Ice

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's descent thrusters have dispersed overlying soil and exposed a harder substrate that appears to be ice.

And where there's ice, there may be organic compounds, a.k.a. "life".

CNN: Chances dim for climate-change legislation

The Lieberman-Warner carbon tax bill is in trouble:

Without widespread corporate support, passage of the bill - already a long shot at best - becomes even more unlikely this year. President Bush remains opposed. House Democrats have been slow to act.

Besides that, a backdrop of rising gasoline prices and the sluggish economy makes it difficult to win votes for a regulatory scheme that will raise the prices of electricity and gasoline. In fact, a key purpose of the bill is to put a price on the emissions of greenhouse gases, as a way to speed the transition to a clean-energy economy and slow down global warming.

The bill would set a cap on so-called greenhouse gases that would reduce them by 70% by 2050 and puts a price on carbon emissiosns.

"In the long run, you want people who burn carbon to pay more," says John Rowe, the CEO of Exelon, the nation's biggest generator of nuclear power. Still, even Rowe worries that the economy could be shocked if the cost of emitting carbon dioxide rises too quickly. "We don't think the economy can stand $30 to $40 carbon in the early years," he says. Political support for climate action could also erode if consumers revolt. In Europe, where permits to emit carbon have been trading since 2005, it now costs nearly $40 to emit a ton of carbon.

And that's a carbon tax that's not being accepted very well at all.

Yet, all three Presidential contenders support climate-change legislation.

Rush

on Vaclav Klaus, Communism and the Ideology of Environmentalism:

RUSH: You want to hear some conservatism? Vaclav Klaus, president, Czech Republic, yesterday, National Press Club, trying to warn everybody in America that we are being hoaxed with global warming and Algore.



Last night on Fox News Channel's Special Report with Brit Hume during the panel discussion, the All Stars, Brit Hume spoke with Juan Williams about Vaclav Klaus, and Hume said, "Do you think Klaus is on the right track here or that he's an alarmist in the other direction?"

WILLIAMS: What he's saying is really interesting to me. I hadn't thought this through. But he's saying it's now beyond the scientists. He is saying in fact that it's an ideology that's seeking to take control of the world, is gonna tell us how to live, what cars to drive, whether you can have a refrigerator and all that, and suggest that it would somehow go beyond politics and not the way that suggests, oh, we have a green movement that everybody gets behind, but in fact would have political consequence not unlike a dictatorship. In all honesty, it struck me as something different. I had not heard this line of argument before because I've never felt threatened by an environmentalist. I think my consciousness is raised.

RUSH: I'm speechless. This is so typical. Here is a learned man, Juan Williams is a smart guy, and only yesterday has he ever heard somebody suggest that the environmental movement is not about environmentalism, that it's about large government, total control, dictatorial powers?

Right on Rush. Right on.

Update: Charles Krauthammer:

Look, on climate change, I'm agnostic. I wrote 20 years ago and believe today that humans pumping huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere can't be harmless.

But the idea that we know exactly what it does, and that it's catastrophic, I think, is rank speculation. It depends on computer models which are inherently speculative. It depends on a cascade of events and a prediction of a cascade of events, all of which are improbable. And if you add it all up, it is pure speculation.

And I think Klaus is right. By pretending that the issue is closed — one of the news magazines had a cover article that the argument over global warming is over. No arguments in science are over. Newton's laws of motion, people for 300 years imagined was over the debate on that, and they turned out to be wrong.

So the idea that at this early stage in the science the argument is closed — but Klaus is right that it is being used by the new class, people, the experts, the planners, people on the left — they used to say we ought to control society in the name of the working class-that's communism- -and then in the name of state control of industry, and our superior knowledge of how to control society — that is the British socialist model.

All of those models have collapsed. And what they have been handed here is a gift. In the name of the planet, now, these experts are going to tell us how to live, and regulate.

And Klaus is right. It's a way to take these decisions out of the hands of individuals and to put it in the hands of experts acting in the name of the state and in the name of the planet. That is the new socialism, and he's right.

Blue Planet in Green Shackles

Vaclav Klaus has a new book and has challenged Al Gore to debate the science of global warming.

Washington - Czech President Vaclav Klaus said Tuesday he is ready to debate Al Gore about global warming, as he presented the English version of his latest book that argues environmentalism poses a threat to basic human freedoms. "I many times tried to talk to have a public exchange of views with him, and he's not too much willing to make such a conversation," Klaus said. "So I'm ready to do it."

