For some reason the media have a habit of hyperventilating about water at the North Pole, remember the infamous New York Times debacle and quiet correction a few years ago? The late John L. Daly put together a piece on open water at the North Pole soon after.

See also Is Arctic Ice Thinning Rapidly? in Ice and Climate News (.pdf) for important perspective -- h/t Dennis Ambler

A Review: Climate Confusion by Roy Spencer - How Global Warming Hysteria Leads To Bad Science, Pandering Politicians And Misguided Policies That Hurt The Poor

Spencer's book, Climate Confusion, is the most comprehensive discussion of "global warming" (aka, human-caused climate change) available today. Spencer's PhD in Meteorology shines through with the very best description of how weather systems function to help maintain a moderate climate. It is an outstanding book for anyone whose interest in climate and weather has stopped short of actually reading a book about it. No deep scientific background is required to understand the processes Spencer describes.

This book is an excellent companion to Dr. Howard Hayden's book, A Primer on CO2 and Climate. Spencer does not go into detail regarding CO2's limitations as a heat retention agent, possibly due to the more technical nature of such discussions. Hayden's book complements Spencer's in that it is not overly technical in detail and presents an easy-to-understand discussion of greenhouse gases that help the reader understand the degree to which alarmists have vastly overrated the dangers of CO2 emissions. (Bob Webster, Web Commentary)

Global Warming: Has the Climate Sensitivity Holy Grail Been Found? - The following is a simplified version of a paper entitled "Chaotic Radiative Forcing, Feedback Stripes, and the Overestimation of Climate Sensitivity" I submitted on June 25, 2008 for publication in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. (Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D.)

The UN climate change numbers hoax - It’s an assertion repeated by politicians and climate campaigners the world over: “2,500 scientists of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agree that humans are causing a climate crisis.”

But it’s not true. And, for the first time ever, the public can now see the extent to which they have been misled. As lies go, it’s a whopper. Here’s the real situation. (Tom Harris and John McLean, Online Opinion)

Coloring the Models: Climate Change through Color Change - NOTE: Mike alerted me in comments about this article he wrote along the lines of my story on Color and Temperature: Perception is everything. I thought this would be good to examine again. This article below is re-posted from John Daly’s website, and was originally published July 7th, 2002. - Anthony (Watts Up with That?)

Sun: Still quiet, over two months since a cycle 24 spot seen - Its all quiet on the solar front. Too quiet. It has now been almost 2 and a half months since the last counted cycle 24 sunspot has been seen on April 13th, 2008. There was a tiny cycle 24 ”sunspeck” that appeared briefly on May 13th, but according to solar physicist Leif Svalgaard, that one never was assigned a number and did not “count”. It is just barely discernable on this large image from that day. (Watts Up With That?)

Perhaps: Cooling coming - A new paper published by the Astronomical Society of Australia has a warning to global warming believers not immediately obvious from the summary:

Based on our claim that changes in the Sun’s equatorial rotation rate are synchronized with changes in the Sun’s orbital motion about the barycentre, we propose that the mean period for the Sun’s meridional flow is set by a Synodic resonance between the flow period (~22.3 yr), the overall 178.7-yr repetition period for the solar orbital motion, and the 19.86-yr synodic period of Jupiter and Saturn.

Or as one of the authors, Ian Wilson, kindly explained to me:

It supports the contention that the level of activity on the Sun will significantly diminish sometime in the next decade and remain low for about 20 - 30 years. On each occasion that the Sun has done this in the past the World’s mean temperature has dropped by ~ 1 - 2 C.

Oh. Global cooling coming, then. Obvious, really. (Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun)

Sun, Jupiter, Saturn: spin-orbit coupling? (The Reference Frame)

Grudging admission modelers know jack: Unravelling The Inconvenient Truth Of Glacier Movement - Predicting climate change depends on many factors not properly included in current forecasting models, such as how the major polar ice caps will move in the event of melting around their edges. This in turn requires greater understanding of the processes at work when ice is under stress, influencing how it flows and moves.

The immediate objective is to model the flow of ice sheets and glaciers more accurately, leading in turn to better future predictions of global ice cover for use in climate modeling and forecasting.

Progress and future research objectives in the field were discussed at a recent workshop organized by the European Science Foundation (ESF), bringing together glaciologists, geologists, and experts in the processes of cracking under stress in other crystalline materials, notably metals and rocks.

The essential problem is that processes at different scales starting from the molecular and going up to whole ice sheets need to be integrated in order to develop models capable of accurate predictions. (SPX)

Power Needed to Bury CO2 a Coal Issue - Experts - NEW YORK - A big challenge facing electric utilities seeking to burn coal cleanly is providing enough power to capture and bury the carbon dioxide produced, experts said Friday. (Reuters)

The 20% energy cost appears highly optimistic to us, most analyses we have seen range between 30% and 40%. Anyone got any useful breakdowns on how they expect to get it down to 20% energy cost?

Energy crisis supplants environment as top concern - OTTAWA — Anger at soaring gas prices has supplanted fear about global warming as the No. 1 issue Canadians say is facing their country. (Globe and Mail)

Playing to the wrong crowd: UN chief praises Kevin Rudd for multilateral policy - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has given an extraordinary endorsement of Kevin Rudd's foreign policy. (The Australian)

Time K.Rudd started worrying about Australia instead:

Climate change strategy splinters Kevin Rudd cabinet - PRESSURE over a new greenhouse gas regime and the looming Garnaut report on emissions trading is fuelling the deepest cabinet divisions over policy and politics since the election of the Rudd Government.

Concerns are being aired about the possibility of the Government missing its starting deadline of 2010 for the emissions trading scheme and political backlash over rising costs and compensation for people and businesses affected by the scheme.

As part of the cabinet discussions, consideration is being given to subjecting Australia's entire food production industry - including cattle, sheep, pig and grain growing - to the full effects of the new carbon pricing system. (The Australian)

Oh my... all this over a problem that exists purely in the virtual realm of GCMs -- imagine what a disaster this government would be if faced by a real problem. K.Rudd has two choices: either proceed with the stupidity of destroying the economy to no purpose, in which case his will be a one-term government and then his party will be removed from all responsibility, probably for decades despite the current parlous state of the main political opposition or, alternatively, pay lip service to the pretend problem of AGW (as everyone else in the real world does) and hope that voter attention drifts to real world problems. Since there is no possibility China will permit its main supplier of coal and iron ore, plus other strategic materials, to cease to function K.Rudd's real choice is whether he wants to lead Australia's export boom or have China do it for him.

Farm Lobbies abandon Farmers - The Carbon Sense Coalition today accused the big farming lobby groups, government departments, politicians and Ministers representing agriculture of ignoring science and abandoning farmers to unjustified carbon taxation.

The chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, claimed that there was no justification whatsoever for including emissions from farm animals in any carbon emissions tax scheme. (Carbon Sense Coalition)

Cap-and-trade is not a market mechanism - Despite the claims of politicians, there is not much that is market friendly about cap-and-trade (Diane Katz, Financial Post)

The cynical politics of global warming and its hobgoblins - "Cynical politics" may be a redundancy, but it is hard to imagine a more cynical political issue than global warming. In his 1992 book "Earth in the Balance," Al Gore called for a "wrenching transformation of society." Leftists, with their elitist penchant for social engineering, didn't need any convincing. (Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson, White Mountain Independent)

Science by intimidation - Truth may enter the world by many doors, but she is never escorted by force. I thought that was a lesson learned long ago, and learned by none more tellingly than scientists. Real scientists, actually, have learned it. A new amalgam has emerged however, the scientist-activist, and for that specimen it's a lesson passed by.

In the dawn of the Enlightenment, it was scientists who were hauled before tribunals and inquisitions. Galileo is the arch example, the pioneer empiricist who rejected the ancient Earth-centric model of the (then known) universe, and for his pains earned the attention and wrath of the distinctly unscientific Inquisition.

I am drawn to these thoughts, and to the long-decayed example of the Inquisition, by a most curious outburst this week by James Hansen, the principal voice of NASA on the subject of global warming, a man who played – as it were – John the Baptist to Al Gore's messianic teachings on the subject. Dr. Hansen is largely credited with “sounding the alarm” on man-made global warming, and he has been a persistent, high-profile and very aggressive proponent of the cause for over two decades now. Dr. Hansen doesn't take kindly to those who dispute his apocalyptic scenarios. I choose the term, apocalyptic, deliberately. According to Dr. Hansen, mankind may have reached the tipping point with global warming. Should that be the case, wide-scale calamity and catastrophe are inevitable. And should we not have reached the point of absolute crisis, should there be a minuscule interval for the human species to act and avert the very worst, according to Dr. Hansen, what yet remains to be faced is still horrible enough indeed.

Not all the world shares Dr. Hansen's vision of imminent ecological Armageddon. (Rex Murphy, Globe and Mail)

Submerged Ancient Oaks Help Reduce Global Warming - COLUMBIA, Missouri, June 29, 2008 - Trees submerged in fresh water store carbon for thousands of years, keeping the carbon dioxide they absorbed while growing out of the atmosphere for a much longer period of time than trees that fall in a forest, researchers at the Missouri Tree Ring Laboratory in the Department of Forestry have discovered. (ENS)

So keep the damn things out of the water to stop them locking up a critical resource in short supply. Current levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are near the lowest they've been for hundreds of millions of years and it is taking a great deal of effort on our part to restore part of this essential resource lost to the biosphere by accidental bio-sequestration during the Carboniferous. The last thing we want is to lose it again.

Blair defends record on tackling climate change - Tony Blair admitted yesterday that he could have done more in his decade as prime minister to tackle the threat posed by climate change.

As he launched a report in Tokyo to bridge the "yawning chasm" between climate change "radicals and realists", Blair admitted that Britain would struggle to meet its targets on cutting CO2 emissions.

But he defended his record - putting Britain on course to meet its Kyoto targets, introducing the climate change levy and helping to set up the EU emissions trading scheme - which has made Britain a leader on the environment. (The Guardian)

Blair Urges G8 Pact on 2050 Emissions Halving Goal - TOKYO - Former British prime minister Tony Blair urged the Group of Eight rich nations on Friday to agree to a global goal of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, despite signs top carbon emitter the United States would not back the target. (Reuters)

Why? G8 May Invest US$10 Bln/Year in Technology to Cut CO2 - TOKYO - The Group of Eight wealthy nations are looking at investing more than US$10 billion a year to support new technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, including carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS), a Japanese daily reported on Sunday. (Reuters)

‘Large Rhetorical Statement’ On Emissions Reductions Expected At G8 - Pew Environment Group Deputy Managing Director Philip Clapp said in a telephone briefing that the likely outcome of the G8 climate change talks July 7-9 is a “large rhetorical statement that everyone is committed to reduce their (carbon) emissions,” AFP reports.

“There has been a very little agreement on actual outcome from that process that will be announced on the final day of the G8 summit on July 9, coinciding with the conclusion of the summit itself,” Clapp says.

He said that while he expects “a little more definition as to the levels nations should agree to,” he doesn’t expect any significant negotiations to take place.

In May, environment ministers from the Group of Eight nations pledged “strong political will” toward cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050 but stopped short of pledging firm commitments for mid-century or mid-term goals for 2020.

Even Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda conceded recently that the G8 would not set targets on cutting post-Kyoto protocol GHG emissions. (Environmental Leader)

G8 focus shifts to oil and food prices - Tokyo, Japan — As Japan prepares to host the Group of Eight Summit in ten days’ time, it appears that the agenda will undergo a change to reflect current world concerns over the prices of food and oil.

According to Japanese officials directly involved in the summit preparations, the summit's focus is likely to shift from climate change to rising prices, as leaders of the world’s richest countries search for solutions to escalating costs that are affecting rich and poor nations alike. (UPI)

Climate change policy may miss setting emission goals - NEW DELHI: The much-awaited climate change policy, set to be announced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday, may fall short of expectations.

The policy is unlikely to include specific emission targets, New Delhi has stuck to its earlier stand, or efficiency norms. However, in a bid to promote investment in clean technology projects, the government is expected to set up a green venture capital fund.

The country’s climate change policy comes in the backdrop of the surge in global oil prices which are threatening to touch the $150-per-barrel mark. There could be bad news in store for old coal-based power projects as the policy is likely to include norms to retire such high CO2-emitting plants. (Economic Times)

Most urgent hurricane threat? Overdevelopment, not global warming - In Al Gore's Nobel-winning movie An Inconvenient Truth, hurricanes became symbols of the danger of global warming.

The reality is more complicated.

Scientists are locked in debate about whether global warming is spiking the intensity of hurricanes. Even those who agree that humans are causing global warming disagree about whether it is making hurricanes worse.

Leading experts are changing their findings. Climatologists desperate for clues are boring holes along Florida's coastline, trying to discern from grains of sand how many tropical storms pounded our shores in past centuries.

Amid the whirlwind of debate, most scientists agree on the most urgent hurricane threat. And it's not global warming. (Curtis Krueger, St. Petersburg Times)

Newsweek Blames Midwest Floods on Global Warming - Newsweek's senior editor Sharon Begley has taken it upon herself to publicly declare the recent floods in the Midwest are being caused by global warming.

Those familiar with her work shouldn't be even slightly surprised by this, as Begley was the person responsible for the August 13, 2007, Newsweek cover story "Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine" which evoked widespread criticism including from one of her fellow editors.

Regardless, Begley is at it again with an article in the upcoming issue of Newsweek disgracefully entitled, "Global Warming Is a Cause of This Year’s Extreme Weather" (NewsBusters)

Oh... Doctors must step up to the challenge of climate change - Doctors must lead by example on climate change, according to experts in this week's BMJ. Health professionals were powerful catalysts in changing society's view of smoking from a normal lifestyle choice to that of a harmful addiction, and they must do the same for climate change, writes Professor Mike Gill from the University of Surrey. (BMJ-British Medical Journal)

... these guys really, really need to stick to subjects they know at least something about.

AFRICA INSIGHT - Are Sudanese and Somalis killing each other because of climatic change? - When the Swedish Nobel Prize committee awarded their prestigious prize for peace to Prof Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan environmental activist, in 2004 and then more recently in 2007 to former US Vice-President Al Gore, the committee was explicitly making the connection between climate change and global conflict.

But, has the scientific community proven a definitive link between the raving effects of climate change and armed conflict in developing regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa? Or, are the environmental activists, prominent world leaders and influential Non Governmental Organisations making bold, unsubstantiated claims without the proper scientific evidence for their own particular agendas? (Daily Nation)

What a great USHCN station looks like: Tucumcari - I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog showing how badly maintained and situated the stations in the USHCN network are. And rightly so, the majority of them have issues. But, finding the good ones is actually more important, because they are the ones that hold the true unpolluted temperature signal. Unfortunately, the “good ones” are few and far between. (Watts Up with That?)

Glacial find pours cold water on world theory - University of Canterbury research indicating a glacial ridge in the South Island was formed by a landslide could pour cold water on evidence that climate change happened simultaneously around the world. (New Zealand Herald)

Climate skeptic: Don't panic - The readers of various climate realist blogs may already know this 10-minute video created by Climate-skeptic.com and posted by Coyoteblog - these two websites actually have the same person behind them unless I misunderstand something. ;-)

But I found it so insightful that you might enjoy it, too. It discusses the importance of feedbacks, why most of them are negative, and what contrived things you have to assume if you want to believe that climate sensitivity significantly exceeds 1 °C. (The Reference Frame)

Good grief! In dangerous denial - According to an Ipsos Mori poll, carried out for the Observer this month, most Britons believe climate change is at least partially down to natural causes, and not solely to human activity. A majority also believe scientists are divided on the causes and more than a fifth say the whole thing has been exaggerated.

Now where would they have got those ideas from? One Channel 4 programme, claiming global warming is "a swindle", has no doubt played a role, as have internet blogs arguing all the world's scientists are party to a Marxist conspiracy bent on destroying western civilisation. But the press, though declining, still counts. It contributes to the framework within which public debate proceeds. It lends respectability to the opinions it highlights.

A study by the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University found US newspapers have improved their coverage of global warming. By 2006, only 8% of what they published failed to reflect the scientific consensus: that human activity is more than 90% likely to be responsible. The UK tabloids - the Sun, Mirror, Mail, Express and their Sundays - show no improvement, with 23% of their 2006 coverage at odds with what nearly every climate scientist believes.

Happily, the Murdoch empire has gone green, thanks to James Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation in Europe and Asia. The Sun and the Times now rarely give space to deniers of man-made global warming. The latter was once full of sceptics but then a leader graciously announced "the planet deserves the benefit of the doubt". But neither paper gives consistent and/or prominent coverage. (Peter Wilby, The Guardian)

The public wouldn't give a damn (and neither would politicians) about hypothetical AGW if it hadn't be for appalling media hysteria drumming up concern over a complete non-issue to begin with. The once-useful Murdoch media has now degenerated to coverage of gorebull warming and UFOs, despite UFOs being perhaps the more plausible subject. Only now, after a decade of Earth's failure to warm concurrently with accelerating carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use are a few publications beginning to give space to skeptical viewpoints.

What is it about these Left-centric cranks' worldview that makes it appear to them that media coverage is unfavorable to their pet fantasies when in fact it is almost exclusively so focused? Sheesh!

Brown's green suicide: Labour crushed in Henley by-election - Gordon Brown suffered the humiliation on Friday of Labour crashing to fifth place in the Henley by-election on his first anniversary as prime minister.

The unprecedented result, which placed the government behind the Green party and the far-right British National Party, is likely to raise further questions about Mr Brown’s leadership and increase calls for change from Labour MPs. (Financial Times)

“the British public has sent a message to Gordon Brown to ’get off our backs, stop the endless tax rises and help us cope with the rising cost of living’”

Dion gung-ho on carbon tax - A bullish Stéphane Dion says he's confident he can win over Canadians with his party's climate change plan, even though it will mean higher energy costs. (Toronto star)

Terence Corcoran interviews Stephane Dion on the Liberal carbon tax - As we headed toward the door at the end of our interview on his carbon tax plan, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion turned to me and asked, "What do you think about the way the Prime Minister wants to debate this?" He was referring, of course, to Stephen Harper's claim that the Liberal carbon plan was "crazy economics" that would "screw the West" and "screw everybody."

It was a moment of insecurity from Mr. Dion, as if he were worrying about the possibility Mr. Harper's low-level pugilism might be an effective counter to Mr. Dion's high-level deep-principle commitment to the Green Shift, the Liberal Party's $40-a-tonne carbon tax project and the risky core of its coming election platform.

I didn't get a chance to give Mr. Dion my personal view that all government carbon plans - Liberal, Conservative, Republican, Democratic - could accurately be labeled crazy economics. Certainly Mr. Harper, with his government's tangled regulatory carbon nightmare, is in no position to be flinging four-letter epithets at Mr. Dion. (Financial Post)

Canadian Province Under Fire Over Carbon Tax - VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Civic leader Scott Nelson says he is as worried as anyone about global warming, but that does not make him happy to be one of the first North Americans to pay a carbon tax to curb climate change.

Nelson, the mayor of Williams Lake, British Columbia, says record high energy prices mean that the levy, for all its good intentions, could not come at a worse time for residents in his community, a small lumber and ranching town about 525 km (340 miles) north of Vancouver. (Reuters)

California Emissions Plan Won't Be Easy or Cheap - LOS ANGELES - California, which enjoyed widespread praise this week for its ambitious plan to combat global warming, now faces the tough part: making it work. (Reuters)

Battle Looms Over Oil Drilling Off Florida's Coast - PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. - For decades opposition to oil drilling off Florida's coast was one of the few issues uniting the state's Democrats and Republicans, who agreed that shielding the environment and the huge tourism industry came first.

Not now, as oil prices rise and US motorists are paying serious prices at gasoline pumps. (Reuters)

Poll: 74 percent support offshore oil drilling in U.S. - Three in four likely voters – 74 percent – support offshore drilling for oil in U.S. coastal waters and more than half (59 percent) also favor drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, a new Zogby International telephone poll shows.

A majority of likely voters across the political spectrum support offshore oil drilling, with vast majorities of Republicans (90 percent) and independents (75 percent) in favor of drilling for oil off U.S. coastal waters more than half of Democrats (58 percent) also said they favor offshore drilling. Republicans (80 percent) and political independents (57 percent) are much more likely to favor drilling for oil in ANWR than Democrats (40 percent).

The telephone survey of 1,113 likely voters nationwide was conducted June 12-14, and carries a margin of error of plus or minus 3.0 percentage points. (Naples Daily News)

Oh boy... Schwarzenegger Says Feeding Oil Addiction No Answer - MIAMI - Republican California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday that politicians who suggest that lifting a ban on offshore oil drilling would ease rising fuel prices in the United States were "blowing smoke." (Reuters)

People aren't "addicted" to oil any more than they are to breathing -- modern societies require significant energy support and that means carbon based technologies will be employed for the major portion of that supply for the foreseeable future, period.

Automakers Make No Headway Against California Clean Car Law - SACRAMENTO, California, June 29, 2008 - A federal judge has denied the latest attempt by automobile manufacturers to invalidate the California law that regulates greenhouse gas emissions from cars. (ENS)

Lawrence Solomon: What I told the Petroleum Club - On a tour earlier this week for his new book on global warming, The Deniers, Lawrence Solomon made a presentation at the Petroleum Club in Calgary. His remarks, adapted, appear below. (Financial Post)

$150 oil 'inevitable' - CALGARY - Even as U.S. environmentalists and some politicians are trying to condemn Alberta's oilsands as "dirty," the world appears hungrier than ever for all forms of crude, after oil shot as high as US$143 per barrel Friday. (Canwest News Service)

Norway Cuts Seismic Study in Arctic Seas - OSLO - Norway scaled down on Friday a seismic survey of undeveloped offshore seas near the Lofoten islands in the Arctic, a study needed before a decision on whether to allow oil and gas activities in the pristine region.

Problems with seismic equipment have delayed the start of the project, deemed as fundamental by Norway's oil industry but which also faces serious political and environmental obstacles. (Reuters)

Renewables push will boost energy bills - LONDON - Meeting Britain's renewable energy targets will add significantly to domestic energy bills on top of already steeply rising fuel prices, a report said on Monday.

The report from tax advisory company Ernst & Young comes days after the government called for a 100 billion pound green revolution to get 15 percent of its energy -- equivalent to 40 percent of its electricity -- from renewables by 2020.

Britain currently gets barely four percent of its electricity from renewables, primarily wind power.

The report said the drive to carbon cutting renewables would add 20 percent in real terms to domestic energy bills by 2020, equivalent to 5.3 billion pounds or just over 200 pounds per household, on top of increases due to booming fuel costs.

But a YouGov survey conducted to coincide with the report also noted that most Britons baulked at the prospect of having to pay to combat climate change.

The survey found that 67 percent of people said they would not be prepared to pay anything extra on their home energy bills to fight global warming. (Reuters)

China Calls for Rich Country Help on Climate Change - BEIJING - Addressing climate change head-on is in China's best interests, but it needs developed countries to do their fair share, President Hu Jintao said in a speech reported by the Xinhua news agency on Saturday. (Reuters)

And why wouldn't they exploit Western ecochondria to help pay for their energy expansion?

EU Lawmakers Confirm Deal on Airline CO2 Emissions - BRUSSELS - European Union governments have struck a provisional deal with lawmakers to include aviation from 2012 in the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), a key tool to fight climate change, the European Parliament said on Friday. (Reuters)

European airlines angered by EU 'CO2 tax' - European airlines complained Friday that new EU rules on carbon dioxide emissions will cost them 4.8 billion euros (7.6 billion dollars) a year and threaten their future. (AFP)

Your taxes, redirected as subsidies, squandered: Landowners feel power of the green pound as renewables firms seek sites for turbines - POWER companies are targeting landowners with the promise of tens of thousands of pounds – and the chance to make millions more – in return for the right to build wind turbines on their land. In the race to find new sites for wind farms, energy firms are writing to farmers and estate owners offering them at least £10,500 a year for each turbine built on their land. (The Scotsman)

Algal Fuels and Massive Scales - Guest post by John Goetz

I keep an active watch of the news for progress being made in the areas of renewable and alternative energy sources. One area that has caught my eye is algal fuel (biofuel produced by algae). One company that has been in the news lately is Sapphire Energy, which claims to be able to produce ASTM compliant 91-octane biogasoline. Sapphire Energy says their technology “requires only sunlight, CO2 and non-potable water – and can be produced at massive scale on non-arable land”.

I am not trying to pick on any one solution or Sapphire Energy in particular. I simply wondered how massive a scale of CO2 and non-arable land is needed to make a noticeable dent in our gasoline demand. (Watts Up With That?)

This wasn’t meant to be a Sunday funny - You’ll never guess the latest idea enacted by public officials to get people to eat less salt.

Gateshead Council in the UK came up with what they believe the solution to getting people to reduce their salt intake: Salt shakers with fewer holes!

They commissioned a company (at taxpayer expense) to make salt shakers with fewer holes and are giving them away to fast food restaurants. As the Daily Mail reports: (Junkfood Science)

From the archives: What is junk food? - Per reader request, here is the link to the classic article, Junk-foods and empty words, by Dr. Johan H. Koeslag, head of the Department of Medical Physiology at the University of Stellenbosch, Tygerberg, South Africa, explaining what junk food really means. This delightfully entertaining article captured the disconnect between science and beliefs about food and what it means to eat healthy. This was first covered in Mythology of health food and junk food, which revealed the real brain food. (Junkfood Science)

Government diet plan for girls - The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has an obesity prevention program for tween girls and their parents to teach them to adopt healthy eating and lifestyle habits. Called BodyWorks, this program is the most powerful demonstration to date of how far astray from soundness public advice for “healthy eating” has become. When you see the reality of this eating plan in action, you’ll fear for our young girls. (Junkfood Science)

What if it never was the tomatoes? - How were tomatoes pinpointed as the source of the latest salmonella outbreak that, as of today’s count, infected 810 people across the country between April 10th and June 15th? Nearly 2,000 tomato samples across the country and in Mexico have been tested and not a single tomato has been found to be contaminated with salmonella. The FDA has cleared 41 states and most of Mexico from being a source of tainted tomatoes.

What if tomatoes never were the source? (Junkfood Science)

Diet Speak - How to design a forced choice poll to reinforce a dieting mentality of controlled eating, and public perceptions of how people ‘should’ eat. (Junkfood Science)

100 years on, mystery shrouds massive 'cosmic impact' in Russia - A hundred years ago this week, a gigantic explosion ripped open the dawn sky above the swampy taiga forest of western Siberia, leaving a scientific riddle that endures to this day. (AFP)

Mark Steyn Cleared by 'Human Rights' Panel - Great news for free speech fans that likely won't get reported much of anywhere outside the rightosphere: the national Canadian "Human Rights" Commission has declined to prosecute a "hate speech" allegation against columnist and author Mark Steyn and the magazine Maclean's.

The allegation, brought against Steyn as part of an effort by the Canadian Islamic Congress (that country's resident apologists for radical Islam comparable to CAIR here) to use the government to censor critics of Islam. It was the second of three motions before three separate bodies to be dismissed; Steyn still awaits the decision of the British Columbia provincial commission. (NewsBusters)

Canadians Urged to Don Sealskin as 'Birthday' Suit - OTTAWA - Canadians should wear sealskin to celebrate the country's birthday on July 1, an Inuit leader said on Friday, in defiance of a European movement to ban the import of Canadian seal products.

"I am quite tired of other people telling us how to live our lives, without taking the time to learn about our culture and way of life," National Inuit leader Mary Simon said.

"I am calling on Canadians who support us to get some seal clothing and wear it in a show of solidarity to Inuit and other Canadian sealers on Canada Day." (Reuters)

Animal rights group turns its fire on celebrity meat-eaters - After helping to make fur coats taboo, campaigners at Peta are using hardline tactics on A-list carnivores (The Independent)

I like animals -- they're very tasty.

MSM Shuns Embarrassing 'The Population Bomb' Anniversary - Today is the official publication date of The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment by Paul and Anne Ehrlich. The release of this book was timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the publication of Paul Ehrlich's once exceedingly popular "The Population Bomb" in 1968. If you expect to see much about either of these books in the mainstream media, you are in for a big disappointment. The MSM is avoiding the whole subject of Paul Ehrlich and his apocalyptic "The Population Bomb" like the plague nowadays. The reason is probably because it might draw embarrassing attention to the fact that apocalyptic visions, despite their popularity at one time such as the current global warming alarmism, are usually proven to be flat out wrong. Such was the case with Paul Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb" which the Intercollegiate Studies Institute ranked as one of the 50 Worst Books of the 20th century due to its many errors. (NewsBusters)

Hoarding Nations Drive Food Costs Ever Higher - After at least 29 countries sharply curbed their food exports, impoverished importing countries are finding it more difficult to afford the food they need. (New York Times)

June 27, 2008

Bull's-Eye! - In a decision McCain supports and Obama opposes, five Supreme Court justices say even bitter Americans have a constitutional right to cling to their guns. It makes a difference who appoints these guys. (IBD)

Where's McCain’s 'Fuel Cell Express'? - NASA’s James Hansen tried this week to surf the 20th anniversary of his famous congressional testimony that launched global warming hysteria. Apparently not wanting to be left out of the green hoopla, John McCain tried to catch Hansen’s wave. Both wiped out with embarrassing proposals. (Steven Milloy, FoxNews.com)

Great Moments In Alarmism - Apparently a number of papers are "commemorating" today the 20th anniversary of James Hansen's speech before Congress warning of catastrophic man-made global warming. So let's indeed commemorate it. Here is the chart from the appendices of Hansen's speech showing his predictions for man-made global warming: (Climate Skeptic)

Let’s Revisit Katrina, Again - Are we ever going to put Katrina to bed? We have covered no end of articles clearly showing that hurricane activity is not increasing and likely will not increase in frequency or intensity due to the ongoing buildup of greenhouse gases. Virtually every prominent scientist involved in hurricane research agrees that it is brutally unfair to blame any one event on global warming, and yet to this day, almost every global warming presenter hints around that we caused Katrina, or at least we substantially added to its strength. As time passes, you would think this storyline would die. However, the recent tragedy in Myanmar associated with Cyclone Nargis left tens of thousands dead and reinvigorated the “global warming equals bigger hurricane” crusade. (WCR)

New "Carbon Revolution" Urged to Slow Warming - OSLO - The world needs a shift as radical as the Industrial Revolution to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 while safeguarding economic growth, the McKinsey Global Institute said on Thursday. (Reuters)

What are these fools going to do when the world wakes up to the fact we can not control the planet's temperature by tweaking insignificant emissions of an essential trace gas? We all know it is not doable so why pretend?

A New 'Revolution'? - For Congress, it's become a matter of near-religious faith that we should spend whatever is needed to curb global warming. A new study suggests that the amounts needed will be staggering. (IBD)

House Testimony Of Roger A. Pielke Sr. “A Broader View of the Role of Humans in the Climate System is Required In the Assessment of Costs and Benefits Effective Climate Policy” - This morning I testified to a House Subcommittee on the climate issue to the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality of the Committee on Energy and Commerce – Honorable Rick Boucher, Chairman. The title of my presentation is “A Broader View of the Role of Humans in the Climate System is Required In the Assessment of Costs and Benefits Effective Climate Policy”. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

Climate Change – Business as Usual? - The global climate has been in a state of change ever since the atmosphere started developing over four billion years ago. This is clearly evident from geological research based on rocks, sediments and ice. (Halfdan Carstens, GEO365)

Phytoplankton surprisingly destroys a lot of ozone - Dr Katie Read and fifteen mostly U.K. and U.S. co-authors have studied the mechanisms destroying ozone (O₃) in the lower atmosphere above the ocean: Extensive halogen-mediated ozone destruction over the tropical Atlantic Ocean (scientific paper in Nature, abstract)

Recall that ozone in the lower atmosphere is a highly potent greenhouse gas. Despite its small amount, it is responsible for almost 2/3 of the effect we attribute to CO₂. (The absolute size of the effect remains uncertain, mostly due to unknown feedbacks, but most of these feedbacks are universal multiplicative factors for all greenhouse gases.) When you divide the "shared absorption" in between the overlapping different gases, the percentages of the total greenhouse effect are as follows (source):
67%+ H₂O (water)
15% CO₂ (carbon dioxide)
10% O₃ (ozone)
3% CH₄ (methane)
3% N₂O (nitrous oxide)
Water itself would be able to cause a much higher percentage of the effect than 67% but some of the spectral lines are absorbed - and attributed to - the competitors. At any rate, you see that O₃ and CH₄, when added together, are almost as important as CO₂, so we should care about them. (The Reference Frame)

Court says no deadline for EPA on global warming - A federal appeals court refused Thursday to make a resistant Bush administration speed up a decision on whether greenhouse gases and global warming threaten public health and welfare.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia denied a petition by Massachusetts and 16 other states and several environmental groups asking it to order the Environmental Protection Agency to make that determination within 60 days.

Such a finding is a necessary first step to regulating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from motor vehicle tailpipes and the smokestacks of refineries, power plants and factories. The Supreme Court more than a year ago ruled that the EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, a step Bush has repeatedly refused to take.

Instead, EPA is expected to issue a proposal in coming weeks that seeks public comment on a range of options the agency could take to control greenhouse gases under current law. It will take no position on whether carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases should be regulated, according to a draft obtained by The Associated Press.

"We are pleased the Circuit court recognized the agency's approach," said Timothy Lyons, deputy press secretary for EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson. "The advanced notice for proposed rulemaking ... will allow for public input on the broad range of fundamental issues involved in regulating greenhouse gases." (Associated Press)

A Better Way Than Cap and Trade - The bitter arguments in the Senate this month over the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill, which would have required major emitters to pay for the right to discharge greenhouse gases, proved that climate change caused by humans has come to the fore of U.S. policy debates. This fact may comfort those who believe that future generations will judge us on the zeal with which we face the challenge. It may even assuage the fears of those who believe that warming will end life as we know it. But political rhetoric is unlikely to put us on a path toward solving the problem of climate change in the best possible way. (Bjorn Lomborg, Washington Post)

He might be the least stupid of the warmenists but I still don't agree with him. The only way to deal with [genuine] climate change is to adapt to it, as humans have always done. There is no controlling the weather in the short term, let alone the long term which we call climate.

Too stupid for words: Renewable optimism - Thousands of turbines, millions of electric cars: a wind of change has swept through energy policy (Fred Pearce, The Guardian)

Rising bills will pay for low-carbon economy - Household gas bills could rise by up to 37% and electricity costs by 13% as the government lines up consumers to pay for a green revolution that would move Britain from oil dependence to a low carbon economy.

A renewable energy strategy outlined by ministers yesterday signalled that energy bills could soar by hundreds of pounds, and could push over 2 million extra people into fuel poverty. (The Guardian)

Embracing alternatives - "Wow!" wrote one blogger after reading this paper's disclosure of ministers' plans to ramp up the provision of greener energy. And if they were actually put into practice, he or she vowed, "I will dance around the house singing hallelujah!" Which about sums up the astonishment many environmentalists felt about yesterday's announcement. Such ambition from a government already so far behind its renewables targets? From the prime minister who went to Saudi Arabia at the weekend to ask for more oil? From the energy minister who admitted just a few weeks ago to negotiating with the EU to reduce the UK's green commitments? Surely it was too good to be true? (The Guardian)

Heavyweight physics prof weighs into climate/energy scrap - A topflight science brainbox at Cambridge University has weighed into the ever-louder and more unruly climate/energy debate with several things that so far have been mostly lacking: hard numbers, willingness to upset all sides, and an attempt to see whether the various agendas put forward would actually stack up.

Professor David J C MacKay of the Cambridge University Department of Physics holds a PhD in computation from Cal Tech and a starred first in Physics, so we can take it that he knows his numbers. And, as he points out, numbers are typically lacking in current discussion around carbon emissions and energy use. (Lewis Page, The Register)

Gordon Brown vows to drive out fossil fuels - Gordon Brown has vowed to break Britain’s dependence on oil and to convert the country to a greener way of life. (Daily Telegraph)

A load of hot air: Why spending £100bn on windfarms to please the EU is Labour's greatest act of lunacy - Today, a giant new wind turbine soars the height of a London tower block above the Mendip hills where I live in Somerset.

A perfect symbol of what is arguably the greatest single political madness engulfing Britain today.

Although this 330ft monster will produce an income of £500,000 a year for the company that built it - nearly half of it in subsidies paid by all of us through higher electricity bills - the amount of power it contributes to our national grid will be so derisory as to scarcely register. (Christopher Booker, Daily Mail)

Earthlog - Labour shows its true colours are not green at all - The call came through from our local Essex anti-wind farm group at 9.45pm on Monday night. They’d won. They had persuaded councillors from Tendring district council’s development control committee to vote unanimously against a wind farm of seven 410-ft-high industrial turbines in a rural location on the edge of Clacton.
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Councillors rejected the windfarm proposed by Npower Renewables at Earls Hall on the grounds of noise for people living nearby, proximity to footpaths and because of the dogged insistence by council officers (who recommended approval) that the building of 20 times more wind-generation capacity on Gunfleet Sands, four miles offshore, was irrelevant to the case.

One councillor kept saying, "Put it in the S.E.A." One wonders how many outbursts of local democracy like the one that occurred in Clacton’s Prince’s Theatre on Monday night will be permitted under the provisions of the new Planning Bill, which passed narrowly through the Commons on Wednesday, or the Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy, published yesterday.

On the face of it, not many. Under the new, streamlined planning provisions, an Infrastructure Planning Commission of appointed technocrats will decide where 4,000 new onshore turbines and 3,000 offshore turbines, not to mention some new nuclear stations, will be built – not elected ministers.

We are seeing a draconian drift towards decision-making by unelected parts of central Government. (Daily Telegraph)

Kroger nixes global warming “policy” - Question: Why does a major grocery store chain need a “comprehensive policy addressing climate change”? Answer: They don’t. (Watts Up With That?)

They wish: Exclusive: No ice at the North Pole - It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.

The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.

"From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water," said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.

If it happens, it raises the prospect of the Arctic nations being able to exploit the valuable oil and mineral deposits below these a bed which have until now been impossible to extract because of the thick sea ice above.

Seasoned polar scientists believe the chances of a totally ice free North Pole this summer are greater than 50:50 because the normally thick ice formed over many years at the Pole has been blown away and replaced by huge swathes of thinner ice formed over a single year. (The Independent)

Good! US Not on Board for 2050 Emissions Cut Goal - Source - TOKYO - Japan has yet to persuade the United States to agree to a global goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050 at a G8 leaders' summit, a Japanese government source said on Thursday. Summit host Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda faces the prospect of a diplomatic failure at next month's talks if Washington refuses to agree to a 2050 emissions target. (Reuters)

Climate Breakthrough Unlikely at G8 Summit - UK Envoy - TOKYO - G8 rich nations and major emerging economies probably won't achieve a big breakthrough in talks on global warming in Japan next month, Britain's climate envoy said on Thursday, echoing other forecasts for modest progress at best. (Reuters)

Dissent in Canada: Our premier could wind up with his carbon footprint in his mouth - If the cheerleading section for Gordon Campbell's gas tax will sit quiet for a moment, I'd like you to meet some smart folks who think the premier's plan is pure madness.

They call themselves the International Climate Science Coalition, whose chairman is Tim Patterson, Earth Sciences Professor at Ottawa's Carleton University. They got together in New York in March to hammer out a response to what they considered to be unnecessary global panic over climate change.

What came out of their meeting was a document called the Manhattan Declaration, a blistering indictment of the received wisdom on global warming.

What heresies does it contain? The kind to make David Suzuki's toes curl. (Alan Ferguson, The Vancouver Province)

Letter of the moment: Just another cycle - There is an unfortunate misconception that reducing carbon dioxide now would stop the Arctic ice from melting and would stop climate change. Nothing could be further from the truth. The earth's climate has gone through warm and cold cycles for its entire geological history of over four billion years. The present warm phase is no more than one of those naturally driven cycles. The global-warming science as espoused by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is being questioned by a large number of scientists. It is time to take a closer look at the reality of climate change in Canada, and not be overly concerned about increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide.
Dr. M. L. Khandekar,
IPCC Expert Reviewer 2007
Markham, Ont. (The Vancouver Province)

Carbon pain is priceless - KEVIN Rudd has a plan to cut your emissions that won't work, will hurt and isn't needed.

In fact, if the Prime Minister has any sense, he'll check the soaring prices for oil and coal and say his painful plan has been tried on you already, and has failed, failed, failed.

Or does he want Labor to lose the next, unloseable election?

Rudd's plan is to cut our greenhouse gases - the ones he claims are heating the world to hell - by making power plants and businesses pay for tradeable licences that let them gas on. You emit, you pay.

That means hitting the biggest sources of carbon dioxide the hardest - petrol and coal-fired power in particular - in the hope the pain of higher prices will force consumers (like you) to switch to something less gassy. (Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun)

Just say 'No!': Australia Starts Reporting for Emissions Trade - CANBERRA - Australia's government on Thursday released details of a new emissions reporting scheme for major corporations to begin next week, underpinning a national carbon emissions trading system due to kick off in 2010.


The regulations, applying initially to around 450 of the country's biggest polluters, spell out how emissions should be calculated and reported, while allowing firms to keep details private if they have commercial reasons. (Reuters)

They all have the best of commercial reasons to not report -- doing so will facilitate destruction of their businesses.

California Dreaming: Can a Growing State Slash Emissions? - California says it can cut greenhouse-gas emissions and still have economic growth.

Huh? Wasn’t that what helped sink the Lieberman-Warner bill—that the country faces a choice between curbing emissions on the one hand, or growing the economy on the other?

So how does California plan to do it? Well, the Golden State’s environmental mavens aren’t exactly sure yet. The state presented today the draft of its big cap-and-trade program that would cut emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020. But it hasn’t gotten around to doing either the economic or the environmental models of what that would entail. (Keith Johnson, WSJ)

Poor schmucks: State renews climate battle - California's next great experiment starts today. The state Air Resources Board will outline this morning a plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2020 and prepare the state for much deeper cuts in the years beyond. The bottom line for consumers, according to the agency's analysis: Electricity and fuel prices will rise. (Sacramento Bee)

California Unveils Major Plan to Slash Emissions - LOS ANGELES - California on Thursday took a major step forward on its global warming fight by unveiling an ambitious plan for clean cars, renewable energy and stringent caps on big polluting industries. (Reuters)

An essential trace gas is not an atmospheric pollutant!

Color and Temperature: Perception is everything - Recently I had some of my readers comment that they thought that The Weather Channel and USA Today (which uses TWC graphics) temperature maps seemed to look “hotter”. They suspected that the colors had changed. I tend to watch such things since my own company (IntelliWeather) produces similar maps.

I searched Google images for some saved older TWC maps, but found none. So I can’t be absolutely sure they have or have not changed. But looking at the color scheme, nothing sticks out in my recollection of the temperature map colors.

But I decided that it would be an interesting exercise to compare USA national temperature maps from the commonly used services today. I saved national CURRENT temperature isotherms/gradient maps from around 03Z (11PM Eastern Time) tonight. All were generated within about an hour of each other.

What I found was surprising. Here they are in alphabetical order: (Watts Up With That?)

Indecision And Litigation Turn America Into A Can't-Do Nation - We have become a nation of second-guessing Hamlets.

Shakespeare warned us about the dangers of "thinking too precisely." His poor Danish prince lost "the name of action" as he dithered and sighed that "conscience does make cowards of us all."

With gas above $4 a gallon, the public is finally waking up to the fact that for decades the U.S. has not been developing known petroleum reserves in Alaska, in our coastal waters or off the continental shelf. Jittery Hamlets apparently forgot that gas comes from oil — and that before you can fill your tank, you must take risks to fill a tanker.

It took 410 days to build the Empire State Building and two years to put up the Eiffel Tower. But ground zero is still ground zero.

Building things is a good indication of the relative confidence of a society. But the last American gasoline refinery was built almost three decades ago. As "cowards of our conscience," we've come up with countless mitigating reasons not to build a new one. Our inaction has meant that our nation's gasoline facilities have grown old, out of date and dangerous.

Maybe Americans can instead substitute plug-in, next-generation electric cars that can be charged at night on the nation's grid powered by nuclear power plants? Wrong again. We haven't issued a single new license that actually led to the building of a nuclear power plant in more than 30 years. (Victor Davis Hanson, IBD)

New Energy Plan Introduced to Reduce Cost of Gasoline : Senate GOP Introduce Common Sense Energy Plan "Gas Price Reduction Act of 2008." - WASHINGTON, DC - Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, commented today on the introduction of the Senate Republicans' "Gas Price Reduction Act of 2008." (Right Side News)

Demonizing Canada - The U.S. is beset by hostile petro-states determined to drive up oil and ream our economy. No matter to Barack Obama. He's drawn a new bead on . . . Canada, our best supplier. His arrogance will cost us. (IBD)

Drive hybrids, slow down, Schwarzenegger says - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger once popularized the gas-guzzling Hummer, but he's now urging Americans to buy hybrid cars and drive slower to cut fuel costs. (Sacramento Bee)

Government Speeds Up CO2 Emissions - Over the last few weeks, despite all the carbon claptrap, the UK Government, aided and abetted by the wetter ‘blue-green’ Tories, has announced a massive acceleration in carbon emissions. As Humpty Dumpty says [picture], this acceleration may be expressed as follows: ΔGCE = Δ(N + E + R + J)/Δt, where: (Global Warming Politics)

Berlin pressed to restore fuel tax break - Germany might reintroduce a €5bn-a-year (£4bn, $7.8bn) tax break for commuters to shield consumers from rising petrol prices.

Senior officials from the Christian Democratic Union led by Angela Merkel, the chancellor, told the Financial Times the pressure to bring back a tax subsidy that was abolished last year, was so high that "we will not have the political strength to resist it". The admission comes as legislators frantically seek to alleviate the effects on voters of rising food and energy prices, which they fear could weaken consumption and dent support for the ruling parties in the run-up to next year's general election.

Using taxes to offset rising petrol prices would mark a U-turn for Germany, which recently rejected French suggestions that European governments should cut levies on petrol to protect consumers' purchasing power. Coalition parliamentarians yesterday said such a move would garner a broad majority in the house. (Financial Times)

Citing Need for Assessments, U.S. Freezes Solar Energy Projects - The freeze has caused widespread concern in the industry, forcing fledgling solar companies to wait just as demand for alternative energy is accelerating. (New York Times)

Ease restrictions on nuclear power plants, state task force recommends - Modification of Wisconsin's nuclear plant moratorium was among the controversial recommendations that the Governor's Task Force on Global Warming approved overwhelmingly Thursday, in its quest to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases.

The task force is not recommending that a new plant be built, but that utilities be able to propose and plan a nuclear plant if it is the most cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gases and fulfill the state's power needs. (Capital Times)

Oh... Nuclear power is not an option, says Kevin Rudd - NUCLEAR energy is not being considered as a response to climate change, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says. Mr Rudd said other options were available to the Government. (AAP)

EU in Deal on Airline CO2 Emissions - Sources - BRUSSELS - European Union governments struck a provisional deal with lawmakers on Thursday to include aviation from 2012 in the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), a key tool to fight climate change, sources said. (Reuters)

Brazil Signs Deal to Export Sustainable Ethanol - SAO PAULO - A group of Brazilian ethanol companies signed a deal to export certified sustainable ethanol to Sweden, in the world's first agreement of such a kind, they said Wednesday. (Reuters)

Traffic tickets for salt — Does healthy eating mean low-salt? - Salt makes food taste good. Therefore, it must be bad for us. Enjoying food means people might eat too much and get fat.

Believe it or not, that is the logic behind beliefs that everyone — from children to adults — should reduce their salt intake as an important part of ‘healthy’ eating.

Fears of salt have become so widespread, even little kids are being told it’s bad for them and given low-salt diets. Even a lot of adults believe that lowering their salt intake will prevent high blood pressure and heart disease. But salt is another food ingredient where the science and the voices of medical experts have had a hard time breaking through myths, fears and pop ideologies.

What may seem inconceivable, given the Red Lights being given to salt, is that there is no credible evidence low-salt diets can help prevent heart disease, high blood pressure or premature death. Nor is there any sound evidence to support fears that we’re eating too much salt and that high salt diets increase our risks for cardiovascular disease and deaths. Nor can we assume that putting everyone on low-salt diets “can’t hurt” and are benign. In fact, the medical research suggests the very opposite. (Junkfood Science)

Tap Water Chemicals Not Linked to Penis Defect - NEW YORK - Though some research has linked chemicals in chlorinated tap water to the risk of birth defects, a new study finds no strong evidence that the chemicals contribute to a common birth defect of the penis.

The defect, known as hypospadias, occurs when the urinary outlet develops on the underside of the penis rather than at the tip. Genetics are thought to play a large role in hypospadias risk, but the other potential causes are not fully understood. (Reuters Health)

StatsCan's ominous attack on bottled water buyers - Statistics Canada has just published an ominous-sounding report on the bottled-water habits of Canadians. This is one of those cases — StatsCan’s report last year on Canadians’ consumption of salt was another — where it’s difficult to know why the government statistical agency is conducting surveys. Outside the industry, does anyone really care how much bottled water Canadians drink? The paranoid view, which is not always unjustified despite being paranoid, is that we’re getting the survey because somebody somewhere wants their government to follow up with a policy. (William Watson, Financial Post)

Government Seeks Dismissal of End-of-World Suit Against Collider - Lawyers for the federal government argued this week that a suit intended to prevent the startup of a the world’s most powerful particle accelerator should be thrown out. (New York Times)

What's the Fuss? Whales Tasty, Profitable - Whaler - SANTIAGO - Reviled by conservationists, Icelandic whale meat exporter Kristjan Loftsson is unapologetic, saying anti-whaling groups and nations are neurotic and that whale meat is highly profitable -- and delicious.

