alaska under federal title should be turned over to the state. “The endgame for limited constitutional government is extraordinary for the state of Alaska,” he says. “Alaska regaining title of its lands would mean exceptional wealth.”

Brooklyn: Why so hot in 1897?

Heat waves are not unique to these days of climate change. In the 19th century, Brooklyn was subjected to a “long term of unusually hot weather,” according to the Brooklyn Eagle in 1897. Not only were air conditioners in short supply then, but even electric fans. And tenements, without cross circulation, became unbearable in a hot Brooklyn summer.

Sen. Murkowski may offer EPA rule delay to small-business bill - The Hill's E2-Wire

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) may offer a plan from Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) to delay EPA regulations of greenhouse gases for power plants and refineries for two years as an amendment to a small-business package.

Local News | Western Climate Initiative offers cap-and-trade | Seattle Times Newspaper

The strategy also called for linking up with other carbon markets in the East and Midwest, an approach Stavins said would make them more efficient. [Maybe they should link to the Chicago Climate Exchange, where one ton of harmless CO2 can currently be offset for one dime?]

- Bishop Hill blog - Is New Scientist making things up?

New Scientist has published a rather remarkable leader to go alongside its interview of Phil Jones:

For years, ruthless climate sceptics have harassed scientists, drowning them in freedom of information requests and subjecting them to vicious personal attacks. Climategate was merely the public face of this insurgent war. In that hostile climate, some scientists fired off personal emails that occasionally lacked decorum. The CRU accepts this. When will their opponents apologise for their own excesses?

American Thinker: Carbon Cronyism: Why Cap-and-Trade Is Not Dead Yet

...the Democrats are determined to get cap-and-trade. It's just a question of when. There's too much money to be made for Democrat cronies to let this opportunity pass.

Foodchain-Angst: Scientists and Media Spread More Enviro-Shock & Awe « P Gosselin – NoTricksZone

The study involves the Potsdam Institute For Climate Impact Research, directed by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, visionary of The Great Transformation , and Stefan Rahmstorf, who predicts sea levels will rise 1.7 meters in the next 90 years, but refuses to even bet on a 60 cm rise. This is an institute that is well well-known for activist science and fear-mongering, with the clear agenda of reorganizing how people live. A dangerous social engineering experiment.

Marine Life Survived 8X Current CO2 Levels | The Resilient Earth

Scientists who study nature, particularly biological organisms, have come to believe that species change. Driven by changing environmental condition, they adapt and they evolve. It should not be surprising that in the past, nature has successfully responded to larger changes in CO2 levels than those created by humans today. Overly sensitive species died out, others had a rough time but most did what successful species always do—they adapted to the new conditions. The lesson here for humans is that continued survival means we must be willing to adapt, because nature is always changing. As the adaptation of simple marine plankton shows, nature has proven predictions of an oceanic apocalypse to be as false as the other climate catastrophes predicted by climate change alarmists.

Pajamas Media » The Difference between ‘True Science’ and ‘Cargo-Cult Science’

“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts” is how the great Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman defined science.
...
Compare Feynman’s scientific integrity with the continual attempts by the leaders of climate “science” to prevent skeptics from checking their data. True scientists would be extremely pleased to provide all raw data, and they would make the data available to all on the Internet. A state attorney general would not have to file suit to make them disgorge.

The Billionaire's Party

David Koch is deeply antagonistic to the Obama administration. He fought the health-care bill, and the financial-regulation measure that was passed last week (“Everyone I know in the financial world is terrified by the powers it gives the federal government”). He also opposes the president’s climate-change proposals. In his office, Koch showed me a photocopied flyer Greenpeace had produced with sketches of him and Charles below the words wanted for climate crimes and shook it in the air. Koch Industries’ emissions, Koch told me, are far less than legally required. “And yet they’re attacking us as environmental criminals,” he said. “Wanting to put me and Charles in jail.” Koch says he’s not sure if global warming is caused by human activities, and at any rate, he sees the heating up of the planet as good news. Lengthened growing seasons in the northern hemisphere, he says, will make up for any trauma caused by the slow migration of people away from disappearing coastlines. “The Earth will be able to support enormously more people because a far greater land area will be available to produce food,” he says.