[...]

Klaus, an economist, said he opposed the "climate alarmism" perpetuated by environmentalism trying to impose their ideals, comparing it to the decades of communist rule he experienced growing up in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the Goracle to enter the debate. He won't - because he would surely lose and he knows it.

It's been said that the global warming alarmists resemble a pseudo-religion with all the trappings: a struggle for salvation (of the planet), a doomsday scenario, a belief system based on faith (not science) and a high priest in the form of the Goracle Himself.

Klaus has made this analogy to communism before and he knows of what he speaks, having grown up under totalitarian rule. Communism failed both ideologically and as a form of government. Says Klaus:

"In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat - this time, in the name of the planet,"

Despite the best efforts of the lefties, socialism hasn't succeeded in western democracies. But environmentalism has become the new rallying cry for those who would like to impose state control on every aspect of our lives.

Klaus' new book is Blue Planet in Green Shackles - What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? Here are some notes from his presentation in Washington:

To make my position and my message clear, I should probably revoke my personal experience. My today’s thinking is substantially influenced by the fact that I spent most of my life under the communist regime which ignored and brutally violated human freedom and wanted to command not only the people but also the nature. To command “wind and rain” is one of the famous slogans I remember since my childhood. This experience taught me that freedom and rational dealing with the environment are indivisible. It formed my relatively very sharp views on the fragility and vulnerability of free society and gave me a special sensitivity to all kinds of factors which may endanger it.

I do not, however, live in the past and do not see the future threats to free society coming from the old and old-fashioned communist ideology. The name of the new danger will undoubtedly be different, but its substance will be very similar. There will be the same attractive, to a great extent pathetic and at first sight quasi-noble idea that transcends the individual in the name of something above him, (of something greater than his poor self), supplemented by enormous self-confidence on the side of those who stand behind it. Like their predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality. In the past it was in the name of the masses (or of the Proletariat), this time in the name of the Planet. Structurally, it is very similar.

That's worth reading.

I can't find a link where the book can be purchased yet. Let me know in the comments if you know it.

Update: here's a link to Klaus' book from Barnes & Noble.

The horrible effects of climate change

The horror... say it isn't so!

Orange Punch

by Mark Landsbaum:

“There is no proven cause-and-effect relationship between increasing CO2 – a natural gas essential to life on Earth and not a pollutant as the U.S. Supreme Court has concluded – and increasing temperatures. Indeed, in the past decade while CO2 levels have greatly increased, global temperatures have declined. Temperatures over next decade are projected to decrease even more, while greenhouse gases are expected to continue increasing in the atmosphere.

“Perhaps this explains the pell-mell rush to pass new laws, impose new regulations and adopt more fees and taxes. The passage of time seems to be working against global warming alarmism, cooling off opinions even as the atmosphere cools.

“Virtually every human activity, from exhaling to laying concrete to generating electricity, emits CO2. The alternatives government would impose either are impractical, exorbitantly costly or simply don’t exist. But in the meantime, a rash of new regulations and taxes can do great economic harm, putting this state and nation at a competitive disadvantage with the booming economies of China and India, where such economy-crippling impediments aren’t about to be imposed.”

h/t

Ball: The Unholy Alliance

Dr. Tim Ball continues his series of articles at Canada Free Press with The Unholy Alliance that manufactured Global Warming

In previous parts of this series (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) I’ve shown how a political agenda took over climate science primarily through the UN and specifically the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The agenda was spread to the world at the 1992 Rio Conference. Periodic Reports from the IPCC maintained the focus on CO2 and increased the political pressure. Please understand I am not claiming a conspiracy, but rather a cabal, which is defined as a secret political clique pushing a political agenda; in this case, designed by Maurice Strong.

Although the IPCC was the major vehicle other agencies got caught up quickly as governments became more involved. Results of the IPCC reports were skillfully propagandized so the issue took hold with the media and the public.

Read it all.

The Grantsmanship game

Jerome J. Schmitt at American Thinker says, academic researchers have hit upon a winning formula:

...if one ties one's research project somehow -- even via the most tenuous and flimsy grounds -- to global warming, one's grant proposal will have much greater chance to be selected for funding...

And if one wants one's research grant to be renewed, then one had better conclude that global warming is somehow threatening something!

