The same is going on in Canada against our ethical oil.  A huge campaign funded by Soros’s Tides foundation and Greenpeace to stop us from getting oil to tidewater. When you mention the Saudi oil being bought all you hear is crickets..

Frightening stuff out of Melbourne, Australia. Especially frightening are the ugly, fat lesbian cops asking Avi to desist from asking questions. Fat ugly lesbians shouldn't be allowed to be cops.

CO2 is plant food.  That’s why people with greenhouses pump the stuff into them.  Actual pollutants like Sulfur dioxide, H2S that cause acid rain? By all means get rid of it.

... then you're not worried at all about your tundras melting like the ones in Siberia spewing methane into our athmosphere? and as mankind can't do much to affect CO2 (except our great-great-great-great-great-...-grandchildren) let's keep blowing smoke in the air - that's more important than air to breathe ... as for the ozone hole being remedied: I invite every one who believes this (or just purports this) to live underneath one ; )
again: yes I understand some of the natural evolution of global warming and deplore a lot of the hype on this topic leading to this backlash agains preserving nature - however that's no reason to ignore man-made pollution, or not preparing for natural warming, just sitting back and waiting for the floods - which I could: I live at 800m and my garden could do with a little warmth ; )
oh wait: they got exactly that this year - warmest summer (starting in March) on record (100 something years) and driest summer, too - doesn't much matter how much of that was man-made and how much is natural tail end of the 4th ice age, my garden still suffered, as did I spending enless hours watering our farm so it would not die out completely ... but I'm sure that's just a concidence and has nothing to do with the last 8 summers / winters getting warmer each year since I moved out here - far too short to be a climate trend, so I'm not gonna worry about the next 100 summers and most definitely nothing to do with the pollution in our cities and on our streets which will only reach me in 800 years ; )
VSD

We are actually in the tail end of the 4th ice age.  The average global temperatures for the planet during these ice ages is 12c we are currently at 14c.  Over the last billion years the average global temperature is 22c.  Currently the earth is sitting at 400ppm CO2.  The average during non ice age times is 2000PPM CO2.  Currently I think we are in more danger of having another ice age than a global warming event. Also CO2 levels are a lagging indicator by about 800 years not a leading indicator.  Climate change happens.  There is not much man can do to affect it one way or another, the acception being CFC pollution that affected the ozone layer which has already been remedied.  The ozone layer is repaired.

I'll even give you Germany with 357kkm² to your parks with 328kkm² - it's still only 3.3% of Canada ... as for 'carbon negative footprint' I'll take your word for it - you're one of the few persons (and countries?) actually not trying to use this rigmarole as an excuse to cut down on nature preservation and just dumping more human crap into nature because 'we're better than other countries' ... just wait until your 26% of tundras start thawing with all this 'warming swindle' ; )
as I already said: I too wish the hype got separated from the facts we do have - so enjoy your forests and nature while you still have it : ) all the rest: beat the pants off their naked asses : P
VSD

I am prettty sure Canada’s national parks land mass is larger than many entire country’s land mass.  I DO know that overall Canada’s forested areas actually make Canada a “Carbon Negative place far outweighing it’s global emmissions.

... of something that started out as protecting nature ... the nature we still need and in many cases simply want for it's beauty ... no wonder everybody now feels fine to start off-shore drilling, fracking, scouting national parks, dumping garbage into the oceans since the Chinese no longer buy it ... after all: it's just a money grabbers game ... well done ...
VSD

it is nothing more than a UN led attempt at wealth redistribution.

... that valid data did not get mixed up with all the hype ...

still no excuse to dump all this human crap in nature cause it does not 'belong' to one person or state, does not 'kill a single individual directly' and thus needs not be protected for it's sheer beauty alone, not to mention that we still need it to survive : (

and please don't argue with the meager 14% natural parks or I get really depressed how little is left - not to mention that half of it is only protected in name, not in deed, and some of the largest parks are in areas where mankind simply has had no interest (yet) and is now starting to encroach on like Greenland or the Arctic circle when they become interesting : (

sadly the hysterical hype around global warming has in many instances done more harm than good ... if I were a conspiracy nut I'd imply that this was done intentionally to make it easier to exploit and destroy nature : P

VSD

PS: back to the roots - loved this little nugget of a news story https://www.bbc.com/news/in-pi... ... it's not mentioned directly in this article however if you look closely at the second picture in the middle you'll see the greatest 'harm' done to the illegal loggers - talk about 'beating the pants off their asses' ; D

Climate ”scientists” warned that ocean temps. had warmed 60% faster than predicted and the ecoterrorists were losing their minds as the media pushed this over and over.  Then one lone scientist says “wait a minute your calculations are flawed” and proved it.  Crickets....

Scientific sleight-of-hand pushed economy-hobbling Paris Agreement:

http://observer.com/2017/02/no...

If ARI had its way, the great global warming swindle would rock on full speed to freezing poverty. Here's hoping Trump's appointment of Scott Pruitt is successful.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

"Environmental groups reacted with alarm Wednesday at the nomination. And New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman vowed to “use the full power” of his office to wage a legal battle to “compel” enforcement of environmental laws under Trump.

“Scott Pruitt has a record of attacking the environmental protections that EPA is charged with enforcing. He has built his political career by trying to undermine EPA’s mission of environmental protection,” said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund. “Our country needs — and deserves — an EPA administrator who is guided by science, who respects America’s environmental laws, and who values protecting the health and safety of all Americans ahead of the lobbying agenda of special interests.”

Fuck you Fred.

The "warmists", gifts who just keep on giving

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Baal Chatzaf (?) yesterday over at the swamp put some meat on the bones of my comment here two years ago:

Wed, 2013-06-05 12:51.
http://www.solopassion.com/nod...
“..the principle of the Great Swindle here is that Man is not responsible or even capable of causing global warming, or global cooling. It is obvious that your Sun, and mine, will have its radiant cycles and Earth will remain in an orbital with our atmosphere acting as a constant heat exchanger into space. An undeniable fact given that we are here, after millions of evolutionary years, to debate the possibility.

The cure for supposed anthropogenic warming, of reversing the industrial revolution, is worse than the misdiagnosed symptoms.”

http://www.objectivistliving.c...
“Yes, the CO2, water vapor and methane -is- slowing down the radiative dissipation of heat somewhat, so there will be some temperature increase. But the atmospheric convection which is not stopped by the CO2 is moving that heat up to the outer bounds of the atmosphere where it will radiate out into cold space according to the Stephan-Boltzmann law. The rate at which a body of Kelvin temperature T radiates to a cold sink is proportional to T^4, the fourth power of the temperature. So the earth is not going to turn into Venus anytime soon.”

The Swindle was never science. It is redistributionist politics. Lefties lie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Shale gas is Rearden Metal

"For my summer holidays I have been mostly reading Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand has her faults but, boy, was she prescient.

One of the things she foresaw was the current nonsensical, dishonest, canting campaign against shale gas. In Atlas Shrugged it takes the form of Rearden Metal, the miracle technology which is going to transform the US economy if only the progressives will let it. But of course, Rand’s fictional progressives don’t want Reardon Metal to succeed any more than their modern, real-life equivalents want shale gas to succeed.

Why not? For the same rag-bag of made-up, disingenuous reasons which progressives have used to justify their war on progress since time immemorial: it’s unfair, it uses up scarce resources, it might be dangerous. Rand doesn’t actually use the phrase “the precautionary principle.” But this is exactly what she is describing in the book when various vested interests – the corporatists in bed with big government, the politicised junk-scientists at the Institute of Science (aka, in our world, the National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society), the unions – try to close down the nascent technology using the flimsiest of excuses."

Climate Change Sceptic Abbot wins by landslide.

"From today I declare Australia is under new management and Australia is now open for business", Mr Abbott told a cheering crowd as he delivered a victory speech.

A Rhodes scholar who once wanted to be a Roman Catholic priest, Mr Abbott has pledged to repeal both the mining and carbon taxes introduced by Labor.

(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama said at a town hall event in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Saturday that unless we find new way of producing energy "the planet will boil over" if people in Africa are allowed to attain air conditioning, automobiles and big houses.

“Ultimately, if you think about all the youth that everybody has mentioned here in Africa, if everybody is raising living standards to the point where everybody has got a car and everybody has got air conditioning, and everybody has got a big house, well, the planet will boil over -- unless we find new ways of producing energy."

According to Obama, global warming constitutes “the biggest challenge we have environmentally,” one greater than all other environmental calamities like “dirty water, dirty air.”

He's got to be helping the cause, just as Gore was ideal to turn people from the idea of AGW.

Locals to get veto power over wind farms

Local communities will be given the power to block wind farms under new planning rules to be unveiled.

"Senior Conservatives claim the move will effectively end the spread of the controversial turbines which have been blamed for blighting picturesque landscapes.

Ministers will announce that residents will have to be consulted over new wind farms with applications barred if there is significant opposition. Councils are currently prevented from even considering applications for larger turbines.

However, under the plans, energy firms will be able to offer “incentives” – such as discounts on electricity bills – to persuade communities to agree to new wind farms.

When planning applications are submitted, officials will have to take into account topography and the impact on “views” and historic sites. Inspectors will also have to assess the “cumulative impact of wind turbines” amid fears that some areas are being overwhelmed by applications.

Currently, councils can be forced to accept new wind farms as national planning guidance states that renewable energy schemes should usually be permitted."

...the sceptic does not have to "prove" his point, just flag up the mistakes in the data/theories of those who make the assertions in the first place.

A true "scientist" would do exactly the same thing, poke holes in his or her own theory - not dismiss all criticism as invalid.

So please convince us you are right.

“I've been doing a lot of research on AGM recently:
The 2nd link you posted, an article by Heartland Institute author Peter Ferrera, is also discredited in my view. Ferrera was crushed in the Comments by climate scientists, and outed for what could only be purposeful misinformation.”

Climate scientists are government-funded with vested interest.

“References from commenters check out, Ferrera's do not. Note that Ferrera is a paid political commentator, not a scientist.”

"Ferrera is a paid political commentator" and climate scientists are not?

You place too much faith in climate “scientists.”

What is Ferrara claiming?

“Ferrera was crushed in the Comments by climate scientists, and outed for what could only be purposeful misinformation.”

If you could point these out, I will look into it.

“Similary, I have reviewed The Great Global Warming Swindle, the genesis of this thread, and have found that it contains similar misinformation. I am noticing a trend on preliminary research.”

