Oh No Now We Have Global Cooling!

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100827/full/news.2010.437.html

Cold empties Bolivian rivers of fish

Antarctic cold snap kills millions of aquatic animals in the Amazon.

Anna Petherick

With high Andean peaks and a humid tropical forest, Bolivia is a country of ecological extremes. But during the Southern Hemisphere's recent winter, unusually low temperatures in part of the country's tropical region hit freshwater species hard, killing an estimated 6 million fish and thousands of alligators, turtles and river dolphins.

Scientists who have visited the affected rivers say the event is the biggest ecological disaster Bolivia has known, and, as an example of a sudden climatic change wreaking havoc on wildlife, it is unprecedented in recorded history...

Glaciers’ wane not all down to humans

Jun 12, 2010

Glaciers’ wane not all down to humans

By Quirin Schiermeier, Nature News

The Great Aletsch Glacier is ill. Over the course of the twentieth century, the largest Alpine glacier, in Valais, Switzerland, receded by more than two kilometres, and Switzerland’s 1,500 smaller glaciers are not faring any better.

The Great Aletsch Glacier lost about 10 km3 of ice between 1890 (top) and 2005 (bottom).Roger Viollet Collection/Getty Images; G. Fischer/Photolibrary

Is it all down to man-made global warming? Not according to a recent study, which finds that about half of the glacier loss in the Swiss Alps is due to natural climate variability1 - a result likely to be true for glaciers around the world.

“This doesn’t question the actuality, and the seriousness, of man-made climate change in any way,” says Matthias Huss, a glaciologist at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, who led the study. “But what we do see is that current glacier retreat might be equally due to natural climate variations as it is to anthropogenic greenhouse warming.”

“This is the first detailed attribution of known climate forces on glacier behaviour,” says Georg Kaser, a glaciologist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, who was not involved in the study. “Given the importance of glaciers to local water supply, this is essential information.”

Researchers have long suspected that glaciers respond sensitively to natural climate swings such as those caused by the rhythmic rise and fall of North Atlantic sea surface temperatures by up to 1 C roughly every 60 years. This Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO), driven by changes in ocean circulation, is thought to affect phenomena including Atlantic hurricanes and rainfall in Europe.

“The idea that glacier retreat is the solely due to increased air temperature is overly simplistic.” In most places, historical records of glacier retreat and local climate are too sparse for researchers to separate the effect of this natural cycle from that of man-made warming. In the relatively well-monitored Swiss Alps, however, Huss and his team managed to gather some 10,000 in situ observations that had been made over the past 100 years, and constructed three-dimensional computer models of 30 glaciers. By comparing a time series of daily melt, snow accumulation and ice and snow volume readings of the glaciers with a widely used index of the AMO, they teased out the impact of natural climate variability. Although the mass balance of individual glaciers varied, the long-term overall trend followed the pulse of the AMO.

Since 1910, the 30 glaciers have lost a total of 13 cubic kilometres of ice - about 50% of their former volume. Brief periods of mass gain during cool AMO phases in the 1910s and late 1970s were outweighed by rapid losses during warm phases in the 1940s and since 1980, when temperatures rose and more precipitation fell as rain than as snow. The scientists believe that these changes are due to the combined effects of the natural cycle and anthropogenic global warming, which now seems to have a greater role than early in the twentieth century.

Subtle mix

Natural climate variability is likely to have driven twentieth-century glacier shrinkage and thinning in other parts of the world, says Kaser. For example, his own research on the glaciers of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania suggests that their dramatic recession is mainly due to multidecadal fluctuations in air moisture2.

“The widespread idea that glacier retreat is the sole consequence of increased air temperature is overly simplistic,” he says. “Glaciologists have known for more than 50 years that glaciers are sensitive to a variety of climate variables, not all of which can be attributed to global warming.”

Questions about the effect of global warming on glaciers hit the headlines earlier this year, after an error was found in the latest assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), based in Geneva, Switzerland, which wrongly stated that most Himalayan glaciers could disappear by the year 20353. The resulting furore put the IPCC’s credibility under scrutiny, and has triggered an independent review by the InterAcademy Council in Amsterdam, which represents 15 national academies of science. (click here for more)

Are Climate Alarmists losing the Mainstream Media?

May 29, 2010

Are Climate Alarmists losing the Mainstream Media?

Marc Sheppard

In the past week, two mainstream media giants have apparently recognized that the debate over manmade global warming is far from over.

On Monday, the NY Times broke with years of blatant warmist bias in reporting that Climate Fears Turn to Doubts Among Britons. The article cited a February BBC survey which “found that only 26 percent of Britons believed that ‘climate change is happening and is now established as largely manmade,’ down from 41 percent in November 2009.” The Times attributed the public opinion swing in Great Britain and similar shifts in Germany and the US to what it referred to as “a series of climate science controversies unearthed and highlighted by skeptics since November.” In other words, the climate fraud uncovered at the University of East Anglia (aka Climategate) and the multitude of errors uncovered in the latest IPCC (AR4) report.

Of course, the Times abhor the new public awareness as it “will make it harder to pass legislation like a fuel tax increase and to persuade people to make sacrifices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions .” But shouldn’t facts drive policy? Not according to Greenpeace spokesman Ben Stewart, quoted by the Times complaining that “[l]egitimacy has shifted to the side of the climate skeptics, and that is a big, big problem.”