Given a wide berth by many at the International Whaling Commission meeting in Santiago, in which anti whale catching nations spearheaded by Australia are separated from hunting nations Japan, Norway and Iceland by an ideological abyss, Loftsson cannot understand what all the debate is about.

"Those who speak loudest, the UK and US, Australia, they used to whale before but they couldn't manage their whales, so everything is gone. So they have no interest in this any more," Loftsson told Reuters in an interview.

"This is our meat in the ocean. But in Australia and New Zealand, they walk and farm on land," he added. "They are hypocrites. This is not about the whales, it's about politics." (Reuters)

He's right, too! Australia's loud whining about whaling is a severe embarrassment to Australians. We were a whaling nation, which is why we are members of the International Whaling Commission, a commission which exists to facilitate sustainable whaling but now some noisy cranks want to convert that commission to a conservation society.

One of the first commercial whaling operations in Australia was the Davidson Whaling Station located just outside of Eden on the South-East coast of New South Wales. Numerous other coastal whaling stations were established around Australia in the late 1820s to 1830s. Whaling stations in Australia and New Zealand killed over 40 000 humpback whales on their migrations from the Antarctic Ocean to the warm tropical waters north of Australia. Whaling ceased on humpback whales in 1963, and they were protected worldwide in 1965 after recognition of a dramatic global decline in numbers although they are again prolific off east and west coasts and a sustainable harvest is certainly possible now. Commercial whaling continued on sperm whales until 1978, with 16 000 taken from 1952 in Australian waters until the end of commercial whaling in 1978. The development of harpoon guns, explosive harpoons and steam-driven whaling boats in the late 19th century made large-scale commercial whaling so efficient that many whale species were over-exploited and came very near to extinction. If we don't want to whale commercially we should not be in the Commission, period -- leave that to those with an interest in the resource which we abandoned long ago.

Whaler Iceland Dismisses "Survival of the Cutest" - SANTIAGO - Whales are just like any other animal and deserve no special treatment, Iceland said on Wednesday, defending its whaling and dismissing what it called a Western "survival of the cutest" mentality. (Reuters)

And here's a pirate who should be hunted down by every law-abiding nation: Sea Captain Aims to Sink Japan Whaling Industry - SANTIAGO - After three decades at the helm chasing whaling ships, Canadian-born renegade sea captain Paul Watson has set his sights on sinking Japan's whaling industry, the largest in the world -- and reckons he is halfway there. (Reuters)

Moving north not such a hot idea - SHIFTING irrigation agriculture from the parched Murray-Darling Basin to Australia's wet tropical north would be a "risky business", the co-author of a new CSIRO climate change report warned yesterday.

Hotter temperatures in the tropical warm-season wet zone would leave crops and livestock almost constantly heat stressed, said Mark Howden from the CSIRO's Climate Adaptation Flagship. (Sydney Morning Herald)

Never mind there's already an abundance of cropping and animal husbandry in the tropics which Australians could probably mimic successfully there's no need. Apart from populist global warming being a phantom menace it's cheaper and easier to divert excess northern water southward than to open up yet more farming country in the north. We already have a blueprint for diverting water along the Dividing Range and into the Murray Darling catchment to provide abundant irrigation water where the infrastructure already exists.

June 26, 2008

Supreme Court overturns DC gun ban -- Second Amendment guarantees individual rights to own guns for self-defense! - Click here for the text of the decision!

The Rantings of James Hansen: Hubris Unparalleled - On 23 June of this year (2008), James E. Hansen --Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies -- unleashed a tirade that was truly "beyond the pale" ... even for him.

He said, among other things, that "climate is nearing dangerous tipping points," that if CO2 emissions follow a business-as-usual scenario, "sea level rise of at least two meters is likely this century," that "polar and alpine species will be pushed off the planet," that "ocean life dependent on carbonate shells and skeletons is threatened by dissolution," and that "we have used up all slack in the schedule for actions needed to defuse the global warming time bomb." And he says that his conclusions "have a certainty exceeding 99 percent."

Well if they do, Hansen certainly didn't reach them via the scientific method; for there is likely no other scientist on earth that would give any credence at all to such an extreme claim, especially as it pertains to such a complex subject. And perhaps that is why U.S. House of Representatives member Ed Markey (Democrat, Massachusetts) is reported by Associated Press writer Seth Borenstein (23 June 2008) to have said "we recognize him as a climate prophet."

But why stop there? With a certainty exceeding 99%, Hansen may as well be recognized as a fledgling God.

Hansen's policy prescriptions for the planet are equally extreme and absolute: "we must draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide to preserve the planet we know," "we must demand a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants," a carbon tax "is essential," and "CEOs of fossil energy companies ... should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature."

But why even bother with trials? ... especially when we have an oracle whose views have "a certainty exceeding 99%" of being correct. Let's just rush out and see how fast we all can carry out his will.

Or perhaps we should actually examine Hansen's rantings just a bit. (co2science)

Vengeful Hansen's answer for global warning heretics - James Hansen, the NASA scientist who 20 years ago warned of global warming disasters, was on stage again recently, once more giving run-for-the-hills testimony before Congress and receiving adulatory comment at every turn. Too bad he's a vicious-minded extremist whose name should be pilloried instead of praised.

A saint of the left, a hero of the environmentalists, a self-proclaimed martyr to truth and champion of democratic processes, Hansen has an interesting idea of what to do with those -- or at least some of those -- who disagree with him. Conduct an inquisition. Strike back at the heretics. (Jay Ambrose, Scripps Howard News Service)

Sounds like Al & Jimmy: Dutch prepare for Maya apocalypse - Thousands of Dutch people are buying boats and rations and building bunkers to await an apocalypse predicted by the Maya of South America. (Daily Telegraph)

Another dangerous zealot: Cost of tackling global climate change has doubled, warns Stern - The author of an influential British government report arguing the world needed to spend just 1% of its wealth tackling climate change has warned that the cost of averting disaster has now doubled. (The Guardian)

$IR NI¢HOLA$ $T£RN (Climate Resistance)

Stern Rebuke | Stern Rebuke II | In Closing, Sternly (Chris Horner, Planet Gore)

Climate change ads should be more cheery, report says - The government needs to drop "gloomy, miserable and bleak" messages in climate change ads and focus on more positive emotional messages to get the public to change their habits, according to a new report. (The Guardian)

No, they shouldn't exist at all. Sheesh!

The eco-crunch: Can Britain still afford to go green? - The housing market is in decline, fuel costs are soaring – and the worst may be yet to come for the global economy. It’s little wonder that politicians are backing away from electorally unpalatable green policies. Paul Vallely investigates the hard choices facing consumers and environmentalists. (The Independent)

Funny because it's true -- ecochondria is strictly a boom economy ailment.

Oh boy... the Grand Old Party is in desperate need of a GOP presidential candidate: McCain bucks Bush on climate change - LOS ANGELES -- Republican White House contender John McCain Tuesday vowed to combat global warming without sacrificing economic growth, staking out a position at stark odds with President George W. Bush.

Unlike Bush, McCain demanded binding cuts to emissions of warming gases as he spoke at a California event alongside Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who opposes the Republican candidate's call for offshore oil drilling. (Agence France-Presse)

Mike Ivey: Should Madison ban the drive-through? - First it was a proposed ban on plastic bags.

Now, a member of the influential Madison Plan Commission wants to ban the restaurant drive-through -- or at least restrict the ubiquitous symbol of America's auto-centric lifestyle.

"Given the concern about all the carbon going into the atmosphere, I'm not sure we should be building more places for people to sit idling in their cars," says Eric Sundquist, who was appointed to the citizen panel by Mayor Dave Cieslewicz this spring. (Capital Times)

Comments On The Article By Palmer et al 2008 “Toward Seamless Prediction: Calibration of Climate Change Projections Using Seasonal Forecasts” - Tim Palmer of the European Centre for Medium Range Forecasting (ECMWF) is an excellent scientist. He is Head of the Probability and Seasonal Forecasting Division at ECMWF. A brief overview of his credentials are that he “is a fellow of the Royal Society and of the American Meteorological Society, and has received awards from both of these societies. He is currently chairman of the Scientific Steering Group of the U.N. World Meteorological Organization’s Climate Variability and Predictability Project, and was lead author of the most recent assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

Thus, any publication that he authors is worthy of discussion. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

Good grief: Climate Change to Create 'Plant Refugees' - US Study - CHICAGO - Climate change may turn many of California's native plants into "plant refugees" in the next century as they seek more suitable habitats, US researchers said on Tuesday. (Reuters)

Sol is worryingly docile and current guesstimates are that we are in for a cooling spell yet the hysterical warming bandwagon rolls on...

Floods, Droughts Make Mild Diseases Deadly - Study - CHICAGO - Extreme floods and droughts brought on by climate change can turn normally harmless infections into significant threats, international researchers said on Tuesday. (Reuters)

That stressors increase disease vulnerability is true but what has this to do with the populist concept of climate change?

More of this nonsense: Climate Change May Strain US Forces: Intel Study - WASHINGTON - US intelligence believes fallout from global climate change over the next 20 years will boost global instability and may place new burdens on US military forces, according to a report delivered to Congress on Wednesday. (Reuters)

Purposeful Manipulation of Temperature Data or Poor Practice? - I stumbled across this letter written by Dr. Fred W. Decker, Professor of Meteorology, Oregon State University, Corvalis, Oregon to the opinion page of the Albany, Oregon Democrat Gazette. We are either placing too much faith in stupid people or data is being manipulated to support the global warming hoax. Thank goodness for professors like Dr. Decker who are not afraid to speak the truth. (Paloustics)

About those extremes... Due for a spell of the roaring 90s - According to Eric Stevens at the Fairbanks Forecast Office of the National Weather Service, more than a decade has passed since Fairbanks, one of the warmest places in Alaska, reached at least 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

“August, 1994,” Stevens said over the phone, remembering the last time Fairbanks reached 90 degrees. “This is the longest stretch of no-nineties in the Alaska climate record, since 1904.”

Fairbanks reached 93 degrees on Aug. 5, 1994, and hasn’t reached 90 degrees in the 14 years since.

“It’s global blanding,” Stevens joked. “We don’t seem to have many 90s or minus-60s anymore . . . Fairbanks doesn’t get into the 90s very often, but based on the climate record, we’re kind of due.” (Alaska Science Forum)

Idiots: California Will Offer Plan to Cut Harmful Emissions - California will introduce a detailed plan on Thursday to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels in 12 years by requiring more energy-efficient appliances and buildings, lowering vehicle emissions and generating 33 percent of its energy from renewable sources.

But the greatest source of reductions would come from capping emissions from utilities, industrial facilities and other businesses, while allowing them to use permits to emit authorized amounts of pollutants. The companies could buy and sell these permits with their counterparts in seven Western states and three Canadian provinces. (New York Times)

It would be one thing if they were going after harmful emissions but they aren't, the targets are so-called greenhouse gases.

Rival climate plans costing Canada - Efforts to make Canada a world environmental and energy superpower are being hindered by a plethora of disparate climate change strategies and initiatives being undertaken at the federal and provincial levels, the head of a prominent business group said Tuesday. (Calgary Herald)

New approach needed to deal with carbon - Neither the Liberals nor Tories appreciate the competitive challenges we face (Thomas d’Aquino, Financial Post)

Carbon-credit schemes fall 30% short of projections, report claims - The vast majority of schemes that sell carbon credits to offset pollution are delivering 30% less than they promise, a report published today claims. (The Guardian)

Row over carbon credits - Developing countries are divided over whether carbon capture projects should be allowed in the UN's carbon trading scheme (The Guardian)

Big gains touted in emissions report - An emissions trading scheme would unlock investment of more than $12 billion over the next 10 years and create nearly 10,000 jobs, according to a report commissioned by the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development.

The report by consultancy Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM) was commissioned just two weeks ago.

The business council's aim is to remind MPs considering the ETS legislation that it has an upside to weigh against the risks and costs other business lobby groups and companies have been emphasising.

Some of the assumption underpinning the report's conclusion might raise eyebrows, however. (Brian Fallow, New Zealand Herald)

Fran O'Sullivan: Rushed report promises too much - Some key members of the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development are steamed up about yesterday's "special report" to MPs promoting a multibillion-dollar bonanza for New Zealand if the emissions trading legislation is passed.

At issue is why the council's executive did not let all its members know it had commissioned special research, did not make copies of its report available to members when asked, and issued media claims that are not fully supported by the underlying analysis.

"We've been blindsided" was one of the more printable comments flying around the traps yesterday as companies ranging from Holcim to Fonterra considered their formal responses in relation to the report. (New Zealand Herald)

Study Highlights Need to Adjust Climate Models - LONDON - Sea spray and microscopic plants from the tropical Atlantic are destroying greenhouse gases in the lower atmosphere at a faster pace than scientists had thought, British researchers said on Wednesday.

The findings published in the journal Nature mean current climate models may need adjusting and they underscore the difficulties in trying to predict future temperature changes, the researchers said. (Reuters)

May need adjusting? There's the hopeful understatement of the year. GCMs are of zero known value for climate forecasting and given the coupled non-linear chaotic nature of climate variables likely never will be.

Tropical oceans expose riddle over global-warming equation - PARIS — A probe into levels of an important greenhouse gas above the tropical Atlantic has challenged assumptions about key sources of global warming, scientists said on Wednesday.

Researchers found that natural chemicals in the atmosphere west of equatorial Africa destroyed 50 percent more ozone in that region than expected.

This process also reduced concentrations of methane, another powerful greenhouse gas.

It may well apply in oceans around the world and if so, it would pose major questions about how Earth's inventory of global warming gases is calculated, they said. (AFP) | Destruction of greenhouse gases over tropical Atlantic (National Centre for Atmospheric Science)

First It Was Yellow Journalism, Now It's Yellow Science - "Man-made global warming...a hypothesis that remains untested, makes no predictions that can be tested in the near future, and cannot offer a numerical explanation for the limited evidence to which it clings." (Wall Street Journal).

The Hot Water Bottle Effect - Stephen Wilde has been a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society since 1968. The first six articles from Mr Wilde were received with a great deal of interest throughout the Co2 Sceptic community.

In Stephen Wilde’s seventh and exclusive article for CO2Sceptics.Com he threads together all of the main articles to achieve a credible rival to "The Green House Effect". The following work titled "The Hot Water Bottle Effect" considers that the "Green House Effect" was flawed and that his own theory will help people understand how the Earth's climate works in conjunction with The Sun. (CO2Sceptics)

Surprise: Explosive volcanic eruption under the Arctic ice found - I posted on a similar story about volcanic eruptions under Antarctic ice earlier this year. What is unique about this situation is that it was a large eruption that went completely undetected, and under pressures that they thought not possible. The big question is then; where did the heat from the volcano go, and what effect did it have on the sea ice environment? Research has been going on looking at volcanism in the ridge but this discovery of a significant eruption in 1999 is new and unexpected. (Watts Up With That?)

China to Lead 50 Pct Jump in World CO2 Output - EIA - NEW YORK - The world's emissions of the main planet-warming gas carbon dioxide will rise over 50 percent to more than 42 billion tonnes per year from 2005 to 2030 as China leads a rise in burning coal, the US government forecast on Wednesday. (Reuters)

Good for them. Someone is going to have to keep the world's economic engine running while Western nations busily commit economic suicide to appease the green gods.

Private Jets Targeted as Symbols of Inequality - WASHINGTON, Jun 25 - Crusaders against inequality are accusing the private jet set of flying high at the expense of the environment, the national air traffic system, and lower-class taxpayers. (IPS)

They're attacking the Hollywood elite? But, but...

Al Gore Denies Global Warming in His Meal Ticket - Former Vice President Al Gore, who famously claimed to have invented the Internet, now denies -in the face of powerful evidence to the contrary- that he is in a position to make an immense fortune from global warming-mitigation efforts. (Hawaii Reporter)

One less: Ex-EPA official critical on climate change - WASHINGTON -- A high-ranking political appointee resigned from the Environmental Protection Agency after concluding there was no more progress to be made on greenhouse gases under the Bush administration. (Associated Press)

McCain Runs Into Opposition Over Offshore Oil Plan - RIVERSIDE, Calif. - Republican presidential hopeful John McCain on Tuesday defended his switch in favor of US offshore oil drilling after a biting critique from Democrat Barack Obama and complaints in green-friendly California. (Reuters)

Pander to voters at peril, U.S. told - Big-city U. S. mayors and presidential hopeful Barack Obama, who joined the parade this week of ill-informed, U. S. anti-oil sands policies, should be careful what they wish for.

While the aim is undoubtedly to pander to the electorate in an election year charged with oil and climate-change debate, what they are stoking is an increasingly angry Canadian energy industry that is seriously looking at non-U. S. markets for its oil.

Here's what Rick George, chief executive of Suncor Energy Inc., Canada's largest single oil sands producer, said this week, reflecting rising frustration with the wave of American anti-oil sands policies: (Claudia Cattaneo, Financial Post)

NAFTA and Oil: Obama plays ‘dirty’ oil card - U.S. politicians are playing a dangerous, hypocritical game (Peter Foster, Financial Post)

This is some idiot's idea of a good thing? Australia: Climate change risks 3 million jobs - MORE than three million Australian jobs are under threat from efforts to tackle climate change, the CSIRO has found. (AAP)

For a little perspective there are only about 20 million Aussies in total and a labor force of a little under 11 million, so this stupid activity risks something over 27% of our jobs with the bizarre promise that "green" jobs will replace them within 15 years. I guess they think subsistence farming and draught animal stables are "green". Shame about those who starved in the meantime but, it is for Gaia...

So don't do it, dipstick! Climate change comes before petrol prices: Rudd - KEVIN RUDD said it was obvious energy costs would increase under an emissions trading scheme as he called on the Opposition to rise above partisan politics on climate change and do what was right for the future.

With soaring petrol prices making emissions trading a hot-button political issue, the Prime Minister said all energy sources - including petrol - that were subject to a carbon tax would increase in price.

"If you adopt a position of acting on climate change, it does have an impact on energy prices. That's just the truth," Mr Rudd told Parliament. (Sydney Morning Herald)

EU Aims to Straighten Air Routes to Cut CO2 - BRUSSELS - The European Commission launched a plan to straighten out aviation routes on Wednesday to cut fuel costs and carbon dioxide emissions growth from increasing numbers of aircraft. (Reuters)

Well, cutting fuel costs is a good idea, at least.

Oh... Shell Says World Can Stabilise Greenhouse Gas Level - ROME - Thirst for energy will double in the first half of the century, but increased biofuel production and carbon storage could help the world stabilise greenhouse gas levels by the 2020s, oil giant Shell said on Wednesday. (Reuters)

Biofuels Pushing 30 Million Into Poverty - Oxfam - BRUSSELS - Biofuels are responsible for 30 percent of the increase in global food prices, pushing 30 million people worldwide into poverty, aid agency Oxfam said in a report on Wednesday. (Reuters)

Obama's Corn Fake - If Obama wants energy independence through alternative fuels, why doesn't he back imported sugar-based ethanol? This old-style politician knows it isn't grown in the Midwest and Brazil has no electoral votes. (IBD)

Talk is Cheap, Skeptics Say of Oil Sands Message - CALGARY, Alberta - Canada's oil sands producers have a rough road ahead persuading environmentalists and an increasingly concerned public they are serious about protecting the environment while investing billions of dollars in new projects.

The industry's lobby group and several chief executives launched a new communications campaign this week aimed at countering a full-court press by environmentalists over the impact of oil sands development on air, land, water and local communities. (Reuters)

Solar Plexus: When, Japan Wonders, Should Clean-Energy Subsidies End? - Renewable energy often seems a little bit like the old joke about Brazil: The technology of the future, and it always will be. Proponents say they want subsidies only until clean-energy is competitive—but that day always gets pushed back further, even with expensive oil. (Keith Johnson, WSJ)

Simple answer? A long time ago.

100-Percent Renewables Not a Pipe Dream - KINGSTON, Ontario, Jun 25 - North America's abject failure to meet the challenge of climate change has been "un-American", environmentalist and scientist David Suzuki told delegates Tuesday at the World Wind Energy Conference, the first ever in the region.

"We're facing an ecological crisis, a crisis far, far worse than Pearl Harbour," Suzuki said. (IPS)

Higher gas and electricity bills to pay for shift from fossil fuels - Householders will be warned today to expect five years of higher home energy bills to pay for a green power revolution. (The Times)

Just 5 years? Believe that & they'll tell you another.

Hutton tells power grid to clear barriers to wind - The government will today take a bold step it believes will remove the biggest single barrier to renewable energy: access to the National Grid.

Today, wind farms can wait 10 years or more to supply homes and businesses. To end this, ministers have told the high-voltage network to start building connections before formal financial commitments from users. The operating company, National Grid plc, confirmed it had agreed to start "sharing" of transmission lines so electricity from wind could use them when needed, handing back capacity to conventional power when the blades are not turning. (The Guardian)

Here's a far more efficient solution, exclude wind altogether.

UK to expand wind energy programme - Plans for a massive expansion of a wind energy programme in the UK are to be unveiled by the Government. They will include the building of 7000 wind turbines both in the countryside and around the coast. Sustainable energy schemes will become much more common, and change to our landscapes, towns and cities is inevitable, the government will say. (Daily Telegraph)

Wind turbines are 'unreliable and will cost each home £4,000' claims think-tank - The Government's plan to build thousands of new wind turbines across Britain is misguided, doomed to failure and will cost every household at least £4,000, a new report claims.

Rather than trying to solve the UK's energy crisis by investing in wind power, ministers should focus on tidal energy, clean coal and nuclear power, it says. (Daily Mail)

Daft idea du jour - All the papers latched onto this one – residential buildings with separately rotating floors. (Number Watch)

Lack of vitamin D linked to deaths - CHICAGO, Illinois -- New research linking low vitamin D levels with deaths from heart disease and other causes bolsters mounting evidence about the "sunshine" vitamin's role in good health. (AP)

Long overdue (Grandma was right when she chased the gets out "to get a bit of sun for their health"). Getting sunburned is not good for you but getting some sun exposure every day is. Remember also that you are really lousy at storing D vitamins so get some sun every day you can. While we prefer balanced diet and exercise and do not specifically endorse nutritional supplements if you are at risk of osteoporosis you might consider Calcium plus D if you aren't getting sun exposure.

Australia’s fat bomb is defused - Far from a crisis of poor health in Australia from a ticking FAT BOMB, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare just released the country’s latest flagship health statistics report, Australia Health 2008. Australians have the second highest life expectancy in the world — 81.4 years — second only to Japan. And death rates are falling for the leading causes of death and health concerns, including cancer, heart disease, strokes, injury and asthma.

The population is aging. Men at age 65 years, can now expect to live to about 83 years and women to age 86.

Even so, deaths from chronic diseases of aging, popularly attributed to obesity or lifestyles, continue to drop.

Children are being vaccinated in very high numbers — more than 90% are fully covered — and rates continue to increase. Death rates among children and young people have been cut in half in the past two decades, with fewer injury-related deaths. Illicit drug use continues to fall. Smoking rates are among the lowest for OECD countries and continue to drop.

The percentages of Australians whose BMIs, calculated from their heights and weights, fall into the “obese” category is 19% for men and 17% for women. Those labeled “overweight” are 41% and 25%, respectively. A total of 50.1% of Australians’ BMIs fall into the “overweight” or “obese” categories. This compares to countries in the UK (51.1%), Oceania (59.3%), northwest Europe (50.9%), and southern and eastern Europe (59.5%). (Junkfood Science)

Diet drug guidelines issued - New obesity clinical guidelines, that doctors in the UK must follow as part of their national contracts with the National Health Services, have just been issued by NICE (the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence). They recommend rimonabant (Acomplia) for all ‘overweight’ and ‘obese’ people who can’t tolerate or haven’t had success with two other weight loss drugs.

Acomplia is the same drug that had been banned by the Food and Drug Administration in the United States over safety and efficacy concerns, and the European Medicines Agency had issued safety warnings concerning risks for mental health side effects. The safety and effectiveness problems raised in the four main randomized controlled clinical trials of Acomplia, and the postmarket adverse events being reported, were covered in detail here. A number of international scientific reviews have also raised concerns about the drug. Just weeks ago, it was announced that 5 deaths and 720 adverse events in the UK had been linked to Acomplia since it had been made available there in 2006. (Junkfood Science)

Active Sonar Vs. Killer Whales - The Supreme Court has agreed to decide if the safety and security of whales trumps that of the United States. Protecting Shamu may make both the California Coastal Commission and the Iranian navy happy. (IBD)

Supermarkets clash with Benn on plastic bags - The bosses of the UK's biggest supermarket chains clashed with environment secretary Hilary Benn on Tuesday night at a meeting about how to reduce the number of carrier bags they give out.

Sir Terry Leahy of Tesco, Sir Stuart Rose of Marks & Spencer, Andy Bond of Asda and Justin King of Sainsbury's were all present, along with the bosses of Morrisons, Somerfield and the Co-op.

The chief executive of one of the big supermarkets said the meeting had deteriorated into a "very heated debate".

The supermarkets told Benn the government was making the wrong decision about cutting carrier bag use and risked losing their goodwill. (The Guardian)

Tracing the Roots of Environmentalism - SARLAT, France -- I have journeyed to the south of France to continue my researches into the earliest ancestors of America's present-day political exotics. The American scene abounds with bizarre creatures: feminists, militant advocates of identity politics, environmentalist wackos -- as Rush Limbaugh's millions call them. I came here to investigate the life of the 12th-century troubadour, Bertran de Born, as early an intellectual precursor to the environmental wackos as I have yet discovered. (R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., American Spectator)

Agriculture's impact far more than economic, study says - Agriculture is important, of course, for generating jobs and income. But it has a host of non-economic benefits, too, according to a Cornell study that asked New Yorkers about the value of local agriculture. (Cornell University)

June 25, 2008

Off-topic-don't-know-whether-to-laugh-or-cry-of-the-day: The Washington Times reports today that President Bush "made a key concession to North Korea by allowing it to exclude atomic bombs from a required disclosure of its nuclear activities."

The Junkman asks: Is it Jan. 20, 2009 yet?

Green Child Abuse of the Day Highway a Health Risk, Protesters Say - ... so reports the Washington Post today about a Green campaign against much-needed highway in Montgomery County, Maryland. The photo below is from the front-page of the Post's Metro section. I wonder if these kids are allowed to eat Ben & Jerry's ice cream, which the Junkman once found to have 200 times the level of dioxin that the EPA says is safe?

White House Refused to Open Pollutants E-Mail - The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.’s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said.

This week, more than six months later, the E.P.A. is set to respond to that order by releasing a watered-down version of the original proposal that offers no conclusion. Instead, the document reviews the legal and economic issues presented by declaring greenhouse gases a pollutant.

Over the past five days, the officials said, the White House successfully put pressure on the E.P.A. to eliminate large sections of the original analysis that supported regulation, including a finding that tough regulation of motor vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 32 years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. (New York Times)

Thanks goodness someone there has some cojones because the 'benefits' of limiting an essential trace gas are totally fraudulent, based entirely on the failed enhanced greenhouse hypothesis and climate models whose prognostic capabilities are not worth a cracker.

Britons fear the carbon cops are coming - LONDON - First there were the thought police, then the surveillance society, now Britons fear the carbon cops are coming to ensure compliance with climate change legislation, a survey showed on Wednesday.

And with warnings of global catastrophe ringing in their ears some people fear that failure to cut personal carbon emissions will eventually result in enforced carbon behaviour re-education, the Energy Saving Trust said.

It said 41 percent of Britons think the country will need its own Carbon Police Force by mid-century and one quarter believe repeat offenders will have to go into carbon rehab and take carbon addiction classes.

"The UK's perception is that by 2050 we could have the sort of draconian infringements on our civil liberties that have been highlighted in our research. This need not be the case," said EST chief Philip Sellwood said. (Reuters)

Recycling ‘Global Warming’ Rubbish - The mindless rubbish about ‘global warming’ that is recycled on a daily basis by journalists, or spouted on radio and television, surely deserves its very own ‘Recycling Code’ to match that, say, for plastics. Global Warming Politics is happy to oblige. (Global Warming Politics)

When it Came to the Environment George Carlin Was One of Us - George Carlin, who died on Sunday, made his mark doing edgy comedy, and today you can't get any edgier than taking on environmentalists and globaloney activists. He did a routine called "The Planet is Fine" which is pretty darn good. I've copied it below minus the seven words you can't say on TV (which means I had to bleep about every third word). However, you'll get the message: (HolyCoast)

An Irrelevant Europe - Best for the World? - In a recent op-ed Robert Kagan laments that (Western) Europe is sliding into irrelevance. But that might be the best thing for the rest of the world.

Don’t get me wrong, the world owes plenty to Europe. It’s given the world great art, architecture, literature, and music. It’s also given the world the ideas of universal education, the scientific method, research institutions, property rights, rule of law, democracy, religious freedom, and freedom of thought and expression, among other things. These ideas and institutions coalesced to power the engine of progress that drives the economic and technological development that have improved human well-being — not only in Europe but elsewhere — to levels far beyond what our ancestors could have imagined. Consequently, today we live longer, healthier, more educated, freer, and wealthier than ever before. But for the past century, Europe seems determined to undo all the good it’s ever done. (Indur Goklany, Cato at liberty)

James Hansen: Abusing the Public Trust - Monday, James Hansen, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), addressed Congress and brought a new twist to his tired global warming song and dance routine. Hansen now seems to be calling for the chief executives of Big Oil to be tried for high crimes against humanity. Their crime? Spreading doubt about global warming.

Actually, it is Hansen who is guilty. Guilty of abusing the public trust. (Brian Sussman, American Thinker)

Scientists make climate plea to Harper - OTTAWA - More than 100 leading climate scientists have launched a new offensive challenging the federal government's climate change plan and urging Prime Minister Stephen Harper along with other Canadian politicians to accelerate efforts to crack down on human activity linked to global warming. (Mike De Souza , Canwest News Service)

What's wrong fellas, career lights dimming?

From CO₂ Science this week:
Editorial:
The Shuttling of Nitrogen from One-Year-Old to Current-Year Foliage in CO2-Enriched Atmospheres: We note an intriguing similarity between independent experiments conducted years apart on loblolly pine and sour orange trees.

Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week:
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 553 individual scientists from 337 separate research institutions in 38 different countries ... and counting! This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from Southern Alaska, USA. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here.

Subject Index Summary:
Snow (North America): What do snow and snowstorm data reveal about the nature of 20th-century global warming?

Plant Growth Data:
This week we add new results (blue background) of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature for: Amur Silvergrass, Dahurian Birch, Marine Coccolithophores, and Wetland Reed.

Journal Reviews:
A Long-Term Record of Tropical Cyclones and Hurricanes of Louisiana, USA: When in the record were the storms most active?

River Discharge to the Global Ocean: What has been predicted for a warming world? ... and what has actually been observed?

Summer and Winter Deaths in Brisbane, Australia: The thermal extremes of which season lead to greater human mortality?

Marine Coccolithophore Photosynthesis in a CO2-Enriched Warmer World: How might it compare with what it is today?

Photosynthetic Acclimation of Native Plants to Warming in the Temperate Steppe of Northern China: How significant is it? (co2science.org)

Iceland warned of polar bear attacks - MARAUDING polar bears could cause terror on Iceland after experts claimed global warming could bring the killer beasts across the sea.

The alert came as police there shot two bears in just two weeks.

The animals - which are not native to Iceland - are thought to have floated across the Arctic Ocean on ice platforms which broke free from Greenland.

Climate expert Thor Jakobsson said: "Since two have reached the shore, more could be on the way." (Daily Record)

Global warming? Actually, unless warming causes heavy sea ice that isn't thought to be the case. Bears are visitors to Iceland in years of heavy sea ice and there are records of this happening for a thousand years (meaning likely throughout the Holocene but no one recorded the fact prior to about 1,000AD).

Climate change is 'top of priorities' - CBI director-general Richard Lambert has warned politicians that the economic slowdown is no reason for them to get distracted from taking urgent action to tackle climate change and secure the UK's future energy supply.

Speaking yesterday at a conference on sustainability, Mr Lambert said energy and the environment were at the top of business's long-term priorities. He said that alternative energies like wind and solar were "an economic opportunity on a scale that has not been seen before". (Daily Telegraph)

Translation: we'd rather be paid subsidies than actually engage in competitive business.

Hurricane Center director talks forecasting in interview - MIAMI -- Substantially improving the accuracy of hurricane intensity predictions could take years and tens of millions of dollars, the National Hurricane Center's director said Tuesday.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Bill Read said reducing by half the errors made in tasks such as determining whether a storm would remain a Category 1 or grow stronger would be a costly and long-term effort.

Predicting a storm's intensity is much harder for meteorologists than estimating where it will go. Since 1990, forecasters have reduced by more than half their errors in predicting a storm's path, but over the same time the accuracy of their intensity forecasts has remained virtually unchanged. (AP)

Reader Poll: James Hansen calls for trials of energy executives, what next? - This poll will gauge reader perception to the issue that Dr. Hansen of NASA has recently raised that I cover in my post here. One vote per computer, and please spread this permalink to the poll far and wide to get a good mix of input across the blogosphere. (Watts Up With That?)

$600 million think tank is not a solution to global warming - As the father of three young children, I believe that when it comes to protecting California's environment and safeguarding our natural resources for future generations to enjoy, there should be no debate.

Republicans and Democrats alike are working to preserve our state's rich environmental heritage so future generations will be able to enjoy our parks, rivers, forests, beaches, habitats and open spaces, though we often differ in how we approach our shared goal.

But protecting the environment should not give state bureaucrats free rein to recklessly spend our hard-earned tax dollars to create expensive new government programs, without accountability to lawmakers or taxpayers. Unfortunately, that's exactly what the appointed bureaucrats at the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) have recently proposed. (Mike Villines, SF Chronicle)

Seamless Prediction Systems by Hendrik Tennekes - Roger Pielke gracefully invited me to write a brief essay on an interesting technical detail in the World Summit document issued by WCRP. According to the document, all time scales, from hours to centuries, all regional details, everything related to prediction should be dealt with by GCM technology. In this context, the term “seamless prediction” is used. That caught my attention. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

Dennis T. Avery Speech To Metlife: “expect Moderate Global Cooling.” - The earth has entered a moderate 25-30 year cooling, which was predicted by the sunspots a decade ago, Dennis Avery recently told the MetLife Agricultural Investment Division at Lake Tahoe, NV. He said the cooling is now also endorsed by a recent shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The cooling is likely to radically change the world’s political climate too, with profound impacts on bio-fuels, energy prices, power generation and agricultural trade. (CGFI)

Climate change: Learning to think like a geologist - Geologists are one group of scientists who aren’t part of Al Gore’s “100 per cent consensus” that humans are the principal cause of global warming and that we have to take drastic steps to deal with it. (Paul MacRae, False Alarm)

Global Warming Movement Turns Cool - Let me warn you, this is a little longer than my usual posts here, but it was prompted by a big op-ed article in the Birmingham News this morning. Take the time to read it, if you dare. Seems like our local paper has settled on one side of the climate change debate, which is certainly their right. But, I have the right to publish this article as well….

Two years ago, it seemed like nothing could stop the global warming train. Most of the media, those in Hollywood, politicians (many on both sides of the cultural divide), and “enlightened environmentalists” were all telling us that man was causing runaway warming of the earth’s atmosphere, meaning global catastrophe only decades ahead for all of us.

Scary stuff.

The problem is that a majority of those in this almost religious movement have little training in atmospheric science, and little understanding of the issue. They jumped on the bandwagon because it matches their worldview, or pads their pocket. This issue has generated great wealth on both sides of the argument, and I need to say up front I have absolutely no financial interest in climate. I am paid the same regardless of whether man is involved in climate change or not, and I have never taken a dime for a speech on the subject.

The simple truth is that the anthropogenic global warming train has slowed to a crawl, and the riders are jumping off as the facts are discovered. (James Spann, ABC 33/40)

Political Speculators - Every dogma has its day, and so it is with the posturing that blames the run-up in oil prices on "speculators." The new political consensus is that further "common-sense regulation" of the energy futures market is necessary. Let's grant that the sentiment is common, but the sense – like the evidence – is nonexistent.

On Sunday, Barack Obama rolled out a proposal that will supposedly thwart market manipulation by "a few energy lobbyists and speculators." John McCain chimed in that Mr. Obama was merely following his lead; last week, the Republican denounced "some people on Wall Street" for "gaming the system." If there's a Congressman who isn't calling for his own crackdown, he's gone into witness protection. And sure enough, even this week's impromptu oil summit in Jeddah blamed "speculators" for high prices.

The futures market may be a convenient scapegoat, but it's simply a price discovery mechanism. Major energy consumers – refiners, airlines – buy and sell these contracts to lock in goods at a future price, as a hedge against volatility. Essentially, they're guesses about coming oil supply and demand, as well as the rate of inflation. The political theory is that such futures trading is creating a bubble in the spot market (i.e., oil purchased for immediate delivery) beyond oil fundamentals. Thus, $4 gas.

But there's no inherent reason to "bet" that commodities will go up rather than down. Bet wrong – place all your chips on red, say – and you lose. If a company purchases the future right to buy oil at $140 a barrel and it instead sells for $130, the option is worthless. Besides, somebody has to take the other side of any futures contract: Some are trying to predict where the price will go in the future, while the other side is attempting to sell its future price risk. But no one knows how things will end up.

Mr. McCain calls such exchanges "reckless wagering." But speculators – normally known as "traders" – are really managing the exposure risks of American businesses to higher oil prices. Traders not affiliated with major producers or consumers provide liquidity to the market. Without the second group, futures markets would be determined exclusively by commercial participants. Another word for this is a cartel. (Wall Street Journal)

McCain Defends Position Switch on Offshore Oil - SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Republican presidential candidate John McCain is defending his decision to switch position in favor of US offshore oil drilling as he seeks votes in environmentally conscious California.

In appearances in coastal Santa Barbara and inland Fresno, McCain said on Monday he believed he had made the right decision at a time of record-high gasoline prices but that it would be up to individual states to choose whether offshore drilling is right for them. (Reuters)

Dow Chemical to Raise Prices 25% as Energy Costs Gain - Dow Chemical Co. will raise prices as much as 25 percent in July, the largest increase in company history and the second in two months, to recoup surging energy and raw-material costs. (Bloomberg)

Report: FPL green energy program misleading - Nearly 39,000 Florida Power & Light customers gave the company $11.4 million over four years to develop green energy, but a report shows most of the money went toward administrative and marketing costs. (AP)

Final installment - For those who’ve been following Neurodiversity blogger Kathleen Seidel’s case when a lawyer tried to intimidate her into silence for writing blogs on the science countering vaccination fears: Since we last left the soap opera... (Junkfood Science)

Tick Tock, Docs are building bomb shelters - Australia’s largest and most prestigious medical professional associations found the FAT BOMB report so startling, they actually issued media releases.

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners’ media statement said that these “startling new figures on the obesity epidemic,” show that this crisis is “the ticking bomb for Australia’s health.” (Junkfood Science)

Biotech Wheat To Ease World Food Shortage, By: Dennis T. Avery - CHURCHVILLE, VA—In the midst of the worst global grain shortage in decades, two lines of Australian biotech wheat have out-yielded current wheats by 20 percent—even under drought stress.

“Around the world, 35–50 percent of the wheat-growing areas are under drought risk. The number of drought-affected wheat growing areas is likely to increase with the effects of climate change” John Brumby, of Victoria, Australia told his audience. “These initial results are very promising, and suggest that these genetically modified wheat lines may be part of the solution to help farmers maintain and improve their crop yields in a changing global environment.” (CGFI)

June 24, 2008

A Desperate Man - In another example of junk science run amok, NASA scientist James Hansen wants oil executives put on trial for giving "misinformation" about his global warming theory. Is this where society is headed?

If so, we are headed for a dangerous place. Only in totalitarian systems is dissent a criminal offense.

Hansen, who 20 years ago Monday cranked up the global warming scare with his congressional testimony, is a clever promoter. By fusing his pseudo science with the wild-eyed efforts of eco-activists, media dupes and pandering politicians, he's been able to convince the public that his flawed theory is actually holy writ.

Out of this has emerged a madness that has divided Westerners into "us," the believers, and "them," the skeptics who are looked down upon as socially irresponsible reprobates.

That's not enough for Hansen, though. He now wants to ratchet his machine up a few notches. (IBD)

James Hansen: 20 years later - Exactly twenty years ago, on June 23rd, 1988, James Hansen gave one of the most notorious speeches that have led to the current irrational and pseudoscientific global warming hysteria.

Today, 20 years later when it is already clear that his predictions have been bunk since the very beginning, James Hansen wants trials against oil firm chiefs who help to allow the people to understand that the predictions have been incorrect. (The Reference frame)

More Press for "Muzzled" Hansen - The Washington Post also commemorates astronomer James Hansen's testimony of 20 years ago that started the global-warming panic. They fall for the spin, big time. Here's how the drama opens:

There have been hotter days on Capitol Hill, but few where the heat itself became a kind of congressional exhibit. It was 98 degrees on June 23, 1988, and the warmth leaked in through the three big windows in Dirksen 366, overpowered the air conditioner, and left the crowd sweating and in shirt sleeves.

James E. Hansen, a NASA scientist, was testifying before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He was planning to say something radical: Global warming was real, it was a threat, and it was already underway.

Hansen had hoped for a sweltering day to underscore his message.

"We were just lucky," Hansen said last week.

Hmmm. As noted below, Hansen's cohort then-Sen. Tim Wirth has made clear that this was as close to orchestrated as they could make it — even attempting to time the temperature market (perhaps that's what Hansen meant by getting "lucky") — and the aforementioned "overpowered" air conditioner actually had just been turned off and the windows left open before hearing time.

Clearly, someone is lying. Or revising history. And we know Hansen would never, ever revise history. Especially about temperatures. Oh, right, he actually has an extensive history of revising past temperatures, both on his own initiative (revisions in 2000 and 2007 resulted in recent temps ticking upward, both times with corresponding drops in earlier temps exaggerating a warming trend) and not so voluntarily (August 2007, when the false warming trend he'd inserted in U.S. data, beginning as luck would have it in 2000, was uncovered, and corrected...for once, without a NASA press release!).

Hopefully Congress can get to the bottom of it. The key question might just be whether publishing such disinformation is a prosecutable offense. Possibly you know an astronomer who can tell you. (Chris Horner, CEI)

With Audio: NASA’s Jim Hansen calls for energy company execs to be put on trial (Watts Up With That?)

Apparently effective technique, claim the opposition is the one doing what they are themselves: Big oil's big lie - James Hansen is right about lobbyists sponsoring the junk science of climate change denial. But prosecuting energy executives is not the answer (George Monbiot, The Guardian)

Funny none of these clowns ever mention the NASA-hosted Hansen Q&A that admits we have no idea what the global mean temperature might be nor have we any agreed method of determining it or even a definition of what we are trying to measure.

Hansen’s Anniversary Testimony - On June 23, 1988 James Hansen, Astronomer by degree but climatologist by self appointment testified in front of congress. It was an orchestrated testimony coordinated by Senator Al Gore and a Senator from Colorado, Tim Wirth (now running Ted Turner’s UN Foundation) who admitted they picked the day after calling the National Weather Service to ensure it was a hot day. He admitted proudly later they opened all the windows the night before, making air conditioning ineffective and making sure all involved including Hansen would be seen mopping their brow for maximum effect. (Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow)

NASA's Hansen Makes His Global Warming Case at Huffington Post - If you needed any more evidence as to just how far to the left NASA's James Hansen is, consider that on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of his highly-controversial testimony to Congress -- wherein he presaged gloom and doom at the hands of the naturally occurring gas carbon dioxide -- he decided to make his global warming case at the ultra-leftwing website the Huffington Post. (NewsBusters)

Don’t Panic Over Predictions of Climate Doom - Get the Facts on James Hansen - NASA scientist James Hansen has created worldwide media frenzy with his call for trials against those who dissent against man-made global warming fears. (EPW Blog)

Part Two: Don’t Panic Over Predictions of Climate Doom- Get the Facts on James Hansen (EPW Blog)

Challenge accepted: Public Enemies - ... And perhaps some scientists are coming out against the idea that humankind has warmed the planet and continues to spew increasing pollutants into our atmosphere. If so, they are awful quiet about their challenge. Perhaps they should post their arguments here and let NRDC's real climate experts take them on. (Phil Gutis's Blog, NRDC)

Richard S Courtney — Jun 23 2008 05:59 PM

Sirs:

You say:

“And perhaps some scientists are coming out against the idea that humankind has warmed the planet and continues to spew increasing pollutants into our atmosphere. If so, they are awful quiet about their challenge. Perhaps they should post their arguments here and let NRDC's real climate experts take them on.”

Well, I am an Expert Peer Reviewer for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); i.e. I am one of the often touted “thousands of UN Climate Scientists”. I and thousands of others speak, publish and sign petitions in attempt to get the media to tell the truth of man made global climate change. And in response to your invitation I post that truth below.

The AGW-hypothesis asserts that increased greenhouse gases (GHGs) – notably carbon dioxide – in the atmosphere will cause the globe to warm (global warming: GW), and that anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide are increasing the carbon dioxide in the air with resulting anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) global warming (AGW).

I think a clear distinction needs to be made between
(a) the science of AGW, and
(b) the perception of AGW - and the use of AGW - by non-scientists.

The science

The present empirical evidence strongly indicates that the AGW-hypothesis is wrong; i.e.

1.
There is no correlation between the anthropogenic emissions of GHGs and global temperature.
2.
Change to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is observed to follow change to global temperature at all time scales.
3.
Recent rise in global temperature has not been induced by rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.
The global temperature fell from 1940 to 1970, rose from 1970 to 1998, and fell from 1998 to the present (i.e. mid-2008). This is 40 years of cooling and 28 years of warming, and global temperature is now similar to that of 1940. But atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has increased at a near-constant rate and by more than 30% since 1940
4.
Rise in global temperature has not been induced by increase to anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide.
More than 80% of the anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide has been since 1940, and the increase to the emissions has been at a compound rate of ~0.4% p.a. throughout that time. But that time has exhibited 40 years of cooling with only 28 years of warming, and global temperature is now similar to that of 1940.
5.
The pattern of atmospheric warming predicted by the AGW hypothesis is absent.
The AGW hypothesis predicts most warming of the atmosphere at altitude distant from polar regions. Radiosonde measurements from weather balloons show slight cooling at altitude distant from polar regions.

The above list provides a complete refutation of the AGW-hypothesis according to the normal rules of science.: i.e.
Nothing the hypothesis predicts is observed in the empirical data, and the opposite of the hypothesis' predictions is observed in the empirical data.

But politicians and advocates adhere to the hypothesis. They have a variety of motives (i.e. personal financial gain, protection of their career histories and futures, political opportunism, etc..). But support of science cannot be one such motive because science denies the hypothesis.

Hence, additional scientific information cannot displace the AGW-hypothesis and cannot silence its advocates (e.g. Hansen). And those advocates are not scientists despite some of them claiming that they are.

Richard S Courtney

Maurice Strong Politics 101 - At a 2004 conference of the Russian National Academy of Sciences Sir David King, Chief Scientific Adviser to Tony Blair’s government made the startling statement that, “Global warming is worse than terrorism.” He was right, but not as he intended. The false premise promoted by the IPCC that human CO2 was causing global warming was being used to terrorize and undermine developed nations in pursuit of Maurice Strong’s goal of getting rid of them. (Dr. Tim Ball, CFP)

World Modelling Summit For Climate Prediction - Comments By Climate Science -Part II - Part I of the Climate Science weblog on the World Modelling Summit for Climate Prediction was presented on June 17, 2008 (see). The specific recommendations in their Statement are discussed here. Following are their conclusions, followed by a Climate Science comment. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

Limits to existing quantitative understanding of past, present and future changes to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration (.pdf) - A presentation by Richard S Courtney to the Climate Conference held In New York, on 2 to 4 March 2008

Synopsis: This presentation demonstrates that it cannot be known what if any effect altering the anthropogenic emission of carbon dioxide (CO₂) will have on the future atmospheric CO₂ concentration.

It is commonly assumed that the rise in atmospheric CO₂ concentration during the twentieth century (approx. 30% rise) is a result of anthropogenic emissions of CO₂ ^(1,2,3). However, the annual pulse of anthropogenic CO₂ into the atmosphere should relate to the annual increase of CO₂ in the atmosphere if one is directly causal of the other, but their variations greatly differ from year to year ⁽⁴⁾

This presentation considers mechanisms in the carbon cycle and uses the model studies of Rörsch, Courtney & Thoenes (2005) ⁽⁴⁾ to determine if natural (i.e. non-anthropogenic) factors may be significant contributors to the observed rise to the atmospheric CO₂ concentration. These considerations indicate that any one of three natural mechanisms in the carbon cycle alone could be used to account for the observed rise. The study provides six such models with three of them assuming a significant anthropogenic contribution to the cause and the other three assuming no significant anthropogenic contribution to the cause.  Each of the models matches the available empirical data without use of any ‘fiddle-factor’ such as the ‘5-year smoothing’ the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses to get its model to agree with the empirical data.

So, if one of the six models of this paper is adopted then there is a 5:1 probability that the choice is wrong.  And other models are probably also possible.

