Morano on consensus and climate insurance

An interesting exchange of emails between Bill Houck and Marc Morano of the Inhofe EPW Press Blog posted as Marc Morano uses facts to answer an "ad hominem" attack from an alleged scientist at Greenie Watch:

One would have hoped that a scientist would have put scientific points to Morano but it was not so. Bill Houck [billhouck@bellsouth.net] (the Bill Houck of the EPA, I assume) wrote rather condescendingly to Marc Morano (of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee) as follows:

Assuming you are sincere in your beliefs about the lack of evidence proving `global warming', I would encourage you to look back 45 - 50 years ago and consider the (400 or so) "prominent scientists" or doctors the tobacco companies would parade around who would insist that cigarette smoking was not proven to be seriously harmful to your health. Perhaps 400 said no while many thousands accepted the obvious about smoking without feeling compelled to write or make public statements about it. After all, it was obvious.

Even if the warming/dimming concerns are exaggerated, there's no great down side to halting excessive and unnecessary pollution. Certainly everyone would want an environment that is as clean as possible.

Morano replied politely as follows:

Thank you for writing. You may have a good point with your tobacco analogy. Please read this article, I do tend to agree with the comparison.

As for the "thousands" of scientists who believe we face a "climate crisis," where are they? The UN IPCC had only 52 scientists write the alarmist Summary for Policymakers in 2007. There are no "thousands" of UN scientists. Even the UN says "hundreds" but they are not involved in the media hyped summary. Many of the "hundreds" of UN scientists are skeptical of the alarmist summary written by the 52 scientists. Many of the skeptics are profiled in our report.

Even the National Academy of Sciences and American Meteorological Society's "consensus" statement was only voted on by two dozen or so governing board members, rank and file scientists never had a say. Take a look at this post, an environmental scientist admits he never looked at evidence of man-made climate fears, he just parroted the UN's line. Because of the new Senate report of over 400, he is now reconsidering his views. See here

Finally, as for your "no great downside" to halting pollution. Of course that statement is true. But that is not what we are facing. Because of fears of a "tipping point" and we "must act now" and "it's cheaper to act now than wait" the US and other nations are being rushed into meaningless and ineffective international treaties and complete climate symbolism for huge costs domestically.

In over three decades of global warming fears, there has been no single proposal that would have a detectable impact on temperatures if fully enacted and the alarmists are correct about the science. Even if Kyoto, the grandaddy of all climate agreements were being complied with, it would not have a detectable impact on temps 50 or 100 years from now. (this is not in dispute, Gore's own scientist Tom Wigley has said this).

There is no such thing as an "insurance" policy against warming when it comes to current proposals. The upcoming cap-and-trade LIeberman-Warner bill in the Senate would not have a detectable impact on global temps, but will cost poor and middle class Americans huge amounts in higher energy bills. All economic pain for no climate gain.

Would you buy and insurance policy that had a huge up front premium for absolutely no payout at the end of the term? If you would, then by all means support all of the current climate bills. But if they were "insurance policies" they would be shut down for insurance fraud for taking money and not paying any benefits.

Cleaner burning technology and wealth creation go hand and hand. Saddling our economy with UN mandates and new layers of federal bureaucracy will only make us poorer and not 'solve' the "climate crisis."

After attending the last four UN climate conferences in a row, I can tell you unequivocally that if we were facing a man-made climate "crisis' and the UN were our only hope to "solve" it, we would all be doomed.

Please read this very long speech to understand the scientific and economic and technological issues.

Please do not continue parroting the meaningless line about "insurance" policies or how "thousands" of scientists endorse a mythical "consensus" unless you can show a shred of evidence for your claims.

Above exchange received by email from Marc Morano [marcmorano@gmail.com]

Emphasis added.

Even in France, it seems, there are those who doubt the gospel according to Gore:

The most conspicuous doubter in France is Claude Allegre, a former education minister and a physicist by profession. His new book, ``Ma Verite Sur la Planete'' (``My Truth About the Planet''), doesn't mince words.

He calls Gore a ``crook'' presiding over an eco-business that pumps out cash. As for Gore's French followers, the author likens them to religious zealots who, far from saving humanity, are endangering it. Driven by a Judeo-Christian guilt complex, he says, French greens paint worst-case scenarios and attribute little-understood cycles to human misbehavior.

Allegre doesn't deny that the climate has changed or that extreme weather has become more common. He instead emphasizes the local character of these phenomena.

While the icecap of the North Pole is shrinking, the one covering Antarctica -- or 92 percent of the Earth's ice -- is not, he says. Nor have Scandinavian glaciers receded, he says. To play down these differences by basing forecasts on a global average makes no sense to Allegre.

He dismisses talk of renewable energies, such as wind or solar power, saying it would take a century for them to become a serious factor in meeting the world's energy demands.

Let Us Eat Cake

To his relief, France has taken another path: Almost 80 percent of its electricity comes from nuclear reactors. What's more, France has a talent for eating its cake and having it, too: Although it signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the country is nowhere near meeting the agreed targets.

What? France is not even close to meeting its Kyoto targets! Where is the outcry from our climate obsessed media?

Global Warming will save America

There are moonbats and then there's... well, Dave Lindorff (photo) - who wrote this in the Baltimore Chronicle on Saturday:

Say what you will about the looming catastrophe facing the world as the pace of global heating and polar melting accelerates. There is a silver lining.

What kind of "silver lining", you ask, could a left wing moonbat possibly find in the coming "catastrophe" of global warming?

So what we see is that huge swaths of conservative America are set to face a biblical deluge in a few more presidential cycles.

Ha! Global warming is the left's secret weapon to wipe out all those right-wing eeevilll conservatives! Heck, the article is even titled Global Warming Will Save America from the Right...Eventually

Good old Dave predicts an environmental disaster for the midwest - but that's OK in his books:

So again, we will see the decline and depopulation of the nation’s vast midsection—noted for its consistent conservatism.

But ol' Dave's not done yet. Hell, he's just gettin' warmed up:

Finally, in the Southwest, already parched and stiflingly hot, the rise in energy costs and the soaring temperatures will put an end to right-wing retirement communities like Phoenix, Tucson and Palm Springs. Already the Salton Sea is fading away and putting Palm Springs on notice that the good times are coming to an end. Another right-wing haven soon to be gone.

So the future political map of America is likely to look as different as the much shrunken geographical map, with much of the so-called “red” state region either gone or depopulated.

Is this guy full of hate and venom? I don't know - it's hard to tell:

The important thing is that we, on the higher ground both actually and figuratively, need to remember that, when they begin their historic migration from their doomed regions, we not give them the keys to the city. They certainly should be offered assistance in their time of need, but we need to keep a firm grip on our political systems, making sure that these guilty throngs who allowed the world to go to hell are gerrymandered into political impotence in their new homes.

Editor's note: Dave needs to get a firm grip on something called reality.

There will be much work to be done to help the earth and its residents—human and non-human—survive this man-made catastrophe, and we can’t have these future refugee troglodytes, should their personal disasters still fail to make them recognize reality, mucking things up again.

It should be considered acceptable, in this stifling new world, to say, “Shut up. We told you this would happen.”

I think Dave's on higher ground all right. But I don't think climbing was involved in his getting there.

So sad about old Dave. His dreams of wiping out conservatives just ain't gonna happen.

PS: If you want to see more of what good ol' Dave is up to, just click here.

Make Global Warming a priority

Brrrr.... Link. h/t: SDA

Also: while we're at it, how about a prediction for 2008?

