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.


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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


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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."

UKIP would ban Al Gore film in schools

Al Gore's global warming film would be banned in schools under plans by the UK Independence Party (UKIP) to court the climate sceptic vote.

Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Published: 6:30AM GMT 25 Feb 2010

The party, that has traditionally campaigned on the anti-European Union vote, launched a manifesto for the environment.
Following a number of scandals around the science of climate change, UKIP are promising to launch a Royal Commission led by a High Court judge to investigate whether global warming is man-made.

Pending the results of the commission, the party, that has no MPs at the moment, have promised to build new fossil-fuelled power stations to meet energy demands and scrap subsidies for wind farms. Global warming 'propaganda' like the Al Gore film Inconvenient Truth will be banned in schools and public authorities will not be allowed to spend money on climate change initiatives.
A recent poll found the just one in five people believe climate change is man-made, compared to one in three a year ago.
The survey of 1,000 people found people over 65 were more likely to be sceptical.
Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, the UKIP climate change spokesman, said his party was the only opportunity to vote against the climate change consensus.
"At the moment all the major parties have decided to sign up to the eco-fascist agenda and therefore anyone who does not believe in eco-fascist agenda has no where else to go," he said.
Climate change sceptics claim that emails stolen from the University of East Anglia show scientists were willing to manipulate the data around global warming in a scandal known as 'climategate'.
In another scandal known as 'glaciergate' the UN body in charge of climate change science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was forced to retract a claim that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.
However leading scientists, including the Royal Society, insist the case for man-made global warming remains convincing and it is a grave threat to human civilisation.
As part of ongoing efforts to restore public confidence, the Met Office announced it is to re-look at all the temperature data going back for the last 160 years.
The global project, in partnership with other weather services around the world, will gather the original data from thousands of weather stations around the world and add new information. The data will then be independently analysed to assess how the temperature has changed over time and in different regions. The results are due in three year's time.

Bill Nye in No Spin Zone

Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels

Study claimed in 2009 that sea levels would rise by up to 82cm by the end of century – but the report's author now says true estimate is still unknown.

David Adam
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 21 February 2010 18.00 GMT


The Maldives is likely to become submerged if the current pace of climate change continues to raise sea levels. Photograph: Reinhard Krause/Reuters

Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.

The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century.

At the time, Mark Siddall, from the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Bristol, said the study "strengthens the confidence with which one may interpret the IPCC results". The IPCC said that sea level would probably rise by 18cm-59cm by 2100, though stressed this was based on incomplete information about ice sheet melting and that the true rise could be higher.

Many scientists criticised the IPCC approach as too conservative, and several papers since have suggested that sea level could rise more. Martin Vermeer of the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany published a study in December that projected a rise of 0.75m to 1.9m by 2100.

Siddall said that he did not know whether the retracted paper's estimate of sea level rise was an overestimate or an underestimate.

Announcing the formal retraction of the paper from the journal, Siddall said: "It's one of those things that happens. People make mistakes and mistakes happen in science." He said there were two separate technical mistakes in the paper, which were pointed out by other scientists after it was published. A formal retraction was required, rather than a correction, because the errors undermined the study's conclusion.

"Retraction is a regular part of the publication process," he said. "Science is a complicated game and there are set procedures in place that act as checks and balances."

Nature Publishing Group, which publishes Nature Geoscience, said this was the first paper retracted from the journal since it was launched in 2007.

The paper – entitled "Constraints on future sea-level rise from past sea-level change" – used fossil coral data and temperature records derived from ice-core measurements to reconstruct how sea level has fluctuated with temperature since the peak of the last ice age, and to project how it would rise with warming over the next few decades.

In a statement the authors of the paper said: "Since publication of our paper we have become aware of two mistakes which impact the detailed estimation of future sea level rise. This means that we can no longer draw firm conclusions regarding 21st century sea level rise from this study without further work.

"One mistake was a miscalculation; the other was not to allow fully for temperature change over the past 2,000 years. Because of these issues we have retracted the paper and will now invest in the further work needed to correct these mistakes."