Report: U.S. energy policy a "serious threat" to economic, national security - The Hill's E2-Wire

The report, released Tuesday by the nonprofit research firm CNA, says the predicted effects of climate change “have the potential to disrupt our way of life” [Don't global warming hoax solutions have the potential to disrupt our way of life?] and “create sustained natural and humanitarian disasters on a scale far beyond those we see today.” That, in turn, will likely foster political instability both at home and abroad.

Climate check-up 'screams world is warming' - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Peter Thorne, of the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites, says the scientists were not swayed by the debate over climate data and whether it had previously been manipulated.

"What this data is doing is screaming that the world is warming, and that cannot be driven by any single individual or even a small set of groups, because the evidence is there to see - there are lots of groups doing this stuff," Mr Thorne said.

The scientists say the warming is due to greenhouse gases and while there were signs of human fingerprints, the report was not designed to attribute blame.

Tom Karl from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Service says the report does not try to make the link between the cause of global warming and what has been observed.

"This is the basis for the next step, because without this data it's impossible to take the next step," Mr Karl said.

The Reference Frame: Our Climate: the ultimate AGW Apple app for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch

A very large fraction of the respectable names of the climate science that you know - Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer, Fred Singer, Henrik Svensmark, Willie Soon, Will Happer, Bob Carter, Craig Idso, Paul Reiter but also folks such as Lord Christopher Monckton, Joanne Nova, Anthony Watts, or your humble correspondent, among many and many others - have helped Aeris Systems - a truly professional and well-educated firm - to build the state-of-the-art application that explains and studies the science of climate change.

Reviewing Last Month’s Forecasts of Doom | Watts Up With That?

The hurricane season has been quite average so far, and Sea Surface Temperatures are plummeting, as forecast by WUWT six months ago.

These same people fail with their forecasts of doom over and over, and just keep turning up the volume. Meanwhile Antarctic ice continues at record highs. Maybe The Guardian needs to do a story about that?

New Mexico: Raising Costs for Bad Energy in a Poor State — MasterResource

New Mexico has enjoyed some of the lowest energy prices in the country—which is good as it is a poor state. However, the major supplier of electricity to the state, PNM, has just asked for a 21.2% rate increase on top of the 24% they’ve received over the last few years. Welcome to the new world of government-forced renewable energy–and one reason why Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) recently said he didn’t have the votes for a federal renewable portfolio standard (RPS).

EU Referendum: And your point is?

Well, let us turn to the Arctic. There is good evidence here that the climate undergoes an eighty-year cycle. Yet the records being used go back to 1979 – very much the short-term, which Stott tells us to avoid. He and his ilk see "clear and unmistakable signs of a warming world" because that is what they want to see. The best they can manage though is a fraction of one degree – in an interglacial period where one would expect temperatures marginally to rise.

What none of them will address is whether this marginal warming is natural – a combination of the underlying rise and longer-term cyclical variation, or man-made. They see it as man-made, because that is what they want to see. Life is too short to deal with these people. They sap life energy and, were they not so dangerous, they would best be ignored.

RealClimate: Happy 35th birthday, global warming!

The idea that the small cooling from the 1940s to 1970s is due to natural variability still cannot be ruled out, although more likely this is a smaller part of the explanation and the cooling is primarily due to the “dust” neglected by Broecker, i.e. due to the rise of anthropogenic aerosol pollution (Taylor and Penner, 1994).

Review & Outlook: Survival of the Fattest - WSJ.com

What a deal: Ethanol reduces carbon for only $754 a ton.

CNSNews.com - Major Newspapers Urge an End to Ethanol Subsidies

On Friday, July 23, the Chicago Tribune published an editorial titled “Enough Ethanol” and on Saturday, July 24, The Washington Post editorial said, “It’s time to end the excessive subsidies for corn ethanol.” On Monday, July 26, The Wall Street Journal joined the chorus.

