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.