Climate: Risks loom for China: study - Health & Families, Life & Style - The Independent

The last century was the warmest period since 1600 and the country's seven warmest years have all occurred in the past decade.

Climate extremes included droughts which hit the country in the 1960s, the late 1970s, early 1980s, the 1990s and in northeastern China in the last decade.

Hot Air » Quotes of the day

Christine O’Donnell is trailing Rep. Mike Castle by only 2% among voters most likely to turnout in the Delaware Senate GOP primary, according to a Tea Party Express poll.

Flashback: Compelling video: Angry voters confront Congressman who voted for cap and trade swindle

At the 4:12 mark, a speaker says that he hopes Castle loses his Congressional seat over his support of cap and trade, and the crowd cheers. Castle smiles briefly, then his face grows grim.

Around the 7:12 mark, Castle is booed after he says he believes in AGW.

Steve Lopez of the LA Times rants about the alleged danger of trace amounts of natural, harmless atmospheric gas

California's Prop. 23, backed by oil giants with a lot to lose, needs to go down in flames - latimes.com

I don't mean to disturb your holiday weekend just when you're trying to scrub that grease off the barbecue grill. But I thought now was a good time to remind you that in two months, you'll have an important choice to make about the air you breathe.

In November, you'll be asked whether California should continue on the path to becoming one of the world's environmental leaders. Or give up the good fight and pray that the global warming deniers are right.
...
The goal of Prop. 23 is to derail the environmental plan we already have in place, one that was written without the help of Texans or tea party crackpots.
...
But compliance would cost energy companies a few bucks. And so they came up with Prop. 23, which would delay implementation of California's landmark legislation until unemployment drops to 5.5%. I'm not a betting man, but I'm not sure that will happen before the polar ice caps melt and Seal Beach and Oxnard, among other coastal locales, are under water.
...
Those are places with red-state politics, which sets up an interesting political conversation. What happens when tea party kooks try to beat back job prospects out there?

Candidates for SD governor disagree on [global warming scam] | Mitchell, South Dakota

The Republican caused a stir during the debate when he said he wasn't sure whether humans were causing global warming.

"I am skeptical about the science that suggests global warming is man-caused or can be corrected by man-made efforts," Daugaard said, drawing gasps and murmurs from some in the crowd. "It's a complex world we live in."

Heidepriem said he believed scientific evidence shows that global warming is occurring and is a real threat.

"We can stick our heads in the sand and pretend like the world isn't out there, but it is," Heidepriem said. "I think the evidence is significant. We ignore that evidence at our own peril."

Mozambique's food riots – the true face of global warming | Raj Patel | Comment is free | The Observer

...to see how climate change will play out in the 21st century, you needn't look to the Met Office. Look, instead, to the deaths and burning tyres in Mozambique's "food riots" to see what happens when extreme natural phenomena interact with our unjust economic systems.
...We're on track for the third-highest wheat crop ever, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).

Making climate data free for all : Nature News

Currently, there are glaring holes in land temperature measurements, with some regions and time periods severely lacking data. In some cases, measurements simply haven't been taken, but often they are not readily accessible because the raw data have yet to be digitized.

Fife Diet cuts carbon emissions by over a quarter - Scotsman.com News

PEOPLE following the "Fife diet" - a drive to source as much locally produced food as possible - generate more than a quarter less carbon than the UK average, a report claims.
...
The Scottish Government, which funded the report through its £27.4 million Climate Challenge Fund, aims to cut carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.

Containing climate change saves us, not Earth - thestar.com

So efforts to control climate change, or to deal with other environmental issues, are not about “saving the planet,” a phrase that deserves to disappear. They’re about saving us—keeping the place fit for human habitation for generations we can envisage.

On that score, our impacts do make a difference. If, for example, we keep loading carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the Arctic ice will continue to melt, unleashing vast amounts of energy. The darker water will absorb heat from the sun that the ice previously reflected. This process will accelerate each year, as the water warms, leading to later freeze-up and earlier breakup. The surrounding permafrost will melt, releasing methane and carbon dioxide from cold storage to further speed the process.

[Philip Stott flashback: Humans are already living successfully over a very wide range in temperature]

But I just want you to have one image, and it’s a very serious scientific image, I want you to think of the world… I want you to think of the world from inner Siberia, to Greenland, then to Singapore, and then come to the Arab states and to Sahara. What, ladies and gentlemen, is the temperature range I have just covered. It is from minus 20 degrees C, to nearly 50 degrees C, a range of 70 degrees C, in which humanity has adapted and learnt to live. [APPLAUSE] We are talking about, ignoring the extremes that Oliver said, a prediction of 2 to 3 degrees C, what a funk! [LAUGHTER, [APPLAUSE]

I’m very serious, what a funk! Humanity lives successfully from Greenland to Singapore to Saudi Arabia. 70 degrees C.

Temperature records to be made public - Telegraph

The UK Met Office is leading the project to create a new set of temperature records from around the world.

The move is being seen as a response to criticism by global warming sceptics of the withholding of data used in climate change research.

Climate change vanishes

One of the inexplicable stories (or non-stories) of the summer is the disappearance of climate change from the political agenda. While many Canadians were sweltering, swatting super-sized mosquitoes, fighting fires, or up to their axles in floodwater, there was nothing but radio silence on the nation's political channel.

Instead of green action, we got static over the census, the gun registry, the prime minister's imperial ways, the imaginary opposition "coalition" and the latest deadlocked polls which look a lot like the previous deadlocked polls. This is busy work, not the serious business of salvaging a warming planet.

On the other hand, politicians are keenly attuned to public concern. Maybe their complacency reflects ours. Maybe we secretly like global warming. It has been a splendid summer for those lucky enough to live near a cool, relatively clean body of water. One Toronto tabloid heralded our "weird, wacky but wonderful" summer, and, politics aside, it has been a relief after the cooler summers of recent years.

Horseshoe crabs and climate change

False alarm: “the current decline in horseshoe crabs is attributed in great part to overharvest for fishing bait and for the pharmaceutical industry”.
...
No unprecedented warming – just a continuation of the alarmist propaganda.

(It’s not really the scientists’ fault – the only way to get funding is to blame something on “climate change”.)

Kirklees Council's winter chaos road repair bill hits £3.5m - and risin

THE bill to repair roads ravaged by the bitter weather last winter has now reached £3.5m.

But Kirklees Council has bought a massive amount of grit in a bid to stave off more misery on the roads this year.

Winin' down summer - Winnipeg Free Press

...most winemakers I talked to in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley described growth as being between 10-14 days behind normal. I saw many red wine vines with small, firm green bunches of grapes still some distance from ripening. The later ripening of the grapes is a tough blow to B.C. vineyards -- many suffered a frost in early October of last year, which did some damage to vineyards not equipped with wind machines or other preventative methods.

Observation Hill weather blog: Frost possible tonight | Duluth News Tribune | Duluth, Minnesota

The record low for Sept. 5 in Duluth is 34 degrees. It looks like the Twin Ports should stay above that mark, but it may be sort of close.

Did your iPod cause it to rain after alarmist Lonnie Thompson took a fossil-fueled trip to Indonesia?

Scientist Watches Glacier Melt Beneath His Feet : NPR

Thompson tells NPR's Guy Raz he has conducted 57 expeditions around the world, but this trip was unusual. It was the first one where he experienced rain on the glacier every day.

"Rain is probably the most effective way to ... cause the ice to melt," Thompson says. "So this was the first time you could see the surface actually lowering around you."

While Thompson and his team were there drilling cores, he says, they witnessed the three-mile high glacier drop 12 inches in just two weeks.

"If that's representative of the annual ice loss on these glaciers," he says, "you're looking at losing over seven meters of ice in a year. Unfortunately, that glacier's going to disappear in as little as five years if that rate continues."

EU Referendum: This dying creed

Nevertheless, it is unlikely that the cause will survive. Like the EU, it has lost any intellectual or moral authority it even had. It is only a matter of time, therefore, before the stench from its decomposing corpse, washed up on the beach, becomes so overpowering that even its supporters are forced to take note.