And the six models each give a different indication of future atmospheric CO₂ concentration for the same future anthropogenic emission of carbon dioxide.

This indicates that the observed rise may be entirely natural; indeed, this presentation suggests that the observed recent rise to the atmospheric CO₂ concentration most probably is natural. Hence ‘projections’ of future changes to the atmospheric CO₂ concentration and resulting climate changes have high uncertainty if they are based on the assumption of an anthropogenic cause. (Richard S Courtney)

Correct the Corrections: The GISS Urban Adjustment - NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) publishes a global temperature index. The temperature record is contaminated by the effects of urban development and land use changes. NASA applies an “urbanization adjustment” to adjust the temperature histories to eliminate these effects. The resulting GISS temperature index is supposed to represent what the temperatures would have been in the absence of urbanization and land use changes. Most scientists assume that these adjustments are done correctly. The index is used to show that CO2 emissions are causing climate change. (Ken Gregory, Friends of Science)

Main CO2 emitters fail to set target / Seoul meeting lowers G-8 expectations - SEOUL--Major carbon dioxide emitters failed to agree on a numerical target for reducing the world's greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050 even though the final session of a two-day meeting here was extended into Monday morning, conference sources said.

According to the sources, however, participants in the fourth Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change (MEM) did manage to hammer out a broad agreement on a draft MEM leaders' declaration to be issued on July 9 after talks to be held on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit meeting in Toyakocho, Hokkaido, which starts July 7. (Yomiuri Shimbun)

Government scientists off mission - The U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), released a report late last week that received big coverage on all the network news outlets. In it, predictions were made that the weather over the United States will get hotter, wetter, more extreme and deadly over the next 50 years because of human-induced global warming.

This report was released at the same time that serious flooding continued over portions of the Corn Belt. The timing appears to be no coincidence, since these NOAA scientists say that there will be more extreme rainfall events because of an increase in atmospheric water vapor caused by warming due to the burning of fossil fuels.

NOAA’s National Weather Service does and excellent job providing warnings and data to the public and private sector. However, these NOAA’s scientists have gone off-mission by implicitly tying the Midwest floods to human-induced global warming. (Karl Bohnak, WLUC TV6)

Hollywood Once Hailed Offshore Drilling - Louisiana takes many hits as "the northernmost banana republic." Yuppies and Greenies constitute a rare, exotic and even comical species down here – to the immense benefit of America's energy needs. "Progressive" and "enlightened" would not be terms Obama's Bay Area supporters would use to describe the Bayou state's decision-makers – especially those who made major decisions half a century ago.

Yet these rustics and yahoos spurred more revolutionary "change" in the production of (genuine) energy than any Obama supporter could imagine with all his or her hallucinations about solar panels and windmills.

In energy production, Louisiana has been well ahead of the learning curve for decades, and offers ready proof regarding its much-hyped "perils." The first offshore oil production platforms went up off the Louisiana coast in 1947.

By 1953 Hollywood (no less!) was already hailing the pioneering wildcatters who moved major mountains – technological, logistical, psychological, cultural – to tap and reap this source that today provides a quarter of America's domestic petroleum, without causing a single major oil spill in the process. This record stands despite dozens of hurricanes – including the two most destructive in North American history, Camille and Katrina – repeatedly battering the drilling and production structures, along with the 20,000 miles of pipeline that transport the oil shoreward. This is the most extensive offshore pipeline network in the world. (Humberto Fontova, FrontPageMagazine.com)

Saudis or Speculators? Oil-Price Finger-Pointing Heats Up - Where to find the answer for expensive oil—Saudi Arabia or Capitol Hill?

When Saudi Arabia rebuffed President Bush’s request for more oil production last month, the reasoning was simple: No customers were asking for more oil, so it clearly wasn’t a supply issue. (Keith Johnson, WSJ)

One of the major problems is weakness in the Greenback, itself a failure of the Fed and Administration to support it. The mere statement that the US was going to seriously pursue a strong dollar policy would force traders and speculators to cover their short positions by buying the Greenback and oil is priced in US dollars. Stronger dollar, lower per unit price of things priced in dollars and so the price of oil will fall. Everyone talking up America's alleged problems is talking down the Greenback and pushing up the price of oil. These are the ones doing more harm to your pocketbook than the House of Saud.

Just Speculating - Democrats, in their never-ending search for scapegoats, have had a go at oil company CEOs, industry profits and now oil "speculators." They've looked everywhere but where they should — in the mirror.

The congressional hearings that kicked off Monday to look into speculative behavior in the markets produced all the usual finger-pointing about the doubling in oil prices over the past year to nearly $137 a barrel.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama, seeking to catch a political wave he can ride all the way to the presidency, has announced he'll "crack down" on oil speculation by imposing new limits and regulations on oil traders in the futures markets.

But as emotionally satisfying as going after speculators sounds, this will only make our current oil problem much worse. (IBD)

Senator's Broad Range Of Energy Policies Defies Categories - Sen. John McCain is putting energy policy at the center of his presidential campaign, embracing a diverse array of positions that defies easy categorization.

He is for more oil drilling and also for alternatives to oil. He wants to drill off the coasts but not in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He supports subsidies for nuclear power and clean-coal technology, but has opposed them for ethanol, solar and wind power.

He wants to lower gasoline prices by temporarily suspending the federal gas tax. But he wants to raise the price of gas with a cap-and-trade system that punishes polluting industries.

In environmentally conscious Portland, Ore., he praised wind power. In Texas oil country he supported more drilling. In rural Missouri he urged more nuclear power. In California he praised fuel-efficiency standards.

"It's all over the map," said Bob Ebel, a senior adviser and energy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "I'm just sort of scratching my head." (Wall Street Journal)

Energy Answers Await At Our Doorstep - As gasoline prices continue to soar, few Americans realize that a key element for strengthening our energy security is right next door. Nearly 50% of our energy imports come from our neighbors in the Western Hemisphere.

Canada is our single-largest energy supplier, providing 17% of U.S. oil imports. In 2007, Canada provided more petroleum than the two next top suppliers. Canada is also our top supplier of natural gas (16% of total supply in 2006) and a major supplier of electricity. (IBD)

Eye-roller: U.S. mayors denounce oilsands - Mayors from the U.S.'s largest cities singled out Western Canada's oilsands sector on Monday as they called for a crackdown on fuels that could cause catastrophic global warming. (Mike De Souza, Canwest News Service)

Coal-fired power plant to be operating in 2010 - OSCEOLA -- A $1.3 billion coal-fired power plant in eastern Arkansas is expected to be completed two years from now, providing much needed electricity at affordable costs, developers say. (AP)

Oil company relief at biofuel respite but Parliament's support uncertain - Oil companies are relieved at a watering-down of a proposed biofuel sales obligation, but the Government has yet to be assured of enough political support for legislation reported back to Parliament yesterday. (New Zealand Herald)

Green Ceiling: Are High-Flying Alternative-Energy Stocks Due for a Fall? - Alternative energy companies have long cheered high oil prices, figuring it would make them even more competitive and attractive. But even if there’s seemingly no limit to oil-price rises, clean-energy stocks are hitting the wall. (Keith Johnson, WSJ)

Brown's pale green policies are more honest than most - Unlike Cameron, the prime minister grasps the need to balance environmental policies against economic growth (Irwin Stelzer, The Guardian)

Knock knock: Diet police - It’s happened. What you eat, cook and feed your children in your own home is now a government matter. Pregnant women and mothers of children under 5 will be getting a knock on the door from a government “health visitor” and given “advice on healthier eating.”

Not only that, employers are being encouraged to monitor workers’ weights. Businesses are being provided with government software that workers will have to type in their weight every morning, which will go into a weight surveillance database. Those who gain weight will be flagged for intervention. (Junkfood Science)

EU Ministers Clinch Deal on New Pesticides Law - LUXEMBOURG - European Union agriculture ministers struck a compromise deal on Monday to revise pesticide authorisation laws that should cut the number of crop chemicals that can be sold in EU markets, officials and diplomats said. (Reuters)

Canadians argue for polar bear hunt - WASHINGTON -- Officials from northern Canada were in Washington on Monday to make an unpopular argument: Let U.S. hunters continue to kill polar bears for sport.

The politicians from Canada's Northwest Territory asked Interior Department officials to allow U.S. sportsmen to still bring back polar bear hides after their hunts in Canada's Arctic region, despite the increased protection now afforded the bear under the Endangered Species Act.

The United States bans sport hunting of polar bears, but Canada does not, although it restricts the hunting season to two months and limits the number of kills.

The recent decision to declare the polar bear threatened under the Endangered Species Act also means U.S. sportsmen may no longer bring home trophy skins -- which is what hunting's high-rollers actually prize.

This "will effectively wipe out our sports hunting industry," Bob McLeod, the Northwest Territory's minister for energy, industry and tourism, said Monday in an interview. He said it will wipe out most of the income for people living in a handful of villages along the province's Arctic coast. (AP)

June 23, 2008

The High Cost of McCarbonomics: Sen. McCain offers $300 million prize for new auto battery - John McCain hopes to solve the country's energy crisis with cold hard cash. The presumed Republican nominee is proposing a $300 million government prize to whoever can develop an automobile battery that far surpasses existing technology... In addition, a so-called Clean Car Challenge would provide U.S. automakers with a $5,000 tax credit for every zero-carbon emissions car they develop and sell. (AP)

The Junkman says: McCain's $5,000 tax credit for each zero emissions vehicle (ZEV) sold is ridiculous:

1. Based on the average automobile's annual CO2 emissions (6 tons) and the average life of a car (9 years), this works out to taxpayers forking over to carmakers $5,000 to avoid 54 tons of tailpipe emissions per ZEV car -- that is, $92.60 per ton of CO2. In comparison, a ton of CO2 only cost about $5.27 on the Chicago Climate Exchange as of Friday, June 20.
2. While no CO2 is emitted from a ZEV per se, the emissions are merely shifted from the tailpipe to the smokestack at the power plant that generated the electricity.

McCain's plan amounts to nothing less than stealing from taxpayers to buy political love from ZEV automakers with little or no reduction in CO2 emissions.

Climate derangement syndrome? Put oil firm chiefs on trial, says leading climate change scientist - James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

Hansen will use the symbolically charged 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking speech to the US Congress - in which he was among the first to sound the alarm over the reality of global warming - to argue that radical steps need to be taken immediately if the "perfect storm" of irreversible climate change is not to become inevitable.

Speaking before Congress again, he will accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading. (The Guardian)

Whether Hansen has begun to believe some of his fantastic tales or what we don't know but it certainly looks like he's out to more than lunch. In fact it appears Hansen has completely left the planet.

It is no secret that global warming alarmism has been funded to the tune of more than $50 billion while the rational case has allegedly seen something less than $20 million, so alarmism enjoys a funding ratio of over 2,500 to 1. Who should we try for that crime against humanity? Hansen would seem to be a fair target along with coconspirator Al Gore but the case would never make trial since both defendants have established prima facie cases of being mentally unfit.

The only question now is when will Hansen become too embarrassing for even The Guardian to publish.

The saddest part is that all this screeching keeps decibel-sensitive politicians doing the misanthropists' bidding and acting against the interests of their constituents while rational people merely roll their eyes and get on with their lives. Despite the enhanced greenhouse hypothesis visibly collapsing we are still losing to the natur über alles brigade because politicians have zero understanding of the issue but they know bad press will result from going counter to rabid greenies -- and bad press translates to lost votes.

Andy's still shilling for him: NASA’s Hansen: Humans Still Loading Climate Dice - Twenty years ago on Monday, James E. Hansen testified before the Senate Energy Committee — in a room kept intentionally warm by committee staff — that the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and forests was already perceptibly influencing Earth’s climate.

Although even Andy admits the hearing room air conditioning was sabotaged to make those present susceptible to nonsense claims of unnatural warming. That makes him better than David A. Fahrenthold at the Washington Post: Turning Up the Heat on Climate Issue: 20 Years Ago, a 98-Degree Day Illustrated Scientist's Warning - There have been hotter days on Capitol Hill, but few where the heat itself became a kind of congressional exhibit. It was 98 degrees on June 23, 1988, and the warmth leaked in through the three big windows in Dirksen 366, overpowered the air conditioner, and left the crowd sweating and in shirt sleeves.

Then again, Andy is experienced enough to know we would soon point out the subterfuge if he ignored it. Revkin can be a really good reporter but sadly has has drunk deeply of the Kool-Aid and is a reliable advocate for AGW zealots, destroying his own credibility.

Smokestack Al - Environmentalists are constantly telling us that major reductions in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions can be made fairly painlessly, so the case of one former Vice President is instructive.

Al Gore made headlines last year when the Tennessee Center for Policy Research disclosed just how much energy the "Inconvenient Truth" auteur consumes in his giant new palace in the Nashville suburbs. Mr. Gore responded at the time by assuring the public that he was purchasing "offsets" to make up for his energy-guzzling ways.

Well, this week the Tennessee Center's Drew Johnson checked in on Mr. Gore again. And despite an alleged program of greenification – including geothermal systems, solar panels and lots and lots of nifty compact fluorescent bulbs – Mr. Gore's electricity use from the grid was up 10% in 2007 compared to the year before. At this rate, he'll never hit his Kyoto targets. His Tennessee home currently eats up 17,768 kilowatt-hours of electricity every month – about 50% more electricity than the average household consumes in an entire year. That's one inconvenient carbon footprint. (Wall Street Jurnal)

New CCSP Report Appears “Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate” - Unfortunately, Another Biased Assessment - There is another CCSP report that was made available yesterday. It is CCSP, 2008: Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate. Regions of Focus: North America, Hawaii, Caribbean, and U.S. Pacific Islands. A Report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research. [Thomas R. Karl, Gerald A. Meehl, Christopher D. Miller, Susan J. Hassol, Anne M. Waple, and William L. Murray (eds.)]. Department of Commerce, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, Washington, D.C., USA, 164 pp.

It is led by the same individual, Tom Karl, Director of the National Climate Data Center, who produced the CCSP Report “Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences”, in which I resigned from and detailed the reasons in Pielke Sr., Roger A., 2005: Public Comment on CCSP Report “Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences”. 88 pp including appendices. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

What the CCSP Extremes Report Really Says - Yesterday the U.S. Climate Change Science Program released an assessment report titled "Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate" (PDF) with a focus on the United States. This post discusses some interesting aspects of this report, with an emphasis on what it does not show and does not say. It does not show a clear picture of ever increasing extreme events in the United States. And it does not clearly say why damage has been steadily increasing. (R. Pielke Jr., Prometheus)

Another Example Of CCSP Bias In The Report “Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate” - I was alerted to another example of a bias in the CCSP report Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate which Climate Science weblogged on earlier today (see). It from the comments on the CCSP report December 20, 2007 COMPILATION OF PUBLIC COMMENTS ON CCSP SYNTHESIS AND ASSESSMENT PRODUCT 3.3 (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

Midwest Floods and Unjustified Climate Change Fear Mongering - A guest post by Mike Smith, CCM and AMS Fellow.

The Midwest floods were rolling downstream last week, setting river stage records in Iowa, bursting levees on the Mississippi, and causing thousands to be displayed from their homes. Billions have been lost in damaged and destroyed property and 24 lives lost.

In the midst of this tragedy, the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) tried to capitalize on heightened public interest with an attempt to gain headlines by tying these tragic events to “global warming.” (Watts Up With That?)

He came. He saw. He drew the wrong conclusions: Bangladesh is set to disappear under the waves by the end of the century - A special report by Johann Hari - Bangladesh, the most crowded nation on earth, is set to disappear under the waves by the end of this century – and we will be to blame. Johann Hari took a journey to see for himself how western profligacy and indifference have sealed the fate of 150 million people went to see for himself the spreading misery and destruction as the ocean reclaims the land on which so many millions depend. (The Independent)

If Global Warming was a company decision, how would you vote? - Lucia at Rank Exploits poses this thought:

“I always think it’s best to ask yourself: Do I really think a particular method of looking at data is meaningful? Would I still believe this if the answers turned out “wrong” from my POV? Or, will I eventually find myself explaining my own method gives uncertainty bounds that are “too small”, when my method suddenly gives “wrong” (in my eyes) answers?

So, in this regard, I need to ask Tilo: Why throw out GISS Temp”?

Thanks, Lucia, for taking a different look at this. It is true that one can make arguments for and against GISTEMP as a valid/not valid data set.

My view is that this is a lot like voting for a company wide policy change on a company board of directors. (Watts Up with That?)

Fortress CRU - As noted in other posts, IPCC policies state:

All written expert, and government review comments will be made available to reviewers on request during the review process and will be retained in an open archive in a location determined by the IPCC Secretariat on completion of the Report for a period of at least five years.

Despite this, IPCC Review Editor John Mitchell of the UK Met Office claimed to have destroyed all their working documents and correspondence pertaining to his duties as Review Editor and the Met Office also claims to have expunged all records. (Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit) | Fortress CRU #2: Confidential Agent Ammann | Fortress Met Office

A Window on Water Vapor and Planetary Temperature - Part 2 - A few days ago I posted a story highlighting the drop in water vapor in the atmosphere which initially looked like the entire atmosphere due to a labeling issue by ESRL, but turned out to be only at the 300 millibar height and not up to 300mb as the ESRL graph was labeled.

Even so, that brought a lot of people into looking at and analyzing the issue further. (Watts Up with That?)

Anthony has opened discussion on Is the atmosphere holding more water vapor?

Global-Warming Bubble - Rarely has so much hectoring produced so little.

After all the magazine covers, celebrity sermonizing and U.N.-certified-expert hand-wringing, the fight against global warming got a real-world test in the U.S. Senate a few weeks ago in the debate over a proposal to limit carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade system. After a small dose of the argument, supporters of the proposal couldn’t wait to drop it. It was leading opponent Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader, who declared he’d be happy to talk about cap-and-trade for a month. (Rich Lowry, NRO)

Pay Me: CEOs Tell G-8 Diplomats to Get Green Subsidies Flowing - If politicians can’t come up with a global climate-change strategy, world business leaders are ready to goose them into action—because they stand to gain from it. (Keith Johnson, WSJ)

Oh, good grief! John McCain hires former CIA director Jim Woolsey as green advisor - For 30 years Jim Woolsey has been a hawkish guardian of American national security. As director of the CIA under Bill Clinton he lived every day with the terrorist threats to his homeland.

Yet in his view, the greatest danger to the country now is not nuclear and chemical weapons but climate change and the American dependence on oil which is partly blamed for causing it.

Mr Woolsey believes the greatest weapon in America's arsenal is not the stealth bomber, the Abrams tank or the F-16 jet – but the humble plug-in hybrid car that will let most people do their daily drive on electric power.

He is one of a new generation of so-called "Greenocons", campaigners who are making the case for a green American foreign and energy policy not just to save the planet, but to keep America safe too. (Daily Telegraph)

Oh... McCain to push new measures to lower auto emissions - PHOENIX, June 22 - White House hopeful John McCain will push on Monday for car makers to build more environmentally friendly vehicles, threatening new legislation if they do not comply and proposing tax breaks to encourage consumers to buy "cleaner" cars.

According to excerpts of his speech obtained by Reuters, the Republican presidential candidate will call for auto manufacturers to speed the process of making engines that can use alcohol-based fuels. (Reuters)

... so, any viable options besides McCain? He's drunk way too much Kool-Aid.

Poll: most Britons doubt cause of climate change - The majority of the British public is still not convinced that climate change is caused by humans - and many others believe scientists are exaggerating the problem, according to an exclusive poll for The Observer.

They blame The Great Global Warming Swindle for their failure to fool the populace? Excellent! You can get your copy and help JunkScience.com at the same time.

Weeping Into Their Cappuccinos - After twenty years of unmitigated ‘global warming’ eco-hype and media bias, we learn this morning that “most Britons don’t believe climate change is man-made” [‘Poll: most Britons doubt cause of climate change’, The Observer, June 22; paper version, pp. 1 & 7]. What a surprise, I don’t think! While I perused this report over breakfast, I admit to having felt a tiny twinge of pity for The Observer/Guardian, and for the attendant cohort of bien pensant political commentators, metropolitan-elite readers, and environmental reporters, as their very own Ipsos MORI poll rams home the truth, long-known here on GWPs, that ordinary British folk are a tad more sensible and down-to-earth about climate change than they are:

“The majority of the British public is still not convinced that climate change is caused by humans - and many others believe scientists are exaggerating the problem, according to an exclusive poll for The Observer.

The results have shocked campaigners ...” (Global Warming Politics)

Air Travel and Carbon on Increase in Europe - Low-cost airlines are democratizing European air travel but also pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. (New York Times)

The Saturated Greenhouse Effect - The paper, Greenhouse Effect in Semi-Transparent Planetary Atmospheres by Ferenc M. Miskolczi shows that the current greenhouse effect equations are incomplete because they do not include the correct boundary conditions. The new theory presented in Miskolczi's paper shows that the atmosphere maintains a “saturated” greenhouse effect, controlled by water vapor content.

Considering that we are told "the science is settled", one would think that the strength of the greenhouse effect (GHE) on Earth would be calculated based on atmospheric physics. That is, the computer models of the atmosphere would incorporate the physics of how the greenhouse effect works, so that by inputing some measured physical properties, the atmospheric gases, the models would determine the strength of the greenhouse effect and the surface temperatures. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

There are no physics, no equations in the models that determines the strength of the GHE. Parameters are just set to obtain the observed temperature. (Ken Gregory, Friends of Science Society)

A Green Coal Baron? - Why Jim Rogers says going green can save the energy business. (New York Times)

No, actually why you should dump Duke Energy shares. Duke is basically a coal-fired energy producer and needs to concentrate on its core business. Any time you have a Kool-Aid swiller for a CEO it's time to take action -- get rid of him or the shares, really fast.

The Climate-Change Deniers - The true deniers of climate change are not the thousands of scientists and economists, the climate realists, who are critical of the ‘global warming’ grand narrative, but the ‘global warming’ zealots who believe that we can either ‘stop’ or ‘stabilize’ climate change, two of the most ridiculous and hubristic concepts ever to afflict human arrogance. It is especially concerning, however, when you read such nonsense in supposedly serious newspapers like the Financial Times [see: Philip Stephens, ‘Saving the planet will be difficult, but do not despair’, Financial Times, June 19]. We learn from this august outlet that: (Global arming Politics)

Diagnosis Of Global Sea Level and Upper Ocean Heat Content On Seasonal To Interannual Timescales Paper Willis et al 2008 Published - The paper Willis J. K., D. P. Chambers, R. S. Nerem (2008), Assessing the globally averaged sea level budget on seasonal to interannual timescales, J. Geophys. Res., 113, C06015, doi:10.1029/2007JC004517. has been published [thanks to Richard Hanson for alerting us].

The abstract reads: “Analysis of ocean temperature and salinity data from profiling floats along with satellite measurements of sea surface height and the time variable gravity field are used to investigate the causes of global mean sea level rise between mid-2003 and mid-2007. The observed interannual and seasonal fluctuations in sea level can be explained as the sum of a mass component and a steric (or density related) component to within the error bounds of each observing system. During most of 2005, seasonally adjusted sea level was approximately 5 mm higher than in 2004 owing primarily to a sudden increase in ocean mass in late 2004 and early 2005, with a negligible contribution from steric variability. Despite excellent agreement of seasonal and interannual sea level variability, the 4-year trends do not agree, suggesting that systematic long-period errors remain in one or more of these observing systems.”

Now that this paper has appeared, the global modelling community is challenged to accurately simulate and explain the absence of significant upper ocean heat changes during this time period. The new (June 19 2008) Nature paper by Domingues et al “Improved estimates of upper-ocean warming and multi-decadal sea-level rise“, unfortunately, chose to end its analysis period five years ago (2003). The Editors should have required that they update their study. The Willis et al paper supercedes their time period of analysis. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

This tired old chestnut... Kiribati Looks for Climate Help From Australia - CANBERRA - With climate change threatening his tiny Pacific nation, Kiribati President Anote Tong on Friday asked Australia for help in the battle against rising seas that threaten to erase his atoll home. (Reuters)

Accelerated sea level rise exists only in models, where no one lives, while there is no evidence of it in the real world, so it is not now and never will be a problem result of CO₂ emissions.

Trying to set up a book deal? Global Warming: Is It A Scenario Too Scary To Think About? - To Patricia Kremer, climate change is a runaway train carrying Earth toward a forbidding future.

”Just stop the train,” said Kremer, a retiring marine scientist who has witnessed the effects during her studies of the ocean's environments for 30 years. She and her husband, James, who is also about to retire from a career as a marine scientist and professor, work at the University of Connecticut's Avery Point campus.

She is not alone in thinking this. United Nations leader Ban Ki-moon says that whether you call it climate change, global warming or climate disruption, it's “the defining challenge of our age.” (The Day)

Finnish Finish “Global” Warming - An international conference was recently held in Zakopane, Poland hosted by the Department of Quaternary Paleogeography and Paleoecology at the University of Silesia and the Institute of Geography and Regional Development at the University of Wroclaw. The meeting also served as the Annual Conference of the Association for Tree-Ring Research. Over 100 scientists gave presentations at the meeting, most were from Europe, although one presenter was from Penn State University and two others from the University of Missouri made the trip to present their research in Poland. The Association for Tree-Ring Research is a credible organization with no agenda that we know of regarding the global warming issue.

One presentation there was entitled “Climate variation (cycles and trends) and climate predicting from tree-rings”, and normally, we would be reluctant to feature conference presentations at World Climate Report. However, the work is an update of what the lead author recently published in The Holocene, the work is currently under review at an undisclosed scientific journal, and the authors have a history of publications in outstanding journals. (WCR)

JunkScience.com note: while we are unimpressed by tree ring studies as presented by the likes of Mann, Bradley & Hughes we share no such qualms about upper limit tree line studies, which demonstrably are specifically temperature sensitive.

'No concrete global warming proof in polar region' - Are the ices of the Arctic north about to melt away for good? Rami Abdelrahman gets the views of a range of Swedish researchers. (The Local)

Solstice Sea Ice Update - The Antarctic set a new record (since records began in 1979) for sea ice extent at the end of last winter. It stayed well above the normal through the summer with icemelt 40% below the normal. As a new height of irony and hype, the media made a big deal about a fracture of a small part of the Wilkins ice sheet in late February (160 square miles of the 6 million square mile Antarctic ice sheet (0.0027% of the total). Media headlines blared: Bye-bye, Antarctica? and Massive ice shelf collapsing off Antarctica.

But as you can see from this Cryosphere chart below, the extent never dropped to less than 1 million square km ABOVE NORMAL during or after the brief event. Currently Antarctic ice extent is running nearly 1 million square kilometers higher than last year at this time. Peak comes at the end of the southern winter (September). (Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow)

Idiots: Retreating Antarctic Sea Ice Threatens Southern Whales - LONDON - The retreat of Antarctic sea ice because of global warming will threaten already endangered migratory whales by reducing their feeding areas, the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) said on Thursday. (Reuters)

Antarctic sea ice shows an increasing trend (has done for many decades now) and the Southern Ocean appears to be cooling. Apart from which southern hemisphere whale population are booming, which is why the conservationist-corrupted whaling commission, whose real function is to facilitate sustainable whaling, is having so much trouble maintaining a whaling moratorium.

Barton: Waxman, Inslee Bills Would Reduce Emissions to 1910 Levels - Back then, ‘there were 92 million people in America and two-thirds of them lived on farms and the method of transportation was foot power or animal power’ (House Energy and Commerce Committee)

Shell Delays Alaska Drilling Plan Due Legal Dispute - ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Shell Oil said on Friday it would delay its 2008 drilling plan in Alaska's Beaufort Sea for a year because of an ongoing legal challenge filed by groups concerned about the potential impact on whales, walruses and other marine mammals.

"This lack of decision has delayed drilling for another year - extending the timeline it will take to bring this much-needed US production on line," Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said in a press release. (Reuters)

What Do The Democrats Take Us For? - The public wants more oil, but Democrats keep offering the same solutions, not one of which includes drilling and all of which are asinine. Do they think the American people are fools? (IBD)

McCain oil plan relies on Middle East - Sen. John McCain caps his weeklong push for U.S. energy independence with a trip Friday to Canada, but his own environmental plan discourages use of Canadian oil and drastically increases American reliance on oil from the Middle East and other potentially unfriendly places.

The presumed Republican presidential nominee called last year to expand California's low carbon fuel standard, which measures the amount of greenhouse gases needed to produce fuel and punishes use of "dirty" heavy crude oil in favor of conventional light crude or alternative fuels.

Expanding that plan nationwide would force U.S. refiners to buy less American and Canadian oil - which come increasingly from dirty sources like shale and tar sands - and instead use more oil from the Middle East. (Washington Times)

Obama Camp Closely Linked With Ethanol - The ethanol industry has provided some top advisers to Senator Barack Obama, who has delivered ringing endorsements of ethanol as an alternative fuel. (New York Times)

The land of ethanol sure is busy in the hydrocarbon stakes: Petrobras announces new light oil strike in Santos Basin - Brazil’s government owned oil corporation Petrobras announced Friday the discovery of yet another field of light oil, in ultra deep waters of Santos Basin. The well known as Guara in the BM-S-9 block encountered oil with specific gravity of 28o API in pre salt reservoirs, according to the official release. (Mercopress)

New natural gas discoveries in Magallanes Region - GeoPark Holdings Limited announced the discovery of two new gas fields in the extreme south of Chile, the Magallanes Region. The gas fields are on the Fell Block following the successful drilling and testing of the two new gas wells. (Mercopress)

McCain Says Wants 45 New Nuclear Reactors by 2030 - SPRINGFIELD, Mo. - Republican John McCain promised Wednesday to put the United States on course to build 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030 if elected president as part of a plan to move the country toward energy independence. (Reuters)

Lack of New Power Lines Threatens Renewable Growth - NEW YORK - While companies scramble to drive down the price of power produced by sun and wind, many say a dearth of transmission lines in remote areas ideal for wind farms and solar plants is a bigger impediment than cost to spurring US growth of renewable energy. (Reuters)

Translation: line our pockets with yet more public money.

Power Price Surge May Force EU Emissions Rethink - A further 13 percent rise in European electricity prices, which have surged by almost 50 percent in the past year, would likely force lawmakers to lower the cost of emissions trading, said an analyst at Deutsche Bank AG. (Bloomberg)

Britain Promises "Green Revolution" With Energy Plan - LONDON - As many as a quarter of British homes could be fitted with solar heating systems and thousands of wind turbines erected across the country under government plans for a "green revolution" to be set out next week. (Reuters)

More moonbattery: We must leave the fossil century behind to reach the golden age of renewable energy, Mr Brown - The past two years have been thrilling and frustrating in equal measure. We have begun to glimpse the green holy grail: reliable renewable electricity. Studies by people as diverse as the German government and the Centre for Alternative Technology have shown how, by diversifying the sources of green energy, by managing demand and using some cunning methods of storage, renewables could supply 80% or even 100% of our electricity without any loss in the continuity of power supplies. (George Monbiot, The Guardian)

Hey, George! What does the euphemism "managing demand" mean? Is that like "rationing"?

Lack of engineers puts government's nuclear power ambitions at risk - Government plans for a new generation of nuclear power stations risk delays after warnings by its own inspectors that no decision can be made on reactor designs because of a shortage of skilled engineers. (The Guardian)

Soaring energy prices will force six million households into the fuel poverty trap - Soaring energy prices could leave more than six million households struggling to pay their fuel bills by Christmas - the so-called fuel poverty trap - leaving in tatters government promises to eradicate the problem for the vulnerable by 2010.

Britain's six big power companies are preparing for a fresh round of price rises of up to 40 per cent, which could start as early as next month. That would drive average dual-fuel bills to £1,467 by the end of the year, up from £1,048.

National Energy Action (NEA), the campaign group, gave warning that such an increase would drive an additional 1.6 million households into fuel poverty - defined as having to spend 10 per cent or more of household income on electricity and gas. Another 500,000 entered fuel poverty earlier this year when power companies put up prices by about 15 per cent. (The Times)

Really? Electric cars given official green light to boost climate change goals - Electric cars could play a major role in the shift to environmentally friendly transport, the government will reveal this week. As part of its long-awaited renewable energy strategy, to be published on Thursday, it will argue that there is massive potential in the UK for plug-in hybrids, for car batteries charged on grid electricity and for vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells. (The Observer)

The UK's electricity grid is barely adequate at the moment and this is before EU-mandated closures of key power stations. How do they propose even keeping the lights on, let alone shifting a slab of transport energy requirements to the grid too?

Dyson working on new generation of fast, green cars - Britain's most famous inventor, Sir James Dyson, is working on a project that could lead to the creation of a fast, green car.

Engineers at his research laboratory in Wiltshire are developing a powerful lightweight motor that could enable electric cars to zoom along for hundreds of miles without causing pollution. Solar panels on their roofs or in garages would charge them with renewable energy. (The Independent)

1365/4=~340W/m² optimal surface solar energy * what conversion efficiency? 15% on a good day? 340*0.15=~50W/m² between maybe 10AM & 2PM in England, so how many square meters of solar panels will be required to charge one of these little beasties? Answer, a lot more than will be available for the purpose, meaning they'll merely be another drain on the grid that England simply cannot supply.

Middle class hit as annual bills increase at twice inflation rate - Middle class households are suffering a sharp decline in living standards, with the cost of annual bills increasing at twice the official rate of inflation, analysis for The Daily Telegraph discloses. (Daily Telegraph)

So, time to increase people's energy costs to fight the phantom menace, you think?

It's no longer populist to put jobs ahead of the climate - A bill to cut through the planning process for runways, motorways and nuclear power stations faces defeat this week (The Guardian)

If not now it soon will be again as reality bites and people decide they don't really want to subsist in miserable poverty.

Timely warning: British families warned of tougher times ahead - BRITISH families' standard of living will stagnate this year while the value of their homes will fall further, the governor of the Bank of England has warned.

Mervyn King said the coming months represented the biggest challenge for the economy in two decades and some households would find them "particularly difficult".

In his most sombre message yet, Mr King said higher electricity and food prices and slowly increasing wages were squeezing families. (Daily Telegraph)

All those trying to tell us that increasing the cost of energy magically makes people better off might want to try out their fantasy explanations in Europe.

Reduce taxes to tackle rising energy bills - In an echo of the 1970s, Britain is suffering simultaneously from economic stagnation and inflation, in part caused by oil prices. So it is welcome that Gordon Brown is taking the problem of high energy bills seriously, especially given that he was once allied to Al Gore's over-zealous and misguided approach to environmentalism, which regards high prices as virtuous. Yet his call for oil-producing nations to help lower oil prices - and their revenues - by investing in British renewables is no panacea for solving Britain's escalating energy costs. (Daily Telegraph)

Once upon a time... - Dr. Tony Dee and Mr. Tim Diddly had a brilliant idea. They would offer free screenings for the dreaded invisible toe fungus. They placed ads and hung posters across the Land of Incognita explaining that ITF can cause instant gangrene without warning. People who wear brown closed-toe shoes are at special risk of getting ITF, they warned.

Their free screenings were a tremendous success. (Junkfood Science)

Run! FAT BOMB getting ready to detonate and splat fat everywhere! - The Olympic fat torch has just been passed from “supersized” Americans to the Aussies, according to the international press. In fact, nearly 400 headlining stories this week have reported that Australia has “overtaken the USA as the fattest nation in the world.”

The origin of this claim is a report called Australia’s Future FAT BOMB ... Not to be confused with Fat Man, the 1945 atomic bomb code name. This bomb is made of fat. It’s “loudly ticking,” the report says, and set to explode across Australia in the next twenty years, and kill 123,000 people, unless it’s defused.

No need to wait, let’s pull the fuse now, and perhaps help save a few hundred billion dollars in taxpayer money for elaborate special task forces. (Junkfood Science)

As seen on TV - Psychic mediums on television can be fun to watch, but everyone knows, just like the cold readings of parlor tricks, fortune tellers and magician acts, that the psychics don’t really have psychic powers. Right?

A psychic reading is fun... until it is believed by school officials to be real and used against you. (Junkfood Science)

Scaring kids - Countless school-based programs for children are attempting to scare them straight, fit or thin. But do you think it is ever right to scare impressionable children, threaten them with unsound information that something could kill them, or tell them that someone they love has died, in order to convince them to change their behavior? Certainly, we want to protect children and know that they won’t get into cars with strangers and stuff. But when does it cross the line? (Junkfood Science)

Cuba’s carbon footprint is smaller than its bootprint - Claims of catastrophic man-made climate change, imminent exhaustion of resources, disastrous loss of biodiversity and growing threats from chemicals all point to much more stringent government control of our lives. The contours of the new polity are necessarily vague, but clearly imply much greater constraints on human freedom. In fact, the model for “sustainable development” has already been quietly crowned. It is Cuba.

Cuba’s unique status as the only country that “enjoys” sustainability was first celebrated in the World Wildlife Fund’s The Living Planet Report 2006. The island Gulag is the only state whose “ecological footprint” (EF) and level of “human development” (according to the UN’s peculiar scale of values) are both within the tiny box where humans are to be allowed to live.

The concept of the ecological footprint was first developed in 1993 by the University of British Columbia’s William Rees and his student Mathis Wackernagel. It claims to quantify the area of land needed to support an individual within a particular nation using available technology. Based on a number of assumptions (such as, only a quarter of the earth is available to us), humans allegedly have some 1.8 hectares of planet each. If your lifestyle requires more, you are taking “more than your fair share” and contributing to “ecological overshoot.”

Such thinking is a combination of hunter-gatherer egalitarianism, neo-Malthusianism and Soviet planning. (Peter Foster, Financial Post)

German town forces homes to fix solar tiles - Solar panels will soon grace the roofs of the quiet medieval town of Marburg under a controversial new law forcing owners of all new or renovated buildings in its limits to include solar panels, setting a national precedent.

A coalition of Social Democrats and Greens passed the ruling late on Friday to counter climate change and soaring energy prices. Anyone failing to comply will face a €1,000 (£790) fine.

The law stipulates that, from October, a 1 sq metre panel must be built for every 20 sq metres of surface area. It applies to new homes or existing buildings undergoing renovations to heating systems or roofs.

Conservatives said the law went too far: "This is an environmental dictatorship," said the local Christian Democratic Union leader, Hermann Uchtmann. A local energy trade association said it was investigating legal action to reverse the ruling. (The Guardian)

The Green Frontier; Environmental Sentimentalism and Reverse Manifest Destiny - If you want to understand the thinking of the more utopian of the Left — especially of the radical environmentalist — a reading of Thoreau is absolutely vital; Thoreau's Walden embodies everything the American Green dreams could be (except they would like to make it compulsory). Thoreau conducted an experiment where he squatted on land he did not own and built a cabin. He wanted to see if he could live a much simpler life, and he kept records on his expenditures. The upshot of Walden was that Man does not require the complications of modernity, as Thoreau managed to get by on very little and was completely satisfied. The American Green dreams of every man building his Walden.

But Thoreau was wrong because his experiment would have failed had there not been a thriving civilization to allow him to drop out. He built his cabin from materials he purchased, he bought seed for his garden from commercial growers, he resided in relative comfort on property that did not belong to him because others kept watch, protecting him from being assaulted or robbed. The Law protected him through the legal mechanism of Adverse Possession so that the worst the owner of the property could do was evict him. The Sheriff, the Judge, the Prison awaited any who would molest him in his peaceful seclusion, and the soldier defended him from foreign attack. He had access to food, clothing, tools, weapons, materials, and medicines he would not have been able to acquire elsewhere. Even the most primitive of peoples have had access to the assistance of the tribe, and few live in a state of nature in isolation. Thoreau's simplicity was purchased by others in the society at large; he lived off the discarded scraps of civilization.

That is where the back-to-nature movement is so wrong; as John Donne put it, "no man is an island," and the enjoyment of the primitive must be purchased by someone. Dropping out can be done, but others must carry the burden of the droppee. (Timothy Birdnow, Intellectual Conservative)

Gordon Brown's eco-towns policy just ‘greenwash’, warns report - The “eco-towns” policy promoted by Gordon Brown has suffered a setback with an official report warning that many of the schemes are little more than ordinary housing estates with a green label attached. (The Times)

Earth Will Survive After All, Physicists Say - The Large Hadron Collider, scheduled to go into operation this fall outside Geneva, is no threat to the Earth or the universe, according to a new safety review. (New York times)

EU pesticide rules 'would decimate crop yields' - Proposed new EU rules on the use of chemicals on farms will decimate the amount of crops produced in the UK, scientists have warned.

Crop yields will be cut by anything between 25-50 per cent and many will become uneconomical to grow.

A ban on chemical products used to control disease, pests and weeds would create food shortages, lead to soaring prices and increase Britain's dependence on imports.

The quality of the food that is grown will also be threatened, according to a devastating report by the independent agricultural and environmental consultancy ADAS. (Daily Telegraph)

India’s Growth Outstrips Crops - JALANDHAR, India — With the right technology and policies, India could help feed the world. Instead, it can barely feed itself.

India’s supply of arable land is second only to that of the United States, its economy is one of the fastest growing in the world, and its industrial innovation is legendary. But when it comes to agriculture, its output lags far behind potential. For some staples, India must turn to already stretched international markets, exacerbating a global food crisis.

It was not supposed to be this way.

Forty years ago, a giant development effort known as the Green Revolution drove hunger from an India synonymous with famine and want. Now, after a decade of neglect, this country is growing faster than its ability to produce more rice and wheat.

The problem has grown so dire that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called for a Second Green Revolution “so that the specter of food shortages is banished from the horizon once again.”

And while Mr. Singh worries about feeding the poor, India’s growing affluent population demands not only more food but also a greater variety. (New York Times)

U.S. May Free Up More Land for Corn Crops - CHICAGO — Signs are growing that the government may allow farmers to plant crops on millions of acres of conservation land, while a chorus of voices is also pleading with Washington to cut requirements for ethanol production.

The Midwest floods have washed out an estimated four million acres of prime farmland, crimping this year’s harvest as the world desperately needs more grain. With corn prices setting records and soybean prices not far behind, the Bush administration is under intense pressure to do what it can to bolster the food supply.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and one of Capitol Hill’s main voices on farm policy, on Friday urged the Agriculture Department to release tens of thousands of farmers from contracts under which they had promised to set aside huge tracts as natural habitat. (New York Times)

Natural England warns Brown of dangers in promoting GM crops - Gordon Brown and the Government are today given a blunt warming about their new enthusiasm for genetically-modified crops and food by the head of the Government's own countryside and wildlife agency. (The Independent)

June 20, 2008

Al Gore’s Epic Hypocrisy

Al Gore imagines that future poets will be singing his praises 1,000 years from now. In the meantime back on Planet Earth, he may have to settle for the slings and arrows that he deserves for his epic hypocrisy. (Steven Milloy, FoxNews.com)

Report Says Severe Weather to Increase as Earth Warms - As humans emit more greenhouse gases, North America is likely to experience more droughts and excessive heat even as intense downpours and hurricanes increase, according to a report issued today by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program.

The 162-page study, which was led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, provides the most comprehensive assessment yet of how global warming has helped to transform the climate of the United States and Canada over the past 50 years, and how it may do so in the future.

Warning that extreme weather events "are among the most serious challenges to society in coping with a changing climate," the report finds that "recent and projected changes in climate and weather extremes have primarily negative impacts."

Coming at a time when record floods are ravaging the Midwest, the new report paints a grim scenario in which unpredictable and severe weather will exact a heavy toll. While the Southwest is likely to face even more intense droughts, the scientists wrote, heavy downpours will become more frequent in some other parts of the country because of increased water vapor in the air. (Washington Post)

Except this increase in weather extremes would need to be driven by that horrific enhanced greenhouse 'feedback', water vapor, wouldn't it? The one that is not occurring in the weather zone?

Global Warming, Cooling and the Paradox of Blame - The “truth” about climate change is just that – the climate is changing. Always has been, and always will.

So it comes as no surprise that, despite recent protests challenging whether scientists in the 1970s did, in fact, warn of global cooling, the climate change phenomenon has haunted the imagination of scientists, policymakers, environmentalists and, now, lawyers. (Shannon L. Goessling, AJPF)

What an idiot: Dion unveils $15.4B carbon tax plan - OTTAWA - Stephane Dion rolled the dice Thursday on his future as Liberal leader, unveiling a complex and politically risky plan to wean Canadians off fossil fuels.

The "green shift" would impose a carbon tax worth $15.4 billion a year - to be offset by an equivalent cut in income and business taxes and a boost in tax breaks for poor, elderly, northern and rural Canadians who stand to be hardest hit by the increased cost of necessities like home heating fuel, electricity, food and travel.

In choosing to make the plan the centrepiece of the Liberal platform, Dion is setting up the next election as an epic battle over competing economic and environmental policies. But he's also triggering a debate over character.

Dion cast himself Thursday as a bold, visionary leader with the courage to do the right thing. (CP) | Don't believe Dion's carbon-tax claims: Harper (CP)

Dumber by the minute: Alcoa, Shell, Duke Want Climate Plan, Global Limits on Carbon - June 20 -- Alcoa Inc., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and 97 other companies are urging world leaders to devise a plan for fighting global warming by setting greenhouse-gas targets for all nations and creating an international carbon market. (Bloomberg)

CBS News sinks to new low; publishes crackpot global warming story, attributes it to Associated Press, kills it with no retraction (Watts Up with That?)

CBSNews.com Pulls Story Making Quake/Climate Link Claim (Business & Media Institute)

AP and Tom Chałko: global warming and earthquakes - The Associated Press decided to promote an übercrackpot called Tom Chałko (Australia) and his new, groundbreaking two-page paper.

Update: CBSnews have removed the article. Moreover, CBSnews insist that the story came from the AP while the AP denies it. See a backup from Yahoo. The MarketWire story seems to be alive at dozens of places, e.g. at MSNBC. (The Reference Frame)

Survey suggests research misconduct is common - WASHINGTON - Research misconduct at U.S. institutions may be more common than previously suspected, with 9 percent of scientists saying in a new survey that they personally had seen fabrication, falsification or plagiarism.

The survey of 2,212 mainly biomedical scientists at 605 universities and other research institutions, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, also showed that researchers are very reluctant to report bad conduct.

Thirty-seven percent of cases of suspected misconduct were never reported to the institution involved for investigation, perhaps due to fear of reprisals for turning in a colleague or a desire to protect the flow of research money. (Reuters)

Guest Weblog by Hendrik Tennekes: A Revolution in Climate Prediction? - The World Climate Research Program (WCRP), a program run by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) organized The World Modeling Summit for Climate Prediction at the European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) in May, 2008. This meeting produced a curious document entitled “The Climate Prediction Project,” which was posted on the WCRP website (see).

I don’t know what to make of this text. Is it a proposal? Is it a call to arms? Is it a trial balloon floated by computer modelers? Is it an attempt by WCRP brass to test the waters for an international facility of unprecedented size? Will the Secretary-General of WMO take this ball and run with it? Will any government be willing to stick its neck out? Did anyone in the circuit that produced and disseminated this text contemplate the ways in which a document of this type may backfire? Did anyone conceive of the complexity of the negotiations that would be needed? (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

Greenland's leafy cover obliterated by climate change - Extensive spruce forests used to cover the southern half of Greenland, according to a Canadian study that gives a remarkable glimpse of the icy island's green past and possible future.

The work, by a team at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal, shows the impact of past climate warming on the massive ice sheet was much greater than previously believed.

And it "should increase concerns about its fate" as the global climate warms because of increasing greenhouse gas emissions, Anne de Vernal and Claude Hillaire-Marcel report in the journal Science Friday.

The journal also features a second report showing how North America's climate suddenly flipped from a cold to a warm state at the end of the last ice age, with dramatic changes in atmospheric circulation in as little as a single year. (Margaret Munro, Canwest News Service)

Yes, conditions have been much more life-friendly in Greenland but no, current conditions do not resemble those of the last great glaciation and so lack some of the key priming influences for past dramatic changes.

Global Warming and Energy Implications: Will Nature Soon Cool Hot Debates? - Measurements by four major temperature tracking outlets reported that world temperatures dropped by about 0.65° C to 0.75° C during 2007, the fastest temperature changes ever recorded (either up or down). The cooling approached the total of all warming that occurred over the past 100 years, which is commonly estimated at about 1° C. Antarctic sea ice expanded by about 1 million square kilometers – more than the 28-year average since altimeter satellite monitoring began.

But have these collective announcements ended the global warming debates? No, stay tuned for further developments. (Larry Bell, Energy Tribune)

As the Earth Cools: What Does it Mean for the Energy Industry? - The earth warmed strongly between 1915 and 1940, cooled between 1940 and 1975 and then warmed strongly again between 1975 and 1998. The earth has been cooling in the opening years of this century even as carbon dioxide levels have risen appreciably since 1998. Many influential people in the industrialized world believe that global warming is a transcendent issue and human activity, especially the activity of the energy complex, is to blame and carbon management, at any cost, is imperative. (Vinod K. Dar, Right Side News)

Saboteurs! EPA May Limit Fuels' Greenhouse Emissions - WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency's staff, under pressure to deal with climate change, is considering whether to set limits on greenhouse-gas emissions associated with gasoline and other transportation fuels.

New fuel standards aimed at curbing greenhouse gases could have broad implications for oil refiners and the struggling automobile industry. Putting limits on greenhouse gases generated by fuels could result in higher prices for gasoline and push auto makers to develop vehicles that consume even less petroleum.

Such rules would mark a shift in policy for the Bush administration, which has avoided mandatory limits on greenhouse-gas emissions. It isn't clear what the EPA's final proposals will include. (Wall Street Journal)

Global Warming - Frog Decline Link Is Disproven - A new study in the peer-reviewed PLoS Biology, a journal of the Public Library of Science, has disproven sensationalist media reports of global warming causing a mass die-off of tropical frogs.