This could well be true, but the principle of the Great Swindle here is that Man is not responsible or even capable of causing global warming, or global cooling. It is obvious that your Sun, and mine, will have its radiant cycles and Earth will remain in an orbital with our atmosphere acting as a constant heat exchanger into space. An undeniable fact given that we are here, after millions of evolutionary years, to debate the possibility.

The cure for supposed anthropogenic warming, of reversing the industrial revolution, is worse than the misdiagnosed symptoms.

And, btw, where's the warming?

Greg,

I've been doing a lot of research on AGM recently:

The 2nd link you posted, an article by Heartland Institute author Peter Ferrera, is also discredited in my view.  Ferrera was crushed in the Comments by climate scientists, and outed for what could only be purposeful misinformation.  References from commenters check out, Ferrera's do not.  Note that Ferrera is a paid political commentator, not a scientist.

Similary, I have reviewed The Great Global Warming Swindle, the genesis of this thread, and have found that it contains similar misinformation.  I am noticing a trend on preliminary research.  From my FB comments:

"The first thing I noticed when comparing AGW Promoters vs Skeptics from online info sources: Promoters provide far greater documentation, especially links to detailed information sources where anyone may independently verify data. Skeptics are witnessed to provide much less documentation in general, especially scientific data. AGW Promoters abound with such information, and their links check out on initial review. Too many Skeptic references were demonstrated to contain purposefully incomplete misinformation, eg., The Heartland Institute. I will continue research."

That last link of mine is being discredited.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...

But don't throw out your winter warmers just yet.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/pe...

http://principia-scientific.or...

Max Planck Institute For Meteorology: “Prognoses Confirm Model Forecasts” Warming Postponed “Hundreds Of Years”

"Because the climate has a very high thermal inertia and the oceans warm up only very slowly, it’s going to take some time before the effects of the greenhouse gases completely take hold. A warming from the greenhouse effect will be amplified by numerous feedbacks, and weakened by a few processes. Only when this complicated interaction quiets down will the climate come to a stable condition. This long-term reaction by the climate is called equilibrium climate sensitivity (ESC) and is calculated by climate scientists. It is the final temperature increase that comes from a doubling of CO2 concentration, and will probably occur first after a few hundred years."

Margaret Thatcher: On two of the great issues, the lady was indeed for turning

She was famed for sticking to her guns, but on Europe and climate change the former prime minister in fact executed U-turns.

"The second momentous issue on which Mrs Thatcher played a far more influential role than is generally realised was global warming. When the scare erupted in 1988, she was the first world leader who not only adopted it as the last great cause of her premiership, but also made moves that helped to push it rapidly towards the top of the international agenda. She made passionate speeches to the Royal Society and the United Nations. Even more significantly, she gave full backing to one of the most fervent evangelists for the belief that the world was threatened by human emissions of carbon dioxide, Dr John Houghton, then head of the Met Office.

No one played a more crucial role than Houghton in setting up, in 1988, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This was the body that was to become the central driver in promoting the worldwide scare over global warming through a series of mammoth reports, the first three of which Houghton did more to shape than anyone. Without their influence, we would not have had the Rio Earth Summit, the Kyoto Protocol, and all those political responses to the scare that, in the past two decades, have had such a dramatic impact on international energy policy – nowhere more disastrously and at greater cost than in the European Union, with Britain’s suicidal Climate Change Act potentially the most damaging consequence of all.

The fiasco of that mammoth Copenhagen conference in 2009 may have marked the moment when, politically, the panic over climate change finally began to crumble apart, as it became clear that the fast-growing countries of the developing world, led by China and India, were simply not going to buy into a treaty that would have landed mankind with the biggest bill in history. But seven years before that, again in her last book, Lady Thatcher had already written, under the heading “Hot air and global warming”, what amounted to a complete recantation of her earlier views, voicing precisely those fundamental doubts over the warming panic that were later to become familiar.

Pouring scorn on what she called “the doomsters”, she questioned all the main scientific assumptions that had been used to drive the scare, from the conviction that the main force shaping the world climate is CO2, rather than natural factors such as solar activity, to exaggerated claims about rising sea levels. She mocked Al Gore and the futility of what she recognised as “costly and economically damaging” schemes to reduce CO2 emissions. She cited the 2.5 degree rise in temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period as having had almost entirely beneficial effects. She pointed out that the dangers of a world getting colder are far worse than those of a CO2-enriched world growing warmer. She recognised how distortions of the science had been used to mask an anti-capitalist, Left-wing political agenda that posed a very serious threat to human progress and prosperity.

Thus, long before it became fashionable, Lady Thatcher was converted to the view of those who, on both scientific and political grounds, have become ever more sceptical of the entire climate change ideology. How odd it is that, even today, so few people realise what a key role she played in helping to promote that scare in the first place. But even fewer realise how she eventually came to make as great a U-turn on this issue as any in her life.

Many people have noticed how, in trying to assess this force of nature who exploded to the centre of our national life 34 years ago, one so often has to balance the positives and the negatives in all she stood for. The upsides in the end far outweighed the downsides. But the fact that on these two great issues she came so radically to change her mind is yet another measure of the difference that has set her apart from all those political pygmies who have followed."

I'm happy you appreciate this. I think Harry Binswanger shouldn't mind me using his 'private' list content in this case.

I f%^king cheered when I read that!  Good find!!!

Thanks for that Gregster'

A fantastic account!

Website thanking the hero who released the private emails between the crooked climate scientists: http://misterfoia.com/

Also Harry Binswanger sent out this letter from the person who now acts alone and calls himself Mr FOIA.

HB: "You remember Climategate 1 and Climategate 2: an anonymous source released private emails among top climate “scientists” that showed the utter politicization and subjectivity at the headquarters (Hadley in England) of the so-called consensus of researchers.

Climategate 1 popularized the phrase “hide the decline” that one of them used (calling it a “trick”) to distort the data to serve the warmmongers' aims. Climategate 2, though less appreciated, showed a wider corruption: our own National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was in on the game; vast amounts of its data had been simply eliminated—to make it seem that global temperatures were warmer than they actually are.

These earlier Climategates involved thousands of emails leaked to the world. Now comes Climategate 3, in which the anonymous whistle-blower turns over his remaining cache: 220,000 emails.

The really good (i.e., bad) stuff had apparently been culled for the earlier leaks, but doubtless much revealing material lies waiting recognition among those 220,000. So far, the most damning one contains this assessment, from within the enemies own ranks, of the science behind the infamous “hockey stick” graph presented by Michael Mann: “crap.”

What's really interesting is that these new leaks were accompanied by a letter penned by the leaker, who now identifies himself as “Mr. FOIA” (i.e., Mr. Freedom of Information Act). He doesn't reveal who he is, but asserts who he is not (a stooge of vested interests, such as the oil companies), and most interestingly, gives his justification for what some (not I) would call an act of theft. Here is his letter in its entirety."

It's time to tie up loose ends and dispel some of the speculation surrounding the Climategate affair.

Indeed, it's singular “I” this time. After certain career developments I can no longer use the papal plural

If this email seems slightly disjointed it's probably my linguistic background and the problem of trying to address both the wider audience (I expect this will be partially reproduced sooner or later) and the email recipients (whom I haven't decided yet on).

The “all.7z” password is [redacted]

DO NOT PUBLISH THE PASSWORD. Quote other parts if you like.

Releasing the encrypted archive was a mere practicality. I didn't want to keep the emails lying around.

I prepared CG1 & 2 [Climategate 1 & 2] alone. Even skimming through all 220.000 emails would have taken several more months of work in an increasingly unfavorable environment.

Dumping them all into the public domain would be the last resort. Majority of the emails are irrelevant, some of them probably sensitive and socially damaging.

To get the remaining scientifically (or otherwise) relevant emails out, I ask you to pass this on to any motivated and responsible individuals who could volunteer some time to sift through the material for eventual release.

Filtering\redacting personally sensitive emails doesn't require special expertise.

I'm not entirely comfortable sending the password around unsolicited, but haven't got better ideas at the moment. If you feel this makes you seemingly “complicit” in a way you don't like, don't take action.

I don't expect these remaining emails to hold big surprises. Yet it's possible that the most important pieces are among them. Nobody on the planet has held the archive in plaintext since CG2.

That's right; no conspiracy, no paid hackers, no Big Oil. The Republicans didn't plot this. USA politics is alien to me, neither am I from the UK. There is life outside the Anglo-American sphere.

If someone is still wondering why anyone would take these risks, or sees only a breach of privacy here, a few words . . . [his three dots]

The first glimpses I got behind the scenes did little to garner my trust in the state of climate science—on the contrary. I found myself in front of a choice that just might have a global impact.

Briefly put, when I had to balance the interests of my own safety, privacy\career of a few scientists, and the well-being of billions of people living in the coming several decades, the first two weren't the decisive concern.

It was me or nobody, now or never. Combination of several rather improbable prerequisites just wouldn't occur again for anyone else in the foreseeable future. The circus was about to arrive in Copenhagen. Later on it could be too late.

Most would agree that climate science has already directed where humanity puts its capability, innovation, mental and material “might”. The scale will grow ever grander in the coming decades if things go according to script. We're dealing with $trillions and potentially drastic influence on practically everyone.

Wealth of the surrounding society tends to draw the major brushstrokes of a newborn's future life. It makes a huge difference whether humanity uses its assets to achieve progress, or whether it strives to stop and reverse it, essentially sacrificing the less fortunate to the climate gods.

We can't pour trillions in this massive hole-digging-and-filling-up endeavor and pretend it's not away from something and someone else. [Right!

If the economy of a region, a country, a city, etc. deteriorates, what happens among the poorest? Does that usually improve their prospects? No, they will take the hardest hit. No amount of magical climate thinking can turn this one upside-down.

It's easy for many of us in the western world to accept a tiny green inconvenience and then wallow in that righteous feeling, surrounded by our “clean” technology and energy that is only slightly more expensive if adequately subsidized.

Those millions and billions already struggling with malnutrition, sickness, violence, illiteracy, etc. don't have that luxury. The price of “climate protection” with its cumulative and collateral effects is bound to destroy and debilitate in great numbers, for decades and generations.

Conversely, a “game-changer” could have a beneficial effect encompassing a similar scope.

If I had a chance to accomplish even a fraction of that, I'd have to try. I couldn't morally afford inaction. Even if I risked everything, would never get personal compensation, and could probably never talk about it with anyone.

I took what I deemed the most defensible course of action, and would do it again (although with slight alterations—trying to publish something truthful on RealClimate was clearly too grandiose of a plan .

Even if I have it all wrong and these scientists had some good reason to mislead us (instead of making a strong case with real data) I think disseminating the truth is still the safest bet by far.