That helps to explain why you see so many studies these days of the "devastating" effects of global warming, despite all the recent evidence that the earth is not warming.

h/t

Meteorolgist: We need to have cooler heads about AGW

Another dissenter from the so-called "consensus" on global warming appears in the Minneapolis St. Paul Star-Tribune:

Longtime WCCO-TV meteorologist Mike Fairbourne says that the environmental movement is practicing "squishy science" when it ties human activity to global warming.

Fairbourne's assessment Monday came on the same day that the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine appeared before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and announced that it has the signatures of more than 31,000 scientists -- including Fairbourne's -- who agree that the human impact on global warming is overblown.

Fairbourne, who joined WCCO in 1977 and has been a meteorologist for 40 years, said that while there is no doubt that "there has been some warming" of global temperatures in recent years ... there is still a pretty big question mark" about how much of that warming is from human activity.

"squishy science" - I like that!

h/t

CNSNews: Gore Financially Invested in Climate Cause

Fred Lucas at CNSNews.com explains Climate Crusader Al Gore's financial stake in a host of businesses that would profit from new government policies designed to fight global warming.

32K Scientists reject AGW "consensus"

In today's Financial Post, Lawrence Solomon asks, How many scientists does it take to establish that a consensus does not exist on global warming?

Good question. Would more than 31,000 do?

the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) will announce that more than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition rejecting claims of human-caused global warming. The purpose of OISM's Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of "settled science" and an overwhelming "consensus" in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climate damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis.

It is evident that 31,072 Americans with university degrees in science - including 9,021 PhDs, are not "a few." Moreover, from the clear and strong petition statement that they have signed, it is evident that these 31,072 American scientists are not "skeptics."

The press conference is set for Monday May 19, at 10:00 AM in Washington, D.C. when Dr. Arthur Robinson (OISM) will Release the Names of almost 32,000 Scientists Rejecting the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) Hypothesis.

Solomon's article contains a concise history of the efforts of an ever increasing number of scientists to counter the greenhouse gas propaganda beginning with the mere 47 who signed the “Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Greenhouse Warming,” back in 1992 decrying “the unsupported assumption that catastrophic global warming follows from the burning of fossil fuels and requires immediate action” to the 4,000 signatories (including 72 Nobel Prize winners) who signed the Heidelberg Appeal, to the 2001 Oregon Petition:

The Oregon petition garnered an astounding 17,800 signatures, a number all the more astounding because of the unequivocal stance that these scientists took: Not only did they dispute that there was convincing evidence of harm from carbon dioxide emissions, they asserted that Kyoto itself would harm the global environment because “increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

If 17,800 were not enough, perhaps 32,000 will do.

h/t: Icecap.

Facing fears & global warming

John Christy is the distinguished professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth Systems Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, studying global climate since 1987.

Here's a bit of what he had to say in the Baptist Standard:

I am a climate scientist. My research and that of many others does not lead me to be afraid for the climate’s future. However, I am fearful for other reasons:

• I fear for my science. The truth is, our climate system is so complex that we cannot predict its state even into next month. Nonetheless, I see high-profile individuals (usually untrained in science) making claims with unwavering confidence about the climate’s trajectory and a looming catastrophe.

[...]

I do not see the humility this science demands. In fact, I suspect an anthropologist, isolated from the media, would observe this global-warming fervor as a religion complete with anointed authority figures, sacred documents, creeds, sins requiring absolution, castigation of heretics and even an apocalypse.

• I fear for humanity. When people speak about “doing something about global warming,” please listen carefully. What they advocate are “solutions,” which lead to rationing of energy while having no climate impact. A hidden consequence of these “solutions” is to make energy more expensive—a regressive burden disproportionately inflicted upon the poorest among us.

[...]

The simple truth is that whatever the climate does—and our research at the University of Alabama in Huntsville does not support predictions of an impending disaster—the regulations proposed to date and promoted by the green agenda will have no measurable effect.

US Senators Warn Bill Could Spike Gas $1.50 to $5 a Gallon

Via the Business and Media Institute, Senators Inhofe and Sessions blast the massive costs of global warming legislation.

Worried about gas prices hitting $4 a gallon and beyond? Imagine if they were $6, $7 or even $8 a gallon. Those levels are a certain possibility should Congress pass cap-and-trade legislation, which could face a vote in early June.