The study by a team of scientists specializing in zoology and animal health reported, "analyses found no evidence to support the hypothesis that climate change has been driving outbreaks of amphibian chytridiomycosis." (Environment News)

Climate realist declaration tops 1,100 endorsers - Ottawa, Canada, June 19, 2008 – Since its creation in March by the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change has attracted signatories from 40 countries. Although ignored by most media and governments, endorsement for the Declaration has rained in from hundreds of climate experts and other scientists, as well as professional engineers, economists, policy experts, medical doctors and average citizens. The complete declaration text, endorser lists and international media contacts for expert commentary, may be viewed at climatescienceinternational.org. (Tom Harris, CFP)

Commission Does Little About Climate Change - WASHINGTON For months, I have had lures in the waters of Gov. Tim Kaine's Commission on Climate Change. The bobber hasn't jiggled. I guess they don't want to hear from the guy who was state climatologist from 1980 through last summer.

That's too bad, because I support the idea that climate change is an object worthy of public scrutiny, and, as a scientist, the only way I can scrutinize is with numbers.

Citizens may or may not believe climate change is all it's cracked up to be, and this might bother them, but I have to say it. The commission's climate-change goal is to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2025. It's high time people see what they'll get for their money. (Patrick J. Michaels, Times-Dispatch)

Hypocrisy is becoming hard to bear - POOR Belle. Here's a polar bear that never got to taste a global warming hypocrite, served fresh.

Oh, I can imagine how Belle's mouth ran to see the welcoming committee of journalists assembled for her this week on the coast of northern Iceland.

She'd have been hungry, of course, having sailed an ice floe over from Greenland and then swum to shore.

And, if she'd read the papers, she might even have expected the reporters before her would be the last to deny her a house-warming snack.

After all, ever since another polar bear had floated to Iceland two weeks earlier, only to be shot dead, the media were cranking out weeping stories of bears suffering in a world made too hot for them by wicked humans.

Bears floating to Iceland "could lend credence to warnings from experts that climate change is creating a more perilous environment for the majestic Arctic animals," wailed an AFP stringer.

These bears belonged to "one of the species most endangered by climate change", sighed a colleague filing for the Scotsman.

"Scientists blame global warming for the disappearance of the sea ice - vital for the bear's survival," sobbed a meaty mate from Associated Press.

And ssshhh. Don't mention that the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre says the extent of Arctic ice is in fact "greater than this time last year".

Don't mention that polar bears are growing in number, not shrinking, and that they have for centuries washed up on Iceland's beaches, with the most recent bobbing up 20 cooler years ago.

And especially don't mention that the world hasn't warmed since 1998.

No, no. Reporters, you see, just want you to really believe your gases are heating the world to Armageddon and will omit any facts that may "confuse".

And now here, in front of a hungry polar bear, were gathered members of this profession that has more than any other preached that vile man is killing nice bears. Naturally, Belle decided to make a meal of the occasion and charged, presuming her greatest defenders would surely not object to providing lunch.

But, alas, you can never trust global warming believers to perform as they preach and Belle was promptly shot dead, perfectly illustrating that what most threatens polar bears isn't warming but hunting.

The police aren't apologising, saying they had "no other choice". (Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun)

Fact Check: Oil Company Investments - In a Fox News Channel interview on June 19, 2008, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) debated Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) about energy issues. Senator Sanders echoed Democratic talking points demonizing oil companies for making a profit. According to Senator Sanders, “Since Bush has been President, the oil companies have made over $600 billion in profits. Most of that will buy back stocks and raise dividends, not use that money for oil exploration.”

Fact: According to a report by analysts at Ernst & Young, North America’s 20 largest oil companies have invested 50 percent more into exploration and production than they earned in net profit over the past 10 years. Additionally, data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Oil Daily shows that profit margins of oil and natural gas companies are ranked #7 among industries. Above them, at the top of the corporate profit list are beverages and tobacco, pharmaceuticals, electrical equipment and appliances, and computer and computer accessories. (Inhofe-EPW Press Office)

Energy: The Life Blood of the Nation - The concept of energy, especially the non-human kind that does not involve slaves, child labor, and human backs, has been crucially important the recent advancement of mankind. More than 100 years after the discovery of electricity and the resulting thousands of uses of it, the American public seems oblivious of its presence, its uses, and the liberating effects it has had. (Michael R. Fox, Hawaii Reporter)

The Drill Vote - A silent transformation of the political landscape has taken place that spells trouble for Democrats this election year. With no end in sight to high fuel prices, voters want the one real solution: drill for oil. (IBD)

McCain Needs To Add ANWR To Energy Plan - Gas is $4 a gallon. Oil is $135 a barrel and rising. We import two-thirds of our oil, sending hundreds of billions of dollars to the likes of Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.

And yet we voluntarily prohibit ourselves from even exploring huge domestic reserves of petroleum and natural gas.

At a time when U.S. crude oil production has fallen 40% in the last 25 years, 75 billion barrels of oil have been declared off-limits, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

That would be enough to replace every barrel of non-North American imports (oil trade with Canada and Mexico is a net economic and national security plus) for 22 years.

That's nearly a quarter-century of energy independence. The situation is absurd. To which John McCain is responding with a partial fix: Lift the federal ban on Outer Continental Shelf drilling, where a fifth of the off-limits stuff lies.

This is a change for McCain, but circumstances have changed. (Charles Krauthammer, IBD)

Nationalize This! - "We can't drill our way out of the problem," goes the Democratic mantra on oil. So what would Democrats do? Some in the party have the worst possible answer: "Nationalize the oil industry." (IBD)

The 'Idle' Oil Field Fallacy - A bill introduced in Congress this week would "compel" oil and natural gas companies to produce from federal lands they are leasing. If only it were that easy to find and produce oil. Imagine, an act of Congress that could do what geology could not.

These lawmakers ask why oil and gas companies want more access to federal lands to drill if they aren't using all of the 68 million acres they already have? Anyone with even the most basic understanding of how oil and natural gas are produced – and this should include many members of Congress – knows that claims of "idle" leases are a diversionary feint.

A company bids for and buys a lease because it believes there is a possibility that it may yield enough oil or natural gas to make the cost of the lease, and the costs of exploration and production, commercially viable. The U.S. government received $3.7 billion from company bids in a single lease sale in March 2008.

However, until the actual exploration is complete, a company does not know whether the lease will be productive. If, through exploration, it finds there is no oil or natural gas underneath a lease – or that there is not enough to justify the tremendous investment required to bring it to the surface – the company cuts its losses by moving on to more promising leases. Yet it continues to pay rent on the lease, atop a leasing bonus fee. (Red Cavaney, Wall Street Journal)

The Mad Professor - I thought I should give you, Dear Reader, a chance to express a smile or two at my expense. Over the last couple of days, in the role of the ‘Mad Professor’, I have been involved in some enjoyable radio interviews, in which I guide listeners around our house - as you will hear, the irrepressible Stephen Nolan insists that it is a “posh house” (spoken in a lovely Ulster accent) - in order to point out how so many ordinary-day items are related to oil and to the price of oil, and thus how oil will impact on domestic inflation. As you will also hear, I talk madly of the direct impacts of oil, of indirect impacts, and of embedded oil while picking up (and dropping) milk bottles, observing yoghourt pots, taking out playing CDs [Laura Cantrell], and throwing open a sash window onto the garden. During one of the recordings, I did accidentally drop a milk bottle, which then sedately rolled down the front door steps, amazingly remaining unbroken. It was all great fun, but with a sound - so to speak - purpose. (Global Warming Politics)

China sharply raises energy prices - HONG KONG: Faced with increasingly severe fuel shortages and the prospect of power failures during the summer air-conditioning season, the Chinese government unexpectedly announced sharp increases late Thursday night in regulated prices for gasoline, diesel and electricity.

The increases are the latest sign of how China's integration into the global marketplace has limited the flexibility of the country's leaders in responding to economic crises.

The government has come under intense pressure recently from both environmentalists and other governments to ease up on its fuel subsidies, which are blamed for distorting global markets, encouraging greater consumption and pushing oil prices higher for other nations. (IHT)

Inconvenient Truth: Why Pricey Oil Can Make Tackling Climate Harder - People concerned about global warming tend to cheer surging oil prices, figuring that will spur less-polluting alternatives. Perhaps those people should think again.

In Europe, natural gas prices track crude oil. Recent crude price spikes have driven natural gas prices higher, too. That has made natural gas even less-competitive against traditional fuels like coal.

So, say carbon-market analysts Point Carbon, the oil price spike is leading some European power companies to switch from burning pricey gas to relatively cheaper coal, then covering their pollution by buying carbon credits in Europe’s carbon trading scheme. (Keith Johnson, WSJ)

Nuclear Dreams: Will the Next Atomic Age Ever Come? - While President Bush picked up the offshore-drilling gauntlet yesterday, senator John McCain returned to the charge on nuclear power. He called for the construction of 45 more nuclear reactors by 2030—or a roughly 50% expansion of the current U.S. nuclear reactor fleet.

Now that public support for the stuff appears to be growing, how realistic is Sen. McCain’s faith in nuclear power? (Keith Johnson, WSJ)

John McCain Goes Nuclear - The Republican candidate pushes for a new Manhattan Project to power our economy and protect the environment. It's about time we caught up with the rest of the world and split atoms, not hairs. (IBD)

The perils of being big in Japan - Millions of Japanese face health ‘re-education’ if they don’t slim down - and all because of bogus claims about the dangers of a large waistline. (Basham and Luik ,sp!ked)

Critical alert for all women: Statins during pregnancy - Someone must have sent out a press release, because there was no new study... or any study at all to support the sudden appearance of this public health message... yet, news outlets across the UK and around the world all reported this story, all on the same day. Yesterday, the top news story was that statins could help pregnant women avoid caesarean sections, especially fat women blamed for raising C-section rates, with headlines announcing that all “obese pregnant mums” will now be given statins during pregnancy.

This was a false story and one that could risk women losing their babies; delivering premature babies; or having babies with limb, brain and neurological deformities. Before we get into more details, it is important that all women know: There is NO medical expert body in the world recommending statins be used by fat women or any women during pregnancy. Statins are specifically contraindicated for use by pregnant women and women trying to become pregnant. (Junkfood Science)

Obesity epidemic: We are the world's fattest - AUSTRALIA'S obesity epidemic has been drastically underestimated, according to the latest comprehensive study showing 9 million adults are fatter than they should be.

The report says Australia is the world's most overweight nation, ahead of the supersized Americans.

Experts are now calling for extreme measures like gym discounting and denial of surgery based on body mass index (BMI) to rectify the situation.

"These might be controversial but they won't just be targeting a small sub-set of Australians," said Simon Stewart, head of preventive cardiology at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute.

"Overweight and obese people now make up the vast majority of us and these are the drastic measures now needed to bring these numbers down."

The report, released ahead of the Federal Government's obesity inquiry, presents the results of height and weight checks carried out on 14,000 adult Australians in 2005.(Daily Telegraph)

Radiation for health - Could exposure to low doses of radiation cure our ills? For decades, we have been told that exposure to radiation is dangerous. In high doses it is certainly lethal and chronic exposure is linked to the development of cancer. But, what if a short-term controlled exposure to a low dose of radiation were good for our health. Writing in today's issue of the Inderscience publication the International Journal of Low Radiation, Don Luckey, makes the startling claim that low dose radiation could be just what the doctor ordered! (Inderscience Publishers)

Canned science - Bisphenol A coverage in The Globe and Mail runs the gamut from scaremongering to preposterous (Terence Corcoran, Financial Post)

Too cautious - Forget the ‘precautionary principle.’ The amount of risk to which the public should be exposed is greater than zero. In the case of Bisphenol A, studies prove that we shouldn’t be worried, yet Canadian regulators won’t relent (Michael Krauss, Financial Post)

Left Coasters... Bee Exclusive: Capital gushes wasted water - Metropolitan region's per-capita use tops U.S. daily average as conservation pledges go unmet. (Sacramento Bee)

Slav farm reserves could avert global famine - Across a great arc of the Eurasian steppe from Ukraine through Russia to Kazakhstan lies enough arable land to feed the world for years to come, with spare for biofuels to help plug the energy gap.

In the days of Nikita Khrushchev - a great enthusiast for the vast Sovkhoz collectives - the Soviet Union farmed 240m hectares, badly. The same territory now farms 207m hectares. These reserves of idle soil are alone enough to meet the entire global need of 30m extra hectares over the next decade, as estimated by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The Moscow investment bank Troika Dialog says that just 43pc of the arable land in Russia is cultivated. Crop yields in the trio of leading ex-Soviet states remain at pre-modern levels. Yields can be doubled in Russia, and tripled in the Ukraine using modern kit and know-how. "The potential is tremendous," said Kingsmill Bond, Troika's chief strategist. (Daily Telegraph)

Synthetic biology aims to solve energy conundrum - Designer enzymes are big business as the need to produce viable biofuels grows - but can they offer a long-term alternative? (Chris Edwards, The Guardian)

Green agenda poses thorny problems - Growing demand for food, fuel and votes raises the price of not doing anything and puts the pressure on politicians to act, both globally and locally. In Britain this week Labour and the Tories have moved in opposing directions on the green agenda - not quite in the way their core supporters would expect. (The Guardian)

EU rule kept half a million homes in the dark - Blackouts that plunged 500,000 homes into darkness last month were compounded by European environmental restrictions over the use of coal and oil-fired power stations, The Times has learnt.

The unexpected shutdown of two power stations on Tuesday, May 29, led to the worst disruption to the UK’s power network in more than 20 years, prompting new concerns over the stability of Britain’s ageing power grid.

However, industry sources say that a key factor was the European Union’s Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD), which sets strict limits on the number of hours that some of Britain’s largest and most heavily polluting coal and oil-fired power stations can operate before they have to close in 2015. The time is measured in “stack hours” — the length of time that chimney stacks, rather than individual generation units, are in use.

For power stations that have more than one burner, this has created a clear economic incentive for plants to be switched off unless they are being operated at full capacity, or until wholesale power prices increase enough for them to be economically viable to be turned back on. (The Times)

June 19, 2008

From the rubber room: Today's Quakes Deadlier Than In Past (Update, AP have yanked the story but it is too late, here's a .pdf version captured earlier) - New research compiled by Australian scientist Dr. Tom Chalko shows that global seismic activity on Earth is now five times more energetic than it was just 20 years ago.

The research proves that destructive ability of earthquakes on Earth increases alarmingly fast and that this trend is set to continue, unless the problem of "global warming" is comprehensively and urgently addressed.

The analysis of more than 386,000 earthquakes between 1973 and 2007 recorded on the US Geological Survey database proved that the global annual energy of earthquakes on Earth began increasing very fast since 1990.

Dr. Chalko said that global seismic activity was increasing faster than any other global warming indicator on Earth and that this increase is extremely alarming. (AP)

This would be marginally more plausible had there been any unusual warming but lets just stop and think for a moment. We are told the reason we can't measure any enhanced greenhouse warming is that it is hiding in the deep oceans. So how does a fraction of a degree warming of deep ocean water increase earthquake activity? Moreover, enhanced greenhouse theory demands that the tropical mid-troposphere warms at a rate significantly faster than the surface and yet the observed trend, if real, is a trivial 0.03 K/decade (less than one-third of one degree per century). If there is anything to the enhanced greenhouse hypothesis then AGW must be less than that trend (too small to measure, in other words). So, tell us again how such a trivial change, if it exists at all, has a more powerful effect on the Earth than the difference between diurnal and nocturnal temperatures. Why doesn't the Earth tear itself apart under the heat of the afternoon sun when the surface temperature might be 30 K higher than just pre-dawn? Why do earthquakes occur in Winter at all if surface heating is a key determinant? Surely all crustal tension would be released during Summer if geothermal energy has such difficulty escaping that earthquakes result?

We've probably had enough fun at Chalko's expense but should point out his 'research' is based on totally flawed model output from none other than Hansen himself. Remember the infamous "smoking gun" release? In Earth's Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications Hansen, et al, state: "Our climate model, driven mainly by increasing human-made greenhouse gases and aerosols, among other forcings, calculates that Earth is now absorbing 0.85 ± 0.15 watts per square meter more energy from the Sun than it is emitting to space. This imbalance is confirmed by precise measurements of increasing ocean heat content over the past 10 years." This is the source of Chalko's "NASA measurements from space confirm that Earth as a whole absorbs at least 0.85 Megawatt per square kilometer more energy from the Sun than it is able to radiate back to space. This 'thermal imbalance' means that heat generated in the planetary interior cannot escape and that the planetary interior must overheat. Increase in seismic, tectonic and volcanic activities is an unavoidable consequence of the observed thermal imbalance of the planet" Unfortunately for Tom, they aren't "NASA measurements from space" but Hansen's crappy model output and it's quite wrong. When the "Energy Imbalance" paper was written the model output was a fair wiggle-fit with Willis (2004) and Levitus (2004). Like all happy accidents, however, this good thing came to an end, too. We'll let Professor Roger Pielke, Sr., do the honors:

The Correction To The Lyman Et Al 2006 Paper Is Available - The correction to the Lyman et al paper “Recent cooling of the upper ocean” is available. It is “Correction to ‘Recent Cooling of the Upper Ocean’” by Josh K. Willis, John M. Lyman, Gregory C. Johnson and John Gilson. While this correction eliminates the cooling that they reported in the 2006 paper, the warming of the 1990s and very early 2000s has not continued. This absence of global ocean warming (which is consistent with the absence of a significant global average sea surface temperature anomaly trend for the last few years) is a challenge to the modelers and to the conclusions of the IPCC with respect to the ability to skillfully predict global warming. Indeed, it appears that with respect to the challenge on Climate Science of A Litmus Test For Global Warming - A Much Overdue Requirement, the models have failed so far. (Climate Science)

Indeed, the alleged +0.85 W/m² "imbalance" simply has not existed at least since 2002 (when Argo floats began reporting actual ocean temperatures) and in fact current indications are that Earth has had a negative balance since Jan '07 as Earth has dumped heat to space and global temperatures have fallen quite significantly.

Chalko up another stupid "global warming" claim completely without foundation in reality. Here's a link to the "paper" (Chalko has had a bee in his bonnet about AGW blowing up the Earth for quite some time).

What you need to know: Relative annual energy release from earthquakes, magnitude 6 or greater, 1900-2008 (source)

Hilarious: Ocean temperatures and sea level increases 50 percent higher than previously estimated - New research suggests that ocean temperature and associated sea level increases between 1961 and 2003 were 50 percent larger than estimated in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

The results are reported in the June 19 edition of the journal Nature. An international team of researchers, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory climate scientist Peter Gleckler, compared climate models with improved observations that show sea levels rose by 1.5 millimeters per year in the period from 1961-2003. That equates to an approximately 2½-inch increase in ocean levels in a 42-year span. (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

Ooh! Ooh! Let us get this one: 2.5"/42 years equates to... 2.5/42*100 = ~6"/century. And the average over millennia is thought to be... ~8"/century, meaning the rate 1961-2003 is only three-fourths that expected, right? What do we win?

Sigh... weasel word alert: Climate change 'could wipe out whales' - CLIMATE change could help do to whale populations what commercial whaling has not - wipe out an entire species.

Humpback, southern right and minke whale populations could be damaged by a lack of food caused by a change in sea temperatures, according to researchers from the Federal Environment Department.

Data from the department’s Australian Antarctic Division (AAD), published in the Marine and Freshwater Research journal, claimed that if the availability of krill - the main diet for “baleen” whales which filter food from water - deteriorated due to climate change, other species could be wiped out. (The Australian)

It is true the Southern Ocean appears to be cooling a little but it has done so many times in the past, yet the whales are still here and so are the krill on which they feed.

Arctic sea ice melt 'even faster' - Arctic sea ice is melting even faster than last year, despite a cold winter. Data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) shows that the year began with ice covering a larger area than at the beginning of 2007. But now it is down to levels seen last June, at the beginning of a summer that broke records for sea ice loss. Scientists on the project say that much of the ice is so thin that it melts easily, and the Arctic may be ice-free in summer within five to 10 years. (BBC)

We'll see but at present global sea ice area is pretty average. The northern hemisphere is 'way down' and southern hemisphere sea ice is 'way up'.

Forget the Planet, Retrofit the Earth - Looking at images of nearly all Iowa underwater got me thinking about the difference in politics between fixing the here-and-now and fantasizing about the future.

One began to suspect our public officials might be drifting toward the clouds when many started referring to Earth as "the planet." Democrats especially of a certain environmental stripe talk only about "the planet."

Of late, one might ask: Which planet are they living on? The Earth is about the here-and-now. The Planet is about the out-there.

This week John McCain sounded like an Earth guy and Barack Obama like a Planet man.

When Sen. McCain said he wanted to open drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf, he was talking about the here-and-now of $135 oil and $4 gasoline. When Sen. Obama in his own energy speech spoke of spending $150 billion over 10 years to create five million new "green energy jobs," he was talking about the out-there.

When House and Senate Democrats last week said their "climate change" bill would collect $6.7 trillion from polluters over 40 years to save the planet, this too was public policy about the out-there. (Dan Henninger, Wall Street Journal)

Canadian Opposition Plans Sweeping Carbon Tax - OTTAWA - Canada's Liberal Party will unveil its long-awaited carbon tax plan on Thursday, detailing an idea the Conservative government has dismissed but one the Liberals hope will help them return to power. (Reuters) | Dion bets big on carbon tax (Toronto Star)

They want to price people out of any reasonable developed world living standard and they think this will make people vote for them... Sharp as bowling balls, these guys. To begin with, what Canadian believes the "revenue neutral" claims following the goods and services tax rip off? Then there's the regressive nature of taxing energy -- poor people suffer really badly under energy taxes particularly since they are heavily inflationary (everything requires energy for manufacture or at least transport and so everything is taxed multiple times as it moves through the supply chain).

Junk tariffs - If the carbon tax will be a “tax on everything,” then it will be a tax on nothing in particular (William Watson, Financial Post)

Germany Approves New Climate Package - BERLIN - The German government approved a climate package on Wednesday which is designed to help it reach a target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels.

Due to differences within the ruling coalition, however, plans to link car taxes to emissions were not included in the package and instead delayed until 2010.

The package, which focuses on the transport and construction sector, builds on a previous climate agreement which emphasised green electricity and making power plants more efficient. (Reuters)

Just 3? Yes, I Am A Heretic On Global Warming - MUCH has been made of my voting with the Government to allow the police to detain terror suspects for 42 days, rather than 28, in special cases.

Yet there was a more important vote last week, in which I was one of only three Members of Parliament to vote against the might of all parties and defy the Climate Change Bill which will cost Britain hundreds of billions of pounds, will not mean any other country has to follow suit and, as we are responsible for only two per cent of the world’s carbon emissions, will make no difference to the climate or to global warming.

Climate change has become a religion, with anyone who dares to throw out a question or two instantly accused of heresy. (Ann Widdecombe, Daily Express)

Timely death: Bill's demise opens next energy debate - Timing is everything. Democrats in the U.S. Senate couldn't have picked a worse time for the recent debate on a global warming bill that would've raised prices on gasoline and other energy sources while lopping billions off America's economic output for decades to come.

Americans might not understand the intricacies of the proposed cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but they know $4-a-gallon gas and no doubt felt that those in Washington proposing legislation to kick those prices even higher had lost their minds.

When the key vote arrived on the so-called Lieberman-Warner bill, the floor manager, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, couldn't scare up 50 votes. Members of the Senate are political creatures first, and they know how to duck and cover when there's a roll-call tally on bad legislation.

Credit Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa, for leading the opposition effort. During a similar debate a few years ago, Inhofe had trouble getting much help from his friends. More than 20 Republicans joined the debate to underscore Lieberman-Warner's folly — owing to the current energy picture and Inhofe's personal tenacity. (The Oklahoman Editorial)

World Modelling Summit For Climate Prediction - Comments By Climate Science -Part I - There was a meeting among a set of modellers from May 6 -9 2008 which was hosted by the European Centre for Medium Range Forecasting (ECMWF) entitled “World Modelling Summit for Climate Prediction”. The goal of the meeting was to provide

“society with reliable regional predictions of climate change at all timescales, necessary to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies. “

Presentations from the meeting are available from this link.

They issued a statement from this meeting which is reproduced in part below with comments by Climate Science. A subsequent post will comment on their specific recommendations. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

Deep-sea carbon storage must be tested, says leading scientist - Scientists must start dumping carbon dioxide into the deep ocean to see whether it provides a safe way of tackling global warming, a leading expert on climate change has said. (The Guardian)

Actually not. About the last thing we want to do is limit life-sustaining CO₂ in the atmosphere, an essential trace gas that has been at critically low levels over the last few million years, the lowest for almost 300 millennia. Most especially we do not want to waste the energy involved in CCS with supplies currently so tight.

Deep divisions - One of the world's leading climate scientists challenges Greenpeace's opposition to storing CO2 in the depth of the oceans (Wallace S Broecker, The Guardian)

CO2 disposal in the ocean is a dangerous distraction - Bill Hare, Greenpeace adviser and visiting scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany, responds to Wallace Broecker's call for carbon storage experiments in the depths of the Pacific Ocean (The Guardian)

This'd be about the first time I'm in partial agreement with greenpeas whacko Bill Hare. CO₂ sequestration by compression and injection is a bloody stupid waste of energy (30-40% increase in energy consumption just to rebury carbon we mined to start with). However, it is the absurd enhanced greenhouse myth that is the dangerous distraction from the world's real problems.

Gore's Home . . . and Media Corruption - The Tennessee Center for Policy Research’s bird-dogging of Gore’s energy hypocrisy sheds light on another scandal: The corruption of media environmental coverage. (Henry Payne, Planet Gore)

Verbatim: Bush Urges Congress To Lift Ban On Offshore Oil And Gas Drilling - With high energy prices taking a heavy toll on the economy, there's no more time for delaying action on boosting U.S. energy supplies, Bush said in a Wednesday speech. (President George W. Bush)

Inhofe Applauds President’s Solutions to Bring Down Gas Prices - WASHINGTON, DC – Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, commented on President Bush’s call for increasing America’s oil and gas production. President Bush outlined a four-point plan focusing on expanding exploration of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), developing oil shales, opening ANWR, and expanding refining capacity. (EPW Blog)

A Redefined 'GOP': Get Our Petroleum - President Bush asks Congress to lift the 1981 drilling ban on offshore oil. The no-drill Democrats will call it flip-flopping. We call it change you can believe in. (IBD)

From the RINO pen: Schwarzenegger opposes offshore oil drilling - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday he opposes lifting a ban on new oil drilling in coastal waters, breaking with President Bush and Republican presidential candidate John McCain. (Associated Press)

Congress, Get Off Your Gas, And Drill! - Last Thursday, oil prices increased $5.50 per barrel in one day. Last Friday marked the biggest single-day surge in oil price history, rocketing $11 more to $138 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In just two days, oil costs increased 13%. (Chuck Norris, IBD)

Congress Cannot Deflect The Blame - First, Democrats dishonestly blamed oil companies for overcharging. Now they falsely accuse them of keeping their high-priced oil off the market. With public support for drilling growing, Congress is panicked. (IBD)

Dearth of Ships Delays Drilling of Offshore Oil - As President Bush calls for repealing a ban on drilling off most of the coast of the United States, a shortage of ships used for deep-water offshore drilling promises to impede any rapid turnaround in oil exploration and supply.

In recent years, this global shortage of drill-ships has created a critical bottleneck, frustrating energy company executives and constraining their ability to exploit known reserves or find new ones. Slow growth in oil supplies, at a time of soaring demand, has been a major factor in the spike of oil and gasoline prices.

Mr. Bush called on Congress Wednesday to end a longstanding federal ban on offshore drilling and open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration, arguing that the steps were needed to lower gasoline prices and bolster national security. But even as oil trades at more than $135 a barrel — up from $68 a year ago — the world’s existing drill-ships are booked solid for the next five years. Some oil companies have been forced to postpone exploration while waiting for a drilling rig, executives and analysts said. (New York Times)

Which is, of course, why you need to go after onshore and shale oil too, as well as adding the infrastructure to handle, refine and distribute more product. Had we developed the resources in an orderly and timely fashion rather than listening to antidevelopment greenies then this crunch would not have occurred but as things stand we have allowed them to create an artificial crisis.

The Crone, meanwhile, displays increasing senile dementia: The Big Pander to Big Oil - It was almost inevitable that a combination of $4-a-gallon gas, public anxiety and politicians eager to win votes or repair legacies would produce political pandering on an epic scale. So it has, the latest instance being President Bush’s decision to ask Congress to end the federal ban on offshore oil and gas drilling along much of America’s continental shelf.

This is worse than a dumb idea. It is cruelly misleading. It will make only a modest difference, at best, to prices at the pump, and even then the benefits will be years away. It greatly exaggerates America’s leverage over world oil prices. It is based on dubious statistics. It diverts the public from the tough decisions that need to be made about conservation. (New York Times)

What they don't realize is that merely displaying a willingness to extract local resources will ease speculative pressure on prices, provided Congress actually repeals bans and opens ANWR and shale to extraction too. Just knowing more resources are going to come online eventually makes bidding up futures a poor bet and reduces price pressures on the currently available supplies.

True, it would be part of a long, slow catch up: Lifting Ban Wouldn't Be Immediate Fix for Oil - As politicians debate whether to open federal offshore waters to oil and natural-gas drilling, there is agreement on at least one point: It isn't a short-term fix.

If the bans were lifted tomorrow, it would be at least seven years -- and likely as long as a decade -- before the first oil began to flow off the coasts of Florida, California and the eastern seaboard.

"Is it going to happen overnight? No," said Dan Naatz, vice president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America. "Is it going to solve all of our nation's energy problems? No." (Wall Street Journal)

Surging Oil Primes Political Pump For New U.S. Drilling - If there's to be a tipping point in the debate over America's energy future, President Bush's speech on Wednesday might just be it. (Terry Jones, IBD)

CO2 Emissions From Transport Up in EU - BRUSSELS - Carbon dioxide emissions from transport have continued to grow in the European Union, despite a slight reduction from overall sources, EU data for 2006 released on Wednesday showed. (Reuters)

EU faces new calls to limit greenhouse gases - BRUSSELS: The European Environment Agency reported Wednesday large increases in emissions of carbon dioxide from aviation and shipping, prompting environment officials to redouble calls for regulation.

The agency said airplanes had contributed nearly five million more tons of emissions, an increase of 4.1 percent from 2005 to 2006, while international shippers added 10 million tons, a 6.3 percent increase.

Currently, airlines and shipping lines are exempt from participation in the European Emissions Trading System, which is the main tool used by the EU to meet its commitments to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto climate treaty. (James Kanter, IHT)

EU Emissions - Taking a break for a moment from domestic politics, let's turn to our supposed model for rationing GHG emissions: Europe. The EU has just released its report to the UNFCCC, “Annual European Community greenhouse gas inventory 1990–2006 and inventory report 2008” (summary here). The short version of the story is that the report does not support either a claim that the EU is “on track” to meet emission reduction promises, or that the ETS is a success. (Chris Horner, CEI)

D'oh! Britain to Miss Renewable Energy Targets - Report - LONDON - Britain is set to miss its own renewable energy target and will also fail to meet European Union requirements unless it steps up action substantially, a parliamentary report said on Thursday. (Reuters)

European Business Urges EU to Review Biofuels Policy - BRUSSELS - Europe's top business lobby has reinforced calls on the European Union to reconsider its target for the use of biofuels which are increasingly blamed for pushing up food prices globally. (Reuters)

Hallo? Where were you? New study to force ministers to review climate change plan: Exclusive Official review admits biofuel role in food crisis - Britain and Europe will be forced to fundamentally rethink a central part of their environment strategy after a government report found that the rush to develop biofuels has played a "significant" role in the dramatic rise in global food prices, which has left 100 million more people without enough to eat.

The Gallagher report, due to be published next week, will trigger a review of British and EU targets for the use of plant-derived fuels in place of petrol and diesel, the Guardian has learned.

The study marks a dramatic reversal in the role of biofuels in the fight against global warming. As recently as last year, corn ethanol and biodiesel derived from vegetable oil were widely seen as important weapons in that fight - and a central plank of Gordon Brown's green strategy. Now even their environmental benefits are in question. (The Guardian)

The worst of this is that the leftie press and socialist governments find this revelatory. Rationalists have always known burning food and/or displacing food crops is completely irresponsible while people are hungry.

Europe To Ban Energy-Wasting Lightbulbs - According to media reports, the European Union is planning to implement a phase-out of energy-wasting, climate-killing incandescent lightbulbs, starting next year. They will be replaced by energy-saving compact fluorescent lightbulbs, which last 10 times longer. (Der Spiegel)

Fed researchers scale back voyages on climate, ecosystem changes to save money on boat fuel - WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - They haven't rechristened a ship the Irony, but federal researchers are canceling and cutting back on voyages aimed at studying climate change and ocean ecosystems so they can save money on boat fuel.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has scrapped at least four trips nationwide and is shortening others "because of the increase in petroleum prices," chief spokesman Anson Franklin said Wednesday. (Associated Press)

Handful of left-wing nuts fear losing disproportionate control of higher education: Naming U. of C. research center after Nobel Prize winner has faculty split - Few names are more associated with the University of Chicago than Milton Friedman's.

But that's exactly the problem, say some faculty who want to put the brakes on a plan to name a new research center after the Nobel Prize-winning economist.

In a letter to U. of C. President Robert Zimmer, 101 professors—about 8 percent of the university's full-time faculty—said they feared that having a center named after the conservative, free-market economist could "reinforce among the public a perception that the university's faculty lacks intellectual and ideological diversity."

About a half-dozen faculty members aired their concerns Tuesday in a meeting with Zimmer and Provost Thomas Rosenbaum, who remain committed to the project. Rosenbaum said the university plans to put about $500,000 toward launching the center next year, but it hopes the expected $200 million endowment for the center will come mostly from private funds from alumni and business leaders.

"It is a right-wing think tank being put in place," said Bruce Lincoln, a professor of the history of religions and one of the faculty members who met with the administration Tuesday. "The long-term consequences will be very severe. This will be a flagship entity and it will attract a lot of money and a lot of attention, and I think work at the university and the university's reputation will take a serious rightward turn to the detriment of all."

The controversy highlights tensions between the university's historically conservative economics department and law school and the generally liberal humanities and social sciences. (Chicago Tribune)

Earth to Socialists: take a hike!

Another burden for obese to bear - Overweight people are being blamed for adding to world hunger and global warming, Joanne Laucius writes. (Canwest News Service)

Good science - The witch hunt against the corporate funding of research ignores the fact that virtually every modern medical innovation was created with industry involvement  (Elizabeth Whelan, Financial Post)

Reflections on health care - A lovely reminder of what health care really is and should be about. (Junkfood Science)

Arming yourself against fake cancer remedies - The internet is filled with people eager to take advantage of others when they’re the most vulnerable, scared and desperate. Products, foods and supplements claiming to prevent, cure or treat cancer have flourished for years, but especially on the internet. The Food and Drug Administration has just issued warning letters for 125 fake cancer "cures" being marketed on the internet. (Junkfood Science)

The hidden learning opportunity - A fourth grader missed her last day of school after being suspended because she shared a lip balm used for fever blisters with two classmates. The school has a no tolerance policy when it comes to drugs in school.

Certainly, sharing cold sore balm isn’t advisable, as it can spread the infection, but that wasn’t the missed educational opportunity that this incident might have provided. As you read the news story, see if you can figure out what it might have been: (Junkfood Science)

Researchers explain nitrogen paradox in forests - Nitrogen is essential to all life on Earth, and the processes by which it cycles through the environment may determine how ecosystems respond to global warming. But certain aspects of the nitrogen cycle in temperate and tropical forests have puzzled scientists, defying, in a sense, the laws of supply and demand. Trees capable of extracting nitrogen directly from the atmosphere often thrive where it is readily available in the soil, but not where it is in short supply. Now scientists from the Carnegie Institution have explained the paradox by recognizing the role of two other factors: temperature and the abundance of another key element, phosphorous. (Carnegie Institution)

Australian GMO Wheat Research Seen Defying Drought - SAN DIEGO - Australian researchers developing a drought-tolerant wheat have had early success in field trials and hope to have the world's first transgenic wheat in farmers' hands in five to 10 years, a biosciences leader said on Tuesday. (Reuters)

GM crops needed in Britain, says minister: Government seeks to relax restrictions to tackle the worsening global food crisis - Ministers are preparing to open the way for genetically modified crops to be grown in Britain on the grounds they could help combat the global food crisis.

Ministers have told The Independent that rocketing food prices and food shortages in the world's poorest countries mean the time is right to relax Britain's policy on use of GM crops.

Last night, the Environment minister Phil Woolas held preliminary talks with the Agricultural Biotechnology Council, an umbrella group formed in 2000 to promote the role of biotechnology in agriculture. It is run by representatives from the companies Monsanto, Bayer CropSciences, BASF, Dow AgroSciences, Pioneer (DuPont), and Syngenta.

He said: "There is a growing question of whether GM crops can help the developing world out of the current food price crisis. It is a question that we as a nation need to ask ourselves. The debate is already under way. Many people concerned about poverty in the developing world and the environment are wrestling with this issue."

He stressed that the "very robust" procedures for ensuring the safety of experiments would continue, with scientists looking at each application on its merits.

The move will anger environmental groups, who accuse the GM industry of trying to exploit the global crisis to win approval for their products. (The Independent)

As if the cranks don't exploit any and everything in their efforts to impose their cockeyed worldview.

June 18, 2008

Here's another one: Defenders of science shouldn't let the sophists carry the day - Public questions in America about science have become the playthings of the manufactured controversy, or "manufactroversy," in which political activists invent a scientific disagreement that isn't real.

An example is global-warming skepticism. PR man Frank Luntz admitted as much in an infamous memo in which he confessed that disagreement about global warming was fading away, but he nonetheless urged Republicans "to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue." This tactic was taken from the tobacco industry, which likes to say there are two sides to every question. (Leah Ceccarelli, Seattle Times)

I don't know whether to admire the courage or despair the rashness of social scientists pontificating on physical science about which they patently know absolutely nothing. Would Ceccarelli take as gospel weather forecasts for next week? Somehow we doubt it and yet she accepts as gospel the garbage output of climate models that, according to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), can't even agree the base temperature of the planet over a range of 5 °C (9 °F)!

From CMIP's introduction: "For some time it has been apparent that these models give somewhat contradictory answers to the same questions -- e.g., a range from roughly 1.5 - 4.5°C in the global mean surface air temperature increase due to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide -- due to subtle differences in their assumptions about clouds and other phenomena at scales smaller than the separation of model grid points."

We assume that was written by an Englishman since it is a masterpiece of understatement. CMIP3 is underway: CMIP3 output from coupled ocean-atmosphere model simulations of 20th - 22nd century climate is being collected by the PCMDI in support of research relied on by the 4th Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Cute. Release the 'report' and then try to generate model output to justify it.

Now, anyone who knows anything about paleoclimatology and/or 'treemometers' knows with certainty that GCMs can never produce useful forward projections simply because they are tuned (wiggle fit) to such fraudulent "histories" as MBH (the "hockey stick") and beaten into shape with marvelous magical multipliers (to gin up physically impossible CO₂ response), water vapor increases which cannot be observed (the atmosphere actually appears to have been drying slightly over the last couple of decades - static image here) and reflective aerosols which simply do not appear in atmospheric opacity measures in the real world. No matter, models can do anything since they are not constrained by the physical world at all.

Apparently Ceccarelli doesn't even realize Hansen admits we don't know the planet's near-surface temperature or even have a standard definition of what we are attempting to measure: I doubt that there is a general agreement how to answer this question. Even at the same location, the temperature near the ground may be very different from the temperature 5 ft above the ground and different again from 10 ft or 50 ft above the ground. Particularly in the presence of vegetation (say in a rain forest), the temperature above the vegetation may be very different from the temperature below the top of the vegetation. A reasonable suggestion might be to use the average temperature of the first 50 ft of air either above ground or above the top of the vegetation. To measure SAT [Surface Air Temperature] we have to agree on what it is and, as far as I know, no such standard has been suggested or generally adopted. Even if the 50 ft standard were adopted, I cannot imagine that a weather station would build a 50 ft stack of thermometers to be able to find the true SAT at its location.

Despite this Ceccarelli sallies forth to slander climate realists as 'sophists'. It's long past time she learned something about the physical world and then perhaps she would spout less bullshit.

Mann trying to cash out before he has to run: Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming (Michael Mann and Lee R. Kump, Pennsylvania State University)

Bad luck Mike, I think it's all unraveling way too fast for you to make much out of this.

Nope: Freedman: Explaining an Extreme Spring - This spring's weather sounds like it was crafted from a pitch meeting between a hapless Hollywood screenwriter and a studio executive. The pitch? "It's a movie in which flooding inundates downtown middle America, tornadoes strike boy scouts, strong winds lash the nation's capital, and record heat wave has New Yorkers sweltering in early June. And no one really knows why... or do they?"

... Given mounting concerns about global climate change due to human activities, it's difficult not to look at such strange and damaging and wonder: "Did we do that?"

As it is with most facets of climate science, the answer is somewhat complicated. It's well-known that precipitation patterns are likely to shift as a result of climate change, and there are indications that this has already begun to occur. The mechanics of such a shift are rather basic, since a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor, which can in turn lead to heavier rainfall events. (Washington Post)

According to NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory atmospheric water vapor has been in general decline since 1990 and atmospheric temperatures have plunged dramatically since Jan '07 so no, "global warming" certainly is not an explanation for an "extreme Spring".

Nothing ‘wacky’ about the weather - When it’s cold, it proves climate change is taking place. And if it’s hot, it also proves climate change is taking place (Terence Corcoran, Financial Post)

How Not To Measure Temperature, Part 64 - Estimating biases and comparing to GISS Homogeneity Adjustments - If you had the task of choosing where to put a climate monitoring thermometer here at the USHCN Climate station of record #469683 in Winfield, WV where would you choose to put it? (Watts Up With That?)

Overheated claims - Scientists advocating for action are overselling the predictive capabilities of climate models (Roger Pielke, Jr., Financial Post)

A Climate Of Belief - "The claim that anthropogenic CO2 is responsible for the current warming of Earth climate is scientifically insupportable because climate models are unreliable." (NZ Climate Science)

A Different Kind of Analog System for Ultra Long Range Forecasting - I have known Jim Witt for decades. He was Science Director for the Dutchess County schools in New York and co-founder of Fleetweather, Inc. In 1962 he initiated a very unique high school weather station at the school in which he taught. The United States Weather Bureau, extremely interested in the program, deemed it the most advanced high school weather program, not only in the entire United States but also in the entire world. (Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow)

NASA Mission Poised to Help Us Gauge Our Rising Seas - Icecap Note: You will note the Hansen influence on this story. Instead of just reporting the facts, they have to repeat the talking points of the alarmist agenda. We support NASA’s and NOAA’s technology attempts and the work of Willis et al. We hope the data from the new satellites is not subject to the so called “quality assurance” adjustments GISS and NCDC are so famous for with their outlier GISS/GHCN data bases. Let the data speak for itself. (Icecap)

Hmm... Energy Guzzled by Al Gore’s Home in Past Year Could Power 232 U.S. Homes for a Month - NASHVILLE - In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former Vice President’s home energy use surged more than 10%, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.

“A man’s commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home,” said Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption.”

In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month. (Tennessee Center for Policy Research)

While 232/12 does yield approximately the right answer the correct comparison is that Gore's Tennessee home uses roughly as much power as 19 "average" US homes. That and the fact that his power use increased 10% is more than adequate to highlight the disconnect between Gore, the proselytizer and Gore, the consumer.

Giant Sucking Sound (Watts Up With That?)

Absurd claims of alarm - Manmade global warming is a myth, and the cult surrounding it will fade into obscurity, says JOE FONE , but the costs and taxes imposed to combat this imagined menace will remain.

In 1998, a peculiar thing happened. Global warming, such as it was, came to an end. Since then, global temperatures have trended downwards, while carbon-dioxide emissions have risen. (The Press)

Meteorologist Says Money Behind Warming Alarmism 'Can Corrupt Anybody' - Cullen adversary argues he knows only one broadcast meteorologist who is 'on the global warming bandwagon.' (Jeff Poor, Business & Media Institute)

The Royal Society: From Science to Fiction - Eco-activist Mark Lynas, has won the Royal Society's prize for popular science writing, for his book, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet.

Except that it isn't science, it's fiction. Science fiction; it takes a vaguely plausible scientific possibility, extrapolates it, and makes it the situation in which some form of drama plays out. For every one degree rise in temperature, Lynas considers what might happen to life on Earth. (Climate Resistance)

India fights off pressure to alter climate agenda - NEW DELHI: India may have won the first round at Bali in December 2007 but the UN meeting on climate change at Bonn from June 2-13 saw the developed countries try to alter the Bali agenda.

India, along with the G-77 grouping, had to fight hard in the subsidiary meeting to defend the Bali roadmap.

There was an attempt by developed countries to wipe the slate clean - forget their existing targets for greenhouse gas emission reduction and set a fresh mandate, erasing their past and existing non-performance, and include targets for developing countries like India at the same time.

The noise for a 'clean slate' solution has increased since it became evident that many European countries and Japan may not be able to meet their greenhouse gas reduction targets by 2012 as required under the Kyoto Protocol. (Times of India)

Climate cures: Technology, not ideology - The real problem, Mr. Carlin says, isn't carbon, per se. "When the Earth is warming, it is receiving more radiation energy than it is losing, which is the basic cause of increasing global temperatures," he says. "If not corrected, either by man or by nature, the climate system may get out of control - with unknown, but possibly catastrophic, consequences. The actual solution is to bring Earth's radiation balance into equilibrium."

He advocates solar radiation management (SRM), a geo-engineering solution that would mimic volcanoes - but without the destruction.

"SRM would control temperatures by reducing the radiation reaching the Earth from the sun. This can be most easily accomplished by adding particles to the stratosphere [which would] scatter small, calculated portions of selected wavelengths of incoming sunlight back into space. These particles would naturally, and slowly, drop out of the stratosphere, and would be replaced, making it relatively easy to make rapid adjustments" - for either warming or cooling. (Cooling would require different particles.)

Mr. Carlin says SRM would turn global warming into a technical challenge, not an ideological contest. It would really be no more difficult, he says, than your average aerospace project and would cost roughly 1/10,000th as much as carbon regulation to keep the average global temperature less than 2 C above its presumably benign preindustrial level. (Globe and Mail)

It begins: EarthFirst files for bankruptcy - Unable to turn a profit from investing in such green technologies as biofuels and reclaiming rubber from old tires, EarthFirst Technologies, based in Tampa, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The company's latest setback comes after months of financial problems. Documents filed in bankruptcy court Friday reveal that EarthFirst owes at least 20 companies hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In 2007, EarthFirst generated $18.3-million in revenue, but couldn't overcome setbacks in its biofuel business or surmount millions in operational costs, bringing its year-end net loss to $9.1-million.

In January, EarthFirst dodged a big bullet after a lawsuit filed by investment firm Laurus Master Funds seeking $8.5-million in debt repayment was dismissed. According to an EarthFirst SEC filing, the lawsuit could have forced the company to fold.

Calls to EarthFirst's offices Monday went unanswered or were met with disconnect signals. A call to EarthFirst CFO Frank Barker Jr. was not immediately returned. (St. Petersburg Times)

Expect many more of the make-believe and tinkerbell "technologies" to come crashing down. If you were conned into investing in the green bubble you should get out, now.

From CO₂ Science this week:
Editorial:
Rapid Genetic Change in Terrestrial Plants: Could it enable earth's vegetation to successfully adapt to predicted changes in climate?

Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week:
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 549 individual scientists from 334 separate research institutions in 38 different countries ... and counting! This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from the Qilian Mountains, Tibetan Plateau, China. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here.

Subject Index Summary:
Trees (Types - Pine: Loblolly, Photosynthesis): How are the photosynthetic rates of loblolly pine trees affected by increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration?

Plant Growth Data:
This week we add new results (blue background) of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature for: Bog Birch, Marine Coccolithophores, Paper Birch, and Yellow Birch.

Journal Reviews:
Antarctic Ice-Sheet and Sea-Ice Albedo and Temperature: 1981-2000: How did these important climatic parameters respond to the supposedly unprecedented warming of the globe over the last two decades of the 20th century?

Sea Surface Temperatures off the Coast of North Iceland: How have they varied over the past 2000 years?

The Northeast Tibetan Plateau's Medieval Warm Period: What caused it? And how did its strength compare with that of the Current Warm Period?

Climate and Population Change in China: What has been the relationship between the two parameters over the past millennium?

Wheat Production in a Warming World: Will rising temperatures decimate this essential enterprise? (co2science.org)

The Pastel ‘Blue-Green’ Tories - These days, David Cameron is striving to paint Tory pictures that look as vapid as an amateur English watercolour or pastel. The soft blue-greens are there to tempt back the wetter Liberal Democrats into the Tory fold, while not frightening the horses with anything too dramatic. It is all ever so ‘nice’, with hardly a mention in the Day Nursery of nasty toys like nuclear power or ‘green’ taxes. (Global Warming Politics)

Japan to Consider Environment Tax - Panel Draft - TOKYO - Japan will consider imposing an environment tax as part of discussions this autumn on an overhaul of the tax system, the government's top advisory panel said on Tuesday, a move that could prompt opposition from businesses. (Reuters)

Is there a special on Kool-Aid or something? Major Economies Must Take Lead in Climate Battle - US - LONDON - The world's major economies emit most of the world's climate-warming greenhouse gases and must take the lead in reducing them, a senior American climate negotiator said on Tuesday. (Reuters)

US envoy says no 'G8 solution' to climate change - TOKYO — The US ambassador to Japan voiced doubt Monday on whether the upcoming Group of Eight summit would take action on climate change, saying that any solution must also involve developing nations.