Big thanks to Steve [McIntyre of ClimateAudit.org] and Anthony [Watts of WattsUpWithThat.com] and many others. My contribution would never have happened without your work (whether or not you agree with the views stated).

Oh, one more thing. I was surprised to learn from a “progressive” blog, corroborated by a renowned “scientist”, that the releases were part of a coordinated campaign receiving vast amounts of secret funding from shady energy industry groups.

I wasn't aware of the arrangement but warmly welcome their decision to support my project. For that end I opened a bitcoin address: 1HHQ36qbsgGZWLPmiUjYHxQUPJ6EQXVJFS.

More seriously speaking, I accept, with gratitude, modest donations to support The (other) Cause. The address can also serve as a digital signature to ward off those identity thefts which are part of climate scientists' repertoire of tricks these days.

Keep on the good work. I won't be able to use this email address for long so if you reply, I can't guarantee reading or answering. I will several batches, to anyone I can think of.

Over and out.

Mr. FOIA

HB: "Mr. FOIA is indeed a hero. Even if what he had exposed had been privately owned information, there would have been no right to keep private the details of a massive fraud—fraud in the literal, legal sense, since it has wreaked untold billions in damages and threatens the lives of billions in the poorer nations. No appeal to property rights can be made on behalf of an attempt to bring down industrial civilization.

But, in fact, the emails exposed to the world were not private but communications involving government-funded science at governmental agencies. These are emails among individuals in the midst of withholding data (claiming it was lost) that called into question their own government-funded work (work to destroy civilization itself). In fact, one of the leaked emails is a request to the parties that they destroy their own emails. In addition there's this from one of the chief warmmongers, Phil Jones:

[McIntyre and McKitrick] have been after the [Hadley] CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone.

Can you believe that? A (supposed) scientist who won't reveal the data behind his claims? And who is so scared of that data getting out, that he states he will break the law rather than reveal it? Keep that in mind the next time you hear that this is all “settled science.”

So far, Climategate 3 is not getting any play in the mainstream media—which is a scandal in and of itself."

MORE SIGNS THAT GLOBAL WARMING IS JUST HOT AIR

"GLOBAL warming is likely to be less extreme than claimed, researchers said yesterday. The most likely temperature rise will be 1.9C (3.4F) compared with the 3.5C predicted by the Intergovern­mental Panel on Climate Change.

The Norwegian study says earlier predictions were based on rapid warming in the Nineties. But Oslo University’s department of geosciences included data since 2000 when temperature rises “levelled off nearly completely”.

Professor Terje Berntsen said: “The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the ­Nineties. This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity. We are most likely witnessing natural fluctuations in the climate system – changes that can occur over several decades – and which are coming on top of a long-term warming.” He insisted, though, that his study did not justify “complacency” about human-induced global warming.

But the climate sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation said: “This research confirms what we have been saying all along. The global warming standstill of the last 16 years is having a dramatic effect on climate models and predictions. The Met Office should now reassess its own, flawed ­computer models and tone down the alarmist pronouncements which are no longer trustworthy.”

If one were to attach a filter on the stack of a coal fired electrical generating station that would capture the trace amounts of uranium in the coal being built and utilized it the resulting heat generated would be 10000x the amount of heat generated by the coal being burned for the entire year.  Not to mention the amount of radioactive carbon 14 also being released into the atmosphere...

I have no idea about global warming, the issue is beyond me and I've not looked into it, but what I really enjoy is; if global warming is real nuclear energy is the best solution! This is the real inconvenient truth that must eat at the hearts of the greenies.

I've always liked Margaret Thatcher. I can forgive her this transgression.

The Met Office has revised downwards a forecast for the rise in average global temperature by 2017. Has global warming, as some say, 'plateaued'?

New York Post, 11:09 PM, January 7, 2013

“We all know now that Al Gore is nothing but a bulls***ter,” said the staffer bluntly.

We do stories on the tax code, and he sells the network before the tax code kicked in?

“Al was always lecturing us about green. He kept his word about green all right—as in cold, hard cash!”

I haven't seen this one. Hat tip Trevor Loudon.

Wind farm protesters backed by planning minister Nick Boles

"Nick Boles told John Hayes, a fellow Conservative, that “local people have genuine concerns” and “wind farms are not appropriate in all settings”.
The Daily Telegraph has been told that Mr Boles warned Mr Hayes in the letter that people “bitterly resented” having onshore wind farm developments imposed on them by planners after an inquiry.
The intervention will be a major boost for communities which are fighting the construction of turbines near their homes.
It is also the first evidence of a Tory ministerial alliance against Liberal Democrat attempts to introduce more onshore wind turbines.
Mr Boles is looking to build an informal alliance against wind turbines with Mr Hayes, a near constituency neighbour, without having to get agreement from Ed Davey, the Lib Dem Climate Change Secretary.
Campaigners are fighting to halt the spread of wind turbines, with communities complaining that they blight properties and harm wildlife, particularly bats and birds."

Fracking for shale gas gets green light in UK

Ed Davey lifts suspension on controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, on condition of strict seismic controls

"The government has lifted restrictions on the controversial practice of fracking, a method of extracting gas from shale rock, giving a green light to drilling that could produce billions of pounds worth of gas.

The first new site is likely to be at Anna's Road in Lancashire, near three exploratory fracking wells that were closed after two minor earthquakes last year, which Cuadrilla Resources, the company responsible for the operations, found were probably caused by the fracking. Dozens more sites across the country could be licensed as ministers signalled their hope that shale gas would help to make up for the decline in North Sea gas supplies.

The go-ahead will dismay environmental campaigners who argue that chemicals use in the drilling technology will contaminate water supplies and that extracting more gas will intensify climate change. The Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the statutory body set up to advise ministers on how to meet the UK's greenhouse gas targets, has warned that a big expansion in the use of gas – such as the 40 new gas-fired power stations the Treasury is aiming for – would be "incompatible" with the UK's carbon budgets."

Chris Heaton-Harris to get dressing down about 'professionalism' after Greenpeace video sting

"Chris Heaton-Harris, who is managing the Conservative campaign for the Corby poll, was forced to apologise after a Greenpeace activist recorded him revealing that he suggested his friend James Delingpole should stand on an anti-wind farm ticket.

Mr Heaton-Harris spoke briefly to party chairman Grant Shapps on Wednesday and is due to meet the party’s whips next week to discuss his “professionalism”. Such informal disciplinary meetings are known in Westminster as an "interview without coffee".

Mr Shapps is understood to accept Mr Heaton-Harris’s argument that he never actually helped someone stand against the Tories because Mr Delingpole, who writes a blog on the Telegraph's website, never paid for his deposit to fight the by-election.

Mr Delingpole announced his intention to stand, but withdrew from the race two weeks ago the day after Conservative energy minister John Hayes said the development of onshore wind farms would be reined in."

Greenpeace video:

Delingpole Responds:

The orgy of greed spoiling our countryside: why I campaigned in Corby

"I love Ukip. There’s barely a single one of their policies I disagree with. Inevitably, there was much upset among my Ukip pals when I announced I’d be standing against them: they were worried that I’d take away votes from their excellent candidate, Margot Parker. This I didn’t want to do.

Equally, though, I had a lot of sympathy for my local Conservative MP, Chris Heaton-Harris, whom I got to know and like at a Tory conference in Windsor in September and who is masterminding the Tory campaign in Corby. Chris is the kind of Conservative who would have me voting Tory again: small-government, anti-EU, massively anti-wind. He, too, was worried I’d steal Tory votes – gosh how nice it is to feel important! – and was keen to show me that his party was at last seeing sense.

For example, he was the one who drew my attention to the anti-wind speeches made by Owen Paterson and the new energy minister, John Hayes, at the Tory conference. It was newspaper reports of some even stronger anti-wind remarks by Hayes which gave me just the excuse I needed to withdraw from the election with honour, claiming victory.

The timing was perfect. Obviously, I totally love the idea that the Coalition rewrote its entire energy policy because of me – and if the Guardian and Greenpeace wish to credit me with such mighty powers, as they did yesterday, then great. But politics is a bit more complicated than that. George Osborne is known to be fiercely anti-wind; Cameron, it is rumoured, appointed Hayes and Paterson quite deliberately to placate all those shire Tories mortified at the bat-chomping eco-crucifixes ruining their views and wiping out their property values. So while I’m proud to have played my small part in the war to defeat the great wind menace, I think it’s more likely that I was only ever a humble Sancho Panza rather than the true Don Quixote."

...almost forgot about the report.

The BBC chickens are coming home to roost and there are even calls for its abolition. (See what laws should we scrap.)

However that's a fringe view, don't expect that any time soon.

I passed it on some weeks ago to some family and friends who tend to side with the watermelon men. At the time I called it a summary, and got heckled for it being 73 pages long. It did read so well, I flew through it. That it still took 73 pages after concise editing to explain just some of the BBC bias didn't disturb the brothers-in-law. I didn't enquire whether they'd read it, they know well where I stand.

More BBC bias over Sir Jimmy Savile. I see the chief has been forced to resign from the government television shambles and takes home about 20,000 per day (?) for his efforts after about 50 days in the job. Note too, the man fingered with flimsy accusations of paedophilia was a prominent Tory, while the actual serial paedophiles worked for the BBC. Overt bias. And when did Catholicism get its foot in the BBC door? I know the BBC's spin of catastrophic global warming has become a religion, but surprise, surprise, under the BBC cloak such unseemly abuse somehow seems natural.

Good news from NZ. Key can't quite bring himself to frighten the horses and put the kabosh on the ETS. Slowly slowly he's winding it down in the probably correct hope that global cooling will come before any further regress is made in the global warming scam. I note he uses "climate change" like it's going out of fashion. He should keep referring to it as Global Warming, so as to make it obvious for the numerous dimwits who are not yet reading between his lines.

Obama's reelection and its future impact on energy and climate change

"With a wink and a nod to the electorate, President Obama campaigned that he would drill more, dig more, burn more, and explore more. In the debates, the two candidates practically got into fisticuffs over who would be the true energy president. Hours after he won the bitterly fought election, he tweeted:

"We want our kids to grow up in a world...that isn't threatened by the destructive power of the warming planet."

Forget the campaign promises. Enviros have nothing to worry about. Obama can now use the EPA to regulate energy companies into near-profitless entities who will now have to deal with even less access to federal lands and off-shore drilling.

Fracking for natural gas is already an anathema to this administration as tougher restrictions and taxes are expected to be imposed on companies that utilize federal lands.