Fans, Businesses Lose a NASCAR Race - 11Alive.com | WXIA | Atlanta, GA

The move will cost Henry county and the state of Georgia millions of dollars in tax revenue, but race promoters say it was a business decision fueled by cold weather and declining attendance in the spring.

Frozen Baltic Results in Cut in Banana Route’s | TopNews United Kingdom

This year the cold snap had affected most of the fruit markets in the European countries.
...
Also, as the Baltic was frozen, therefore all the supply that had to be made for Russia and other regional markets was dropped down at Rotterdam. As a result of this, there was an oversupply in the Western Europe, which further resulted in lowering the prices. This cut in the bananas' route made a significant impact on its sales.

Double Play for Global Warming | The Rundown News Blog | PBS NewsHour | PBS

There's a fight brewing on an issue that seemed settled in 2006. That was when California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, flexing his environmental credentials, signed into law a measure that requires a statewide cut in greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. That amounts to about a 15 percent decrease, a move designed to lower the amount of carbon dioxide and other pollutants emitted by manufacturers, power generators, oil companies, ships and any other sources of greenhouse gases.
...
The measure has yet to generate a big debate, but some writers consider it the most contentious initiative on the November ballot. With a lot of money involved, voters will soon be barraged with TV commercials on both sides.

Cargo ship embarks on historic Arctic passage | Reuters

Rosatomflot has assigned two 75,000-horsepower icebreakers to the vessel for about 10 days of the three-week voyage. Tschudi won't say how much Rosatomflot is charging but praised it as "cooperative, service-minded and pragmatic."

"Today the route is basically competitive with the Suez Canal, and we can subtract the piracy risk," he said.

Excluding icebreaking fees, a bulk ship that takes the Arctic route from Hamburg to Yokohama can save more than $200,000 in fuel and canal expenses, Oestreng said.

Northern Sea Route - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Possibility of navigation the whole length of the passage was proven by mid-19th century. However, it was only in 1878 that Finland-Swedish explorer Nordenskiöld made the first successful attempt to completely navigate the North East Passage from west to east during the Vega expedition. The ship's captain on this expedition was lieutenant Louis Palander of the Swedish Royal Navy. In 1915 a Russian expedition led by Boris Vilkitskiy made the passage from east to west with the icebreakers Taymyr and Vaygach.[2]

One year before Nordenskiöld's voyage, commercial exploitation of the route started with the so-called Kara expeditions, exporting Siberian agricultural produce via the Kara Sea. Of 122 convoys between 1877 and 1919 only 75 succeeded, transporting as little as 55 tons of cargo. From 1911 steamboats ran from Vladivostok to Kolyma (the Kolyma steamboats) once a year.

A cunning bid to shore up the ruins of the IPCC - Christopher Booker - Telegraph

Through all this the IPCC has been exposed for what it truly is: not a proper scientific body but an advocacy group, ready to stop at nothing in hijacking the prestige of science for its cause. But little of this might be guessed from the Inter-Academy report (jointly commissioned by Dr Pachauri himself and Ban Ki-Moon, the UN's Secretary General). Even if Dr Pachauri is forced to resign at a UN meeting in Korea next month, as seems possible, he will merely have been thrown off the sledge so that the all-important cause can survive.

Yet the IPCC is the body on whose authority our Parliament voted for the Climate Change Act, passed all but unanimously two years ago. This will land us, on the Government's own figures, with by far the biggest bill we have ever faced: up to £18 billion every year for the next 40 years – £734 billion in all – in order to cut our CO2 emissions by 80 per cent, something impossible to achieve except by closing down virtually all our industrial economy.

On the same authority, the rest of the world is being told that it must take similar steps, to avert a catastrophe dreamed up and promoted by no one more than those joint winners of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, Al Gore and the IPCC. Does this not all add up to the most bizarre and outrageous scandal in the history of the world?

Another sparse "crowd" rallies for the global warming hoax

End Domestic Flights Now | Demotix.com

Members of the Campaign Against Climate change gathered at City Airport calling for an end to domestic flights whilst also being against airport expansion. London, United Kingdom, 04/09/2010.

Glenn Beck Rally Attendance

AirPhotosLive.com took pictures of the crowd, and has said that there were between 78,000 and 96,000 in attendance at the event.

Those who attended filled six full blocks, according to CNN. ABC has estimated the total to be over 100,000, but has not released an exact number. Why are the estimates so different from one another?

Al Gore's Climate [Hoax] roject is nearly dead: After scheduling over 100 presentations in Sept '09, only six presentations are scheduled for Sept '10

The Climate Project presentations - Sept '10

[6 presentations]

The Climate Project presentations - Sept '09

[Well over 100 presentations]

Discovery Channel gunman mad over global warming | KETK

[One-minute news video] During the ordeal.... Lee ended up on the phone with an NBC producer. Lee talked to the producer for about
10 minutes.
...
The gunman was reportedly angry over the Discovery Channel's lack of programming on global warming.

Pajamas Media » Media Bias Gets Dangerous: Minimizing the Ecoterror Threat

They are over and done with the topic of James J. Lee, despite the mounting number of attacks committed in the name of environmentalism.

NC Media Watch: SBC's imaginary climate consensus continues to crumble

To help Honorable Madam Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, understand there is no consensus and that human generated CO2 has no measurable effect on global warming 130 German Scientist have published an open letter to the Chancellor.

To help Steven Frisch and his environmentalist friends understand there is no consensus and that humans are not responsible for global warming, and that AB32 is based on bad science here are the key points in the German Scientist letter

Global Warming Stats And Claims Rejected By Scientific Review

The Global Warming “Scientists” with their political agenda have brought the whole area of science into disrepute and under suspicion. Thus within the so called “scientific” community of “Global Warmers” and bureaucrats, the granting of huge cash awards of other people’s money and the blind acceptance of “scientific” papers is commonplace; consequently, a virtual ‘legal’ criminal enterprise is given a freehand and best wishes by sycophants and a gullible public that is willing to trade their wealth and sovereignty to have con artists and Socialists save the world.

From politicians and bureaucrats, we expect these criminal endeavors that skirt the thin ice of legality, but we now have a sizable portion of the scientific community engaged in ongoing political drama and malfeasance; consequently, the integrity of the scientific community will be damaged for generations and that is a tragedy, for mankind will, at some point in the future, suffer immeasurably when the real scientists try to warn us of an actual impending disaster.

Sen. Graham reaches out to Tea Party - The Hill's Blog Briefing Room

Some grassroots conservatives are frustrated with Graham for partnering too often with President Obama and congressional Democrats. Graham was the lead Senate GOP negotiator on climate change and immigration legislation, though neither package moved forward in the Senate.
...
Graham defended himself as a mainstream conservative, and expressed worry that public officials like himself were being effectively prohibited from expressing disagreement with the party.

Save Pachauri, end the IPCC « The Daily Bayonet

The man is a skeptic’s dream and the longer he stays the more the world understands what the IPCC really is; politicized, corrupt and clueless. We should think of the IPCC leader as a gift from the skeptic gods and not play out the Guardian’s fears:
...
The public has lost faith in the once-respected IPCC and Pachauri is the public face of that body. Why allow the IPCC to ‘rebrand’ when skeptics have such a recognizable face to symbolize everything that is wrong with climate science. Pop up a picture of Pachauri and the first thing people think of is Climategate, not climate science.

Save Pachauri and end the IPCC. It would be best for everyone if his job simply didn’t exist rather than removing him from it early.

West Virginia Football Uniforms To Honor Coal, Fallen Miners : TreeHugger

In an attempt to honor the 29 coal miners who tragically died last year at the Upper Big Branch coal mine, the West Virginia University Mountaineers have teamed up with Nike to create new football uniforms that have the mark of coal. The uniforms are white, but have coal dust on the pants and shoulders. The yellow strip on the hemet is said to represent a miner's headlamp. In the photo featuring the new uniform a player appears to be emerging from a strip mine, leaving behind a desolate landscape.