Oil is trading at record levels, in excess of $120 a barrel. Leading Republican Sens. James Inhofe (Okla.) and Jeff Sessions (Ala.) both told the Business & Media Institute (BMI) energy prices would drastically increase if the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (S. 2191) is signed into law.

“The studies show it would be directly affected, would be a $1.50 a gallon, in addition to what it is today,” Inhofe, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said to (BMI).

“So now I think we need to concentrate on what it will cost the American people,” he said during the press conference. “To try to put it in a perspective people understand, if we had ratified, according to the Wharton School of Economics, the Kyoto Treaty, back five years ago, it would have cost about – between $300 and $330 billion – that was the range they had. This bill that’s up today is $471 billion – far more than that. And the question is, what do you get for it?”

Canada, it seems, is not alone when it comes to liberal lunacy. Senators Inhofe and Sessions are battling the same insanity of raising energy taxes at a time of record high prices.

And this will do nothing to combat a global warming problem that just isn't happening. It's just another gigantic liberal tax grab.

Dion's tax grab

With Canadians facing record prices for gasoline, the current leader of the Liberal Party, Stéphane Dion is about to offer a solution that scares even his own MPs... higher taxes on gasoline (and other carbon based fuels).

There's a definition for this kind of thinking.
It's called insanity.

Polar Bears listed by US

The polar bear is now officially the pawn of the global warming alarmists.

The U.S. government has decided to list polar bears as a threatened species under its Endangered Species Act because of the effects of global warming

This decision comes despite the fact that polar bear numbers are actually increasing. But the doomsayers and alarmists have never allowed little things like facts to get in the way of their agenda.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne, who made the announcement in Washington on Wednesday, said the decision was based on findings that polar bears' sea ice habitat, vital to their survival, has dramatically melted in recent decades.

He said computer models projected declines in sea ice averaging 30 per cent by the middle of the century. Scientists predict that as a result, two-thirds of polar bears could disappear by then.

There we go again - making policy based on computer models. Last week the alarmists were all in a tizzy and had to make excuses for their computer models when it became clear that mother nature is not paying attention to all their doomsday predictions and we might be heading into a period of global cooling.

Oh, and as for all that great loss of sea ice, here's a recent item titled Report: Global Sea Ice at 'Unprecedented' Levels:

“On a global basis, world sea ice in April 2008 reached levels that were ‘unprecedented’ for the month of April in over 25 years,” Steve McIntyre wrote on Climateaudit.org on May 4. “Levels are the third highest (for April) since the commencement of records in 1979, exceeded only by levels in 1979 and 1982.”

When arctic sea ice decreased last summer it was all over the news. But how many news stories did we hear that the ice had recovered and reached "unprecedented" levels?

Now that those cuddly polar bears are on the endangered species list, you can brace yourself for an onslaught of activists demanding legislation to reduce carbon emissions.

Update: Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee

“Unfortunately, the decision to list the polar bear as ‘threatened’ appears to be based more on politics than science,” Senator Inhofe said. “With the number of polar bears substantially up over the past forty years, the decision announced today appears to be based entirely on unproven computer models. The decision, therefore, is simply a case of reality versus unproven computer models, the methodology of which has been challenged by many scientists and forecasting experts. If the models are invalid, then the decision based on them is not justified. It’s disappointing that Secretary Kempthorne failed to stand up to liberal special interest groups who advocated this listing."

A history of global warming alarmism

Dr. Tim Ball on The Hockey Stick scam that heightened global warming hysteria in Canada Free Press.

Climate change will boost farm output

Global warming alarmists don't want you to know that a little moderate warming would actually be good for us. If history is any indicator, the alarmists are dead wrong about the effects of warming. Periods of warming have historically been periods of great prosperity and growth.

Now comes this news from Australia:

AUSTRALIAN agricultural output will double over the next 40 years, with climate change predicted to increase, rather than hinder, the level of production.

A recent spate of reports forecasting the decline of Australian agriculture because of climate change have greatly exaggerated, and even completely misreported the threat of global warming, according to senior rural industry figures.

In a report published by the Australian Farm Institute, executive director Mick Keogh says agricultural output is projected to improve strongly through to 2050, with a growing global population and increased economic wealth boosting demand for Australian produce. If the sector adapts even modestly, production would increase rather than decrease as a result of climate change, the report says.