In the Nature Geoscience retraction, in which Siddall and his colleagues explain their errors, Vermeer and Rahmstorf are thanked for "bringing these issues to our attention".

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

I Won't Say, "I Told You So"

An Inconvenient Driveway

A leading global warming scientist has some startling news for you. Read today’s commentary to learn more.

Thu, Feb. 18, 2010 Posted: 11:26 PM EDT


As you probably heard, between 40 and 50 inches of snow fell in the Washington, D.C., area in early February. The record snowfall brought the entire mid-Atlantic region to a halt-paralyzing the government, this time for snow.

A Washington Post online headline captured it: “Senate climate change hearings canceled because of storm.”

The people most inconvenienced by the blizzards weren’t the residents of this region, or the senators-it was the proponents of man-made global warming. Scientists and activists insisted that people on this side of the Atlantic ignore the evidence in their driveways and, instead, trust their computer models.

Not only did they tell us that this winter’s weather didn’t disprove their global warming data, they told us that the record snows were caused by global warming. Really!

Of course, 10 years ago, they told us that, on account of the same global warming, “snow is starting to disappear from our lives.” We were told that, because of all that nasty CO2, British children “just aren’t going to know what snow is.”

Ten years later, they most certainly do. Not only British children, but children in every state except Hawaii. All of Britain, much of the rest of Europe, and the United States have experienced snowfalls this winter. The data suggests, in fact, that “snow is coming earlier and heavier than it used to.”

If all of the white stuff hasn’t left you doubting those computer models, maybe Phil Jones can help you. That would be ironic since, until recently, Jones was the director of the Climate Research Unit at Britain’s East Anglia University. He was the keeper of the data upon which the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) based its predictions-data that has been, to put it mildly, called into question.

In an interview with the BBC, Jones acknowledged that there has been no significant warming since 1995. Let me repeat that. One of the world’s leading global warming advocates says there has been no significant warming since 1995. Fifteen years.

He also indicated that there is nothing exceptional about the warming the occurred between 1979 and 1995. He even admitted that is was possible that it might have been warmer during the pre-industrial Middle Ages than it is now.

If all of that sounds familiar, it ought to. Those very points have been made by global warming skeptics and reported frequently on BreakPoint. If there has been no significant warming during a period when the models predicted exactly that, or if the world was warmer 1000 years ago before we started burning fossils fuels, then maybe these models, just maybe, are wrong.

And threatening us with global catastrophe and upsetting children with pictures of drowning animals becomes unconscionable.

Of course, neither Jones nor his fellow advocates will admit that. As Jones also acknowledged, the IPCC tends to leave “inconvenient findings” out of its reports.

Why? It’s a matter of worldview.

Activists and scientists have too much invested in human-caused global warming. For activists, it’s the threat by which they can create their version of a better world, and scientists have staked their careers and reputations on the accuracy of those computer models.

Given what’s at stake, inconvenient snow and cold has to be explained away. Assuming, that is, the people who do so can get out of their driveways.

From BreakPoint, February 17, 2010, Copyright 2010, Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with the permission of Prison Fellowship Ministries. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced or distributed without the express written permission of Prison Fellowship Ministries. “BreakPoint®” and “Prison Fellowship Ministries®” are registered trademarks of Prison Fellowship
Chuck Colson
Christian Post Guest Columnist

Catastrophe Denied: The Science of the Skeptic’s Position

Catastrophe Denied: The Science of the Skeptics Position (studio version) from Warren Meyer on Vimeo.

Christy and McKittrick in the UK Times: doubts on station data

A new story by Jonathan Leake in the Sunday Times puts the spotlight on surface temperature data.


Above: Rome’s airport weather station. Here is the interactive view

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.
The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site.

Christy has published research papers looking at these effects in three different regions: east Africa, and the American states of California and Alabama.

“The story is the same for each one,” he said. “The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development.”

The IPCC faces similar criticisms from Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, who was invited by the panel to review its last report.

The experience turned him into a strong critic and he has since published a research paper questioning its methods.

“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.

….

I and the surfacestations project get a mention also.