Flashback: Nike, Starbucks, others form clean-energy coalition BICEP - USATODAY.com

With an environmentally-friendly Obama administration coming to power, a new green business coalition — led by Nike, (NKE) Starbucks,(SBUX) Levi Strauss, Sun Microsystems (JAVA) and Timberland (TBL) — is calling for stronger policies to slash global warming and to create a clean-energy economy.

Farmers' Almanac Winter Prediction Contradicts NOAA Forecast

Winter will be mixed in some states. "Overall, it looks like it's going to be a kinder and gentler winter, especially in the areas that had a rough winter last year," managing editor Sandi Duncan said in a statement. The east coast, from New England to Florida, could receive "much colder-than-normal winter temperatures." However, they will not be as frigid as conditions felt last winter. New England in particular should be sure to bundle up.

2010 predictions by NOAA's Climate Prediction Center is contradicting to the report from the Farmers' Almanac. The Almanac says the Northwest will experience a mild winter and the Southeast will have colder temperatures. However, NOAA has stated the opposite, they show cold weather in the Northwest, and warmer temperatures in the east.

OSU’s Moore edits book on climate change

More than 80 global leaders, writing on the moral obligation to act to mitigate climate change, have contributed to “Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril.” The new collection of essays is edited by Kathleen Dean Moore, an Oregon State University distinguished professor of philosophy, and Michael P. Nelson of Michigan State University. It will be released Tuesday.
...
Contributors to the book are politicians, including President Barack Obama, and religious leaders, including Pope John Paul II and the Dalai Lama.

Should white roofs be required in cold Montreal?

For borough mayor, white roofs are a no-brainer

The mayor of Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie hopes a new bylaw requiring white roofs on homes and commercial buildings will make his the coolest borough in Montreal, literally.

François Croteau says his proposed bylaw, which will require all new roofs in the borough to be white - or of a colour or material that reflects rather than absorbs heat - just makes environmental and economic sense.
...
Akbari said the roofing industry is slow to embrace the cool roof materials, since they cost 10 to 25 per cent more than traditional materials. But in the long run, the building owner will reap more than the difference in energy savings, and have a longer lasting roof.
...
Akbari sees cool roofs as a key tool in fighting climate change. To make his point, he calculated the cooling effect on the planet of replacing every black roof in the world with a white, or cool one.

"This could delay global warming by one and half years, which is equal to taking all the cars in the world off the road for the next 20 years."

Nation & World | U.S. suggests white roofs to curtail climate change | Seattle Times Newspaper

There is also the winter problem: In a cold climate, a dark roof can lower heating costs by soaking up the winter sun.

Montreal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Montreal's summers are warm, but often muggy with average high temperatures of 26°C (79°F) and low of 16°C (61°F), temperatures frequently exceed 30°C (86°F). Winter in Montreal usually brings very cold, snowy, windy, and at times, icy weather, with an average high temperature of -9°C (23°F) and lows of -16°C (9°F). However, some winter days are with milder temperatures, and others below -20°C (-4°F)

2008: City close to breaking snow record

So far this winter, 347 centimetres of snow has fallen in Montreal. The city needs another 37 centimetres of snow to break the record of 383 centimetres of snowfall set in 1971.

Wildlife Promise: Your Mind Is The Scene Of The Climate: Watch NWF's Climate Capsule

[4-minute video] The National Wildlife Federation Climate Capsule team's favorite summer movie was Inception. It got us to thinking, what if you could enter the dreams of Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Big Oil's MVP?

Massive Iceberg Reaches Nares Strait - Softpedia

Over the past few years, more and more glaciers around the world began shedding icebergs at increasing rates than ever before.

Space channel pays tribute to our demise

The piece de resistance, though, has to be the 2006 doomsday doc, Countdown to Doomsday, hosted by that noted man of science, Today Show host Matthew "Matt" Todd Lauer.

Countdown to Doomsday features such respected experts in their fields as Al Gore, Daniel H. Wilson, Seth Shostak and Michio Kaku ruminating about asteroids, giant solar flares, supervolcanos -- sort of like a volcano, but bigger -- Gamma-ray bursts, flu pandemics, global warming and alien invasion.

Is “The Day After Tomorrow” Happening Today — Ice Age Imminent?

Snow in Brazil August 5th, 2010

* Norway experienced a half a meter of snow on August 29th.
* Russia, just a month removed from scorching record heat, also had unusually-early snowfall.
* Australia recorded the coldest August in 35 years.
* South America experienced record cold this winter resulting in millions of fish and other wild life dying off.

End of 'summer' near, more odd weather expected

Jan Null, a meteorologist with the private Golden Gate Weather Services, said the average monthly maximum temperatures around California were two to five degrees below normal.

San Francisco had an average high temperature of 65.2 degrees in August - four degrees below normal. June and July also had below-average temperatures.
...
...it was a cool summer that extended over most of the state: Null reported that San Jose's average temperature in August was 78.9 degrees, 5.1 degrees below normal, the coolest for the month in 19 years.

George F. Will - The environmental movement in retreat

The collapsing crusade for legislation to combat climate change raises a question: Has ever a political movement made so little of so many advantages? Its implosion has continued since "the Cluster of Copenhagen, when world leaders assembled for the single most unproductive and chaotic global gathering ever held." So says Walter Russell Mead, who has an explanation: Bambi became Godzilla.

That is, a small band of skeptics became the dogmatic establishment.

Santa Cruz's climate action plan up for review Tuesday

SANTA CRUZ - City leaders want to help 5,000 homes go solar, cut citywide water use 10 percent and reduce in-town vehicle trips 30 percent, all within a decade. Now, residents, business owners and city officials get to weigh in on how to realize those goals.

After nearly three years of study and planning, the city's climate change action coordinator, Ross Clark, will present findings Tuesday that tally the city's greenhouse gas emissions and provide a road map for how to cut the community's emissions 30 percent from levels seen in the mid-1990s. The report was published Thursday on the city's website.

Twitter / Chris Schilling

I just found out I work with a kitchen full of global warming denialists. #sigh

The Climate Post: Will the “dead” climate bill become a federal renewable energy standard? | Grist

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says he might have two Republicans on board for a lame-duck bill that would give the U.S. a Federal Renewable Energy Standard requiring utilities to "provide 15 percent of their power from renewables by 2021, although about a fourth of the requirement could be met with energy-efficiency programs."

Has Pachauri sealed his fate? In a new interview, he still claims that the IPCC made only *one* error; he also suggests that all of the 2,300 DC climate lobbyists were *against* the climate hoax

Oil firms played foul

I was merely an emblem of the larger issue that these people wanted to harm and damage over the so-called errors in the IPCC’s fourth assessment report. Except for one error, which we ourselves acknowledged about the Himalayan glaciers, the doubts raised have proved to be unfounded.
...
The Centre for Public Integrity in Washington, DC, came out with a report in 2009, according to which lobbyists in Washington had been put in charge of a mission to thwart climate change talks.
There are 2,300 lobbyists whose sole responsibility is to topple the talks. The report has estimated that around 770 companies are funding these people. So there are four lobbyists for every member of Congress, and a big money interest is involved.
We have always encouraged a healthy debate that is based on reliable information.
...
In our reports, we have always included articles that have a point of view that is different from ours. However, these articles should have a published record, should be scholarly and should have been published in peer-reviewed journals.
There are those who misinform and misrepresent facts. While their number is dwindling, their decibel level is high and hence they get a lot of attention.

[Q] Where do the sceptics get their funding from?
Again, I would like to refer to the report of the Centre for Public Integrity. A report in The Times of London on July 19 talked about some oil companies funding a group of sceptics. It is perhaps those who feel threatened, such as fuel companies or automobile manufacturers, who fund these people.
...
[Q] How big a threat do the sceptics pose to the global talks to be held in Mexico?
Two weeks ago, I was in Mexico and met the president. The Mexican foreign minister was in Delhi recently. Mexico, in my expectation, is not going to achieve anything dramatic or revolutionary. But some steps forward will be taken. There is a certain level of realism, and most world leaders want action on climate change.