“The best refutation of the theory of the survival of the fittest is probably the corn ethanol lobby, whose annual $6 billion in federal subsidies have managed to outlive both its record of failure and all evidence and argument,” said The Wall Street Journal.

GISS Arctic -vs- DMI Arctic: differences in method | Watts Up With That?

As has been well covered by Steve Goddard on WUWT, the “interpretation” of Arctic conditions by NASA/GISS is based on astonishingly little data north of 80 degrees latitude, which is to say no data at all.

NC Media Watch: LIes, more lies, and one really big lie

Jerry Brown. the current Attorney General of California, is running for Governor and has published his latest environmental plan available here. He had this to say about global warming in California:

Climate disruption and rising temperatures threaten serious harm to California by increasing the number and intensity of forest fires, severe flooding, water shortages, coastal erosion and air pollution. Climate scientists are virtually unanimous in calling for significant reductions in greenhouse gases. . . .

Lets us examine the each one of the lies about global warming in California, starting with the assumption that temperatures are rising in California

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: Michael Oppenheimer Responds

If others have better ideas for estimating how climate change affects migration, they should publish them.

Obama must take a lead on climate change – and soon | Jeffrey Sachs | Environment | guardian.co.uk

All signs suggest that the planet is still hurtling headlong toward climatic disaster. ...Today's understanding of earth's climate and the human-induced component of climate change is the result of extremely difficult scientific work involving many thousands of scientists in all parts of the world. This scientific understanding is incomplete, and there remain significant uncertainties about the precise magnitudes, timing, and dangers of climate change.
...
This has given rise to a third problem in addressing climate change, which stems from a combination of the economic implications of the issue and the uncertainty that surrounds it. This is reflected in the brutal, destructive campaign against climate science by powerful vested interests and ideologues, apparently aimed at creating an atmosphere of ignorance and confusion.
...
[Obama]  could then present an estimated price tag for phasing in these changes over time, and demonstrate that the costs would be modest compared to the enormous benefits.
...And nature is telling us that our current economic model is dangerous and self-defeating.

Response to George Monbiot: Why 'Amazongate' matters | Environment | guardian.co.uk

George Monbiot should be calling the IPCC to account for its unreferenced rainforest claims, rather than attacking its critics

Lessons from Senate climate fail | Grist

The Obama administration got off to a rough start on climate policy when it put a revenue assumption from a carbon cap into its first budget based on Obama's campaign platform.
...
Last November, thousands of emails stolen from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit were posted online. A handful of these emails, out of context, were widely disseminated by the Merchants of Doubt. After the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Prize, I had assumed that the debate about climate science was effectively over and, along with the rest of the environmental community, turned my attention to advancing solutions. A handful of emails couldn't possibly undermine confidence in a body of peer reviewed scientific literature built up over two decades, could it?

With the global climate pact dead, China gets hungry for U.S. factory pork | Grist

Now that we've figured out why the climate bill died, it's time to start thinking about the consequences. The failure doesn't just mean that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions will continue inching up. It also means that we probably won't see a global climate deal anytime soon. And that means untold years of ever-increasing emissions -- and likely dire consequences for human habitation on Earth.

Think about a global climate pact from China's perspective. Why should it take leadership, now that the U.S. has refused to act?  [Why wouldn't they take leadership, if they actually believed that CO2 might kill their grandchildren?]

Is it all over for climate change policy in the United States? | Inside Story

In fact, though he couldn’t quite bring himself to say it, Reid’s announcement was close to being that there would be no climate change legislation in the United States for the remainder of Barack Obama’s presidency. If that proves to be the case, the ramifications would be global. It would shift the chances of reaching international agreement on a comprehensive climate change treaty within the next three years to more or less zero.

To be sure, even as Reid was fixing the nails in the coffin of American climate legislation, desperate efforts were being made to push the lid open from the inside.

