Bernier cautions about climate science

Many of us have been disappointed with the Harper government's handling of the climate-change issue, with their stance on limiting carbon emissions and support for Copenhagen. Well, perhaps this is the first chink in the armour.

Canada's ex-foreign minister Maxime Bernier has written a letter to LaPresse in which challenges climate change science. Here's an English version via Norman Spector in the Globe & Mail

“Environmental groups in Copenhagen criticized our government for blocking an agreement … and again when Jim Prentice announced our targets at the end of January ... But with each passing week we see the wisdom of the government’s moderate position … since December, a debate has broken out in the media over the science of warming, a debate that had been stifled due to political correctness … the numerous errors by the IPCC add to alternative theories of warming that have been put forward over the years.

We now recognize that it’s possible to be a “skeptic,” or at least to keep an open mind about nearly all critical aspects of the warming theory. For example, while no one questions whether there has been warming, there is no consensus among scientists as to its degree.

Moreover, we realize that during the period of greatest concern about warming – the last decade – temperatures have stopped increasing! Meanwhile, the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere, said to be the cause of warming according to the official theory, is still increasing. Some very serious scientists believe that we are under-estimating the influence of the sun and other factors that have nothing to do with carbon emissions.

Mojib Latif, a German researcher associated with the IPCC who essentially supports the warming theory, said last fall that temperatures may decline for two decades before warming resumes. No model predicted this. But the same models claim to predict the number of degrees of warming by the end of the century. And that’s only one of the “certainties” about which there is no consensus.

What is certain is that it would be irresponsible to spend billions of dollars and to impose unnecessarily stringent regulations to solve a problem whose gravity we still are not certain about. The alarmism that has characterized this debate is no longer appropriate. Canada is wise to be cautious.”

The original letter is here.

Climategate meets the Law

via Pajamas media:

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) today asked the Obama administration to investigate what he called “the greatest scientific scandal of our generation” — the actions of climate scientists revealed by the Climategate Files, and the subsequent admissions by the editors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).

Senator Inhofe also called for former Vice President Al Gore to be called back to the Senate to testify.

“In [Gore's] science fiction movie, every assertion has been rebutted,” Inhofe said. He believes Vice President Gore should defend himself and his movie before Congress.

[...]

Senator Inhofe is asking the Department of Justice to investigate whether there has been research misconduct or criminal actions by the scientists involved, including Dr. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University and Dr. James Hansen of Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Science.

Senator Inhofe's blog.

Cheap gas from coal

Fossil fuels, coal in particular, have been given a bad rap by the environmental movement. Well some researchers at the Unviersity of Texas at Arlington say they've found a practical way to make synthetic crude from inexpensive coal.

"We're improving the cost every day. We started off sometime ago at an uneconomical $17,000 a barrel. Today, we're at a cost of $28.84 a barrel," said engineering dean Rick Billo.

That's $28 a barrel versus $75 we pay now for imported crude.

Challenging the EPA

The EPA isn't getting a free ride on its decision to regulate CO2. We reported earlier that Utah, Texas and Virginia had challenged the ruling. Now another big player, non-government this time, has waded into the fray:

The world’s largest private sector coal business, the Peabody Energy Company (PEC) has filed a mammoth 240-page “Petition for Reconsideration,” a full-blown legal challenge against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The petition must be answered and covers the entire body of leaked emails from ‘Climategate’ as well as those other ‘gate’ revelations including the frauds allegedly perpetrated under such sub-headings as ‘Himalayan Glaciers,’ ‘African Agricultural Production,’ ‘Amazon Rain Forests,’ ‘Melting Mountain Ice,’ ‘Netherlands Below Sea Level’ as well as those much-publicized abuses of the peer-review literature and so called ‘gray literature.’ These powerful litigants also draw attention to the proven criminal conduct by climate scientists in refusing to honor Freedom of Information law (FOIA) requests.

Peabody is, in effect, challenging the right of the current U.S. federal government to introduce cap and trade regulations by the ‘back door.’

via climategate.com

Update: There's more.

Industry groups, conservative think tanks, lawmakers and three states filed 16 court challenges to U.S. EPA's "endangerment" finding for greenhouse gases before yesterday's deadline, setting the stage for a legal battle over federal climate policies.

Update 2: John O'Sullivan offers general legal strategies for challenging what is fast being recognised as the greatest criminal fraud of all time.