2008 will be the year when Al Gore and his forecasts of an approaching inferno will be thoroughly discredited, not by the constantly growing legion of global warming skeptics, but by none other than Mother Nature herself.

via NewsMax

The hot air cult

Cal Thomas comments at the Washington Times on a theme that's been observed here in the past: that global warming alarmists are in fact followers of a pseudo-religion:

You don't have to be religious to qualify as a fundamentalist. You can be Al Gore, the messiah figure for the global warming cult, whose followers truly believe their gospel of imminent extermination in a Noah-like flood, if we don't immediately change our carbon-polluting ways.

One of the traits of a cult is its refusal to consider any evidence that might disprove the faith. So it is doubtful the global warming cultists will be moved by 400 scientists, many of whom, says The Washington Times, "are current or former members of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Gore for publicizing a climate crisis." In a report by Republican staff of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, these scientists cast doubt on a "scientific consensus" that human-caused global warming endangers the planet.

Like most cultists, the true believers struck back, not by debating science, but by charging that a small number of the scientists mentioned in the report have taken money from the oil industry.

And Exxon has dismissed the claim as just so much hot air. But we should take a look at the dollars for some startling information:

The pro-global warming cultists enjoy a huge money advantage. Paleoclimate scientist Bob Carter, who has testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, noted in an EPW report how much money has been spent researching and promoting climate fears and so-called solutions: "In one of the more expensive ironies of history, the expenditure of more than $50 billion on research into global warming since 1990 has failed to demonstrate any human-caused climate trend, let alone a dangerous one," he wrote on June 18, 2007. The $19 million spent on research that debunks the global warming faith pales in comparison.

Mr. Thomas doesn't pull any punches when it comes to the Goracle and his followers:

Mr. Gore and his disciples will still be living in their big houses, driving gas-guzzling cars and flying in private jets that leave carbon footprints as large as Bigfoot's, while most of us will be forced to drive tiny automobiles and live in huts resembling the Third World. But hypocrisy is just one of many traits displayed by secular fundamentalists like Mr. Gore.

Before adopting any faith, the agendas of the people attempting to impose it, along with the beliefs held by them and their disciples, should be considered. Al Gore and company are big government liberals who think government is the answer to all our problems, including those they create. As Ronald Reagan often said, in too many cases government is the problem.

That last paragraph sums it up rather nicely.

h/t: the Strong Conservative

Senate: Number of AGW skeptics growing

From Senator Jim Inhofe's EPW Press Blog:

Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called "consensus" on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore.

The new report issued by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s office of the GOP Ranking Member details the views of the scientists, the overwhelming majority of whom spoke out in 2007.

Even some in the establishment media now appear to be taking notice of the growing number of skeptical scientists. In October, the Washington Post Staff Writer Juliet Eilperin conceded the obvious, writing that climate skeptics "appear to be expanding rather than shrinking." Many scientists from around the world have dubbed 2007 as the year man-made global warming fears “bite the dust.” (LINK) In addition, many scientists who are also progressive environmentalists believe climate fear promotion has "co-opted" the green movement. (LINK)

h/t SDA

Consider this little bit of detective work by Tom Harris of the NRSP into the IPCC's Working Group I (WG I) report on the extent and possible causes of past climate change including future ‘projections’ and the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) published recently by Canada Free Press:

An examination of reviewers’ comments on the last draft of the WG I report before final report assembly (i.e. the ‘Second Order Revision’ or SOR) completely debunks the illusion of hundreds of experts diligently poring over all the chapters of the report and providing extensive feedback to the editing teams. Here’s the reality.

A total of 308 reviewers commented on the SOR, but only 32 reviewers commented on more than three chapters and only five reviewers commented on all 11 chapters of the report. Only about half the reviewers commented more than one chapter. It is logical that reviewers would generally limit their comments to their areas of expertise but it’s a far cry from the idea of thousands of scientists agreeing to anything.

Compounding this is the fact that IPCC editors could, and often did, ignore reviewers’ comments. [...]

An example of rampant misrepresentation of IPCC reports is the frequent assertion that ‘hundreds of IPCC scientists’ are known to support the following statement, arguably the most important of the WG I report, namely “Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years.”

In total, only 62 scientists reviewed the chapter in which this statement appears, the critical chapter 9, “Understanding and Attributing Climate Change”. Of the comments received from the 62 reviewers of this critical chapter, almost 60% of them were rejected by IPCC editors. And of the 62 expert reviewers of this chapter, 55 had serious vested interest, leaving only seven expert reviewers who appear impartial.

So at best, not 2,500 but just 62 scientists reviewed the IPCC's critical chapter that concludes the greenhouse gases are causing climate change. Compare that to the 400+ scientists above and it's pretty clear that there's no consensus on this theory of anthropogenic global warming.

Bolton: It's not unusual for Gore to be wrong

Ambassador John Bolton talks with Fox News' Megyn Kelly about Al Gore, the United Nations and the climate change conference in Bali (click image to watch video):

Well, it's not unusual for Vice President Gore to be wrong, either, as he is in this case. You know, of the G-8 industrialized democracies, four - the United States, Japan, Canada, and Russia - share our view that we don't want numerical targets in this agreement. Four others, the four European countries, disagree. But, within the G-8, it's a four-four split. If you look at the developing countries, Brazil, India, and China all oppose these targets as well. So, the notion that this is the fault of the U.S. is wrong. If anybody's isolated here, I think it's the Europeans and Al Gore.

Via Newsbusters. h/t: Jack's Newswatch

What really happened at Bali

While the liberal media are trumpeting the "deal" reached at the UN conference on climate change in Bali as a "cave in" by both the United States and Canada, the truth is not quite so simple.

Noel Sheppard writes in Manic Misinterpretations of Climate Change Capitulation by US in Bali:

Readers should understand that this was a huge victory for the U.S., and what was indeed missing from the Kyoto Protocol the Clinton administration, with support from then Vice President Al Gore and 95 senators, refused to ratify in 1997. Now, ten years later, developing nations are the ones that have capitulated and agreed to participate in emissions cuts.

Though most media will downplay this, it was indeed a win for the Bush administration and America, as it establishes that any agreement to emissions cuts in the future - assuming such occur - will include developing nations like China and India. This potentially assures that any climate change agreement the U.S. enters into in the future will not give such nations an unfair economic advantage.

Again, this was a HUGE win for the Bush administration that will likely be downplayed by the press.

Downplayed by the press is an understatement. This "deal" sets no hard emissions targets as sought by the Europeans and it effectively ends the exemption enjoyed until now by so-called "developing" nations like China and India. As Sheppard says, "the White House got exactly what it wanted from this conference, and the alarmists got virtually nothing."

The UN's Climate Change Numbers Hoax

Tom Harris writes that that the IPCC must come clean on the real numbers of scientist supporters of their position on anthropogenic global warming:

It’s an assertion repeated by politicians and climate campaigners the world over – ‘2,500 scientists of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agree that humans are causing a climate crisis’.

But it’s not true. And, for the first time ever, the public can now see the extent to which they have been misled. As lies go, it’s a whopper. Here’s the real situation.

It really is startling. You can read the rest at Canada Free Press.

We should give up futile attempts to combat climate change

A group of over 100 scientists has written an open letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations stating the UN climate conference is taking the World in entirely the wrong direction.

Snowjob

A new video from the Heartland.org disputes the common misconceptions about anthropogenic global warming using clips from An Inconvenient Truth and the Great Global Warming Swindle.



The video concludes with this statement:

Learning the facts is the best way to understand that global warming is occurring but is not a crisis. It is better to trust scientists than politicians. Don't let fear ruin your day. Learn the facts.

How inconvenient for the Goracle.

More here.