Twitter / JimInhofePressOffice

RT @drgrist: Worth noting: Major green groups including NWF, NRDC, Sierra Club & EDF absent from Reid's big energy-bill rollout.

Senate Fail: Let's Name Names | Mother Jones

The statement is nice, but I wish they would have called out the specific Senators who remain a problem. I don't mean only Republicans; there are a number of Democrats who wouldn't have voted for a climate bill this year, either, which is why it didn't make its way into the Senate package.

Wonk Room » Recently Elected Dem Senators Want More ‘Passion,’ ‘Political Clarity,’ And ‘Fight’ For Green Economy

In a series of interviews with the Wonk Room at Netroots Nation, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) described the challenges of confronting climate pollution in the sclerotic legislative body, brought to a practical standstill by minority obstruction. They each discussed how the “new class” of 22 Democratic senators elected in the 2006 and 2008 waves (with independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont) have pressed for greater “political clarity” on climate by “rattling all the cages” in the Senate, alongside senior leaders such as Sen. John Kerry (D-MA).

Weather Talk: South America hit hard by unusually cold winter | INFORUM | Fargo, ND

The current winter season in the Southern Hemisphere has been a particularly harsh one in much of South America. Large portions of Argentina, southern Brazil and Chile have recorded temperatures 5 to 10 degrees below average in recent weeks.

Heavy snow and bitterly cold temperatures have contributed to the deaths of more than 100 people. Livestock have been particularly hard hit, with thousands of animals dying from hypothermia.

The usually warm city of Buenos Aires recorded a low of 29 degrees, the coldest reading since 1991. The Antarctic blast was so powerful that it dropped temperatures into the 40s as far north as the Amazon rain forest.

In some ways, South America is experiencing a winter reminiscent of the harsh winter our continent experienced six month ago.

Climategate scientist [Phil Jones] breaks his silence - environment - 28 July 2010 - New Scientist

[Q] Climategate has highlighted conflicts between climate scientists and some of their critics. Is there a value in having critical voices contribute to scientific discussions?

PJ Yes, provided they do it through the normal processes, which is through peer review. I say that not because there's no value in the blog sites, but because it's necessary. Unless the alternative views are in the peer-reviewed literature, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cannot refer to them.
...
PJ I don't hold a world view - that's ridiculous. I have no interest in policy at all. I'm interested in the science, not the policy. I get these emails saying I'm trying to change the world government - it's just ridiculous. People assume that I'm advocating that society should be doing certain things. I'm not. We try to be totally apolitical in the CRU.
People assume that I'm advocating that society should be doing certain things. I'm not
...There should be an acceptance that the climate has warmed since measurements began. OK, there's then debate about what caused that warming. But I do find it difficult engaging with people who deny the evidence and say the world has not warmed.

Daily Kos Editor Says Skeptics Should Commit Suicide

A Daily Kos contributing editor has suggested that “Steve Milloy and his buddies” commit suicide or be euthanized apparently for the crime of opposing global warming alarmism.

Amid a rant on his Examiner.com blog about skeptics “carpet-bomb[ing] newspaper editorial pages with climate change disinformation…], Steven Alexander, who writes for Daily Kos under the nom-de-plume “Darksyde,” wrote that,

… if only Milloy and his buddies could check into one of the [Soylent Corporation’s] lovely medical suites for a short nature movie and a glass of wine…

The reference is to the assisted suicide scene in the 1973 movie Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston.

Vital ocean phytoplankton a casualty of global warming? - CSMonitor.com

A new study suggests that a global rise in ocean temperatures has cut the number of phytoplankton, which are the bedrock of the food chain, by 40 percent since 1950. Other scientists link the rise in ocean temperatures to global warming.

ABC The Drum Unleashed - Who killed the climate bills?