Common law tells us that governments cannot impose climate regulations on their citizens by regarding similar facts differently on different occasions. This principle is known among legal practitioners as stare decisis (i.e. judges are obliged to obey the set-up precedents established by prior decisions). I’ve examined two of the recently filed climate skeptic petitions filed by U.S. corporations. In both there is the common argument that ‘arbitrary and capricious’ governmental climate-related decisions have been imposed upon the people. These EPA regulations, they argue, must be over turned because the science that underpins them has been proven to be fraudulent and significantly based on subjective elements. Thus, the basis of the EPA’s decision to determine that carbon dioxide is a pollutant is unlawful due to the ‘arbitrary and capricious’ components within the EPA’s fact finding process.

How Al Gore Wrecked Planet Earth

Walter Russell Mead asks...

How did the climate of carelessness at the IPCC develop — and why were warning voices from inside the movement ignored in the rush to get all the alarming but unverified predictions into print?

Global Warming: Meltdown

KUSI TV in San Diego has aired a special report Global Warming: Meltdown by weatherman John Coleman on the latest developments in Climategate and as a response to the critics of his previous special, Global Warming: The Other Side. Says Coleman:

The “Climategate” revelations that began in mid December have crescendoed into a series of almost daily embarrassments for the UN IPCC. This telecast covers as many of them as we can cram into an hour. The program can be viewed in segments. With the intro to each segment you will find links you may use to find more information on the topics covered. If this is the first time you are hearing about my efforts to debunk the bad science behind the global warming frenzy, you will find a wealth of information, videos and links to sites on the colemanscorner page of KUSI.com/weather/.

Here is the special in 9 video segments:



















Or view them directly at KUSI.

Virginia joins fight against EPA

Via Climategate.com:

This week, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli filed a petition that challenges the EPA’s recent finding that CO2 and other greenhouse gases contribute to alleged climate change.

Good for Virginia for standing up to the EPA.

Previous: Utah and Texas.

EPA battle heats up

It was reported here the other day in Utah vs the EPA that there's a fight brewing between some states and the federal government's EPA.

Texas joins the battle:

DALLAS, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Texas and several national industry groups on Tuesday filed separate petitions in federal court challenging the government's authority to regulate U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

If Obama and the Dems think they can accomplish by regulation what they cannot achieve by legislation, they may find out it ain't going to be that easy.

Inhofe: ‘CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE' IN THE IPCC

Senator James Inhofe's speech on climategate to the US Senate:

Mr. President, I rise today to highlight several recent media reports uncovering serious errors and possible fraud by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.

I can already hear the question: just what is the IPCC? Many in this body may not be familiar with it. But I hope the Senate becomes more acquainted with it very soon, if only because of its sheer importance to the debate we're having on global warming and cap-and-trade legislation.

For now, you need to know just 3 things about the IPCC: (1) the Obama Administration calls it "the gold standard" of climate change science; (2) some say its reports on climate change represent the so-called "consensus" of scientific opinion about global warming; and (3) the IPCC and Al Gore were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2007 for "their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change..."

Put simply, what this means is that, in elite circles, the IPCC is a big deal. So when ABC News, the Economist, Time Magazine, and the Times of London-among many others-report that the IPCC's research contains embarrassing flaws, and that the IPCC chairman and scientists knew of the flaws, but published them anyway-well, you have the makings of a major scientific scandal.

Where to begin?

A good place is here.

Climategate: the final days

Climategate Rally at Penn State

The warmists may not like it, but the climate debate is not settled. Case in point, this demonstration on the campus of Penn State.


I love that picture of the two warmists holding their "global warming is real" sign in the snow. Click to watch the video.

The rally came on the heels of released results from an internal peer investigation earlier this week.

The committee decided that there is no substantial information to pursue an investigation into three of the four misconduct allegations against Dr. Mann.

Leading the local Young Americans for Freedom group requesting an external investigation, Samuel Settle told WJAC-TV Friday that he doubts the committee of peers could be unbiased.

“For the sake of the university, for the sake of his reputation, for the sake of our reputations as students and community members, we need to come out and make it clear to the university that this is not what we consider acceptable,” said Settle. “We ask; we demand an external investigation of this."

Bette Jackson believes that an independent probe into academic misconduct allegations is necessary.

