Climate modelers, the new Flat Earthers: New paper finds climate model results are 'substantially' erroneous because they assume the Earth is flat

THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: New paper finds climate model results are 'substantially' erroneous because they assume the Earth is flat

A new paper published in Theoretical and Applied Climatology finds "substantial" differences between conventional climate models that assume the Earth is flat as compared to a model that accounts for 3-D geography over mountainous regions.

Links

BRUTAL! Democrat Senator Shreds Obama’s Global Warming Speech: ‘Irresponsible’, ‘Flat Earth’ | The Tea Party News Network | TPNN.com

It’s not only Tea Party conservatives who didn’t approve of Obama’s ridiculous speech today, in which he pitifully attempted to get his massive scandals off the front page. Democrat Senator Joe Manchin had a brutal assessment of Obama’s climate change speech today. Speaking to Bret Baier of FOX News, Manchin called the speech “irresponsible” and referred to the those promoting Obama’s war on coal and domestic energy as still believing that the world was flat:

Lomborg: Obama should confront climate change fantasies

The confusion stems from Obama's unwillingness to confront three climate fantasies:

Renewables are a major part of the solution today. No, they are almost trivial. Today, the world gets 81% of its energy from fossil fuels – by 2035, in the most green scenario, we will still get 79% from fossil fuels. Wind and solar will increase from 0.8% to 3.2% -- impressive, but not what is going to matter.
Biofuels should play a major part of the solution. No. For now, biofuels simply diverts food into cars, driving up food prices and starvation, while clearing forests for new fields emit more CO2 than biofuels save.
Efficiency can cut emissions. No. While efficiency is good, studies show it has little climate impact, because its savings gets eaten up by more use. As your car gets more efficient, you drive it further, and the money you still save get used for other carbon-emitting activities.

Joan Walsh: ‘Obama Got the Last Laugh’ When People Died During Superstorm Sandy | NewsBusters

On MSNBC’s Hardball Tuesday, Salon’s Joan Walsh actually said “Obama got the last laugh” when people died as a result of Superstorm Sandy because it rebuffed something Mitt Romney said about the President at last year’s Republican National Convention

Twitter / BarryJWoods: Gordon Brown tried the 'flat ...

Gordon Brown tried the 'flat earther line', Pre - Cop15. how did that turn out. ? @MotherJones @chriscmooney how will Gordon be remembered.

Hot, Flat, And Paved Over By Eco-Hero Tom Friedman's Family?

Thomas Friedman’s World Is Flat Broke | VF Daily | Vanity Fair

[Nov '08] ...based on the bad news coming out of shopping-mall owner General Growth Properties [GGP], it is no wonder Friedman is feeling crankier than usual. That’s because the author’s wife, Ann (née Bucksbaum), is an heir to the General Growth fortune. In the past year, the couple—who live in an 11,400-square-foot mansion in Bethesda, Maryland—have watched helplessly as General Growth stock has fallen 99 percent, from a high of $51 to a recent 35 cents a share. The assorted Bucksbaum family trusts, once worth a combined $3.6 billion, are now worth less than $25 million.

Flat N All That

When some time ago a friend of mine told me that Thomas Friedman’s new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, was going to be a kind of environmentalist clarion call against American consumerism, I almost died laughing.
...
Where does a man who needs his own offshore drilling platform just to keep the east wing of his house heated get the balls to write a book chiding America for driving energy inefficient automobiles? Where does a guy whose family bulldozed 2.1 million square feet of pristine Hawaiian wilderness to put a Gap, an Old Navy, a Sears, an Abercrombie and even a motherf*cking Foot Locker in paradise get off preaching to the rest of us about the need for a “Green Revolution”? Well, he’ll explain it all to you in 438 crisply written pages for just $27.95, $30.95 if you have the misfortune to be Canadian.

GGP files for bankruptcy

So we have a self-proclaimed progressive lecturing us on our profligate ways and hectoring us about climate change, who lives in a house 6 times bigger than mine, and whose outsized wealth is [was?] largely based on paving over thousands and thousands of acres of land.

Talk about not walking the talk.

Bravo, Andrew Tyrie

UK: Sussex MP branded 'flat earther' following climate change vote (From The Argus)

A Sussex politician has been attacked as a “flat earther” after he was one of just three MPs to vote against landmark legislation to tackle global warming.

Andrew Tyrie, Tory MP for Chichester, joined two of his party colleagues in opposing the Climate Change Bill as it passed its final Commons stage by an overwhelming 463 votes to 3.