FOXNews.com - Energy Reform: Heavy Hitters Seek to Sway Cap and Trade Debate

In the five years since Congress last voted on climate change, there's been a 300 percent increase in the number of climate lobbyists, according to the Center for Public Integrity. There are now more than 2,300 lobbyists from 770 companies and organizations -- more than four lobbyists for every member of Congress.

And those lobbyists collected at least $90 million last year from 770 companies and organizations, including the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a group of 48 firms that spent a total of $9.95 million exclusively on the issue.

The explosive growth in energy lobbying was reported last month by the Center for Public Integrity, which noted that just 45 percent of the interests now weighing in on the issue were energy companies and manufacturers, compared with 70 percent in 2003. Finance and investment firms, which had virtually no role in the debate in 2003, now have about as many lobbyists as alternative energy corporations, according to its report, "The Climate Change Lobby Explosion."

Sun-Earth Coupling

Given the complexity of the atmosphere, and the ways the sun’s output can vary, it seems too sweeping to say that the observed small irradiance changes seen from the sun over a solar cycle can only account for a 0.1 deg C change in global annual average temperatures.

Harvard Code of Conduct Contrasts with Penn State and UVa

While this legal process plays out, the court of public opinion must wonder why the openness and direct dealing with such allegations exhibited by Harvard is not the model for the University of Virginia. Harvard is shown to be a scientifically open and self policing university; UVa is hiding behind its self -righteous claims of academic freedom and legal barricades. Whose research will the public more likely trust?

Pachauri admits the IPCC just guesses the numbers « JoNova

Such is the pressure finally beginning to bear on the IPCC that Pachauri has been forced into the ridiculous position of trying to rescue credibility by contradicting most of their past PR campaign. He’s taken the extraordinary step of admitting they don’t have hard numbers, hey, but it’s all OK because the IPCC is really a government agency to make policy, not to write scientific reports “that don’t see the light of day”.

So he’s admitting that the IPCC was all about policy prescriptions all along? And the science was just fudged-up window dressing to provide an excuse? Well, who would have guessed.

How Garrison Keillor warmed up a frozen fair grandstand | StarTribune.com

How cold was it Friday for “A Prairie Home Companion” at the State Fair Grandstand?
So cold that concertgoers were wearing parkas, stocking caps and gloves. So cold that PHC pianist Richard Dworsky was wearing a winter top coat and scarf. So cold that the fair put up tall, flaming heaters and gave away free hot chocolate (they ran out by intermission) and coffee (which we thought was the drink of choice of Lutherans).

The Koch brothers invade California - How the World Works - Salon.com

The billionaire libertarians plunk a cool million down in support of Prop. 23 and higher temperatures for everyone

If you haven't already read Jane Mayer's devastating New Yorker profile of the billionaire Koch brothers who, among other things, have been bankrolling the Tea Party and funding climate change skepticism on a massive scale, well, what are you waiting for? I can't think of a better way to ruin a great three-day weekend!

Flashback: Gore to recruit 10m-strong green army | Environment | The Guardian

During the next three years, his Alliance for Climate Protection plans to spend $300m (about £150m) on television advertising and online organising to make global warming among the most urgent issues for elected American leaders.
...
Environmental activists yesterday described the plan as the most ambitious public campaign launched in the US.

"The resources are completely unprecedented in American politics," said Philip Clapp, of the Pew Environment Group. It is equally ambitious in targets. The Alliance has already reached out to organisations as diverse as the Girl Scouts and the steelworkers union to try to broaden its appeal.

How Can Los Angeles Adapt to Coming Climate Change?: "Scientific" American

Climate change can't alter the blue skies or access to the beach and mountains, but it will pose four tangible threats: The summers will grow hotter, the air will be smoggier, there will be more fires, and there will be much less water
...
You can walk around in shorts in February, and in the summer there is rarely humidity or a heat wave.
...
Almost everyone in Los Angeles was not born here. Many of us are transplants from cold Northeastern cities.

August 19, 2010: Coldest July For Los Angeles According to NASA GISS……Station Records « Things I Find Interesting

As you can see Los Angeles is about 2.75° C below the average for July of 22.95° C. Matter of fact the graph shows this is the coldest July in the entire instrumental record, just slightly cooler then July 1944. Also notice that there is a basically flat temperature trend for July in Los Angeles. Again you see that big spike in 1959 but you also see another at 1931.

ETS reveals how divorced from reality politicians are » The Gisborne Herald

Claiming carbon credits on forestry is a disaster, both individually and nationally. A short-term gain will likely end in long-term pain.

Farmers who claim and sell credits will be leaving their descendants a potential time bomb, and land that can never be sold. Nick Smith claims $666 per hectare per year is available to those who sell their credits; $666 by 25 equals $16,650 liability per hectare. Who would want to buy land that has a carbon credit liability like this, let alone one five to 20 times what the credits were sold for.

Also, who will be responsible for repaying those credits if land use changes? When does this responsibility end?

I predict this land will become worthless, with a liability in excess of its value. The only reason to sell credits now is if you are 100 percent positive the price is going to collapse and you can make money from others’ stupidity.

The Government has set the price at $25 a tonne, it is currently selling at $18 to $20 a tonne. In the US it is $0.10 a tonne.

Banana glut dents profits at Fyffes

A banana glut caused when cold weather shut down street markets this year hit Fyffes, with profits at Europe’s second-largest banana shipper down 18 per cent in the first half.

Green jobs come to the urban poor | MNN - Mother Nature Network

Many of Los Angeles's urban poor have bigger concerns than climate change. Nonetheless, the past few years have seen formerly homeless and jobless folks planting gardens, installing solar panels, and working other green jobs as they make upgrades to increase the efficiency of their homes.

Fiorina announces support for Proposition 23 to roll back state's global warming law| PolitiCal | Los Angeles Times

...her campaign put out a nuanced statement Friday afternoon, as Fiorina headed out of the country to Israel, that said she supported Prop. 23.

Payne: The irony of Jesse Jackson's stripped SUV | themichiganview.com | The Michigan View

Add Jesse to the Al Gore-Tom Friedman-Barack Obama School of Environmental Hypocrisy. While preaching to Americans that they need to cram their families into hybrid Priuses to go shopping for compact fluorescent light bulbs to save the planet, they themselves continue to live large.
...
Real jobs produced big, profitable SUVs like the one Jesse prefers to ride in. His SUV has been stripped by thugs – a fitting metaphor for what Jesse and his pals have done to the auto industry for the last 35 years.

Robert Reich: Stimulate Economy With 90% Tax On Top Earners | NewsBusters.org

Yep. Let's tax carbon and give the proceeds to lower and middle-income wage earners.

There it is, folks. If you doubted the whole global warming scam was specifically designed to redistribute wealth, one of the left's most-respected economic strategists just admitted it!

C3: Should Fanatical Environmental Literature Be Used In The U.S. Public School System?

As the recent Maryland green-terror incident reveals, environmentalists are ramping up the level of violence. The Al Gore, Greenpeace-type of fanatical propaganda is definitely having an impact and it raises serious questions about whether school systems, teachers and administrators could ultimately be held accountable.

Do the many emotionally, dysfunctional young people who populate our schools really need to be scared-out-of-their-wits by ludicrous, catastrophic enviro-fanatic predictions?

[Why are trace amounts of CO2 utterly failing to make our lives miserable?]: The environmentalist’s paradox: we do better while the earth does worse | Grist

His argument is pretty simple: More people have more money, better health, more mobility, more food, and more security than ever before in human history. That chart on the right is from the Human Development Index, which tracks life expectancy, literacy, and other indicators of human well-being. The lines are heading up almost everywhere. Humanity doesn't seem to be suffering unduly for its environmental sins.