Really?

Now Newsweek has joined the newly aware, but with a dash more honesty. In a piece titled Uncertain Science, the normally climate alarm sounding magazine has also acknowledged the turning tide:

Blame economic worries, another freezing winter, or the cascade of scandals emerging from the world’s leading climate-research body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But concern over global warming has cooled down dramatically. In über-green Germany, only 42 percent of citizens worry about global warming now, down from 62 percent in 2006. In Britain, just 26 percent believe climate change is man-made, down from 41 percent as recently as November 2009. And Americans rank global warming dead last in a list of 21 problems that concern them, according to a January Pew poll.

Now, such news from the MSM would normally be followed by a lengthy sermon about the effects of a well-funded “denial” machine and simple-minded fools confusing weather with climate. Or, as witnessed by the Times piece, how easily misled are the public by “denier” tricks. But Newsweek’s Stefan Theil instead broke with the usual alarmist ad-hominem and declared that “[t]his is no dispute between objective scientists and crazed flat-earthers.” Writes Theil:

The lines cut through the profession itself. Very few scientists dispute a link between man-made CO2 and global warming. Where it gets fuzzy is the extent and time frame of the effect. One crucial point of contention is climate “sensitivity”—the mathematical formula that translates changes in CO2 production to changes in temperature. In addition, scientists are not sure how to explain a slowdown in the rise of global temperatures that began about a decade ago.

While not entirely accurate (more than a few scientists reject the notion of CO2-influenced warming outright), by publishing those words Newsweek has gone where few (if any) left-leaning newsmagazines have gone before – admitting that there’s a problem with the “science is settled” mantra.

Needless to say, Theil’s take-away from a continuing climate debate isn’t likely to please the Cap-and-Tax-and-Control crowd:

There are excellent reasons to limit emissions and switch to cleaner fuels—including an estimated 750,000 annual pollution deaths in China, the potential to create jobs at home instead of enriching nasty regimes sitting on oil wells, the need to provide cheap sources of power to the world’s poorest regions, and the still-probable threat that global warming is underway. At the moment, however, certainty about how fast—and how much—global warming changes the earth’s climate does not appear to be one of those reasons.

Okay, so he can’t help clinging to a “still-probable threat that global warming is underway,” which I suppose implies an anthropogenic cause, but at least he acknowledges that further unbiased investigation must precede any policy decisions.

Of greater note -- the same powerhouse publication that in its August 2007 cover story -- The Truth about Denial -- described climate skepticism as “an undermining of the science” now challenges the same AGW orthodoxy it once preached.

No wonder Ben Stewart is worried.

The $10 Trillion Climate Fraud

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=531731

Posted 04/28/2010 07:11 PM ET

Al Gore is co-founder of an investment management firm that is now the fifth-largest shareholder in the Chicago Climate Exchange. AP

Cap-And-Trade: While senators froth over Goldman Sachs and derivatives, a climate trading scheme being run out of the Chicago Climate Exchange would make Bernie Madoff blush. Its trail leads to the White House.

Lost in the recent headlines was Al Gore's appearance Monday in Denver at the annual meeting of the Council of Foundations, an association of the nation's philanthropic leaders.

"Time's running out (on climate change)," Gore told them. "We have to get our act together. You have a unique role in getting our act together."

Gore was right that foundations will play a key role in keeping the climate scam alive as evidence of outright climate fraud grows, just as they were critical in the beginning when the Joyce Foundation in 2000 and 2001 provided the seed money to start the Chicago Climate Exchange. It started trading in 2003, and what it trades is, essentially, air. More specifically perhaps, hot air.

The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) advertises itself as "North America's only cap-and-trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide." Barack Obama served on the board of the Joyce Foundation from 1994 to 2002 when the CCX startup grants were issued. As president, pushing cap-and-trade is one of his highest priorities. Now isn't that special?

Few Americans have heard of either entity. The Joyce Foundation was originally the financial nest egg of a widow whose family had made millions in the now out-of-favor lumber industry.

After her death, the foundation was run by philanthropists who increasingly dedicated their giving to liberal causes, including gun control, environmentalism and school changes.

Currently, CCX members agree to a voluntary but legally binding agreement to regulate greenhouse gases.

The CCX provides the mechanism in trading the very pollution permits and carbon offsets the administration's cap-and-trade proposals would impose by government mandate.

Thanks to Fox News' Glenn Beck, we have learned a lot about CCX, not the least of which is that its founder, Richard Sandor, says he knew Obama well back in the day when the Joyce Foundation awarded money to the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, where Sandor was a research professor.

Sandor estimates that climate trading could be "a $10 trillion dollar market." It could very well be, if cap-and-trade measures like Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer are signed into law, making energy prices skyrocket, and as companies buy and sell permits to emit those six "greenhouse" gases.

Could Cleaner Air Actually Intensify Global Warming?

Enlarge Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images

Is the solution to global warning more pollution?

April 25, 2010

As much of the world marked Earth Day this past week, the Environmental Protection Agency reported that air pollution has declined dramatically over the past 20 years. It sounds like good news, but science writer Eli Kintisch argues that there's a surprising downside: Cleaner air might actually intensify global warming.