Host Japan has expressed hope that the July 7-9 summit of the Group of Eight (G8) rich nations -- Britain, Canada, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, Russia and the United States -- will help shape negotiations on a post-Kyoto climate treaty.

But Thomas Schieffer, the US ambassador to Japan, said that any solution on curbing greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming needed to bring on board major emitters in the developing world such as China and India. (AFP)

Chinese reap biggest Kyoto rewards - China has been by far the biggest winner from the Kyoto protocol, receiving tens of billions of dollars in investment to finance low-carbon technology.

Last year, 73 per cent of carbon credit projects certified by the United Nations under the protocol were based in China.

Brazil and India received the next largest shares at 6 per cent each, while only 5 per cent of projects were based in Africa. (Financial Times)

Despite the ridiculous promises made to them by greens conning their support, poor nations will continue to miss the wealth transfers since the whole farce revolves around countries with an industrial base. Poor countries simply cannot expect any assistance from green social engineering.

Competition for Polysilicon - My colleague at the John Locke Foundation, Geoff Lawrence, in a blog post today looks at economic modeling for costs of solar power as North Carolina lawmakers last year were putting together a renewable portfolio standard law for the state's utilities. His analysis shows that modelers were way off: (Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch)

Major Atmospheric Shift Could Change Direction of Energy Markets, Top Climate Scientists and Energy Experts to Show at June 26, NYC Event - WASHINGTON, June 17 -- In the past 30 days, far-reaching changes have occurred in the atmosphere not seen in almost 70 years that could have profound consequences for global energy markets.

Energy Business Watch (EBW) will bring to the New York Marriot Marquis, June 26, a special, 3-hour discussion (beginning at 3:00 PM) with three of the top weather scientists in the world -- Dr. Roland Madden (whose pioneering work led to the discovery of the Madden-Julian Oscillation), Harry Van Loon (one of the foremost experts in the world on El Nino/La Nina events) and Dr. William Gray (perhaps the best known expert on hurricanes).

This all-star trio of renowned weather scientists will be joined on the program by EBW's nationally-recognized Publisher, Andy Weissman, and EBW's Chief Meteorologist, Dave Melita -- who has demonstrated repeatedly a unique capability to accurately predict major weather trends on an extended range basis.

"The atmospheric changes currently under way have the potential to change the price trajectory for energy for much of the rest of this year. The information provided at our Forum is likely to have a direct and immediate impact on the market," said Weissman, with urgency. (PRNewswire)

World Crude Production Has Peaked - Pickens - WASHINGTON - World crude oil production has topped out at 85 million barrels per day even as demand keeps climbing, helping to drive a stunning surge in prices, billionaire oil investor T. Boone Pickens said on Tuesday. (Reuters)

Offshore oil drilling opponents are rethinking - WASHINGTON -- The environmental movement, only recently poised for major advances on global warming and other issues, has suddenly found itself on the defensive as high gasoline prices shift the political climate nationwide and trigger defections by longtime supporters. (Los Angeles Times)

Bush Will Seek to Drop a Drilling Ban - WASHINGTON — President Bush, reversing a longstanding position, will call on Congress on Wednesday to end a federal ban on offshore oil drilling, according to White House officials who say Mr. Bush now wants to work with states to determine where drilling should occur.

The move underscores how $4-a-gallon gas has become a major issue in the 2008 presidential campaign, and it comes as a growing number of Republicans are lining up in opposition to the federal ban.

The party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, used a speech in Houston on Tuesday to say he now favors offshore drilling, an announcement that infuriated environmentalists who have long viewed him as an ally. Florida’s governor, Charlie Crist, a Republican, immediately joined Mr. McCain, saying he, too, now wants an end to the ban. (New York Times)

McCain's Sea Change On Offshore Oil - While Democrats want to continue to outsource our energy supplies to the likes of Hugo Chavez, John McCain wants to repeal the federal ban on offshore drilling. The energy tide is turning. (IBD)

Why Brazil Isn't Ashamed to Exploit Its Oil - Petrobras CEO José Sergio Gabrielli was flush with bullish insights when he stopped by the Journal's New York office last week to talk about the Brazilian oil company.

One reason for Mr. Gabrielli's optimism is last year's discovery of the offshore Tupi field, which is said to contain between five billion and eight billion barrels of black gold. Another, equally important reason is that, according to Mr. Gabrielli, neither environmentalists nor Brazilian politicians have raised concerns about exploiting oil in the waters off the Brazilian coast.

That's quite a contrast with attitudes in the U.S., where offshore exploration and development has been all but shut down save in the Gulf of Mexico. One company official explains the difference by saying that Brazilians understand the importance of energy to their future, while Americans do not.

I have another theory. And mine fits the pattern of resource development – or lack thereof – all over the Western Hemisphere. It comes down to this: Where government has the property right, restrictions on development tend to be low. But when the private sector is the owner, environmental concerns blossom.

Exhibit A is Petrobras. Not only did Mr. Gabrielli say there is no appetite for stopping offshore projects in his country. He went further. "Brazil has one of the freest and most investor-oriented regulation in the world. Even freer than the United States of America," he said, referring to the climate for oil exploration.

That may be so, but it would be interesting to know why, given Brazil's prominent embrace of socialism. It could be that the country is changing. After all there is now private-sector competition in the oil industry. Yet it is also worth noting that the Brazilian government has a 58% controlling stake in Petrobras's voting shares and 32% of its total shares. This means that some of Petrobras profits go straight to the government's bottom line, giving the politicians more money to spend on bribing their constituents. (Wall Street Journal)

Dominic Lawson: The sheer hypocrisy of this debate on oil - Oil makes hypocrites of us all. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general who last year took office declaring that his main goal was to fight "man-made climate change", has spent most of his weekend in Jeddah attempting to persuade King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to ramp up the kingdom's oil production.

This is just the global edition of Gordon Brown's earlier plea to the Saudis to "do something" about the high price of oil; a remarkable display of diplomatic chutzpah from a man who, as Chancellor, spent a decade telling us that increasing the price of petrol on British forecourts through fiscal means was very much in the best interests of the whole planet.

Meanwhile the US Senate has threatened to launch a prosecution of OPEC for its alleged fixing of the world oil market, to the detriment of the American consumer. The American legislature's hypocrisy in this matter takes a different form to ours: the politicians who are now howling with rage about the shortage of oil supply are in essence the same people who have long blocked the oil industry from developing vast deposits both in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off their own coastline – about 80 per cent of the US continental shelf is out of bounds, on environmental grounds.

I imagine that when King Abdullah told Mr Ban that "national policies in the West" were partly to blame for the current very high price of crude oil, the Americans' refusal to drill for oil in their own most geologically promising territories might have been one of the factors he had in mind. (The Independent)

Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol - Silicon Valley is experimenting with bacteria that have been genetically altered to provide 'renewable petroleum' (The Times)

Only For Elites Could High Gas Be Good Thing - The other day in southwestern Fresno County, a poor part of Central California, I talked with a number of folks at a rural gas station. Most drove second- and third-hand pickups, large cast-off sedans or used SUVs.

Their general complaint was twofold: They didn't have the cash to buy a new fuel-efficient Honda or Toyota.

And they were now spending a day or two of their wages just to fuel their cars for their long rural commutes. (Victor Davis Hanson, IBD)

Voters Furious over Surging Energy Prices - Natural gas prices are expected to rise by 40 percent in Germany. A battle of the populists has begun as politicians promise to put more money into citizens' pockets. But any financial relief will likely be eaten up before long by rising energy costs. (Der Spiegel)

No! CO2 to go under sea - The Federal Government is clearing the way for millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide to be stored under the sea.

Resources Minister Martin Ferguson told parliament today the move would enable the gas to be safely stored for thousands of years, with the potential to substantially reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Ferguson was introducing amendments to the offshore petroleum law which, he said, would enable a key component of the carbon-dioxide capture and geological storage (CCS) process to be actively pursued by industry. (AAP)

What idiot decided throwing away 30-40% of energy to bury carbon we have already expended energy mining in the first place was a good idea? When will people wake up? Carbon is not the enemy, carbon zealots are.

Electric Cars Still Require Resources - Detroit — Green efforts to starve America of its own mineral wealth — whether tapping Alaskan oil fields or firing coal plants — is popularly sold as necessary to preserve wilderness areas and keep the air clean. But it is also a calculated strategy to wean the country off carbon-rich resources in order to stimulate the production of alternate technologies from wind farms to petrol-free vehicles.

But alternatives are often more dependent on expanding existing technologies than the public knows. (Henry Payne, Planet Gore)

Better treatments for malaria in pregnancy are needed - Malaria in pregnancy threatens the life of both mother and child, and yet there has been very little research on how best to treat it, say a team of malaria experts in this week's PLoS Medicine.

Plasmodium vivax -- challenging the dogma of being 'benign' - Plasmodium. vivax can cause severe malaria associated with substantial morbidity and mortality, show two studies published in PLoS Medicine this week. These findings challenge the current dogma that P. falciparum can be severe and life-threatening whereas P. vivax tends to be mild, according to the related commentary by Stephen Rogerson (University of Melbourne, Australia), an expert not connected with these studies. (PLoS)

Study shows 'being fat in today's world' invites social discrimination - Obese people feel "a culture of blame" against them, which they say has been made worse by media reports about the health risks of obesity, a new study from Australia found. The results will be presented Tuesday, June 17, at The Endocrine Society's 90th Annual Meeting in San Francisco. (The Endocrine Society)

School lunches — are kids eating healthfully? - Time Magazine’s special June 23 issue featuring childhood obesity was just released, but needs no review. The script was identical to the recent advertorial series in the Washington Post — the sources were the same, and the very same unsupported claims and doomsday predictions were made. But those concerned about the health and welfare of children and teens will find one article particularly disturbing. (Junkfood Science)

Real-life medicine and the passing of Tim Russert - It’s really hard to give up the belief that if we do everything right — eat healthy, exercise, undergo diligent screening, and get all of our numbers lined up in ideal ranges — that we can prevent heart disease, cancer, diabetes and forestall premature death.

This weekend, we saw how vehemently both the public and medical interests defend these beliefs; and are even quick to blame tragic victims for having done something amiss, been fat, or failed to properly manage their risk factors somehow; before they can bring themselves to see the evidence.

No one but a respected and intrepid board certified cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist (who’s also not trying to sell us something) could have made such a perfect and poignant comment about Tim Russert’s sad death and help us see the truth about what is really going on.

In an invaluable article, Dr. Westby G. Fisher, M.D., FACC, wrote: (Junkfood Science)

June 17, 2008

Trivially right: Climate chaos is inevitable. We can only avert oblivion - At best we will limit the extent of global warming, but Kyoto barely helps. Does humanity have the foresight to save itself? (Mark Lynas, The Guardian)

Climate is a coupled, non-linear, chaotic system but beyond that Lynas is an idiot. Climate model 'forecasts' are not worth the energy squandered generating them, we don't know the world's surface temperature with an accuracy sufficient to determine trends and we don't know it's expected temperature with an accuracy sufficient to determine whether it is currently warmer or cooler than it 'should' be. Worse, we know atmospheric carbon dioxide lacks the physical properties required to produce the absurd disaster scenarios so beloved of the eco-flakes (hence the marvelous magical multipliers employed by the modeling fraternity to make model-generated output interesting).

Sporadically people write to me with the mistaken "insurance" analogy, claiming it is better to "address global warming" in the off-chance there may be something in the hypothesis than not -- "just in case". Let's put this stupid flawed analogy to death once and for all:

Say you have a house worth $300,000 and the insurance premiums are a staggering 1% ($3,000/yr) -- pretty steep you say but conclude you are willing to repurchase your house every 100 years in order to protect yourself against a total loss. That's a rational decision, right?

Now, during the '90s (last decade available) average global damage from extreme weather events approached $40 billion/yr and so it would be equally rational (if expensive) to insure with premiums up to $400 million/yr (1%), right? But measures to "address global warming" "just in case" start far in excess of $100 billion/yr -- meaning you are paying multiples of the anticipated damages just in "insurance" premiums. Would you pay the cost of your house again every few weeks just in insurance premiums? Would you do so every year or even every 10 years? Of course you wouldn't, it simply is not economic to do so unless you expect to lose your house more frequently than you are repaying for it in premiums (in which case I'd suggest living elsewhere).

"Just in case" insurance must make economic sense and collapsing the global economy by strangling the energy supply can never be a worthwhile exchange, especially since the alleged risks are physically impossible. There is no rational justification for "addressing" the phantom menace and no economic case for "just in case". Can we please lay this nonsense "insurance" analogy to rest now?

How is climate hysteria maintained? Like this: Why Your "Skeptical" Comment on Climate Change Got Deleted - Climate "skepticism" is not a morally defensible position. The debate is over, and it's been over for quite some time, especially on this blog.

We will delete comments which deny the absolutely overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, just as we would delete comments which questioned the reality of the Holocaust or the equal mental capacities and worth of human beings of different ethnic groups. Such "debates" are merely the morally indefensible trying to cover itself in the cloth of intellectual tolerance.

So, if you're a climate skeptic, you may be well-intentioned and you're certainly welcome to your opinion, but we're not interested.

Thanks. (Alex Steffen, World Changing)

"World Changing" has the tag: "Change your thinking" although all appearances are they'd rather stifle it. At least they never tried to claim they were open minded :)

By current indications they are going to busy hitting that delete key -- here's about an hour's worth of responses (I've highlighted some of Anthony Watts' response):

I'm confused.
How is intellectual skepicism "morally indefensible?

It seems like you have a moral problem with anyone who disagrees with you. It doesn't seem to matter what the subject matter is.

Posted by: Flip on June 16, 2008 8:01 PM

Certainly you can do whatever you like, but you may have overlooked a not so small problem, you now have contradictory statements on this web site.

From your About page: "This is a conversation, not a sermon. We encourage not just feedback, but active participation, and, yes, challenge. "

And here on this page you say:

"We will delete comments which deny the absolutely overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change..."

No challenges after all?

Such a quandary you've painted for yourself; by contradicting your own policy, it is highly likely you've made this website irrelevant.

Hopefully, this comment won't be deleted since it does not contain anything that is a challenge to "overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change".

Posted by: Anthony Watts on June 16, 2008 8:29 PM [em added -- Ed]

Alex Steffen,
Scepticism about climate change or anything else, is not analogous to dissent about climate change or anything else.
See.

Posted by: Jennifer Marohasy on June 16, 2008 9:00 PM

The debate is over? What debate? I must have missed the first part of this blog, where the debate took place, the alarmists won the debate, and the laws of physics were changed accordingly.

It's interesting to note that your blog is being discussed ( we promise not to use the word debate ) by one of the largest collections of climate scientists to be found in a single spot anywhere on the web. Sorry you can't read the comments, the forum is unfortunately limited to only climate scientists.. which we can assume you are not.

Jim Peden
Atmospheric Physicist

Posted by: Jim Peden on June 16, 2008 9:08 PM

Speaking of ignorant fools: First, Step Up - Asking people to make sacrifices to stop Global Warming is political suicide, right? Evidently not. (Bill McKibben, yes magazine)

Villafication Of Our Polly - Libby Purves has written a splendid little column in The Times today on the use of strong political beliefs to cover up our own nasties [‘Lefties hug their children less. Don't they?’, The Times, June 16]. In this piece, Libby reminds us just how vulnerable well-heeled, left-wing journalists are when they pontificate on ‘global warming’:

“Affluent lefties are an easy target: witness a recent glorious moment on Question Time [Question Time, Wednesday, April 30, BBC 1]. Polly Toynbee was soberly talking up green taxes and biofuels while the rightist rottweiler Richard Littlejohn cited the fuel and financial travails of ordinary people. Toynbee spoke disdainfully of his Daily Mail salary, as if that disqualified him from caring. Littlejohn shot straight back by asking whether she worries about poverty and the environment while flying to her private villa in Italy. The resulting facial expressions have been starring on YouTube ever since.” (Global Warming Politics)

Dems Running on Empty - What a difference three years makes: In 2005, I led the charge against a massive global warming cap-and-trade bill. It was a lonely battle with few GOP members willing to join me on the Senate floor to publicly oppose it.

Fast forward to June 2008: Not only was I joined by dozens of GOP Senators, but nearly 30% of the Democratic Senators rebelled against their leadership and opposed the Boxer Climate Tax Bill. In the end, Senator Boxer only had at most 35 Democratic Senators willing to vote for final passage on the largest tax bill in U.S. history. The Boxer Climate Tax Bill was so thoroughly disowned by Democratic Leadership that proponents of climate taxes will now be forced to start from scratch next year. (Sen. James Inhofe, Human Events)

Dingell drafts climate change bill - WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Dearborn, said Wednesday he is working to complete a wide-ranging climate change proposal that would stand a better chance of passage than a Senate bill rejected last week.

Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has oversight over climate bills, said a Senate bill rejected Friday was "poorly written" and never had a chance of passage.

The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act got 48 votes -- 12 votes shy of ending debate and putting it to a vote. The setback means it likely won't be considered again this year. (Detroit News)

Merkel Supports Bush Plan For Climate Summit - MESEBERG, Germany -- President Bush's hopes for reaching a climate-change agreement among the world's biggest economies got a boost from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe's leading global advocate for tough new greenhouse-gas limits. (Wall Street Journal)

Midland MPs clash over cause of climate change - The “apocalyptic visions” of environmentalists are not justified by the evidence about global warming, according to a Midland MP.

John Maples (Con Stratford) told the House of Commons he did not believe scientists really understood what was happening to the earth’s climate.

He sounded a note of scepticism in a debate which highlighted the lack of consensus among Britain’s politicians about the environment. (Birmingham Post)

The Blue/Green, Upside Down, Left/Right, Inside-Out, Three-Bags-Full Agenda - Leader of the UK's Conservatives, David Cameron, is at it again... Here he is, unveiling the latest installment of the 'resurrection' of the Tory Party, by announcing his continued commitment to Environmentalism, in spite of the prospect of an economic downturn, and rising fuel costs, by mixing the Green Party Manifesto, and a nod at the market, and some straightforward opportunism.

The Labour Party are on their knees. The Lib-Dems are barely registering. Cameron could say whatever he liked, or nothing at all. Yet here he is, wrapping himself in green cloth, telling the UK that there is no alternative, 'cos the 'era of cheap oil is over', so we have to go Green. Well, we do now. Thanks to Dave.

The new 'Blue Green Charter' aims to 'reconfigure our whole economy' with horse feathers, and 'overturn our hydrocarbon dependency' by powering the country with rocking-horse shit. (Climate Resistance)

Conflicts fuelled by climate change causing new refugee crisis, warns UN - Climate change is fuelling conflicts around the world and helping to drive the number of people forced out of their homes to new highs, the head of the UN's refugee agency said yesterday. After a few years of improvement, thanks mainly to large-scale resettlement in Afghanistan, the numbers of civilians uprooted by conflict is again rising. During 2007 the total jumped to 37.4 million, an increase of more than 3 million, according to statistics published today. (The Guardian)

Uh-huh... the globe cooled dramatically all through 2007 and continues to do so, roughly -0.75 K since Jan '07. Been really hard on people, that cooling, as evidenced by an almost 9% leap in 'environmental' refugees. Makes you wonder why zealots want to undo fortuitous warming, doesn't it?

Validation, Evaluation and Exaggeration from the IPCC: A Note from Vincent Gray - The first United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report had a Chapter headed "Validation of Climate Models". A similar Chapter occurred in the first draft of the Second Report. I commented that since no climate model has ever been validated, the word was inappropriate. The next draft had changed the Title, and the words "Validated" or "Validation" to "Evaluated" or "Evaluation" fifty times. Since then the word "validation" is never used, only "evaluate".

No IPCC document has even discussed what measures might be required before a computer model of the climate might be "validated". (JenniferMarohasy.com)

U.S. Flood Damage 1929-2003 - The ongoing Midwest floods are a horrible disaster. The United States however has seen a long-term trend of decreasing flood losses as a fraction of GDP, as shown in the following graph. (Prometheus)

The Virginia Climate Change Commission and the Mirage of Low Hanging Fruit - The Virginia Commission on Climate Change has been tasked by Virginia Governor Tim Kaine with coming up with Climate Action Plan to reduce Virginia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by the year 2025. As it turns out, this will prove much tougher than it first seems. (WCR)

Why Costly Carbon is a House of Cards - How can the world achieve economic growth while at the same time decarbonizing the global economy?

This question is important because there is apt to be little public or political support for mitigation policies that increase the costs of energy in ways that are felt in reduced growth. Consider this description of reactions around the world to the recent increasing costs of fuel: (Prometheus)

Oh boy: Tories to block third runway at Heathrow - A Conservative government is likely to block a third runway for Heathrow airport, David Cameron indicated yesterday as he criticised Gordon Brown for "pig-headedly" pressing ahead with the scheme.

In his first big environment speech of the year, the Tory leader called on the government to make Heathrow "better, not bigger" and denied that the party was abandoning its green agenda. (The Guardian)

7 Ways McCain Can Use Energy to Beat Obama - "Climate change is never going to rise to the status of a top-tier political issue" is how one top climate-policy expert recently described the political lay of the land to me. Just take a look at the results of a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. The top issue for voters (27 percent) was job creation and economic growth. Right behind was the war in Iraq (24 percent). Then came energy and gas prices (18 percent). Far down the list were the environment and global warming, at a minuscule 4 percent. So despite all the media attention on global warming as an existential threat to humanity, it still scores a bit below illegal immigration in the hierarchy of voter concerns.

And there lies an opportunity for John McCain to turn the issues of energy and the environment to his advantage in his race against Barack Obama. Here are a few pieces of advice for Team McCain that I have gathered after talking to some political folks in recent days. (James Pethokoukis, US News)

McCain wants to lift ban on offshore oil drilling - Republican Sen. John McCain said today he supports lifting the federal moratorium on offshore drilling - a position that sets him at odds with most California officials, including his ally Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who see the ban as the best way to protect the state's coast.

The announcement was a move to the right for McCain, who has courted environmentalists by opposing drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and backing climate change legislation. But conservatives have been clamoring for more domestic oil and gas drilling, and GOP strategists believe the issue plays well with voters as gas prices hit record highs.

McCain's plan, which he will highlight in a speech Tuesday to oil industry executives in Houston, would end the 27-year-old moratorium and allow states to choose whether to allow drilling off their coasts. States that did so would be offered what he called "financial rewards" - likely a share of the oil and gas royalties. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Alaska's Polar Bears: Going With The Floe? - The green light given by the Fish and Wildlife Service for oil drilling off Alaska is being portrayed as an OK to hurt polar bears. But there are so many polar bears, it's the drillers who should worry. (IBD)

Another Chance for the Senate - Given a chance to do something important about global warming, the Senate fell flat on its face earlier this month when it could not even produce enough votes to have a good debate. It can begin to redeem itself, by approving a bill to extend vital tax credits for renewable fuel sources like wind and solar power.

These credits are necessary to attract new investment in renewable sources until they become competitive with cheaper, dirtier fuels like coal. When the credits disappear, as they have in the past, investment shrivels. And since the credits expire at the end of this year, action now is critical. (New York Times)

We've been hearing for 40 years that wind and solar are "almost competitive", they just need a little more subsidy. Horseshit! These toys and subsidy farms will never compete with energy dense carbon fuels. Want power? You have few choices: fossil, atomic, hydro. In fact we need more of all three. Drop all the tinkerbell credits, they aren't worth a cracker.

The EU: Dangerous On Energy - The idea that the EU is fundamentally benign is increasingly undermined by its abject policies on energy. In recent weeks, these policies have been revealed to be potentially dangerous, hypocritical, inflexible, rose-tinted, and bureaucratic. (Global Warming Politics)

Finally getting it: Oil prices are world's biggest worry, Gordon Brown warns - Gordon Brown has warned that the sharply rising oil price is "the most worrying situation in the world" after it hit a new record high. As the oil price reached almost $140 a barrel, motorists across Britain faced growing fuel shortages caused by the weekend's fuel-tanker drivers' strike. (Daily Telegraph)

US Coal Production Unlikely to Sate World Demand - HOUSTON - US coal production has room to grow, but expansion is unlikely to meet surging world demand because miners fear a boom-bust cycle, key reserves are declining, and regulation has tightened.

Despite soaring prices, the US Energy Information Administration has cut projections of US output rather than raised them, and now foresees a total of 1.166 billion short tons by 2010, barely up from a record 1.163 billion in 2006.

That is not enough to overcome what some coal officials see as a shortage of 25 million to 35 million tons this year in the 6-billion-ton world market and a shortfall of perhaps 70 million tons next year.

Closing the gap with US coal would require spending billions of dollars to expand mines, rails and ports, investment difficult to recover if -- as has happened before -- supply growth exceeds demand and prices fall. (Reuters)

Drilling Down: U.S., Europe Dither on Energy; Russia Acts - We’ve noted it before, but we’ll say it again: You can have energy security, you can give consumers a break, or you can do something for the environment. But aiming for all three at once—that is, what passes for energy policy in the U.S. and Europe—appears next to impossible.

Take the U.S. High oil prices have given legs to Big Oil’s demand for more access to federal lands and coastal areas—a bid for energy security–even while many in Congress are still opposed. But environmentalists figure high oil prices will spur alternative energy and help fight climate change. The Liberman-Warner climate bill foundered thanks in part to high energy prices right now. Meanwhile, the consumer gets whacked regardless—with higher gas prices, or higher electricity bills, or both.

\Or take Europe. It’s been trying to goose its coddled energy markets to make life easier on consumers, saddled for decades with monopoly utilities. But keeping the lights and the heat on is also a priority, and that’s without mentioning all the climate-change hand-wringing. And what’s happened? Consumers are still paying through the nose, few countries are meeting their Kyoto obligations, and Russia is quickly becoming the guarantor of Europe’s energy security. (Keith Johnson, WSJ)

Australasia’s Gas Liquefaction Plans - The Australian LNG business appears to be on the cusp of a big expansion. Over the past few months, several new gas liquefaction projects have been announced, including ones in the traditional North and North West Shelf basins, in the relatively new Queensland coal-bed methane (CBM) province of Eastern Australia, and in Papua New Guinea. Plans are also afoot for an LNG import terminal in New Zealand.

These projects are driven by three factors: tight mid-term supply in the global LNG market; the willingness of buyers to agree to long-term price indexation close to parity with oil; and the attraction of Australasia’s political stability (compared to other gas-rich provinces) for international oil companies. (David Wood, Energy Tribune)

The pesticide report that nobody read - No major media picked up the story, even though it demolished every health and environmental claim devised by scaremongers (Terence Corcoran, Financial Post)

The lawn is safe - On Friday, May 16, Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PEMA) released its final reevaluation of 2,4-D, the leading pesticide in use in Canada. It was one of the most comprehensive science reviews in Canadian history, carried out exclusively by Health Canada scientists. Below are excerpts adapted from the PEMA report. (National Post)

Baby fat fears reach sumo proportions - Myths about an epidemic of “sumo” babies and baby fat fears have been attempting to frighten young women around the world. It adds to their anxiety and fuels beliefs that babies’ weights are the mother’s fault. Such fears can lead mothers to undereat during pregnancy or try to underfeed their babies, and jeopardize their baby’s health, growth and development. Or tragically, even frighten fat women into aborting their babies. (Junkfood Science)

Crack down on gene tests - Thirteen genetic testing businesses in California have been ordered by health authorities to immediately cease and desist from offering genetic tests to residents until they have a clinical laboratory license from the state Department of Public Health. (Junkfood Science)

Well duh! He's black, and he's back! Private enterprise saves southern Africa's rhino from extinction - A pioneering scheme which allows private landlords to own and breed wild rhinoceroses has succeeded in bringing one of Africa's most majestic animals back from the brink of extinction, conservations will announce today. (The Independent)

We've been telling you for years the only really useful conservation strategy is property rights! The Commons is always and everywhere a disaster while proprietorship invokes immediate self-interested protections for and careful management of the resource. Socialism always involves a race to the bottom and destruction of everything while free enterprise (under stable governance and guaranteed property rights) delivers optimal results at the most economical cost. Sadly the Left seems incapable of learning such a universal truth.

Africa Could Triple Food Output Quickly - UN - NAIROBI - To counter the global food crisis, Africa could triple or quadruple domestic production over two seasons through simple changes to agricultural practices, a United Nations food expert said on Monday.

In response to rising food prices, the continent must drop its reliance on food imports and learn to feed itself, said Mafa Chipeta, sub-regional coordinator for the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) in east Africa.

"Within two seasons we can change (dependence on imports)," he told Reuters on the sidelines of the launch of a regional FAO conference in Nairobi, Kenya. "We can boost production by three or four times by making simple changes."

Governments should reduce fertiliser prices and introduce quality, high-yield seed varieties, he said. (Reuters)

Food Revolution That Starts With Rice - ITHACA, N.Y. — Many a professor dreams of revolution. But Norman T. Uphoff, working in a leafy corner of the Cornell University campus, is leading an inconspicuous one centered on solving the global food crisis. The secret, he says, is a new way of growing rice.

Rejecting old customs as well as the modern reliance on genetic engineering, Dr. Uphoff, 67, an emeritus professor of government and international agriculture with a trim white beard and a tidy office, advocates a management revolt.

Harvests typically double, he says, if farmers plant early, give seedlings more room to grow and stop flooding fields. That cuts water and seed costs while promoting root and leaf growth.

The method, called the System of Rice Intensification, or S.R.I., emphasizes the quality of individual plants over the quantity. It applies a less-is-more ethic to rice cultivation.

In a decade, it has gone from obscure theory to global trend — and encountered fierce resistance from established rice scientists. Yet a million rice farmers have adopted the system, Dr. Uphoff says. The rural army, he predicts, will swell to 10 million farmers in the next few years, increasing rice harvests, filling empty bellies and saving untold lives. (New York Times)

June 16, 2008

Another one of these: That 'new shower curtain smell' gives off toxic chemicals, study finds - Vinyl shower curtains sold at major retailers across the country emit toxic chemicals that have been linked to serious health problems, according to a report released Thursday by a national environmental organization.

The curtains contained high concentrations of chemicals that are linked to liver damage as well as damage to the central nervous, respiratory and reproductive systems, said researchers for the Virginia-based Center for Health, Environment & Justice. (Los Angeles Times)

Interestingly, even the ABC rightly rips this nonsense: Studies Gone Wild: Death by Shower Curtain? - ... But some health experts are paying scant attention to those behind the curtain study. And perhaps with good reason.

Skeptics pointed out what they call a glaring error in the study's methodology. The group tested a total of five shower curtains, of which only one shower curtain - not one brand; one curtain - was subjected to complete testing for chemicals in its composition, as well as those it released into the air - a phenomenon known as "off-gassing."

...

The study found the one curtain which was tested for off-gassing may have released, over the course of the first few hours after it was opened, chemicals that could be toxic if swallowed or inhaled only in quantities thousands of times greater than those found.

Critics said that the testing was not verified by an independent lab and didn't account for real-world conditions such as temperature or humidity in a shower stall.

The study also included estimated results for some of the chemical amounts it reported, and most of the off-gassed chemicals found initially were not detectable after a few days.

In short, it is a piece of shower curtain research that some experts said just doesn't hold water.

"It's a great example of how quickly a sound bite can become dangerous and contagious," said ABC News medical contributor Dr. Marie Savard.

"The idea that people should be tossing out their shower curtains based on a study that more or less focuses on a single shower curtain is absurd. This is scare science at its best, or worst, depending on how you look at it."

Also sounding off against the study was the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CSPC), the agency charged with protecting the public from dangers in more than 15,000 types of consumer products under its jurisdiction.

"The CSPC never just discounts or discredits information," said CSPC spokesperson Julie Vallese. "If it is a topic that the agency should have an interest in, we are always willing to take a look at the science."

But in this case, she noted, "Our toxicological experts took a look at the report and have many, many concerns with the credibility of the science involved." (ABC News)

UN overstated Aids risk, says specialist: Agency 'has wasted billions' on HIV education - The United Nations has systematically exaggerated the scale of the Aids epidemic and the risk of the HIV virus affecting heterosexuals, claims a leading expert on the disease.

The numbers of people worldwide with HIV have been inflated and the UN Aids agency has wasted billions of pounds on education aimed at people who are unlikely to become infected, says Professor James Chin, a former senior Aids official with the World Health Organisation. He also accused UNAids of misleading and scaring the public by promoting 'myths' about the disease, such as that poorer people are most at risk, and of being guided in its approach by 'political correctness' rather than hard evidence. (The Observer)

Mike Fumento has been telling people this for years -- wonder if he'll get an apology for the slander he suffered for telling the truth?

Threat of world Aids pandemic among heterosexuals is over, report admits - A quarter of a century after the outbreak of Aids, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has accepted that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared.

In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO's department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalised epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa. (The Independent)

Over? It never actually existed to begin with.

An Invaluable Insecticide - DDT has come under fire from large corporations and environmentalists. But it is saving lives in Southern Africa.

Uganda’s High Court recently ordered the health ministry to stop spraying the insecticide DDT in the northern part of the country. Until there is a final ruling on a lawsuit brought by nine companies (including those supplying British American Tobacco), no life-saving DDT can be sprayed. The companies allege that their exports of organic produce, including tobacco, might be harmed if they became contaminated with traces of DDT. Given that more than 300 Ugandan children die each day from malaria, delaying the indoor spraying of DDT will surely cost lives.

In part, the Court’s decision reflects environmentalist hostility to DDT, which has made many African officials unduly skittish about using the chemical. European governments have issued mixed messages, privately advising against DDT use and publicly saying they will boycott produce imports if traces of the chemical are too high. Only those governments and companies courageous and rich enough to ignore Western environmental pressure—notably those of Southern Africa—are using significant and useful amounts of DDT. (Roger Bate, The American)

Gun Rights Is Top Issue for Court to Decide - WASHINGTON - One momentous case down, another equally historic decision to go. The Supreme Court returns to the bench Monday with 17 cases still unresolved, including its first-ever comprehensive look at the Second Amendment's right to bear arms.

The guns case — including Washington, D.C.'s ban on handguns — is widely expected to be a victory for supporters of gun rights. Top officials of a national gun control organization said this week that they expect the handgun ban to be struck down, but they are hopeful other gun regulations will survive. (Associated Press)

More ozone stupidity: Environmental Catch-22?: Mending Ozone Hole May Worsen Climate Change - Decades of chemical pollution have damaged the ozone layer of the upper atmosphere that shields Earth from the harmful effects of the sun's ultraviolet rays, each summer eating a hole over the South Pole that expands to nearly the size of Antarctica. But since 1996, when an international treaty banned the culprit chemical refrigerants and propellants (known as CFCs, or chlorofluorocarbons), the size of the seasonal tear has been shrinking—and scientists predict it may stop forming by the end of this century.

You would think that was good news. But atmospheric scientists caution in a new study published in Science that sewing up the rift in the ozone (a type of oxygen) layer may exacerbate another environmental woe: climate change. (David Biello, SciAm)

Oops! Although this piece bears a publication date later than that of the replaced Science piece it didn't catch Science's reversal:

But wait! Science have replaced their original ozone story with one possibly even worse: Ozone Layer to the Rescue? - The recovery of the ozone layer is considered essential for the health of the planet's living creatures, but new research suggests it could also assist in the fight against global warming. In the 13 June issue of Science, climatologists report that ozone recovery could restore wind patterns in the Southern Hemisphere that have blown out of kilter due to ozone depletion and the buildup of greenhouse gases. (ScienceNOW Daily News)

And they falsely claim the southern hemisphere is warming (nope and nope). About the only thing they got partly right is there has been a slight cooling over Antarctica although there is zero evidence of any change in Antarctic ozone behavior.

Climate change, health and myth-information - WHO Director General Margaret Chan recently described climate change as the “fifth horseman” of the Apocalypse who will rain pestilence and disease upon humanity. She is concerned that rising global temperatures will lead to catastrophic death and destruction in the poorest countries of the world, and that “tropical” diseases like malaria and dengue will make their way northwards to Europe and America.

As G8 leaders gather in Tokyo, how seriously should they take Dr Chan’s warnings?

According to medical entomologist Prof Paul Reiter of the Institut Pasteur in Paris, bodies such as the WHO and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are promulgating a misleading and alarmist interpretation of the relationship between vector-borne diseases and temperature.

The reality is that the epidemiology of these diseases is a highly complex interplay of the ecology and behaviour of both humans and vectors that defies simplistic analysis. The resurgence of many of these diseases is a major cause for concern, but it is facile to attribute it to temperature: the principal determinants are politics, economics and human activities.

If the WHO, IPCC and other authoritative bodies continue to misuse science, policies will be enacted that will be both ineffective and counterproductive. (CFD)

End of the tree ring circus? Hot climate or cold, tree leaves stay in comfort zone: study - PARIS - The internal temperature of leaves, whether in the tropics or a cold-clime forest, tends toward a nearly constant 21.4 degrees Celsius (71 degree Fahrenheit), reports a study released Wednesday.

It had long been assumed that actively photosynthesising leaves -- using energy from sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar -- are nearly as cold or hot as the air around them.

The new findings not only challenge long-held precepts in plant biology, but could upend climate models that use tree rings to infer or predict past and present temperature changes.

For decades, scientists studying the impact of global warming have measured the oxygen isotope ratio in tree-rings to determine the air temperature and relative humidity of historical climates.

Oxygen atoms within water molecules evaporate more or less quickly depending on the number of neutrons they carry, and the ratio between these differently weighted atoms in tree trunk rings has been used as a measure of year-to-year fluctuations in temperatures and rainfall.

"The assumption in all of these studies was that tree leaf temperatures were equal to ambient temperatures," lead researcher Brent Helliker told AFP. "It turns out that they are not." (AFP)

If trees are capable of regulating leaf temperature then the basic assumption of those using "treemometers" is false and dendro-based temperature histories complete nonsense. They are, as climate realists have long pointed out, mere markers of growing conditions, recording the mix of the trees' requirements from optimal moisture conditions, nutrient status, competition, shading and so on with no realistic expectation of distinguishing between say hot, dry and cold, wet conditions as both result in non-optimal growth. Doubtless advocacy sites like realklimate will continue their absurd dogmatic defense of Mannian hockey sticks but their last slender twig of hope for justification just got thrown on the bonfire of failed hypotheses.

See Loehle, C. 2007. A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-treering proxies. Energy & Environment 18(7-8): 1049-1058 for a rather more realistic temperature history over the last couple of millennia:

EUROPE: Getting Allergic to Climate Change - BERLIN, Jun 13 - Climate change induced by global warming is provoking health hardships in Europe, especially through new, prolonged allergies, authorities say.

The most important new allergy affecting Europeans is being caused by ambrosia artemisiifolia, popularly known by several names, including common ragweed, annual ragweed, bitterweed, blackweed, or, more telling, hay fever weed.

The plant was native to North America, but was brought to Europe several decades ago, according to German biologists and health authorities. But with the recent, steady rise in temperatures in Europe, the plant, which grows to about a metre in height, has spread in Germany, France, Hungary, Italy and other European countries. (IPS)

So, "climate change" magically transported a feral plant from North America to Europe?

Woolly Thinking & Maudlin Sentiment - Here is an excellent Friday read, namely James Delingpole’s lively interview in this week’s The Spectator with the ever-stimulating Bjørn Lomborg [‘Global warming is not our most urgent priority’, June 11]. Lomborg’s arguments are vital [see: ‘Bjørn Again’, May 31] , because they show with remorseless logic, that, even if ‘global warming’ were true in every detail, trying to control climate would still not be an economic priority. He is the perfect antidote to our age of woolly thinking: (Global Warming Politics)

Right... except for the climate part: Disaster-Prone Deltas Next Climate Risk - Ecologist - WASHINGTON - Some of the world's most productive and populous places -- river deltas from the Mekong to the Mississippi -- are ripe for disasters made worse by climate change, an ecological catastrophe expert said.

In fact, said marine biologist Deborah Brosnan, these disasters are already occurring.

Brosnan pointed to Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta, ravaged by Cyclone Nargis in May. A couple centuries of human-generated transformation -- dams, rice paddies, the withdrawal of water -- combined with a dense, poor population and the effects of global warming created a triple threat, she said. (Reuters)

Actually the disaster is attributable to poor governance and poverty and has absolutely nothing to do with climate, as has been pointed out many times already. Brosnan needs her butt firmly kicked for such idiot misdirection.

Climate change 'to affect coral fish' - Scientists say coral fish could suffer from climate change just as much as the reefs they live in.

Over 400,000 species of fish live in or around coral reefs and the lives of many of them depended on the health of corals, said Dr Philip Munday from the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, based at James Cook University in Townsville.

"We have already seen episodes of mass die-off of corals as a result of warmer waters associated with global warming," Dr Munday said. (Sydney Morning Herald)

Actually only the upper couple of meters of the water column warms sufficiently to affect corals and then usually only due to a lack of storms (which cause the turbulence that mixes the water column, preventing excessive solar warming of the surface layer). So, either they think "global warming" will suppress storm activity and consequently lead to an increase in surface bleaching (in which case corals react by changing the symbiotic algae hosted to more heat tolerant species), something which other activists will dispute since it contradicts one of their favorite hazard claims of increased storm activity in a warmer world, or they are simply trying to grab some cheap headlines by making up baseless claims.

Well Dr. Munday, which is it? Do you have reason to believe storms will be suppressed in a warmer world or did you merely have a desperate need to see your name in print and "global warming" is a hook that guarantees publicity?

China Increases Lead as Biggest Carbon Dioxide Emitter - China has clearly overtaken the United States as the world’s leading emitter of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas, a new study has found, its emissions increasing 8 percent in 2007. The Chinese increase accounted for two-thirds of the growth in the year’s global greenhouse gas emissions, the study found.

The report, released Friday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, found that in 2007 China’s emissions were 14 percent higher than those of the United States. In the previous year’s annual study, the researchers found for the first time that China had become the world’s leading emitter, with carbon emissions 7 percent higher by volume than the United States in 2006.

Many experts had been skeptical of the earlier study, whose results were less clear-cut than those released Friday. The International Energy Agency had continued to say only that China was projected to overtake the United States by the end of 2007. Now there is little doubt.

“The difference had grown to a 14 percent difference, and that’s indeed quite large,” said Jos Olivier, a senior scientist at the Dutch agency. “It’s now so large that it’s quite a robust conclusion.”

China’s emissions are most likely to continue growing substantially for years to come because they are tied to the country’s strong economic growth and its particular mix of industry and power sources, the researchers said. (New York Times)

Good for them. Fortunately, atmospheric CO₂ is of no relevance where threats are concerned and in fact helps feed our global population, green deserts and increase plant water efficiency, so: Thank you, China, for helping us green the world.

More Signs Of The Sun Slowing Down - In my post from yesterday, I highlighted a paragraph from a NASA press release which touched on one of the final findings of the soon to be ended Ulysses spacecraft mission to study the sun:

“Ulysses ends its career after revealing that the magnetic field emanating from the sun’s poles is much weaker than previously observed. This could mean the upcoming solar maximum period will be less intense than in recent history. “

A few months ago, I had plotted the Average Geomagnetic Planetary Index (Ap) which is a measure of the solar magnetic field strength but also daily index determined from running averages of eight Ap index values. Call it a common yardstick (or meterstick) for solar magnetic activity. (Watts Up With That?)

The Apocalyptic Temptation: A plea for scientific rationality - part 1 - It is historically axiomatic that humankind is obsessed with the future, the “undiscovered country”. It is also axiomatic that humankind has tended to fear the future, based mainly on a lack of imagination coupled with a willingness to extrapolate current trends well into the future, often beyond all reason.

If the Global Warming Panic has taught us anything, its taught us the strong propensity of highly educated people to construct trends from noisy data and make startling pronouncements, projections, predictions of future catastrophe if current trends continue. This latest Apocalyptic scare has come at a time when, at least in the Western culture, formerly dominant religious beliefs have fallen by the wayside - those beliefs of course having an Apocalyptic Day of Judgment to represent the final gambit to believe in the final triumph of a particular religious orthodoxy over its enemies, ie non-believers.

It also appears to be a constant of human history that those who claim to be able to predict the future are given unusual privilege within the society, rather than scorn or skepticism. Apparently successful short term predictions give the would-be prophet a measure of gravitas and even elevated position within the society. It appears that no society is immune to this process - from the earliest recorded stories about the Pharoahs of Egypt through to the current President of the United States, the person or group who makes successful short-term predictions gains political, social and economic power. (Solar Science)

The making of a climate skeptic - After reading some of the False Alarm website, which is highly critical of the scientific “consensus” that humans are the principal cause of global warming, a friend sent me an email the other day that read, in part:

How can many, many respected, competitive, independent science folks be so wrong about this (if your premise is correct)? I don’t think it could be a conspiracy, or incompetence… Has there ever been another case when so many “leading” scientific minds got it so wrong?

This is a really good question. I’m not a climate scientist (but, then, neither is Al Gore); I’m an ex-journalist, now an academic. I teach professional writing. How dare I claim to know more than, say, the 2,000 or so scientists who contribute to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports? These are the experts, after all, and they say that humans are the principal cause of global warming at the moment. How could the experts possibly be wrong? (Paul MacRae, False Alarm)

Global warming: Dogmatics vs. skeptics - One fire ebbs but another is being kindled in the great global-warming debate. For those determined to save the planet, it's all about taking action. Posthaste. In other words: Do now, think later. (Pittsburg Tribune-Review)

Pioneer of climatology dies at 88 - Reid Bryson, a towering figure in climatology and interdisciplinary studies of climate, people and the environment, and the founder of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's meteorology department and Center for Climatic Research, and the first director of the Institute for Environmental Studies, died in his sleep early June 11 at his home in Madison. He was 88. (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Environmentalists Seize Green Moral High Ground Ignoring Science - The first qualification on my resume now is “Environmentalist”. Actually, it is a title everyone can put after their name. We are all environmentalists to greater or lesser degrees. It is an outrage that certain people and groups have usurped this title and implied that only they care about the environment. While this series of articles has shown the role the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in manipulating climate science it has succeeded within the dominance of environmentalism over the western view of the world. (Dr. Tim Ball, CFP)

Global Warming Series:
Part 1: Environmental Extremism
Part 2: Historical and philosophical context of the climate change debate.
Part 3: How the world was misled about global warming and now climate change
Part 4: How UN structures were designed to prove human CO2 was causing global warming
Part 5: Wreaking Havoc on Global Economies
Part 6: The Hockey Stick scam that heightened global warming hysteria
Part 7: The Unholy Alliance that manufactured Global Warming
Part 8: UN’s IPCC preying on people’s ignorance
Part 9: Carbon Taxes: Hand over your money! “We are saving you from yourself”
Part 10: Environmentalists Seize Green Moral High Ground Ignoring Science

CSM echoes Grist: Survey: 74 percent of Congressional Republicans are climate deniers - A National Journal survey of members of Congress found that 74 percent of Congressional Republicans do not believe that global warming is caused by humans.

The poll asked 39 Democrats and 39 Republicans if they thought that “it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made pollution”. The answers are anonymous, except for party affiliation. Only 26 percent of Republicans answered yes, with the rest answering no. Among Democrats, 95 percent answered yes. (Eoin O'Carroll, CSM's Bright Green Blog)

If such percentages are generally applicable then this would be the strongest case anyone could make for voting Republican, fist last and always. Democrats would appear to have almost universally drunk deep of the Kool-Aid and are hell-bent on destroying the economy and your living standards to "address" the phantom menace. Who could risk such fools gaining control of the energy supply?

Why Are So Many TV Meteorologists and Weathercasters Climate 'Skeptics'? - All three staff meteorologists at KLTV, the ABC affiliate broadcasting to the Tyler-Longview-Jacksonville area of Northeast Texas, joined forces last November to deliver an on-air rebuttal of the idea that humans are changing the earth's climate. (Bill Dawson, Yale Forum)

Simple answer Bill, they know from long experience that weather models struggle with initial conditions and that their forecasts decay rapidly beyond a few hours due to the non-linear, chaotic nature of atmospheric activity. Since climate is merely weather over sustained periods of time and models cannot deliver realistic responses over even relatively brief time periods meteorologists know climate models are valueless for prognostication. Weathermen simply don't believe climate models, making weathermen much more sensible than your average climatologist. Understand it now, Bill?

Impure as the Driven Snow - Belching from smokestacks, tailpipes and even forest fires, soot—or black carbon—can quickly sully any snow on which it happens to land. In the atmosphere, such aerosols can significantly cool the planet by scattering incoming radiation or helping form clouds that deflect incoming light. But on snow—even at concentrations below five parts per billion—such dark carbon triggers melting, and may be responsible for as much as 94 percent of Arctic warming. (SciAm)

Further Support To The Conclusion That The Human Influence On The Climate Is Significant and Involves a Diverse Range of First-order Climate Forcings Beyond CO2 - In the weblog Three Climate Change Hypotheses - Only One Of Which Can Be True the conclusion is presented that the correct scientific hypothesis is

While natural variations are important, the human influence is significant and involves a diverse range of first-order climate forcings (including, but not limited to the human input of CO2).