January 2008 Environment & Climate News

Three respected scientists, Arthur B. Robinson, Noah E. Robinson, and Willie Soon, have written a review article on climate change that is generating considerable “buzz” in the scientific community. The essay, published originally in the peer-reviewed Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, could fundamentally change the world-wide debate on global warming and appears in full in this special edition of ECN. We are thankful to the authors and Dr. Jane Orient, president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, for permission to reprint it.

via Heartland.org

Download the full review article in the January 2008 issue of Environment & Climate News

UN censors dissenting scientists

From Heartland.org:

Lone voice of dissent censored by United Nations
Written By: Tom Swiss
Published In: News Releases
Publication Date: December 13, 2007
Publisher: The Heartland Institute


(CHICAGO, Illinois - December 13, 2007) -- For the second time this week, the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) was kicked off the press schedule for the United Nations' climate conference in Bali, Indonesia.

The ICSC is a group of scientists from Africa, Australia, Europe, India, New Zealand, and the U.S. who contend sound science does not support the outrageous claims and draconian regulations proposed in Bali.

The ICSC team leader, Bryan Leyland, an expert in carbon and energy trading, reported, "This morning I confirmed we had the main conference hall for 9:00 AM tomorrow. At 4:30 PM today, I found that Barbara Black bumped us off the schedule and closed further bookings. I'm fuming."

Black is NGO liaison officer for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bali.

Earlier in the week, UN officials in Bali closed down the ICSC's first press conference there. Black interrupted the press conference and demanded the scientists immediately cease. She threatened to have the police physically remove them from the premises.

Black's efforts are part of the United Nations' ongoing censorship of dissenting voices at Bali. ICSC scientists have been prevented from participating in panel discussions, side events, and exhibits.

For further information:

Bryan Leyland
+64 21 978 996
bryanleyland@mac.com
Christopher Monckton
+44 7980 634784
monckton@mail.com

Study: Part of Global-Warming Model May Be Wrong

via Fox News:

Part of the scientific consensus on global warming may be flawed, a new study asserts.

The researchers compared predictions of 22 widely used climate "models" — elaborate schematics that try to forecast how the global weather system will behave — with actual readings gathered by surface stations, weather balloons and orbiting satellites over the past three decades.

The study, published online this week in the International Journal of Climatology, found that while most of the models predicted that the middle and upper parts of the troposphere —1 to 6 miles above the Earth's surface — would have warmed drastically over the past 30 years, actual observations showed only a little warming, especially over tropical regions.

"Can the models accurately explain the climate from the recent past? It seems that the answer is no," said lead study author David H. Douglass, a physicist specializing in climate at the University of Rochester.

Douglass and his co-authors S. Fred Singer, a physicist at the University of Virginia, and John R. Christy, a climatologist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, are noted global-warming skeptics.

Kyoto Double talk

via today's National Post:

Is it just our imagination, or is there something about global warming that makes Liberals especially unbearable?

(...)

First, there is Stephane Dion, who served as environment minister from 2004 to 2006. He is in Bali this week, spreading the same climate change gospel he refused to implement when he was actually in a position to do so. He calls Mr. Harper's approach "a recipe for failure." Perhaps. But we would prefer Mr. Harper's "recipe" to the equally failed approach Mr. Dion's Liberals advocated while in power -- which consisted in large part of shipping off hundreds of millions of dollars to Vladimir Putin's Russia to purchase carbon credits. Under both the Liberals and the Conservatives, Canada has badly missed its Kyoto targets. At least under Mr. Harper, we don't have to prop up Russia's quasi-dictatorship for the privilege.

Full article.

While Greenies Gab, Science Strides Forward

Marc Sheppard asks, How Green Was My Bali? and explains that the scientific evidence continues to contradict the carbon-minded global warming alarmists gathered at the latest UN climate fest. From today's American Thinker:

Without exception, everything discussed at UNFCC, indeed the very temporary greening of Bali itself, is predicated on the specious argument that GHG, and no other forces, might be driving global temperatures.

But the science on which the U.N's hysteria-engendered flock base their planet-saving plans is settled only in their minds and the reams of hyped reports from the IPCC, which they foolishly expect to dictate global climate policies.

Readers are all too aware of the endless tricks, deceptions, outright lies, and more tricks used to divert attention from any driver not Carbon (and, therefore, not industry) related. Those same readers are well aware that this author believes the factor most irresponsibly ignored by alarmists to be Solar, as I have opined many times, including here , here, and here.

As it happens, last week also saw astronomer and Sun expert Dr David Whitehouse further the case for Solar forcing's majority influence. Whitehouse reported that it's been months since any sunspots have been observed:

"After a period of exceptionally high activity in the 20th century, our Sun has suddenly gone exceptionally quiet."

The significance of which might become quite evident quite quickly. You see, whenever presented with the obvious (and logical) correlations between solar activity and Terran climate in the past, Solar Deniers claimed that continued elevations in global temperatures after 1998 somehow disproved any direct connection. While insignificant in long-term analysis, Whitehouse nonetheless attributed this to the rapid increase between 1978 and 1998, after which average temps have held their high, but steady, level:

"Almost everyone agrees that throughout most of the last century the solar influence was significant. Studies show that by the end of the 20th century the Sun's activity may have been at its highest for more than 8,000 years."

He suggests we're actually in a period of solar activity low enough to not only counteract any GHG increases, but, as proposed by Russian Academy of Sciences members, actually cause temperatures to drop 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2020. Whitehouse dubs this new Solar season, which may even usher in another Little Ice Age, the Modern Solar Minimum. The good doctor also lists it with previously correlative periods the greenies completely ignore.

Solar Deniers? I like that term.

The greening of Al Gore

The Goracle has received a bit of criticism in the press prior to receiving his Nobel Prize.
From the Times Online:

WHO would have thought that saving the planet could be such a lucrative business? Al Gore, the former US vice-president turned environmental campaigner, has made more than £50m in just seven years from his books, speeches and shrewd investments in technology and green ventures.

and from the Daily Mail:

Al Gore is criticised for lining his own pockets after £3,300-per-minute green speech

But at least he's saving the world from CO2 right?
Well, not exactly: Gore Takes Train From Oslo Airport, Luggage Takes Mercedes

Update: scientists in Australia are investigating eco-friendly flatulence.

Lord Monckton: Dishonest political tampering with the science on global warming

Christopher (Lord) Monckton takes a blast at the hypocrisy now playing out at the UN's climate change conference in Bali.

As a contributor to the IPCC's 2007 report, I share the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. Yet I and many of my peers in the British House of Lords - through our hereditary element the most independent-minded of lawmakers - profoundly disagree on fundamental scientific grounds with both the IPCC and my co-laureate's alarmist movie An Inconvenient Truth, which won this year's Oscar for Best Sci-Fi Comedy Horror.

Two detailed investigations by Committees of the House confirm that the IPCC has deliberately, persistently and prodigiously exaggerated not only the effect of greenhouse gases on temperature but also the environmental consequences of warmer weather.

He doesn't mince his words, does he? He goes on to explain the devastating effects of following the folly of the IPCC and the global warming alarmists:

If we take the heroically stupid decisions now on the table at Bali, it will once again be the world's poorest people who will die unheeded in their tens of millions, this time for lack of the heat and light and power and medical attention which we in the West have long been fortunate enough to take for granted.

If we deny them the fossil-fuelled growth we have enjoyed, they will remain poor and, paradoxically, their populations will continue to increase, making the world's carbon footprint very much larger in the long run.

As they die, and as global temperature continues to fail to rise in accordance with the IPCC's laughably-exaggerated predictions, the self-congratulatory rhetoric that is the hallmark of the now-useless, costly, corrupt UN will again be near-unanimously parroted by lazy, unthinking politicians and journalists who ought to have done their duty by the poor but are now - for the third time in three decades - failing to speak up for those who are about to die.

