The Deniers - the book

Based on his successful series in the National Post, Lawrence Solomon has now published a new book named The Deniers. It's available from Amazon.com.

Is The "Scientific Consensus" on Global Warming a Myth?

Yes, says internationally renowned environmentalist author Lawrence Solomon who highlights the brave scientists--all leaders in their fields-- who dispute the conventional wisdom of climate change alarmists (despite the threat to their careers)

Al Gore and his media allies claim the only scientists who dispute the alarmist view on global warming are corrupt crackpots and "deniers", comparable to neo-Nazis who deny the Holocaust.

Solomon calmly and methodically debunks Gore's outrageous charges, showing in on 'headline' case after another that the scientists who dispute Gore's doomsday scenarios have far more credibility than those who support Gore's theories. These men who expose Gore's claims as absurd hold top positions at the most prestigious scientific institutes in the world. Their work is cited and acclaimed throughout the scientific community. No wonder Gore and his allies want to pretend they don't exist.

This is the one book that PROVES the science is NOT settled. The scientists profiled are too eminent and their research too devastating to allow simplistic views of global warming--like Al Gore's--to survive.

Earth Hour 2008: a huge success?

The above graph show the impact of tonight's Earth Hour on Ontario's electricity demand. Actual demand is shown in green, forecast is in blue. The red box highlights the hour between 20:00 to 21:00 hours, or 8:00 to 9:00 PM, a.k.a. "Earth Hour".

As you can see, "Earth Hour" had practically zero effect on the electricity demand in the Province of Ontario. While electricity use was barely below forecast, it was actually up slightly from the previous hour!

Update: The numbers continue to come to light (pun intended), so here's a quick roundup of some analysis on the impact of yesterday's Earth Hour:

• Tim Blair: Cold and Dark, Sparkage Boosted and Gesture Symbolic.
• Andrew Bolt: Earth Hour crashes to Earth
• Tom Nelson: Earth Hour in Minneapolis
• Celestial Junk: Earth Hour Saskatoon
• Stephen Taylor: Earth Hour in Ottawa (photos)
• small dead animals: Don Cherry's favourite left-wing kook (video)
• Ed Morrissey, comment: Aiming for a Darker World.
• Magic Statistics: CBC jumps on Earth Hour bandwagon
  

Light Up for Earth Hour

Bump.

What will you be doing to participate in Earth Hour?

I, for one, will be LIGHTING UP as much as possible. I know, I know. Earth Hour is supposed to bring attention to the impact of greenhouse gases and spur millions around the globe to participate in an, albeit symbolic, act to combat global warming.

But we here at A Dog Named Kyoto know better, much better. We know that climate change is natural and that human activities, including carbon emissions, really have little or no impact on global warming (or cooling).

We know that there has been no warming of our climate since 1998 - no warming for the past 10 years! We know that this global warming alarmism is possibly the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the human race.

We know that this Earth Hour is all just a bunch of foolishness and that most sensible people will be ignoring it. But that's just wrong. We can't ignore this nonsense! Therefore, I'm encouraging all thinking people, like you readers of this blog, (you know who you are - both of you!) to participate in Earth Hour 2008 in your own special way.

Here's a few suggestions:

• Light up as much as possible, preferably with good old fashioned and environmentally friendly incandescent bulbs - none of those new fangled mercury filled compact flourescent lamps (CFLs) allowed. They're too dim anyway!
  
• Heck, I still haven't taken the Christmas lights down yet, gonna plug them babies back in again!
• Fire up the Hummer, the 4x4 or SUV. Let 'er idle for the full 60 minutes!
  

Here's a few more ideas previously posted by the always wise Lisa:

The London Fog, Dust My Broom, Mitchieville and Lisa's Kitchen invite you to hasten Spring. Burn as much hydro as you can during this hour. Turn on every light and lamp, fire up the space heaters, bake some bread, cook some soup, do some laundry, print some recipes and be sure to flush. Do your part to combat global cooling.

Or how about a couple of videos to spark the imagination?



That 2nd video clearly shows that lighting up is a lot more exciting than sitting in the dark for an hour.

It all happens between 8:00 and 9:00 pm Saturday! We're sure you can think of other interesting ways to celebrate Earth Hour. Let us know in the comments.

Update: Unearthed Hour by Andrew Bolt.

Update: Take Back the Night

The whacky world of the Canadian Human Rights Commission

The dirt is coming out about the thought police who staff the Canadian Human Rights Commission:

Bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart is alive and well, and works for the Canadian Human Rights Commission. And under an assumed name, it seems.

Even those of us advocating human rights commission reform, and thus inclined to think the less of them, have been amazed this week by what goes on at the CHRC, as revealed by a tribunal prosecuting alleged hatemonger Marc Lemire.

There we were, making abstract arguments about free speech and quoting Voltaire.

There the federal snivel servants were, logging onto Internet hate sites under assumed names, trying to conceal what they were up to by using the wireless Internet account belonging to a young woman who seems to be completely uninvolved in any of it and, according to Lemire, trying to entrap people who visited his site.

Only the unusual circumstance of these people being publicly cross-examined brought any of this to light.

Boy, did we ever not quite get it. We thought this was a high-minded disagreement over fundamental principles. Instead, we find the CHRC tolerates sleazy behaviours among its investigating officers that have no place in a free society.

A quick backgrounder.

Straight to the point, Mark Steyn asks, What proportion of Canada's "white supremacists" are, in fact, government employees?

See also Ezra Levant.

Inhofe: Media Hype on ‘Melting’ Antarctic Ignores Record Ice Growth

From Marc Morano at Sen Jim Inhofe's EPW Press Blog:

The media is once again hyping an allegedly dire consequence of man-made global warming. This time the media is promoting the ice loss of one tiny fraction of the giant ice-covered continent and completely ignoring the current record ice growth on Antarctica.

Contrary to media hype, the vast majority of Antarctica has cooled over the past 50 years and ice coverage has grown to record levels since satellite monitoring began in the 1979, according to peer-reviewed studies and scientists who study the area. (LINK)

Former Weather Channel Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo rejected the hype surrounding the recent Wilkins Ice Shelf collapse in Western Antarctica. “The shattered part of the Wilkins ice sheet was 160 square miles in area, which is just 0.01% of the total current Antarctic ice cover, like an icicle falling from a snow and ice covered roof,” D’Aleo wrote on March 25. (LINK)

“We are very likely going to exceed last year’s record [for Southern Hemisphere ice extent]. Yet the world is left with the false impression Antarctica’s ice sheet is also starting to disappear,” D’Aleo added.

h/t: Newsbeat1

Viva Via

A great gesture by Via Rail

Via Rail is offering Canadian Forces members, veterans and National Defence employees free rail travel for the month of July in a gesture of appreciation, railway officials said Wednesday in Halifax.