There is a new paper that further bolsters this perspective. It is Andreae and Rosenfeld, 2008: Aerosol–cloud–precipitation interactions. Part 1. The nature and sources of cloud-active aerosols. Earth System Reviews. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

Oh boy... G8 Statement on Action Plan for Climate Change - 1. Climate Change is one of the most urgent issues for the world to tackle. We, G8 Finance Ministers, recognize that the international community has been making considerable efforts, but that there is still much to do. Many reports, like the one released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have warned us of the huge economic risks and adverse impacts from climate change and underscored the need for all countries to take concerted action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly below current levels.

2. We are convinced that urgent and concerted action is needed and accept our responsibility to show leadership in tackling climate change. We are strengthening our efforts assisting developing countries in addressing climate change. We welcome and support the launch of the new multilateral funds to be established in collaboration with the multilateral development banks (MDBs).... (Reuters)

Dodging devastation of cap-and-trade - The nation avoided global warming-related devastation last week. The Senate killed a grandiose scheme to clamp down on emissions of CO2, a benign, necessary, natural atmospheric gas. However, something similar, if not worse, will be back next year. (Orange County Register)

French Presidency Heads for Knotty EU Climate Deal - PARIS - France has no option but to try to push through ambitious measures to fight climate change during its European Union presidency from July ahead of thorny global talks for a post-Kyoto deal at the end of 2009. (Reuters)

Why? Why can't they do the sensible thing and declare climate panic a complete nonsense and get on with addressing real problems?

UN climate deal said "daunting" as Bonn talks end - BONN, June 13 - The world faces a daunting task to agree a new deal by the end of 2009 to slow climate change, the United Nations said on Friday as 170-country talks ended with recriminations about scant progress. (Reuters)

Climate-Change Deal Is `Daunting Challenge,' UN Says - Representatives from 170 nations failed to come up with proposals on how to slow global warming, heightening the differences between wealthy and developing countries, the United Nations and environmental groups said. (Bloomberg)

UN Climate Talks Seek Clearer Ideas - BONN - A UN climate conference urged governments on Thursday to come up with clearer ideas for a new treaty to slow global warming after criticism from delegates that progress was too slow. (Reuters)

Reason Roundtable: Climate Change and Property Rights - Shikha Dalmia, senior policy analyst at Reason Foundation, notes in the latest edition of the Reason Roundtable: Property Rights in an Age of Anthropogenic Global Warming that ultimately free market advocates cannot have an ideological predisposition regarding the scientific outcome of climate change. Their interest ought to be first and foremost in ensuring maximum protections for property rights.

There has been much discussion in free market circles about market-based solutions to global warming that minimize the threat that big government poses to property rights. But less attention has been paid to the threat that greenhouse gas emitters themselves might pose to private property. This is the issue that Jonathan Adler, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Business Law & Regulation at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law and Indur Goklany, author of The Improving State of the World: Why We're Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet discuss in this edition of Reason Roundtable in two radical and provocative essays.

Adler believes that a normative commitment to property rights requires that First World countries, the primary contributors to global warming, ought to consider ways to compensate property owners in affected countries. But Goklany challenges that conclusion noting that, when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, no country or person - whether in industrialized or developing countries - has "clean hands." Therefore, based on what is known right now, no one has any claim for redress.

You can find the Reason Roundtable columns here: (Reason Foundation)

Global Warming and the Price of a Gallon of Gas - You may want to give credit where credit is due to Al Gore and his global warming campaign the next time you fill your car with gasoline, because there is a direct connection between Global Warming and four dollar a gallon gas. It is shocking, but true, to learn that the entire Global Warming frenzy is based on the environmentalist’s attack on fossil fuels, particularly gasoline. All this big time science, international meetings, thick research papers, dire threats for the future; all of it, comes down to their claim that the carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks from our power plants is destroying the climate of planet Earth. What an amazing fraud; what a scam. (John Coleman, KUSI News)

No More Excuses: The U.S. Needs To Tap Into Its Own Oil Reserves - The Department of Commerce recently announced that the U.S. trade deficit reached $60.9 billion this past April. America's trade deficit increased by $600 million from April 2007 to April 2008, even though U.S. exports increased by $25 billion.

Why is our country facing a rising trade deficit even though American-made exports grew 19.2% over the last year (April 2007 to April 2008)?

The answer is found at gas stations across the country and in America's $34.5 billion petroleum deficit, which is roughly half of our monthly trade deficit. (Tim Walberg, IBD)

The Great Race - I have heard an awful lot of public discourse over the past few days about the irresponsibility of our Washington policymakers’ refusal to tap domestic sources of hydrocarbons. What seems to be gaining particular traction is objection to the lame defense that, well, the oil from ANWR wouldn’t be here for another seven to ten years anyway, so let’s not do it.

I have heard in response the rather sane assessment that it does seem rather likely that we are going to need it in seven to ten years, as well, and as such that accessing our own energy sources remains a good bet.

And there's the rub. The typically implicit and often express rationale underlying the “it’s not immediate” rationalization is that we should instead invest in alternatives of the future. First, taxpayers have been investing in alternatives to hydrocarbons to the tune of about $40 billion since the 1970s — and what have we gotten for all that appropriated money? (Chris Horner, CEI)

Putting Up The 'For Shale' Sign - Exxon Mobil is selling its gas stations because there's no money in it. Meanwhile, two GOP congressmen do what John McCain should do — change their position on drilling in ANWR. (IBD)

Companies get OK to annoy polar bears - Less than a month after declaring polar bears a threatened species because of global warming, the Bush administration is giving oil companies permission to annoy and potentially harm them in the pursuit of oil and natural gas.

The Fish and Wildlife Service issued regulations this week providing legal protection to seven oil companies planning to search for oil and gas in the Chukchi Sea off the northwestern coast of Alaska if "small numbers" of polar bears or Pacific walruses are incidentally harmed by their activities over the next five years.

Environmentalists said the new regulations give oil companies a blank check to harass the polar bear. (AP)

Culpable Congress - The big jump in the consumer price index on Friday scared a lot of people. But the sad fact is, much of inflation's recent rise is due to the upward spiral of energy prices. And guess whose fault that is? (IBD)

Coal in Your Car’s Tank - In 1943, when Germany had virtually no sources of petroleum to fuel its Luftwaffe, U-boats, and Tiger tanks, its scientists (arguably among the best in the world at that time) didn’t turn to solar and wind power. Evil does not equate to naïveté. Hitler’s technical advisers turned to another energy source to keep their Wehrmacht running steadily for several years without petroleum. They used the Fischer-Tropsch process to convert coal into diesel fuel and employed the Bergius hydrogenation (or liquefaction) process to convert coal into aviation gasoline and high-quality truck and automobile gasoline. (Ed Hiserodt, New American)

Surging Oil and Food Prices Threaten the World Economy, Finance Ministers Warn - OSAKA, Japan — The global economy faces a one-two punch from slowing growth and soaring fuel and food prices, finance ministers from the world’s richest nations warned Saturday, though they stopped short of offering concrete solutions.

Finance ministers from the Group of 8 industrialized nations wrapped up a two-day meeting in Japan that was dominated by talk of rising petroleum prices, which have set off street protests across the world. In a statement, the ministers said higher prices of oil and other commodities threatened the world economy at a time when it was still reeling from the collapse of the housing market in the United States.

The ministers urged oil-rich nations to increase production to help reverse a trend that has pushed up oil prices to nearly $140 a barrel, a record. The ministers also warned that the rising cost of oil and other commodities could spur broader increases of prices and wages. (New York Times)

Plan Would Lift Saudi Oil Output - Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, is planning to increase its output next month by about a half-million barrels a day, according to analysts and oil traders who have been briefed by Saudi officials.

The increase could bring Saudi output to a production level of 10 million barrels a day, which, if sustained, would be the kingdom’s highest ever. The move was seen as a sign that the Saudis are becoming increasingly nervous about both the political and economic effect of high oil prices. In recent weeks, soaring fuel costs have incited demonstrations and protests from Italy to Indonesia.

Saudi Arabia is currently pumping 9.45 million barrels a day, which is an increase of about 300,000 barrels from last month.

While they are reaping record profits, the Saudis are concerned that today’s record prices might eventually damp economic growth and lead to lower oil demand, as is already happening in the United States and other developed countries. The current prices are also making alternative fuels more viable, threatening the long-term prospects of the oil-based economy. (New York Times)

'North Sea oil will last for 100 years' - The north sea will continue to provide oil for another 100 years, twice as long as previous estimates, according to industry analysts.

Dr Richard Pike, a former oil industry consultant and now the chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry, said: "Rather than only getting 20 to 30 billion barrels [from the North Sea] we are probably looking at more than twice that amount." (Daily Telegraph)

B.C. premier's attention shouldn't be on carbon tax - VANCOUVER - With the price of gas nudging $1.50 a litre in the Lower Mainland, the absurdity of B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell's carbon tax becomes daily more apparent.

The immediate impact of the new tax, to take effect July 1, will be to add a further 2.4 cents a litre to the price of gasoline at the pumps.

This is what happens, I'm afraid, when you surround yourself with cockeyed crusaders on climate change, who promise to craft you an environmental "legacy."

The trouble with the tunnel-visioned eco-idealists advising the premier is that they can't see outside the narrow confines of their own obsession.

In designing a single-issue policy to force people out of their cars and onto the bus, they conveniently ignore what's happening in the wider world. (Alan Ferguson, Canwest News Service)

Does Cameron work for Brown? CO2 plan threatens new coal power plant - Britain's most controversial power project, the £1.5bn coal-fired plant at Kingsnorth, faces an uncertain future as a result of a tough greenhouse gas emissions standard that will be proposed by David Cameron next week.

The proposals will make new coal-fired power stations unbuildable unless they incorporate new clean technology known as carbon capture and storage (CCS). This strips out CO2 and buries it deep underground to prevent global warming. (The Guardian)

The Tories desperately need a Tory leader instead of this foolish eco-toff.

One of the stupidest ideas in captivity: The cost of cleaning up fossil fuels - and the price of doing nothing - The 500ft cooling tower at the Mountaineer power station in New Haven, West Virginia, does not look much different from the scores that dot the British countryside. It might need a second look to notice that, in its shadow, there is a hole in the ground that goes two miles deep into the rock next to the Ohio river. (The Guardian)

What idiot decided a 30-40% energy loss to appease lunatic greens made any sense at all? That's the energy cost of capturing an essential trace gas and putting it where it can't do any good.

UK Police Arrest 29 Environmental Protesters - LONDON - British police have arrested 29 environmental protesters who occupied a train carrying coal to Britain's biggest coal fired power station, British Transport Police (BTP) said on Saturday. (Reuters)

When are we going to get serious dealing with these antisocial nitwits?

Greenpeace declares war on coal - Greenpeace has called for all Australian coal-fired power stations to be shut down by 2030 as part of a radical energy plan.

The group wants an immediate ban on new coal-fired power stations - and extensions to existing plants - and for the Rudd government to plan to close their doors for good. (Sydney Morning Herald)

Oddly enough, rational people call for Greenpeace to be shutdown immediately.

Meanwhile: Cut fuel price, say voters - ALMOST 80 per cent of voters want direct Government intervention to cut petrol prices, the latest Herald/Nielsen poll finds.

Among those demanding action, three times as many support a cut in fuel excise, as proposed by the Opposition, than support the Government's FuelWatch price information scheme. (Sydney Morning Herald)

Flooded ethanol industry threatens US mandates - NEW YORK - Floods in the Midwest that have pushed corn prices to record levels have wiped out profits for making U.S. ethanol and threaten to sink production of the fuel below government mandates. (Reuters)

Pollution rules may be suspended to allow big expansion of Heathrow - More than 60,000 extra flights will pass low over London each year under a government plan to suspend air pollution limits to allow Heathrow to expand. (The Times)

Biomass may threaten food supply, worsen climate change - WASHINGTON D.C.: "Energy farming," or cultivating crops for energy needs, will gobble up land needed to grow food or will impinge on natural ecosystems, possibly even worsening the climate crisis, according to researchers at Carnegie Institute of Science. The researchers found that while biomass can be carbon neutral and hold many benefits, there are limits to the extent that it can sustainably contribute to global energy needs.

The total mass of carbon fixed by all croplands worldwide each year, about 7 billion tons, is still less than that released by fossil fuel emissions, 7.7 billion tons, the researchers wrote in a recent issue of Trends in Ecology and Evolution. This demonstrates "the challenge of replacing a substantial part of the fossil fuel system with a system based on biomass." (Energy Current)

Making A Killing: The Deadly Implications of the Counterfeit Drug Trade - Counterfeit pharmaceuticals kill hundreds of thousands of people every year. Although most pervasive in poorer parts of the world, counterfeit drug trafficking is a worrying new phenomenon in wealthy countries too.

From internet pharmacies frequented by Western consumers to the back streets of New Delhi, counterfeit drug trafficking is a complex, deadly and increasingly lucrative industry that is becoming an attractive arena for organised crime.

In this groundbreaking study, Roger Bate traces pharmaceutical counterfeiting around the world. He concludes by championing greater cooperation between wealthy and poor nations, more policing resources, harsher penalties for counterfeiters, widespread public education, and common-sense consumer vigilance against this danger. (CFD)

Not really: New Finding Links Pollution to Childhood Allergies - LONDON - German researchers say they have found some of the strongest evidence yet linking traffic pollution to childhood allergies. (Reuters)

Yes, cheaper housing is located nearer major thoroughfares... but how did they measure children's actual exposure to said pollutants? Answer, they didn't. This is simply another association of cheaper accommodation and lower socioeconomic groups displaying poorer health outcomes.

Johns Hopkins raps AP story on lead experiment - For about 20 years, Dr. Michael Klag has used a fertilizer made from Milwaukee municipal sludge on azaleas and yew shrubs at his suburban Baltimore home. And Klag, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, says he's never had any question about its safety.

But in the past few weeks, he has found himself reassuring the public about a similar product, a compost made with treated municipal sewage sludge in Baltimore. Johns Hopkins researchers spread it on nine yards in poor black Baltimore neighborhoods in an experiment eight years ago.

That's become a cause for outrage among some politicians and others who have called for an investigation. The trigger was an Associated Press story in April that raised questions about the Baltimore experiment and whether there has been adequate testing to determine if sludge is safe. (AP)

How Montezuma gets his revenge - Every year, about 500 million people worldwide are infected with the parasite that causes dysentery, a global medical burden that among infectious diseases is second only to malaria. In a new study appearing in the June 15 issue of Genes and Development, Johns Hopkins researchers may have found a way to ease this burden by discovering a new enzyme that may help the dysentery-causing amoeba evade the immune system. (Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions)

Metabo — your figure or your job - As first covered earlier this year, the government health ministry in Japan has mandated compulsory “flab checks” for all workers over age 40. Waistlines have to conform to regulation size or face stiff penalties; and older, heavier people are enduring certain social castigation. This Friday the 13th, we begin coverage of the latest studies examining the medical evidence for trim waistlines. (Junkfood Science)

Metabo — Is a small waistline a measure of health? - What’s in a name? It’s called “metabo” in Japan and “metabolic syndrome” here, but is it a real medical syndrome? Does having it mean you’re more likely to have a heart attack or die prematurely?

While having a trim waistline to avoid the dreaded metabo and reduce medical costs has become a popular health mandate, is it evidence-based? (Junkfood Science)

Forest changes can help fuel fire - The fires like those burning the foothills and forests in California this week are more intense and more damaging – because the landscape has changed.

"The forests as people know them now aren't what they should be," said Pete Duncan, an assistant fire management officer for the Plumas National Forest.

Forests today are poised to feed an inferno because they are choked with smaller plants, trees and shrubs. Duncan and other experts know that this is not natural. (Sacramento Bee)

Ebb and flow of the sea drives world's big extinction events - If you are curious about Earth's periodic mass extinction events such as the sudden demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, you might consider crashing asteroids and sky-darkening super volcanoes as culprits.

But a new study, published online today (June 15, 2008) in the journal Nature, suggests that it is the ocean, and in particular the epic ebbs and flows of sea level and sediment over the course of geologic time, that is the primary cause of the world's periodic mass extinctions during the past 500 million years. (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Invasion of the killer ladybirds - Britain is under attack from insects from abroad. Are these foreign species threatening our food and countryside?

But are our food, health and way of life under threat? Maybe not as much as we might think. Environmental experts and psychologists agree that we are particularly susceptible to becoming over-hysterical about the threat posed by non-native species. Our in-bred instincts to repel all boarders make it very hard to assess such threats objectively. (The Times)

Indian Monsoon Brings Cheer, La Nina Weakens - SINGAPORE - The monsoon season, a lifeline of India's trillion-dollar economy, has progressed well, cheering farmers hoping for a good rice crop while giving the government an opportunity to ease restrictions on exports. (Reuters)

World's woes create more opportunities for biotech industry - SAN DIEGO — Food supplies are shrinking. Diseases are mutating. Global warming and high gas and oil prices are making alternative energy a must.

Critics still have plenty of problems with genetically engineered foods and bio-based medicines and fuels, but worldwide woes are giving the biotech business an unexpectedly big boost.

"It's a great time to be in this space," said Patrick Kelly, a vice president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization trade group.

In a sign of the industry's strength, more than 2,200 companies and 20,000 attendees from around the globe are expected to attend the association's annual BIO International conference in San Diego this week. Next year, the conference will be held in Atlanta.

Look just about anywhere in the country, though, and you'll find that biotech is booming. (Palm Beach Post-Cox News Service)

June 13, 2008

Greens thwart gasoline production - Four-plus dollar gasoline is forcing Americans to realize that increased domestic oil production is needed to meet our ever-growing demand for affordable gasoline.

But even if the Greens lose the political battle over drilling offshore and in places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), they’re nevertheless way ahead of the game as they implement a back-up plan to make sure that not a drop of that oil ever eases our gasoline crunch. (Steven Milloy, FoxNews.com)

D'oh! Rich Nations Fail to Take Lead at Climate Talks - UN - BONN, Germany - Industrialised nations are failing to lead enough at UN climate talks in Bonn even as developing states are showing interest in a new global warming treaty, the UN's top climate official said on Wednesday. (Reuters)

Climate negotiators discuss changing key elements in new global warming agreement - BONN, Germany - Back when negotiators set the clock for fighting climate change, they fixed 1990 as noon. Now, as midnight approaches, there is talk of resetting the hour hand.

Changing the base year for measuring carbon emissions is just one radical idea under consideration by delegates from 170 countries negotiating a new climate pact set to take effect in 2012.

Also being discussed are proposals to give industrialized countries credit for building low-carbon nuclear power stations in developing countries, to give nations credit for helping to avoid deforestation, and various schemes to raise the trillions of dollars needed in the coming decades to help poor countries adapt to the effects of their changing climates. (Associated Press)

Desperate activists: Global Boiling - The evidence for the consequences of global warming is appearing with alarming frequency. This morning's headlines are filled with tales of deadly weather: "At least four people were killed and about 40 injured when a tornado tore through a Boy Scout camp in western Iowa on Wednesday night"; "two people are dead in northern Kansas after tornadoes cut a diagonal path across the state"; "[t]wo Maryland men with heart conditions died this week" from the East Coast heat wave. These eight deaths come on top of reports earlier this week that the heat wave "claimed the lives of 17 people" and the wave of deadly storms killed 11 more: "six in Michigan, two in Indiana and one each in Iowa and Connecticut," as well as one man in New York. Tornadoes this year are being reported at record levels. States of emergency have been declared in Minnesota, California, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan because of floods and wildfires. Counties in Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, South Dakota, and Wisconsin have been declared disaster areas due to the historic flooding that has breached dams, inundated towns, and caused major crop damage, sending commodity futures to new records. The floodwaters are continuing down the Mississippi River, with "crests of 10 feet or more above flood level" for "at least the next two weeks."

GLOBAL BOILING: This tragic, deadly, and destructive weather -- not to mention the droughts in Georgia, California, Kansas, North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, North Dakota, and elsewhere across the country -- are consistent with the changes scientists predicted would come with global warming.

Actually the planet is definitely off the boil: "Global Warming" At A Glance.

Global Warming Policies' Economic Chill - Many Americans think that switching to energy-efficient light bulbs, buying environmentally friendly appliances and obeying a (100% recycled) bag of green living tips will be the extent of their contribution to curbing greenhouse gases. But the price tag to consumers could be a lot higher if some politicians have their way. In fact, U.S. households could expect a $2,900 annual hit to their family budget sooner than they think. (Margo Thorning, IBD)

2009 Workshop On 21st Century Challenges In Regional Climate Modeling - There is an important new workshop planned on regional climate modeling in Lund Sweden on May 4-8, 2009. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climates Science)

More disease outbreaks in Europe with climate change: experts - STOCKHOLM - Europe could face an increase in outbreaks of diseases carried by insects and rodents as the climate on the continent becomes hotter and wetter, EU health experts said Thursday. (AFP)

This old chestnut, again... Will Europe warm over the next 3 decades? No one knows.

The Climate Alarmist Manifesto - Just as class struggle forms the nucleus of Marxism, so does it sit at the very core of the Left's climate alarmism. At a glance, the regressive nature of fiscal Carbon control schemes, be they taxation or cap-and-trade, would appear to be antithetical to liberal thinking. But beneath the veneer of both the domestic and international green agenda lies a devious wealth-redistribution plan compared to which all predecessors pale. (Marc Sheppard, American Thinker)

Oh boy... Species already gone - scientists - ENTIRE species may have already been wiped off the face of the earth because of climate change, scientists believe.

But due to a lack of research - caused by minimal funding from governments - it may be some time before it becomes known which species, a CSIRO marine biologist said.

On the back of a study that criticised the lack of funding oceanic research has received, Australian marine biologist Elvira Poloczanska said climate change could have already killed entire populations.

“I think it’s possible … we haven’t even discovered all the animals in the ocean,” Dr Poloczanska said.

... never mind that most species have lived and died without human observation the bottom line here is that "climate change" has had virtually no effect on the seas compared with past changes.

Carbon zombies attack economy - Somewhere on the road to Kyoto, Canada turned into the land of the carbon zombies.

Like the walking undead, blood-sucking politicians of all stripes are howling at each other over discredited ways to reduce carbon emissions that other countries, having tried to implement, are running away from in terror.

In Europe, politicians who boasted they were leading the fight to save Gaia from global warming are now fleeing before enraged mobs of citizens, furious their governments' plans to "save the planet" have turned out to be nothing more than skyrocketing taxes and energy prices.

That, plus a "cap-and-trade" carbon market which, while worshipped by speculators and a few academics, has led to usurious electricity bills and done nothing for the environment.

In the U.K., furious taxpayers want to hurl their government -- an early supporter of the Kyoto accord -- over a cliff. Almost three in four tell pollsters they're unwilling to pay higher taxes to (supposedly) fight climate change. Two in three dismiss government schemes to do so as a ploy to raise taxes. (Lorrie Goldstein, Toronto Sun)

Madagascar to Sell Carbon Credits to Protect Forest - PORT LOUIS - Madagascar will sell nine million tons of carbon offsets in a voluntary scheme to help protect one of its biggest and most pristine forests, a conservation group said on Thursday. Environmental campaigners are placing huge hope in offset schemes that let polluters pay for cuts elsewhere in emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change. (Reuters)

ABC Hypes Sci-Fi Future of Death, Doom and Fire - In order to promote a new climate change special airing this fall, Thursday's "Good Morning America" hyped terrifying future predictions of "more floods, more droughts, more wildfires" and, bizarrely, invited viewers to somehow morph into prophets and "report back" about what life is like in the year 2100. Featuring a slate of global warming alarmists, reporter Bob Woodruff previewed "Earth 2100" and touted the show as "a countdown through the next century" that "shows what scientists say might very well happen if we do not change our current path." An online version of this story hyperventilated, "Are we living in the last century of our civilization?" (NewsBusters)

Head for the Hills! Creatures Flee Global Warming - Global warming is forcing 30 species of reptiles and amphibians to move uphill as habitats shift upward, but they may soon run out of room to run.

The shift could cause at least two toad species and one species of gecko in Madagascar to go extinct by the end of this century, a biologist says.

Uphill movement is a predicted response to increased temperatures, researcher Christopher Raxworthy of the American Museum of Natural History says. Earlier studies in Costa Rica have provided evidence of how tropical animals respond to climate change. (LiveScience)

Icecap reality check: here is the NASA annual temperature plot since the 1880s for Antananarivo, a large city in Madagascar with a population of 452,000. See if you spot any signs of global warming. I always thought for there to be warming, temperatures actually had to rise. The creatures can’t read IPCC reports or model forecasts. Maybe they are moving because of the loss of habitat to population growth or trying to escape those crazy scientists with cameras and probes.

See larger graph here

In the virtual world: Freshwater runoff from the Greenland Ice Sheet will more than double by the end of the century - The Greenland Ice Sheet is melting faster than previously calculated according to a recently released scientific paper by University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Sebastian H. Mernild. (PhysOrg)

Will double? Not exactly -- they mean "might if could perhaps maybe"... that's the thing about "climate by PlayStation®", its "predictions" are worth exactly nothing and are merely the programmed output of someone's parameter guesses.

Bullshit! Scientist highlights urgent need for new computer models to address climate change - Two papers published in the journal Science today by Microsoft Research ecologist Drew Purves together with research colleagues at Princeton University and universities in Madrid, Spain, highlight how an improved understanding of forest dynamics is needed to better predict environmental change. The research suggests that a new generation of realistic forest modelling, which is urgently needed and now within reach, will significantly improve an understanding of how forests work, how tree species respond to deforestation, and how forests impact climate regulation and environmental change. (Microsoft Research Cambridge)

What the world needs is a reality check and absence of computer models because people don't realize they are mere process models. Believing garbage output is one the world's greatest contemporary problems.

Field project seeks clues to climate change in remote atmospheric region - Scientists are deploying an advanced research aircraft to study a region of the atmosphere that influences climate change by affecting the amount of solar heat that reaches Earth's surface. (NSF)

Translation: they are fishing for something that might breathe life into the collapsing enhanced greenhouse hypothesis.

More fun with fantasy worlds: Computer models show major climate shift as a result of closing ozone hole - A new study led by Columbia University researchers has found that the closing of the ozone hole, which is projected to occur sometime in the second half of the 21st century, may significantly affect climate change in the Southern Hemisphere, and therefore, the global climate. The study appears in the June 13th issue of Science. (The Earth Institute at Columbia University)

First, see: Chemists poke holes in ozone theory: Reaction data of crucial chloride compounds called into question. (here, if you lack access) -- there is zero evidence the seasonal Antarctic Ozone Anomaly will "heal" or that people ever "broke" it to begin with and there never has been. The great "ozone crisis" is simply another failed modeling exercise, never anything more than an interesting observation dating from the 1950s (not the 1980s as media myth would have it but from first observation with a Dobson Photospectrometer deployed at Halley Bay in the International Geophysical Year of 1956 -- see "additional material" here).

If a Tree Falls in the Forest, and No One Is Around to Hear It, Does Climate Change? - There are roughly 42 million square kilometers of forest on Earth, a swath that covers almost a third of the land surface, and those wooded environments play a key role in both mitigating and enhancing global warming. (NSF)

Sad News About Professor Reid Bryson - Professor Greg J. Tripoli of the University of Wisconsin - Madison has shared this sad news with all of us.

“I have the sad news to report that Professor Emeritus Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin - Madison passed away in his sleep Wednesday morning. Reid founded the Department of Meteorology at the University of Wisconsin - Madison in 1948 . Although Reid is most well known for his work in Climate, People and the Environment, it is less known that Reid was also a pioneer in tropical meteorology and hurricane forecasting. As U.S. Army Air Corps meteorologist out of Saipan, Marshall Islands during World War II (December, 1944), Reid pieced together evidence that a typhoon was apparently developing in harms way and commissioned reconnaissance of the storm that he believed surrounding observations suggested must exist in one of the many data void regions. The reconnaissance that he ordered found the storm, encountered 140 kt winds and aborted an apparent eye wall penetration. Reid then identified a trough of low pressure in the storms path and predicted to his superiors that the storm would recurve into the path of the US Third Fleet. Believing that typhoons never recurve so far to the east, Reid’s superior officers chose to not believe his forecast. Reid pleaded that this was not a guess, they actually flew into the storm and measured the winds! His superior officers conceded to watch it closely but did not act to move the fleet. Reid tells me that he went so far as to place unofficial warnings (off the record) of his own which he is convinced did save lives. Then 36 hours later the storm began the recurve, just as Reid predicted and they tried to move the Third Fleet out of the way, but is was now too late. Unfortunately this resulted in one of the worst naval disasters in navy history (3 ships sunk, 28 ships damaged, 146 aircraft destroyed, 756 men lost at sea (see Henderson, 2007: Down to the Sea, ISBN 978-0-06-117316-5 for a detailed account of this incident). I suppose that this experience went a long way to shape Reid’s views on conventional thought and to compel him to dedicate the rest of his life to the science of weather and finding truth.” (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

Interesting results: Effect of global warming on Bay of Bengal cyclones - There is a lot of heated debate going on over the consequences of global warming, due to anthropogenic activities, on climate, plant and animal life on planet earth. Extinction of species and rising sea levels are but two of the possible consequences being discussed in scientific circles.

In the light of climate change due to the release of ‘greenhouse’ gases into the atmosphere and the recent devastating cyclone Nargis which caused unimaginable havoc in Myanmar, one question which comes to one’s mind is: What will be the effect of global warming on cyclonic activity, particularly in the Bay of Bengal, in the 21st century? (The Hindu)

Claims climate 'myth' may wreck economy - THE BOOMING Territory economy is at risk of being "destroyed" by government policy responses to climate change, an academic has said.

There will be winners and losers under the system and reducing carbon dioxide emissions is expected to cost industry a lot of money.

But University of Adelaide mining geology professor Ian Plimer says all the expense will be for nothing, as climate change cannot be stopped -- and it isn't even caused by human-created carbon dioxide.

"There is no relationship between carbon dioxide produced by industry and climate change," he said.

Professor Plimer said the scientific community had not reached any kind of consensus that carbon dioxide causes global warming. (NT News)

The Micawber Principle - For a long time now, I have been inveighing against politicians of all parties for their abject, and wilful, inability to address the UK’s looming energy crisis [see: ‘Grid Locked’, May 28]. It is one of the major scandals of the age, and it represents a dire warning, a dreadful and alarming example of political failure and of the famous ‘Micawber Principle’.

On Tuesday, writing in the Daily Mail [‘FUEL CRISIS: Forget warnings of panic at the pumps. Britain is set to lose nearly half its electricity in six years’, June 10], Christopher Booker spelt out this failure and principle in all their ‘Janet & John’ simplicity, so that even our deeply-innumerate MPs might grasp the hard Micawberian facts of life: (Global Warming Politics)

Hamish McRae: Our focus is on oil, but Old King Coal is very much alive and kicking - BP chose a good time to publish its annual Statistical Review of World Energy yesterday – for it came just after the spike in oil prices to a record $139 a barrel last week, and a warning from the chief executive of Russia's Gazprom that oil might go to $250 a barrel next year.

BP's analysis of the production and demand not just for oil but also for other energy sources goes back for 57 years. That is prior to the first oil shock in 1973/4, and even the founding of Opec in 1960, so it has a long perspective on the twists and turns of the energy market. This review is the most thorough source of information on the energy market that there is.

The big picture first. Oil remains the largest single source of energy, but for the past six years it has been losing ground to coal. Total energy consumption last year rose by 2.4 per cent, with China, up 7.7 per cent, accounting for more than half that growth. North American consumption rose by 1.6 per cent, India by 6.8 per cent, with the EU actually cutting energy use by 2.2 per cent. Germany achieved the biggest reduction in energy use, 5.6 per cent. The UK managed to cut energy use by 3.8 per cent, but we had rather faster overall economic growth last year than Germany, so our improvement in energy efficiency relative to GDP would have been about the same.

You can see the balance of energy consumption in the first graph. The thing that most stands out is the extent to which the world economy is still driven by fossil fuels. Nuclear and hydro power matter, but their combined output is very small when compared with oil, coal and natural gas. (The Independent)

Congress' Crude Squeeze - Energy: Oil is selling as if the world is running out of crude. It's not. In this country alone there is at least 118 billion barrels of recoverable but untapped oil, a bit more than Iraq's estimated reserves. (IBD)

Heavy Problem: Dirtier Oil, Though Cheaper, Sparks Green Backlash - The Journal’s Ben Casselman reports:

Cheap oil! Get your cheap oil here!

Well, “cheap” may be pushing it. But even as benchmark crude futures have soared above $130 per barrel, there’s still oil out there for about $105 a barrel. The bad news: it’s nasty stuff.

Heavy, sour grades of crude oil trade at a discount because they cost more to refine and produce less of the premium products like gasoline and jet fuel. Iran has had such trouble selling its sulfur-rich oil that it’s got 14 tankers of the stuff floating in the Persian Gulf unsold. So yesterday, Iran and Kuwait slashed the price of their heavy oil; it’s now selling at the steepest discount in at least nine years.

Meanwhile, as prices soar for lighter, sweeter grades of oil, refiners are expanding their capacity to refine the dirty stuff, the Journal’s Ana Campoy reports. Or at least, they’re trying to. Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency rejected a permit to expand a refinery in Roxana, Ill., after environmentalists objected. Similar projects in California and Indiana have also faced challenges. At issue is the fact that heavier crudes require more energy to refine—meaning more greenhouse gas emissions.

Trouble is, there’s more heavy oil on the way. (Jeffrey Ball, WSJ)

Nuclear Power Among Options for UN Greenhouse Cuts - BONN - Developing nations might get help to build nuclear power plants under proposals at 170-nation climate talks in Bonn for expanding a fast-growing UN scheme for curbing greenhouse gases. (Reuters)

Voters Waiting For Candidate Who Will Drill - The recent spike in oil prices and unemployment is dramatically changing this presidential campaign — virtually overnight. The near $20 jump in oil to $140 a barrel, the unexpected half-point increase in the jobless rate to 5.5% (the biggest monthly increase in 20 years) and the resulting 400-point plunge in stocks has created a new campaign issue right before our eyes.

Public worry No. 1 is now oil, jobs and the economy, with the inflationary woes of the U.S. dollar right underneath. The candidate who can connect with these issues will win in November. But so far neither Barack Obama nor John McCain is dealing with the new political reality.

In fact, it's all about oil right now. The price has doubled over the past year, while the economy has slumped.

But here's an eye-opener. Recent polling data from Gallup show that the percentage of voters blaming oil companies for skyrocketing gasoline prices has dropped from 34% to 20% over the past year. At the same time, support for more drilling in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas has increased to 57% from 41%.

And the candidates remain blind to these shifts. (Lawrence Kudlow, IBD)

PG&E Investing Billions to Support Plug-In Cars - CEO - WASHINGTON - The chief executive of California utility Pacific Gas & Electric Co said on Wednesday that his company is investing billions of dollars in developing the infrastructure necessary to support plug-in hybrid vehicle technology. (Reuters)

Oh what a $70m feeling - ALWAYS happy to donate to a worthy cause - widows, orphans, lepers. But to give $70 million to the emperors of Toyota?

Toyota? Which in the first three months of this year alone raked in another $3 billion in profits, and apologised it was so little?

But there the Brumby and Rudd governments were this week, tipping our sweated millions into that bulging Kenzo bag of billions - a little "encouragement" for those hard-up men of Toyota to help them find their Gucci feet and build 10,000 of their new hybrid Camrys in Altona.

You want more proof that governments do worst when they play at picking business winners? That business welfare is so often just politicians feeding berley to piranhas? (Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun)

The sky is not falling... - The biggest health story of the year has received almost no notice. We are healthier and living longer than in the entire history of our country. Why is such great news not being shouted from the rooftops?

The media incessantly tells us we that our diets, weights and modern lifestyles are so deplorably unhealthy that massive new public health programs are urgently needed and that a complete transformation of our society to coerce us all into healthy lifestyles is imperative. But every year the evidence provides no support for such doomsday claims or the need for such vast, government interventions.

The good news continues to offer evidence that there is no need for us to feel continually anxious about our health, food and lifestyles. Deep cleansing breath... (Junkfood Science)

Report: Worrisome rise in underweight babies - The percentage of underweight babies born in the U.S. has increased to its highest rate in 40 years, according to a new report that also documents a recent rise in the number of children living in poverty. (AP)

Plan to conserve forests may be detrimental to other ecosystems - Conserving biodiversity must be considered when developing plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, researchers warn in today's edition of Science. (University of Cambridge)

June 12, 2008

Good thing, too! Environmental Skeptics Are Overwhelmingly Politicized, Study Says - A review of environmental skepticism literature from the past 30 years has found that the vast majority of skeptics, often identified as independent, are directly linked to politically oriented, conservative think tanks.

The study, published in this month's issue of Environmental Politics, analyzed books written between 1972 and 2005 that deny the urgency of environmental protection. The researchers found that more than 92 percent of the skeptical authors were in some way affiliated to conservative think tanks - non-profit research and advocacy organizations that promote core conservative ideals. (Ben Block, WorldWatch)

Just as well some of us rise to the challenge of defending the world from the enviro-loonies. The one universal truth about so-called environmentalists is that they are not environmentally friendly, merely misanthropic.

Eye-roller: Another Failure on Climate Change - The most obvious lesson to be learned from the Senate’s failure to mount any sort of grown-up debate on climate change last week is that the country needs a new occupant in the White House.

By that we mean a president who not only understands and cares deeply about the issue — which both Senators Barack Obama and John McCain say they do, and which President Bush clearly does not — but who is willing to invest the time and the political capital necessary to push good legislation through Congress. (New York Times)

What The Crone fails to understand is the only useful climate legislation that could be enacted federally is a legislative ban on States enacting climate legislation. There is no such thing as 'good' climate legislation with regard to controlling weather/climate. If I had to hazard a guess I would say the chances of our understanding climate drivers sufficiently to knowingly and predictably adjust the globe's climate in one hundred years' time to be in the vicinity of zero to none.

Environmentalism as the new face of communism - Americans are searching for leadership in this election year and they have found it. Unfortunately, he is not an American politician.

Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, who survived the communist system and now leads a country that emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet empire, is warning of a new form of communism threatening human freedom and progress. (Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media)

Cengiz: Academic inquiriy failing on global warming - Academic freedom and academic courage are taking a major blow in the United States. Academic courage looks like Galileo, who opposed the Roman Catholic Church's Ptolemaic theory and was imprisoned. He sought truth despite the consequence and regardless of what was popular. This is the courage we are lacking. (Daily Utah Chronicle)

NASA to Probe Sun “in situ” - Until the SOHO satellite was launched, astronomers had to be content to look through earth bound telescopes at the sun. Now that the sun is key to “the biggest threat facing mankind - climate change” it seems only sensible that NASA send a probe for direct measurement.

Now if we can just get Jim Hansen out of his office to look at some of the weather stations he keeps using in the GISS surface temperature database, we’ll really have something. (Watts Up With That?)

Some Planetary Perspective (Watts Up with That?)

About time: Estate owners sue Greenpeace for prediction: The organisers’ graphic prediction on how global warming will affect La Manga has caused sales of houses in the coastal area to drop by 50 percent.

MADRID - A group of real estate developers and property owners in La Manga del Mar Menor - a spit of sandy, low-lying coastal land and Murcia's premier beach resort - are threatening to take Greenpeace to court over its graphic predictions of what global warming may do to the area, which they say have caused house prices to plummet.

The lawsuit, which the plaintiffs plan to present unless Greenpeace agrees to an out of court settlement of almost EUR 30 million in damages, comes more than six months after La Manga featured prominently in a photo book published by the environmental organisation that was intended to shock Spain into action on climate change. (Expatica)

As utter rubbish goes, here's a classic: Katrina Meets Kucinich - In the back of your head have you ever thought that abandoning an American city and nearby towns to a predictable and predicted natural disaster, and then refusing to repair the damage, ought to be considered unacceptable behavior. On a grander scale, does it strike you that there is something seriously wrong with the Bush Administration's failure, not just to acknowledge global warming, but to take significant action to stop increasing it and begin reducing it? If we destroy our home will it matter that there wasn't a specific statute on the books banning the exacerbation of global warming?

For a refreshing view of Hurricane Katrina and of global climate change, I highly recommend the following two articles of impeachment, introduced in the House of Representatives on Monday evening by Congressman Dennis Kucinich. (David Swanson, American Chronicle)

Congress' Bad Joke - Demagoguery: Democratic leaders smothered an embarrassing House impeachment measure against President Bush. If Democrats believed their own anti-Bush rhetoric, wouldn't they be proud to move against him?

The U.S. government's challenges today include a global war on terror, sky-high gas prices amid our dangerous dependence on foreign oil, the impending expiration of major tax cuts that could ravage an already sluggish economy and out-of-control entitlement spending that will lead to a fiscal Armageddon if left unchecked.

So, the House of Representatives stayed in session into the wee hours Monday and Tuesday nights, but not to do anything about those or any other problems.

Instead, Democrats wasted hours indulging fringe presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, as he read 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush into the Congressional Record. (IBD)

Mike's Challenge to Climate Alarmist Heidi Cullen - We've heard enough from these climate alarmist goons and it's time for them to put their money where their mouth is. The Weather Channel's leading Global Warming Chicken Little is Dr. Heidi Cullen, who has been curiously silent about climate change over most of the record shattering cold winter across America, and proclaimed that the above average temperatures in the northeast is an indicator that we will be having more frequent and severe heat waves in the near future and that it re-enforces climate model predictions of global warming.

Sorry babe, we're not buying it. With a record breaking winter under our belts, sunspot absence, record late snowfall, and Aspen slopes hosting skiers on the third weekend in June, we'll happily offer up the meteorological version of the Pepsi Challenge:

Let's wager $1000 (to the charity of the winner's choosing) that the frequency and magnitude of cold spells far out perform the frequency and magnitude of heat waves over the next three years (from Jan 1, 2008 to Jan 1, 2011). (MikeChurch.com)

The Emergence of Land Change Science for Global Environmental Change and Sustainability by Turner et al. - An important paper has been published that further documents the increasing recognition of the role of land surface processes in environmental variability and change, including issues with the climate system. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

Important New Insight into Climate and Energy Policy by Peter R. Hartley and Kenneth B. Medlock III of Rice University - In response to the Climate Science posting entitled Roger A. Pielke Sr.’s Perspective On Adaptation and Mitigation, Peter R. Hartley contacted me with respect to an in-depth assessment of the subject of climate and energy policies and the degree to which they overlap. Professor Hartley is the George and Cynthia Mitchell chair and a professor of economics at Rice University. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

Excellent Research Paper by Katsafados et al. on Regional Climate Forcings and Teleconnections Across Thousands of Kilometers - There is a very important paper, published in 2005, that demonstrates the important role of heterogeneous climate forcings on weather thousands of kilometers removed from the forcing. This paper concerns SST anomalies but the same spatial forcing due to aerosols and land-use change would apply. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

New Study On The Role Of Soot Within the Climate In The Higher Latitudes And On “Global Warming” - There is an article in Scientific American by David Biello entitled “Impure as the Driven Snow - Smut is a bigger problem than greenhouse gases in polar meltdown“. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

New Paper On The Role Of Historical Landscape Change On the Near-Surface Atmosphere - Beltrán-Przekurat et al. - We have another paper on the role of historical landscape change on the near-surface atmosphere Beltrán-Przekurat, A., R.A. Pielke Sr., D.P.C. Peters, K.A. Snyder, and A. Rango, 2008:Modelling the effects of historical vegetation change on near surface atmosphere in the northern Chihuahuan Desert. J. Arid Environments, accepted. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

Comparison of Model and Observations Of Upper Ocean Heat Content - There is a set of excellent powerpoint presentations from a March 2008 meeting entitled ”NOAA XBT Fall Rate Workshop” [and thanks to Bryan Sralla for alerting us to this important meeting!]. Bryan pointed out that an updated estimate of upper ocean heat content since 1957 was presented by Syd Levitus, and is reproduced below as the first figure. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

Comments On The Science In The Nature Paper By Allen and Sherwood - On Monday, Climate Science documented the inappropriate credit that Robert Allen and Steve Sherwood, and in a separate article, Peter Thorne, took for introducing the use of the “thermal wind” to diagnose tropospheric temperatures. Today’s weblog briefly overviews several of the science mistakes in their papers, with additional ones to follow in our submitted paper. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

An Emergency Cooling System for the Planet - Can geoengineering save us from global warming? (Ronald Bailey, Reason)

In a word, no, since the problem doesn't exist to begin with. I don't know why Bailey drank the Kool-Aid, he used to be a rational fellow but now has joined the ranks of the deceived/deluded.

NYT 1993: ' Study of Greenland Ice Finds Rapid Change in Past Climate' - The next time some New York Times reporter wants to write about how man is responsible for warming the planet, maybe he should take a look at an amazing article his paper published on July 15, 1993, largely refuting any connection between the burning of fossil fuels and rising temperatures.

Written by Walter Sullivan, "Study of Greenland Ice Finds Rapid Change in Past Climate" addressed findings that suggest "the period of stable climate in which human civilization has flourished might be unusual, and that the current climate may get either warmer or colder much more quickly than had been believed -- in spans of decades or even less."

Doesn't sound like today's hysterical press claims concerning global warming, does it? Neither does this (emphasis added throughout): (NewsBusters)

Soot: Calling "Bull" on Global Warming Activists and Politicians - In my previous posting, "Fixing Soot Gains 20 Years against Global Warming" I found myself omitting some rather surely controversial comments in hopes the idea gains acceptance and distribution. I truly believe it's a win-win proposition for everyone concerned about global environmental problems whether they be industrialists or environmentalists. Airborne soot falls from the air in a matter of weeks, so its abatement is perhaps even more efficacious than curtailing CO2 emissions in terms of cost effectiveness and tangible environmental benefits. If human societies find themselves incapable of abating CO2 emissions at a sufficient rate against any warming milestone that poses any real risk, then buying time with soot mitigation will be of paramount importance. (Scientific Blogging)

Hathaway: “Sun’s contribution is small compared to volcanoes, El Nino and greenhouse gases” - I’ve no objection at all and much praise when scientists actually make falsifiable predictions based on their understanding of the science. Thus when David Hathaway predicts that Solar Cycle 24 will be as large or larger than Solar Cycle 23, I applaud that boldness. (Solar Science)

Carbon Garden - Environment: Al Gore has conned a world into thinking that carbon dioxide is harmful, and the Supreme Court has ordered the federal government to classify it as a pollutant. Gee, why are they so anti-green?

From all the hype, you'd think CO2 is an environmental toxin on the level of nuclear fallout, a big threat to our existence.

It's not. As any fourth-grader knows, carbon dioxide is necessary for life on Earth. Without it, there's no plant life, and hence no animals and no humans — exactly what some of the more radical misanthropic eco-activists want.

CO2's importance has become obvious to two researchers who found that the Earth, drenched in carbon dioxide, has become a lush sphere of green — far from the charred-brown, hardly habitable orb that environmental activists have been telling us we'll inherit if we don't change our fossil fuel habit. (IBD)

Letter of the moment: Anthropogenic Global Cooling? - Any bets as to how long it will be before the environmentalists decide that global cooling is real and that capitalism and conservative politics cause it? And that the only solution is massive government intrusion and intervention in our lives (with the obligatory tax increases, of course) if we are to have any chance at all to "save the planet".

Yes, I see it now... of course! Terrestrial electric power distribution grids modulate the earth's magnetosphere. The earth's magnetosphere then interacts with the sun's magnetic field, reducing sunspot activity and thence affecting terrestrial climate. It's so obvious, we should have seen it all along. We must immediately ban all human activities involving electrical power. No! Wait! We should heavily tax electrical power and trade Electrical Power Credits, paying countries that don't use electricity to offset power production in evil, nasty industrialized nations.

With best regards and tongue firmly in cheek,
Roy Tucker

Govt 'knew about' climate change in 1984 - The Hawke government knew about the risks of climate change 25 years ago but did little about them, according to Labor heavyweight Barry Jones who was a federal minister at the time.

Dr Jones cast himself as an Australian version of climate campaigner Al Gore in a speech to a Canberra conference on Wednesday. (AAP)

Apart from his being a communist nitwit the only thing I recall about this bloke is the impression he successfully negotiated an oil company-named and sponsored quiz show hosted by a game fisherman.

Climate change debate gets wrapped up in gasoline prices - NEW YORK -- If Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" convinced Americans that global warming is a problem, rising gasoline prices and the recent bungled Senate debate on emissions regulations may have convinced the public that it isn't ready to take action to curb greenhouse gas emissions just yet. (MarketWatch)

Fact Check on Boxer's Climate Tax Bill Claims - Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) made several assertions during her June 10 floor speech on the failed climate tax bill and energy issues. Below is a sampling of some of Boxer’s claims, followed by fact checks: (EPW Blog)

Global Warming Alarmists Like High Gas Prices - Climate change activists in elected office, lobbying and the media view rising fuel costs as 'the best thing that can possibly happen.' (Nathan Burchfiel, Business & Media Institute)

It's Domestic Energy, Stupid! - Energy: A leader in Congress sees a need for "obviously more production" from America's abundant energy reserves. Is Rahm Emanuel, head of the House Democratic Caucus, joining the "drill here, drill now" bandwagon?

The Illinois Democrat made those remarks when asked by CNBC's Erin Burnett what the Democratic energy agenda would be. Perhaps it was a Freudian slip, but it just happens to be the truth — something 57% of the American people agree with, according to a new Gallup poll. (IBD)

U.S. senator says Canada's oilsands won't be penalized by restrictions - WASHINGTON - Canada's oilsands won't be penalized by American legislation that prohibits the U.S. government from buying alternative fuels with higher greenhouse gas emissions than conventional sources, Senator Jeff Bingaman said Wednesday.