My fellow-participants, there is no climate crisis. The correct policy response to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing. Take courage! Do nothing, and save the world's poor from yet another careless, UN-driven slaughter.

Full article via the Jakarta Post

h/t: Bourque

CO2 cannot be blamed for Global warming

"The notion that carbon emissions cause global warming is not scientifically defensible on today's evidence." "It's not science, it's politics"

via Bushvision:

David Evans worked for the Aust[tralian] Greenhouse office as a modeller and established the worlds best method of carbon accounting. He also started to realise CO2 is not the cause of dangerous global warming. Here he explains why.

Save the World: Dump Kyoto

Is implementing the Kyoto Protocol the best way to "save the world" from global warming? If you believe so, then you better read this article by Jonathan Kay, writing in Tuesday's National Post:

You rarely see anyone actually crunch the numbers and prove Kyoto's worth on a cost-benefit basis.

That's because, as world-renowned Danish thinker Bjorn Lomborg demonstrates in a new book, you can't.

Lomborg's book -- excerpted in a three-part series that appeared on these pages a month ago -- is built around the (surprisingly) rich body of peer-reviewed studies that measure the aggregate social cost of climate change on human societies -- including its impacts on agriculture, fisheries, fresh water supplies, hurricanes and land loss... For every dollar we spend on Kyoto, we get back 34¢.

And even this analysis is optimistic -- because it assumes the most efficient carbon-abatement policies available. In practice, many nations have opted instead for inefficient, but optically attractive, solutions such as windmills.

Schemes that are even more ambitious than Kyoto result in even greater economic inefficiencies.

That's because of the law of diminishing marginal returns. Our first carbon cuts are always going to be the easy ones -- dropping the house thermostat when we go away for the weekend, screwing in a few CFL light bulbs, buying a slightly smaller SUV, etc. But the deeper you cut carbon emissions, the more painful and difficult the cuts become.

But here's where Lomborg's analysis is especially trenchant. While his methods are ruthlessly utilitarian, he shares the same humanitarian goals ostensibly championed by climate change activists. Indeed, there's nothing he'd like more for the $180-billion a year demanded by Kyoto to be shovelled into other programs that address human misery more directly. If we did so, he shows, we'd save millions more lives.

h/t: Global Warming Hyperbole

Dion's smear campaign

Check this video by Richard Madan of CityNews on the Mulroney-Schreiber inquisition, where right at the end Madan reports:

"But Liberals are going to keep this pressure up - if not to smear the government, but to smear the Conservative brand."

Stephane Dion, the current leader of the Liberal Party has apparently concluded that a good old fashioned smear campaign will accomplish for him what his lack of leadership on real issues will not.

CBS seeks environmental reporter

...knowledge of the environment NOT a requirement:

Company:   CBS News
Position:  Seeking Vibrant Reporter/Host for Eco Beat
Location:  National, United States
Job Status:   Freelance
Salary:   Negotiable
Ad Expires:  December 12, 2007

Description:
CBS is expanding its coverage of the environment. We seek a talented reporter/host for Internet video broadcast. We are looking for smart, creative, hard working up and comers, who can bring great energy, creativity and a dash of humor to our coverage. A deep interest in the environment and sustainability issues will serve you well.

You are wicked smart, funny, irreverent and hip, oozing enthusiasm and creative energy. This position requires strong people, reporting, story telling and writing skills. Managing tight deadlines should be second nature. Knowledge of the enviro beat is a big plus, but not a requirement.

Responsibilities include reporting and hosting two to three news packages per week plus daily writing for our blog. You should be comfortable using a video camera and the Internet. Be prepared to see America. Heavy domestic travel.

Send resumes, cover letters and links to katzn@cbsnews.com or send DVD reels to:

Neil Katz
CBS News
518 W57th Street
5th Floor
NY, NY 10019

Oh well, I guess if David Suzuki can pass himself off as an environmental scientist, then just about anybody can report on the environment for CBS.

Get ready for the c-c-cold

This is going to be hard for Al Gore and David Suzuki to explain:

After years of warmer-than-normal winters that spurred constant talk of global warming, winter this year is expected to be the coldest in almost 15 years and should remind everyone of what real Canadian cold feels like, Environment Canada said Friday.

With the exception of only small pockets of northern Canada and southwestern Ontario, this December through February is forecast to be one of the harshest winters in recent memory across the country, said senior climatologist David Phillips.

"It is somewhat remarkable that we're seeing the same situation from coast to coast to almost coast - from Vancouver Island to Bonavista, Nfld., we're showing the country as being colder than normal," Phillips said.

This old dog is looking forward to all the upcoming news reports about the record cold weather and how they'll relate that to our ever increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Shucks, they'll probably blame it all on global warming anyway!

I think I'll give my travel agent a call....

Global Warming Alarmism reaches new heights

This time, they've gone too far.

CTF: a 2nd look at global warming

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has taken a second look at global warming:

Climate change is taking place; it always has. Yet the media and politicans present the view that climate change is bad and humans are solely responsible for destruction of the earth without any critical analysis or competing theories. Your CTF is a taxpayer, not science advocacy organization. But as long as the world is presented one viewpoint of so-called global-warming 'science' no tax-funded cost will be deemed inappropriate if it involves saving Mother Earth. Governments are now spending billions of tax dollars not only on questionable policy objectives of little measurable result but increasingly on alarmist propaganda. Please take the time to watch the British documentary film The Great Global Warming Swindle" and have a look at this Canadian-based website www.friendsofscience.org for more thoughtful information.

www.friendsofscience.org. The Great Global Warming Swindle Kyoto Update – Nothing the Taxpayers Federation Hasn’t Said, Twice Before Save our kids

There's also a set of links to the full series of stories by Lawrence Solomon known as "The Deniers" series and published in the National Post concerning the many problems with the theory of man-made Global warming.

Oh, and the piece d'resistance: a copy of the Great Global Warming Swindle video that actually works!

Link: sevenload.com

India, China poised to profit from Kyoto

India, which is exempt from reducing carbon emissions under the Kyoto Protocol is nonetheless set to capitalize on the carbon trading business that Kyoto will spawn:

With renewed global concern over climate change, carbon trading is emerging as a major business prospect for India Inc, which is eyeing a $100-billion annual potential in this area, says a World Bank expert.

and which countries are going to benefit the most?

According to statistics available with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), out of 844 projects registered under the CDM scheme, as many as 289 are from India, accounting for 34.24 per cent of the total.

China ranks next with 131 projects, or 15.52 per cent...

Surprise. Like India and other developing countries, the People's Republic of China - the Number One emitter of CO2 - is also EXEMPT from reducing its carbon emissions under Kyoto.

Via the Indo-Asian News Service

Libs ponder degree of defeat under Dion

Stéphane Dion, the current leader of the Liberal Party of Canada is increasingly isolated from his own Party faithful and “pays attention only to his wife and his dog Kyoto” according to an article by Angelo Persichilli in the Hill Times.

As for the next election, “The only question,” said one Liberal MP, “is the degree of the defeat."

Craig James on global warming

Craig James provides a nice summary of his position on AGW at woodtv:

In response to the many comments I have received recently questioning my position on global warming, I’d like to offer this summary.

There are several possible causes for warming and cooling of the atmosphere on a global scale. Periodic astronomical cycles, such as the Milankovitch Cycles, solar variations, volcanic activity, the shift in phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), the Arctic Oscillation (AO), plus many others certainly all play a huge role. I have written about the natural oscillation of the oceans and their affects on temperatures in several posts on this site. Of course the mainstream emphasis today is on increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. If I conducted a survey asking people whether the temperature rises first and then CO2 levels increase, or vice-versa, I’m sure we could all guess the prevailing opinion is that CO2 levels increase first. I think it is very important for everyone to understand, this is not the case.