“The clear intention here is for Via Rail to express on behalf of all Canadians how much we appreciate the service of men and women in uniform and our veterans and their families,” Defence Minister Peter MacKay said at the announcement.

McCain and Global Warming

With the Presidential election looking closer than would have been thought possible a few months ago, it is worth examining just where Sen. McCain stands policywise on global warming at the moment. An IBD article today looks at his position and how it leaves both sides of the debate cold. The article quotes McCain's policy chief — Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who is a smart guy — as saying that a detailed proposal is months away, but it would contain two main elements: a cap-and-trade plan and a Kyoto II that would include India and China.

Read the rest at Planet Gore.

h/t: Tom

Bad Time for Green Schemes

Higher taxes to fight global warming would create political and economic disaster. By Phil Kerpen at National Review Online:

The numerous energy taxes and regulatory schemes being proposed internationally, federally, and locally in the name of fighting global warming are a dire threat to freedom and prosperity. The costs associated with some of these proposals — both in dollars and lost liberty — are staggering. But the political costs of “being green,” and taxing green, may be just as high.

A recent Gallup poll reveals that the general economic situation is far and away the top concern among voters, and that high energy prices are tied with health care as the third biggest concern. Global warming, as such, doesn’t even register on the list. And related though ambiguous issues like “lack of energy sources” and “environment/pollution” rank near the bottom, registering just 1 or 2 percent.

But that’s not stopping politicians from pursuing feel-good and supposedly “costless” environmental policies that always draw the adulation of the media elites. Governors from both parties are appointing climate commissions while ceding control of the process to liberal outside consultants. (This can lead to some disturbing results, as my friend Paul Chesser at Climate Strategies Watch has been documenting.) Bureaucrats in California have proposed placing radio control devices in thermostats so that the government can decide how hot or cold homes and businesses should be. International negotiators and U.N. officials are touting vast redistributions of wealth under the banner of global warming. And perhaps most disturbing of all, the costly Lieberman-Warner legislation now in the U.S. Senate could come up for a vote in the next couple of months.

If the economy is indeed the top concern of voters, this bill is a surefire political disaster.

Read the whole thing.

Gore in '08?

It sounded like a crazy idea the other day, but new reports are emerging that some Democrats are really considering a Gore-led ticket as a solution to the Clinton-Obama standoff.

CFP: The IPCC on the run at last

Bob Carter at Canada Free Press:

According to UK journalist, Geoffrey Lean, all that is lacking to solve the global warming “crisis” is political will from governments.

Well, thank the Lord for that lack. For the IPCC’s 2007 final Summary for Policymakers shows that the climate alarmists are at last on the run. Their evidence for dangerous, human-caused global warming, always slim, now lies exposed in tatters for all to see.

In contrast, the alternative, persuasive and non-alarmist view of climate change is well summarized in two recently issued and readily available documents. The first is a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations, which was released at the UN’s Bali conference last December, supported by the signatures of 103 eminent professional persons. The second is the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change, the release of which coincided with the launch of the International Climate Science Coalition at a major climate rationalist conference in New York in early March.

The evidence for dangerous global warming adduced by the IPCC has never been strong on empirical science. Endless circumstantial scare campaigns have been run about melting glaciers, more droughts and storms and floods, sea-level rise and polar bears, but all founder on one inescapable problem – as does Mr. Al Gore’s over-hyped science fiction film. And that is that we live on a naturally variable planet. Change is what planet Earth does on all scales, and so far not one of the alleged effects of human-caused global warming has been shown to lie outside normal planetary variation. Sea-level rising? Sure, it happens. And the appropriate response is adaptation, as the Dutch have known for centuries.

Stuck with the absence of empirical evidence for dangerous warming or abnormal change, in 2001 the IPCC turned to graphmanship, giving prominence in its 3AR to the so-called “hockey-stick” record of temperature over the last 1000 years. The hockey-stick graphic, which appeared to show dramatic increases of temperature during the 20th century compared with earlier times, has now been exposed as statistical chicanery and, thankfully, is nowhere to be seen in the 4AR.

No hockey-stick and no empirical evidence, what is a man to do? Well, obviously, turn to virtual reality rather than real reality: PlayStation 4 here we come.

The IPCC’s expensive and complex computer models can be programmed to produce any desired result, and it is therefore not surprising that they uniformly predict warming since 1990. Meanwhile, the real-world global average temperature has stubbornly refused to obey this stricture. It exhibits no significant increase since 1998, and the preliminary 2007 year-end temperature confirms the continuation of a temperature plateau since 1998 to which is now appended a cooling trend over the last 3 years.

Is global cooling next?

Read the whole thing.

Poor Stéphane

“He has no instinct,” former Liberal minister and political commentator Liza Frulla said in an interview.

“At a certain point, people feel it if there is something wrong, even if they don't know exactly what it is. But he, poor Stéphane, doesn't feel it.”

When key people within your own party make statements like that, you know your leader is in trouble. Big trouble.

Asked about projected Liberal results in Quebec if there is a general election this spring, Mr. [Steven] Pinkus said, “It won't be pretty.”

Via the Globe and Mail: Dion facing revolt in Quebec ranks

Ontario's best laid electricity plan

Ontario's New Nukes: A very political power play is a very interesting article by Andy Frame that appeared in Saturday's Toronto Star about Atomic Energy Canada Limited (AECL) and the Ontario government's announcement that it intends to build 3,500 MW of new nuclear power by 2018.

One thing the announcement made abundantly clear was that the Ontario government has taken complete control of electric power planning: It makes the key decisions and then tells operators – Ontario Power Generation (OPG) or Bruce Power – where a plant will be built and what to buy.

For previous projects – Pickering, Bruce and Darlington – Ontario Hydro made the decisions based on system requirements, technology and operational considerations. But with the government taking over decision-making, the process becomes more complicated and more political – what should be a power plan becomes a political plan.