Bingaman, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Energy Committee, said he supports adopting a clarification like one in the House of Representatives that clearly exempts the oilsands.

Under that measure, restrictions wouldn't apply to general U.S. purchases, only contracts drawn up specifically limiting a certain type of alternative, non-conventional fuel.

Extracting fuel from the oilsands is not a new technology anyway, said Bingaman. (CP)

Fudge or Free Markets: The energy-policy choices that we face. - The collapse last week of the Lieberman-Warner bill, the enviro-Left’s attempt to bribe Senators to impose energy rationing on the nation, shows that we are now left with only two energy-policy choices: We can adopt fudging issues as a policy, which will achieve nothing, hurt many, and satisfy no one; or we can pursue a free-market policy that will anger green activists and alarmists but actually do some good. Chances are that fudge is on the menu. (Iain Murray, NRO)

Oil prices: Europe threatened with summer of discontent over rising cost of fuel - Concerns were growing last night over a summer of coordinated European fuel protests after tens of thousands of Spanish truckers blocked roads and the French border, sparking similar action in Portugal and France, while unions across Europe prepared fresh action over the rising price of petrol and diesel. (The Guardian)

FUEL CRISIS: Forget warnings of panic at the pumps. Britain is set to lose nearly half its electricity in six years - Every day we hear that Britain is facing a 'fuel crisis'. The world oil price breaks records every week. The cost of petrol and gas soars. Foreign suppliers of gas and oil are holding Britain to ransom and charging exorbitant prices. The average family, we are told, faces fuel bills of £1,500 a year.

Yet all this pales into insignificance compared with the real energy crisis roaring down on Britain with the speed of a bullet train as, within six or seven years, we stand to lose 40 per cent of all our existing electricity-generating capacity.

Thanks to decades of neglect and wishful thinking by successive governments - and now the devastating impact of a directive from Brussels - we are about to see 17 of our major power stations forced to close, leaving us with a massive shortfall. (Christopher Booker, Daily Mail)

BP: peak oil reached - The Guardian informs us that according to an annual review published by BP today, the world oil output fell from 2006 to 2007. (The Reference Frame)

Britain Holds Investor Summit on New Nuclear Build - LONDON - Britain will meet around 80 senior nuclear power industry players on Thursday to help the government draw up a road-map towards the building of new nuclear power stations. (Reuters)

Algenol Trains Algae to Turn Carbon Into Ethanol - NEW YORK - Private US company Algenol plans to make ethanol from a primordial green soup that won't raise food costs compared to other biofuel feedstocks like corn and sugar cane. (Reuters)

Strictly for the birds - When Horatio Nelson clamped the telescope to his sightless eye and proclaimed “I see no signal” he became a model for a later generation of “scientists” and the environmental journalists who feed off them. A classic example of the genre appeared in the Telegraph, The Times and, no doubt, all over the place. (Number Watch)

Do vaccines cause autism, asthma and diabetes? - Almost 70% of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children do so because they believe vaccines may cause harm. Indeed vaccines have been blamed for causing asthma, autism, diabetes, and many other conditions--most of which have causes that are incompletely understood. Some parents believe that vaccines can "overwhelm the immune system."

To respond to these concerns about vaccine safety, the National Network for Immunization Information (NNii) writing team of Martin G. Myers, MD, and Diego Pineda have written a book titled, Do Vaccines Cause That?! A Guide for Evaluating Vaccine Safety Concerns. (Infectious Diseases Society of America)

Petitio Principi - The Obesity Society recently commissioned a panel from its members* to write a white paper arguing that obesity should be a disease. Their paper was just published in the June issue of the Society’s journal, Obesity. It offers an indispensable opportunity to test our own logical reasoning and to get a glimpse of theirs'. (Junkfood Science)

US life expectancy tops 78 as top diseases decline - For the first time, U.S. life expectancy has surpassed 78 years, the government reported Wednesday. The increase is due mainly to falling mortality rates in almost all the leading causes of death, federal health officials said. The average life expectancy for babies born in 2006 was about four months greater than for children born in 2005. (AP)

Rightly: Officials warn against raw milk trend - SAN FRANCISCO, California -- Dairy owner Mark McAfee started selling raw milk in 2000, marketing it to customers who believe it contains beneficial microbes that treat everything from asthma to autism.

Unpasteurized or "raw" milk is dangerous, U.S. health officials say.

The unpasteurized milk swiftly caught on as part of the growing natural food movement.

But the Food and Drug Administration considers McAfee a snake oil salesman and recently launched an investigation into whether his dairy illegally shipped raw milk across state lines. The agency even tried to recruit one of his employees to secretly record conversations with him.

The case against McAfee is part of a crackdown on raw milk by government health officials who are concerned about the spread of food-borne illnesses. Lawmakers and law enforcement agencies are stepping up efforts to keep unpasteurized milk out of reach, even as demand for the niche product grows. (AP)

Unfortunately people have to be protected from themselves and such snake oil sellers, only the truly ignorant and misguided will risk unpasteurized milk and it should never be inflicted upon children.

Report from the epicenter of woo - For those following the tin foil hat story from the City Different, the Santa Fe City Council met tonight to make a decision on the petition from a group of people claiming they are allergic to wifi and trying to block wireless service in public buildings. (Junkfood Science)

Get a Little Sun This Summer – It Could Help Save Your Life - As summer comes and people across America get ready to start slathering on the sunscreen, a note of caution is in order – a little sunshine is good for you. (Oregon State University)

Vitamin D: New way to treat heart failure? - Strong bones, a healthy immune system, protection against some types of cancer: Recent studies suggest there's yet another item for the expanding list of vitamin D benefits. Vitamin D, "the sunshine vitamin," keeps the heart, the body's long-distance runner, fit for life's demands. (University of Michigan)

Attack of the tomato industry killers - The tomato scare story illustrates our absurd inability to cope with relatively minor events that involve little risk (Terence Corcoran, Financial Post)

Thermometers Are Doing The Talking - CHURCHVILLE, VA—What a world!! Global warming alarmists bring us to the brink of world food shortage and economic collapse—using words and computer models, not higher temperatures. As a result, more wildlife species are threatened by palm oil plantations growing biodiesel than by climate change. Heavy sea ice just trapped a big Russian ice-breaker for seven days in the Arctic’s Northwest Passage, which the alarmists told us last year would soon be open sailing. The sunspots and a Pacific Ocean cooling phase are forecasting the earth will cool further over the next two decades. In the past, both have [been] accurate in their predictions. Dennis t Avery, CGFI)

Rocky water source - Gypsum, a rocky mineral is abundant in desert regions where fresh water is usually in very short supply but oil and gas fields are common. Writing in International Journal of Global Environmental Issues, Peter van der Gaag of the Holland Innovation Team, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, has hit on the idea of using the untapped energy from oil and gas flare-off to release the water locked in gypsum. (Inderscience Publishers)

Blindingly obvious but unfortunately necessary research: Pigs raised without antibiotics more likely to carry bacteria, parasites - While consumers are increasing demand for pork produced without antibiotics, more of the pigs raised in such conditions carry bacteria and parasites associated with food-borne illnesses, according to a new study. (OSU)

Worldwide mission to solve iron deficiency - A University of Adelaide researcher will lead an Australian project to help address the world's biggest nutritional deficiency – lack of iron. (University of Adelaide)

June 11, 2008

Senator Boxer's Ignorance of Climate Bill Is Inexcusable - Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) looked ridiculous last week when she insisted the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act would cause “no increase in gas prices.”

She is chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which has jurisdiction over climate change, so there is no excuse for her not knowing that the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act was designed to make gas more expensive. (Cooler Heads Digest)

The Big Chill - Two years ago a Time magazine's cover warned us about global warming: "Be Worried . . . Be Very Worried." We should be even more worried about the supposed global warming legislation the U.S. Senate debated last week, then rejected without a vote. It would have replaced markets with government controls over the economy and Americans' personal lives. So different would be a Boxer-Lieberman-Warner America, and so likely it is that the same legislation will be back in Congress next year, that it is worth thinking through what it would do and how it would affect us. (Pete DuPont, Wall street Journal)

Bad Science: A grand tradition. - With the failure of the Lieberman-Warner global-warming bill in the Senate last Friday, I am reminded of the long and grand tradition the scientific community has had in promoting “bad science.” (It is mere coincidence that the acronym for this term is “BS.”)

While the failure of the carbon cap-and-trade legislation was largely a result of economic concerns over what it would cost the country, its proponents will no doubt return next year with claims that no price is too great to save us from planetary destruction. (Roy Spencer, NRO)

Climate fraud allegations - Doug Keenan is an independent mathematician, formerly a financial analyst, based in London. After I re-published a list of peer-reviewed papers that question the received wisdom on climate science - received wisdom, it should be said, only in the political and media worlds, not the scientific - I received an email from Dr Keenan drawing my attention to two peer-reviewed papers he had written that are relevant. I have added them to the first post, but want to draw attention to them here. Both are very accessible to a lay reader. Both are absolutely gobsmacking, to use a technical word. (Freeborn John)

Sherwood, Allen, and radiosondes - The media recently wrote far-reaching comments about the latest Nature Geophysics article by Steven Sherwood and Robert Allen (Yale University): Warming maximum in the tropical upper troposphere deduced from thermal winds.

The authors - or at least the media - have claimed that a new method to "measure" the tropical tropospheric temperatures has removed all contradictions between the theoretical and empirical warming rates in the troposphere.

Recall that the greenhouse-dominated models predict rapid warming in the troposphere, roughly 10 km above the equator. The satellite measurements (UAH MSU, RSS MSU) show an actual warming rate that is at least 10 times slower than the theoretical predictions. The data from balloons and radiosondes they carry, for example the Hadley Center data, confirm the satellite figures. Detailed numbers will be discussed below. (The Reference Frame)

Ha ha ha... European system for cutting CO2 emissions is working well: Lessons to be learned for US, globe - In a bid to control greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change, the European Union has been operating the world's first system to limit and to trade carbon dioxide. Despite its hasty adoption and somewhat rocky beginning three years ago, the EU "cap-and-trade" system has operated well and has had little or no negative impact on the overall EU economy, according to an MIT analysis. (MIT)

... the very reason it isn't harming the EU members' economies is that it isn't working! They haven't cut emissions of CO₂ due to trading at all since EU governments wildly over-allocated emission quotas to maintain competiveness (and why not, since the alleged problem is a phantom menace anyway).

Science Academies Urge 50 Pct CO2 Cuts by 2050 - OSLO - Major economies should aim to halve world emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 and work out ways to bury gases in a wider assault on climate change, the science academies of 13 nations said on Tuesday. (Reuters)

What's really troubling is that alleged science academies can sign off on such blatant rubbish. Beyond PlayStation® climatology there is not a the slightest scrap of evidence increases in the essential trace gas CO₂ is anything but beneficial for life on Earth. Zip, nada, nothing, not a thing...

Is Climate Change the World’s Most Important Problem? Part 2 - Despite using the World Health Organization’s scientifically suspect estimates of the present-day death toll “attributable” to climate change, we saw in Part 1 that climate change contributed less than 0.3% of the global death toll. At least 12 other factors related to food, nutrition and the environment contribute more.

Here I’ll examine whether climate change is likely to be the most important global public health problem if not today, at least in the foreseeable future. (Cato @ liberty)

Dirty US Media Secret: 'Rest of the World' Rebels Against Climate Taxes - The supposedly surprising rejection of the Lieberman-Warner climate bill last week had an element that Old Media in the US hasn't covered, but is very relevant.

While the press is ever eager to jump on politicians who fly in the face of supposed "world opinion" when it goes against US positions and traditions, it has been virtually silent over how "the rest of the world" has been rejecting the true linchpin of government climate policies: supposedly climate change-related higher taxes and fees. Surely some of the green-leaning Senators who were supposedly on board but voted against cloture were not blind to this. (NewsBusters)

'GMA' Features Professor Who Blames Greenhouse Gases for Current Heat Wave - Think it's hot outside? "Good Morning America" wants you to think it is your fault - at least that's why an expert featured on the June 9 show told viewers it is hotter outside.

Stanford University professor Dr. Stephen Schneider said that methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are making hot temperatures even hotter. (NewsBusters)

Could Global Warming Obsessed Media Ever Consider CO2's Benefits? - With summer looming, and the nation experiencing its first heatwave of 2008, it certainly isn't surprising our global warming obsessed media have resumed the spread of climate hysteria as reported by my colleague Jeff Poor just a few hours ago.

Yet, given their willingness the past few months to discuss ethanol's connection to higher food prices, is it too much to ask for these same press outlets to offer a little balance by presenting the benefits of rising carbon dioxide levels along with the mythical costs? (NewsBusters)

From CO₂ Science 11 June 2008
Editorial:
The Downward Spiral of Global Amphibian Populations: Has it been caused by global warming, an emerging infectious disease, or a global-warming-driven infectious disease?

Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week:
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 545 individual scientists from 331 separate research institutions in 38 different countries ... and counting! This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from the Kuujjua River Region, Western Victoria Island, Northwest Territories, Canada. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here.

Subject Index Summary:
Floods (General): Are floods increasing in frequency and intensity in response to global warming, as climate alarmists say they should?

Plant Growth Data:
This week we add new results (blue background) of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature for: Dahurian Birch, Field Mustard, Marine Coccolithophores, and Yellow Birch.

Journal Reviews:
Coral Bleaching and Recovery in Dubai over the Past Decade: How bad was the former? How good was the latter?

Acclimation to Thermal Stress in Reef-Building Corals: Just how rapidly can it occur?

Symbiont Shuffling of a Scleractinian Coral During Bleaching: Do the real-world observations affirm the validity of the thermal acclimatization process?

Humans, Cosmetic Sunscreens and Coral Reefs: Sunscreens are good for humans, but a new study suggests we should leave them at home when visiting the beach.

Phytoplankton Calcification in a CO2-Accreting Ocean: Does it drop lower and lower as the atmosphere's CO2 concentration rises higher and higher, as has been suggested by a host of theoretical studies? (co2science.org)

NOAA: Them’s fightin’ words - This is a bit off topic for this blog, but I’m posting it because it shows the thoughtless heavy handedness that is permeating government organizations like NOAA. Last week is was bonfires on the beach in Seattle being considered for a ban due to “CO2 concerns”, this week it’s fishing on the open ocean. For me, this is a tipping point. One by one our freedoms are being taken away by environmental concerns. Where’s the ACLU on this one? (Watts Up With That?)

Another NCAR pot world-boiler: Permafrost threatened by rapid retreat of Arctic sea ice, study finds - The rate of climate warming over northern Alaska, Canada, and Russia could more than triple during periods of rapid sea ice loss, according to a new study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The findings raise concerns about the thawing of permafrost, or permanently frozen soil, and the potential consequences for sensitive ecosystems, human infrastructure, and the release of additional greenhouse gases. (NCAR)

Climate Change a Fallacy - South African Professor - MAN-MADE global warming is not real, a Professor from the University of Pretoria charged in Windhoek last week.

Professor Will Alexander claimed that claims by environmentalists that climate change was real were not true and if the world was warmer now, it was simply caused by natural climatic variability.

This is contrary to recent reports by the UN-funded Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other world scientists that climate change was a reality and people just have to learn to live with it.

Alexander said he was involved in a number of studies to see if changes in the atmosphere were being caused by climate change but there was no evidence of that.

Alexander was one of the speakers at the national debate on climate change held in Windhoek on Friday. (The Namibian)

Sun Goes Longer Than Normal Without Producing Sunspots - The sun has been lying low for the past couple of years, producing no sunspots and giving a break to satellites.

That's good news for people who scramble when space weather interferes with their technology, but it became a point of discussion for the scientists who attended an international solar conference at Montana State University. Approximately 100 scientists from Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa and North America gathered June 1-6 to talk about "Solar Variability, Earth's Climate and the Space Environment."

The scientists said periods of inactivity are normal for the sun, but this period has gone on longer than usual. (ScienceDaily)

Um, no: Emerging Economies Can Fund Climate Fight - World Bank - LONDON - Emerging economies can help fund the fight against climate change through sovereign wealth funds, swollen by oil and other exports receipts, the World Bank's Latin America chief, Pamela Cox, said on Tuesday. (Reuters)

Regardless of wealth, no one can "fight climate" and should not try. What we can do -- and which nations need to enrich themselves to do -- is cope with inevitable change. The ridiculous fossil fuel emission-driven global warming fantasy is becoming ever more dangerous as the foolish and gullible respond to it.

It’s the Greenery, stupid (Number Watch)

House GOP seeks to pin $4 gasoline on Democrats - With the AAA reporting that the average national cost for gasoline crossed the $4-mark for the first time, House Republicans on Sunday sought to lay the blame for record prices at the doorstep of congressional Democrats.

“Today marks another dubious day for this Do-Nothing Democratic Congress,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) stated. “On their watch, gas prices have soared to new heights, and by refusing to schedule a vote on a plan to increase American-made energy to help lower gas prices, congressional Democrats are complicit in this unprecedented surge in fuel costs.” (The Hill)

Climate of Fear: Seize the Offensive on 'Global Warming' - On Friday morning Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) forced a cloture vote to end debate on the Lieberman-Warner “climate tax” bill. He needed to stop the political bleeding among his caucus caused by their enthusiastic promotion of the measure at the time when public attention to gasoline prices is intense and angry. Gasoline prices have increased at least $1.66 since the Democrats won the majority. (Christopher C. Horner, Human Events)

Inhofe: ‘Here We Go Again: Democrats Propose Yet Another Energy Tax’ - WASHINGTON, DC – Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, criticized the Democrats Consumer First Energy Act as a “No” Energy bill in floor remarks today. Senator Inhofe voted against cloture on the bill today.

“Here we go again. As the price of gas at the pump continues to go up, Democrats are proposing yet another energy tax,” Senator Inhofe said. “The Democrats don’t appear to have learned anything from their stunning defeat of their climate tax bill last week, which over 20% of Democratic Senators could not even support. This week their attempted ‘solution’ to our energy challenges is to raise taxes again and further harm American families. (EPW Blog)

France and Germany Dilute the Green - BRUSSELS, Jun 10 - The leaders of France and Germany, the European Union's two largest car-producing countries, appeared to take their cue from glossy vehicle advertisements this week. Just as such ads routinely seek to convey the impression that vehicles are ecologically benign, President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel tried to present an agreement they reached on carbon dioxide (CO2) limits from new cars as a boon for the environment. (IPS)

Toyota boosts hybrid production - TOKYO–Toyota will start making the Camry hybrid in Australia and Thailand as part of the Japanese automaker's efforts to step up production of such green cars around the world, the company said Tuesday.

Toyota Motor Corp. said in a statement it plans annual production of 10,000 Camry hybrids at the Altona plant in southeastern Australia – a bit of bright news for that nation's lagging auto industry – starting in early 2010.

Toyota also will start making the Camry hybrid at its Gateway plant in Thailand next year, targeting annual production of 9,000 vehicles, it said in a release.

The announcements are part of Toyota's efforts to boost hybrid production and pick the best production places around the world. (AP)

Actually, Toyota 'chose' Australia because the K.Rudd government was gullible enough to give the $35million to do so, essentially subsidizing each unit $3,500.00 in taxpayer funding, paid directly to Toyota shareholders. Perhaps no one told them 'green' cars aren't really green or environmentally friendly either.

Terence Blacker: Shouldn't local people have a say on wind farms? - In his great work Small Is Beautiful, EF Schumacher argued that, because land is our most precious resource after humanity itself, the way we treat the landscape involves our whole way of life. The mighty quango, Natural England, in its recent much-publicised Manifesto for the Natural Environment, made a similar point. The countryside and its future was closely linked to the nation's cultural identity, it said.

But, as always in the case of government bodies, it is worth looking at the specifics which lurk behind the warm words. Towards the end of its manifesto, Natural England mentions that it will "help find the space for renewable energy by publishing a map of suitable locations for onshore wind energy developments". As a soundbite, it works well enough. The Government has renewable energy targets. Who better than its statutory governmental adviser on the environment to offer guidance as to where new developments should best take place?

But when one looks at how the new guidelines are to be drawn up, worrying questions arise about this project. The map will have a seismic effect on the future of the landscape. Natural England, after all, is as powerful as any government body can be, having been formed out of the Countryside Agency, English Nature and the rural development wing of Defra. It seems to me that the fate of any area designated on its regional map as "a suitable location for onshore wind energy development" will be sealed. Developers will have been given an unofficial green light. Environmental objections based on local concerns, however valid, risk being defeated before they have even been articulated. (The Independent)

How Big is Your Carbon Footprint? - There’s a lot of talk today about the size of one’s so-called “carbon footprint” as a measure of alleged greenness. Perhaps a better measure might be the size of one’s corn footprint. That’s because our current rush towards ethanol – that greenest of green fuels – has, in just a few years, reached major geographic proportions.

This year, over 25 percent of America’s corn crop will be burned as transportation fuel after being converted into ethanol (at great cost in government subsidies). This is an unbelievable feat, given that America is by far the world’s largest corn producer (China is a distant second) and that U.S. farmers have planted the most extensive corn crop in modern history – nearly 94 million acres.

This means that 24 million acres of the most productive land on Earth have, with the stroke of a few pork-laden Congressional acts, been taken out of food production. That’s nearly equal to all the arable land in Kansas. (Mac Johnson, Energy Tribune)

Biofuels: Brazil disputes cost of sugar in the tank - Ethanol producers cut the carbon but still come under fire from campaigners (The Guardian)

FDA official says baby bottles with bisphenol A safe - Plastic baby bottles and water bottles are safe, a federal health official said Tuesday, seeking to ease public concerns about the health hazards of a chemical used in the products. (Associated Press)

Water babies: A health advisory for parents - Pediatricians at Johns Hopkins Children’s Medical Center sounded the alarm recently that water isn’t a healthful beverage to give babies under one year of age. Every year, they see healthy children being rushed to their emergency room suffering seizures after having been given water to drink. It takes very little water to lead to water intoxication in babies and tiny tots. As little as three ounces a day could be too much water for a child under a year old, said Dr. Allen J.Walker, M.D., head of the Emergency Department at Hopkins Children’. (Junkfood Science)

Sweet kids and hyperactivity - Decades of parents have feared that the very foods kids love the most could harm them. To each generation of parents, worries surrounding sucrose (refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup, or any of its many names) are new and frightening. But their fears aren’t new. Sweeteners have been studied more than any other food ingredient in history and the very same scares surface over and over again, often more elaborate with each telling... and the science re-examines those fears over and over again, too. Sadly, the reassuring science rarely seems to reach parents. (Junkfood Science)

Milk does a tummy good - These researchers thought to question how things have always been done. If you’ve ever had to chug barium before a CT scan of your tummy, this story will sound too good to be true. (Junkfood Science)

The myth of sloth slayed... again - The popular belief that we’ve become a nation, and an industrialized world, of increasingly sedentary sloths has become so widespread, that research to the contrary travels slow... if it even makes it out of the medical journals at all. A new study using the latest scientific measuring tool of physical activity energy expenditure, the doubly labeled water method, compiled the largest collection of international data going back to the 1980s. Guess what it found? (Junkfood science)

Doing our best to save children - Why has Save the Children departed from its mission — to prevent hunger and malnutrition, supply emergency relief, and provide prenatal care and immunizations to save millions of infants and children in poverty-ridden areas — and now lobbying for childhood obesity legislation? (Junkfood Science)

Summer vacation edition of Grand Rounds - A truly grand edition of Grand Rounds has just been published at NHS Doctor, with the best of medical articles on the net. Between breathtaking photos and thought-provoking, touching, painful and entertaining essays from healthcare professionals around the globe, there’s more than enough to keep everyone logged on for the evening. (Junkfood Science)

Fat women of childbearing age targeted again - For fat women who are expecting a baby, recent news has been delivering a continual barrage of stories that has left them frightened and worried. Pregnant women have heard that because of their fat, they put a strain on hospitals and that their babies are at higher risk of being born stillborn. Heavens, how does news like that help anyone? Before women add more worries to what is already naturally one of the most anxious times in their lives, remember that news stories are not research and just because something is said in the media — and in growing frequency — does not mean that there’s a growing body of new evidence... or any at all... to make it true. (Junkfood Science)

Who’s writing those orders? Are computers replacing your doctor? - In a valuable article today, Dr. Westby G. Fisher, M.D., FACC, a board certified internist, cardiologist, and cardiac electrophysiologist in Evanston, Illinois, illustrates the concerns of doctors about electronic medical records and their computer-generated drug orders and patient management. (Junkfood Science)

Worries Mount as Farmers Push for Big Harvest - GRIFFIN, Ind. — In a year when global harvests need to be excellent to ease the threat of pervasive food shortages, evidence is mounting that they will be average at best. Some farmers are starting to fear disaster. American corn and soybean farmers are suffering from too much rain, while Australian wheat farmers have been plagued by drought. (New York Times)

Nature laid waste: The destruction of Africa - The massive scale of environmental devastation across the continent has been fully revealed for the first time in an atlas compiled by UN geographers. Michael McCarthy reports

It was long shrouded in mystery, called "the Dark Continent" by Europeans in awe of its massive size and impenetrable depths. Then its wondrous natural riches were revealed to the world. Now a third image of Africa and its environment is being laid before us – one of destruction on a vast and disturbing scale.

Using "before and after" satellite photos, taken in all 53 countries, UN geographers have constructed an African atlas of environmental change over the past four decades – the vast majority of it for the worse.

In nearly 400 pages of dramatic pictures, disappearing forests, shrinking lakes, vanishing glaciers and degraded landscapes are brought together for the first time, providing a deeply disturbing portfolio of devastation. (The Independent)

Why don't they call it what it is, lack of democracy, absence of property rights and poverty? Why hide behind "climate change" when Africa's rainfall actually increased through the 20^th Century? There is no cure in lying about it, you dopey buggers!

June 10, 2008

The Politics of Carbon Footprints - The general public is being duped into signing up to one of the biggest globalist scams in history. (Ron Fraser, The Trumpet)

They've finally said it: FSA chief heats fuel taxes debate - Higher energy prices are a “legitimate” way to cut greenhouse gas emissions, Gordon Brown’s chief adviser on climate change said on Friday, even as the government faces mounting pressure from MPs to ease fuel taxes.

Adair Turner, the chairman of the government’s climate change committee and new head of the Financial Services Authority, told the Financial Times that, as a matter of principle, “everyone accepts that putting a price on carbon is a crucial instrument” to cut emissions. “That will put up the price of energy and there is no way round that. We should not deny that is what these policies do,” he said. (Financial Times)

There you go, making poor people poorer is a "legitimate" way to cut greenhouse emissions. Never mind there is no value whatsoever to people or planet in so doing.

Cap and Burn - For months, Democrats and the environmental lobby promoted last week's Senate global-warming debate as a political watershed. It was going to be the historic turning point in U.S. climate change policy. In the event, their bill collapsed in a little more than three days.

Democrats failed to secure a majority, much less the 60 Senators necessary, for a procedural vote on Friday morning that would have allowed the real work of amending the bill to begin. By that point, Majority Leader Harry Reid had already made it plain that he wanted the bill off the floor as quickly as possible – despite calling climate change "the most critical issue of our time." But not critical enough, apparently, even to let his Members vote on the merits, much less amendments.

The strange death of this year's cap-and-trade movement was so unexpected that some are already predicting a shift in the politics of global warming. That's premature. Still, the postmortem holds lessons for the next time this issue emerges. (Wall Street Journal)

Who Killed Cap and Trade? - The new political center on climate will be defined around cost-containment and technology investment. If it's done right, it will establish American economic leadership on energy, strengthen our economy, and create a win-win for Americans and Chinese alike. (Michael Shellenberger, Breakthrough)

China Issue to Live on After US Carbon Bill Death - NEW YORK - The US climate bill may be dead but one thorny element of it -- possible tariffs on energy-intensive imports from rapidly developing countries like China -- will fester as lawmakers form new greenhouse legislation. (Reuters)

In praise of CO2 - With less heat and less carbon dioxide, the planet could become less hospitable and less green (Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post)

Surprise: Earths’ Biosphere is Booming, Satellite Data Suggests CO2 the Cause - Eco Worriers: “CO2 is a pollutant!” Gaia: “Tell that to the biosphere.” Biosphere: “Yumm, burp!” (Watts Up With That?)

We're sure everyone knows this has been published: Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Change on the United States - A Report of the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources National Science and Technology Council

I've been back on deck since Saturday and trying to read through this since. Unfortunately it is a seriously painful collection of weasel words and outright horseshit. Why anyone would bother to publish it is a mystery to me because it contains exactly zero useful information and a great deal of blatant misinformation. The modeling exercises are complete rubbish and it even throws in the old ozone chestnut (in case you don't know stratospheric ozone is largely irrelevant due to Earth's 20% oxygen atmosphere limiting UV penetration to ground level and the tropics receive as much irradiation on any given day as allegedly 'depleted' regions receive throughout the year -- guess where life thrives?).

I get the impression it is the result of a committee effort with members from Greenpeace, Sierra, NRDC, UCS and other misanthropic Gaia nuts. Excellent example of exactly what is wrong with what currently passes for 'climate science'.

Key point: even the IPCC admits "The climate system is particularly challenging since it is known that components in the system are inherently chaotic; there are feedbacks that could potentially switch sign, and there are central processes that affect the system in a complicated, non-linear manner. These complex, chaotic, non-linear dynamics are an inherent aspect of the climate system. ... We simply do not fully understand the causes of climate drift in coupled models."

Error Growth Beyond The Hapless Butterfly - Climate Science is fortunate to have another guest weblog by the internationally respected scientist Professor Hendrik Tennekes (Climate Science)

Has global warming research misinterpreted cloud behavior? - Climate experts agree that the seriousness of manmade global warming depends greatly upon how clouds in the climate system respond to the small warming tendency from the extra carbon dioxide mankind produces. (PhysOrg) Paper

The Deniers: Our spotless sun - With the debate focused on a warming Earth, the icy consequences of a cooler future have not been considered (Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post)

Airbrushing history, again: Case against climate change discredited by study - A difference in the way British and American ships measured the temperature of the ocean during the 1940s may explain why the world appeared to undergo a period of sudden cooling immediately after the Second World War.

Scientists believe they can now explain an anomaly in the global temperature record for the twentieth century, which has been used by climate change sceptics to undermine the link between rising temperatures and increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. (The Independent)

The really funny part is this makes modelers' situation worse since they rely absolutely on sulfate aerosols to fudge the estimated temperature dip and constrain warming within observed bounds -- take away the aerosol cooling and their GHE is way overblown, along with their guesstimates of potential future warming. Stupid game!

Yes, There is Statistically Significant Warming… Since the FAR! - Yesterday, I tried to decipher Tamino’s method of proving statistically significant warming since 2001 and applied it, incorporating data since the time he did his test. The statistically significance vanished, “Poof!” Of course that happens when we have short trends of data. Even when hypotheses are wrong we sometimes can’t prove they are false. (The Blackboard)

Guest Essay: A Christian Critique - On occasion, ‘Global Warming Politics’ will host a major Guest Essay, starting with today’s, which is by Dr. R. W. (Bob) Bradnock, former Head of Department of Geography at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and currently Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London (KCL). Bob is a widely-respected world authority on the Indian sub-continent. He is also a committed Christian and a Liberal Democrat. This essay was first written for the church magazine of the Amersham Free Church, which is in membership with the Baptist Union and the United Reformed Church in the UK. I am most grateful to Bob for his kindness in allowing me to reproduce his fine essay on GWP. (Global Warming Politics)

Doubters of the green faith are like pedophiles - The Bishop would have been perfect for the Spanish Inquisition - or a Salem jury:

The Bishop of Stafford has compared people who ignore the effects of climate change to the Austrian child sex monster Josef Fritzl.

The Very Rev Gordon Mursell ... writes: “It’s easy to demonize Josef Fritzl. And it’s certainly hard to imagine a more monstrous or revolting crime. The publication of photographs showing him sunbathing in Thailand while his helpless daughter and several young children were locked in his basement is bound to make us ask, ‘How could anyone do such a thing?’

“And yet Josef Fritzl represents merely the most extreme form of a very common philosophy of life: I will do what makes me happy, and if that causes others to suffer, hard luck.

“In fact you could argue that, by our refusal to face the truth about climate change, we are as guilty as he is...’’

Of course, the Bishop is also arguing that men who imprison and rape their daughters are really no worse than leading scientists who dispute the causes and dangers of global warming, which is further proof that this cleric is as stupid as he is hysterical. (Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun)

Human Sacrifice on the Altar of Gaia - ... Lovelock assures us that he does not agree with the "totalitarian greens, sometimes called eco­fascists," who want to see most of the human race "eliminated" by genocide so as to leave a "perfect Earth for them alone." That's a relief. But wait -- he then tells us that if we survive the current crisis, our next goal must be to forcibly reduce our numbers: "If we are to continue as a civilization that successfully avoids natural catastrophes, we have to make our own constraints on growth and make them strong and make them now." As it is, we are unintentionally at war with Gaia and must agree to "wartime" rationing and temporary "loss of freedom." Strong constraints? Loss of freedom? What's the difference between this and ecofascism? And how far down will our population have to plummet to satisfy Gaia? Actually, Lovelock states that something like nine-tenths of our population must vanish: "Personally I think we would be wise to aim at a stabilized population of about half to one billion." To accomplish this goal, both the birth rate and death rate would have to be "regulated" as "part of population control." So we are to be bred, managed, and put down just like a herd of animals on a farm. If this isn't totalitarianism, what is? (Anne Barbeau Gardiner, New Oxford Book Reviews)

"Geologic Evidence of the Cause of Global Warming and Cooling — Are We Heading for Global Catastrophe?" - Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, Professor Emeritus Geology, Western Washington University is the author of 8 books, 150 journal publications with a focus on geomorphology; glacial geology; Pleistocene geochronology; environmental and engineering geology (for a summary of his impressive bio click here). He voted for Al Gore in 2000 but now can't forgive him for turning scientific debate in to outrageous propaganda. He has called NASA's James Hansen a "so-called climatologist" "who says things that are idiotic".

It would seem that Geologists who have spent a lifetime studying the long history of the earth have little time for people that don't know what they're talking about. But we've pointed out for sometime that geologists, and even paleontologists, are much less likely to believe in anthropogenic global warming than say a chemist or climatologist. Why? Because they've seen this type of climate change happen many times before, in the history of the rocks and fossils that they study. Dr. Easterbrook does an excellent job of pointing out how current climate conditions pale in comparison to even recent historical climatic events.

Here is how Dr. Easterbrook describes his manuscript: (Global Warming Hoax)

How not to measure temperature, part 63 - One of the strangest things I’ve learned in the past year about the US Historical Climatological Network is the propensity for placement of weather stations at sewage treatment plants.

The reason of course has to do with putting a thermometer at a facility that is staffed 7 days a week. That thermometer must be manually read once a day and the readings transcribed into a logbook. Waste Water Treatment Plants (WWTP’s) fit that requirement (as they have an operator on duty, often 24/7) but they themselves are their own mini islands of waste heat and humidity, especially in winter and overnight. Yet, a significant portion of the US climate data comes from these locations. (Watts Up With That?)

What an excellent time to increase the cost of living... Britons must steel themselves for a sharp fall in living standards - Britons must steel themselves for a fall in living standards which could be as sharp and painful as in the 1970s, as the western world faces up to a new era of stagflation, a former Bank of England policymaker has warned. (Daily Telegraph)

Analysis of the UK Climate Change Bill (Julian Morris, CCNet)

Carbon costs soar as world cools - There is something comically forlorn about the BBC's continued efforts to promote its frenetically one-sided belief in global warming. It was inevitably quick, for instance, to pick up on that bishop who suggested anyone who refuses to save the planet from global warming was morally comparable with Josef Fritzl, the Austrian who fathered seven children on the daughter he kept for 24 years in a dungeon. But how about these headlines?

"Globally, 2008 significantly cooler than last year", "Global temperatures dive in May". Not a word about this on the BBC, although they summarised two items on the Watts Up With That website run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts, reporting the latest data from Dr Roy Spencer, formerly head of climate studies for Nasa. (Christopher Booker, Daily Telegraph)

Harper Sees `Big Shift' in Europe for Climate Treaty - Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said European leaders may compromise on a global climate treaty by scaling back demands for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to win backing from major polluters such as the U.S. and China.

``They will gravitate to realistic targets,'' Harper, 49, said in an interview in London yesterday. ``There will be a lot more discussion on not just what targets are, but how targets can actually be achieved.''

Harper made the comment after a three-day tour of Europe to discuss climate change and prepare for a July summit of leaders from the Group of Eight nations. The G-8 is seeking to take the lead in global efforts for a successor to the 1997 Kyoto climate treaty. (Bloomberg)

Vague Japan Climate Plan Could Risk its G8 Ambitions - TOKYO - A Japanese climate policy plan to be issued next week is likely to set a 2050 target to cut greenhouse gas pollution but it also needs a mid-term emissions goal for Japan to gain credibility at next month's G8 summit, experts say.

Japan is hosting the summit of rich nations to seal an agreement for the world to halve emissions by 2050, a target that the G8 said they would seriously consider at their summit last year in Germany.

But at a time when developing nations are calling for advanced countries to first commit to ambitious targets over a shorter time period, climate experts say Japan might lack bold policies at home to push international negotiations forward. (Reuters)

Japan to Test Carbon Trade; Puts Off Interim C02 Goal - TOKYO - Japan will start a trial system for carbon trade this year, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said on Monday, unveiling a climate change policy that set a goal for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, but stopped short of what environmentalists say is key. (Reuters)

Just say it: Kyoto's a crock: Stephen Harper should call the environmental accord what it is -- a train wreck - Could Prime Minister Stephen Harper or Environment Minister John Baird please explain what they mean when they say Canada continues to be a participant in the Kyoto accord?

How can we be a participant when the PM has said we cannot do what Kyoto requires of us -- lower our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by an average of 6% below 1990 levels between now and 2012?

We're 29.1% above our Kyoto target. Achieving that target is the point of Kyoto.

So what, exactly, are we participating in? (Lorrie Goldstein, Toronto Sun)

Correspondence received: I thought you might find the attached campaign letter from Al Gore of some interest.  He begins by accusing President of Bush of “stampeding our country to war with Iraq on fabricated evidence” and eventually leads to a claim that we should elect more Democrat Senators because of  “The undeniable reality of global warming—the most serious threat to human existence in history.”

I would put it to you that there was more evidence of Saddam having WMD than evidence that my energy use is the most serious threat to human existence.

He also says “George Bush, Dick Cheney and their backers in the Senate have fought endlessly to avoid making the hard choices necessary to address global warming—and have increased our dependence on foreign oil and dirty coal.”

Agreed. Saddam deliberately fostered the impression of having WMD and most countries' intelligence services believed it. On the other hand there is zero evidence increasing atmospheric CO₂ is anything other than beneficial. Moreover, Democrats' obstruction of increased American oil recovery and refining has increased dependence on foreign oil and gas, as has obstruction of new coal-fired generating capacity. If you want domestic energy supplies then you really need to boot the Democrats to the kerb and learn to ignore the phantom menace.

Scientocracy's CO2 Shackles: Why You Should be Skeptical - Alan Journet recently wrote on the editorial pages of the Southeast Missourian an article titled, "Scientific consensus on climate change". In it, he made a number of weak analogies, and performed a number of rhetorical sleights of hand, in order to shut off the debate on global warming. Being a skeptic, and not a "so-called skeptic", as Mr. Journet railed against, I will lay out the case why you too should be skeptical when a small group of experts, in this case the Scientocracy, attempts to substitute a their judgment (working under the auspices of the United Nations on the basis of consensus), for the judgment of the people as expressed through their elected leaders. Mr. Journet begins his effort to shut down the debate with a tenuous analogy which equates those skeptical of global warming with the the tobacco industry which knowingly was promoted a dangerous product:

As scientific evidence regarding the hazards of tobacco became overwhelming, a tobacco industry document outlined the basis for the countercampaign: "Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the body of fact that exists." Fortunately, tobacco manufacturers were unable to derail sane legislation designed to warn the public of the hazards.

Mr. Journet's analogy doesn't work very well for several reasons: (Southeast Missourian)

Global warming, an unsettled science - The thesis of man-made global warming has been portrayed as a scientific consensus, but is this more a policymaker and media phenomenon than a settled matter? (Simon Roughneen, ISN Security Watch)

Czech President’s “Inconvenient Challenge” to Al Gore - Since leaving office, former Vice-President Al Gore has gained enormous stature within certain circles on the world scene, acquiring it per the standard liberal formula. Taking up his “Earth in the Balance” cause, he produced the feature length movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” which is replete with fantastic prophesies of doom for the planet unless America immediately regresses to third-world squalor.

An insipid and unsubstantiated piece of propaganda, Gore’s movie would never have resonated beyond the boundaries of a few egg headed film fests, were it not for the concerted efforts of virtually every liberal and socialist special interest known to mankind. Coming to his aid, they collectively proclaimed “An Inconvenient Truth” to be at once the scientific equivalent of Einstein’s theory of relativity, packaged in cinematic genius that eclipses Ben Hur.

In the typical modus operandi of liberalism, an avalanche of recognition and awards were conferred upon Gore and his movie, from the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to an Oscar for “Best Documentary” to effusive accolades from every aspiring tinseltown movie critic. The film, along with all of his efforts to foment a global warming panic, have since been predictably declared as universal truth, a judgment based not on the availability of evidence, but on the profusion of like-minded liberal ideologues who are willing to accept and advance his hysterical claims. (Chris Adamo, Opinion Editorials)

Global Warming Goes Round And Round - A very powerful case that the climate trend we’re currently seeing is part of a product of a solar-linked cycle that creates harmless naturally warmer conditions approximately every 1500 years is made in a recent book, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years, by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery. It has 459 references, a glossary and an index. (Jack Dini, Hawaii Reporter)

PlayStation® climatology for the common man: New vision of climate change through Google Earth - Millions of Google Earth users around the world will be able to see how climate change could affect the planet and its people over the next century, along with viewing the loss of Antarctic ice shelves over the last 50 years, thanks to a new project launched today. (Met Office)

Cold Irony: Arctic Sea Ice Traps Climate Tour Icebreaker (Watts Up with That?)

Biased View Of The Global Average Temperature Trend Data At Real Climate (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

Use Of Winds To Diagnose Long Term Temperature Trends - Two New Papers - There are two new papers in Nature Geosciences which report on the use of winds to assess the multi-decadal trends in tropospheric temperatures. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)

Science, Politics & Climate Change - Science does not proceed on the basis of consensus. The history of science is full of cases where a minority (or even single individuals) turn out to be right and the majority turns out to be wrong. The German scientist, Wegener, provides a Twentieth Century example, through the response of the scientific community to his notion of continental drift. For some sixty years the theory was derided by the majority of the geophysical community and papers supporting it were declined for publication by leading journals. Minorities, particularly, have a problem where there are strong ideological pressures towards conformity. In these cases, some fortitude is required to maintain what is seen to be a deviant or heretical view. Apart from the obvious example of Galileo the situation of biological scientists in the Soviet Union, subjected to the dominant (and erroneous) dogma of Lysenko about the inheritability of acquired characteristics, might be cited.

In the contemporary world of public financing of intellectual activity, there are also more subtle pressures towards conformity. One of the many baleful consequences of directed or ‘performance’-based research funding is the extent to which it privileges the prejudices and paradigms of those holding power in the system at any time. The result is to favour for research support and publication those who follow the party-line. This characteristic, and the dominating connection between this activity and promotion, ensures the production of vast quantities of mediocre and repetitive material in our universities and like establishments and discourages the long-term and more speculative activity that used to be their academic glory. It is to the continuing shame of all the New Zealand universities that this is so. In this connection it is noteworthy that in the UK the panels making these systemic judgements about academic worth have now been instructed to destroy all the notes on which the judgements were made. (Dr Ron Smith, New Zealand Centre for Political Research)

Bishop’s call on climate change angers environmentalists - The ANGLICAN Bishop of Chester’s call to allow science, not emotion, lead the debate on global warming has come under attack from environmental groups. (Religious Intelligence)

A hot summer doesn't mean we're doomed - News flash: Environment Canada is predicting a hotter-than-average summer.

Please try to remain calm.

Back in the good old days, before global warming hysteria took hold, Canadians pretty much had the seasons figured out -- summers hot, winters cold, fall and spring variable.

Alas, not any more. (London Free Press)

Biggest storm centers on climate change - Despite the deadly potential of tropical storms and hurricanes, research into what causes them might once have been just boring science. But today each new study gets launched with as much fanfare as some low-budget movies and every new piece of research can be wired around the world on the Web within seconds. Scientists then duel it out in the news media and on Internet list serves.

Like Goldenberg, some scientists say they've never seen anything as personal or nasty as the debate over what influence global warming has or will have over hurricanes.

"This has been a battle royal," Goldenberg said. "The name-calling, the threats going back and forth; it is amazing." One will say: "You have fossilized brains," he said. Another will retort: "Your science is sloppy."

The insults come, not from fringe scientists, but from well-respected experts and peer-reviewed authors. (News Journal)

How can International Development policy help poor countries face climate change? - ... She cites recent Tyndall Centre research in Burkina Faso as evidence. “As one of the world’s poorest countries, Burkina Faso already suffers severe flood and drought as part of its natural climate variability”. (Innovations Report)

Quite. What has this to do with hypothetical AGW?

Sigh... Giant trees 'to clear excess CO2' - The scientist who coined the term "global warming" in the 1970s has proposed a radical solution to the problem of climate change. Wallace Broecker advocated millions of "carbon scrubbers" - giant artificial trees to pull CO2 from the air. (BBC)

UN Climate Talks Chairman Seeks Concrete Proposals - BONN, Germany - The chairman of United Nations climate talks urged governments on Friday to boost efforts to secure a new deal to tackle global warming by making specific proposals as soon as possible. (Reuters)

CO2 Emissions to Double by 2050 Unless Govts Act - IEA - TOKYO - Planet-warming carbon emissions will rise 130 percent and oil demand will rise 70 percent by 2050 under current government policies, the International Energy Agency warned in a report on Friday.

Governments around the world must bring about a "global energy technology revolution" to reduce CO2 emissions, the IEA said, adding that the total investment required to halve emissions by 2050 would come to US$45 trillion. (Reuters)

Now you know... Russian wins new greenhouse gas emissions rights - OSLO/LONDON, May 29 - Russia has won rights to emit or sell licences for extra greenhouse gases equivalent to France's total annual output, after revisions to Soviet-era data underpinning a U.N. climate pact, official documents show.

A 2007 review raised Russia's emissions ceiling under the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol for combating climate change by 107 million tonnes a year to 3.32 billion tonnes -- or 535 million tonnes extra under the pact's five years from 2008-12.

Russia is the world's number three emitter of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, behind the United States and China so revisions to its data can have a big impact. (Reuters)

... Russia's "signing fee" for ratifying Kyoto and kicking the stupid thing into play.

Seven EU states seek overhaul of CO2 rules - BRUSSELS - Seven eastern European Union countries led by Hungary are calling for an overhaul of the bloc's efforts to curb carbon dioxide so as to take account of their historical reductions before they joined the EU.

The 27-member bloc has set ambitious targets to cut CO2 emissions by one fifth by 2020 compared to 1990 levels.

That overall target has been split between countries according to their emissions and economic strength in the baseline year of 2005, the first year the EU had verified data for all its members.

However, CO2 emissions dropped significantly in eastern Europe between 1990 and 2005 due to economic weakness after the collapse of communism -- and it is this reduction in CO2 that the seven want taken into account. (Reuters)

Stalled warming - The science of climate change is increasingly confronted by profound disagreements and re-adjustments. The rise in temperatures that occurred during much of the 1980s and 1990s appears to have stalled for much of the past 10 years.

Meanwhile, global carbon dioxide emissions have been accelerating considerably. Greenhouse gas emissions increased on average 3 per cent a year from 2000 to 2005, compared with a growth rate of 1 per cent a year on average during the 1990s. Yet global temperatures failed to rise as a result of accelerating emissions. (Benny Peiser, Financial Times) More in this section: Vicious cycles | Model behaviour | Nearing meltdown | Painful cuts | Heat and myth

U.S. Rep. Joe Barton remains a steadfast skeptic on climate change - WASHINGTON – In a cavernous committee room, U.S. Rep. Joe Barton sat at the end of a long wooden table, patiently waiting his turn to question a Bush administration official.

A massive portrait of Mr. Barton hung on a wall above him, a reminder of his bygone leadership of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee. Now in the opposition, the committee's ranking Republican fired off a series of short, direct questions that reminded the crowd that he remains one of the most outspoken skeptics of global warming. (Dallas Morning News)

Our Trivial UK Media - The near-total failure of the UK media, both broadcast and print, to report the abject collapse on Friday of the Climate Tax Bill - aka the climate change bill - in the U.S. Senate [see: ‘The ‘Global Warming’ Mad House’, June 6] is further worrying evidence of both the decline in the standards of news reporting and the partial-to-biased coverage of ‘global warming’, in particular. This morning, I have trawled the ‘Sundays’, especially The Sunday Times and The Observer, to try to find even a brief mention, but to my knowledge none exists, despite the fact that The Observer carries all the usual weekend ‘Green’ dross, such as ‘Green Goddess: Eva Herzigova’s eco conversion’ (‘Eco-Herzigova’, The Observer Magazine, pp. 38 - 47). Apparently, “Al Gore turned the Czech supermodel on to natural living”, for which read sexy, vintage, floral print dresses, a tad more ‘English’ than that adorning Italian actress and model, Ms Monica Bellucci, at Cannes, 2002.