(...)

It seems to me as if there hasn’t really been much attention given to the fact that CO2 increases occur AFTER the temperature begins rising and therefore cannot be the initial cause of global warming. Even the most vocal proponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) acknowledge this fact.

OK, so anyone who is even slightly informed on global warming knows that carbon dioxide levels increase about 800 years following warming. Even the AGW alarmists have to admit that.

Another issue I want to emphasize has come about because of all of the concern regarding the low Arctic sea ice extent measured this fall. I can’t state this strongly enough… THERE IS NO CORRELATION BETWEEN ARCTIC AIR TEMPERATURES AND ARCTIC SEA ICE!

(...)

The air temperatures in the Arctic were warmer in 1940 than now. The sea ice extent began to diminish in 1950 as air temperatures were going DOWN.

If there is no correlation, there can be no causation. Also, never once mentioned in the mainstream media is the fact that the southern hemisphere sea ice extent was at a record MAXIMUM this year.

h/t: icecap

Harper: Kyoto a mistake

Now this is more like it...

KAMPALA, Uganda – Stephen Harper concluded a Commonwealth summit today by bluntly describing the Kyoto accord as a mistake the world must never repeat.

The Prime Minister characterized the landmark climate change deal as a flawed document and served notice that Canada will not support any new international treaty that carries its fatal flaw.

Harper said the key error of Kyoto was slapping binding targets on three-dozen countries but not the rest, including some of the world's biggest polluters like the United States, China and India.

That took some guts, but he's correct. Now, if only some politicians had what it takes to tell the truth about Kyoto and so called greenhouse gases.

On another note, John Howard will be missed.

In case you missed it...

While replying to some inane questions from Stéphane Dion about the Mulroney-Schreiber affair, Prime Minister Stephen Harper gave the current leader of the Liberal Party of Canada a bit of a smack down during oral questions in Parliament yesterday. Via Hansard:

Right Hon. Stephen Harper (Prime Minister, CPC):
Mr. Speaker, the terms of the inquiry, as the government already has said, will be set independently by Professor Johnston. I do not know whether he will accept the position of the current leader of the Liberal Party that there be an unlimited inquiry, or of the past leader of the Liberal Party that there be no public inquiry, or of the future leader of the Liberal Party, who says there should be a limited public inquiry. I am sure one of these Liberal positions will be adopted.

Dion is getting to be a bit like the Eveready bunny: he takes a lickin' and keeps on coming back for more!

h/t: Joanne's Journey.

Global Warming, Or Global Con?

Here's a snippet from today's editorial at Investor's Business Daily on the IPCC's fourth assessment report:

Accepting something like Kyoto, which would dismantle our thriving free-market economy while reducing global temperatures by an estimated 0.04 degree Celsius over the next century, an amount too small to measure.

It would achieve this trifling result only at the cost of literally trillions of dollars over that time — money that will not come from some imaginary place or "global resources," but out of your pocket.

After all, when the U.N. grandly says "we must work together," what it's really saying is, "Americans must foot the bill."

In today's National Post, Terrence Corcoran says the recent doomsday pronouncements from the IPCC are having the effect of someone shouting "fire" in a theatre - except it's a theatre that's full of other people who are also shouting "fire".

h/t: Newsbeat1

Unstoppable Global Warming

Dennis Avery, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute outlines his latest book on climate change in this Powerpoint presentation.

Via the Frontier Center for Public Policy

The never ending winter of 2007

Sorry Al, looks like you're wrong again: Lowest November temperatures in 90 years.

Someone must tell Al Gore the same or invite him to visit this corner of the world. It is a never ending winter here in South America. “What a hell is happening this year with a seven-month winter”, asked a famous TV journalist about the unusual climatic winter of 2007 that began with fury in May and still persist in November. Buenos Aires recorded this Thursday (November 15th) the lowest temperature for the month of November in 90 years. Temperature in the Downtown weather station reached 2.5C. Since records began more than a century ago, only two days had colder lows in November. It was in 1914 (1.6) and 1917 (2.4). And ninety years ago the urban heat island effect was much less pronounced than nowadays, what turns the temperature observed today remarkable.

h/t: Drudge

Just what part of 'yes' don't you understand?

via John Gormley:

But this week the feckless Stephane Dion, the first leader of the Liberal party since dance marathons not to become prime minister, brought the Alice in Wonderland feel of question period to a new place.

Dion arrived at question period ready to demand a full public inquiry into allegations against ex-prime minister Brian Mulroney.

He was evidently well prepared -- a bit too prepared it turned out -- with just the right sound bite questions.

As question period began, it was clear that Prime Minister Stephen Harper had changed his mind from having a mere review by a neutral third party to accepting Mulroney's own request for a public inquiry.

In answer to Dion's first question, Harper announced he would appoint an independent person to "provide the terms of reference for a full public inquiry."

After listening to the answer, Dion sprung to his feet, demanding the prime minister "step up to the plate and do the right thing, that is to launch immediately a full public inquiry."

Harper: "I just answered this question about a public inquiry. The independent third party will give the government the appropriate terms of reference for such an inquiry, and such an inquiry will be launched."

Dion (evidently staying on script): "Mr. Speaker, even Mr. Mulroney is calling for a full public inquiry. The prime minister must be the only person who does not think it is a good idea. Why? What is he afraid of? Will he do the right thing? Will he take on his responsibilities and call a full public inquiry now?"

Harper: "Mr. Speaker, the problem is that the leader of the Opposition has whipped himself up into that question and has failed to listen to the previous two answers. That is precisely what the government will be doing."

It is hard to fathom where Dion can go from here. Don't expect it to be to 24 Sussex Drive anytime soon.

That's why around here, we refer to him affectionately as the "current" leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

Christy on the IPCC

This opinion piece by John Christy, Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama and a member of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is titled No consensus on IPCC's level of ignorance, and comes to us via BBC News:

At an IPCC Lead Authors' meeting in New Zealand, I well remember a conversation over lunch with three Europeans, unknown to me but who served as authors on other chapters. I sat at their table because it was convenient.

After introducing myself, I sat in silence as their discussion continued, which boiled down to this: "We must write this report so strongly that it will convince the US to sign the Kyoto Protocol."

Politics, at least for a few of the Lead Authors, was very much part and parcel of the process.

Hmmm... it seems the BBC can at least air both sides of the argument on AGW - something the CBC can't stomach.

A Global Temperature Chart

...that's not in Al Gore's movie...

click images to enlarge.


This second image illustrates the period from 1940 through the 1970's when despite the continued rise of CO2 emissions temperatures actually cooled - and how they have levelled off or cooled slightly since 1998, while so-called greenhouse gases continue to be emitted at record levels.

More from Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters.org and from climatologist Cliff Harris and meteorologist Randy Mann at Long Range Weather.com

Baird: Less talk, more action

Federal Environment Minister John Baird via the Ottawa Citizen:

"It just shocked me to find that, in 2007," he says, "it was still legal to dump raw sewage into our oceans, rivers and lakes. I mean, that's an environmental crime. We've got to act.

"Canadians are understandably very cynical when it comes to politicians making promises on the environment," he concedes.

"We study things to death but never actually get things done," he says. "I'm all for scientific research, but I'm also for action."

This "I-didn't-come-to-Ottawa-to-push-paper" environment minister and former Treasury Board president has turned his considerable determination to the Great Lakes.