"If we continue to cut back on smoke pouring forth from industrial smokestacks, the increase in global warming could be profound," Kintisch writes in an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times.

Kintisch isn't talking about greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide; he's talking about another kind of pollutant we put in the sky — "like aerosols from a spray can," he tells NPR's Guy Raz. "It turns out that those particles have a profound effect on maintaining the planet's temperature."

Greenhouse gases and aerosol pollutants work in opposing ways on the Earth's climate, Kintisch explains. "The greenhouse gases warm the planet when they're emitted, because they absorb heat reflected up from the ground — the greenhouse effect. These aerosols, though, do the opposite. They block sunlight, they make clouds more reflective — and by doing that, they actually cool the planet.

"The problem is that we're cutting the cooling pollution as we make our air cleaner," he says.

The Scope Of The Problem: Still A Mystery

Some scientists, he says, are confident that this is connected to global warming, but they don't know how large the effect is. "That's the frightening thing, because if it's a big cooling effect, it means that we've been actually warming the planet more than we know," Kintisch says. "As we take away that unexpectedly helpful cooling mask, we're going to be facing more global warming than we expected.

"If, however, the aerosol cooling is less than we fear, then it won't be such a big deal as we clean our air, though it will still be an effect."

The solution, of course, isn't to stop cutting air pollution. "We have to continue doing that, because these pollutants contribute to asthma, they contribute to respiratory diseases, they cause all sorts of health problems, and they make our environment dirty," he says. "But there's a variety of answers that are more sophisticated than simply continuing to pollute."

Gunk To The Rescue

One of those answers is pretty radical: injecting new pollutants into the stratosphere while we continue to clean up our emissions. It's one of the theories of "geoengineering" that Kintisch explores in his new book, Hack the Planet.

It sounds contradictory, but the idea is actually based on a natural polluter — volcanoes. Kintisch points out that nearly 20 years before the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland shut down air traffic across Europe, a much bigger volcano in the Philippines affected the climate over a much broader area.

"In 1991, when Mount Pinatubo erupted, it put tons of sulfur into the stratosphere," he says. "Those sulfur aerosols cooled the planet."

So if we found ourselves in a climate crisis where oceans were rising rapidly and coastal areas were flooding, some scientists think "we could mimic the cooling effect of natural volcanoes and make man-made volcanoes by putting our own gunk, essentially, up in the upper atmosphere," Kintisch says.

"It's unclear whether we would be able to respond and actually stop a disintegrating ice sheet situation," he cautions. "However, some scientists think we're getting near that worse-case scenario right now."

More Global Warming Profiteering by Obama Energy Official

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/more-global-warming-profiteering-by-obama-energy-official/

Surprising documents made available to this author reveal that Assistant Secretary of Energy Cathy Zoi has a huge financial stake in companies likely to profit from the Obama administration’s “green” policies.

Zoi, who left her position as CEO of the Alliance for Climate Protection — founded by Al Gore — to serve as assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, now manages billions in “green jobs” funding. But the disclosure documents show that Zoi not only is in a position to affect the fortunes of her previous employer, ex-Vice President Al Gore, but that she herself has large holdings in two firms that could directly profit from policies proposed by the Department of Energy...

Scientist says Arctic getting colder

http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog

MOSCOW, April 23 (UPI) -- A Russian scientist says the Arctic may be getting colder, not warmer, which would hamper the international race to discover new mineral fields.

An Arctic cold snap that began in 1998 could last for years, freezing the northern marine passage and making it impassable without icebreaking ships, said Oleg Pokrovsky of the Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory.

"I think the development of the shelf will face large problems," Pokrovsky said Thursday at a seminar on research in the Polar regions.

Scientists who believe the climate is warming may have been misled by data from U.S. meteorological stations located in urban areas, where dense microclimates creates higher temperatures, RIA Novosti quoted Pokrovsky as saying.

"Politicians who placed their bets on global warming may lose the pot," Pokrovsky said.

Global warming graph attacked by study

By Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent

Published: April 14 2010 19:51 Last updated: April 14 2010 19:51

A key piece of evidence in climate change science was slammed as “exaggerated” on Wednesday by the UK’s leading statistician, in a vindication of claims that global warming sceptics have been making for years.

Professor David Hand, president of the Royal Statistical Society, said that a graph shaped like an ice hockey stick that has been used to represent the recent rise in global temperatures had been compiled using “inappropriate” methods.

“It used a particular statistical technique that exaggerated the effect [of recent warming],” he said.

The criticism came as part of a report published on Wednesday that found the scientists behind the “Climategate” e-mail scandal had behaved “honestly and fairly” and showed “no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice”.

The e-mails were hacked last autumn from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. They caused a storm, as they appeared to show scientists manipulating and concealing data.

Although Wednesday’s report – commissioned by UEA with advice from the Royal Society, the UK’s prestigious national science academy – exonerated the unit’s scientists, it criticised climate experts for failures in handling statistics.

“It is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians,” the report concluded.

The hockey stick graph was a key part of the scandal. In the e-mails, UEA’s Professor Phil Jones referred to a “trick” to “hide the decline” in temperatures suggested by certain sources of data. A similar trick was used in the hockey stick graph.