Predictions of a 20 per cent drop in farm production by mid-century were cited by Kevin Rudd and Agriculture Minister Tony Burke as justification for Australia's signing of the Kyoto Protocol.

In fact, Mr Keogh says, if global warming does occur, some areas such as southeast Queensland will receive more rain, and as a result will greatly benefit. Recent research has shown increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lifts plant production by up to 30 per cent in a phenomenon known as carbon fertilisation.

Oh those contrary plants. They just love CO2 and warm temperatures!

How many states?

The remaining candidates in the US Presidential election all say they will address global warming. But dealing with the problem will be much more difficult than anyone thought. As Senator Obama explains, the United States is much larger than previously known.



Update: And if you're surprised by Obama's knowledge of geography, you might be interested in how he does at history.

Monckton: The cost and futility of trading hot air

Here's a bit from the Foreword – A Political Context of a new paper by Lord Christopher Monckton, The Cost and Futility of Trading Hot Air:

European and American statists, including activist NGOs like the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), assert that the moderate climate warming that is occurring today is a man-made catastrophe, and have embraced the dystopian fantasy that coercive policies for the elimination of fossil fuel production and usage can prevent or turn back the current warming cycle. They have, thus, made the “global warming planetary emergency” into the central plank of their ongoing campaigns for more centralized government.

[...]

For decades environmental activists have insisted that capitalism is not a “sustainable” (sufficient to “save the planet”) economic system. We now hear brazen declarations that democracy is no longer a “sustainable” political process. Al Gore lends a popular, philosophical/theological underpinning to collectivist impulses by casting the root of all environmental evils – real and imagined – in the scientific and industrial/technological revolutions. Put differently, for Gore and the EDF, the planetary environment, not human life, appears the supreme standard of value. Therefore, everything, most importantly Science and Economics, must be pried away from the benefit of man and pressed into total service of the State.

Given just a decade or two of such “sustainable” policies, bolstered by Gore’s religion, the world will be well on its way to a new Dark Ages, and the human misery it breeds.

The American people who owe their long, comfortable and healthy lives to the accomplishments of modern industry, technology, medicine and affordable fossil energy ought to be outraged by activists’ claims and policies.

Monckton says that carbon ‘cap-and-trade’ is an immoral non-solution to a non-problem. And he's exactly right. But of course, a ‘cap-and-trade’ system is exactly what Stéphane Dion, the current leader of the Liberal Party, would like to impose upon Canadians should he ever become Prime Minister.

Read the The cost and futility of trading hot air (pdf)

Who's winning the climate debate??

Al Gore refuses to debate climate change. Could it be because when warmists, or "greens" do engage in debate that they don't do terribly well when confronted with facts put forward by skeptics?

Luboš Motl asks the question, Why are green advocates failing in climate debate? In his post Motl quotes one Mark Seal, a "green" who felt the need to create a discussion forum named Talk Climate Change.

When I launched the TalkClimateChange forums last year, I was initially worried as to where I would find people who didn’t believe in global warming. I had planned to create a furious debate, but in my experience global warming was such a universally accepted issue that I expected to have to dredge the slums of the internet in order to find a couple of deniers who could keep the argument thriving.

The first few days were slow going, but following a brief write-up of my site by Junk Science I was swamped by climate skeptics who did a good job of frightening off the few brave Greens who slogged out the debate with. Whilst there was a lot of rubbish written, the truth was that they didn’t so much frighten the Greens away - they comprehensively demolished them with a more in depth understanding of the science, cleverly thought out arguments, and some very smart answers. If you want to learn about the physics of convection currents, gas chromatography, or any number of climate science topics then read some of the early debates on TalkClimateChange. I didn’t believe a word of it, but I had to admit that these guys were good.

In the following months the situation hardly changed. As the forum continued to grow, as the blog began to catch traffic, and as I continued to try and recruit green members I continued to be disappointed with the debate. In short, and I am sorry to say it, anti-greens (Reds, as we call them) appear to be more willing to comment, more structured, more able to quote peer reviewed research, more apparently rational and apparently wider read and better informed.

Luboš also has a poll running on his blog where you can vote on why you think the greens are weak in the climate debate.

Reuters: Britain puts personal carbon trading plan on ice

It seems that the goal of reducing the Earth's temperature by a fraction of a degree in the next half century is getting off to a bit of a rocky start because, ahem, "it would be too expensive"

LONDON (Reuters) - The British government has shelved plans to get people to reduce their carbon footprint by allowing them to trade personal emissions permits because it would be too expensive and ambitious.