Mr Tyrie has questioned the science behind concerns that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are increasing the earth’s temperature, threatening devastating floods and droughts.
...
Brighton Kemptown Labour MP Des Turner welcomed the vote result and dismissed Mr Tyrie’s opposition as marginal.

He said: “He’s one of the last of the flat earthers. He doesn’t believe in man-made climate change – and he’s wrong, in the same way people who believed the earth was flat were wrong.”

Dr Turner said the vote was “one of the most important” in his 11 years as an MP.

He added: “We are literally talking about the future of the human race.”

Mr Tyrie was unavailable for comment.

Links

Twitter / BigJoeBastardi: Cant spin blocking or warm ...

Cant spin blocking or warm water for worst arctic attack into S Am since 1975.Antarctic oscillation strongly positive pic.twitter.com/31tgOyPrF8

Shepherds Flat developers took full advantage federal, state and local taxpayer subsidies to fund the $2 billion wind farm | OregonLive.com

For Shepherds Flat wind farm, the $30 million in tax credits that received final approval from Oregon Department of Energy last month were frosting on a multi-layered cake of federal, state and local subsidies. Its developers gorged themselves on hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers, and government officials were well aware it was over-subsidized.

At the White House, top advisors balked at the largesse for Shepherds Flat, warning President Obama of potential backlash as opportunistic developers "double dipped" on public money.

Electoral War Over Electricity Bills in Delhi - NYTimes.com

The story of exorbitant electricity charges is repeating itself throughout Delhi, feeding growing discontent among residents, especially of lower-income neighborhoods, over inadequate public services at higher costs.

Twitter / BigJoeBastardi: 45 day CFS paints a cool ...

45 day CFS paints a cool last 1/2 of summer for most of US east of Rockies. Texas/NE looks too cool to me here pic.twitter.com/3QiJ9jlMZM

Twitter / BigJoeBastardi: The coming cold in Brazil not ...

The coming cold in Brazil not unprecedented but rare indeed. Great paper on it
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0493(1978)106%3C1545%3ASAOAPO%3E2.0.CO%3B2 …

Links

Targeting and tailoring climate change communications - Bostrom - 2013

The advent of technology-enabled microtargeting is rapidly expanding the opportunities for tailoring and targeting climate change communications and for adding to what we know from using them to make them effective.

Obama, not ‘Skeptics,’ Serve as President of the ‘Flat-Earth Society’ | Heartlander Magazine

So who is really the president of the “Flat Earth Society” on this issue? It is not the so-called “skeptics” who rely on scientific data to inform their position. The Flat Earthers are people such as Obama, who ignore that solid evidence and simply declare their religious belief that human activity is catastrophically changing the Earth’s climate.

Twitter / climatebrad: Only NBC News covered Obama's ...

Only NBC News covered Obama's 49-minute climate speech…ABC and CBS covered the SwissAir heist instead #climatesilence

Twitter / PeterGleick: I watched the President's ...

I watched the President's #climate speech live and now I've re-read the transcript. It is truly brilliant, historical, and inspirational.

Obama's scaled-down climate-change agenda - Reid J. Epstein and Jennifer Epstein - POLITICO.com

even his biggest proposals fall short of what environmentalists had been hoping for, and what he came into the White House promising to achieve.

Clean Air Act, Reinterpreted, Would Focus on Flexibility and State-Level Efforts - NYTimes.com

Already, glaciers are melting, heat waves and heavy rains are increasing, the food system is under stress and the sea is rising

Links

Twitter / m4gw: I don't know about the Flat ...

I don't know about the Flat Earth Society but I am a member of the Flat Chart Society, no warming for 15 years. #ObamaClimate

Twitter / etzpcm: Obama climate speech / initiative ...

Obama climate speech / initiative not mentioned on BBC 10.00 news.

How To Block Obamaclimate | Real Science

Republicans need to do two things :

Run an advertising campaign showing Obama promising to make energy prices skyrocket and bankrupt the coal industry, over and over again. That will make his credibility plummet after today’s speech.
Pass legislation making it illegal to shut down a power plant, unless it poses an immediate threat to safety or there is 100% replacement power coming on line. Democrats won’t be able to vote against that without paying a very high price.

Obama Returns Science To The 16th Century | Real Science

A leader with no training in science who insists that his science view is the only valid one, and who publicly denigrates anyone who disagrees with him.

Furthermore, he has failed to produce any evidence that his plan will have any meaningful impact on the climate.