Read the remainder in the Sunday Times

Global warming's snowball fight

By Dana Milbank
Sunday, February 14, 2010; A19

The back-to-back snowstorms in the capital were an inconvenient meteorological phenomenon for Al Gore.

"It's going to keep snowing in D.C. until Al Gore cries 'uncle'," Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) exulted on Twitter.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) posted photos on Facebook of "Al Gore's New Home" -- a six-foot igloo the Inhofe family built on Capitol Hill.

"Where is Al Gore?" taunted Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.).

"He has not been seen since the snow and the arctic blast have pummeled the Eastern Seaboard in America, turning it into a frozen tundra," reported Fox News's Glenn Beck, who also tastefully suggested hara-kiri for climate scientists.

As a scientific proposition, claiming that heavy snow in the mid-Atlantic debunks global warming theory is about as valid as claiming that the existence of John Edwards debunks the theory of evolution. In fact, warming theory suggests that you'd see trends toward heavier snows, because warmer air carries more moisture. This latest snowfall, though, is more likely the result of a strong El Niño cycle that has parked the jet stream right over the mid-Atlantic states.

Still, there's some rough justice in the conservatives' cheap shots. In Washington's blizzards, the greens were hoist by their own petard.

For years, climate-change activists have argued by anecdote to make their case. Gore, in his famous slide shows, ties human-caused global warming to increasing hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, drought and the spread of mosquitoes, pine beetles and disease. It's not that Gore is wrong about these things. The problem is that his storm stories have conditioned people to expect an endless worldwide heat wave, when in fact the changes so far are subtle.

Other environmentalists have undermined the cause with claims bordering on the outlandish; they've blamed global warming for shrinking sheep in Scotland, more shark and cougar attacks, genetic changes in squirrels, an increase in kidney stones and even the crash of Air France Flight 447. When climate activists make the dubious claim, as a Canadian environmental group did, that global warming is to blame for the lack of snow at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, then they invite similarly specious conclusions about Washington's snow -- such as the Virginia GOP ad urging people to call two Democratic congressmen "and tell them how much global warming you get this weekend."

Argument-by-anecdote isn't working. Consider the words of Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), chairman of the energy committee, who told The Hill newspaper last week that the snow "makes it more challenging" to make the case about global warming's danger to people who aren't "taking time to review the scientific arguments."

Scientific arguments, too, are problematic. In a conference call arranged Thursday by the liberal Center for American Progress to refute the snow antics of Inhofe et al., the center's Joe Romm made the well-worn statements that "the overwhelming weight of the scientific literature" points to human-caused warming and that doubters "don't understand the science."

The science is overwhelming -- but not definitive. Romm's claim was inadvertently shot down by his partner on the call, the Weather Underground's Jeff Masters, who confessed that "there's a huge amount of natural variability in the climate system" and not enough years of measurements to know exactly what's going on. "Unfortunately we don't have that data so we are forced to make decisions based on inadequate data."

The scientific case has been further undermined by high-profile screw-ups. First there were the hacked e-mails of a British research center that suggested the scientists were stacking the deck to overstate the threat. Now comes word of numerous errors in a 2007 report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, including the bogus claim that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear in 25 years.

For those concerned about warming, it's time for a shift in emphasis. Fortunately, one has already been provided to them by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has done more than any Democrat to keep climate legislation alive this year. His solution: skip the hurricanes and Himalayan glaciers and keep the argument on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent annually on foreign oil, some of that going to terrorists rather than to domestic job creation.

Al Gore, for one, seems to realize it's time for a new tactic. New TV ads released during last week's blizzards by Gore's climate advocacy group say nothing about climate science. They show workers asking their senators for more jobs from clean energy.

That's a good sign. If the Washington snows persuade the greens to put away the slides of polar bears and pine beetles and to keep the focus on national security and jobs, it will have been worth the shoveling.

danamilbank@washpost.com

Goreacle's Cult Again With Disinformation.