Frame provides some insightful information too about the timing and the numbers:

The Ontario government has made a firm commitment to shut down all the province's coal-powered generating plants by 2014. New nuclear plants will take four years for decisions, design and approvals, plus another six to build. That means completion in 2018 – if the schedule holds up. Time is short.

So even if the construction schedule holds up, which it likely won't, there appears to be a 4 year period of impending electricity shortages from the time of the coal plant closures in 2014 until the new nukes start coming on line in 2018.

Even at that, there's only 3,500 MW of new nukes planned, not enough to replace the current 6,800 MW of coal power. McGuinty's electricity plan has a lot of holes in it. He doesn't have enough new gas, wind or nuclear power combined to replace coal and meet Ontario's growing demand. It's unlikely that the shortfall can be made up with imports from Quebec, Manitoba, Michigan or New York.

One of two things will have to happen, maybe both:

• The coal closures will have to be re-re-scheduled to 2018 or later (remember McGuinty originally promised to close all of Ontario's coal plants by 2007)
• the demand for electricity in Ontario will need to decrease significantly, something it has rarely done.
  

But then again, when any commodity, electricity included, is in short supply it's price tends to rise which will curb demand somewhat. High electricity prices will also put a big damper on Ontario's manufacturing based economy.

Just how high that price will go is anyone's guess, but we all better get ready for it because it looks like a sure thing.

Update: Ontario's economy run by monkeys

2008 Climate Debate

There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. — Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)

Climate Confusion

Via Luboš Motl:

Roy Spencer's new book, "Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Leads to Bad Science, Pandering politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor", is now #7 among all books at amazon.com.

Congratulations to his bestseller! (And congratulations to Rush Limbaugh who has proved that he matters.)

Roy Spencer is not only one of the big experts but also one of the major entertainers among climate skeptics and his texts are witty. This book introduces the reader into basics of weather science and climate science but also exposes psychological and political reasons that have made climate science tainted and untrustworthy.

See also The sloppy science of global warming, a new text by Spencer on Anthony Watts' blog.

Marohasy: Climate facts to warm to

An interesting interview from the Australian.

Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.

Read the whole thing and be sure to visit Jennifer Marohasy's blog.

Gore to end Democrats' Schism?

Rumours are rampant that Nobel Prize winner, Inventor of the Internet and our favourite High Priest of the Church of Global Warming, Al "the Goracle" Gore is being considered to become the Saviour of the Democratic Party by ending the schism between the Hillaryites and the Obamatists:

John Zogby, the pollster who runs Zogby International, said today on the Hannity Radio Program that there are rumors that top ranking Democrats are talking about having Obama give his delegates to Al Gore. He said Obama would have to offer these delegates since he's in the lead and the thinking seems to be that Gore will have more appeal to white male voters and that Gore will likely be able to hold on to the support of Clinton supporters since these are core Democratic voters. He said that Hillary and Obama would be given either the VP position, high-level Cabinet positions, or the Senate Majority position or something along those lines in order to make their voters happy.

Comment from Matt DiBari at Blogs for John McCain's Victory:

I pray they do this.

The Democrats are facing a potential meltdown in Denver because they have two candidates that are so attractive to the Democratic electorate...

The obvious problem there is no matter who the party throws the nomination to, roughly half of the voters will feel that their candidate lost the election in the ’smoke-filled room.’

Handing the nomination to the man that has not a single delegate in the 2008 election cycle, no matter how popular that man is, is not the answer.

If they steal the nomination from both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and give it to an old white guy, they will hand the Presidency over to John McCain.

DiBari is right. The Democrats are clearly frustrated that neither candidate has been able to reach a clear majority of delegates and that the race will likely be decided by the "super delegates".

The two camps are polarized and neither will accept a super delegate decision. This new (Pennsylvania) poll suggests that 1 in 5 Democrat supporters would switch to McCain if their candidate doesn't get the Party's nod:

Among Obama supporters, 20 percent said they would vote for Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee, if Clinton beats their candidate for the nomination. Among Clinton supporters, 19 percent said they would support McCain in November if Obama is the Democratic nominee. (See poll)

Giving the nomination to Al Gore would be a terrible mistake for the DNC. Can they possibly be giving this serious consideration?

The New New Thing

Richard Branson, billionaire founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways and Virgin Records, recently invited some prominent friends and business leaders to his retreat in the British Virgin Islands to hatch plans to cash in on the "New New Thing" to emerge from the global warming hysteria:

Some of them, like Page, carbon-consciously jet-pooled in from Silicon Valley, where the financiers who bankrolled the Web boom of the 1990s have started chasing the new "New New Thing": green power. In an era of $100-plus oil, venture capitalists like Vinod Khosla, another invitee, are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into young companies that cook up biofuels and harness the power of the sun.

(...)

Many executives and financiers, including some in attendance at the retreat, have a lot of money riding on global warming. Branson, for example, has invested in a host of alternative energy enterprises, including existing businesses within his sprawling Virgin Group.

Gotta hand it to these guys, including former Brit PM Tony Blair - they're having a good time saving the planet.

There was plenty of time for fun and games, of course. After lunch one afternoon, Branson suggested that the entire gang sail off to Mosquito, a nearby island he also owns, aboard a dozen catamarans. He said there was a party over there...

One of Blair's security personal trailed behind in a motorboat. As the catamarans beached up on Mosquito, music was blaring and bikini-clad women were dancing. Branson deadpanned, "Normally the girls would be naked, but the prime minister is here."

The Global Warming Bubble

Steve Milloy at Canada Free Press:

Just this week, the Environmental Protection Agency issued its economic analysis of the Lieberman-Warner global warming bill that is now being considered by the Senate. The EPA projects that, if the bill is enacted, the size of our economy as measured by its gross domestic product (GDP) would shrink by as much as $2.9 trillion by the year 2050. That’s a 6.9 percent smaller economy than we might otherwise have if no action was taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

For an idea of what that might mean, consider our current economic crisis. During the fourth quarter of 2007, GDP actually increased by 0.6 percent, yet trepidation still spread among businesses, consumers and the financial markets. Though the EPA says that Lieberman-Warner would send our economy in the opposite direction by more than a factor of 10, few in Congress seem concerned. For more perspective, consider that during 1929 and 1930, the first two years of the Great Depression, GDP declined by 8.6 percent and 6.4 percent, respectively.

And what would we get for such a massive self-inflicted wound?