How Environmental Organizations Are Destroying The Environment | Watts Up With That?

Raising energy prices is the most regressive taxation I know of. The poorer you are, the harder you are hit by rising energy costs, and the more the poor suffer, the more the environment bears the brunt.

Proud moment for warmists: President of real Flat Earth Society believes in the global warming hoax

Actually, even the Flat Earth Society believes in climate change - Salon.com

As it turns out, there is a real Flat Earth Society and its president thinks that anthropogenic climate change is real. In an email to Salon, president Daniel Shenton said that while he “can’t speak for the Society as a whole regarding climate change,” he personally thinks the evidence suggests fossil fuel usage is contributing to global warming.

“I accept that climate change is a process which has been ongoing since beginning of detectable history, but there seems to be a definite correlation between the recent increase in world-wide temperatures and man’s entry into the industrial age,” he said. “If it’s a coincidence, it’s quite a remarkable one. We may have experienced a temperature increase even without our use of fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution, but I doubt it would be as dramatic as what we’re seeing now.”

Links

Flat-Earth Democrats | FrontPage Magazine

Al Gore once sneered, “Fifteen per cent of the people believe the moon landing was staged on some movie lot and a somewhat smaller number still believe the Earth is flat. They all get together on a Saturday night and party with the global warming deniers.” More and more scientific evidence suggests that it is Gore and his Democratic brethren who are the flat-earthers, clinging to an exploded paradigm not because of the “overwhelming judgment of science,” but because it gratifies their ideological and political preferences and interests.

THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: How taxpayers subsidized Tesla to make the rich richer

And even if Tesla's cars do sell, the policy question is why billionaires in California couldn't have financed the business themselves. Why should middle-class taxpayers whose incomes are falling still pay to subsidize the purchase of cars that only the affluent can afford, and then partly as a gesture of their superior environmental virtue? When does the rest of America get its return on Tesla's profits?

Climate Lessons: 50 to 1 Project: still in with a chance of proceeding

One thing we shall need for years to come is good quality materials to help repair the damage done in politics and in education by the past decades of overblown alarmism about CO2. This video project promises to provide exactly that, and may yet manage to go ahead on a reduced budget. Here is the latest update

THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: The global solar cartel is making solar energy even more uncompetitive

Call it tragicomic that the only way for the U.S. and EU to achieve their green objectives is to embrace China's model of state-managed capitalism. But the story is also a parable of how the cronyism inherent in the renewable-energy industry can clash with environmental goals.

Don’t mention the pause, or there may be Nazis | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

No consensus here: While warmist James Hansen has admitted that global temps have been "flat" for many years, warmist John Abraham continues to deny it

'Luke-warming?' The world's scientists know better | Warmist John Abraham

[John Abraham] Westgard then asserts that climate has taken a 10-year hiatus on warming. That would be good news, if it were true. In reality, climate has not taken a "breather." The vast majority of the heat we are adding to the Earth is ending up in the oceans. The oceans, land and atmosphere continue to warm, despite what Westgard asserts. How do I know? I study and publish in this very area. I also speak to colleagues around the world on a daily basis. No one I know would agree with Westgard.

[January 2013] NASA's James Hansen's finally concedes 'flat' global temps: Hansen's 'remarkable' comments on global warming standstill: 'The five-year mean global temperature has been flat for the last decade...'

Delightfully stupid Daily Kos piece from warmist Greg Laden: He suggests that James Hansen is "a moron" for admitting that global temperature has been flat for the last decade; also "there is more money going into climate science denial than any political counter movement that has ever existed"

Daily Kos: Dollars for Deniers: Big Oil Funds Climate Science Denialism

To state, with a straight face, that the jury is still out, or that we can’t separate natural variation from human caused changes, or that the earth has stopped warming for the last decade, or any of the other things we constantly hear from climate change denialists is exactly the same thing as standing there with a big sign that reads “I am a moron.”
...Most times, though, the science-denialism comes from a handful of very active blogs, from those charismatic lecture circuit denizens such as “Lord” Christopher Monkton, and a very large number of commenters and their probable sock puppets who show up at every on line newspaper and blog to spew the same exact lines again and again even though every single remark they make … without exception … has long ago been discredited with science and reason.

It turns out that there is a fairly straight forward explanation for this continued craziness. $500,000,000 dollars.
...
So, at this point there seems to be two likely answers to the question, “Why are you a climate science denialist?” One, is that you are getting paid to do so. The other, is that you really think you know better than the entire scientific community, and you are not personally getting any of of the payola even though there is more money going into climate science denial than any political counter movement that has ever existed.