U.N. climate panel admits Dutch sea level flaw

Sat, Feb 13 2010
OSLO (Reuters) - The U.N. panel of climate experts overstated how much of the Netherlands is below sea level, according to a preliminary report on Saturday, admitting yet another flaw after a row last month over Himalayan glacier melt.

A background note by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said a 2007 report wrongly stated that 55 percent of the country was below sea level since the figure included areas above sea level, prone to flooding along rivers.

The United Nations has said errors in the 2007 report of about 3,000 pages do not affect the core conclusions that human activities, led by burning fossil fuels, are warming the globe.

"The sea level statistic was used for background information only, and the updated information remains consistent with the overall conclusions," the IPCC note dated February 12 said.

Skeptics say errors have exposed sloppiness and over-reliance on "grey literature" outside leading scientific journals. The panel's reports are a main guide for governments seeking to work out costly policies to combat global warming.

The 2007 report included the sentence: "The Netherlands is an example of a country highly susceptible to both sea level rise and river flooding because 55 percent of its territory is below sea level."

"A preliminary analysis suggests that the sentence discussed should end with: 'because 55 percent of the Netherlands is at risk of flooding'," the IPCC note said.

The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, the original source of the incorrect data, said on February 5 that just 26 percent of the country is below sea level and 29 percent susceptible to river flooding.

The IPCC said the error was widespread -- it quoted a report from the Dutch Ministry of Transport saying "about 60 percent" of the country is below sea level, and a European Commission study saying "about half."

The panel expressed regret last month after admitting that the 2007 report exaggerated the pace of melt of the Himalayan glaciers, which feed rivers from China to India in dry seasons, in a sentence that said they could all vanish by 2035.

The 2035 figure did not come from a scientific journal.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

An Honest IPCC Scientist Tackles 'ClimateGate'

AGW? Maybe some of the Hope and Change!

Snowfall sets single-day record in DFW


By ALEX BRANCH

abranch@star-telegram.com

North Texas hasn’t seen a winter this white in 32 years.

The 11.2 inches of snow that had fallen by midnight Thursday at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport topped the previous record for snowfall in one day of 7.8 inches recorded in 1917 and 1964.

The 12.4 inches that had fallen by 4 a.m. Friday also broke the 24-hour record of 12.1 inches Jan. 15 and Jan. 16, 1964.

Thursday’s snow also catapulted seasonal accumulation to 15.7 inches, according to the National Weather Service in Fort Worth.

That ranks as the second snowiest season ever.

Most snowiest was the 17.6 inches that fell in 1977-78.

That year, 13.5 inches fell in February alone, also a record.

The snow appeared to have finally stopped falling by 6 a.m. Friday

The ingredients for a snowy season are simple: multiple upper-level storm systems supported by temperatures low enough to turn moisture to snow.

Those two elements have collided more than once over North Texas this season.

"It's definitely one of those winters," said Bill Bunting, a meteorologist with the weather service. "You never really know when you’ll get one."

Staff writer Mitch Mitchell contributed to this report.

ALEX BRANCH, 817-390-7689

New Paper in Science: Sea level 81,000 years ago was 1 meter higher while CO2 was lower

This Week in SCIENCE, Volume 327, Issue 5967, Food Security dated February 12 2010, is now available at:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol327/issue5967/twis.dtl


Fig. 1 Encrusted speleothems at various levels in caves from Mallorca. (A) Geologic map of Mallorca (10) and location of sampled caves (red dots). (B) Schematic cross-section through a coastal cave in Mallorca showing multiple carbonate encrustation levels. (C and D) Present-day and paleo levels of encrusted speleothems related to higher (E) and lower (F) sea-level stands. (G) Typical morphology for tidal range–related carbonate encrustation (size of speleothem, 20 cm). (H) Bathymetric map of the western Mediterranean region and the predicted present-day rate of sea-level change due to GIA [adapted from (15)

Excerpts:

Abstract:

Sea-Level Highstand 81,000 Years Ago in Mallorca

Jeffrey A. Dorale,1,* Bogdan P. Onac,2,* Joan J. Fornós,3 Joaquin Ginés,3 Angel Ginés,3 Paola Tuccimei,4 David W. Peate1

Global sea level and Earth’s climate are closely linked. Using speleothem encrustations from coastal caves on the island of Mallorca, we determined that western Mediterranean relative sea level was ~1 meter above modern sea level ~81,000 years ago during marine isotope stage (MIS) 5a. Although our findings seemingly conflict with the eustatic sea-level curve of far-field sites, they corroborate an alternative view that MIS 5a was at least as ice-free as the present, and they challenge the prevailing view of MIS 5 sea-level history and certain facets of ice-age theory.