Basically nothing. Read the full article here.

Al Gore's 10 Errors

Scientific Mistakes and Exaggerations from an Interview March 17 in India Today with Christopher Monckton, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. (pdf)

Trenberth: Global Warming heating outer space

What do leading climate change alarmists do when their own scientific studies provide evidence that doesn't fit their agenda?

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years.

The oceans aren't warming as expected... puzzling?

Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.

In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.

Not only are the oceans not warming as expected, the oceans should be absorbing 80 to 90 per cent of all global warming!

"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says.

So the cooling is "insignificant". One can only wonder that had this same study found that there has been a "slight warming" of the oceans, would that also be labelled as "insignificant"?

Hold onto your seat belt, because you won't believe how this unexpected and inconvenient "slight cooling" is rationalized by a lead author of the IPCC's AR4.

But if the aquatic robots are actually telling the right story, that raises a new question: Where is the extra heat all going?

Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research says it's probably going back out into space.

Quick, better adjust those climate models to account for this new heating of outer space by the Earth's oceans!I can hear the the screams of the alarmists now, "We're heating the solar system, we must act now before it's too late".

But Trenberth then makes a startling admission:

The Earth has a number of natural thermostats, including clouds, which can either trap heat and turn up the temperature, or reflect sunlight and help cool the planet.

That can't be directly measured at the moment, however.

"Unfortunately, we don't have adequate tracking of clouds to determine exactly what role they've been playing during this period," Trenberth says.

Clouds. Made up of water vapour, the most significant of the greenhouse gases accounting for 95% of the greenhouse effect.

RTWT at The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat by Richard Harris

Update: comment from Icecap:

If anyone would bother to look at the actual data instead of just pronouncements in the media from NOAA or GISS, they would not be surprised at all by these findings. Here is a plot of actual monthly temperatures and the trends from the Hadley global data set (HADCRUT3v) and University of Alabama satellite derived lower tropospheric temperatures covering the same period as the robots measured ocean heat content. Like the robots they show a downtrend (cooling).
See full size graph here

It is also worth noting that Roger Pielke Sr. has advocated ocean heat content as a better measure of the global changes in temperatures than surface station based trends. Work by Roger and Anthony Watts at surfacestations.org have identified major issues with the land stations. In this case the ocean heat content agrees with the land stations, so the cooling over the past 5 years is very likely real. 5 years does not a long term trend make but it does call into question claims the warming is accelerating and that immediate action is required. Indeed Roger has just posted on this on Climate Science. See his post here. He has also reposted this story ”Big Time Gambling With Multi-Decadal Global Climate Model Predictions” by Roger A. Pielke Sr. and Roger A. Pielke Jr.

Clean Air Act battle

Environmentalists and left wingers, including some leading Democrats are pressuring the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate and limit CO2 emissions because greenhouse gases pose a "threat to humanity":

"It appears that EPA's efforts to regulate CO2 emissions have been effectively halted," Waxman wrote in a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson, "which would appear to be a violation of the Supreme Court's directive and an abdication of your responsibility to protect health and the environment from dangerous emissions of CO2."

But is the EPA really in violation of a Supreme Court ruling? This article from the Wall Street Journal explains:

The fracas concerns California's attempt to limit CO2 emissions via the federal Clean Air Act, which allows state air-quality standards that are stricter than Capitol Hill's. By California's reasoning, climate change is an air-quality problem, caused by a "pollutant," CO2, that goes into the air. Ergo, the state is entitled to a waiver. Not coincidentally, this is also the pet theory of the environmental left, which wants the EPA to declare greenhouse gases a threat to humanity. Last year, the Supreme Court agreed, to a point. It ruled that the EPA must determine whether or not carbon "endangers public health and welfare," and that if it does, the agency must regulate. That process is now underway.

The reason the EPA has never included CO2 with pollutants restricted by the Clean Air Act, like NOX or SOX, is that it is fundamentally different. It does not contaminate the air or make it unhealthy to breathe. It is natural: Think human respiration. Because there's no technology that can limit its release as carbon fuel combusts, it is unavoidable. Plus, when the Act was amended in 1990, Congress specifically rejected provisions for greenhouse gases.

(...)

The Supreme Court did not require the EPA to change its position on CO2, only to justify it within the scope of the Clean Air Act. In fact, the Court said the agency could defer a judgment because the science is complex and still evolving.

Unfortunately, it seems that the EPA has all but caved in to the Democrats.

h/t: Newsbusters

CEI Launches National Ad Campaign on the Impact of Al Gore’s Global Warming Policies

Washington , D.C. , March 11, 2008—Today the Competitive Enterprise Institute launches a national advertising campaign, focusing on the threat to affordable energy posed by Al Gore’s global warming agenda. The ads contrast Gore’s energy-consuming lifestyle with the life-and-death need for energy in developing countries.

CEI’s new campaign comes in the face of Gore’s March 1st announcement of a major new set of ads from his Alliance for Climate Protection to promote the global warming issue. CEI’s response includes both a broadcast television ad and related online video.

More videos here.

h/t: Bob

Liberal leadership woes

Stéphane Dion continues to demonstrate time and time again that he's not much of a leader. His tenure as the current leader if the Liberal Party of Canada is certainly limited and will likely expire shortly after the next federal election.

But if Liberals think that their party's next leader will fare better after the inevitable replacement of the hapless Dion, they better take a look at their top contenders:

• Bob Rae, the socialist former leader of Ontario's NDP and current Liberal Party candidate recently demonstrated his lack of knowledge of foreign affairs. That might not be so bad except for the fact that "Mr. Rae isn’t just any Liberal candidate: he’s the party’s foreign affairs critic".

• Oh well, the Grits always have Michael "Iggy" Ignatieff, the Harvard human rights professor turned politician and the Party's current Deputy Leader who was once described as the most prominent Liberal supporter of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
  

• Yup, that's the same Iggy who once said, "As a practical matter of politics, nobody knows what Kyoto is or what it commits us to".
  

Both of the above statements clearly put Iggy at odds with the current party leader and the liberal left in general.

The bumbling Stéphane Dion is generally seen as the best asset of Stephen Harper's minority Conservative government. It's Dion's weak leadership that has allowed Harper to govern with a defacto majority for the past two years.

But after taking a look at his two heirs apparent, one must wonder if either of them would be any more effective.