After studying ways of encouraging individuals to cut their CO2 emissions so they could sell their excess permits to those who exceed their carbon quota, the environment ministry has concluded it is not yet practical.

"Personal carbon trading has potential to engage individuals in taking action to combat climate change, but is essentially ahead of its time and expected costs for implementation are high," the ministry said Thursday.

h/t

FOX: Cold Water Thrown on Antarctic Global-Warming Predictions

via Fox News:

Antarctica hasn't warmed as much over the last century as climate models had originally predicted, a new study finds.

[...]

The new study, detailed in the April 5 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, marks the first time that researchers have been able to give a progress report on Antarctic climate model projections by comparing climate records to model simulations.

[...]

"This is a really important exercise for these climate models," said study leader Andrew Monaghan of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Co.

Monaghan and his team found that while climate models projected temperature increases of 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.75 degrees Celsius) over the past century, temperatures were observed to have risen by only 0.4 F (0.2 C).

Once again observed real data does not support the alarmist predictions of computer climate models.

Climate summary for 2008 shows coolest April in 11 years

Via NOAA:

The average temperature in April 2008 was 51.0 F. This was -1.0 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 29th coolest April in 114 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.

h/t

The climate alarmists will be discredited...

...when respected scientists like these continue to publish the truth about things like sea ice, environmentalism, faulty science and the global warming scam.

Steve McIntyre (climateaudit.org):

World sea ice in April 2008 reached levels that were “unprecedented” for the month of April in over 25 years. Levels are the third highest since the commencement of records in 1979, exceeded only by levels in 1979 and 1982. This continues a pattern established earlier in 2008, as global sea ice in March 2008 was also the third highest March on record, while January 2008 sea ice was the second highest January on record.

Dr. Vincent Gray (4 time IPCC Reviewer and Nobelist):

The Global Warming Scam has been perpetrated in order to support the Environmentalist belief that the earth is being harmed by the emission of greenhouse gases from the combustion of fossil fuels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (IPCC) was set up to provide evidence for this belief. They have published four major Reports which are widely considered to have proved it to be true. This paper examines the evidence in detail and shows that none of the evidence presented confirms a relationship between emissions of greenhouse gases and any harmful effect on the climate. It is the result of 18 years of scrutiny and comment on IPCC Reports and of a study of the scientific literature associated with it.

John Coleman, (KUSI Meteorologist and Founder of The Weather Channel) in an open letter to environmentalists:

The science behind your global warming scare is bad and no anthropogenic global warming is happening. Dissenting scientists have now produced convincing evidence that the cornerstone of your scientific argument, increased atmospheric carbon dioxide forcing a rapid, irreversible rise in temperature, is invalid. All of the various "signs of global warming" you have so widely publicized have been proven wrong. They are normal variations in climate that result mostly from the cycles of the Sun. As the Sun cycle has changed in the last three or four years, they have reversed themselves. Arctic ice melting and polar bears dying, shrinkage of glaciers and the rise of ocean levels, increased intensity and number of hurricanes and intensified droughts have all been touted as signs of global warming. They are not. They are part of this natural variation in climate. The intensified hurricane claim never happened. Katrina was an isolated, random event. The droughts are part of the natural cycle and are reversing at this time. Glaciers are stabilizing. The Arctic ice cap is already back to normal.

Climate models for all occasions

We've often said that the IPCC's climate models were terribly unreliable and should not be relied upon. Well, there's a new study out that uses climate models and it predicts a period of no warming or even cooling for the next decade.

Here's some interesting commentary from Canadian newspapers today. First up is Lorrie Goldstein in the Toronto Sun: Global warming on hiatus

Let's call it Apocalypse Postponed. At least temporarily.

German climate scientists have just published a study in the respected science journal Nature suggesting global warming has stopped and will not resume until at least 2015.

In other words (my words, not theirs) contrary to the received wisdom of Al Gore's simplistic and propagandistic An Inconvenient Truth, global temperatures aren't moving in lockstep with rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the science isn't settled and we don't know everything we need to know.