Read the rest of this entry »

Green Police

‘Minnesotans For Global Warming’ Call Out Gore Over Harsh Winter in ‘Frozen Wasteland’

Climategate: MoveOn’s Triple Whopper

February 10, 2010 - by Marlo Lewis

Air quality in the United States has improved dramatically over the past 40 years, yet MoveOn.Org wants you to believe that breathing the air is like being a pack-a-day smoker.

MoveOn broadcasts this disinformation in TV ads bashing Senators Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Ben Nelson (D-NB), and Mary Landrieu (D-LA). The ads show little leaguers, a mother and her bottle-feeding infant, track athletes, and even a mother giving birth all smoking cigarettes. As these images flash by, the text of the ads says:

While Senator Landrieu [or Lincoln, or Nelson] works to roll back the Clean Air Act

Many Americans are already smoking the equivalent of a pack a day.

Just from breathing the air.

Senator Landrieu [or Lincoln, or Nelson], Americans need the Clean Air Act.

Leave it alone.

The MoveOn ad is a triple whopper, piling falsehood upon falsehood upon falsehood. No American smokes the equivalent of a pack a day just by breathing. The senators are not working to “roll back” the Clean Air Act. The policy they support — one that MoveOn opposes — would not slow any federal or state efforts to clean the air. Let’s examine each falsehood in turn.

MoveOn claims that “many” Americans breathe the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes a day. Cigarette smoking accounts for 30% of all cancer deaths in the United States, and nine out of 10 lung cancer deaths. So how does cigarette smoke compare with outdoor air in regard to airborne carcinogens?

Nazaroff and Singer (2004), a study by researchers at UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, found that, by breathing indoor “environmental tobacco smoke” (ETS), non-smokers who live with a smoker each year inhale 1.2 to 150 times more of six known carcinogens than they inhale from “ambient” (outdoor) sources. Smokers themselves get a bigger dose of carcinogens, since they inhale both first- and second-hand smoke.

Not only is MoveOn’s pack-a-day claim false, it could also harm “the children,” because it trivializes the risks of smoking. After all, a gullible teenager might reason, if breathing is as unhealthy as smoking, then how bad can smoking be?...

RFK, Jr. 15 months ago: Global warming means no snow or cold in DC

By: David Freddoso
Online Opinion Editor
12/21/09 1:51 PM EST


Mary Mitchell cross country skis in a deserted downtown in front of the U.S. Capitol December 19, 2009 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who flies around on private planes so as to tell larger numbers of people how they must live their lives in order to save the planet, wrote a column last year on the lack of winter weather in Washington, D.C.

In Virginia, the weather also has changed dramatically. Recently arrived residents in the northern suburbs, accustomed to today's anemic winters, might find it astonishing to learn that there were once ski runs on Ballantrae Hill in McLean, with a rope tow and local ski club. Snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don't own a sled. But neighbors came to our home at Hickory Hill nearly every winter weekend to ride saucers and Flexible Flyers.

In those days, I recall my uncle, President Kennedy, standing erect as he rode a toboggan in his top coat, never faltering until he slid into the boxwood at the bottom of the hill. Once, my father, Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy, brought a delegation of visiting Eskimos home from the Justice Department for lunch at our house. They spent the afternoon building a great igloo in the deep snow in our backyard. My brothers and sisters played in the structure for several weeks before it began to melt. On weekend afternoons, we commonly joined hundreds of Georgetown residents for ice skating on Washington's C&O Canal, which these days rarely freezes enough to safely skate.

Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil and its carbon cronies continue to pour money into think tanks whose purpose is to deceive the American public into believing that global warming is a fantasy.

Having shoveled my walk five times in the midst of this past weekend's extreme cold and blizzard, I think perhaps RFK, Jr. should leave weather analysis to the meteorologists instead of trying to attribute every global phenomenon to anthropogenic climate change.

U.N. Climate Chief: Critics Should Rub Their Faces With Asbestos

FOXNews.com

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the U.N.'s International Panel on Climate Change, said global warming skeptics are like people who see no difference between cancer-causing asbestos and talcum powder.


AP Photo/Gurinder Osan

U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) head Rajendra Pachauri looks on at a press conference in New Delhi, India.

The U.N.'s climate chief dismissed "nefarious" global warming skeptics this week by insinuating that they are deep in the pockets of big business -- and suggested that they go rub their faces in cancer-causing asbestos.

Rajendra Pachauri, the besieged head of the U.N.'s International Panel on Climate Change, told the Financial Times on Wednesday that he is the victim of a "carefully orchestrated" campaign to block climate change legislation.

"I would say [there are] nefarious designs behind people trying to attack me with lies, falsehoods," he told the paper, swatting away allegations that his India-based climate institute, TERI, has benefited from decisions made by the IPCC, which he also chairs.

Climate change skeptics "are people who deny the link between smoking and cancer; they are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder," he said.

"I hope that they apply it (asbestos) to their faces every day."

Pachauri's remarks came as pressure and scrutiny are mounting against the IPCC's hallmark Fourth Assessment Report, which laid out the case for man-made climate change over a thousand sprawling pages.

The report contained misleading data about the melting rate of glaciers in the Himalayas and is riddled with citations to data furnished by activist groups, non-scientific journals and material that was never peer-reviewed.

Pachauri called the furor over errors in the assessment report "a blip that is going to pass," and reiterated his intention to remain in place as the chief of the world's most powerful climate body.

"I'm not a quitter. Some people would want me to be; some people would probably say that I should go, but I am not going to oblige them. I have no desire to leave at all," he said.

His critics in the business world, he told the paper, "see climate change as a threat to their own comforts, their own convenience and the generation of easy profits." He accused them of establishing a network of lobbyists in D.C. "trying to write all kinds of malicious articles and indulge in invective."

"It's all part of a pattern," he continued. "But let me clarify. I have no proof. I can only presume something like this is at work."

Climate change emails between scientists reveal flaws in peer review

A close reading of the hacked emails exposes the real process of science, its jealousies and tribalism
Read more: doubts about "hockey stick" graph revealed

Fred Pearce guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 February 2010 18.27 GMT Article history


The coastline of Lake Baikal, Siberia, one of the areas where analysis of temperature change was severely disputed. Photograph: Olivier Renck/Getty Images/Aurora Creative

Scientists sometimes like to portray what they do as divorced from the everyday jealousies, rivalries and tribalism of human relationships. What makes science special is that data and results that can be replicated are what matters and the scientific truth will out in the end.

But a close reading of the emails hacked from the University of East Anglia in November exposes the real process of everyday science in lurid detail.

Many of the emails reveal strenuous efforts by the mainstream climate scientists to do what outside observers would regard as censoring their critics. And the correspondence raises awkward questions about the effectiveness of peer review – the supposed gold standard of scientific merit – and the operation of the UN's top climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The scientists involved disagree. They say they were engaged not in suppressing dissent but in upholding scientific standards by keeping bad science out of peer-reviewed journals. Either way, when passing judgment on papers that directly attack their own work, they were mired in conflicts of interest that would not be allowed in most professions.

The cornerstone of maintaining the quality of scientific papers is the peer review system. Under this, papers submitted to scientific journals are reviewed anonymously by experts in the field. Conducting reviews is seen as part of the job for academics, who are generally not paid for the work.

The papers are normally sent back to the authors for improvement and only published when the reviewers give their approval. But the system relies on trust, especially if editors send papers to ­reviewers whose own work is being criticised in the paper. It also relies on anonymity, so reviewers can give candid opinions.