"For the last 50 years, we've treated the Great Lakes -- one of the most remarkable features that Canada is blessed with -- as a dumping ground. I can bring a real personal commitment and the government has a real commitment to the Great Lakes.

"We don't need any more studies. We don't need tests. We need action, remediation." Water quality and conservation are crucial, he says. "For Canadians, clean water is a huge priority."

And it's a political priority: "It's a really big issue for our team because virtually every riding along Lake Ontario, Lake Huron and Georgian Bay has a strong voice in our caucus."

Mr. Baird says the Conservative government will tackle upfront, eight "big hotspots." The worst is Randle Reef in Hamilton Harbour, with parallel clean-up announcements on the seven others, which have not been named, to follow.

Canada produces one trillion litres of sewage every year from some 4,600 wastewater collection and treatment systems in towns and cities.

The National Sewage Report Card III on 22 cities by the Sierra Legal Defence Fund concludes: "Victoria, Saint John, Halifax, St. John's and Dawson City continue to dump some or all of their sewage, raw and untreated, directly into Canada's rivers, lakes and oceans -- a total of 140 billion litres per year.

"Three other cities (Vancouver, Montreal and Charlottetown) discharge some or all of their sewage with only primary treatment (e.g. settling and skimming off of large debris). Together, these eight cities generate more than 3.0 billion litres of sewage effluent per day -- nearly 40,000 litres every second. All of it is discharged with no or only minimal treatment."

But it won't be legal, Mr. Baird promises, for much longer.

How refreshing to see a politician taking action on a real environmental issue, instead of trying to score political points by blowing a lot of hot air about Kyoto.

Global Warming: the greatest scam in history

The founder of the The Weather Channel in the US has described the concept of global warming as 'the greatest scam in history' and accused global media of colluding with 'environmental extremists' to alarm the public.

Here's John Coleman's original post at ICECAP.

Scared to Death

Scared to Death: From BSE To Global Warming - How Scares Are Costing Us The Earth is a book by Christopher Booker and Richard North. Here's an article from these authors from the Telegraph:

A scare is often set off - as we show in our book with other examples - when two things are observed together and scientists suggest one must have been caused by the other. In this case, thanks to readings commissioned by Dr Roger Revelle, a distinguished American oceanographer, it was observed that since the late 1950s levels of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere had been rising. Perhaps it was this increase that was causing the new warming in the 1980s?

Stage two of the story began in 1988 when, with remarkable speed, the global warming story was elevated into a ruling orthodoxy, partly due to hearings in Washington chaired by a youngish senator, Al Gore, who had studied under Dr Revelle in the 1960s.

But more importantly global warming hit centre stage because in 1988 the UN set up its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC). Through a series of reports, the IPCC was to advance its cause in a rather unusual fashion. First it would commission as many as 1,500 experts to produce a huge scientific report, which might include all sorts of doubts and reservations. But this was to be prefaced by a Summary for Policymakers, drafted in consultation with governments and officials - essentially a political document - in which most of the caveats contained in the experts' report would not appear.

This contradiction was obvious in the first report in 1991, which led to the Rio conference on climate change in 1992. The second report in 1996 gave particular prominence to a study by an obscure US government scientist claiming that the evidence for a connection between global warming and rising CO2 levels was now firmly established. This study came under heavy fire from various leading climate experts for the way it manipulated the evidence. But this was not allowed to stand in the way of the claim that there was now complete scientific consensus behind the CO2 thesis, and the Summary for Policy-makers, heavily influenced from behind the scenes by Al Gore, by this time US Vice-President, paved the way in 1997 for the famous Kyoto Protocol.

Shame on the CBC

Dr. Tim Ball & Tom Harris have written a four five part series published by Canada Free Press titled "CBC’s continuing denial of the climate science debate". Here's an excerpt:

Like the network itself, The Fifth Estate has violated its own mandate with ‘The Denial Machine’

The CBC television programme, “The Fifth Estate”, describes its raison d’ etre as follows:

“to challenge assumptions and question conventional wisdom, and most importantly to give voice to victims of injustice who deserve to be heard but have been silenced.”

But what if The Fifth Estate itself is the perpetrator of the injustice? What if it is their own network that has ignored and mistreated those who disagree with “conventional wisdom” on an issue of national importance? Will the programme then “challenge assumptions” on which fashionable views are based? Or will they simply parrot political correctness, carefully ignoring, or denigrating the opinions of those who spend their lives studying the field?

If the past year’s repeated broadcasts of The Denial Machine (aired for at least the 15th time on October 28th on CBC TV) is any indication, then the answer to these questions are obvious--when it comes to climate change, the Fifth Estate is not even remotely interested in questioning conventional wisdom or even following basic journalistic ethics. They are climate campaigners--state-funded propagandists, pure and simple. And, as is usually the case with partisan activists, the ends apparently justifies the means in their eyes, no matter how disreputable.

My (Tim Ball’s) own experience with Fifth Estate staff is a case in point.

Read more... link to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

Update: be sure to check out the documents linked below...

To learn more about the lack of any known consensus in the scientific community about the causes of the past centuries modest warming and forecasts for the future, readers may read a paper prepared by the authors as well as the PowerPoint slides that accompanied the presentation of this paper.

Energy efficient windows

Sent to me by a friend:

Last year I replaced all the windows in my house with that expensive double-pane energy efficient kind, and today, I got a call from the contractor who installed them. He was complaining that the work had been completed a whole year ago and I still hadn't paid for them.

Hellloooo, just because I'm blonde doesn't mean that I am automatically stupid. So, I told him just what his fast talking sales guy had told ME last year, namely, that in ONE YEAR these windows would pay for themselves! Hellloooo? It's been a year! (I told him.)

There was only silence at the other end of the line, so I finally just hung up.... He never called back. Guess I won that stupid argument.

I bet he felt like an idiot.

Maybe she'd like to invest in some carbon credits?

Climate Skepticism in Europe

Climate skepticism has now gained a firm foothold in various European countries.

Hillary vows to conceive "son of Kyoto"

In Her latest policy pronouncement...

Democratic White House frontrunner Hillary Clinton on Monday pledged that as president she would negotiate a successor treaty to the Kyoto protocol on climate change by 2010 – two years before Kyoto expires.

This announcement is guaranteed to make AlGore pee his pants with glee, as Hillary also promised to "set up a US-wide cap and trade system that would auction trading permits covering 100 per cent of America’s carbon output."

Oh well, they way she's been going lately, she'll probably announce that she's opposed this plan in a day or two.

Harris on the Coren show

Here's a video of NRSP Executive Director Tom Harris on the Michael Coren show on October 30, 2007 discussing climate change and the IPCC.

Christy's Nobel moment

Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a participant in the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), John R. Christy comments on being a co-recipient (along with the Goracle) of this year's Nobel Peace Prize .

I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time.

There are some of us who remain so humbled by the task of measuring and understanding the extraordinarily complex climate system that we are skeptical of our ability to know what it is doing and why. As we build climate data sets from scratch and look into the guts of the climate system, however, we don't find the alarmist theory matching observations. (...)

It is my turn to cringe when I hear overstated-confidence from those who describe the projected evolution of global weather patterns over the next 100 years, especially when I consider how difficult it is to accurately predict that system's behavior over the next five days.

Mother Nature simply operates at a level of complexity that is, at this point, beyond the mastery of mere mortals (such as scientists) and the tools available to us. As my high-school physics teacher admonished us in those we-shall-conquer-the-world-with-a-slide-rule days, "Begin all of your scientific pronouncements with 'At our present level of ignorance, we think we know . . .'"