Both defeats can claim many parents: climate change skeptics, conservative politicians in opposition, well-funded lobbyists, vested interests in industry, the complexity of the proposed bills, the failure of international negotiations, and the complacency of ordinary citizens.
...
It didn't help that many Democrats opposed the bill, perhaps worried about their electoral prospects this November. Senators like Missouri's Claire McCaskill and West Virginia's Jay Rockefeller were probably never going to vote for it, fearing the backlash in their coal-intensive home states. And one-time Republican allies like John McCain and Lisa Murkowski sniffed the wind of a visceral anti-climate change movement in the Republican right and back-pedalled rapidly on their support for limiting carbon emissions. The result is that US cap-and-trade legislation looks dead in the water.

Do Bill and Hillary Clinton really believe in the global warming hoax?

£7k cake at Chelsea Clinton's £3.2m wedding of the year | Mail Online

...a huge £320,000 has been earmarked for transporting guests to the event.

Global Warming "Undeniable," U.S. Government Report Says

"Global warming is undeniable," and it's happening fast, a new U.S. government report says.
...
Such climatic shifts are already ushering in extreme weather, which plagued much of the globe in 2009, according to the report. (See a world map of potential global warming impacts.) For instance, Australia experienced its third hottest year on record.

On one February 2009 day—labeled "Black Saturday"—in Australia, 400 wildfires swept across the state of Victoria, killing 173 people and destroying 3,500 buildings.  [Did CO2 really cause those fires?]
...
"It's telling us what's going on in the real world, rather than the imaginary world," said Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the Boulder, Colorado-based National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Even so, the report "does not carry the authority of the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] by any means," Trenberth noted.
...
And even with real-world data, "the theory with regard to global warming is still incomplete"—especially since the atmosphere is so complex, Trenberth cautioned.

This "can be seen at a glance," for example, "by looking out of the window at the wondrous, great variety in clouds."

Met Office report: global warming evidence is 'unmistakable' - Telegraph

A new climate change report from the Met Office and its US equivalent has provided the "greatest evidence we have ever had" that the world is warming.
...
Both the NOAA and Nasa have stated that the first six months of this year were the hottest on record, while the Met Office believes it is the second hottest start to the year after 1998.

Dr Peter Stott, Head of Climate Monitoring and Attribution at the Met Office, said “variability” in different regions, such as the cold winter in Britain, does not mean the rest of the world is not warming.

And he said 'greenhouse gases are the glaringly obvious explanation' [Why, specifically, is this "glaringly obvious"?] for 0.56C (1F) warming over the last 50 years.
...
Dr Stott said the sceptics can no longer question the land surface temperature as other records also show global warming.

He pointed out that each indicator takes independent evidence from at least 3 different institutions in order to ensure the information is correct. Despite variations from year to year, each decade has been warmer than the last since the 1980s. [ie, since right after the last global cooling scare ended]

Foreign foresters could 'rip the heart out of rural towns' - Story - Business - 3 News

Foreign-owned "carbon [swindle] foresters" have ambitions to turn a fifth of New Zealand sheep and beef farmland into forests and that will devastate many rural towns, the national farmers' lobby says.
...
"Carbon forestry doesn't need the same labour force as a farm and in some instances, after planting will require none. What will become of the shearers, mechanics, stock and station agents, builders or vets?

White House Ends Climate Change Gag Order

Washington, D.C. July 28, 2010 – The Government Accountability Project (GAP), counsel for EPA and climate change whistleblowers Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, sent a letter to President Obama yesterday thanking the White House for causing the EPA to withdraw its censorship orders that effectively gagged the two enforcement attorneys.

Williams and Zabel had challenged "cap-and-trade" as a climate change solution in their personal capacities by, among other actions, posting a video on YouTube late last year. The EPA accused them of violating ethics rules simply by listing and referencing their government positions and experience to strengthen their credibility.

Twitter / Ted Fickes [Because climate realists couldn't be unpaid individuals who've independently realized that trace amounts of CO2 aren't dangerous?]

Would love to know more about the organizing/funding dynamics behind the anti climate change blog commenting trolls.