Cracks in the system have been obvious for years. Yesterday it emerged that 14 leading researchers in a different field – stem cell research – have written an open letter to journal editors to highlight their dissatisfaction with the process. They allege that a small scientific clique is using peer review to block papers from other researchers...

Glad the UK Press Isn't Scared to Print the Truth!

No apology from IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri for glacier fallacy

Head of UN climate change body 'not at fault' for false claim Himalaya ice caps would melt by 2035

David Adam and Fred Pearce
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 February 2010 20.31 GMT
Article history


Pachauri said it would be hypocritical to apologise for the false claim that Himalayan glaciers (above) could melt away by 2035. Photograph: Channi Anand/AP

The embattled chief of the UN's climate change body has hit out at his critics and refused to resign or apologise for a ­damaging mistake in a landmark 2007 report on global warming.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said it would be hypocritical to apologise for the false claim that ­Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035, because he was not personally responsible for that part of the report. "You can't expect me to be personally responsible for every word in a 3,000 page report," he said.

The IPCC issued a statement that expressed regret for the mistake, but Pachauri said a personal apology would be a "populist" step.

"I don't do too many populist things, that's why I'm so unpopular with a certain section of society," he said.

In a robust defence of his position and of the science of climate change, Pachauri said:

• The mistake had seriously damaged the IPCC's credibility and boosted the efforts of climate sceptics.

• It was an isolated mistake, down to human error and "totally out of character" for the panel.

• It does not undermine the "basic truth" that human activity is causing temperatures to rise.

• That he would not resign and was ­subject to lies about his personal income and lifestyle.

Pachauri spoke as the second day of the Guardian's investigation into the emails stolen from the University of East Anglia reveals how climate scientists acted to keep research papers they did not like out of academic journals. One UEA scientist, Dr Keith Briffa, wrote to a colleague to ask him for help rejecting a paper from a journal which he edited. "Confidentially I now need a hard, and if required, extensive case for rejecting." The request apparently broke the convention that the review process should be independent and anonymous. Briffa was not able to comment because of an ongoing independent review into the stolen emails.

In another email, sent in March 2003, the leading US climate scientist Prof Michael Mann suggested ostracising a journal for publishing a paper that attacked his work.

"I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues … to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal." Mann denies any attempt to "stifle legitimate sceptical views".

The emails also reveal that one of the most influential data sets in climate science – the "hockey stick" graph of temperature over the past 1,000 years – was controversial not just with sceptics but among climate scientists themselves. "I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story [in the forthcoming IPCC report], but in reality the situation is not quite so simple," wrote Briffa in September 1999.

In his Guardian interview, Pachauri defended the IPCC's use of so-called "grey literature" – sources outside peer-reviewed academic journals, such as reports from campaign groups, companies and student theses. The false Himalayan glacier claim came from a report by the green group WWF. He said reports of further errors in the IPCC report linked to grey literature were ­spurious and the result of a "factory" of people "only there to create pinpricks and get attention".

Stories that claimed errors about losses from natural disasters and Amazon destruction were false, he said. "We looked into that [Amazon claim] and we're totally satisfied that what's been stated in the report is totally valid."

The IPCC is beginning work on its next climate report, and Pachauri said it would stress to authors and reviewers the importance of checking sources. "Our procedures are very clear on the use of grey literature. Whenever an author uses grey literature they need to double check the source of information is authentic and defensible. People have been using grey literature for quite some time now. Apparently in this [Himalayan glacier] case there has been a failure because authors did not follow the procedures required."

To exclude such reports, he said, would give an incomplete picture. "The reality is that in several parts of the world, which will be influenced by the impacts of climate change, it's an unfortunate fact that we just don't have peer-reviewed material available."

Pachauri also rebutted newspapers' claims that he lives a lavish lifestyle and wears $1,000 suits. He said: "It's ridiculous and it's a bunch of lies."

His salary from the research institute that employs him is fixed in the range of 190,000 rupees (£2,600) a month, he said, while he receives only travel expenses for chairing the IPCC.