The UEA scientists said that “trick” merely referred to a scientific technique – an explanation accepted by some sceptics, including Lord Lawson, former Tory chancellor.

Prof Hand said his criticisms should not be seen as invalidating climate science. He pointed out that although the hockey stick graph – which dates from a study led by US climate scientist Michael Mann in 1998 – exaggerates some effects, the underlying data show a clear warming signal.

He accused sceptics of “identifying a few particular issues and blowing them up” to distort the true picture. The handful of errors found so far, including the exaggerated hockey stick graph and a mistaken claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035, were “isolated incidents”, he said. “If you look at any area of science, you would be able to find odd examples like this. It doesn’t detract from the vast bulk of the conclusions,” he said.

The report into the science produced by UEA, which came from a panel chaired by Lord Oxburgh, a scientist and former Shell chairman, was the second investigation into Climategate in the UK. The first, by a committee of MPs, also found the scientists innocent of manipulating data, though it said they may have breached Freedom of Information legislation.

An investigation into the scientists’ handling of FOI requests is still under way.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools.

Preview: 'The Factor' Confronts Al Gore

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGaHiWDZRNY

Follow the Money : James Hansen Gets Another Pay-Off

http://mensnewsdaily.com/sexandmetro/2010/04/09/follow-the-money-james-hansen-gets-another-pay-off/

Friday, April 9, 2010

Godfather of the global warming hoax, James Hansen has received a $100,000 “environmental prize for decades of work trying to alert politicians to what he called an unsolved emergency of global warming.”

Climate scientist James Hansen wins Sophie Prize : The “Sophie Prize” is awarded for disrupting free-market capitalism and pushing the world toward centralized control. In its mission statement, the organization behind the prize states:

Today’s economic system is at odds with the limits set by nature. Too many decisions are based on short-term profit for a few select groups rather than a moral and fair distribution of the world’s resources.

…

For as long as the means allow, The Sophie Prize will be awarded to an individual or an organization that, in a pioneering or a particularly creative way, has pointed to alternatives to the present development and put such alternatives into practice.

Hansen never hides his overpowering leftist political views and agenda, having traveled the world to declare that successful capitalists should be jailed. His prattle seems never to be more sophisticated that the target audience demands, with unexamined low-left statements like:

It’s been of parallel interest watching testimony in Congressional hearings about the greedy bastards who caused this Great Recession we’re laboring to overcome. The most frequent criticism was of their short-sighted, short-term view of cause-and-effect relationships. The fossil fuel militia aren’t even that advanced

Cows Absolved of Causing Global Warming With Nitrous Oxide

The research will reignite the argument over whether to eat red meat or not Photo: REUTERS

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7564682/Cows-absolved-of-causing-global-warming-with-nitrous-oxide.html

Livestock could actually be good for the environment according to a new study that found grazing cows or sheep can cut emissions of a powerful greenhouse gas.

By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Published: 7:00AM BST 08 Apr 2010

In the past environmentalists, from Lord Stern to Sir Paul McCartney, have urged people to stop eating meat because the methane produced by cattle causes global warming.

However a new study found that cattle grazed on the grasslands of China actually reduce another greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide.

Authors of the paper, published in Nature, say the research does not mean that producing livestock to eat is good for the environment in all countries. However in certain circumstances, it can be better for global warming to let animals graze on grassland.

The research will reignite the argument over whether to eat red meat after other studies suggested that grass fed cattle in the UK and US can also be good for the environment as long as the animals are free range.

Klaus Butterbach-Bahl, of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, carried out the study in Inner Mongolia in China. He found that grassland produced more nitrous oxide during the spring thaw when sheep or cattle have not been grazing. This is because the greenhouse gas, also known as laughing gas, is released by microbes in the soil. When the grass is long snow settles keeping the microbes warm and providing water, however when the grass is cut short by animals the ground freezes and the microbes die.

Dr Butterbach-Bahl said the study overturned assumptions about grazing goats and cattle.

"It's been generally assumed that if you increase livestock numbers you get a rise in emissions of nitrous oxide. This is not the case," he said.

Estimated nitrous oxide emissions from temperate grasslands in places like Inner Mongolia as well as vast swatches of the United States, Canada, Russia and China account for up a third of the total amount of the greenhouse gas produced every year. Nitrous oxide is the third most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and methane.

But Dr Butterbach-Bahl pointed out that the study did not take into account the methane produced by the livestock or the carbon dioxide produced if soil erodes. He also pointed out that much of the red meat eaten in the western world if from intensively farmed animals in southern countries.

He said the study does not overturn the case for cutting down on red meat but shows grazing livestock is not always bad for global warming.

Arctic Sea Ice Melting Season Posts Latest Start on Record

Bloomberg

Arctic Sea Ice Melting Season Posts Latest Start on Record

April 06, 2010, 1:52 PM EDT

By Alex Morales

April 6 (Bloomberg) -- The extent of sea ice over the Arctic Ocean grew until the last day of March, the latest the annual melting season has begun in 31 years of satellite records, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said.