NOAA: Coolest December-February Since 2001 for U.S., Globe

A bit if inconvenient news for Gore, Suzuki and all the other climate alarmists.

The average temperature across both the contiguous U.S. and the globe during December 2007-February 2008 (climatological boreal winter) was the coolest since 2001, according to scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. In terms of winter precipitation, Pacific storms bringing heavy precipitation to large parts of the West produced high snowpack that will provide welcome runoff this spring.

U.S. Winter Temperature Highlights

In the contiguous United States, the average winter temperature was 33.2°F (0.6°C), which was 0.2°F (0.1°C) above the 20th century average - yet still ranks as the coolest since 2001. It was the 54th coolest winter since national records began in 1895.

Full report at the National Climatic Data Center

Foster: from Brundtland to Kyoto, the New Road to Serfdom

Peter Foster writes in today's National Post about how the environmental movement has been used to further the socialist cause that is leading society down a new Road to Serfdom...

Criticisms of Environment Minister John Baird for the vagueness of the moves announced this week to force oilsands to sequester CO2, and prevent construction of "dirty" coal plants reflects the Alice in Wonderland quality of the climate-change non-debate. Opposition parties brayed that he had not been "tough" enough. Media headlines suggested that big emitters had "won."

But nowhere in either the policy or the attacks would you find any suggestion that any measures, whether tough or not, would have the slightest impact on the global climate. How did we get to this ridiculous mess? It is all inextricably tied to the remarkable job that the Left has done in the past 20 years to rescue itself from the brink of extinction by exploiting environmental concerns.

That revival started in 1987 with the report of the UN-based Brundtland Commission. Brundtland was packed with representatives of the old left -- defined as those who seek state control over capitalist enterprise on the basis that it is both morally suspect and practically unstable. The commission played into widespread misconceptions: that the world was "running out" of resources; and that the capitalist rich had achieved their wealth at the expense of "the poor." However, its most important new weapon was that of the alleged despoliation of the environment by industrial society.

From Brundtland emerged the concept of "sustainable development," or SD, that was to be managed so as not to adversely affect future generations. Practically, the notion that the enormous range of private economic activities upon which growth depends could be beneficially monitored and vetted was ridiculous. SD nevertheless maintained that markets' "externalities" justified central co-ordination and control. What gave SD its great boost was the theory of catastrophic man-made climate change.

(...)

The old/new Left was quick to seize upon the potential of climate change at the huge Brundtland follow-up at Rio in 1992. Rio was organized by Brundtland commissioner Maurice Strong, a long-time committed Canadian socialist who was the strategic mastermind of the new environmental Left. From Rio emerged the processes that led to the Kyoto accord.

Why would governments support the theory of potentially disastrous man-made climate change? It was a combination of the success of the environmental Left -- in particular activist non-governmental organizations -- in stoking the concerns of the electorate, and of the desire of bureaucrats and policy-makers to stay relevant, busy and in power.

Read the rest here.

Gore sustainable investment fund raises $5B

GENEVA: The sustainable investment firm run by Al Gore, the former U.S. vice-president, is about to be closed to new investors, having raised close to its $5 billion target.

Generation Investment Management will probably restrict inflows into its main Global Equity Fund next month, Gore and David Blood, co-founder of the company, said at a news conference Tuesday.

Is there any doubt why Al Gore is the greatest climate fear-monger in the world?

Related: Blood and Gore.

A winter without end

Environment Canada says Ottawa is approaching a record-breaking year with 410.7 centimetres this year compared to the previous record of 444.6 centimetres that fell in the winter of 1970-71.

If it's any consolation, spring is just 11 days away.

Does Stéphane Dion have any backbone?

When the Liberals, NDP and Bloc combined forces last week to push a bill through the minority Parliament - a bill that would allow taxpayers to deduct contributions made to their Registered Educational Savings Plans (RESPs), estimated to cost the government between $1 to $2 billion per year - they probably thought that they put the governing Tories between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

Would Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the tax cutter and balanced budget champion, kill this tax cut or choose to run a deficit. Well, we found out the answer today:

Characterizing the measure as an irresponsible tax cut for the wealthy, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said he would make a provision squashing the proposal as part of forthcoming legislation related to last month's budget.

"It runs the risk of putting the balanced budget of our government into a Liberal deficit," Mr. Flaherty said. "We are not going to run a deficit, so we are going to kill the bill."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's gambit puts dozens of Liberal MPs in the uncomfortable position of potentially reversing their support for a colleague in order to stick with Leader Stéphane Dion's decision last month to back the government's budget and avoid an election.

All this begs the question - will Stéphane Dion, the current leader of the Liberal Party, have the backbone to defeat the Conservatives on their budget and trigger an election?

Or will this be just another opportunity for him to back down?

Vaclav Klaus

The Epicycles of Global Warming

How are the "True Believers" of anthropogenic global warming coping with the reality of this coldest of cold winters and an observed annual drop in temperature of 0.6 Degrees? Well, it seems that they're hopping on their "epicycles" and peddling them as hard and as furious as they can.

Courtesy of American Thinker.

Today we see a spate of new computer models showing up in science journals, each one attempting to rescue some piece of the ecological goose that laid the golden egg. These are often not called "models." With utter dishonesty, they are labeled "new studies of the climate." But they are not empirical studies at all. They are little math models with new epicycles, but still based on the same gross oversimplifications. To reassure the True Believers, they always end with the same punch line: Yes, Virginia, there really is a global warming faerie, and all the doom-sayers are right.

More...

Leadership, Dion style

Stephane Dion, the current leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, takes another bold stand in Parliament and supports the Harper government which he continues to claim is "so bad".

Only 11 Liberals voted for an NDP non-confidence motion condemning the government for failing to respect international climate agreements and for its refusal to adopt opposition-approved legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Other Liberals MPs were present but didn't vote.

Stephen Harper's Conservatives have a de facto majority in Parliament as long as Stephane Dion fears facing the voters on just about any issue.

U.K. moves towards clean coal power

An interesting battle is shaping up in Britain as that country considers moving "Back to black".

The Government will today anger environmentalists by signalling its support for a controversial new generation of coal-fired power stations and warning that Britain needs to burn more fossil fuels to prevent power cuts.

John Hutton, the Secretary of State for Business, will say that "clean coal" has a crucial role to play in filling Britain's energy gap for the future. He will accuse the green lobby of "gesture politics" by opposing any coal-fired plants, putting energy supplies at risk and presenting a false "black and white" choice to the public over coal.