Flashback: NASA's James Hansen's finally concedes 'flat' global temps: Hansen's 'remarkable' comments on global warming standstill: 'The five-year mean global temperature has been flat for the last decade...' | Climate Depot

Hansen: "5-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade"; also "The one major wild card in projections of future climate change is the unmeasured climate forcing due to aerosol changes and their effects on clouds"

New Jim Hansen: Temps flat for a decade, warming is slowing: Natural variability to blame | JunkScience.com

But “background” — i.e., imaginary — global warming is still occurring, says Hansen.

[Jim Hansen's new paper]

From the paper above:

The 5-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slowdown in the growth rate of the net climate forcing...The annual increment in the greenhouse gas forcing (Fig. 5) has declined from about 0.05 W/m2 in the 1980s to about 0.35 W/m2 in recent years [With the fate of the planet allegedly hinging on this number, Hansen is off by a factor of 10 here when reading numbers from his own graph.  He means .035, not .35]...The one major wild card in projections of future climate change is the unmeasured climate forcing due to aerosol changes and their effects on clouds. Anecdotal information indicates that particulate air pollution has increased in regions with increasing coal burning, but assessment of the climate forcing requires global measurement of detailed physical properties of the aerosols. The one satellite mission that was capable of making measurements with the required detail and accuracy was lost via a launch failure, and as yet there are no plans for a repllacement mission with the needed capabilities

Amid her usual climate propaganda, Juliet Eilperin includes quotes from Christy and Curry; warmist Chris Field compares the threat of CO2 to the threat of getting more than two flat tires per private fossil-fueled car trip

2012 hottest year on record in contiguous U.S., NOAA says - The Washington Post

Alaska and the Pacific Northwest didn’t experience record-setting heat last year; a cool-weather pattern over the Pacific Ocean kept temperatures lower.
...Vanderbilt Law School professor Michael Vandenbergh said today’s leaders will be judged harshly by future generations for not focusing on climate change.

“A hundred years from now, they’re not going to be talking about health care or the fiscal cliff,” he said. “But they will ask, ‘What did you do when we knew we were going to have serious climate change?’ ”

John R. Christy, who directs the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said some researchers are exaggerating the severity of the threat. He said that the right climate target is “in the mind of the beholder,” given that rising energy demand is a sign that many poor people are struggling “to be lifted out of their current condition.”

“No one in Washington can stop that,” he said. “And, right now, carbon is the most accessible and affordable way to supply that energy — so CO2 emissions will continue to rise because of the undeniable benefit carbon energy brings to human life.”
...Some scientists, however, think it is premature to blame droughts or hurricanes on human-caused warming. Georgia Institute of Technology atmospheric scientist Judith A. Curry said in an e-mail that the global average temperature for 2012 will not set a record — last year will probably be the eighth warmest. “Natural variability continues to dominate the occurrence of extreme weather events,” she said.
...
Chris Field, who directs the Carnegie Institution for Science’s global ecology department at Stanford University, noted that although it is impossible to say whether the world will be “safe” if it limits the temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius, he compared it to “the number of flat tires I can tolerate on a road trip in my car.”

“With even one flat, there is a risk of a serious accident. But because I am a careful driver, and I have a spare, one is probably ok,” he wrote in an e-mail. “With two flats on the trip, I know I don’t have a spare for the second one, and I understand that the risk of a serious accident is increased. . . . For more than two flats, things get really messy.”

Obama the Great Uniter: Republicans who diss solar/wind/biofuels are like Flat Earthers

Obama hammers GOP on gas prices rhetoric - Jennifer Epstein - POLITICO.com

“Lately, we’ve heard a lot of professional politicians — a lot of the folks who, you know, are running for a certain office, who shall go unnamed — they’ve been talking down new sources of energy. They dismiss wind power. They dismiss solar power. They make jokes about biofuels,” Obama said. “They were against raising fuel standards because apparently they like gas guzzling cars better. We’re trying to move towards the future, and they want to be stuck in the past.”

Those same people, Obama said, would’ve thought the Earth was flat, that television wouldn’t last, that the automobile was only a passing fad.

“If some of these folks were around when Columbus set sail, they must have been founding members of the Flat Earth Society,” he said. “They would not have believed that the world was round.”