Cold weather and winds from the north over the Bering Sea and Barents Sea meant that the area of ocean covered by ice expanded through last month, the Boulder, Colorado-based center said today in a statement on its Web site. That’s two days later than in 1999, the previous latest start to a melting season since satellite monitoring began in 1979.

Scientists have highlighted declining Arctic sea ice as an indicator of global warming. The NSIDC has said the Arctic Ocean could be largely ice-free during the summer by 2030. While this year’s melting season has started late, it probably won’t have an impact on the extent of ice in the summer, the group said.

“The ice that formed late in the season is thin and will melt quickly when temperatures rise,” the NSIDC said.

The peak ice extent of 15.25 million square kilometers (5.89 million square miles) “approached” the average for the years 1979 to 2000. It was 670,000 square kilometers more than the record low ice peak of 2006, the center said.

Melting started in March then reversed during a cold snap, prolonging the annual freeze.

In September, the researchers said Arctic sea ice shrank in 2009 to its third-lowest summer minimum on record, remaining “well outside the range of natural variability.”

--Editors: Randall Hackley, Reed Landberg

When the Germans give up on AGW you really do know it's all over…

By James Delingpole Politics
Last updated: April 1st, 2010

No people on earth are more righteously Green than the Germans. They built the foundations and set the tone of the modern Green movement in, ahem, the 1930s. They invented the phrase Atomkraft Nein Danke. They were the first country to allow nasty, dangerous Sixties eco-radicals to reinvent themselves as respectable politicians. They were the first place to buy, wholesale, into the solar power con, which is why so many of their rooves – especially on churches – shimmer and glow like reflective-coated crusties at a mid-Nineties rave, while the German taxpayer is ruing the day his government ever chose to subsidise (Achtung Herr Cameron!) this fantastically pointless scheme… (Hat tip: Robert Groezinger, et al)

So when the Germans say “Auf Wiedersehn AGW” it really is time for the rest of the world to sit up and take notice. And that’s exactly what they just have said. See for yourself in this tear-inducing glorious feature in one of their leading newspapers.

Der Spiegel has done a number on AGW - one of the best and most comprehensive I’ve read in any newspaper anywhere – and it could hardly be more damning.

Truly, the experience is akin to having honey (really good stuff, heather probably) licked off one’s body by nubile blonde Nibelungen.

On the recently vindicated Prof Phil Jones:

“I am 100 percent confident that the climate has warmed,” Jones says imploringly. “I did not manipulate or fabricate any data.”

His problem is that the public doesn’t trust him anymore. Since unknown hackers secretly copied 1,073 private emails between members of his research team and published them on the Internet, his credibility has been destroyed — and so has that of an entire profession that had based much of its work on his research until now.

On the politicisation of science:

Reinhard Hüttl, head of the German Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam near Berlin and the president of the German Academy of Science and Engineering, believes that basic values are now under threat. “Scientists should never be as wedded to their theories that they are no longer capable of refuting them in the light of new findings,” he says. Scientific research, Hüttl adds, is all about results, not beliefs. Unfortunately, he says, there are more and more scientists who want to be politicians.

On the Urban Heat Island Effect (complete with nice dig at the aforementioned “exonerated, give him his job back” Prof Jones)

Critics reproach Jones for not taking one factor, in particular, sufficiently into account: the growth of urban areas. Stations that used to be rural are now in cities. And because it is always warmer in cities than outside, the temperatures measured at these stations are bound to rise.

Environmental economist Ross McKitrick, one of McIntyre’s associates, examined all rapidly growing countries, in which this urban heat effect was to be expected, and found a correlation between economic growth and temperature rise. He submitted his study in time for the last IPCC report.

Jones did everything he could to suppress the publication, which was critical of him. It proved advantageous to him that he had been one of the two main authors of the temperature chapter. In one of the hacked emails, he openly admitted that he wanted to keep this interfering publication out of the IPCC report at all costs, “even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

On the myth of monster storms:

The all-clear signal on the hurricane front is another setback for the IPCC. In keeping with lead author Kevin Trenberth’s predictions, the IPCC report warned that there would be more hurricanes in a greenhouse climate. One of the graphs in the IPCC report is particularly mysterious. Without specifying a source, the graph suggestively illustrates how damage caused by extreme weather increases with rising average temperatures.

When hurricane expert Roger Pielke, Jr. of the University of Colorado at Boulder saw the graph, he was appalled. “I would like to discover this sort of relationship myself,” he says, “but it simply isn’t supported by the facts at the moment.”

Pielke tried to find out where the graph had come from. He traced it to the chief scientist at a London firm that performs risk calculations for major insurance companies. The insurance scientist claims that the graph was never meant for publication. How the phantom graph found its way into the IPCC report is still a mystery.

Der Spiegel would never have got away with this article four years ago. But then, in 2006, according to a poll, 62 per cent of Germans surveyed answered “Yes” to the question “Are you personally afraid of climate change.” In 2010 that figure has dropped to 42 per cent, which for those of you who haven’t done the math means that the majority of Germans are now not personally afraid of climate change.

Way to go, Germans! Gott Mitt Uns and all that. Stimmt. Genau

Climate Craziness of the Week – Greenpeace posts threats

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/03/climate-craziness-of-the-week-greenpeace-posts-threats/

The Spinmeister At It Again

Gore Attaches Global Warming as Cause to Last Weekend's Storm in Northeast
Former vice president points toward weather events as evidence of climate change during 'strategy conference call' for supporters.