He added: "There is a tailor who stitches all my suits for 2,200 rupees (£30)."

The panel's report at the centre of the controversy said: "The likelihood of them [the Himalayan glaciers] disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high," a statement referenced to a report by WWF, which had taken it from a magazine article. It was subsequently found to be wrong.

Questions were raised about the glacier claim in an article in the US journal Science in November, and again by the BBC on 5 December, leading to allegations that Pachauri had been told by Pallava Bagla, the Indian journalist who wrote both, that it was problematic, but failed to act.

But Pachauri said he had not become aware of the problem until January. "If he [Bagla] sent me an email and I didn't see it, I can only say that I'm sorry that I didn't see that email. A lot of my emails are handled by my office and I don't get to see them personally."

Pachauri also said he was taking steps to strengthen the staff employed by the panel. "We're in an information society today and we have to respond adequately and professionally. We've been weak in that regard to be honest. The IPCC is starting to realise we're living in a very different world to what we had in 1988.

"I think this [glacier] mistake has certainly cost us dear, there's no question about it," he said. "Everybody thought that what the IPCC brought out was the gold standard and nothing could go wrong. But look at the larger picture, don't get blinded by this one mistake.

"The larger picture is solid, it's convincing and it's extremely important. How can we lose sight of what climate change is going to do to this planet? What it's already doing to this planet?"

Peas in a Pod?

http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate

Feb 02, 2010
Osama and Obama on global warming

Washington Times Editorial

Discredited climate theories make strange bedfellows. In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama said there was “overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change.” In his most recent message to the world, Osama bin Laden said that climate change “is not an intellectual luxury but an actual fact.” It’s nice to see these two leaders can agree on something.

The hitch is that the man-caused catastrophic global warming theory is dead, and it needs to be buried. Evidence had been mounting for years that there were problems with the global warming model; most telling was that the globe refused to warm up. Carbon emissions continued apace, but the world began cooling. This is why true believers abandoned the “global warming” brand name and tried to shift the debate to the more ambiguous label “climate change,” which is something the rest of us like to refer to as “weather.”

The dam broke with Climategate when hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit revealed that global warming advocates had for years attempted to hide conflicting data and silence their professional critics. British authorities have determined that the university broke freedom-of-information laws by denying information to scientists seeking to check claims that global warming was caused by human activity.

Evidence is emerging that the data had been rigged all along. Russian analysts noted that British temperature calculations excluded data from 40 percent of Russian territory, much of which showed no increase in temperature in the past 50 years. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also cherry-picked data, cutting Canadian data sources from 600 to 35 and relying on only one monitor for all of Canada above the Arctic Circle. This was done even though Canada operates 1,400 weather stations, 100 of which are in the Arctic.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is having its own scandal regarding a finding in its Nobel Peace Prize-winning 2007 report that glaciers in India were rapidly disappearing. It is now revealed that this dramatic claim was based not on years of patient observation and research but anecdotes from a hiking magazine and a student’s master’s thesis. IPCC Chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri knew about the erroneous information before December’s Copenhagen climate summit but maintained the falsehood. He even denounced a report from India that showed the glaciers were in far less jeopardy as “unsubstantiated research.” Last month, Mr. Pachauri published a sexually explicit novel, further diminishing his professional reputation.

Climate scientists have to come to grips with some highly inconvenient truths. World temperatures continue to decline as carbon emissions increase. Chilly Scotland is facing its coldest winter in a century. Arctic sea ice is not vanishing. Polar bears are experiencing a baby boom. Water vapor appears to play as important a role in the climate as carbon emissions. Sunspot activity may be more important than both combined. Meanwhile, climate change fanatics seek to blame capitalism and productivity for global warming, global cooling, too much snow, not enough snow, hurricanes, tornadoes and even the Haiti earthquake.

The simplistic and increasingly discredited theory of carbon-based, man-caused global warming needs to be discarded, and the scientists who sought to squelch skeptics and artificially inflate their own reputations must be disciplined. Alas, Mr. Obama and Mr. bin Laden need to update their talking points. See more here.