Mr Hutton, the cabinet minister responsible for energy, will speak about the future of coal for the first time at a speech to the free market Adam Smith Institute in London.

Up to seven more coal plants are "in the pipeline".

The minister will argue that fossil fuels will also play an important role in ensuring the flexibility of the electricity generation system for which demand fluctuates, particularly in winter. Neither wind nor nuclear power could fulfil this role, so back-up from fossil fuels will be needed, with coal seen as the most reliable source.

Not to mention the most economical.

The media snowjob on global warming

by Lorne Gunter. Read it.

Record snowfalls

This winter is setting records... And not the kind that AlGore and Kooky Suzuki would want you to know about:

Locations such as Madison, Wis., and Concord, N.H., endured their snowiest winter since records began, and parts of the western USA also saw a much snowier-than-average winter, according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.

The U.S. winter of 2007-08 — which meteorologists classify as the months of December, January and February — will go down as the coldest since the winter of 2000-01, with a national average temperature of 33.2 degrees, NOAA reported Thursday.

In Madison, the 88.3 inches of wintertime snow shattered the all-time record of 76.1 inches, set in the winter of 1978-79, according to the National Weather Service.

Concord recorded 100.1 inches of snow this season, stressing roofs and frazzling drivers' nerves. Before that, the record had been 78 inches, set during the winter of 1886-87, according to the weather service.

No Regrets

A report on the recent Manhattan Conference on Global Warming:

The Carbon Sense Coalition based in Australia, says that the science and empirical evidence on Global warming is now clearly indicating that a “No Regrets” policy is the best course for the world to follow.

The Carbon Sense Coalition was one of the 52 organisations from 20 different countries which co-sponsored the recent International Conference on Climate Change in New York. Al Gore was invited to address the conference (he was even promised his $200,000 fee) but he declined to appear. Jim Hansen of NASA, another prominent alarmist, was also invited, but declined. (Contrast this with the Bali conference when a delegation of prominent sceptical scientists sought to present their petition to the UN. They were denied admission and refused an audience.)

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense” Mr Viv Forbes, who attended the conference along with about 20 other Australian and New Zealand speakers and observers, said that with over 500 delegates attending over 100 sessions presented and discussed by scientists, economists, politicians and policy analysts (many of world standing) there was no aspect of global warming science and policy that was not examined in the light of current knowledge and evidence.

For more information on the conference see:
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=22875 and
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/03/ny_climate_conference_journey.html

Forbes claimed that a number of clear conclusions arose from the conference:
1. There is no doubt that the earth is in a warming phase, and has been in this phase for some 300 years. Warming started after the frigid years of the Little Ice Age, and has continued, in waves, ever since.
2. There is no doubt that the short warm eras in earth’s history have proved very beneficial for life on earth as evidenced by the rising population, increased prosperity, increased life span, increased food production and the flourishing of art and architecture that has accompanied every one of the recent warm eras. Ice Ages, not Warm Ages, are the big threats to life on earth.
3. There is considerable uncertainty about the future trends in earth’s temperature. However, there is close correlation between past temperature trends and variations in solar output and planetary cycles, and these indicate that the current warming is likely to end, no matter what man does, maybe within decades. The cooling may have already started.
4. It is very clear that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen, but close study of the correlations between CO2 and temperature shows that it is far more likely that temperature changes trigger changes in CO2 levels. Past records also show that current levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are neither unusual nor concerning.
5. There are no credible claims or evidence from any quarter that current or projected levels of CO2 in the atmosphere pose any other threat to human, animal or plant life on earth. CO2 is not a contributor to air pollution; in fact it is a precious plant food on which all life on earth depends.
6. Man’s activities contribute less than 5% of total emissions into the atmosphere, and this addition has had only minor effect (probably undetectable) on the rising temperature trend.
7. There is good evidence that oceans, volcanoes and other natural sources expel large but variable quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. Oceans expel CO2 as they warm and absorb it as they cool.
8. It is agreed in all quarters that the computerised General Circulation Models utilised heavily by the IPCC to produce their warming alarms have no proven ability to forecast climate even one year in advance, let alone the 50 or more years that some people have quoted.
9. It is a fact that CO2 and the other atmospheric gases provide an insulating blanket to the earth, keeping surface temperature higher than it would otherwise be. However, science is agreed that CO2’s warming potential is almost exhausted, and even if current levels of CO2 doubled, it would not on its own cause alarming global warming. There is nothing to fear from CO2 induced warming.
10. The large positive warming feedbacks assumed by the IPCC are quite likely to be much smaller or even negative. Recent work is showing that the earth has a huge capacity to distribute and dissipate heat via winds, ocean currents, evaporation, precipitation and radiation to space. There is a large degree of self regulation in the natural global temperature controllers.

“In summary, man is not as important or as smart as some people believe he is. He is nowhere near to understanding the complex interactions between the big climate players – the sun, planetary cycles, atmospheric circulation, volcanoes and the dominating role of water in clouds, in the atmosphere, in the oceans, and in snow and ice. Moreover, his tiny contribution to an extremely minor atmospheric gas such as CO2 is highly unlikely to be the main driver of world climate.

“The inevitable conclusion to be drawn from the above observations is that man is unlikely to achieve any positive climate benefits from a very costly and disruptive policy of forcible decarbonisation of all human activities. The earth will largely ignore him.

“This indicates that the huge sums of money contributed by consumers, taxpayers and businesses to this futile war on carbon will be largely wasted, and future generations will have great regrets that their parents were so profligate with their
inheritance.

Forbes claimed that the nations of the world should follow a “No Regrets Policy” which yields dividends no matter what the future climate holds.

“We should abandon all policies that assume either warming or cooling, because there is no clear evidence on what the future holds.

“We should be strengthening our ability to adapt our lifestyle and our economy to whatever climate the future holds for us. We can be certain that climate will change, perhaps dramatically, but no one is yet competent to predict it, and man is
powerless to have significant effect on it.

“A “No Regrets” policy means exposing all people to the full cost of their actions, and allowing the climate and the market to deter silly practices and encourage sensible ones.