According to analysts at ClearView Energy Partners, they expect the president to "continue prosecuting energy policy through regulation and administrative action, with only the courts as a check on that agenda."

By tightening these rules and arduous regulations, billions will be added "in costs for oil and gas companies." These costs are expected to be passed on to consumers. Obama is also expected to cut subsidies to oil and gas companies and continue to promote renewable energy under Energy Secretary Steven Chu's tutelage."

Death knell for wind farms: 'Enough is Enough' says minister

Wind farms have been “peppered” across Britain without enough consideration for the countryside and people’s homes, a senior Conservative energy minister admitted last night as he warned “enough is enough”.

"John Hayes said that we can “no longer have wind turbines imposed on communities” and added that it “seems extraordinary” they have allowed to spread so much throughout the country.

The energy minister said he had ordered a new analysis of the case for onshore wind power which would form the basis of future government policy, rather than “a bourgeois Left article of faith based on some academic perspective”. The comments sparked speculation that Conservative ministers are planning to drop their support for wind farms — a move which would trigger a major Coalition rift.

Mr Hayes, who was appointed energy minister in last month’s reshuffle, is understood to believe that there should be a moratorium on new onshore wind farms. Almost 4,000 turbines are set to be built across Britain in the coming years.

Several senior Tories, including Owen Paterson, the new Environment Secretary, also believe the wind farm “blight” has not been properly considered before allowing development. Mr Paterson will formally respond to a government review on the community benefit of wind farms shortly and is expected to warn about their impact on rural areas.

Last night, Mr Hayes said: “We can no longer have wind turbines imposed on communities. I can’t single-handedly build a new Jerusalem but I can protect our green and pleasant land.

“We have issued a call for evidence on wind. That is about cost but also about community buy-in. We need to understand communities’ genuine desires. We will form our policy in the future on the basis of that, not on a bourgeois Left article of faith based on some academic perspective.”

The energy minister indicated that only a minority of the thousands of wind turbines currently put forward for planning permission are likely to be given the go-ahead. He said that this would be enough to fulfil green targets set by the Government."

The REALLY inconvenient truths about global warming. Last week we explosively revealed a 16-year 'pause' in rising temperatures - triggering a bitter debate. You decide what the real facts are...

"Last week The Mail on Sunday provoked an international storm by publishing a new official world temperature graph showing there has been no global warming since 1997.

The figures came from a database called Hadcrut 4 and were issued by the Met Office and the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University.

We received hundreds of responses from readers, who were overwhelmingly critical of those climate change experts who believe that global warming is inevitable.

But the Met Office, whose lead was then followed by climate change campaigners, accused The Mail on Sunday of cherry-picking data in order to mislead readers. It even claimed it had not released a ‘report’, as we had stated, although it put out the figures from which we drew our graph ten days ago.

Another critic said that climate expert Professor Judith Curry had protested at the way she was represented in our report. However, Professor Curry, a former US National Research Council Climate Research Committee member and the author of more than 190 peer-reviewed papers, responded: ‘A note to defenders of the idea that the planet has been warming for the past 16 years. Raise the level of your game. Nothing in the Met Office’s statement .  .  . effectively refutes Mr Rose’s argument that there has been no increase in the global average surface temperature for the past 16 years.

‘Use this as an opportunity to communicate honestly with the public about what we know and what we don’t know about climate change. Take a lesson from other scientists who acknowledge the “pause”.’

The Met Office now confirms on its climate blog that no significant warming has occurred recently: ‘We agree with Mr Rose that there has only been a very small amount of warming in the 21st Century.’

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one." From Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds.

Quoted in the shocking analysis of BBC bias reporting on climate change delivered by Christopher Booker to the GWPF.

Cameron’s U-turn on the environment has the greens howling, but should delight voters

"For years, the countryside has had pitifully few friends in Westminster. The Labour Party had abandoned hope of winning votes there: its interest in rural England extended solely to imposing a fox-hunting ban. The Tory modernisers, meanwhile, took rural voters for granted, so felt able to pick fights over planning laws and ludicrously expensive railway lines. Both parties also allowed their environmental policy to be shaped by the prevailing fashion in London: so mainly concerns about carbon emissions and the welfare of newts, trees and bats. The millions who actually lived in the countryside were left out of the equation.

It was always odd that David Cameron should go along with such a process. He is, at heart, a rural Tory who loves country walks and has a labrador-like tendency to dive into icy lakes. He still grumbles to his wife about what, for him, are “banned activities” – notably shooting, which he feels does not befit a leader of a party trying to win suburban votes. But that compliance with the consensus was adopted when he thought he would win the next election. Now, he thinks he may not – which explains a quiet yet fundamental change in the political environment.

Owen Paterson is far from a household name, but the significance of his appointment as Environment Secretary has not been lost on the green lobby groups. As far as they’re concerned, this is war. They are already denouncing him as a “prominent hater of wind turbines” and overall climate change sceptic.

It is just as well, then, that Paterson has spent two years at Northern Ireland, learning the art of political combat. For his critics are quite right to detect a shift in policy. According to Downing Street, his mission is to revive the rural economy – and the main species he has been asked to protect is the humans trying to make ends meet. As for his leader, the man once photographed being pulled by dogs over a Norwegian glacier is tiptoeing away from his old policies as he might do from embarrassing photographs of his student exuberance.

What Cameron has realised, perhaps belatedly, is that the crash has changed everything. In the boom years, a green surcharge on a heating bill seemed like a small price to pay for environmental progress. But with living standards facing their worst squeeze for 80 years, and at least 20,000 pensioners dying of the cold each year, the cost of such green subsidies is now becoming intolerable. Especially since, as Paterson will know, their beneficiaries are often the rich – to an extent that even appals the gentry. “When we toffs meet up, all we talk about is government grants,” one landowner tells me. “I was even offered a grant for my folly. It’s all about who is getting what subsidy for which hydro plant.”

Over recent years, a class of landowning welfare junkies has been created – and the old environmental consensus left them immune from scrutiny. Many are impeccably connected (one has the Prime Minister as a son-in-law), and can take their money directly from Brussels. But there is still much an Environment Secretary can do to cut that cost.

Perhaps the greatest single opportunity facing him, however, is shale gas exploitation. Geologists have known for decades about gas trapped in shale and other rock formations, but only in the past 20 years has technology existed that allows it to be captured. In America, hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, has transformed the energy supply. Shale now provides a third of its gas, up from 2 per cent a decade ago. British companies now pay four times as much for gas as their American counterparts – not something that global chemical companies can ignore when deciding where to build a new factory. Docks built to import gas into America are now exporting it.

This has been nothing short of an energy revolution, and it could well happen here. When 200 trillion cubic feet of shale gas deposits were discovered in Lancashire last year – enough to power Britain for 65 years – it was without doubt the biggest energy find since North Sea oil in the Sixties. It says much about the hysterical nature of the British climate change debate, however, that this was almost entirely ignored.

Shale emits half as much carbon dioxide as coal, and is far cheaper to produce. The biggest deposits are in China, so passing fracking technology on to the Chinese could do more to reduce global carbon emissions than any airport runway ban. Yet the environmentalists have greeted shale with either complete silence, or outright hostility.

In economic terms, too, shale is a godsend for Cameron, just as North Sea oil was for Thatcher: it could well make Blackpool into the Dallas of the north, creating 5,000 jobs in an area that desperately needs them. But this gift horse is being sent packing, as if the Prime Minister wants to be left alone with his economic misery. Even as Northern Ireland Secretary, Paterson was saying in Cabinet that this was lunacy. Then, he was a lone voice. Now, he is in charge of the policy."

Flashback: Another Moonwalker Defies Gore

"At a House global warming hearing on Capitol Hill on April 24, 2009, former Vice President Al Gore once again compared skeptics of man-made climate fears to “people who still believe that the moon landing was staged on a movie lot in Arizona." Gore appears ignorant that his several years old analogy has been refuted by two of NASA's moonwalkers themselves -- Moonwalker and Award-Winning NASA Astronaut/Geologist Jack Schmitt – who recently declared he was a global warming skeptic and now, Award-Winning NASA Astronaut and Moonwalker Dr. Buzz Aldrin.

Gore was not asked during his April 24, 2009 Congressional hearing how he can link climate skeptics to people who believed the moon landing was "staged" when two prominent moonwalkers themselves are man-made global warming skeptics.

NASA's Dr. Aldrin -- who earned a Doctorate of Science in Astronautics at MIT -- declared he was skeptical of man-made climate fears in a July 3, 2009 UK Telegraph interview.

"I think the climate has been changing for billions of years," Aldrin, the second person to walk on the Moon, said. On July 20, 1969, Aldrin and astronaut Neil Armstrong made their historic Apollo 11 moonwalk, becoming the first two humans to set foot on the Moon. According to his bio, "Aldrin has received three U.S. patents for his schematics of a modular space station, Starbooster reusable rockets, and multi-crew modules for space flight." Aldrin was also decorated with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest American peacetime award and he has received numerous distinguished awards and medals from 23 other countries.

"If it's warming now, it may cool off later. I'm not in favor of just taking short-term isolated situations and depleting our resources to keep our climate just the way it is today," Aldrin explained.

"I'm not necessarily of the school that we are causing it all, I think the world is causing it," Aldrin added.

Aldrin joins fellow moonwalker Schmitt, who flew on the Apollo 17 mission, in declaring their skepticism of man-made global warming fears.

"The 'global warming scare' is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. It has no place in the Society's activities," Schmitt, who flew on the Apollo 17 mission, said in 2008."

Marc Morano discusses Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ hyperbole and his threats to sue Mark Steyn for calling him a climate fraud.
Watch here.

Mitt Romney confirms he would end US wind power subsidies

"Mitt Romney looks set to declare war on America's wind energy industry, further emphasising the dividing line between the presumptive Republican presidential candidate and President Barack Obama on energy issues.

Romney's campaign confirmed this week he wants to end long-standing tax credits for wind farm projects when the incentives come up for review later this year.

The pledge means the popular production tax credits (PTCs) – which have helped drive a surge in new wind energy investment in the US, making it the second largest wind energy market in the world after China – would be allowed to expire at the end of this year if the Republicans secure the White House in November."

Global Warming? Yeah, right

"Have a look at this chart. It tells you pretty much all you need to know about the much-anticipated scoop by Anthony Watts of Watts Up With That?

What it means, in a nutshell, is that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – the US government body in charge of America's temperature record, has systematically exaggerated the extent of late 20th century global warming. In fact, it has doubled it.