You would have thought that the fact that neither of the two likely presidential nominees, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, participated in the debate, or even voted, would have been interest enough, especially as this was the first climate bill before the Senate in a long time. But no; if it were not for bloggers like me, the British public would still be ignorant of the truth that the U.S. remains politically cold on ‘global warming’. (Global Warming Politics)

Letter of the moment: Advice is poisoned by fear - I HEAR on the scientific grapevine that CSIRO’s biggest problem when providing formal advice to the federal Government on the matter of climate change is to say nothing that can be interpreted as giving aid and comfort to the army of irresponsible sceptics out there who are doubtful about the dreadful consequences of global warming.

One can only feel sorry for the Government. Where can it go these days to get unbiased advice on the issue of global warming? Its official sources are poisoned by the fear among many scientists that they may be labelled by their colleagues and by their institutions as climate-change sceptics.

Basically, the problem is that the research community has gone so far along the path of frightening the life out of the man in the street that to recant publicly even part of the story would massively damage the reputation and political clout of science in general. And so, like corpuscles in the blood, researchers all over the world now rush in overwhelming numbers to repel infection by any idea that threatens the carefully cultivated belief in climatic disaster.
Garth Paltridge
Emeritus Professor and Honorary Research Fellow,
Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies,
University of Tasmania (published in The Australian)

And another: We can’t predict climate change - I concur with Bill McAllister’s letter “The climate-warming game” (5/28). I, too, am an engineer — for some 60 years. For 28 years I taught and conducted research in the area of gas dynamics in a university aerospace engineering program. My research included the development of a laboratory model of a tornado.

There are six equations that describe a gas dynamics problem: the equation of state and five nonlinear differential equations expressing the conservation of mass, momentum and energy. Key to these for the atmosphere are: 1. the future flow of heat from the sun as a function of time and space and 2. the absorbent and reflective nature of the atmosphere as a function of time and space.

We don’t have a clue about these. For any computer model to produce answers, many extremely questionable assumptions must be made. As McAllister noted, “why can’t the current scientific models accurately predict next week’s weather?”

The new green left (environmentalist) propaganda reminds me of the old red left (communist) propaganda. The dirty word is now carbon rather than capitalism. The game is simply to intrude and control everything. How much will the carbon tax be for each of us to breathe?

Vincent U. Muirhead
Lawrence (Kansas City Star)

From CO₂ Science 4 June 2008:
Editorial:
Solar Forcing of Multiple Climatic Parameters: Evidence for the suite of linkages is undeniable, although the mechanisms responsible for the linkages have not been fully elucidated.

Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week:
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 544 individual scientists from 330 separate research institutions in 38 different countries ... and counting! This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from the Atlas Mountains, Morocco, Northwest Africa. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here.

Subject Index Summary:
Trees (Types - Pine: Scots): How do Scots pines respond to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations?

Plant Growth Data:
This week we add new results (blue background) of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature for: Paper Birch, Purple Nutsedge, River Birch, and Yellow Nutsedge.

Journal Reviews:
Water Balance of the Great Lakes of North America: How has it been affected by the "unprecedented" warming of the 20th-century?

Modeling Earth's Tropical Climate: What have we learned so far? And what is the outlook for the future?

A Holocene Sediment Record from Northeast Greenland: What does it imply about the nature of 20th-century global warming?

Belowground Nematode Herbivores of Grasslands: How do they respond to atmospheric CO2 enrichment?

Nitrous Oxide Emissions from Irrigated Sorghum: How are they impacted by elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations? (co2science.org)

Uh-huh... Lawmakers debate gas price solutions such as tax breaks - ... Hare also is among supporters of a U.S. House measure that would impose a "windfall profits tax" on oil companies whenever profit from the sale of crude oil, natural gas or similar products "exceeds a reasonable profit." A new panel, the Reasonable Profits Board, would decide what constitutes a reasonable profit.

The proposal, dubbed the Gas Price Spike Act of 2008, was introduced in early May and awaits action in the U.S. House. (Adriana Colindres, GateHouse News Service)

... and I suppose they are going to guarantee "reasonable profit" (read: price support) during the down phase of the energy price cycle? Not that long ago a barrel of benchmark crude was $10 and it was not worth drilling for, yet oil companies were expected to keep fuel flowing without interruption. Now they are in boom and they should be soaking up profits, fattening for the inevitable lean times ahead. Do lawmakers really want to help consumers? Yes? Then get the heck out of the oil companies' way and let markets work.

Drivers Say U.S. Should Drill for Oil on Federal Lands - On the Spot - A recent Department of Interior report, requested by Congress, estimates there are 139 billion barrels of undiscovered oil in the United States, onshore and off-shore combined -- more than the known oil reserves of Iran, Iraq or Russia. But most of that oil cannot be tapped because of environmental regulations. (CNSNews.com)

Petition: Drill here. Drill now. Pay less - We, therefore, the undersigned citizens of the United States, petition the U.S. Congress to act immediately to lower gasoline prices by authorizing the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries. (American Solutions)

Ottawa Restores Imperial Oil's Oil Sands Approvals - CALGARY, Alberta - Imperial Oil Ltd again has all the approvals it needs to go ahead with its C$8 billion (US$7.8 billion) Kearl oil sands project after Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) reinstated its authorization, revoked in March during a legal battle. (Reuters)

Oil shortage a myth, says industry insider - There is more than twice as much oil in the ground as major producers say, according to a former industry adviser who claims there is widespread misunderstanding of the way proven reserves are calculated.

Although it is widely assumed that the world has reached a point where oil production has peaked and proven reserves have sunk to roughly half of original amounts, this idea is based on flawed thinking, said Richard Pike, a former oil industry man who is now chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Current estimates suggest there are 1,200 billion barrels of proven global reserves, but the industry's internal figures suggest this amounts to less than half of what actually exists. (The Independent)

Jim Crow energy policies - The U.S. civil rights revolution of the 1950s and '60s was one of the greatest social and political liberations in history. It gave African-Americans and other minorities new opportunities and new levels of success in virtually every walk of life.

But today we face unprecedented new challenges to indispensable but often neglected rights enunciated in our Declaration of Independence: "That all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

These fundamental rights are under assault in subtle, often insidious ways. Sometimes it is with the best of intentions, by good people who don't realize they are impairing other people's rights, hopes and dreams. At other times, it is by people who are willing, even determined, to sacrifice individual rights in the name of a proclaimed threat or greater common good.

One critical challenge involves restrictions on access to energy and economic opportunity - and thus on liberties and rights - in the name of protecting the environment. (Roy Innis, Washington Times)

Climate change bills could melt cost benefits - Alaskans are being hit hard by soaring fuel costs, so they had better keep an eye on climate change legislation in Congress, said a leading national economist. The bite of energy costs could get worse. (Alaska Journal of Commerce)

Gas bills set to crash through the £1,000 barrier - HOUSEHOLDERS have been warned to brace themselves for "catastrophic" rises that could take their gas bills to £1,000 a year, after prices nudged to a record high yesterday. The average bill is set to soar by nearly £400 as energy companies prepare to pass on the costs of wholesale gas prices, which have surged. This would take the average gas bill from £665 to £1,091, the first time it has been more than £1,000. This is double what it was in January last year and treble the average bill just six years ago. A reprieve for consumers also looks unlikely as the predicted price of gas remains high for the next three winters. (The Scotsman)

Blackouts hit thousands as generators fail - Hundreds of thousands of people were hit by electricity blackouts yesterday when seven power stations shut down. The unscheduled stoppages were regarded as an unprecedented sign of the fragility of Britain’s power infrastructure. (The Times)

EU leaders unsure how to handle fuel crisis: The high cost of oil is beginning to have political consequences - Fuel price protests threaten to spread around Europe in the run-up to the weekend following earlier action in the UK, France and Bulgaria, with EU leaders uncertain how to respond to the unfolding crisis. (EUobserver)

Silly blighters. Current fuel costs are trivial compared with what they will be should wannabe energy rationers get their way under the guise of "addressing climate change". The entire purpose of the gorebull warming myth is to seize control of the energy supply.

World major economies see new nuclear dawn - AOMORI, Japan — Top economic powers have declared that the world is entering a new era of nuclear energy amid rising concerns over high oil prices and global warming, but Germany stood firmly as an exception. (AFP)

Marine Power Lags Wind by Only 5 Years - Triodos - LONDON - Technology to make electricity from wave and tidal power lags maturer wind power schemes by just five years and will catch up rapidly, according to Triodos, one of the first banks to invest in wind in the 1980s. (Reuters)

German minister says car tax plan looks doomed - BERLIN, May 28 - Members of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition remain "miles apart" on a plan to link car taxes to emissions and are unlikely to introduce the change in 2009 as planned, Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee said.

Merkel came under criticism for backtracking on her environmental aims when the government announced last week that approval of the plan to change car tax rules to take exhaust emissions into account would be delayed.

She insisted over the weekend that the "Kfz" tax change, part of a climate protection package agreed by the coalition last year, was not dead despite differences in her government.

But Tiefensee, in an interview with Die Welt newspaper, suggested the plan was doomed and blamed Economy Minister Michael Glos for a "surprising reversal" on the issue. (Reuters)

Airlines protest at cost of EU emissions vote - BRUSSELS - The aviation industry could be hit with billions of euros of extra costs from new proposals aimed at curbing carbon dioxide after 2013 and will struggle to cope, airlines said on Wednesday.

Under proposals being drawn up in Brussels to fight climate change, all airlines using airports in the 27-nation European Union would be included in the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) from 2012, with a cap on their emissions of greenhouse gases. (Reuters)

Driven by the planet: The latest affordable automobiles are as eco-friendly as hi-tech hybrids - Oil at $135 a barrel. Petrol approaching 120p a litre, diesel at almost 130p. The $200 barrel looming; here by Christmas, perhaps. Headlines about our dying planet every day. Since none of all this seems to stop us using our cars, the Sexy Green Car Show couldn't be better timed. It's on now at the Eden Project in Cornwall, and the people behind it have a refreshingly realistic view of the world. From their vast glass biome domes, home to fabulous rainforest and Mediterranean mini-ecosystems, they show no inclination to throw stones at the rest of us. Far from it. The point of the Sexy Green Car Show is that cars aren't going to go away, so why not work to make them cleaner and greener?

Why not, indeed, work to make our best-selling cars cleaner and greener? For example, a 1 per cent improvement in the Ford Focus's CO2 emissions equates to 1,200 less vehicles on the road or 1,200 true-zero-CO2 vehicles. So that's what Ford have given us – their "ECOnetic" range of Focuses and Mondeos that deliver less pollution than their untweaked brethren, but at little more cost and with no noticeable difference to the driving experience. Volkswagen and its sister brands, Seat and Skoda, have also been greening their ranges with "Bluemotion", "Ecomotive" and "Greenline" editions. (The Independent)

More absurd by the moment: U.N. talks halt plans for oceans absorb CO2 - ... During the conference, delegates and environmentalists have consistently said that human activity and greenhouse gas emissions are causing the most serious spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. Three species vanish every hour, they say. (Reuters)

3 species an hour? They need to check with their own hand-wringing organizations since more species have been rediscovered over the last decade than are thought to have gone extinct (number of species known to have gone extinct in last decade is, um... zero, actually, although a few rare critters have not been relocated in one or more attempts to do so -- e.g. Miss Waldron's red colobus monkey, an obscure little subspecies last seen in 1978 and which may have comprised a single small family troupe then).

Body Mass Index: a big fat lie - Continuing our debate on ‘The Best and Worst of Medicine’, Patrick Basham and John Luik argue that BMI has led to a needless ‘war on obesity’. (sp!ked)

Bureaucrats like BIG

The Government, in its usual devious way, says that such services will be additional and not replacement (Oh yeah? Just as surveillance legislation was only going to be used against terrorists.)

As always the politics is surrounded by pretence. Ministers try desperately to create the impression that the policies they are defending were thought up by themselves. If these are not the result of EU directives, they are the product of endless manoeuvring by secretive British bureaucrats. The wrecking of out of hours medical services is a case in point. The BMA, in trade union mode, celebrated a great victory when it turned down an offer it was never intended to accept, resulting in an unbelievably expensive, dysfunctional and bureaucratically-controlled system that at best puts people in fear and at worst kills them.

One of the problems is that external “experts” brought in (journalists like to call them “Tsars”) invariably go native. Such was the case with LORD Darzi, a health minister and consultant surgeon, who felt able to put aside his Hippocratic Oath for the sake of bureaucratic convenience.

It all brings to mind a comment made long ago by a British Council official in Malaysia – “The way things are going, we will end up with just one scholarship, but it will be superbly administered.”

The bureaucratic ideal would be one giant polyclinic, perfectly administered, with minimum inconvenience caused by patients, who would be discouraged from attendance. (Number Watch)

Medical ethics retrospective - Dr. James Gaulte, M.D., has taken up the issue of the changing face of medical ethics in a thought provoking article today titled, “It is not your father’s medical ethics any more.” He opens by asking healthcare professionals if medical ethics — which place what’s best for individual patients first — can survive in a financial environment where a doctor’s autonomy is diminished and their pay is controlled by a third party? (Junkfood Science)

Public health — the collective act of prevention - The ethical questions surrounding public health and obesity policies that seek to intervene into the medical and lifestyle choices of individuals for the collective good of society, has sparked considerable discussion. These policies are universally based on the belief that most chronic diseases can be prevented by certain “healthy” eating and lifestyles. As many people are discovering, when the science and evidence behind the most popular initiatives are critically examined, they suddenly don’t appear to be about what’s best for everyone at all. (Junkfood Science)

Loophole Part Two: The canary in the mine? (Part One here) - Should failings in the integrity of science and evidence-based clinical guidelines matter, regardless of the popularity of their proposals, even when the health interventions are for people seen in our society as especially repugnant or undesirable? Or, do we look the other way because we don’t want to be seen standing up for such patients, or appear to be endorsing politically incorrect unhealthy behaviors? Do the ends ever justify the means if it’s at the expense of science or lives? (Junkfood Science)

One More Look at Thimerosal - Of all the articles I have written for Health News Digest, none has come even remotely close to generating the amount of e-mail I received on a November, 2006 piece entitled "Anti-Vaccination Hysteria - Undoing Progress." A portion of that article discussed the fervent devotion some parents of autistic kids have to the notion that vaccination—and notably the mercury-containing preservative Thimerosal—caused the affliction.

Indeed, no matter how much data could be piled up, the zealots would not be swayed, and would blow off the mountain of contrary evidence as being part of some Big pharma/government conspiracy. On the other hand, they would cite highly questionable studies of their own, and fear entrepreneurs such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Presumably, Kennedy's dog in this fight was to enlarge his interest group that rails against mercury coming from coal-fired power plants.

Meanwhile, for the general public, confusion reigned supreme, since additional factors are in play here. The criteria for a diagnosis of autism has been expanding, and many studies that researched any link between Thimerosal and autism not only had to set sometimes highly arbitrary conditions, they also used arcane statistical analysis. To be sure, statistics are vital in epidemiological studies, but they can also be misused to achieve a set of desired results. (Michael D. Shaw, HealthNewsDigest.com)

Biofuel Standards Sought to Weather Critics Storm - ROTTERDAM - Once hailed for providing an alternative to fossil fuels, makers of crop-based biofuels must now fight criticism for pushing up food prices and rainforest depletion by proving they are still a sustainable energy source. (Reuters)

EU to Propose More Flexible GMO Food Imports - BRUSSELS - Europe's food safety chief will soon suggest allowing "very limited" amounts of genetically modified material not yet permitted in EU markets to be mixed in imports of foods like maize, rice and soya, she said on Monday. (Reuters)

June 9, 2008

Enviros working to cause higher energy prices and more energy chaos: Conoco Refinery Expansion Is Set Back - "Plans to expand an Illinois refinery have hit a stumbling block because of rejection of key air permits by a board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Illinois EPA had given the Wood River project a green light, but last Thursday, the federal EPA's Environmental Appeals Board sent the decision back to the Illinois agency. The appeals board was acting on a petition by the American Bottom Conservancy, an environmental group, and the Illinois chapter of the Sierra Club. (Wall Street Journal, Subscription may be required)

The refinery is also being menaced by the Natural Resources Defense Council, which, along with Conoco, is a member of the global warming lobbying group known as the U.S. Climate Action Partnership. What are friends for?

We recently unnerved Conoco CEO Jim Mulva at his shareholder meeting with questions about his membership in USCAP. Listen to Part 1 and Part 2 of Mulva's meltdown.

Time to Retire 'Denier' - In Charles Krauthammer's May 30 must-read column, "Carbon Chastity," he rightly lambastes environmentalists as resurrected communists/socialists who have latched on to the environment and climate change as a means to advance their anti-people social agenda.

The specific occasion for his justifiable outrage is a recent proposal by a British parliamentary committee to institute a personal carbon ration card for every citizen.

The plan would place limits on food and energy consumption in the form of credits not to be exceeded — except through the potential for heavy-carbon users, often the wealthy, to purchase credits from lower-carbon users, often the less wealthy. In other words, their answer to global warming is wealth redistribution.

Though I thoroughly endorse Krauthammer's condemnation of the plan, I have to take issue with his adoption of loaded terms straight out of the green lexicon to argue his point. (Steven Milloy, FoxNews.com)

Putting the guffaw into gorebull warming 'science': Putting sea life to the acid test - In a Hobart laboratory a few weeks ago, a young marine biologist placed the shell of a tiny sea snail on a weighing scale and held her breath. Donna Roberts's critical experiment rested on getting the exact weight of this fragile specimen; any movement in the room could instantly throw off the delicate scale, so sensitive it is called a microbalance.

Roberts had been weighing 100 of these shells, stripped from snails that had been collected from the depths of the great Southern Ocean half way between Tasmania and Antarctica.

The snails, known to biologists as pteropods, swim through the sea like butterflies. They are as abundant as krill and help feed the ocean's huge schools of fish.

The shell specimens dated back to 1996 and the earlier ones had weighed in at 20 micrograms. But Roberts observed that as the specimens became more recent, the weight of the shells had fallen. When her last specimen, from 2005, weighed in at just 10 micrograms, Roberts barely dared to breathe.

"Wow, what is going on?" she asked herself. A halving of shell weight in just one decade was a real worry.

Roberts's still unpublished research is just one reason why her collaborator, Dr Will Howard, from the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, this week convened an extraordinary meeting of Australia's leading marine scientists in Hobart. (Sydney Morning Herald)

Ignoring the unmentioned plethora of independent variables, what biologist worthy of their parchment could possibly make the ludicrous leap of faith to assume the trivial change in oceanic alkalinity, driven by an insignificant change in atmospheric carbon dioxide, could halve pteropod shell weight? Who would do so on a total of 100 samples? (Common critters like these should be say an average of say 100 batches of 10,000 shells from each of perhaps 500 Southern Ocean regions for each of the years of interest just to establish some sort of base line) Were the samples taken at the same location? If so, what changes in currents and phase of Antarctic Circumpolar Wave have been accounted for? What is the current strength of upwelling compared with previous samples? What is the nutritional status of the samples? What is their drying status? Has their been any change in handling or storage?

As it stands no conclusion can be drawn because there is really zero data but this piece enjoys the ignominious distinction of being a strong contender for the title of the worst piece of crap written in the entire gorebull warming farce.

The Chilling Costs of Climate Catastrophism - SOMETIME AFTER the Soviet Army had crushed the Dubcek regime in Prague in 1968, our great Cold War warrior, Frank Knopfelmacher, was described by his opponents in condescending and patronising tones as a “threat expert”. Vietnam had fallen and the USA was in disarray, the Soviet empire was marching from success to success, and Soviet apologists in Australia were increasingly confident about the future. Knopfelmacher embraced the term with enthusiasm. “Yes,” he replied, “I am indeed a threat expert,” and went on to recount the story of his escape from Czechoslovakia as a teenager just before the Nazi takeover in 1938; and then how, having returned to Czechoslovakia after the war, he was forced to use the proceeds from selling his family’s property (he was the only survivor) to bribe his way out after the communist takeover in 1948. He was, through first-hand experience, a highly qualified threat expert.

In recent years another Czech threat expert has been sounding the trumpet for freedom. Vaclav Klaus was born in Prague in 1941 and became an outstanding student in economics, graduating from the University of Economics in Prague in 1963. He was allowed to study abroad in Italy in 1966 and in the USA in 1969, where he came under the influence of Milton Friedman. In 1968 he was awarded his PhD from the Institute of Economics of the Czech Academy of Sciences. From 1970 until 1987 he was kept under wraps in the State Bank of Czechoslovakia, but after the successful uprising of November 1989 he was appointed Federal Minister of Finance, and he became Prime Minister in June 1992. In February 2003, and again in February 2008, he was elected President of the Czech Republic. (Ray Evans, Quadrant Magazine)

Sacrifices to the Climate Gods - It is well-established that the ancient Mayan, Aztec, Incan, and Toltec peoples offered human sacrifices, probably in the belief that such rituals would placate the gods who were in charge of nature; for instance, to help bring life-giving rains to their crops.

Although we shudder at the thought of such barbaric practices, I believe that we have unwittingly reinstituted human sacrifice in modern times. But while the list of justifications has grown immensely, our new rituals are still performed in the name of avoiding the wrath of the gods of nature.

Our environmental protection practices have already caused the deaths of millions of people, mainly in poor African countries. By far the most humans — mostly women and children — have been sacrificed in the mistaken belief that the use of any amount of the pesticide DDT would harm the environment. As a result, the preventable disease malaria has continued to decimate Africa.

Only recently has this genocide disguised as environmentalism been partly reversed through the reinstituted practice of twice-yearly DDT treatments of the entryways to homes. While most environmentalists continue to insist that there is no connection between international bans on DDT and human deaths, such protestations really are like denying that the Holocaust ever happened. (Roy Spencer, NRO)

The Planet Tax - The Senate takes up a bill to strangle the economy and mortgage your children's future in the name of saving the planet. Hold on to your wallets and your jobs. It's going to be a bumpy ride. (IBD)

Bush Would Veto US Climate Change Bill - WASHINGTON - Even before debate began Monday on the first comprehensive climate change bill to reach the Senate floor, the White House said President Bush would veto it in its current form. (Reuters)

Boxer’s Math Does Not Add Up: Letter Reveals 10 Democratic Senators Opposed Climate Tax Bill - Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) claimed today that Democrats had the support of 54 U.S. Senators for the Climate Tax Bill. Directly contradicting Boxer’s assertion is a letter signed on June 6 by ten Democratic Senators explicitly stating they “cannot support final passage” of the Climate Tax Bill. The letter indicates that Boxer would apparently only have had at most 45 votes today to support final passage of the bill. (Democrat Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who was absent for today’s vote, had previously voted against bringing the bill to the floor on June 2.)

Boxer alleged in a June 6 statement that Democrats “had 54 Senators come down on the side of tackling this crucial issue now” following the today's cloture vote of 48-36 which effectively killed the bill.

But the signed letter by ten Democratic Senators tells a much different story. (EPW)

In Congress, gas prices trump global warming - WASHINGTON — Congress retreated Friday from the world's biggest environmental concern — global warming — in a fresh demonstration of what happens when nature and business collide, especially in an election year.

It was no contest.

A bill the Senate was debating would put a price on carbon emissions, targeting "greenhouse gases" that contribute to the warming that many scientists say could dramatically change the Earth.

Opponents wanted to talk about higher gasoline prices. And higher taxes. (AP)

Climate-Change Collapse - Environmentalists are stunned that their global warming agenda is in collapse. Senator Harry Reid has all but conceded he lacks the vote for passage in the Senate and that it's time to move on. Backers of the Warner-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill always knew they would face a veto from President Bush, but they wanted to flex their political muscle and build momentum for 2009. That strategy backfired. The green groups now look as politically intimidating as the skinny kid on the beach who gets sand kicked in his face.

Those groups spent millions advertising and lobbying to push the cap-and-trade bill through the Senate. But it would appear the political consensus on global warming was as exaggerated as the alleged scientific consensus. "With gasoline selling at $4 a gallon, the Democrats picked the worst possible time to bring up cap and trade," says Dan Clifton, a political analyst for Strategas Research Partners. "This issue is starting to feel like the Hillary health care plan."

It's a good analogy. (Wall Street Journal)

Tough Climate Goals Cost $45 Trillion By 2050-IEA - BONN - A goal to halve planet-warming carbon emissions by 2050, similar to an aim Japan is urging G8 leaders to agree next month, would add $45 trillion to global energy bills, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday. (Reuters)

No end to this stupidity: Farewell, Fair Weather - We are now firmly ensconced in the Age of Extreme Weather.

According to the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, there have been more than four times as many weather-related disasters in the last 30 years than in the previous 75 years. The United States has experienced more of those disasters than any other country.

Just this month, a swarm of tornadoes shredded the central states. California and Florida have been scorched by wildfires, and a crippling drought in the Southeast has forced Georgia to authorize plans for new reservoirs.

Who do we have to thank for all this? Probably ourselves. (New York Times)

The ‘Global Warming’ Mad House - “... it would appear the political consensus on global warming was as exaggerated as the alleged scientific consensus.” (Stephen Moore, writing on the Democrats’ collapsing Climate Tax Bill, in The Wall Street Journal, June 6]

The ‘global warming’ mad house is flourishing! I have rarely known a couple of days in which so many ‘global warming’ foibles and follies have been exposed for the nonsense that they are. Here is my Friday round-up for you to savour: (Global Warming Politics)

Tough 2020 Climate Goals Unachievable -US - BONN, Germany - The United States will tell a July meeting of the Group of Eight rich nations that it cannot meet big cuts in emissions of planet-warming gases by 2020, its chief climate negotiator Harlan Watson said. "It's frankly not do-able for us," he told Reuters on Tuesday, referring to a goal for rich countries to curb greenhouse gases by 25-40 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. (Reuters)

Some Sanity Comes To The Guardian - The Guardian, as we all know, is a particularly fine repository of intellectualized masturbation where ‘global warming’ is concerned, full of deep desires to wash away the false consciousness of the masses, and for us all to be made to alter our evil ways. As ever, Aunty Polly is on full Guardianista message in her column today [Polly Toynbee: ‘Any fat goose fretting over tax can boo this lot off course’, The Guardian, June 3]: (Global Warming Politics)

The Crone... The Science of Denial - The Bush administration has worked overtime to manipulate or conceal scientific evidence — and muzzled at least one prominent scientist — to justify its failure to address climate change.

Its motives were transparent: the less people understood about the causes and consequences of global warming, the less they were likely to demand action from their leaders. And its strategy has been far too successful. Seven years later, Congress is only beginning to confront the challenge of global warming. (New York Times)

Do you suppose they'll ever learn that the only risk springs from attempting to address the phantom menace? The major failing of the Bush Administration where global warming is concerned is their recent swilling of the Kool-Aid. There is simply no net downside to a marginally warmer world even if we could cause it.

Under Pressure, White House Issues Climate Change Report - The Bush administration, bowing to a court order, has released a fresh summary of federal and independent research pointing to large, and mainly harmful, impact of human-caused global warming in the United States. The report, released Thursday, is online at climatescience.gov, along with a new report updating the administration’s priorities for climate research. (New York Times)

Is Climate Change the World’s Most Important Problem? - A 2005 review article in Nature on the health impacts of climate change provided an estimate of 166,000 deaths as the annual global death toll “attributable” to climate change. This estimate, based on global vital statistics for the year 2000, was derived from a study sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) that even the study’s authors acknowledge may not “accord with the canons of empirical science” (see here). Let’s, nevertheless, accept this flawed estimate as gospel, for the sake of argument.

Where would this rank climate change in the list of global threats to mortality? (Cato @ liberty)

Bjørn Again - ... I am thus delighted today with Mark Henderson’s excellent and comprehensive coverage in The Times of Bjørn’s latest ‘Copenhagen Consensus’, the previous ‘Consensus’ having been in 2004 ['Forget climate change, we should spend on nutrition', The Times, May 31;  paper edition, ‘Save the children: world’s first priority is to end malnutrition’, pp. 32-33]. (Global Warming Politics)

Lorne Gunter: As goes the economy, so goes environmentalism - If truth is the first casualty of war, then environmental concern is the first casualty of economic recession.

Surveys of Canadian voters showed the environment to be their first or second concern in 1989-90. At that time, though, the economy was booming, pumping out tens of thousands of new jobs a month.

A year-and-a-half later, with the economy locked in the worst recession in 60 years, government finances were imploding, jobs disappearing and foreclosure wolves circling, the environment vanished from the top 10.

There will always be a small, hard-core voter base motivated by eco-issues. They're not worried about losing their jobs in an environmentalist-driven recession. They know that if they get laid off from the alternative music store, they can always go clerk at the Gaia Vegan Market or Wiccans 'R' Us. But for most people, the environment is a luxury good -- easily expendable when their livelihoods and homes are threatened.

As with most other bad, but fashionable left-wing political ideas, Europe glommed onto carbon taxes before North America. But now that the worldwide credit crunch and commodity-price boom have hit the European economy, voter hostility to carbon taxes is growing-- rapidly. (Lorne Gunter, National Post)

Is Germany's 'Climate Chancellor' a Failure? - A year after pitting herself against the world's leaders over climate change, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has backed down and gone silent on key environmental policies. It seems that the one opponent she can't bear confronting is the German voter. (Der Spiegel)

Greens Criticise World Bank Climate Funds - BONN, Germany - Some 121 environment and development groups on Thursday questioned the credibility of proposed World Bank funds to help the poor fight global warming, but the UN's climate change agency broadly welcomed them. (Reuters)

Selective Precaution: How does the third world insure itself against Lieberman-Warner? - Senators Joseph Lieberman (I., Conn.) and John Warner (R., Va.) base their proposed Climate Security Act legislation on two fundamental premises: That there is a scientific consensus on global warming and that, even if the scientists are wrong and the global-warming risk never materializes, we will at least have aided the environment.

Both premises are wrong. Not just wrong. The premises could well have it exactly backwards. (Lawrence Solomon, NRO)

Time To Leave ‘The Mad Tea-Party’ - Listening to the ‘Today’ programme (BBC Radio 4) this morning, I think one might be forgiven for thinking that the world has gone completely round the proverbial. For the first time, I believe I understood what it must be like to be a moderately sane person locked up in an asylum, or the only person fully sober at a binge-drinking session. In contrast, Trevor Kavanagh, the powerful Political Editor of The Sun [‘Can you afford to be green, Darling?’, The Sun, June 2], comes over as the very fount of reason and common sense. How the world turns! (Global Warming Politics)

Cooling on warming - We should tackle climate change through research and adaptation instead of trying to transform human behaviour (David Cox, The Guardian)

Climate Change Could Trim Corn Yields - USDA - NEW YORK - Warmer temperatures brought on by climate change could trim output of some US crops like corn in coming decades, but increase yields from other crops like soybeans, government scientists said on Tuesday. (Reuters)

As if PlayStation® climatology is ever going to provide any reliable information more than a few months into the future.

Caring for the earth - ONCE upon a time, botanist Dr David Bellamy was all over our television screens, like a rash of the invasive fungi he so often enthused about.

He was in that flock of eccentric telly egg-heads (such as Dr Magnus Pike), plucked from their natural academic habitat, hired to round up vast herds of untamed mainstream viewers, previously untempted by a diet of hard science.

But like the formerly prolific house sparrow, Dr Bellamy, aged 75, is also now a relatively rare sighting. Luckily, keen boffin-watchers without binoculars can view him at close-quarters as the Cheshire Show’s special guest, later this month.

Can we blame his scarcity on global warming? Well, yes, indirectly, he says. More shockingly, he believes an appearance on children’s magazine Blue Peter killed his small screen career. (Liverpool Daily Post)

Blogasaurus Versus Mediasaurus - In 1993, the famous novelist, Michael Crichton, wrote a splendid piece in Wired [‘Mediasaurus’, Issue 1.04, September/October, 1993], in which he argued that “today’s mass media is tomorrow’s fossil fuel”: (Global Warming Politics)

Cut car, ditch electric toothbrush-UN climate tips - ROME - Better insulation at home, less use of the car and even giving up an electric toothbrush can help people in rich nations halve emissions of greenhouse gases, a UN report said on Thursday.

"Adopting a climate-friendly lifestyle needn't require drastic changes or major sacrifices," according to the 202-page UN Environment Programme (UNEP) book entitled "Kick the CO2 Habit: the UN Guide to Climate Neutrality" (Reuters)

The carbon experiment - In any discussion of carbon taxes, no matter what their form, it is important to keep the core economic theory in focus. The basic idea, advanced by early 20th-century economist Arthur C. Pigou, is that if a society wants to reduce the use of something that's undesirable, the best way to do that is to have the government tax it. Pigou is the magician behind the great global pressure from economists and politicians -- from Stephane Dion to Stephen Harper, from John McCain to Nicholas Sarkozy --for taxes on carbon emissions.

The theory is simple enough, and intuitively appealing. In the Pigouvian world, if you raise the price of carbon, the laws of supply and demand will kick in and carbon use--from burning coal, oil, gas, wood-- will fall. As carbon use falls, the threat of man-made global warming will be reduced, maybe even eliminated. Beautifully simple. Who could not like such a clean solution to a messy problem? (Terence Corcoran, Financial Post)

World Environment Day Calls For End To Carbon Addiction - WELLINGTON - The United Nations urged the world on Thursday to kick an all-consuming addiction to carbon dioxide and said everyone must take steps to fight climate change. (Reuters)

US cities, firms to push consumer climate fight - NEW YORK - A campaign founded in Europe to help consumers fight climate change will be launched in the United States on Thursday by US cities including New York, leading American companies and non-profit groups. (Reuters)

Poor Nations Demand Climate Funds, West Views Jobs - BONN, Germany - Rich and poor countries argued over how the West can deploy know-how to fight climate change in developing countries but not lose jobs at a UN-run climate conference in Germany on Tuesday. (Reuters)

Department doubts ability to achieve Kyoto targets - THE Department of Finance does not believe the Government can meet its climate change targets. In a private memo, department officials admitted: “We have doubts about the likelihood of success.” (Irish Examiner)

U.K. Says West Shouldn't `Demonize' China, India on Environment - June 7 -- U.K. Business Secretary John Hutton said Western leaders shouldn't ``demonize'' China and India over their carbon emissions, arguing that growing nations have a right to the higher living standards that come from using more energy.

``We must strongly resist the temptation to demonize the new Asia economies,'' Hutton told executives in Hong Kong today, according to a text released in London. ``Those who think the answer to dealing with the challenges of climate change is to tell the people of China or India to sacrifice the sort of living standards that we have enjoyed are deeply misguided.'' (Bloomberg)

Funny: Independent Investigation Finds Concerted Gov't Effort to Silence NASA Climate Scientists - A new investigation finds a consistent pattern of suppression of data by political appointees, though it fails to implicate higher ups

Those following the global warming debate here at DailyTech can likely agree on two things -- first a lot of research remains to be done before definitive conclusions can be drawn. And secondly, many people hold very strong opinions on the topic. (Daily Tech)

See also: NASA Press Office Is Criticized on Climate Reports - Hansen news trend still positive (Watts Up With That?) and: Media Double-Standard on Global Warming "Censorship" (NewsBusters)

Painting by numbers: NASA's peculiar thermometer - The story is that the world is heating up - fast. Prominent people at NASA warn us that unless we change our carbon producing ways, civilisation as we know it will come to an end. At the same time, there are new scientific studies showing that the earth is in a 20 year long cooling period. Which view is correct? Temperature data should be simple enough to record and analyze. We all know how to read a thermometer - it is not rocket science. (Steven Goddard, The Register)

Cooling Underway: Global Temperature Continues to Drop in May - Global temperatures continued to slide in May 2008. Meteorologist Anthony Watts details the cooling temperatures in a report titled “Global Temperature Dives in May.” The new global temperature data reveals a whopping three quarters of a degree Celsius drop in temperatures since January 2007. Watts reported late yesterday that the cooling is “equal in magnitude to the generally agreed upon ‘global warming signal’ of the last 100 years.” (EPW)

The Sanctity of Climate Models - Reading between the lines of the new Thompson et al. Nature paper suggests that once they get the details worked out, the “updated” observed global temperature history is going to fit climate model hindcasts even better than it does now, and embolden confidence in their future projections. (WCR)

Global Whining vs. the Truth - "105° tomorrow? We'll be sending you out live," the television producer informed me.

Like most TV Meteorologists, I loathed the heat wave live-remotes. I would much rather work in a controlled environment, complete with air conditioning and a green Chroma-key screen. And during extreme weather events, the studio lent itself to professionalism rather than playing on emotion.

"Let me guess, the bank in Walnut Creek?" I said sarcastically. I had been through this drill many times.

"Perfect location. Plus, a lot of viewers with ratings meters out there."

Walnut Creek is an upscale town 30 miles east of San Francisco. It is sheltered from the cooling influences of the coast and the Bay by a modest mountain range. As a result, in the summer that region can bake. The bank not only referenced the name of the town, but had a thermometer that was several degrees off, thanks to the heat absorbing black asphalt on the adjacent multi-lane street and the pavement of the nearby parking lot. The producer knew 105° would easily read 110°. On air, I always quickly explained the reason for the soaring temperature reading for our audience, but it was not enough. The misleading visual message was absolutely clear: 110° in Walnut Creek-another sign of climate doom! No doubt about it, the climate was under assault. It had to be global warming.

No, it's global whining. (Brian Sussman, American Thinker)

Army: Sun, Not Man, Is Causing Climate Change - The Army is weighing in on the global warming debate, claiming that climate change is not entirely man-made. Instead, Dr. Bruce West, with the Army Research Office, argues that "changes in the earth’s average surface temperature are directly linked to ... the short-term statistical fluctuations in the Sun’s irradiance and the longer-term solar cycles." (Wired)

The Death Blow to Anthropogenic Global Warming - Stephen Wilde has been a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society since 1968. The first five articles from Mr Wilde were received with a great deal of interest throughout the Co2 Sceptic community.

In Stephen Wilde’s sixth and exclusive article for CO2Sceptics.Com he considers that the IPCC have failed to carry out any risk analysis for the potential for global cooling instead of global warming and that a repeat of the Little Ice Age a mere 400 years ago would cause mass starvation worldwide. (Co2sceptic)

The great carbon bazaar - Evidence of serious flaws in the multi-billion dollar global market for carbon credits has been uncovered by a BBC World Service investigation. The credits are generated by a United Nations-run scheme called the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The mechanism gives firms in developing countries financial incentives to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But in some cases, carbon credits are paid to projects that would have been realised without external funding. (BBC)

Gore Invests In Carbon Credit Company, Will Media Care? - For years, NewsBusters has contended that Nobel Laureate Al Gore is spreading global warming hysteria to benefit his own wallet.

On Wednesday, despite claims by one of Gore's representatives two months ago, it was revealed that his Generation Investment Management private equity fund has taken a 9.5 percent stake in a company that has one of the largest carbon credit portfolios in the world.

Yet, on April 6, NewsBusters' Matthew Vadum reported that in response to his The Media Ignore Al Gore's Planned Global Warming Profiteering article, a GIM spokesman called his piece a "nonsense story" while claiming that neither Gore nor any other members of GIM’s board have the slightest financial vested interest in the expansion of carbon trading. (NewsBusters)

Green Fatigue: Coal To Petrol - The title of the 2008 climate-change summit being organised by The Guardian and The Observer for July 16 says it all: ‘Fighting climate change fatigue: how to keep stakeholders engaged’. Delegates are to be addressed by the old suspects, including Jonathon Porritt and Dr. R. K. Pachauri, and the threatened video address by Gordon Brown should really do the trick to keep the caravel, ‘Global Warming’, afloat. By then, it could be sinking fast, holed below the waterline by every piece of economic and political cannon shot imaginable.

Moreover, there is one petrol shock heaving into sight over the horizon that many of its earnest crew will not yet have spotted, although the Government’s former Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Sir David King, high up there in his Ivory Tower Oxford Crow’s Nest, has indeed espied it through today’s Observer [‘Now is not the time to abandon our ambition to be green’, The Observer, June 1; paper edition, p. 31]. Sir David can see all too clearly that the myth which says we are running out of petrol is about to be blasted out of the water by Pirate Black Jack himself, Old King Coal: (Global Warming Politics)

China builds plant to turn coal into barrels of oil - ERDOS, China - With oil prices at historic highs, China is moving full steam ahead with a controversial process to turn its vast coal reserves into barrels of oil.

Known as coal-to-liquid (CTL), the process is reviled by environmentalists who say it causes excessive greenhouse gases.

Yet the possibility of obtaining oil from coal and being fuel self-sufficient is enticing to coal-rich countries seeking to secure their energy supply in an age of increased debate about how long the world's oil reserves can continue to meet demand. (Reuters)

Mounting Costs Slow the Push for Clean Coal - WASHINGTON — For years, scientists have had a straightforward idea for taming global warming. They want to take the carbon dioxide that spews from coal-burning power plants and pump it back into the ground.

President Bush is for it, and indeed has spent years talking up the virtues of “clean coal.” All three candidates to succeed him favor the approach. So do many other members of Congress. Coal companies are for it. Many environmentalists favor it. Utility executives are practically begging for the technology.

But it has become clear in recent months that the nation’s effort to develop the technique is lagging badly. (New York Times)

It has also been clear, for a century or so, that carbon dioxide is largely irrelevant where global climate is concerned.

Global Demand Squeezing Natural Gas Supply - CAMERON PARISH, La. — The cost of a gallon of gas gets all the headlines, but the natural gas that will heat many American homes next winter is going up in price as fast or faster. That fact makes the scene in the languid, alligator-infested marshland here in coastal Louisiana all the more remarkable. Only a month after Cheniere Energy inaugurated its $1.4 billion liquefied natural gas terminal here, an empty supertanker sat in its berth with no place to go while workers painted empty storage tanks. The nearly idle terminal is a monument to a stalled experiment, one that was supposed to import so much L.N.G. from around the world that homes would be heated and factories humming at bargain prices. But now L.N.G. shipments to the United States are slowing to a trickle, and Cheniere and other companies have dropped plans to build more terminals. (New York Times)

Grid Locked - “Can we please shed the political paranoia about ‘saving the world’, and, focus instead on practical energy? The failure of our political parties to be realistic about future energy demand could be catastrophic. I do not want to see the economic success of the UK falter because of ‘green’ whimsy. Drop the cant and energise Britain.” (Philip Stott, ‘It’s this simple: wind farms the size of London, or safe, clean nuclear plants’, The Times, April 12, 2005, p. 18). (Global Warming Politics)

US Seeks License For Nuclear Waste Dump In Nevada - NEW YORK - The US Energy Department has applied for a license to operate a long-delayed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, US Energy Secretary Sam Bodman announced on Tuesday. (Reuters)

US should weigh impact of Canada oil sands -report - CALGARY, Alberta - US regulators should weigh the environmental impact of oil sands extraction in Canada before granting permits for pipelines that will carry the rising flood of Canadian crude to refineries in the United States, a green group said Wednesday. (Reuters)

Oil world at environment crossroads -StatoilHydro - OSLO - The oil industry stands at a crossroads where the need for more energy meets calls to tackle climate change, the boss of Norwegian oil and gas producer StatoilHydro told Reuters on Wednesday. (Reuters)

Biofuels Win At Summit But UN Food Envoy Fights On - ROME - The rapidly growing global bio-energy industry escaped unscathed from a food summit on Thursday, but its wings must be clipped to stop fuel-from-food stoking world hunger, the UN envoy on the right to food said. (Reuters)

Food Prices To Stay High, "Grain Drain" Fuel Blamed - PARIS - Food prices will remain high over the next decade even if they fall from current records, meaning millions more risk further hardship or hunger, the OECD and the UN's FAO food agency said in a report published on Thursday. (Reuters)

US threatens Britain with legal action over airline taxes - Gordon Brown is embroiled in a major diplomatic row with the United States over controversial plans for new airline taxes which could see British families paying £400 extra for transatlantic flights. (Daily Telegraph)

Energy Wedgists versus Technology Breakthroughists: The future of the world's economy and climate may depend on which side wins - This week the U.S. Senate is debating the Climate Security Act, a piece of legislation which would require the country to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 4 percent in 2012, 19 percent in 2020, and 71 percent in 2050 below what they were in 2005. The act rations the emission of greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels by issuing an ever declining supply of emissions allowances. Emitters such as electric power generators, coal, oil and natural gas companies, and energy intensive industries like steel and cement manufacturers will be able to buy and sell the government-issued permits. This trading puts a price on greenhouse gases. The idea is that as energy produced from climate-damaging fossil fuels becomes increasingly expensive, industries, researchers and entrepreneurs will be encouraged to develop new climate-friendly, low-carbon and no-carbon energy technologies. But will this happen? (Ronald Bailey, Reason)

E.ON UK chief warns power shift will send household bills soaring - The era of cheap and plentiful energy to which we have become so accustomed is about to give way to a new age of scarce and expensive power that will see household bills rocket, said Paul Golby, the chief executive of E.ON UK.

He warned that over the next 12 years, the industry and the Government will need to invest some £100bn to meet ambitious carbon-reduction targets and a looming generation gap. The predictions came in the company's UK Energy Manifesto, which was published yesterday. (The Independent)

Texas wind farms choked off from grid due to insufficient power lines - Thousands of wind turbines in the US are sitting idle or failing to meet their full generating capacity because of a shortage of power lines able to transmit their electricity to the rest of the grid.

The issue of transmission capacity will be high up the agenda as 10,000 wind power industry executives descend this week on Houston, Texas, where the shortage of power lines is hampering the state's alternative energy plans. The problem is particularly acute in Texas because of the speed with which it has grown its wind power industry, two years ago surpassing California as the state with the most capacity. The solutions devised in Texas could form a model for the future of the industry in the US and elsewhere, as energy companies look beyond fossil fuels for cheaper and greener sources of power.

A proposal for $6.4bn of new power lines linking new wind farms with the state's public electricity grid, whose cost will be borne mainly by consumers, is proving politically controversial. Wind farm developers are examining building their own private lines. (The Independent)

The Childhood Obesity Numbers - It is a sad commentary on the health of American youngsters that we are cheering a leveling off of childhood obesity rates. Far too many children and teenagers are still overweight.

Tens of millions of young people will be at risk of illness and death unless this country commits to reversing, not just stabilizing, the epidemic.

The prevalence of obese and overweight children and teenagers has soared since 1980, and the heaviest children have added the most poundage. Now the upsurge appears to have paused, judging from some encouraging findings reported by federal health officials in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Their analysis concluded that childhood obesity hit a plateau from 1999 to 2006. Even so, a dismaying 32 percent of young people aged 2 through 19 were still judged overweight or obese as measured by body mass index, with roughly half falling into each of those categories. Their excess weight increases their risk of developing diabetes, heart disease and other ailments. (New York Times)

Which is yet another indicator of how flawed is BMI as a health metric.

Right... for the wrong reasons: Obesity Is The Public Health Equivalent Of Climate Change - The obesity epidemic is the public health equivalent of climate change, the Faculty of Public Health's annual conference in Cardiff will hear today. Not only are the consequences of both potentially catastrophic if allowed to go unchecked, but each are extremely complex problems that require nothing less than a fundamental policy overhaul to address. (Medical News Today)

In fact these are roughly equivalent problems -- complete non-issues both.

New Zealand sees breakthrough in animal gas problem - PARIS - New Zealand believes it has made a breakthrough in its plan to cut methane emissions from its livestock, part of a strategy to tackle greenhouse gasses, the farming nation's trade minister said on Wednesday. (Reuters)

U.N. Says Food Plan Could Cost $30 Billion a Year - ROME — Faced with an immediate hunger crisis and the need to double food production in the next 30 years, world leaders meeting Tuesday to discuss soaring food prices were mostly in agreement on how the problem could be resolved. The questions were how to get there and who was going to pay for it. (New York Times)

Food Is Gold, So Billions Invested in Farming - Huge investment funds have already poured hundreds of billions of dollars into booming financial markets for commodities like wheat, corn and soybeans.

But a few big private investors are starting to make bolder and longer-term bets that the world’s need for food will greatly increase — by buying farmland, fertilizer, grain elevators and shipping equipment.

One has bought several ethanol plants, Canadian farmland and enough storage space in the Midwest to hold millions of bushels of grain.

Another is buying more than five dozen grain elevators, nearly that many fertilizer distribution outlets and a fleet of barges and ships.

And three institutional investors, including the giant BlackRock fund group in New York, are separately planning to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in agriculture, chiefly farmland, from sub-Saharan Africa to the English countryside.

“It’s going on big time,” said Brad Cole, president of Cole Partners Asset Management in Chicago, which runs a fund of hedge funds focused on natural resources. “There is considerable interest in what we call ‘owning structure’ — like United States farmland, Argentine farmland, English farmland — wherever the profit picture is improving.”

These new bets by big investors could bolster food production at a time when the world needs more of it.

The investors plan to consolidate small plots of land into more productive large ones, to introduce new technology and to provide capital to modernize and maintain grain elevators and fertilizer supply depots. (New York Times)

Food Crisis May Open Door To Genetically Modified Rice - LOS BANOS, Philippines - Some rice-producing nations may drop their reluctance to use genetically modified (GM) seeds in the next few years to help offset a crisis that has forced millions to go hungry, a top expert said. (Reuters)

June 6, 2008

Junkman blasts 'poseur' shareholders at the ExxonMobil annual meeting - "If you don't like the oil and gas business... get out." (YouTube.com)