Mexico's foreign minister dampens hopes of Cancun climate [swindle] deal | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Patricia Espinosa says success of talks should not be measured by whether countries agree on a new legally binding text

If Rajendra Pachauri goes, who on Earth would want to be IPCC chair? | John Vidal | Environment | guardian.co.uk

If Pachauri goes – and the decision can only be taken by governments – two years into his second six-year term, then no future IPCC chair can ever feel safe....Ousting the IPCC chairman mid-term again would be the ultimate victory for scepticism of the wildest kind.
..
Pachauri, in fact, has been a rare find and a staunch defender of international science.

Breaking: ‘Hockey Stick’ Judge Rejects ‘Academic Freedom Argument,’ Denies Cuccinelli anyway - Planet Gore - National Review Online

But the fact that the judge’s wife previously worked in the Department of Environmental Sciences — the very department that stood to suffer had he ruled in favor of the attorney general – was somehow not worth disclosing to counsel. I learned of this only after the hearing from Ms. Peatross’s former coworkers, who were astonished that her husband would decide such a matter given his seeming lack of objectivity.

Warning Signs: Hurricane Humility

...Earl has veered out into the Atlantic and is just barely holding on to a Category 1 status.

How many hours did Fox News, the Weather Channel, and all the others devote to sensational satellite pictures of the Mighty Earl until, over the hours, it became apparent that those intrepid reporters waiting for it to come ashore were reduced to interviewing disgruntled surfers unhappy that they could not commit suicide in Earl’s surging waves?

IAC review of the IPCC : Stoat

Anyway, I can no longer put off actually reading the thing... but then I realised I couldn't be bothered. So I just read the exec summary. This means you should discount what I say by some appropriate amount.

What lies beneath Antarctic ice : Nature News

The British Falkland Islands Dependencies Aerial Survey Expedition findings from the mid-1950s showed unusual numbers of crabeater seals dying in this area. Members of the expedition suggested that methane could be implicated.

Climate Change Dispatch - The Costs of Free Energy

So what does the professor finally conclude? He finds that "the new technology may actually be an energy sink, instead of an energy source, relative to the global total primary energy supply for many years or decades..."

How long before Joe Romm deletes this claim?: He actually suggests that 45.5 degrees F. is a "great" temperature for a swim

Hey Joe: I challenge you to spend one hour swimming in 45.5 F. water, then let us know how "great" the experience was.

Captain’s log from the Chukchi Sea: “The water temperature is 7.5 degrees. If we weren’t sailing, it would be a great temperature for a swim!” « Climate Progress

He notes in an update,”The water temperature is 7.5 degrees. If we weren’t sailing, it would be a great temperature for a swim!” [He means degrees Celsius, of course.]

Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion calculator

Answer: 7.5 ºC = 45.5 ºF

Swimming Pool Water Temperatures

Even for the most adventurous swimmers, 65° F is unbearably cold.

Cold Water Survival

40–50° F (4–10° C)  [Exhaustion or Unconsciousness in] 30–60 minutes
[Expected Survival Time]  1–3 hours

[Alarmist journalist David Appell weighs in]: Climate in Wonderland

In actual fact, there is hardly any disagreement among practicing scientists that man-made climate change is real, is upon us and is going to get much worse in the decades to come.

As a science journalist, I have attended many climate science conferences. There, I've rarely seen any presentations that disagree with the man-made climate change position. Moreover, such disagreements rarely appear in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The vast majority of papers accept the basic science of man-made climate change and are building upon it, working to examine its consequences.

Disputes by climate change skeptics now appear only in the dark corners of the Internet, because they do not pass the muster necessary for scientific publication.

Anti-corruption academy with UN and EU sponsoring opens in Austria — MercoPress

An anti-corruption academy co-sponsored by the United Nations opened Thursday in Austria with the aim of filling the rising global need for training, research and contemporary measures and techniques in the fight against corruption.

The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Green Cheese

We have already seen how a little inquiry can expose the grandest of claims about the fashionable if fading new label for central planning, the "green economy". When President Obama was outed on his claims about Spain - as in serially calling on us to "think about what's happening in countries like Spain, Germany and Japan" -- he simply transitioned to "Denmark and Germany". Well, Denmark (like Germany) was also exposed. Then Japan's scheme turned out to be no more than the same Spanish and German program of raising consumer energy costs to transfer the wealth to "green economy" interests, according to its own government.

As a result, Obama no longer points to anywhere his model has worked.

With a Little Help from Its Media Buddy, USA Today, the U.S. Geological Survey Perpetuates Climate-Science Fraud - Big Journalism

To recap, the USGS this week issued a report that summarizes Asian glacier science from the 1970s. Nonetheless, a USGS civil servant wrote an alarming press release in the present tense, and titled it, “Asian Glaciers Retreating.” A reporter at USA Today then parroted the press release, evidently without reading the underlying report. This shoddy media, in turn, informs leading politicians like John Kerry, who use fake facts to try to scare people into voting for energy rationing. Thus is climate alarmism manufactured.

‘Clunkers,’ a classic government folly - Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe

...the supply of used cars is artificially low, because your Uncle Sam decided last year to destroy hundreds of thousands of perfectly good automobiles as part of its hare-brained Car Allowance Rebate System — or, as most of us called it, Cash for Clunkers. That was the program under which the government paid consumers up to $4,500 when they traded in an old car and bought a new one with better gas mileage. The traded-in cars — which had to be in drivable condition to qualify for the rebate — were then demolished: Dealers were required to chemically wreck each car’s engine, and send the car to be crushed or shredded.

Congress and the Obama administration trumpeted Cash for Clunkers as a triumph — the president pronounced it “successful beyond anybody’s imagination.’’ Which it was, if you define success as getting people to take “free’’ money to make a purchase most of them are going to make anyway, while simultaneously wiping out productive assets that could provide value to many other consumers for years to come. By any rational standard, however, this program was sheer folly.
...
When all is said and done, Cash for Clunkers was a deplorable exercise in budgetary wastefulness, asset destruction, environmental irrelevance, and economic idiocy. Other than that, it was a screaming success.

Is a Sweltering Summer Proof of Global Warming? | Audubon Magazine Blog

Yet the five hottest years ever recorded since record keeping began in 1880 happened in the last decade, NASA reports, indicating that the earth is heating up.
...
On the Pew Center on Global Climate Change’s blog, Jay Gulledge, senior scientist and director of the science and impacts program there also offers some interesting comments when writing about extreme weather events in recent years.

“As every dutiful scientist does, I stopped short of blaming those individual weather events on global warming, but I am also careful to point out that it is scientifically unsound to claim that the confluence of extreme weather events in recent years is not associated with global warming,” he says.

Flashback: A New Leaderboard at the U.S. Open « Climate Audit

Four of the top 10 are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004) fell well down the leaderboard, behind even 1900.

Another Item for Climate Panel's To-Do List - NYTimes.com

So there’s a circular issue here. All media queries for the hundreds of scientists participating in the panel’s next assessment are supposed to funnel through a media office with almost no resources (see the InterAcademy review), and direct access (through, say, a user-friendly country-by-country directory with links to scientists’ home pages) won’t be forthcoming until the authors get media training (with what resources?).

I have an idea. Why don’t scientists and other experts contributing to the fifth assessment by the climate panel self organize and create a public Web portal? They can stick to the panel guidelines, but still interact with reporters and — better yet — the public.

Another modeling "oops": Carbon dioxide fails to prevent 22-fold increase in Fraser River salmon run

Canada sees shock salmon glut : Nature News

It's the biggest run of sockeye salmon in British Columbia since 1913. Some 34 million fish are thronging the Fraser River as they return from the sea to spawn, federal regulators announced on 31 August. The event, following two decades of decline in salmon-run numbers, is taking fisheries scientists by surprise — and causing frustration across the fishing industry, which is largely unable to access the windfall.
...
This year's unexpected boom has led to even more intense speculation about the state of the sockeye population. The 2009 salmon run reportedly saw only around 1.5 million fish returning to the river. The Canadian government's Cohen Commission, established in 2009, is now looking at the current state of the sockeye population and potential causes of the decline. The commission aims to make recommendations for the future sustainability of salmon stocks by mid-2011.