Is this a case of deliberate fraud by Warmist scientists hell bent on keeping their funding gravy train rolling? Well, after what we saw in Climategate anything is possible. (I mean it's not like NOAA is run by hard-left eco activists, is it?) But I think more likely it is a case of confirmation bias. The Warmists who comprise the climate scientist establishment spend so much time communicating with other warmists and so little time paying attention to the views of dissenting scientists such as Henrik Svensmark – or Fred Singer or Richard Lindzen or indeed Anthony Watts – that it simply hasn't occurred to them that their temperature records need adjusting downwards not upwards.

What Watts has conclusively demonstrated is that most of the weather stations in the US are so poorly sited that their temperature data is unreliable. Around 90 per cent have had their temperature readings skewed by the Urban Heat Island effect. While he has suspected this for some time what he has been unable to do until his latest, landmark paper (co-authored with Evan Jones of New York, Stephen McIntyre of Toronto, Canada, and Dr. John R. Christy from the Department of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama, Huntsville) is to put precise figures on the degree of distortion involved."

Chris Booker

Greenland’s ice cap was on the brink of melting… for a few hours

"Nothing could have better demonstrated the desperate straits to which global warmists have been driven as they try to keep their scare going than two satellite pictures in last Tuesday’s Guardian, showing a change that had come over the Greenland ice cap. One showed, in white, the second-largest mass of land ice on the planet, seemingly intact. The other, taken a few days later, showed in pink a seemingly ubiquitous melting. These Nasa pictures, we were told, showed alarmingly that, for the first time in history, the surface ice was melting right across Greenland. It took only hours for this scare story to be blown apart.

A tiny rise in air temperatures had momentarily taken them just above freezing, enough to melt a few inches of surface ice. But the ice below it, up to two miles deep, had been unaffected. This had happened before, in 1889. Ice cores show that it happens every 150 years or so. Within hours, as even the BBC admitted, the ice had frozen again. The shortest scare in history was over."

Satellites reveal sudden Greenland ice melt

"When we see melt in places that we haven't seen before, at least in a long period of time, it makes you sit up and ask what's happening," Nasa chief scientist Waleed Abdalati said.

He said that, because this Greenland-wide melting has happened before - in 1889 - scientists are not yet able to determine whether this is a natural but rare event, or if it has been sparked by man-made climate change.

"Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time," said Lora Koenig, a glaciologist from Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and a member of the research team analysing the satellite data.

"But if we continue to observe melting events like this in upcoming years, it will be worrisome."

Prof Eric Wolff, from the British Antarctic Survey (Bas) told BBC News: "There have clearly been some very warm days in Greenland this month. As a result, the surface snow has melted across the whole ice sheet.

"This is confirmed by some of my international colleagues who are on the ground at the NEEM ice core drilling site in north Greenland - they are reporting several days with temperatures above zero, and ice layers forming in the snow.

"While this is very unusual, as always we cannot attribute any individual extreme event to climate change: We will have to wait and see if more such events occur in the next few years to understand its significance for both the climate and the health of the ice sheet."

Tree-rings prove climate was WARMER in Roman and Medieval times than it is now - and world has been cooling for 2,000 years

"How did the Romans grow grapes in northern England? Perhaps because it was warmer than we thought.

A study suggests the Britain of 2,000 years ago experienced a lengthy period of hotter summers than today.

German researchers used data from tree rings – a key indicator of past climate – to claim the world has been on a ‘long-term cooling trend’ for two millennia until the global warming of the twentieth century.

This cooling was punctuated by a couple of warm spells.

These are the Medieval Warm Period, which is well known, but also a period during the toga-wearing Roman times when temperatures were apparently 1 deg C warmer than now.

They say the very warm period during the years 21 to 50AD has been underestimated by climate scientists.

Lead author Professor Dr Jan Esper of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz said: ‘We found that previous estimates of historical temperatures during the Roman era and the Middle Ages were too low.

‘This figure we calculated may not seem particularly significant, however it is not negligible when compared to global warming, which up to now has been less than 1 deg C.’
In general the scientists found a slow cooling of 0.6C over 2,000 years, which they attributed to changes in the Earth’s orbit which took it further away from the Sun.

The study is published in Nature Climate Change.

It is based on measurements stretching back to 138BC.

The finding may force scientists to rethink current theories of the impact of global warming

Professor Esper's group at the Institute of Geography at JGU used tree-ring density measurements from sub-fossil pine trees originating from Finnish Lapland to produce a reconstruction reaching back to 138 BC.

In so doing, the researchers have been able for the first time to precisely demonstrate that the long-term trend over the past two millennia has been towards climatic cooling."

Global cooling: It is the first time that researchers have been able to accurately measure trends in global temperature over the last two millennia

Rio+20 Earth Summit is a washout

"The climate change conference produced an inconsequential agreement that will not take action on any of the urgent issues

Even the skies wept. Glorious weather bathed Rio de Janeiro for the week running up to the Earth Summit, while some hope remained that it might produce even minor measures to tackle the world’s escalating environmental crises. But when the leaders flew in on Wednesday to rubber-stamp an agreement shorn of commitments to action, the rain started falling – and didn’t let up, culminating in a thunderstorm on the final morning.

It is always a bad sign when a UN conference ends on time: if anything substantive is at stake, these unwieldy gatherings of 190 governments invariably overrun, only reaching resolution in the early hours of the morning. So it says much about the inconsequentiality of the agreement in Rio that it was finalised even before the meeting began.

Brazil, as host country, was desperate to avoid a repeat of the Copenhagen climate summit, where the leaders found little agreed when they arrived and had to try to do the job themselves. Confronted with the failure of two years of negotiations to agree even an anodyne and non‑binding accord, Brazil watered it down even further and rammed it through: the 100 or so presidents and prime ministers were effectively confined to self-congratulatory speeches and public relations photo-calls."

Rio+20 Earth summit: leaked draft reveals conflict among countries

UN's vision for one deal to save the Earth is in peril as countries bicker over phrasing of clauses and key terms in the draft text.

"According to Third World network, the only non-governmental group to publish daily reports on the progress of the negotiations, developed countries are still firmly opposed to proposals by developing countries calling for the provision of "new and additional financial resources". This has created serious tensions and frustrations with Pakistan, speaking for the G77 and China, saying there was no point in discussing further and no scope for further work and that it was better to "eliminate the entire finance chapter itself", given the response of developed countries.

WWF director general, Jim Leape is deeply concerned that the talks could collapse under the pressure of having to negotiate so much in such a short time. Earlier this week he said: "Currently we are a long way from where we need to be in these negotiations. Heads of state still have a unique opportunity in Rio to set the world on a path to sustainable development – but they need to step up their game dramatically. As things currently stand, we are facing two likely scenarios – an agreement so weak it is meaningless, or complete collapse."

The most recent text is a significant weakening of previous drafts, particularly in the areas of valuing natural wealth, energy and ocean protection, and even this draft was privately rejected by a number of delegations. "When they gather in Rio, governments must restrain the flow of weasel words that is threatening to emasculate any agreement," said Leape. "They are not helping their people or the planet by 'noting', 'recognising' or 'emphasising'. We need to see time-bound commitment and action words like 'will', 'must' and 'deliver'," he said.

"Astonishingly, it now emerges, it has become quite deliberate government policy to keep Britain short of water. And the explanation for this baffling volte-face lies in a “Communication” issued in 2007 by the European Commission (COM (2007) 414 Final) “addressing the challenge of water scarcity and droughts in the European Union”."

From heroic Christopher Booker in The Telegraph.

Did dinosaurs cause climate change? Huge creatures may have contributed to their own demise because they produced so much flatulence, say scientists

"Dinosaurs may be partly to blame for a change in climate because they created so much flatulence, according to leading scientists.

Professor Graeme Ruxton of St Andrews University, Scotland, said the giant animals spent 150 years emitting the potent global warming gas, methane.
Large plant-eating sauropods would have been the main culprits because of the huge amounts of greenery they consumed.

The team calculated the animals would have collectively produced more than 520m tons of methane a year - more than all today's modern sources put together.

It is thought these huge amounts could easily have been enough to warm the planet.

It is even possible that the climate change was so catastrophic that it caused the dinosaurs eventual demise...

Cows and other livestock currently only emit about 100m tons of methane a year.

According to Professor Ruxton and his co-researcher David Wilkinson, of Liverpool John Moores University, this is only a fifth of what was produced when Dinosaurs walked the Earth.
'In fact, our calculations suggest these dinosaurs may have produced more methane than all the modern sources, natural and human, put together,' said Mr Wilkinson to the Sunday Times.

The research is due to be published in an academic journal this week."

Ha, ha. Snap!!! Climate change alarmists eat their own!!!

Wind farms can cause climate change, finds new study

Wind farms can cause climate change, according to new research, that shows for the first time the new technology is already pushing up temperatures.

"Usually at night the air closer to the ground becomes colder when the sun goes down and the earth cools.

But on huge wind farms the motion of the turbines mixes the air higher in the atmosphere that is warmer, pushing up the overall temperature.

Satellite data over a large area in Texas, that is now covered by four of the world's largest wind farms, found that over a decade the local temperature went up by almost 1C as more turbines are built.

This could have long term effects on wildlife living in the immediate areas of larger wind farms.

It could also affect regional weather patterns as warmer areas affect the formation of cloud and even wind speeds.

It is reported China is now erecting 36 wind turbines every day and Texas is the largest producer of wind power in the US.

Liming Zhou, Research Associate Professor at the Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences at the University of New York, who led the study, said further research is needed into the affect of the new technology on the wider environment.

"Wind energy is among the world’s fastest growing sources of energy. The US wind industry has experienced a remarkably rapid expansion of capacity in recent years,” he said. “While converting wind’s kinetic energy into electricity, wind turbines modify surface-atmosphere exchanges and transfer of energy, momentum, mass and moisture within the atmosphere. These changes, if spatially large enough, might have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate.”

The study, published in Nature, found a “significant warming trend” of up to 0.72C (1.37F) per decade, particularly at night-time, over wind farms relative to near-by non-wind-farm regions...

Professor Steven Sherwood, co-Director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, said the research was ‘pretty solid’.

“This makes sense, since at night the ground becomes much cooler than the air just a few hundred meters above the surface, and the wind farms generate gentle turbulence near the ground that causes these to mix together, thus the ground doesn't get quite as cool. This same strategy is commonly used by fruit growers (who fly helicopters over the orchards rather than windmills) to combat early morning frosts.”

Is global warming just hot air? World temperatures have risen by just 0.29C in the last two decades

"World temperatures have remained almost stagnant in the last two decades, new figures have revealed.