“Specifically, all governments should assist their communities to adapt to whatever changes are surely in store for us by ceasing to mandate market shares for any particular energy source, and abolishing all discriminatory energy taxes and
subsidies and all limits, caps and taxes on harmless emissions of CO2. They should also abandon all plans to mandate the Emissions Trading Game – leave that to the gamblers who choose to play. It will be more fun than Monopoly with a
similar outcome – a few big winners and all the rest losers.

“No one has the right to gamble the seed corn of the community on preparing for last year’s climate crisis. Governments are currently planning to spend huge and growing amounts of money on the very dubious assumption that global warming is a clear and present danger. This money would be far better spent on infrastructure to insulate us from future shortages of water, energy or food, procuring emergency equipment that can cope with ANY natural disaster, tackling real air or water pollution problems or designing policies that ensure that rising prices are left free to discourage the waste of scarce resources.

“Useful equipment and facilities and sound stable policies will serve us well in drought, flood, fire, tempest, tidal wave, global warming or global cooling.

This indeed would be a policy of “No Regrets”.

“Man believes he is a heavy hitter, confident in his ability to dominate and manipulate the climate. But he needs to remember, “Nature bats last”.

Still no consensus

EDMONTON - Only about one in three Alberta earth scientists and engineers believe the culprit behind climate change has been identified, a new poll reported today.

The expert jury is divided, with 26 per cent attributing global warming to human activity like burning fossil fuels and 27 per cent blaming other causes such as volcanoes, sunspots, earth crust movements and natural evolution of the planet.

A 99-per-cent majority believes the climate is changing. But 45 per cent blame both human and natural influences, and 68 per cent disagree with the popular statement that "the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled."

Reaction from the Heartland Institute.

"This is a ringing endorsement of the main theme of The Heartland Institute's conference," said Joseph Bast, president of The Heartland Institute. "There is no consensus on basic questions such as how much warming is occurring, how much of it is caused by human activity, or what future climate conditions will be. Those who claim the contrary are either misinformed or dishonest."

For more information about the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, visit http://www.heartland.org/NewYork08/newyork08.cfm.

Junk Science

Just another example of politicians acting on misinformation....

“The Government is irresponsible to jump on a bandwagon that has no base in scientific evidence. This is one of many examples where you get bad science leading to bad decisions which are counter-productive.

Unfortunately, imposing restrictive regulations like this do nothing to improve the environment.

Are lawsuits the answer?

We learned earlier today that PM Stephen Harper has decided to sue Stephane Dion and the Liberal Party for libel to stop their ridiculous barrage of unfounded allegations which are nothing more that character assassination by an increasingly unpopular and desperate Liberal Party and its ineffective leader.

Now John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel suggests suing Al Gore & Co. to hold them accountable for "climate fraud".

“[I] have a feeling this is the opening,” Coleman said. “If the lawyers will take the case – sue the people who sell carbon credits. That includes Al Gore. That lawsuit would get so much publicity, so much media attention. And as the experts went to the witness stand to testify, I feel like that could become the vehicle to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming.”

Are lawsuits the answer to politicians and climate alarmists who have run amok? They just might be. It should be interesting to watch these unfold.

New report counters IPCC AR4

The Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (N-IPCC - not to be confused with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC) will be published this week by the Heartland Institute.

It promises to be the most complete, up-to-date, authoritative summary of peer-reviewed critical positions with respect to "Anthropogenic Global Warming".

The report is titled Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate and is edited by S. Fred Singer. From the report's Forward:

In his speech at the United Nations’ climate conference on September 24, 2007, Dr. Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, said it would most help the debate on climate change if the current monopoly and one-sidedness of the scientific debate over climate change by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were eliminated. He reiterated his proposal that the UN organize a parallel panel and publish two competing reports.

The present report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) does exactly that. It is an independent examination of the evidence available in the published, peer-reviewed literature – examined without bias and selectivity. It includes many research papers ignored by the IPCC, plus additional scientific results that became available after the IPCC deadline of May 2006.

The report is highly critical of the UN's Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) released last year. From the N-IPCC's Summary for Policymakers (SPM):

The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group-1 (Science) (IPCC-AR4 2007), released in 2007, is a major research effort by a group of dedicated specialists in many topics related to climate change. It forms a valuable compendium of the current state of the science, enhanced by having an index, which had been lacking in previous IPCC reports. AR4 also permits access to the numerous critical comments submitted by expert reviewers, another first for the IPCC.

While AR4 is an impressive document, it is far from being a reliable reference work on some of the most important aspects of climate change science and policy. It is marred by errors and misstatements, ignores scientific data that were available but were inconsistent with the authors’ pre-conceived conclusions, and has already been contradicted in important parts by research published since May 2006, the IPCC’s cut-off date.

In general, the IPCC fails to consider important scientific issues, several of which would upset its major conclusion – that “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations” (emphasis in the original).

The IPCC does not apply generally accepted methodologies to determine what fraction of current warming is natural, or how much is caused by the rise in greenhouse (GH) gases. A comparison of ‘fingerprints’ from best available observations with the results of state-of-the-art GH models leads to the conclusion that the (human-caused) GH contribution is minor. This fingerprint evidence, though available, was ignored by the IPCC.

The following is taken from the report's Conclusions:

The extent of the modern warming – the subject of the first question – appears to be less than is claimed by the IPCC and in the popular media. We have documented shortcomings of surface data, affected by urban heat islands and by the poor distribution of land-based observing stations.

(...)

This report shows conclusively that the human greenhouse gas contribution to current warming is insignificant. Our argument is based on the well established and generally agreed-to ‘fingerprint’ method. Using data published by the IPCC and further elaborated in the U.S.-sponsored CCSP report, we have shown that observed temperature trend patterns disagree sharply with those calculated from greenhouse models.

And finally, this statement on Policy Implications:

Our findings, if sustained, point to natural causes and a moderate warming trend with beneficial effects for humanity and wildlife. This has obvious policy implications: Schemes proposed for controlling CO2 emissions, including the Kyoto Protocol, proposals in the U.S. for federal and state actions, and proposals for a successor international treaty to Kyoto, are unnecessary, would be ineffective if implemented, and would waste resources that can better be applied to genuine societal problems [Singer, Revelle and Starr 1991].

Even if a substantial part of global warming were due to greenhouse gases – and it is not – any control efforts currently contemplated would give only feeble results. For example, the Kyoto Protocol – even if punctiliously observed by all participating nations – would decrease calculated future temperatures by only 0.02 degrees C by 2050, an undetectable amount.