By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
3/16/2010 6:22:24 AM

If there’s a drought – it’s global warming. When there’s a hurricane – it’s global warming. If there are heavy snows or even blizzards – it’s somehow global warming. And amazingly, the latest round of rainy and windy weather in the Northeast, well that’s consistent with this phenomenon as well, so says former Vice President Al Gore.

Gore, the self-anointed climate change alarmist-in-chief, told supporters on a March 15 conference call that severe weather in certain regions of the country could be attributed to carbon in the atmosphere – including the recent rash of rainy weather.

“[T]he odds have shifted toward much larger downpours,” Gore said. “And we have seen that happen in the Northeast, we’ve seen it happen in the Northwest – in both of those regions are among those that scientists have predicted for a long time would begin to experience much larger downpours.”

But Gore had a specific example in mind. He explained this recent soaking in the Northeastern United States was “consistent” with what global warming alarmists were projecting.

“Just look at what has been happening for the last three days,” Gore said. “The so-called skeptics haven’t noted it because it’s not snow. But the downpours and heavy winds are consistent with what the scientists have long warned about.”


So what did Gore suggest? He proposed to solve these weather events he tied to climate change by revamping the American economy to being powered by “clean renewable energy” and phasing out the reliance of foreign oil.

“And we now face the opportunity to start doing something about this,” Gore said. “Rather than continuing to spend billions of dollars on foreign oil, we can make a transition to clean energy and pass that money here at home on clean renewable energy sources, creating millions of new jobs, building new industries – making us more secure.”

One solution of weaning the United States the reliance on foreign oil would be to open up parcels to offshore drilling of the U.S. continental shelf, a policy Gore has opposed. However, he did underscore the national security a need of fossil fuels presented the country.

“We can address the security threat that I mentioned,” Gore said. “And incidentally, a large number of top ranking generals and admirals have warned that fossil fuels and our nation’s fragile electricity grid pose significant security threats to the United States.”

Gore’s remarks are consistent with the media view of the issue. Journalists have repeatedly preferred the alarmist view on the climate over any opposition even when the weather is inconveniently different than predicted.

Stockholm Initiative

PRESSRELEASE

Stockholm March 5, 2010

Climate cover-up continues

Climate scientist delivers false statement in parliament enquiry
It has come to our attention, that last Monday (March 1), Dr. Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (CRU), in a hearing with the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee made a statement in regards to the alleged non-availability for disclosure of Swedish climate data.
Dr. Jones asserted that the weather services of several countries, including Sweden, Canada and Poland, had refused to allow their data to be released, to explain his reluctance to comply with Freedom of Information requests.
This statement is false and misleading in regards to the Swedish data. All Swedish climate data are available in the public domain. As is demonstrated in the attached correspondence between SMHI (Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute), the UK Met Office and Dr. Jones (the last correspondence dated yesterday March 4), this has been clearly explained to Dr. Jones. What is also clear is that SMHI is reluctant to be connected to data that has undergone “processing” by the East Anglia research unit.

STOCKHOLM INITIATIVE
Göran Ahlgren, secretary general
Kungsgatan 82
112 27 Stockholm, Sweden
Tel: +4687555335, Mob: +46707555969 goran.ahlgren@stockholminitiative.com, www.stockholminitiative.com

A question to the USGS and NPR

Which of these states is closest to 20,000 square kilometers in area?

WUWT reader “DC” points us to this Gore-esque pronouncement from a USGS scientist about “Antarctic ice loss”.

Jane Ferrigno of the U.S. Geological Survey in a National Public Radio interview
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124178690

Ms. FERRIGNO: The fact that the ice shelves are changing on the peninsula is a significant signal that global change, climate warming, is affecting the ice cover of Antarctica. It’s affecting first the area that’s towards the north, that’s slightly warmer, but the effect of the warming has traveled from the northern part of the peninsula to the southern part of the peninsula, where it’s colder.

…

“RAZ: Give us a sense of how much ice [on the Antarctic peninsula] has been lost over the past, say, 10 years.

Ms. FERRIGNO: I think I’ll go back 20 years, and in the last 20 years, I would say at least 20,000 square kilometers of ice has been lost, and that’s comparable to an area somewhere between the state of Texas and the state of Alaska.

RAZ: So about the size of the state of Texas in terms of ice has been lost in the past 20 years. ”

It gets better.
Ms. FERRIGNO: Well, this is a fairly small amount of ice when you consider the whole Antarctic continent consists of about 13 million square kilometers of ice.

RAZ: I mean, it sounds so dramatic, the size of Texas, right?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. FERRIGNO: It is. It is very dramatic, and it is larger than the size of Texas, but when you consider the entire Antarctic ice sheet, it’s still a fairly minimal amount. But the thing that we’re really interested in seeing is that this is a sort of a red flag because if the warming continues, if the retreat continues, if the amount of ice on the continent starts to flow into the water, then there will be substantial impact to the sea level.

RAZ: That’s Jane Ferrigno. She is a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Jane Ferrigno, thanks for coming in.