Temperatures across the globe rose by around a third of a degree last year from the average of 14 degrees Celsius recorded between 1961 and 1990.
In some years, temperatures rose by just 0.29 degrees C while in others they rose by .53 degrees.

The findings come as consumers feel the full force of a raft of environment policies introduced by the coalition and the previous Labour government in the name of climate change.

By 2030, ‘green’ policy burdens could cost families an extra £267 a year and have already raised current energy bills by £78 annually.

The figures on global temperatures were published by Environment Minister Gregory Barker in a parliamentary answer to Tory MP Anne Main.

Mrs Main said it raised questions about whether vulnerable people should be made to make the choice between heating and eating...

The figures were unveiled as an environmental guru and maverick scientist admitted that he may have been ‘alarmist’ about climate change.

James Lovelock, who warned that billions would die before the end of this century and only the Arctic would be fit for human habitation, said: ‘The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened.’

'Gaia' scientist James Lovelock: I was 'alarmist' about climate change

"James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too.

Lovelock, 92, is writing a new book in which he will say climate change is still happening, but not as quickly as he once feared.

He previously painted some of the direst visions of the effects of climate change. In 2006, in an article in the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, he wrote that “before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”

However, the professor admitted in a telephone interview with msnbc.com that he now thinks he had been “extrapolating too far."

The new book, due to be published next year, will be the third in a trilogy, following his earlier works, “Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back – and How We Can Still Save Humanity,” and “The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning: Enjoy It While You Can.”

The new book will discuss how humanity can change the way it acts in order to help regulate the Earth’s natural systems, performing a role similar to the harmonious one played by plants when they absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen."

New Aussie Documentary on ABC1

I Can Change Your Mind About..Climate

"I Can Change Your Mind About Climate, which airs on Thursday takes former senator and climate-change doubter Nick Minchin and founder of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition Anna Rose on a discovery tour. A special edition of Q&A will run immediately after I Can Change Your Mind About Climate so the debate will continue. On Q&A Minchin and Rose will be joined by mining magnate Clive Palmer, social researcher and writer Rebecca Huntley and chief executive of the CSIRO Dr Megan Clark."

By Alan Caruba

Americans are paying the hangman for the rope...

...There is a reason that the upcoming Earth Day, April 22nd, falls on the birthday of Vladimir Lenin, the former Soviet Union’s first dictator. Everything associated with the environmental movement has communism as its basis.

And "Earth Day: "How To Fail""

http://www.youtube.com/watch?f...!

Both seen at TPN.

Gas 'fracking' gets green light

Drilling method can be extended throughout UK, say experts, even though it has caused two earthquakes.

"Ministers have been advised to allow the controversial practice of fracking for shale gas to be extended in Britain, despite it causing two earthquakes and the emergence of serious doubts over the safety of the wells that have already been drilled.

The advice of the first official British government report into fracking, published on Tuesday, is all but certain to be accepted by ministers, with the result that thousands of new wells could be drilled across the UK.

The experts say hydraulic fracturing, whereby a well is drilled hundreds of metres deep and pumped full of water, sand and chemicals in order to release methane gas, should be allowed on a wide scale, although they accept that two small earthquakes in Blackpool last spring were caused by the first stages of fracking activities in the only British plants operating.

The government's own data revealed serious questions around the safety of fracking in areas of known seismic activity, such as the two wells in Lancashire, because of evidence that the resulting earthquakes have damaged the integrity of at least one well. There is also apparent confusion over which government agencies should be overseeing the process to ensure its public safety, with the responsibility shared among several bodies that appear not to be co-ordinating...

In the US, fracking has been associated with the contamination of water supplies and soil, and the danger of explosions.

But Mark Miller, the chief executive of Cuadrilla Resources, which drilled the British earthquake sites, said: "We are pleased the experts have come to a clear conclusion that it is safe to allow us to resume hydraulic fracturing, following the procedures outlined in the review."

In April last year, around Cuadrilla's main Blackpool site, there was a tremor measuring 2.3 on the Richter scale and in May one measuring 1.5. These tremors are enough to be felt but do not in themselves cause serious damage...

Shale gas is now one of the major sources of energy in the US, following years of intensive fracking operations, but critics point to ravaged landscapes, contaminated water supplies and potentially damaging pipeline installations left by industrial-scale operations, as well as concerns over the long-term safety of the wells. Although natural gas is supposed to be a "cleaner" fuel than coal, releasing less carbon when burned, evidence also suggests fracking produces more carbon than exploring for conventional gas supplies, making the fuel less attractive from an environmental point of view.

Estimates of the amount of shale gas in the UK vary widely. Cuadrilla puts the potential resources in Lancashire alone at a 200 trillion cubic feet – an amount that could supply the whole of the UK's gas needs for more than five decades...

Some groups – including The Global Warming Policy Foundation, the climate-sceptic thinktank led by Lord Lawson – have been enthusiastically advocating the take-up of the technology. But residents in the areas affected have been mobilising against the plans.

Environmental groups are worried not just about the potential dangers from earth tremors caused by fracking, but about the effects on the UK's push to tackle climate change. Last month, the chancellor, George Osborne, and the new energy secretary, Ed Davey, launched a new "dash for gas" when they announced measures to encourage the building of new gas-fired power stations across the UK. Green groups argue this will put carbon-cutting targets out of reach, by locking in high-carbon emitting infrastructure and crowding out investment in renewables. "We should be developing the huge potential of clean British energy from the sun, wind and waves, not more dirty and dangerous fossil fuels," said Atkins."

Conservatives plot re-think on countryside wind turbines

Ministers are preparing to veto major new wind farms in the British countryside and cut back their subsidies, according to senior Government sources.

"The decision to pull back from onshore wind farms comes after more than 100 backbench Conservative MPs mounted a rebellion against turbines blighting rural areas earlier this year.

Greg Barker, the Climate Change Minister, also said this weekend Britain has “the wind we need” either being built, developed or in planning.

“It’s about being balanced and sensible,” he said. “We inherited a policy from the last government which was unbalanced in favour of onshore wind.

“There have been some installations in insensitive or unsuitable locations - too close to houses, or in an area of outstanding natural beauty.”

Britain already has around 350 wind farms across the country, with around 500 already under construction or awaiting planning permission...

Sources said ministers are prepared to block major developments of onshore wind turbines under the new Localism Act that came into force last month.

They are also ready to reduce the £400 million per year in funding that goes to wind farms under the Renewable Obligation Certificate subsidy.

The moves would be popular with the dozens Conservative MPs fighting against new wind developments in their constituencies.

In the letter sent to Downing Street in February, more than 101 MPs say they have become “more and more concerned” about government “support for onshore wind energy production”.

“In these financially straitened times, we think it is unwise to make consumers pay, through taxpayer subsidy, for inefficient and intermittent energy production that typifies onshore wind turbines,” they say.

The MPs want the savings spread between other “reliable” forms of renewable energy production."

"And how many tens of billions have these crackpots at Goddard Institute for Space Studies cost the taxpayers?"

March 28, 2012
The Honorable Charles Bolden, Jr.
NASA Administrator
NASA Headquarters
Washington, D.C. 20546-0001

Dear Charlie,

We, the undersigned, respectfully request that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled.

The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.

As former NASA employees, we feel that NASA’s advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study of the possible overwhelming impact of natural climate drivers is inappropriate. We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject. At risk is damage to the exemplary reputation of NASA, NASA’s current or former scientists and employees, and even the reputation of science itself.

For additional information regarding the science behind our concern, we recommend that you contact Harrison Schmitt or Walter Cunningham, or others they can recommend to you.

Thank you for considering this request.

Sincerely,

(Attached signatures)

CC: Mr. John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator for Science
CC: Ass Mr. Chris Scolese, Director, Goddard Space Flight Center

http://www.realclearpolitics.c...

Democrat Dick Turpin Durbin calls for more laws regulating carbon output while he sends a dire warning that we must convert to hybrid cars or lose our life.

'Global warming started over 100 years ago': New temperature comparisons using ocean-going robots suggest climate change began much earlier than previously thought

Ocean surface temperature has risen .59C (1.1F) since the 1870s

"It’s widely believed that global warming began in the 1970s, but new ocean temperature readings show that the Earth has in fact been warming for far longer.
A study by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego traced ocean warming to the late 19th century, which implies, say researchers, that the Earth’s climate as a whole has been heating up since then.

The report is the first global comparison of temperature between the historic voyage of HMS Challenger between 1872 and 1876 and modern data obtained by ocean-probing robots now continuously reporting temperatures via the global Argo program.

The research, led by oceanographer Dean Roemmich, shows a .33C (.59F) average increase in the upper portions of the ocean to 700 metres (2,300 feet) depth.

The increase was largest at the ocean surface, .59C (1.1F), decreasing to .12C (.22 F) at 900 metres (2,950 feet) depth.
Scientists have previously determined that nearly 90 per cent of the excess heat added to Earth's climate system since the 1960s has been stored in the oceans.

The new study, published in the April 1 advance online edition of Nature Climate Change and co-authored by John Gould of the United Kingdom-based National Oceanography Centre and John Gilson of Scripps Oceanography, pushes the ocean warming trend back much earlier."

The scumbag protestor-punching two-Jags Prescott deserves a trashing:

"Lord Lawson should own up to, not just to this donation, but also where any other donation has come from. The public interest demands greater transparency as to where the money has come from for his hostile thinktank into climate change. I've asked him in the alley way, I've asked him in parliament and I'll have to ask again: come clean, Lord Lawson."

Not good, meeting Prescott in an alley way, it one hoped to get past. This is the guy who had a chauffeured vehicle waiting outside the hotel, while on another frequent taxpayer-funded talk-fest on emissions, to transport his wife 100 metres up the road so her hair wouldn't be messed up in the inclement weather.

We have seen that money spent on "Climate Change" is counted in billions. It dwarfs the smart money spent countering that greatest hoax and attack on freedom. Of which 99% or more is stolen by governments.

The Tories and Hintz, under attack in the Guardian rag, should fight back by stating why they are supporting Lawson's thinktank. They could start by getting the message out there -- how and why capitalism is the surest path to becoming the "greenest government ever."

Simple shit. I bet they won't, but hope someone does.

Michael Hintze revealed as funder of Lord Lawson's climate thinktank

Michael Hintze financially supporting organisation that regularly casts doubt on the science and cost of tackling climate change.