In conclusion, this NIPCC report falsifies the principal IPCC conclusion that the reported warming (since 1979) is very likely caused by the human emission of greenhouse gases. In other words, increasing carbon dioxide is not responsible for current warming. Policies adopted and called for in the name of ‘fighting global warming’ are unnecessary.

It is regrettable that the public debate over climate change, fueled by the errors and exaggerations contained in the reports of the IPCC, has strayed so far from scientific truth. It is an embarrassment to science that hype has replaced reason in the global debate over so important an issue.

Contributors to the N-IPCC report are: Warren Anderson United States, Dennis Avery United States, Franco Battaglia Italy, Robert Carter Australia, Richard Courtney United Kingdom, Joseph d’Aleo United States, Fred Goldberg Sweden, Vincent Gray New Zealand, Kenneth Haapala United States, Klaus Heiss Austria, Craig Idso United States, Zbigniew Jaworowski Poland, Olavi Karner Estonia, Madhav Khandekar Canada, William Kininmonth Australia, Hans Labohm Netherlands, Christopher Monckton United Kingdom, Lubos Motl Czech Republic, Tom Segalstad Norway, S. Fred Singer United States, Dick Thoenes Netherlands, Anton Uriarte Spain, Gerd Weber Germany.

Related: Climate change not due to greenhouse gases, NYT: Global Warming Skeptics Convene in New York, The Earth Times: Research of Hundreds More Scientists Shows the Natural 1,500-Year Climate Cycle, Fox News: Global Warming: Is it really a crisis?

Harper vs. Dion

Who said winter in Canada was dull? There's always politics to keep us entertained.

The current leader of the Liberal Party, Stephane Dion has placed his foot firmly and irrevocably in his mouth:

"Mr. Speaker, that will not help the problems of the Liberal leader, this will become the biggest error in judgment of his career."

Stephen Taylor has more.

I've been tagged...

OMG, I've been tagged in one of these silly blogger games! Now, I'm supposed to share six non-important things/habits/quirks about myself! Holy crap!!

Well, here goes...

1. I like red meat
2. I have a cold wet nose
3. I prefer warm weather over cold
4. I have a difficult time learning new tricks
5. I like to scratch behind my ear with my foot
6. I always raise one foot off the ground when I pee

Now I'm supposed to pass this nonsense on to six other victims:

1. Mitchieville
2. Les Enfants Terrible
   
3. Five Feet of Fury
4. Grouchy Old Cripple
5. Officially Screwed
6. The Other Club

There, glad that's over with!

Who will pay for carbon tax?

In a rare burst of clarity in a report otherwise loaded with "green" bafflegab, the economic study the David Suzuki Foundation released last week to bolster its case for a $100 per tonne carbon tax accurately explained the motivation behind all these government mandated, central planning programs.

To wit, all involve: "(P)assing the cost of carbon on down through the supply chain and on to industry and eventually consumers. This is the raison d'etre of a carbon price ..." Exactly.

Or, as Lorrie Goldstein puts it, when they tell you "polluters will pay" to reduce greenhouse gases, they mean you and me.

No Mercy from Mercer

His performance has been generally seen as disastrous, but I haven't picked on poor Stéphane Dion, the current leader of the Liberal Party of Canada lately. I guess I don't need to when Canada's top funny man does this ...

Comedian Rick Mercer has Stéphane Dion's struggling Liberals in his sights.

In the two years since Prime Minister Stephen Harper & Co. booted the Liberals out of government after a 13-year reign, the Liberals have not once stood up against the Conservatives when it meant they'd have to go back to the electorate for a vote.

When Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion pledged not to bring down Harper over the budget this week he left himself and his party open to ridicule and eye-rolling even from within its own ranks.

"This is a surrender and an embarrassment," one Liberal blogger wrote this week.

"How in the hell can we pretend any longer to have any credibility as the official Opposition?" asked another blogger.

The party even was the subject of a hilarious skit on Rick Mercer's show post-budget that made fun of the Liberals for constantly criticizing the Tories but never bringing them down when given the chance.

As a top Liberal blogger put it, "When they start laughing at you, it's all over".

You can watch a video clip of Rick Mercer's skit here. (it's Season 5, Episode 16, Feb 26, 2008 - Mercer: Message from the Liberals)

God to Gore

From Mens News Daily. Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.

Since the Renaissance, considerable human energy and ingenuity in the Western world has been applied to improving and increasing food production and the results of manual labor. Aiding the resulting elevation of living standards was the rise of mathematics and the physical sciences. People came increasingly to understand the workings of the physical world and the God-given laws of science governing nature.

In the 19th century, however, scientific progress became infused with nonsensical political theory, the atheistic and materialistic socialism of the French Revolution. From this came the idea of progress toward conquest of nature. It was not sufficient merely to understand the processes of nature. Man had to become godlike and to control the forces of nature.

As C. S. Lewis warned us in The Abolition of Man,

At the moment, then, of Man's victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual man, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely 'natural' – to their irrational impulses. Nature untrammelled by values, rules the Conditioners and, through them, all humanity. Man's conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature's conquest of man.

Our current-day obsession with the hypothesis of global warming as a man-made phenomenon, rather than a normal cycle of God's nature, is one result.

Its impetus is to transfer all individual freedom to a single, universal control board whose chairman presumably would be Al Gore. The Kyoto Protocol, don't forget, was a product of the UN and collectivist bodies like the EU.

Individuals are no longer to be free to make decisions about how to heat their homes, what automobiles to drive, even what foods to eat. Liberal-progressive-socialist councils will tell us what we are required to want and how we are required to conduct our daily lives.

Gore, the man who would be God, is unsatisfied with continuing an open scientific investigation of natural phenomena. He has, once and for all time, selected his hypothesis and strives mightily to achieve the earthly power to impose its sanctions upon us all.

The article also contains a number of useful links to recent news relating to the fact that "much counter-evidence to the man-made global warming hypothesis has come to light."

Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age

Temperature Monitors Report Widespread Global Cooling

Measuring the Phoenix Urban Heat Island

Global warming skeptics buoyed by record cold

UA prof challenges one of central beliefs about global warming

Ocean circulation in a warming climate

Chilling Effect

Global Warming: Experts' Opinions versus Scientific Forecasts

Kilimanjaro's ice set to linger

The Sun Also Sets

Read the sunspots

The real costs of climate change