David Warren offers more in this post from the Ottawa Citizen:

The news, for what it's worth, comes from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, in Kiel, Germany, prominently played in the international science journal Nature. The authors of the study applied existing knowledge of oscillations in ocean temperatures, especially in the North Atlantic, to computer models of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that show consistent upward trends. This had not been done before, and when it was, the IPCC's predicted 0.3°C rise in global atmospheric temperatures over the next decade was cancelled out.

Now to be fair, it must be said that these new predictions are based on the same IPCC computer models used to predict global warming. The same models which we know have been terribly unreliable.

Besides, the authors say that this newfound effect is probably only temporary and that global warming will likely resume again in 15 or 20 years. Talk about maintaining the party line while covering your ass at the same time! Actually, Roger Pielke Jr. sums it up pretty nicely this quote that I found at FuturePundit:

I am sure that this is an excellent paper by world class scientists. But when I look at the broader significance of the paper what I see is that there is in fact nothing that can be observed in the climate system that would be inconsistent with climate model predictions. If global cooling over the next few decades is consistent with model predictions, then so too is pretty much anything and everything under the sun.

This means that from a practical standpoint climate models are of no practical use beyond providing some intellectual authority in the promotional battle over global climate policy. I am sure that some model somewhere has foretold how the next 20 years will evolve (and please ask me in 20 years which one!). And if none get it right, it won't mean that any were actually wrong. If there is no future over the next few decades that models rule out, then anything is possible. And of course, no one needed a model to know that.

So if temperatures go up with GHG emissions, they have a model for that. If temperatures go down while GHG emissions go up, they have a model for that too!

Update: Steven Milloy - Can global warming’s vested interests close the deal on greenhouse gas regulation before the public wises up to their scam?

Dion: 'we need to put a price on carbon'

Here's an interesting comment about the current leader of the Liberal Party of Canada - from an editorial in today's Toronto Star:

Many Canadians, including a large number of Liberals, think Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion must be crazy. With oil prices close to $120 (U.S.) a barrel and gasoline approaching $1.30 a litre, Dion has been musing aloud about bringing in a carbon tax that would push those prices, in Canada at least, even higher.

What would cause "many Canadians" to think that Dion "must be crazy"?

It appears to be nothing less than his own words.

Freedom of Speech

CTV's Mike Duffy takes note of the attack on free speech by Canada's Human Rights Commissions in this interview with Mark Steyn.



h/t.

London's new mayor

Jennifer Marohasy:

The UK Conservative Party's Boris Johnson, climate realist and member of Benny Peiser's scholarly electronic network CCNet, has been elected Mayor of London, defeating 'Red Ken' Livingstone.

Hooray!

h/t.

Update: more from Sky News and the Beeb

Global warming alarmism reaches new heights

Now, they're really trying to scare us!

Wiki: Climate Change Orthodoxy

Lawrence Solomon asks, Who Is William Connolley? in today's Financial Post:

"It is his view that there is a consensus in the scientific community about climate change topics such as global warming, and that the various reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) summarize this consensus," states his Wikipedia page, in the section called "Biography."

Wikipedia is probably the most used reference source for information on the internet. It is interesting to learn more about the man who controls much of the content of the site; a man who Solomon says "may be the world's most influential person in the global warming debate", next to Al Gore of course.

Connolley is not only a big shot on Wikipedia, he's a big shot at Wikipedia -- an Administrator with unusual editorial clout. Using that clout, this 40-something scientist of minor relevance gets to tear down scientists of great accomplishment. Because Wikipedia has become the single biggest reference source in the world, and global warming is one of the most sought after subjects, the ability to control information on Wikipedia by taking down authoritative scientists is no trifling matter.

One such scientist is Fred Singer, the First Director of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Service, the recipient of a White House commendation for his early design of space satellites; the recipient of a NASA commendation for research on particle clouds -- in short, a scientist with dazzling achievements who is everything Connolley is not. Under Connolley's supervision, Singer is relentlessly smeared, and has been for years, as a kook who believes in Martians and a hack in the pay of the oil industry. When a smear is inadequate, or when a fair-minded Wikipedian tries to correct a smear, Connolley and his cohorts are there to widen the smear or remove the correction, often rebuking the Wikipedian in the process.

Wikipedia is full of rules that editors are supposed to follow, as well as a code of civility. Those rules and codes don't apply to Connolley, or to those he favours.

Read more.

A short history of climate change

Two respected scientists, Dr. Willie Soon and Dr. David Legates discuss climate change history and its drivers including man's CO2 contribution.