"Michael Hintze, a leading Conservative party donor who runs the £5bn hedge fund CQS, has emerged as a financial backer of the climate sceptic thinktank founded by former chancellor, Lord Nigel Lawson.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, launched by Lawson in 2009, regularly casts doubt on the science and cost of tackling climate change in the media and has called on climate scientists to show greater transparency, but has refused to reveal details of its donors. Leading Nasa climate scientist James Hansen calls it "one link in a devious manipulation of public opinion [regarding climate change]."

On Monday, Downing Street was forced to reveal that Hintze was among the leading Tory donors who were invited to privately dine with David Cameron at a "thank you" dinner following the general election in 2010. The revelation that Hintze, who has also donated £1.5m to the Tory party, is connected with climate change scepticism will be an embarassment for David Cameron, who has pledged to lead the "greenest government ever".

The Guardian has seen correspondence sent by Hintze in which he appears to indicate he is financially supporting the educational charity. Last October, Hintze emerged as a key figure in the lobbying scandal which forced the resignation of the then defence secretary Liam Fox after it was revealed by the Guardian that Hintze had given free office space to Fox's controversial associate Adam Werrity and flown both Fox and Werrity on his private jet. Hintze's former charity adviser, Oliver Hylton, later lost his job at CQS after it was revealed that he was the sole director of Pargav Ltd , a company which paid for Werrity's global travel and derived its income from Conservative party donors...

Last November, Chris Huhne, the then energy secretary, described the GWPF as "misinformed, wrong and perverse."

Last week, the GWPF filed its latest set of accounts with Companies House. It revealed that the charity's income in the year up to July 2011 was £158,008, compared to £503,302 in its first year. Income from membership fees suggest that it now has 143 members compared to 88 in its first year.

In a statement included with the accounts, Lawson said: "We have been able to establish ourselves as the leading thinktank in our field... Before we came into existence there was virtually no debate about global warming policy in the UK. There is now increasingly lively debate and, within the media, only the BBC continues to regard the matter as being definitively settled and not a proper subject for debate. The GWPF has played an important part in achieving this change."

Lawson and the GWPF were approached by the Guardian but have yet to comment."

Is this finally proof we're NOT causing global warming? The whole of the Earth heated up in medieval times without human CO2 emissions, says new study

Evidence was found in a rare mineral that records global temperatures

Warming was global and NOT limited to Europe

Throws doubt on orthodoxies around 'global warming'

"Current theories of the causes and impact of global warming have been thrown into question by a new study which shows that during medieval times the whole of the planet heated up.
It then cooled down naturally and there was even a 'mini ice age'.

A team of scientists led by geochemist Zunli Lu from Syracuse University in New York state, has found that contrary to the ‘consensus’, the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ approximately 500 to 1,000 years ago wasn’t just confined to Europe.

In fact, it extended all the way down to Antarctica – which means that the Earth has already experienced global warming without the aid of human CO2 emissions.

At present the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) argues that the Medieval Warm Period was confined to Europe – therefore that the warming we’re experiencing now is a man-made phenomenon...

‘We showed that the Northern European climate events influenced climate conditions in Antarctica,’ Lu says. ‘More importantly, we are extremely happy to figure out how to get a climate signal out of this peculiar mineral. A new proxy is always welcome when studying past climate changes.’

The research was recently published online in the journal Earth And Planetary Science Letters and will appear in print on April 1."

Worth a read at Watts Up With That.

“We shall lose the West unless we can restore the use of reason to pre-eminence in our institutions of what was once learning. It was the age of reason that built the West and made it prosperous and free. The age of reason gave you your great Constitution of liberty. It is the power of reason, the second of the three great powers of the soul in Christian theology, that marks our species out from the rest of the visible creation, and makes us closest to the image and likeness of our Creator. I cannot stand by and let the forces of darkness drive us unprotesting into a new Dark Age.”

If only he hadn't ruined it with the Creator business.

Poland resists EU push for deeper CO2 emission cuts

"Poland has signalled its opposition to an EU plan for deeper carbon emission cuts, which environment ministers will discuss on Friday.

Denmark, currently steering EU negotiations, is backed by the UK in calling for a 25% cut in CO2 emissions by 2020. Previously the target was 20%.

But Poland, reliant on coal for more than 90% of its electric power, fears the move would make energy more costly.

Coal and other fossil fuels emit CO2, seen as a catalyst for climate change.

Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper says that "tomorrow Poland is ready to veto the EU plan to reduce CO2 emissions".

Poland's Environment Minister Marcin Korolec has sent a letter to his EU colleagues urging them to reject the 25% target, the Financial Times newspaper reports.

"There is no point whatsoever in gambling with the European economy's future, introducing policies that might put our industries in jeopardy versus our competitors," he was quoted as saying...

Last June the EU's efforts to toughen CO2 emissions targets were blocked by Poland acting alone.

This time Poland's position is supported by the Czech Republic, Romania and one of the Baltic countries, Gazeta Wyborcza reports."

Word up yo' green niggas!

Barack Obama pushes for $1bn green tax credits

"Another week, another car talk. Barack Obama stopped by a North Carolina truck factory on Wednesday to announce $1bn in tax credits and grants for alternative-energy cars and trucks. It was Obama's third speech on cars and fuel in an election battleground state in three weeks.

The president has travelled from New Hampshire to Florida and now North Carolina to insulate himself from Republican attacks on rising gas prices and the on-again, off-again Keystone XL tar sand pipeline ahead of the general election.

"We can't just keep on relying on the old ways of doing business. We can't just rely on fossil fuels from the last century. We've got to continually develop new sources of energy," Obama said in his speech at the Daimler truck plant in Mount Holly North Carolina.

The White House, briefing reporters on the plane and through a factsheet emailed out before the event, said Obama's factory tour was intended to spur the development of a new generation of clean, fuel-neutral cars: electric, natural gas, and alternative fuels.

The Daimler plant is working to produce 18-wheeler trucks that use only half as much gas as current models. Long-haul trucks make up just 4% of all vehicles on the roads, according to the White House, but suck up 20% of all transport fuel in the country.

The factory also makes hydrogen-powered trucks.

The tax credits – which must be voted on by Congress – would help up to 15 cities and towns to pay for charging stations for electric cars and biofuel pumps for alternative fuel vehicles to encourage people to switch to electric cars.

"At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how much natural gas, or flex-fuel or electric vehicles you have if there's no place to charge them up or fill them up," Obama said.

The speech came just a few days after GM announced a five-week hiatus in the production of its Chevy Volt because of flagging demand.

Obama is also asking Congress to expand the tax credit for advanced vehicles to $10,000 from $7,500, and to all fuels – including natural gas, which is not covered under the programme.

It's unclear whether either programme will see the light of day, given Republicans' dominance in Congress and their opposition to Obama's clean energy agenda.

The Republicans claim clean energy loans and grants are a waste of money – and have used the failure of the Solyndra solar power maker to try to discredit Obama's energy agenda."

The Himalayas and nearby peaks have lost no ice in past 10 years, study shows

Meltwater from Asia's peaks is much less than previously estimated, but lead scientist says the loss of ice caps and glaciers around the world remains a serious concern

"The world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.

The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.

The study is the first to survey all the world's icecaps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less than previously estimated, with the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy.

Bristol University glaciologist Prof Jonathan Bamber, who was not part of the research team, said: "The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero."

The melting of Himalayan glaciers caused controversy in 2009 when a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change mistakenly stated that they would disappear by 2035, instead of 2350. However, the scientist who led the new work is clear that while greater uncertainty has been discovered in Asia's highest mountains, the melting of ice caps and glaciers around the world remains a serious concern...

The new study used a pair of satellites, called Grace, which measure tiny changes in the Earth's gravitational pull. When ice is lost, the gravitational pull weakens and is detected by the orbiting spacecraft. "They fly at 500km, so they see everything," said Wahr, including the hard-to-reach, high-altitude glaciers."

Sunday Times: So, Do We Freeze Or Fry?

"Figures showing temperatures flatlining have given the climate debate fresh ferocity. The Sunday Times unpicks the row

John Prescott was apocalyptic. “Our polar ice caps are melting,” the then deputy prime minister thundered. “Only this weekend Mexico was hit by freak snowstorms ... a world of drought and crop failures, rising seas, mass migration and disease ... rising greenhouse grasses [sic] . . .”

The year was 1997 and Prescott had just come back from Kyoto in Japan to give the House of Commons his account of the latest climate talks.

Prescott’s terrifying warnings were backed by Britain’s leading climate scientists. Just before Kyoto a Met Office report warned that climate-related floods would put 50m people at risk of death from starvation in the coming decades. Whole island nations would disappear, it added, while the American Midwest, which helps to feed 100 nations, was likely to face drought and the North Pole might melt.

That was 15 years ago — what has happened to world temperatures since then? Last month came the suggestion that the answer was, embarrassingly, nothing. Research based on Met Office figures pointed to temperatures having been flat since 1997....

Perhaps the simplest first step is to put aside the arguments and get back to the data. Is it really true that global temperatures have not risen since 1997?

The simple answer is: they have risen, but not by very much. “Our records for the past 15 years suggest the world has warmed by about 0.051C over that period,” said the Met Office. In layman’s terms that is 51 thousandths of a degree.

These figures come from the Met Office HadCruT3 database, which takes readings from 3,000 land stations around the world, along with oceanic readings from a similar number of ships and buoys.

However, HadCruT3 is just one of several global temperature databases, each overseen by different scientists and calculated in slightly different ways. This allows each group to cross-check results, confirming findings or spotting errors.

One, held at the National Climate Data Centre (NCDC), run by America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, suggests that global temperatures rose by an average of 0.074C since 1997. That’s small, too — but it is another rise.

A third and very different data set is overseen by John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He gathers figures from three satellites that orbit the Earth 14 times a day. They measure the average temperature of the air from ground level to a height of 35,000ft, a method completely different from those of the Met Office and NCDC. Oddly, given his reputation as a climate sceptic, he found the biggest rise of all.

“From 1997-2011 our data show a global temperature rise of 0.15C,” he said. “What’s more, our satellites have been taking this data since 1979, and over that period [the] global temperature has risen 0.46C, so the world has been getting warmer.”

Overall, then, the world has got slightly warmer since 1997. Perhaps the real question is: why has it warmed so much less than was predicted by the climate models?

For most climate scientists the answer is simple. “Fifteen years is just too short a period over which to measure climate change,” said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at the Met Office. “The world undergoes natural temperature changes on all kinds of time scales from daily variations to seasonal ones. It also varies naturally from year to year and decade to decade.”

101 Tories revolt over wind farms

"At least 4,500 more turbines are expected to go up as the Government’s drive to meet legally binding targets for cutting carbon emissions sparks a green energy boom.