I haven't seen that type of climate humility lately. Rather I see jump-to-conclusions advocates and, unfortunately, some scientists who see in every weather anomaly the specter of a global-warming apocalypse. Explaining each successive phenomenon as a result of human action gives them comfort and an easy answer.

Others of us scratch our heads and try to understand the real causes behind what we see. We discount the possibility that everything is caused by human actions, because everything we've seen the climate do has happened before. Sea levels rise and fall continually. The Arctic ice cap has shrunk before. One millennium there are hippos swimming in the Thames, and a geological blink later there is an ice bridge linking Asia and North America.

One of the challenges in studying global climate is keeping a global perspective, especially when much of the research focuses on data gathered from spots around the globe. Often observations from one region get more attention than equally valid data from another.

The recent CNN report "Planet in Peril," for instance, spent considerable time discussing shrinking Arctic sea ice cover. CNN did not note that winter sea ice around Antarctica last month set a record maximum (yes, maximum) for coverage since aerial measurements started.

More from the Wall Street Journal Online.

Update: Christy has refused his share of the Nobel Prize that he shares with AlGore.

Dion's dilemma

To tax or not to tax? The current leader of the Liberal Party says he would raise the GST at the same time he's allowing the Conservative government to cut the tax.

...between now and an election, Dion could draw considerable ridicule for criticizing the Tory government one day and then allowing it to pass key legislation the next in order to avoid an election.

The criticism of Citizen Dion isn't limited to those outside the Liberal Party.

One Liberal MP actually buried his head in his hands when told of his leader’s public musing.

Update: click here for an illustration of Citizen Dion's political future.

Newsbusters

The UN's 62nd anniversary

Do you trust the United Nations to keep you informed about important world issues like climate change?

Dr. Tom Coburn is a ranking member of the U.S. Senate's Federal Financial Management Subcommittee, part of the Committe on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. He released this today on the 62nd anniversary of the UN:

The U.N. charter declares the purpose of the U.N. is to maintain peace and security, develop friendly relations based on respect for equal rights and self-determination, and encourage respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Unfortunately, 62 years later, the United Nations is incapable of living up to its charter.

For years, there have been attempts to reform the U.N., both from the Secretariat and from the U.N.’s donors. Unfortunately, all reform efforts have failed.

Dr. Coburn said, “The best way to honor the U.N. on its birthday is to help the organization cure its cancer of corruption, fraud, secrecy and impotence that is preventing the U.N. from achieving its mission.”

To that end, Dr. Coburn has unveiled a website, the United Nations Watch, cataloguing the growing list of scandals and released the following list of examples currently plaguing the U.N.:

A stinging indictment of the UN.

Stossel on AGW: Give me a break!

Man-made global warming? John Stossel says, "give me a break!"

GORELERO

"I took the initiative in creating the Internet" and other.. uh, untruths. GORELERO by Hugh Hewitt.

Global Warming effecting education system

Who'd a thunk? Global warming is now having an adverse effect on students' ability to learn.



h/t: the Grouchy Old Cripple

Court Identifies Eleven Inaccuracies in Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’

An update on the recent High Court ruling in Britain, via Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters:

Here's something American media are virtually guaranteed to not report: a British court has determined that Al Gore's schlockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" contains at least eleven material falsehoods.

It seems a safe bet Matt Lauer and Diane Sawyer won't be discussing this Tuesday morning, wouldn't you agree?

For those that haven't been following this case, a British truck driver filed a lawsuit [0] to prevent the airing of Gore's alarmist detritus in England's public schools.

According to [1] the website of the political party the plaintiff, Stewart Dimmock, belongs to (ecstatic emphasis added throughout, h/t Marc Morano):

In order for the film to be shown, the Government must first amend their Guidance Notes to Teachers to make clear that 1.) The Film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument. 2.) If teachers present the Film without making this plain they may be in breach of section 406 of the Education Act 1996 and guilty of political indoctrination. 3.) Eleven inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children.

How marvelous. And what are those inaccuracies?

• The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government's expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
• The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
• The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that it was "not possible" to attribute one-off events to global warming.
• The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that this was not the case.
• The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
• The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant's evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
• The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
• The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
• The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
• The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
• The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

In the end, a climate change skeptic in the States must hope that an American truck driver files such a lawsuit here so that a U.S. judge can make similar determinations.

Of course, even if one could find such an impartial jurist, our media wouldn't find it newsworthy, would they?

Judge: Gore's film promotes "partisan political views"

From the Times Online:

A lorry driver from Kent has forced the Government to rewrite guidance for schools that want to show Al Gore’s climate change film, An Inconvenient Truth.

Stewart Dimmock, a father of two, brought a High Court action against the screening of the documentary in schools, claiming that it was “politically partisan” and “sentimental”.

His lawyers argued that the film contained serious scientific inaccuracies. They accused the Government of backing the film, by the former US Vice-President, as a way of “brainwashing” pupils on global warming.

Mr Dimmock, a school governor with children aged 11 and 14, said at the outset of the hearing: “I wish my children to have the best education possible, free from bias and political spin, and Mr Gore’s film falls far short of the standard required.”

Yesterday the High Court judge Mr Justice Burton said that the film did promote “partisan political views”.

Global Warming is not caused by carbon dioxide

A good website to check out: The Science of Global Warming in Perspective
h/t: On Climate Tinkers:

When an ice age begins, global Warming occurs exactly as it is doing now. Heated oceans cause precipitation to increase. Eventually, increased snowfall will reflect away solar energy and trigger a cool-down.


Alarmists are not promoting science; they are promoting propaganda justified through a black-box analysis which generates contrived numbers. Science requires evidence and logic.

There is no mechanism for carbon dioxide creating global warming

"Greenhouse gases" absorb all radiation available to them in a few meters. More of the gas cannot absorb more radiation. A thick sheet of plastic does nothing more than a thin sheet. Doubling the CO2 would only shorten the distance for absorption of radiation from 10 meters to 5 meters, which is not an increase in temperature.

The real cause of global warming could be an increase in solar energy, as critics generally claim; but there is evidence that it is due to variations in heat from the earth's core. Ice ages are caused by oceans heating, which appears to result from increased heat from inside the earth. The primary evidence is the exact cycling of ice ages. Environmental factors would not be so precise. Also, the oceans heating more than the atmosphere points to the heat coming from inside the earth.

Atmospheric changes can result from variations in solar activity, but they are superficial compared to heat from the earth's core which drives ice age cycles.

Ice over oceans is melting much faster than expected. The reason is because the oceans are heating, not the atmosphere. Heated oceans can melt ice rapidly, while heated air cannot. Ninety percent of ice is below the surface—exposed to water, not air—and water has the heat capacity needed for melting.

The Science of Global Warming in Perspective by Gary Novak.

Dirty snow?

Are the so-called greenhouse gases taking the heat for dirty snow?

Writing about their findings in the Journal of Geophysical Research, the researchers explained that dirty snow has had a significant impact on climate warming since the Industrial Revolution. UCI scientist Charlie Zender said that in the past 200 years, the Earth has warmed by about 0.8 degrees Celsius and he contends that up to 20 percent of this rise could be attributed to dirty snow.

The effect is more conspicuous in Arctic areas, where Zender believes that more than 90 percent of the warming could be attributed to dirty snow. "When we inject dirty particles into the atmosphere and they fall onto snow, the net effect is we warm the polar latitudes," said Zender. "Dark soot can heat up quickly. It's like placing tiny toaster ovens into the snow pack."

(...)

Zender explains that dirty snow is potentially much more of a threat to Arctic areas than greenhouse gases, levels of which have increased by one-third in the last two centuries. "A one-third change in concentration is huge, yet the Earth has only warmed about 0.8 degrees because the effect is distributed globally," Zender said. "A small amount of snow impurities in the Arctic have caused a significant temperature response there."