"I know if I were Dr. Mann, I would want impartial people to take a thorough look at my career and make sure that there were no blemishes on it," said Jackson.

Utah vs the EPA

I smell a fight brewing here between states like Utah and the federal government that wants to accomplish by regulation (EPA) what it can't pass by legislation (cap & trade). This via the Guardian:

Utah delivers vote of no confidence for 'climate alarmists'

Carbon dioxide is "essentially harmless" to human beings and good for plants. So now will you stop worrying about global warming?

Utah's House of Representatives apparently has at least. Officially the most Republican state in America, its political masters have adopted a resolution condemning "climate alarmists", and disputing any scientific basis for global warming.

The measure, which passed by 56-17, has no legal force, though it was predictably claimed by climate change sceptics as a great victory in the wake of the controversy caused by a mistake over Himalayan glaciers in the UN's landmark report on global warming.

But it does offer a view of state politicians' concerns in Utah which is a major oil and coal producing state.

The original version of the bill dismissed climate science as a "well organised and ongoing effort to manipulate and incorporate "tricks" related to global temperature data in order to produce a global warming outcome". It accused those seeking action on climate change of riding a "gravy train" and their efforts would "ultimately lock billions of human beings into long-term poverty".

Sounds reasonable to me. But that language proved a little too strong for the Utah legislature.

By the time the final version of the bill came to a vote, cooler heats apparently prevailed. The bill dropped the word "conspiracy", and described climate science as "questionable" rather than "flawed".

However, it insisted – against all evidence – that the hockey stick graph of changing temperatures was discredited. It also called on the federal government's Environmental Protection Agency to order an immediate halt in its moves to regulate greenhouse gas emissions "until a full and independent investigation of climate data and global warming science can be substantiated".

The poor reporter couldn't help herself... "against all evidence" ...is she kidding? Michael Mann's hockey stick has been long discredited.

Coren on Ball

Michael Coren had an interesting interview with Canada's foremost climatologist, Dr. Timothy Ball:

“If people knew just how deep and dark this conspiracy is — yes, conspiracy — they’d be amazed,” he explains. “More and more academics are standing up to refute climate-change theories, but it’s still dangerous to do so. It can mean the end of a career, the targeting of someone by well-organized fanatics.”

There's more. Lots more, so be sure to follow the link above.

Perhaps things would be different if the Canadian media had been following the story of climategate. But they wouldn't want the Canadian public informed about what's been going on now, would they? That would be counter productive to the Agenda.

We'll just have to leave real news reporting up to the Brits and the Yanks. And the world wide web. I'm so glad that Al Gore invented the internet.

the Great Manmade Global Warming Hoax of the early 21st Century

Archy Cary at BigJournalism.com reflects on the mainstream media and their role in the now exposed climate change hoax.

Tomorrow’s researchers, examining the archives of the U.S. print media, will marvel at the willful negligence displayed by the MSM outlets, how they failed to apply critical thinking to the “scientific” claims of man-made global warming even as, one by one, those claims were discredited and peeled away like layers of an onion, until there was no onion left.

Impartial analysts will note how the British press most clearly exhibit to their former colonists what Freedom of the Press looks like while the American MSM, like migrating lemmings, silently trudged hip deep through the mounting pile of invalidated claims that screamed of the earth’s imminent death at the hands of man.

Some will ask, “What were they thinking?” The wise will answer, “They weren’t thinking. They were following.” And when the press follows it loses its independence of thought and, thereby, its freedom.

Now the Hoax is fully exposed, buck naked, picked clean. Clean as the wind-driven snow.

Yet, although its premise is dead, the carcass of thought that brought it this far will continue to walk. But it’ll be the walk of the zombie. Stiff, staggering, with flat eyes and muffled voice.

Its false prophets, led by Al Gore — a modern day P.T. Barnum — will continue to push their premise. But their disciples will melt away as the snow will eventually melt in D.C.

So, somewhere inside the Beltway today, a lone vender pushes his cart through the grayness of the day, hawking his now bad goods, calling out, “Carbon credits. Carbon credits. Get your carbon credits here. 90% off list price.”

Wendt: the Great Global Warming collapse

Even the Globe and Mail has taken notice. Margaret Wendt:

As the science scandals keep coming, the air has gone out of the climate-change movement...