Flashback: Obama Says He Can Unite U.S. 'More Effectively' Than Clinton

MANCHESTER, N.H., Aug. 14 -- Drawing a sharp contrast with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, his main rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama said in an interview that he has the capacity she may lack to unify the country and move it out of what he called "ideological gridlock."

BBC Science Reviewer on Flat-Earthers

http://www.ozclimatesense.com/2011/08/bbc-science-reviewer-on-flat-earthers.html

Steve Jones, in a review of BBC Science coverage recommended in effect that sceptics be given even less time (if that were possible) on the BBC which provoked a hail of criticism. Jones in an article in the Telegraph defends himself and attacked sceptics by saying that science upsets "flat-earthers". The comments on his article are mostly not complimentary! 

Warmist Tom Friedman endorses $10 per gallon gas tax to be used to buy our vehicles, which would be crushed and piled in a mountain as a monument to 9/11?

Hot, flat, and crowded, page 262- Google Books


What Obama’s Reading, President Obama Book List - Barnes & Noble

Often seen with a book in hand, President Obama has been shaped by such notable reads as Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman

2009: Scandal over Obama's Martha's Vineyard reading list

Referring to a September 2008 news report in which Obama discussed Thomas L. Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Samuel P. Jacobs wonders why the president brought the book to Martha's Vineyard. No word from the president, but Friedman told the Daily Beast in an email: “Given the pressure of a campaign, I doubt that the President got to read anything cover to cover. And for most of his presidency, the Great Recession has really swamped debate and discussion about climate and energy. So, I was very pleased to hear that he is diving into it again. ..."

John Vidal reports from a dramatic day at the UN climate change summit | Environment | guardian.co.uk

As seven African countries stalled talks for five hours, environment editor John Vidal reports

[Video: Friedman throws global warming under the bus: He suggests that he'd like to see China grow "dirty" for another ten years]

Thomas Friedman, author of Hot, Flat, and Crowded (just released in a paperback edition), stopped at CNBC for an extended interview this morning on his way to the Copenhagen climate conference. His basic message was that economic revival is strongly dependent on green technology. He pointed out that one out of three wind turbine systems worldwide is now made and exported by Denmark. "If you don't believe in hot," he said, "Just focus on flat and crowded." Video below [Friedman says: "I say to [China]...it's your turn-take your time-grow as dirty as you want 'cause I think my country just needs five years to invent all the clean power technologies you're gonna need as you choke to death, and then we're gonna come over here and we're gonna sell them all to you and we're gonna clean your clock--how do you say "clean your clock" in Chinese? ...you wanna give me a five year lead? I'll take five; I prefer ten take your time..."]

Confused? You might BE a psychologist « JoNova

Some scientists just keep looking in the wrong places for answers. Here’s Stephan Lewandonsky, professorial fellow of psychology, in The Age trying to answer the most important question in modern science and economics. He refers to ClimateGate and asks if the stunning accusations of serious misconduct are true? Watch the flat out assertion backed by a non-sequiteur...

Walkouts? We're locked out | Al Jazeera Blogs

I'm told 45,000 people have been accredited in all. The venue only has a 15,000 capacity and already 30,000 are attending. More are arriving all the time as the summit enters its most fraught and crucial final period.

One woman grumbled bitterly into her mobile phone in Spanish. I couldn't hear the detail but she repeatedly and loudly stressed the word 'cojones'. One can only guess.

You have to wonder at the organisers' competence here. How on earth can they be entrusted with saving the planet?

Why those emails are lethal: Melanie Phillips

AGW theory is deader than Monty Python’s parrot. Get over it.

Brown rejects 'flat-earth' climate sceptics - Yahoo! News

LONDON (AFP) – World leaders heading to UN climate talks next week must not be distracted by "flat-earth" sceptics who deny humans are to blame for global warming, Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned Saturday.

"With only days to go before Copenhagen, we mustn't be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics," Brown told The Guardian newspaper ahead of the landmark UN summit in the Danish capital.

"We know the science. We know what we must do. We must now act and close the five-billion-tonne gap. That will seal the deal."

Lake effect snow sets a few records | Michigan

Forecasts had been calling for three to five inches in some places, but a small band of snowstorms blew that total away, dropping 14 to 15 inches in some places.

Scandal shakes foundations of climate science - The Globe and Mail

Now the pirating of thousands of e-mail messages from within its walls has revealed a dangerous bunker mentality among the scientists who guarded those records and a data-fudging scandal that has created a crisis of confidence in global-warming science that is threatening to destroy the political consensus around next week's carbon-policy summit in Copenhagen.