Given the existence of models that predict fluctuations in salmon populations, why has this year's glut come as such a shock? Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the government agency in Ottawa, Ontario, that runs the models and regulates the salmon fishing industry, has been criticized for failing to predict it.

Sue Grant, fisheries biologist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, explains that the models are full of uncertainties: "They are based on biological information from historical and real-time catches to estimate the abundance," she says. "The forecasts are probability distributions based in part on extrapolation from historical data sets."

Flashback - Canadian report says Fraser River salmon fishery in danger of collapse

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) -- The Fraser River salmon fishery could collapse within a few decades because of global warming, a Canadian government study indicates.

The report issued this week by the Climate Change Secretariat predicts a grim future for the world's most productive sockeye salmon river system, which historically has produced millions of fish caught in U.S. as well as Canadian waters.

Jesse Jackson's Gas-Guzzling Escalade Ironically Stolen After "Green Jobs" Rally

http://m.jalopnik.com/5629715/jesse-jacksons-gas+guzzling-escalade-ironically-stolen-after-green-jobs-rally

Kyoto is costing Russia too much - Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/russianow/opinion/7980382/Kyoto-is-costing-Russia-too-much.html

There has never been a consensus that man is to blame for global warming among the experts at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

I was among the fiercest opponents and have challenged that document because it is not scientifically valid. The UN Framework Climate Change Convention says the concentration of greenhouse gases must be such as to rule out the danger of anthropogenic impact on the climate. But where is that level? Nobody knows, so it can be fixed arbitrarily.

Whether to mention the weather

Some climatologists speculate that 2010 might be a "Pearl Harbour" moment for global climate change.

Virginia’s War on Academic Freedom - Science Business - research, innovation & policy - Forbes

The conclusions that the Earth is warming up, and that humans are one of the main causes, are no longer controversial within the scientific community, especially after the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) issued its report a few years ago. Nonetheless, many global warming denialists, including Mr. Cucinelli, continue to dispute them.

But Cucinelli isn’t just a global warming denialist. He’s also the attorney general of Virginia, which gives him quite a bit of power within that state. He’s not a scientist, but that didn’t stop him from suing the University of Virginia.
...
The Virginia attorney general’s groundless lawsuit, based on his purely political views and ambitions, is clearly intended to intimidate academic scientists at Virginia universities. Prof. Mann himself called the case “criminal harrassment.” This kind of political threat is reminiscent of the oppressive regimes of the Soviet Union, whose scientists only published findings that met with the approval of their political masters. Political threats are a recipe for bad science.

» Hedge Fund Manager Earns Millions on Carbon, Spends it Financing Global Warming Initiative Campaign - Big Government

It is often pointed out by climate change skeptics that the deeds of the most prominent voices preaching climate doom rarely match their apocalyptic caterwauling. How many times a year does Al Gore circumnavigate the globe in a gasoline fueled jet to condescendingly tell the masses that their use of gasoline is killing the planet?

And how worried can Tom Steyer be about the ill effects of carbon fuels if he’s helping to fund the development and delivery of them?

Scene & Herd: For Ludwig, teaching science is elementary - Lexington, MA - Lexington Minuteman

“I guess the thing that motivates me most now is doing what I can to limit climate change, including teaching, volunteering and political activism. Climate disruption is a specter that looms over all our kids and grandchildren,” she said. “This world of nature that I've spent a lifetime exploring with kids and adults is at risk, as is our way of life — think 30 or more days a summer above 90 degrees in the future if we do nothing different. It's really disturbing that there seems so little momentum for change in Washington.”

Environmentalists Getting Mad As Hell | The Science Friday Blog

Are environmentalists “mad as hell” now and willing to become more vocal and politically active? Could be.

They’ve watched greenhouse gas legislation stalling in Congress this year, again. They’ve listened to politicians call global warming the greatest hoax ever foisted on the American public. They’ve seen environmental groups, over the decades, try to be more accommodating with lobbyists and industry, hoping to “get along” if they “give a little.” How much did it get them?

If China is going green, why did those 10,000 coal trucks get caught in the Mother-Of-All-Traffic Jams? | Washington Examiner

But incredible as a 75-mile traffic jam is in and of itself, there was something else of importance worth noting in the Chinese traffic choker - it was mainly caused by trucks hauling coal. According to China Daily, "more than 10,000 trucks mainly carrying coal are stuck in a 120 km (75 mile) traffic jam in the north Chinese region of Inner Mongolia, in the latest dramatic snarl-up on the country's roads."

New website to track climate aid, key to U.N. talks | Reuters

In the Reuters tally, half of the total pledged so far -- $15 billion -- is from Japan, but much of this comes from a previously planned initiative running from 2008-12.

Greenpeace Violence Is Escalating – “The Lines Are Drawn”

Greenpeace is known for breaking the law, trespassing, putting other people at risk, and chaining its members to drilling platforms to protest and, more importantly, to seek the capital of publicity. That’s one thing – but it’s quite another to recruit, psychologically manipulate, and exploit a child for the purpose waging psychological war on people who have different opinion. Greenpeace is ratcheting up the level of violence.

In the video that follows, posted by a reader at WUWT, Greenpeace instrumentalises a hooded, militant young boy as a propaganda pawn. The boy’s anger is clearly visible as he threatens and intimidates people with generational conflict. His expressions are militant, like those we see on tapes of crazed Islamic radicals released to publicise their threats. This is the new level of violence now being used by Greenpeace.

The Book the IPCC Plagiarized « NoFrakkingConsensus

It appears unlikely that a good faith, bona fide review of the scientific literature took place prior to the writing of significant sections of the IPCC’s first health chapter. Instead, the climate bible surreptitiously incorporated numerous opinions expressed a few years earlier by the activist-oriented person in charge of writing this chapter.

Then the media told the world that the IPCC’s proclamations regarding global warming and diseases such as malaria were the considered, consensus view of thousands of experts.

Obama's EPA planning heroic efforts to save us from hurricanes caused by cow flatulence?

EPA set to deliver modest carbon crackdown - 03 Sep 2010 - BusinessGreen.com

Official admits watchdog will struggle to deliver 17 per cent cut in emissions outlined in failed climate bill
...
In particular, the EPA is thought to be looking at regulations to tackle methane emissions, a greenhouse gas that is known to be around 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is scheduled to attend a meeting in Mexico next month that will investigate measures for tackling methane emissions from landfill and livestock and the agency is believed to be looking at various proposals for tackling the problem.

AFP: Website tracks Copenhagen [climate hoax] pledges

GENEVA — Six rich economies joined a website unveiled on Friday detailing pledges in short-term aid they made at last December's climate summit, a move aimed at restoring damaged trust with developing countries.

The portal www.faststartfinance.org showed that Britain, Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Norway had so far allocated the equivalent of 3.2 billion dollars in climate funds.

Twenty-seven poorer countries are named as beneficiaries, including Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Morocco and the Philippines. Details of the projects and the timescale of funding were not given.

Climate Code Foundation

The Foundation intends to work with climate scientists, funding bodies, national and international organisations, and science publishers, to establish climate science in the forefront of science software quality and transparency.

Gee, thanks, Al: Midwestern farmers get a taste of the real "green economy"

VeraSun to farmers: Pay us back - Omaha.com

Nebraska farmers who sold corn to the former VeraSun Energy Corp. have been receiving notices from law firms in New York demanding that they pay back any money received from VeraSun 90 days prior to the company filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy Oct. 31, 2008.

The money is to be returned to the bankruptcy-reorganized VeraSun.

VeraSun operated ethanol plants in Ord, Central City and Albion.
....
More than $100 million could be at stake.
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Rempke said the Farm Bureau is also telling farmers who received letters that they should respond in writing, after consulting an attorney, because failure to respond could result in litigation and the bankruptcy court potentially authorizing 100 percent repayment to the reorganized VeraSun entity.