Zender believes policymakers could use these research results to develop regulations to limit industrial soot emissions and begin switching to cleaner-burning fuels that would leave snow brighter. New snow falls each year, and if it contained fewer impurities, the ground would brighten and temperatures would cool.

And it would be a lot cheaper to clean up emissions of soot than to try to reduce CO2 to Kyoto levels. A lot more effective too.

But then again, Al Gore & Co. wouldn't be able to impose regulations on industry and make billion$ from the carbon cap & trade swindle.

The Money and Connections Behind Al Gore’s Carbon Crusade

For Al Gore, the business of climate change is all about the money. Here's a great article by Deborah Corey Barnes at Human Events.com

Al Gore’s campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear. Reporters and commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions. But while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America. And journalists routinely ignore evidence that he may personally benefit from his programs. Would the romance fizzle if Gore’s followers realized how much their man stands to gain?

There's nothing new about Gore's profit motives concerning carbon trading, but Barnes lays out the details very thoroughly in her article.

Gore’s Circle of Business

Al Gore is chairman and founder of a private equity firm called Generation Investment Management (GIM). According to Gore, the London-based firm invests money from institutions and wealthy investors in companies that are going green. “Generation Investment Management, purchases -- but isn’t a provider of -- carbon dioxide offsets,” said spokesman Richard Campbell in a March 7 report by CNSNews.

GIM appears to have considerable influence over the major carbon-credit trading firms that currently exist: the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) in the U.S. and the Carbon Neutral Company (CNC) in Great Britain. CCX is the only firm in the U.S. that claims to trade carbon credits.

CCX owes its existence in part to the Joyce Foundation, the Chicago-based liberal foundation that provided $347,000 in grant support in 2000 for a preliminary study to test the viability of a market in carbon credits. On the CCX board of directors is the ubiquitous Maurice Strong, a Canadian industrialist and diplomat who, since the 1970s, has helped create an international policy agenda for the environmentalist movement. Strong has described himself as “a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology.”

(...)

Along with Gore, the co-founder of GIM is Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson. Last September, Goldman Sachs bought 10% of CCX shares for $23 million. CCX owns half the ECX, so Goldman Sachs has a stake there as well.

GIM’s “founding partners” are studded with officials from Goldman Sachs. They include David Blood, former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM); Mark Ferguson, former co-head of GSAM pan-European research; and Peter Harris, who headed GSAM international operations. Another founding partner is Peter Knight, who is the designated president of GIM. He was Sen. Al Gore’s chief of staff from 1977-1989 and the campaign manager of the 1996 Clinton-Gore re-election campaign.

(...)

Front and Center

Clearly, GIM is poised to cash in on carbon trading. The membership of CCX is currently voluntary. But if the day ever comes when federal government regulations require greenhouse-gas emitters -- and that’s almost everyone -- to participate in cap-and-trade, then those who have created a market for the exchange of carbon credits are in a position to control the outcomes. And that moves Al Gore front and center. As a politician, Gore is all for transparency. But as GIM chairman, Gore has not been forthcoming, according to Forbes magazine.

This is only the start, you should read the rest.

There's more in my earlier post: Blood and Gore.

Scientists Counter AP Article Promoting Computer Model Climate Fears

Marc Morano at The Inhofe EPW Press Blog:

Nearly two dozen prominent scientists from around the world have denounced a recent Associated Press article promoting sea level fears in the year 2100 and beyond based on unproven computer models predictions. The AP article also has been accused of mischaracterizing the views of a leading skeptic of man-made global warming fears. The scientists are dismissing the AP article, entitled “Rising Seas Likely to Flood U.S. History” (LINK) as a “scare tactic,” “sheer speculation,” and “hype of the worst order.” (H/T: Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters.org - LINK)

...more...

Notes for the speech of the President of the Czech Republic at the UN Climate Change Conference

Václav Klaus:

Distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,

As responsible politicians, we know that we have to act when it is necessary. We know that our duty is to initiate public policy responses to issues that could pose a threat to the people of our countries. And we know that we have to form partnerships with colleagues from other countrieś when a problem cannot be confined to national boundaries. To help us doing it is one of the main reasons for the existence of institutions such as the United Nations.

However, the politicians have to ensure that the costs of public policies organized by
them will not be bigger than the benefits achieved. They have to carefully consider and seriously analyze their projects and initiatives. They have to do it, even if it may be unpopular and if it means blowing against the wind of fashion and political correctness. I cońgratulate Secretary General Ban Kimoon on organizing this conference and thank him for giving us an opportunity to address the important, but until now onesidedly debated issue of climate changes. The consequences of acknowledging them as a real, big, imminent and manmade threat would be so
enormous that we are obliged to think twice before making decisions. I am afraid it is not the case now.

Let me raise several points to bring the issue into its proper context:

1. Contrary to the artificially and unjustifiably created worldwide perception, the increase in global temperatures has been – in the last years, decades and centuries – very small in historical comparisons and practically negligible in its actual impact upon human béings and their activities.

2. The hypothetical threat connected with future global warming depends exclusively upon very speculative forecasts, not upon undeniable past experience and upon its trends and tendencies. These forecasts are based on relatively short time series of relevant variables and on forecasting models that have not been proved very reliable when attempting to explain past developments.

3. Contrary to many selfassured and selfserving proclamations, there is no scientific consensus about the causes of recent climate changes. An impartial observer must accept the fact that both sides of the dispute – the believers in man's dominant role in recent climate changes, as well as the supporters of the hypothesis about their mostly natural origin – offer arguments strong enough to be listened to carefully by the nonscientific community. To prematurely proclaim the victory of one group over another would be a tragic mistake and I am afraid we are making it.

4. As a result of this scientific dispute, there are those who call for an imminent action and those who warn against it. Rational behavior should depend on the size and probability of the risk and on the magnitude of the costs of Its avoidance. As a responsible politician, as an economist, as an author of a book about the economics of climate change, with all available data and arguments in mind, I have to conclude that the risk is too small, the costs of eliminating it too high and the application of a fundamentalistically interpreted "precautionary principle" a wrong strategy.

5. The politicians – and I am not among them – who believe in the existence of a significant global warming and especially those who believe in its anthropogenic origin remain divided: some of them are in favor of mitigation, which means of controlling global climate changes (and are ready to put enormous amounts of resources into it), while others rely on adaptation to it, on modernization and technical progress, and on a favorable impact of the future increase in wealth and welfare (and prefer spending public money there). The second option Is less ambitious and promises much more than the first one.

6. The whole problem does not only have its time dimension, but a more than important spatial (or regional) aspect as well. This is highly relevant especially here, in the UN. Different levels of development, income and wealth in different places of the world make worldwide, overall, universal solutions costly, unfair and to a great extent discriminatory. The already developed countries do not have the right to impose any additional burden on the less developed countries. Dictating ambitious and for them entirely inappropriate environmental standards is wrong and should be excluded from the menu of recommended policy measures.

My suggestions are as follows:

1. The UN should organize two parallel IPCCs and publish two competing reports. To get rid of the onesided monopoly is a sine qua non for an efficient and rational debate. Providing the same or comparable financial backing to both groups of scientists is a necessary starting point.

2. The countries should listen to one another, learn from mistakes and successes of others, but any country should be left alone to prepare its own plan to tackle this problem and decide what priority to assign to it among its other competing goals.

We should trust in the rationality of man and in the outcome of spontaneous evolution of human society, not in the virtues of political activism. Therefore, let's vote for adaptation, not for the attempts to mastermind the global climate.