But now, even leading scientists and environmental groups admit the IPCC is facing a crisis of credibility that makes the Climategate affair look like small change.

India goes alone on global warming

More bad news for Rajendra Pachauri and the UN:

The Indian government has established its own body to monitor the effects of global warming because it “cannot rely” on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group headed by its own Nobel prize-winning scientist Dr R.K Pachauri.

The move is a significant snub to both the IPCC and Dr Pachauri as he battles to defend his reputation following the revelation that his most recent climate change report included false claims that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035. Scientists believe it could take more than 300 years for the glaciers to disappear. oup headed by its own Nobel prize-winning scientist Dr R.K Pachauri.

While western nations, including Canada, continue to march to the UN's warmist drum, India is taking a new and significantly different course.

Dr Pachauri had dismissed challenges like these as based on “voodoo science”, but last night Mr Ramesh effectively marginalized the IPC [sic] chairman even further.

He announced the Indian government will established a separate National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology to monitor the effects of climate change on the world’s ‘third ice cap’, and an ‘Indian IPCC’ to use ‘climate science’ to assess the impact of global warming throughout the country.

Maybe they will take a less biased look at the science. They can only do better than the UN's IPCC.

Mann investigation to continue

Charlie Martin via Pajamas Media:

When the Climategate story first broke, a lot of adherents of the skeptical view of anthropogenic climate change were mightily excited — proclaiming it the “end of the global warming hoax.” They have been disappointed because the breaking story wasn’t immediately followed by the resignation of everyone involved, the termination of all U.S. action on cap and trade, and tar and feathers for Al Gore.

This was a little unrealistic. There are a lot of vested interests involved, a lot of money that depends on the CO2-driven AGW narrative, a lot of people with wealth and reputations on the line. That’s a lot of inertia, and the narrative won’t change course quickly.

That doesn’t mean nothing is happening, however.

No, not at all. For one thing author of the hockey-stick graph, Professor Michael Mann will be subject to further investigation. Read more...

Update: the Penn State Report

The death of global warming

The movement died from two causes: bad science and bad politics.

The 10 anti-commandments of global warming

Via Lord Moncton.

1. The pin-up species of global warming, the polar bear, is increasing in number, not decreasing.

2. US President Barack Obama supports building nuclear power plants.

Last week, in his State of the Union address, he said: ''To create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.''

3. The Copenhagen climate conference descended into farce.

The low point of the gridlock and posturing at Copenhagen came with the appearance by the socialist dictator of Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez, whose anti-capitalist diatribe drew a cheering ovation from thousands of left-wing ideologues.

4. The reputation of the chief United Nations scientist on global warming is in disrepair.

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is being investigated for financial irregularities, conflicts of interest and scientific distortion. He has already admitted publishing false data.

5. The supposed scientific consensus of the IPCC has been challenged by numerous distinguished scientists.

6. The politicisation of science leads to a heavy price being paid in poor countries.

After Western environmentalists succeeded in banning or suppressing the use of the pesticide DDT, the rate of death by malaria rose into the millions. Some scholars estimate the death toll at 20 million or more, most of them children.

7. The biofuels industry has exacerbated world hunger.

Diverting huge amounts of grain crops (as distinct from sugar cane) to biofuels has contributed to a rise in world food prices, felt acutely in the poorest nations.

8. The Kyoto Protocol has proved meaningless.

Global carbon emissions are significantly higher today than they were when the Kyoto Protocol was introduced.

9. The United Nations global carbon emissions reduction target is a massively costly mirage.

10. Kevin Rudd's political bluff on emissions trading has been exposed.

The Prime Minister intimated he would go to the people in an early election if his carbon emissions trading legislation was rejected. He won't. The electorate has shifted.

A more detailed list is here.

No new carbon and cap-and-trade taxes

Here's your chance to say NO to new carbon and/or cap-and-trade taxes.

Global warming alarmists are placing tremendous pressure on the federal government to commit to draconian carbon dioxide reduction measures. Canadians already pay huge carbon taxes in the form of gas taxes, since about one-third of the pump price is tax. Carbon taxes and cap and trade would make power, transportation, and home heating bills rise higher--something Canadians cannot afford.

Go to Taxpayer.com to sign the petition and let Canada's lawmakers know you want them to stop pandering to the alarmists before they completely ruin our economy.