Flashback: Al Gore Saved The Ethanol

Some revealing new quotes from climate hoax promoter Pachauri

I am happy that truth has come out: Pachauri - India - The Times of India

They have talked about quantifying uncertainties. To some extent, we are doing that, though not perfectly. But the issue is that in some cases, you really don't have a quantitative base by which you can attach a probability or a level of uncertainty that defines things in quantitative terms. And there, let's not take away the importance of expert judgment. And that is something the report has missed or at least not pointed out.
...
Let's face it, we are an intergovernmental body and our strength and acceptability of what we produce is largely because we are owned by governments. If that was not the case, then we would be like any other scientific body that maybe producing first-rate reports but don't see the light of the day because they don't matter in policy-making. Now clearly, if it's an inter-governmental body and we want governments' ownership of what we produce, obviously they will give us guidance of what direction to follow, what are the questions they want answered. Unfortunately, people have completely missed the original resolution by which IPCC was set up. It clearly says that our assessment should include realistic response strategies. If that is not an assessment of policies, then what does it represent? And I am afraid, we have been, in my view, defensive in coming out with a whole range of policies and I am not saying we prescribe policy A or B or C but on the basis of science, we are looking at realistic response strategies.

But that is exactly what this committee has recommended that we get out of — policy prescriptions. It is for this reason that I brought out that this what is written in the IPCC mandate. This is a misperception on the part of some people in the scientific community. And I hope I can correct it.
... And I must say I owe it to what has happened over the past few months that I have certainly shed any inhibitions or feelings of cowardice. I believe this is now my opportunity to go out and do what I think is right. In the second term I may be little more uncomfortable for the people than I was in the first. Maybe they realize it.

Southwest Florida snook fishing restrictions extended | news-press.com | The News-Press

State wildlife regulators have decided to extend restrictions on snook fishing until Sept. 1, 2011, in Everglades National Park and along Florida's Gulf Coast after thousands of the temperature-sensitive sport fish died during January's cold snap.

Virginia AG speaks out against cap and trade | TriCities.com

ABINGDON, Va. – Speaking to a full auditorium in a town hall-style meeting at Virginia Highlands Community College on Thursday, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said cap and trade, if passed by Congress, would send power rates through the roof.

“Cap and trade is going to drastically affect electric rates and the economy here in Southwest Virginia,” said Cuccinelli, whose role as attorney general includes representing customers when power companies seek to increase rates.

Prairie farmers on lookout for frost

Drew Lerner of World Weather Inc. near Kansas City said there have already been patches of frost in parts of Alberta, and more could be on the way.

Discovery Channel Hostage Taker: Inside the Liberal Mind

Is this guy cracked? Oh yeah. Is is manifesto just some totally made-up satirical crap? Rational Americans might be tempted to think so, but then, most Americans haven’t been exposed very much to liberal thinking (remember, they usually keep their thinking hidden and disguised from the general public).

To be sure, not all liberals are as far gone as this nut-job, but most of them at least have the same zip code as this guy.

first direct interviews 10:10 Global Director, Lizzie Gillett for Chapter 2 of their 'Colourful Lives' report

As part of this, first direct have interviewed Lizzie Gillett, Global Director of 10:10 aged 32, who changed her stressful career in TV production to work for the climate change [hoax] charity and do something more worthwhile with her life. In the video she talks about her decision to change careers, how she got involved in such a worthy cause and how her career shift has improved her life. first direct is one of the many companies who have signed up to 10:10 and are committed to cutting its carbon omissions by at least 10% in 2010.

Lisa Jackson's High-Wire Act on Carbon Controls - BusinessWeek

Former House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) has warned that attempts to use existing law to regulate carbon will create a "glorious mess." So far, he seems to be right. Still, Jackson is forging ahead. "There is only so much this agency can do under the Clean Air Act," she concedes. "You can get started, and we need to get started."

Mexico Coffee Crop Struggling to Recover from Cold - Food Industry News

Sept 2 - Mexico's coffee harvest, hit this season by a cold snap at the beginning of the year, will struggle to recover next season as some plants were completely destroyed, producers said on Thursday.

Unusually cold weather last winter ruined crops in the coffee growing states of Veracruz, Puebla and San Luis Potosi causing losses of between 200,000 and 300,000 60-kg bags.

Southern snow as winter maintains its grip - New Zealand

We're already a few days into spring, but winter is refusing to release its grip.

Repowered wind farm could save Altamont birds

If we told you that a poorly regulated energy facility killed thousands of birds this year, you could assume we were talking about BP's Deepwater Horizon platform in the Gulf of Mexico. But we also could be talking about the Altamont Pass wind farm east of San Francisco, which has been killing thousands of migratory birds and protected raptors since the 1980s.
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A recent study estimates that the Altamont Pass turbines kill between 7,500 and 9,300 birds each year. Many of the affected species are protected under state and federal laws, including the golden eagle, red-tailed hawk, American kestrel and burrowing owl. These birds are spectacular examples of a wild California - part of our identity as a state - that we must protect.

Flashback: YouTube - Hundreds of ducks die in Alberta oilsands tailings pond

Environmentalists are furious, governments are demanding answers and Syncrude -- located about 40 kilometres north of Fort McMurray -- is scrambling to contain the damage, he said.

- Bishop Hill blog - Shapiro speaks

[Andrew Montford, reacting to a Myles Allen statement] To my mind this means that we will not get a credible IPCC report until some time around 2020.

The Reference Frame: The likelihood that 2010 will surpass 1998

The odds are about 5-to-1 that 2010 will stay cooler than 1998.

C3: Does Human CO2 Cause Extreme Weather Events? Another Climate Scientist Says 'No' As Does The Data

The elites-caused global warming hysteria is producing some truly dysfunctional behavior by individuals, due to the exaggerated fear about extreme weather and climate. As it stands though, global warming and human CO2 are not causing an increase in extreme disaster events. Climate scientists examining the actual data say there is not the connection that global warming alarmists claim.

Zardari, Al Gore discuss flood situation

[Gore] said he would appoint a group of experts to investigate the cause of devastating floods, which would also submit a report on it.

August 2010 UAH Global Temperature Update: +0.51 deg. C « Roy Spencer, Ph. D.

While the global-average lower tropospheric temperature remained high, +0.51 deg. C in August, 2010, monitoring of the daily Aqua Ch.5 data at the Discover web site suggests that the cooling of global average sea surface temperatures that started several months ago is now causing the troposphere to cool as well.

Cold beats climate change protest - Scotsman.com

The environmental pressure group said freezing conditions and strong winds forced campaigners on board the Stena Don rig to abandon their protest action against the drilling plans of Edinburgh-based Cairn Energy.

Science's policy clout diminished, but oil risk looms large

The message content hypothesis is important because it directly addresses problems in current politics: Scientists and government experts report research findings, which policy makers dispute and sometimes vote as 'false' or 'junk science'. Charges of junk science have come from many groups, both left and right, and have been directed at scientific findings in many areas—climate change, nuclear power, nuclear waste storage, genetic engineering, high-power electric transmission lines, pesticides, and oil drilling.

Still the Skeptical Environmentalist « John Stossel

The bottom line: Bjorn Lomborg has not "defected" from the skeptic camp. The environmentalists just don't pay close attention.

Shell pulls out of CO2 injection project | The Martinez News-Gazette

Shell has abandoned plans to truck CO2 into the Montezuma Hills near Rio Vista, for which it had joined with the West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (WESTCARB). The intent was to demonstrate the viability of pumping excess CO2 emissions more than two miles under ground.

According to Shell spokesperson Barbara Kornylo, Shell has decided to pull out of the project because the company has become aware of two other options to mitigate CO2 emissions. As for the other two options, “I can’t say what they are right now,” Kornlyo stated.