Ms. FERRIGNO: Thank you.

Ms. Ferrigno might do well to have a look at this map of the USA and Antarctica compared at Texas A&M University’s Polar Science program to get a sense of scale.

Maybe Ms. Ferrigno will be embarrassed enough by her geographic ineptitude and will heed Gavin Schmidt’s advice and stop trying to “persuade the public“.

Head of 'Climategate' research unit admits he hid data - because it was 'standard practice'

On the spot: Professor Phil Jones being grilled by the Science and Technology committee in the Commons yesterday

By David Derbyshire
Last updated at 1:11 AM on 02nd March 2010

Scientists at the heart of the Climategate row were yesterday accused by a leading academic body of undermining science's credibility.

The Institute of Physics said 'worrying implications' had been raised after it was revealed the University of East Anglia had manipulated data on global warming.

The rebuke - the strongest yet from the scientific community - came as Professor Phil Jones, the researcher at the heart of the scandal, told MPs he had written 'some pretty awful emails' - but denied trying to suppress data.

The Climategate row, which was first revealed by the Daily Mail in November, was triggered when a hacker stole hundreds of emails sent from East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit.

They revealed scientists plotting how to avoid responding to Freedom of Information requests from climate change sceptics.

Some even appeared to show the researchers discussing how to manipulate raw data from tree rings about historical temperatures.

In one, Professor Jones talks about using a 'trick' to massage figures and 'hide the decline'.

Giving evidence to a Science and Technology Committee inquiry, the Institute of Physics said: 'Unless the disclosed emails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research and for the credibility of the scientific method.

'The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital.'

Last month, the Information Commissioner ruled the CRU had broken Freedom of Information rules by refusing to hand over raw data.

But yesterday Professor Jones - in his first public appearance since the scandal broke - denied manipulating the figures.

Looking pale and clasping his shaking hands in front of him, he told MPs: 'I have obviously written some pretty awful emails.'

He admitted withholding data about global temperatures but said the information was publicly available from American websites.

And he claimed it was not 'standard practice' to release data and computer models so other scientists could check and challenge research.

'I don't think there is anything in those emails that really supports any view that I, or the CRU, have been trying to pervert the peer review process in any way,' he said.

Professor Jones, who was forced to stand down as head of the CRU last year, also insisted the scientific findings on climate change were robust.

The Al Gore Comedy Hour

Posted By Roger Kimball On February 28, 2010 @ 9:26

Admit it: you can’t think of Al Gore any more without tittering, can you? Even some Apple shareholders are disgusted with the former VP turned eco-nut moneybags. He’s become “a laughing stock,” declaimed one disgusted shareholder [1], and no wonder.

True, Al Gore has positively cleaned up [2] by exploiting the business opportunities that have come his way from the Chruch of Gaia, I’m Green-than-thou, Inc. The London Telegraph describes him [3] as our “first carbon billionaire.” “There’s gold in them there faked studies, pardner!” Gore’s successful gaming of the system argues for a certain cunning and eye for the main chance. The guy has hauled in an impressive pile of pelf these last few years.

But that success says nothing about his sanity. Alas, the chap is clearly bonkers. I submit as exhibit A the interminable Op-Ed column that his PR-firm, a.k.a. the New York Times [4], issued today. Here’s the first paragraph:

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

“Unimaginable calamity,” eh? “Large-scale, preventive measures,” you say? “Human civilization as we know it”? Chicken Little time, what?

Yes, but the part to pay special attention to, of course, is the bit about “Large-scale, preventive measures,” i.e., the heavy, heavy hand of government bursting in to tax and regulate the U.S. economy to death. That’s the goal — or, rather, the goal is putting the government in charge against what Gore later calls “market triumphalism, i.e, the free, you know, market — while various energy enterprises in which Al Gore just happens to have a stake get the red carpet treatment.

A nice question: does Al Gore actually believe the rubbish he spouts? Or is it merely opportunism on the march? I don’t know, but if I were a betting man, I’d say that he has successfully melded credulity and opportunism in to one bloviating whole. Never mind the fact — that’s “fact,” Kemo Sabe, as in “what is actually the case, no foolin’” — never mind that the entire Climate Hysteria Industry is in full-scale retreat since the East Anglia University fraud [5] was revealed last year. Phil Jones will not, repeat not, be attending any environmental rallies until further notice.

It is just lovely that the New York Times — the world’s most discredited newspaper — would give so thoroughly discredited a mountebank this lavish soapbox upon which to make a fool of himself. Next stop, Hyde Park Corner — or maybe a padded cell.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from Roger's Rules: http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2010/02/28/the-al-gore-comedy-hour/

URLs in this post:

[1] declaimed one disgusted shareholder: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/02/27/al-gore-mocked-apple-meeting-hes-become-laughingstock

[2] cleaned up: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Al-Gore--environmental-saboteur-84922887.html

[3] The London Telegraph describes him: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/6491195/Al-Gore-could-become-worlds-first-carbon-billionaire.html

[4] the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28gore.html?pagewanted=all

[5] East Anglia University fraud: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/6636563/University-of-East-Anglia-emails-the-most-contentious-quotes.html


Click he

You Can Call Him Al ... But Al Won't Call You Back

Dec. 14: Former Vice President Al Gore speaks at the U.N. Climate summit in Copenhagen.