Critics say wind farms are inefficient because the wind cannot be guaranteed to blow at times of greatest energy demand. They are also said to be unsightly, blighting the landscape.

Wind farms are also accused of forcing up energy bills while swallowing disproportionate amounts of taxpayer-funded subsidies.

The Tory MPs, including several of the party’s rising stars as well as former ministers, say it is wrong that hard-pressed consumers must pay for the expansion of onshore wind power.

In the letter sent to No 10 Downing Street last week, which has been seen by The Sunday Telegraph, the MPs say they have become “more and more concerned” about government “support for onshore wind energy production”.

“In these financially straitened times, we think it is unwise to make consumers pay, through taxpayer subsidy, for inefficient and intermittent energy production that typifies onshore wind turbines,” they say. The MPs want the savings spread between other “reliable” forms of renewable energy production.

They have also called on Mr Cameron to change the proposed National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) so that it gives local people who object to proposed wind farms a better chance of victory in the planning process. The framework has finished a public consultation process and is awaiting the green light from ministers.

The letter reads: “We also are worried that the new National Planning Policy Framework, in its current form, diminishes the chances of local people defeating onshore wind farm proposals through the planning system.”

The number of Tory signatories to the letter, organised by Chris Heaton-Harris, the Conservative backbencher, means that the controversy could be the biggest protest to hit Mr Cameron since the Coalition was formed. Last October, 81 Tory MPs defied him in a Commons vote on holding a referendum over Britain’s future in the European Union."

Another brilliant article by fearless James Delingpole in the Mail. [Has he been reading The Free Radical? His new book is called Watermelons.]

Over the past 20 years, across the Western world, billions of pounds, dollars and euros have been squandered by governments on hare-brained schemes to ‘combat climate change’.
Taxes have been raised, regulations increased, flights made more expensive, incandescent light bulbs banned, landscapes despoiled by ugly, bird-chomping wind farms, economic growth curtailed — all to deal with what now turns out to have been a non-existent problem: man-made CO2.

Some great pictures of cooling here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

It is freezing here. It was -10 degrees C this morning, so I couldn't start tha car.

Now it's snowing down in buckets outside.

Local hero Dr Chris de Freitas gets a mention in the Wall Street Journal, Jan 27th.

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.

Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern update, "Follow the money."

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.

'Frustrated' Tesco Ditches Eco-Labels

Monday, 30 January 2012 17:59 Ian Quinn

Tesco will no longer feature the Carbon Trust’s carbon reduction label on its products, claiming it is too time-consuming and expensive to justify.

The supermarket giant has also told of its frustration that other leading retailers failed to follow its lead, which meant the label was unable to gain sufficient critical mass.

When it launched four years ago, in conjunction with the Carbon Trust, Tesco’s Carbon Reduction Labelling plan was hailed by then CEO Sir Terry Leahy as the start of a “revolution in green consumption”.

However, Tesco told The Grocer it had decided to wind down the project after finding research for each product involved “a minimum of several months’ work”.

“We expected that other retailers would move quickly to do it as well, giving it critical mass, but that hasn’t happened,” said Tesco’s climate change director, Helen Fleming.

About 1,100 products have been researched by the retailer with 500 products having labels in Tesco stores.

But Fleming said the lack of uptake by other retailers had failed to make the scheme viable.

Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)

"The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.

Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.

We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24’ – which is why last week’s solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century.

Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still."

Protesters urged to occupy Chicago during G8 and Nato summits

"Adbusters, the group which helped spark the Occupy movement, has put out a call for tens of thousands of protesters to occupy Chicago during the G8 and Nato summits in May.

Seeking out those it describes as "redeemers, rebels and radicals" all over the world, the Canadian activist group is calling on protesters to bring their tents and peaceful barricades to converge on the city and build a camp on public ground. By making the call international, the group said it is hoping to pull off the "biggest multinational occupation" ever.

It encourages peaceful civil disobedience and invokes the spirit of the "Chigago Seven", a group of high-profile civil rights leaders including Abbie Hoffman, who were charged with inciting riots in 1968, when the city was host to violent clashes between police and anti-Vietnam activists during the Democratic National Convention.

Protesters flocking on the city in May will face heightened security, when heads of state, Nato generals and other military leaders will be there. They will also face unique rules in the city against erecting tents, which forced Occupy Chicago to become unique in the Occupy movement for not ever setting up a permanent occupation.

Since a wave of evictions in cities and campuses across the US last November, the Occupy movement, which protested against income inequality and corporate greed, has become less visible, aside from a few rallies or demonstrations. But campaigners insist the movement continues to grow and will rise anew in the spring in time for the May offensive.

The month-long protest will focus on demands for "a Robin Hood Tax … a ban on high frequency 'flash' trading … a binding climate change accord … a 'three strikes and you're out' law for corporate criminals … an all-out initiative for a nuclear-free Middle East" and whatever it decides on general assemblies and global internet brainstorms, according to Adbusters."

China hits back at US wind turbine import investigation

"The Chinese government has hit back against a US investigation into exports of wind turbine towers, warning that the escalating trade spat runs counter to global efforts to curb carbon emissions and could damage clean-energy co-operation between the two countries.

The US Commerce Department announced last week that it will respond to a complaint by a group of American wind turbine tower manufacturers over low-cost towers imported from China and Vietnam by launching a formal probe into whether the imports breach trade rules.

However, China's Ministry of Commerce responded immediately, issuing a statement on its website in which it criticised the investigation and offered a thinly veiled threat that China could take retaliatory action if the US government imposes import tariffs.

"This investigation will not only be harmful to the development of Sino-US new-energy cooperation; it will harm the interests of the US industry, and is not in line with global efforts on climate change and energy security," it said.

The ministry also urged the US to stand by commitments made at the G20 to avoid introducing new protectionist measures.

However, some critics maintain that the generous subsidies and preferential treatment the Chinese government offers many of its clean-tech firms amount to unfair competition...

Chinese officials escalated the row last November by announcing they would launch their own investigation into the level of subsidy the US government has provided its domestic clean-energy firms."

The warmists must be getting desperate!

Michael Mann vows to keep up the "street fight" against climate change deniers

Scientists are in a “street fight” to prove climate change is happening, according to Michael Mann, the physicist who first created the controversial hockey stick graph.

"The Director of Penn State Earth System Science Center said the so-called ‘climategate’ scandal was meant to “intimidate” scientists.

He said personal emails between himself and colleagues at the University of East Anglia were stolen in a “malicious and intentional” attempt to make scientists afraid to express their opinions.

“What they are trying to do is to blur the distinction between private correspondence and scientific data and methods, which of course should be out there for other scientists to reproduce,” he said.

In an interview with a leading British newspaper, Professor Mann suggested that the hacking was a “smear campaign” funded by the fossil fuel industry, who have the most to lose if the world switches to renewable energy.

“I think it’s intentional and malicious. Its intended to chill scientific discourse, to intimidate scientists working in areas that threaten these special interests,” he added.

Professor Mann became the centre of the climate change debate after he published his ‘hockey stick graph’ in 1998.

The graph show temperature rise over the last 1,000 years.

However sceptics argued that is was inaccurate and misleading because it failed to show the variations over the centuries and much of the earlier information was based on vague data like tree rings."

World Economic Forum warns of economic turmoil and social upheaval

"The threat of fresh economic turmoil and social upheaval threaten to put at risk the gains produced by globalisation, the World Economic Forum said.

In its annual assessment of the outlook for the global economy, the WEF set the scene for its meeting in Davos later this month by warning that the "seeds of dystopia" were being sown...

The study said the policies and institutions of the 20th century no longer offered protection in a more complex and integrated global economy. "The weakness of existing safeguards is exposed by risks related to emerging technologies, financial interdependence, resource depletion and climate change, leaving society vulnerable."

"Each Chevy Volt sold thus far may have as much as $250,000 in state and federal dollars in incentives behind it – a total of $3 billion altogether, according to an analysis by James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Hohman looked at total state and federal assistance offered for the development and production of the Chevy Volt, General Motors’ plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. His analysis included 18 government deals that included loans, rebates, grants and tax credits. The amount of government assistance does not include the fact that General Motors is currently 26 percent owned by the federal government."

By Tom Gantert Dec. 21, 2011

Don't fret, global warming's a goner

By Jim Hopkins, NZ Herald

"About a year ago, almost to the day, in this column, you may recall a bold prediction, fearlessly made. But lest you don't, which is highly likely, since most of us wouldn't remember a Higgs bison if we saw one in a game park, here it is again, much as it appeared 12 months ago:

If you're worried about all the things you have to worry about, cheer up. Here's one thing you won't have to worry about any more. Global warming (remember, this was a prediction) will be the Great Disappearing Act of 2011. It will sink like a stone, exit stage left and generally melt away. Whoopee!

Inspired by the sneaky leaking of all those dodgy East Anglian emails - proof positive of scientific fraud, collusion and deceit - the prediction relied on one basic assumption.

Journalists never admit they're wrong (see phone hacking). They just stop being wrong. When caught with their sceptical pants down and the spotty globes of their credulity exposed, they simply drop the story and move to something else.

Which is precisely what's happened. Global warming has left the building."

Russia supports Canada's withdrawal from Kyoto protocol

"Russia supports Canada's decision to pull out of the Kyoto protocol, says its foreign ministry, reaffirming Friday that Moscow will not take on new commitments.

Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told Friday's briefing that the treaty does not cover all major polluters, and thus cannot help solve the climate crisis.

Canada on Monday pulled out of the agreement initially adopted in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, to cut carbon emissions contributing to global warming. Its move dealt a blow to the treaty, which has not been formally renounced by any other country.

"This is yet another example that the 1997 Kyoto protocol has lost its effectiveness in the context of the social and economic situation of the 21st century," Lukashevich said, adding that the document does not ensure the participation of all key emitters.

The protocol requires some industrialised countries to slash emissions, but doesn't cover the world's largest polluters, China and the United States. Canada, Japan and Russia said last year they will not accept new Kyoto commitments.

Russia is the only country to speak out in support of Canada's move so far, with even Japan calling the withdrawl "disappointing" and China condeming it as "preposterous".

Canada's environment minister Peter Kent defended the decision on Monday, saying it would save the country $14bn in emissions trading permits it could have had to buy for not achieving its Kyoto targets. "To meet the targets under Kyoto for 2012 would be the equivalent of either removing every car, truck, ATV, tractor, ambulance, police car and vehicle of every kind from Canadian roads or closing down the entire farming and agriculture sector and cutting heat to every home, office, hospital, factory and building in Canada," Kent said."