In Search of Cooling Trends « the Air Vent

The first 10 (Set 1) of Tony’s target stations, which at this point I should say seemed to be a randomly chosen set, were:

* Brazil – Curitiba (1885 to 2009) Cooling 1955 to 2009
* Canada – Edmonton (1881-2009) Cooling from 1886 to 2009
* Chile – Puerto Montt (1951-2009) Cooling from 1955
* China – Jiuquan (1934-2009) Cooling all years
* Russia – Kandalaska (1913-2009) Cooling 1933-2009
* Iceland – Haell (1931-2009) Cooling all years
* India – Amritsar (1948-2009) Cooling all years
* Morocco – Casablanca (1925-2009) Cooling all years
* Adelaide – Australia (1881-2008) Cooling all years
* Abilene, Texas – USA (1886-2009) Cooling 1933-2009

Al Fin: The Impending Cult of the Great Green Global Suicide

The fantasies of leftists have taken on macabre and disturbing overtones as of late. Mr. Lee's suicide by SWAT is but one of the unsettling directions such fantasies can turn. Expect more occurrences of leftist inspired eco-terrorism in the not-so-distant future.

Somewhere, in a jail cell not so far away, the Unabomber is giggling.

Climate CO2 Sensitivity Overestimated | The Resilient Earth

More plainly put, making simplifying assumptions about nature has led to an over estimation of carbon dioxide's impact on temperature. As experienced modelers will tell you, simplifying assumptions can be the death of any simulation. Here is more proof that the climate models used by the IPCC and other climate researchers don't have a chance in hell of getting future climate change correct. The closer science looks at the real world processes involved in climate regulation the more absurd the IPCC's computer driven fairy tale appears. Instead of blithely modeling climate based on hunches and suppositions, climate scientists would be better off abandoning their ivory towers and actually measuring what happens in the real world.

[Are hurricanes climate, while a lack of hurricanes is weather?] | CEJournal

[Curry] So that’s where we’re at. We still have this observation of an increasing percent of category 4 and 5 hurricanes. But what [can] we attribute that to? Natural variability? Or climate change? Probably some combination of both. But natural variability could very well be playing the dominant role . . . We just don’t have enough data to sort it out.

Climate Resistance » What Happens When the Think-Tank is Empty of Thought?

Attempts to read instructions from objective, material reality quickly turn out to owe a great deal to what happens in the human world. The attempt to form political agendas from what appears to be the state of the natural, material world — peak oil, climate change, population growth, biodiversity, and so on — comes after the messy, anxiety, aimlessness and sense of crisis have been projected onto it. It’s as though what’s out there is easier to confront than that same mess, aimless, crisis and anxiety. In today’s silly debate about resources, too much exists prior to any sensible data about how to make the best use of them, occluding a clear view of our situation. The ‘thinkers’ that populate ‘think’ tanks and political organisations, having no positive programme to speak of, cannot respond to theoretical risks proportionately. Nervousness about change in the material world reflect nervousness about politics itself, so any notion of change amplifies, to become the next Soviet Union, the next Nazi Party, or the next great flood. It follows that vapid politicians with hollow agendas would make a virtue of scarcity.

Driver hopes to combine environmentalism, NASCAR - From the Marbles - NASCAR  - Yahoo! Sports

ARCA driver Leilani Munter, pictured above left with the Atlanta Falcons' Ovie Mughelli and former NFL'er Mike Alstott at the Gulf Coast, is hard at work trying to bring attention to environmentalism. It's a tough road -- NASCAR, with its vehicles driving hundreds of miles in a circle, is the lazy thinker's whipping boy for anti-environmentalism -- but Munter is doing her part to open a few eyes, as a current CNN profile of her efforts reveals.

ROI: Ten Ways to Save Money by Going Green - WSJ.com

(Meanwhile, the deniers cling to their peculiar upside-down logic: "You can't prove for certain that my house is going to catch fire, so fire codes are a total waste of time, and there is no point buying an extinguisher.")

Breaking: Trace amounts of CO2 can allegedly cause "a legacy of environmental hell"

Senate should move on climate change legislation - The Hill's Congress Blog

The BlueGreens told audiences in August the choice for lawmakers is leaving a legacy of environmental hell or bequeathing climate unchanged.

Breaking: CO2 will allegedly cause food poisoning and increasing rates of depression

Climate change picked to hit health | Stuff.co.nz

Two GPs are warning that doctors need to be prepared for a wave of new ailments this century caused by climate change, including more accidents, gastroenteritis, skin cancer, depression and dengue fever.

Speaking at the Royal NZ College of GPs conference in Christchurch this morning, GPs Rochelle Phipps of Christchurch and Rebecca Randerson of Johnsonville said climate change would have "significant implications" for general practice.

More injuries and deaths from disasters such as floods, landslides, storms and fires were predicted, as well as food poisoning problems due to warmer temperatures and sewerage problems from flooding.

They also predicted increased rates of skin cancer, as warmer weather drew people outside beneath a continued ozone hole.

Increased rates of depression were also likely, as farmers lost their livelihood through climate change, and in victims of increasing environmental disasters.

Greenhouse Protection Racket — An Update

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/globalwarmingorg/~3/7qyIjIKpAls/

In short, as I discuss in a column this week in Pajamas Media, the Administration needs to keep the prospect of CO2 litigation alive in order to sustain the "greenhouse protection racket" — the strategy of regulatory extortion — on which warmists increasingly rely to promote their agenda.

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: Discrepancies in CO2 Reporting

The report concludes:

Policy implications are quite serious because the empirical discrepancies in the current annual CO2 emissions estimates far exceed the annual reduction targets generally proposed by policy instruments like the cap‐and‐trade program or national commitments.

The Hindu Business Line : Carbon credits to be taxed in new tax regime

Some industry observers, however, contend that bringing carbon credits into tax net may be a retrograde step as it will discourage corporates from working towards reduction in carbon emissions and preventing global warming.

China and India account for about 75 per cent of the carbon credits issued, according to the United Nations Framework for Climate Change. Many Indian corporates had in the recent years earned tidy profits from carbon credit trade, but had not provided for any tax in the books of accounts in the absence of specific provision in the income tax law.

Former US VP calls Zardari: US Experts on climate change to visit Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari and Former US vice president Al Gore had a telephonic conversation on Thursday in which they discussed the situation of recent floods in Pakistan and impact of climate change in recent floods.

According to President House Spokesman Farhatullah Babar the former US Vice president expressed his grave condolence over the loss of lives in the floods and said that US would continue to assist Pakistan.

AlGore also announced that a group of US Experts on climate change will visit Pakistan.

American Thinker Blog: Cracks in Climate Change Onslaught Appear

...All of this scare-tactic hysteria comes without any credible and repeatable scientific tests showing how trivial amounts of CO2 can have any major impact on global warming and without any believable mathematical model showing minimal climate change in over 1000 years except for the last 70 years of technological progress.

For those of us wishing for a return to rigorous science in the climate change debate, failure at Cancun can only help stall progress until greater transparency of IPCC assessments makes the whole process moot.

Uh oh. « the Air Vent

Steve M may have found the holy grail for climate skeptics. We don’t know what is in this data, and I’m guessing that neither do most climatologists and it covers 70 percent of the earth. What if the historic ocean temp trend is modified significantly by manual or algorithmic adjustment – I’m not saying it was, but it wouldn’t shock me after reading the discussions in the UEA emails. Link below.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change must keep its eye on the ball | Myles Allen | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Instead of producing reports 3,000 pages long, the IPCC should focus only on the key questions that everyone is interested in

Energy secretary Chris Huhne warned not to cut subsidies for green electricity | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Reducing funding for household generation of renewable energy will jeopardise job creation and energy security, Huhne is told

[If the Chinese people really believed that CO2 might kill their grandchildren, would they take this stance?]: China Sustains Blunt 'You First' Message on CO2 - NYTimes.com

Yu, who is now China’s ambassador to the Czech Republic, presented a tough — and appropriate — challenge to the world’s industrialized nations, which have largely built their wealth on a couple of centuries of burning fossil fuels.

In sum, he said that China’s national interests will always come first and, in any move toward binding steps for reducing global emissions of greenhouse gases, rich countries must go first.
...
My sense of this, as a longtime observer, is that Scissors is right in concluding there will remain very little linkage between American choices on climate policy and Chinese actions.