Said one scientist working at the institute: “It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that this has set the climate-change debate back 20 years.”
...
Unusually, even sympathetic scientists and some activists have concluded that the credibility of climate science has been seriously harmed.
...Some of his colleagues also say the IPCC now does more harm than good and should be disbanded.

That position has led some of his colleagues to attack him. This week, several said in Internet posts that such transparency would be unworkable because the matter of climate is too urgent and the stakes too high to allow skeptics to have any influence on policy.

That, Prof. Hulme said, is exactly the attitude that led to the sort of questionable practices chronicled in the CRU e-mails.

BBC News - Newsnight - CRU's programming 'way below expected standards'

As the row caused by the Climatic Research Unit's leaked e-mails continues, Newsnight has been told there are now serious concerns over the quality of the computer programming used to produce the global temperature records at the heart of the debate.

Newsnight's Science Editor Susan Watts looks at how the source code used in the CRU's computer files is way below expected standards for this type of commercial software, according to software engineer Dr John Graham-Cumming.

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: IPCC Advocate in Chief

Is it appropriate for the IPCC head to be engaged in overt political lobbying? If so, what policies should he be lobbying for, since the IPCC itself doesn't discuss specific policies? Is the IPCC an advisory body or an advocacy organization?

Obama's Stealth Energy Policy

In early 2008, a week after his defeat in the New Hampshire primary, Barack Obama sat down with the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle. "The problem is," Obama said about global warming, "can you get the American people to say this is really important and force their representatives to do the right thing?"

Bret Stephens: Does Obama Believe in Human Rights - WSJ.com

Human rights "interfere" with President Obama's campaign against climate change.

'Deny climate change? Then you're as ignorant as those who think the world is flat' - Scotsman.com News

CLIMATE-change sceptics are as ignorant as people who believe the earth is flat, according to one of Scotland's most influential conservationists.
Professor Colin Galbraith, director of policy at Scottish Natural Heritage, also warned that the more people who refused to accept climate change was an issue, the worse the consequences for the planet.

Of the sceptics, Prof Galbraith said: "They also believe the world is flat. I'm absolutely scathing of them. The more people that ignore this, the worse it will be. They should open their eyes. There is evidence all around us..."

Electric Cars Find Power in Governments [spending other people's money] - WSJ.com

The cost of batteries is still way too high, however, costing some $10,000 each. Japan's Mitsubishi Motor Corp. has put a small electric car on sale at four million yen ($44,000), but is losing money even at that price.

Scam yields more cash: Province pours $90 million into climate research institute

A new four-institute $90-million climate change research centre will have its home base at the University of Victoria, Premier Gordon Campbell announced Friday.

Hotshot greens caught wasting home heat - Times Online

THEY may shout their green credentials from the rooftops, but some of Britain’s most prominent environmental champions are living in homes that produce up to half a ton of excess carbon dioxide a year.

An audit of properties, measuring heat loss, has revealed that Chris Martin, the pop star, Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, and Sir David Attenborough, the broadcaster, are among those who reside in homes that are “leaking” energy. Some lack even the most basic energy saving measures such as cavity wall insulation and double glazing.

Thermal images of the residences of 10 high-profile green campaigners found that their heat loss was either worse or no better than that found in the average family home.

Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat energy and climate change spokesman, owned the least energy-efficient property. He bought his £150,000 flat in Southwark, south London, 25 years ago but has failed to fit it with any significant insulation. Only last week Hughes unveiled plans to make every home in Britain energy efficient within the next decade. He could start with his own flat.

Is America Ready to Quit Coal? - NYTimes.com

Dan W. Reicher, Google’s director for climate change and energy initiatives, is confident it’s possible to wean ourselves off coal. Last year he devised a plan, called Clean Energy 2030, that calls for America to go almost fossil fuel-free by 2030.

His proposal entails keeping electricity demand flat by aggressively pursuing energy efficiency, thus bypassing the need for new coal plants to meet growing demand. All existing coal generation and about half of our current natural gas production would be replaced with a medley of clean electricity propelled by wind, solar, nuclear and other sources.

Michael G. Morris, chief executive of American Electric Power in Columbus, Ohio, also one of the largest utilities in the country, dismisses Google’s plan, particularly the idea of eliminating coal-fired electricity by 2030. “Absolutely impossible,” he scoffs. “If you can make the wind blow 24/7 that would be good. Maybe Google’s got a plan for that.”