Gene J. Koprowski
- FOXNews.com
- February 26, 2010
You Can Call Him Al ... But Al Won't Call You Back

Al Gore won a Nobel Prize and an Oscar for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. But in the last three months, as global warming has gone from a scientific near-certitude to the subject of satire, Gore -- the public face of global warming -- has been mum on the topic.


Al Gore won a Nobel Prize and an Oscar for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. But in the last three months, as global warming has gone from a scientific near-certitude to the subject of satire, Gore -- the public face of global warming -- has been silent on the topic.

The former vice president apparently finds it inconvenient even to answer calls to testify before the U.S. Senate. You can call him Al . . . but he won't call back.

On Tuesday, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe -- a prominent skeptic of global warming theory and the Republican leader of the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee -- issued a request for Gore to come testify on global warming. In an interview with FoxNews.com, Inhofe said he wants Gore to appear because "it will be interesting to ask him on what science he based his movie," a film the senator considers "science fiction."

Gore has yet to respond, but that didn't prevent him from causing a stir at Apple's shareholder meeting Thursday. According to CNET, Gore was seated in the first row while several stockholders bashed his high-profile views on climate change. One reportedly said Gore "has become a laughingstock. The glaciers have not melted."

Gore did not reply, and he has not commented on his blog or Twitter feed.

Inhofe says he hopes Gore will address the recent Climate-gate scandals that have besmirched the science, scientists and politicians who back the theory of manmade climate change. Last fall, news outlets in the United Kingdom exposed a scandal in which leading global warming scientists conspired in e-mails to hide data that contradicted "proof" of manmade global warming. Then the world's leaders failed to reach a deal on climate change policy in Copenhagen. And the U.N.'s climate change research body admitted flaws in its report that concluded that the Himalayan glaciers were melting, the Arctic ice cap was fading away, and the Amazon rainforest was in imminent danger.

Since his appearance at the Copenhagen climate summit in December, Gore has been reluctant to talk to the media, making only a handful of public appearances.

On Jan. 16, he spoke at the American Library Association conference at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, and he signed copies of his newest book, Our Choice: How We Can Solve the Climate Crisis.On Feb. 22, at the IBM Pulse Conference in Las Vegas, Gore commented on how the environment was a fantastic business opportunity.

"We are in the presence of one of the greatest opportunities in the history of business to become much more efficient and eliminate waste, pollution and losses all at the same time," he said.

The media, meanwhile, have started to ask why the world's most famous advocate of all things green remains mute on the growing chorus of opposition.

"The godfather of climate hysteria is in hiding as another of his wild claims unravels -- this one about global warming causing seas to swallow us up," the editors of Investors Business Daily wrote on Tuesday. "We've not seen or heard much of the former vice president, Oscar winner and Nobel Prize recipient recently as the case for disastrous man-made climate change collapses."

After days of calls and e-mails by FoxNews.com to the "Al Gore Support Center" -- located online at algoresupportcenter.com and in the real world in Carthage, Tenn -- a spokeswoman for Gore declined to comment on the matter.

"Thank you for your kind request," wrote Kalee Kreider. "Unfortunately, Mr. Gore's schedule is extremely overbooked and we're unable to offer any availability. It's very difficult to decline invitations such as yours, but it's an unfortunate inevitability of the growing influence of the climate-crisis message and the demand on Mr. Gore's time. We do apologize, but thanks for your interest."

Inhofe says it's important that Gore testify before the Congress and tell the full story.

"First Climate-gate happened, before Copenhagen, and everything unraveled on the global warming front," the senator said. "It appears that the scientific community has been deliberately falsifying science for years, whether it's the melting of the Himalayas or the melting of the polar ice. All of that was in his movie. So we tried to reach him."

"When his movie came out," Inhofe added, "parents of small children told me their kids had to go to the psychiatrist over bad dreams about global warming. We owe it to the public to find out where the science came from. This is the greatest scientific scandal of our generation."

Others in the environmental community agree on the need for a hearing, and for the star witness to appear. "Al Gore absolutely needs to testify," said Paul Driessen, a senior fellow with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a non-profit that focuses on energy, the environment and international affairs.

Inhofe said global warming science is still being used by the Obama administration to support regulations to rein in emissions, despite indications that Britain's official weather office may redo all of its data, and indications that the U.N. will anounce changes in reaction to Climate-gate. He said he believes that global warming legislation could not generate more than 20 votes in the Senate right now.

He said he has issued calls for the inspectors general of the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to come to his committee and testify. He said criminal law may have been broken in the U.K. when scientists there refused to comply with requests for information in a timely fashion, and he worries that untoward acts may have been committed in the U.S. as well.

"What other kinds of unethical or criminal things have happened?" he asked.

But Inhofe's critics said the senator's demands reflect his own agenda. "Senator Inhofe will never stop working to protect Big Oil by denying that global warming exists, and frankly he's an embarrassment to the United States Senate and the nation," said Kert Davies, research director for Greenpeace.

"This is just a continuation of his 15-year-plus smear campaign and clearly not a serious effort to discuss the increasingly urgent warnings from climate scientists about what is happening to our planet."