Jenkins: Our 'Hottest Year' and Al Gore's Epic Failure - WSJ.com

The contiguous United States isn't the globe. It isn't even the United States, omitting Alaska and Hawaii. The Lower 48 represent just 1.58% of the total surface area of the Earth. The law of large numbers is at work here: The smaller the sample, the more volatile its patterns compared to a larger sample. And the fact remains, in all the authoritative studies, the warmest year on record globally is still 1998 and no trend has been apparent globally since then.  [Via DB]

Adjunct professor of applied psychology on climate change: ''Those who voted Green or Labor were simply more objectively knowledgeable about the phenomenon and the issue"

Climate-change denial feels the heat

''There's a powerful climate change signal in extreme weather events in Australia,'' said Joseph Reser, an adjunct professor at Griffith University's school of applied psychology. ''The current heatwave is outside people's experience.''
...
Results of a test about climate change also saw divergent results.

''Those who voted Green or Labor were simply more objectively knowledgeable about the phenomenon and the issue,'' he said. ''Our female respondents were generally more knowledgeable, more concerned.''

August 2012: The polar bear facts : 6-minute video

At the 4:44 mark, we're told that polar bear expert Susan Crockford says that thinner, first-year sea ice is actually better for polar bears. It's better because seals don't hang around in areas where the ice is too thick to make breathing holes.

National Marine Mammal Laboratory

Ringed seals can live in areas that are completely covered with ice! They use their sharp claws to make and maintain their own breathing holes through the ice, which can be up to 7 feet thick!

Peter Ewins of World Wildlife Fund: You know why those whales ended up trapped in ice? Because "global warming is making the pattern of ice very unpredictable"

Is Global Warming Responsible for Trapped Whales? | French Tribune

Peter Ewins of World Wildlife Fund says that global warming is making the pattern of ice very unpredictable. This is what leads to such situations. Ted Scambos, a leading scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center, has doubts about the direct relation of global warming with this incident.

Ed Miliband’s Solar Scheme To Add £1 Billion To Family Household Bills

Ed Miliband’s controversial scheme to encourage homeowners to install solar panels and wind turbines is set to cost families an extra £1billion in higher bills, bringing more misery for cash-strapped consumers.

Has Rupert Murdoch turned into a climate change sceptic? - Press - Media - The Independent

There must have been some heads in hands at the New York HQ of the self-proclaimed “first global media company to achieve carbon neutral”.

Executives at News Corp have spent several years building the company’s green credentials, under the guidance of Rupert Murdoch, only for the founder and executive chairman to suggest it may have all been a waste of time and money.

California cold snap threatens $2 billion citrus harvest - Terra USA

An Arctic air mass has sent temperatures plunging across California, threatening the state's lucrative citrus harvest, its winter vegetables and its more cold-sensitive strawberry crop, weather and agricultural experts said on Friday.

Temperatures throughout the state fell by as much as 20 degrees Fahrenheit (11 degrees Celsius) below normal on Thursday and Friday as snowfall and sub-freezing conditions forced a 17-hour closure of a key highway, Interstate 5, through the mountains north of Los Angeles.

Negative Economic Impact Expected from Freeze Warning... Yuma, AZ/El Centro, CA

Our area produces 90 percent of winter vegetables for the entire country; harvesters say the effects of freezing temperatures could spread beyond the crops to have a widespread negative economic effect.

"Prices have basically doubled. This time last year we were shipping cartons of lettuce, 24 heads in a carton, for $8, $9. And right now, it's more than doubled to $20 to $25," said Vic Smith, president of JV Smith Companies.

House Science Chairman Lamar Smith puts climate change assessment on agenda | Trail Blazers Blog

“I believe climate change is due to a combination of factors, including natural cycles, sun spots, and human activity. But scientists still don’t know for certain how much each of these factors contributes to the overall climate change that the Earth is experiencing,” Smith said through an aide. “It is the role of the Science Committee to create a forum for discussion so Congress and the American people can hear from experts and draw reasoned conclusions. During this process, we should focus on the facts rather than on a partisan agenda.”

BBC News - Afghan children succumb to harsh winter weather

Last winter, more than 100 children died in the cold weather in the numerous refugee camps that surround the Afghan capital. Twenty-six of them died in the same camp where Janan lived.

China Shivers Through Coldest Winter in Decades - YouTube

Apparently, iPads and other Apple products take an extremely long time to charge at low temperatures. Although Apple employees explain that this is normal, desperate users have reported smothering their iPads in blankets, heating them with hot water bottles, and blasting them with hairdryers to speed up the charging process.

BBC News - Bushfires rage on in Australia 'helped' by climate change

Six people have been treated for heat exposure, but nobody has died.

Welcome To Green Europe: Greeks Raid Forests In Search Of Wood To Heat Homes | The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)

Tens of thousands of trees have disappeared from parks and woodlands this winter across Greece as the crisis-hit country’s impoverished residents, too broke to pay for electricity or fuel, turn to fireplaces and wood stoves for heat.

Japan seeks to reverse commitment to phase out nuclear power

the return to office last month of the conservative Liberal Democratic party (LDP) under Shinzo Abe effectively killed off the idea of a non-nuclear Japan

Twitter / RyanMaue: Let's all give it up for GFS, ...

Let's all give it up for GFS, instead of 110°F in Sydney as it had forecasted up/down for days, it is rainy & 73°F, high maybe touched 90°F

Twitter / ClimateOfGavin: If you can't stand the heat, ...

If you can't stand the heat, don't keep emitting greenhouse gases #MoreSensibleSayings

Twitter / ClimateOfGavin: Summertime, and the living ...

Summertime, and the living is easy - unless you are a polar bear #MoreSensibleSayings

Twitter / MichaelEMann: Weather is what you *get*, ...

Weather is what you *get*, Climate is what you *perturb* (by altering either short or long wave radiative fluxes). #MoreSensibleSayings

Warmist 147-Megabyte "National Climate Assessment" available for your review: The "letter to the American people" claims "periods of extreme heat last longer than any living American has ever experienced"

Federal Advisory Committee Draft Climate Assessment Report Released for Public Review | National Climate Assessment Development Advisory Comittee

Provide Comments on the Report!
...
Between January 14th and April 12th only: Please go to the Review and Comment System to provide comments on the draft.

Monetizing the Effects of Carbon | Watts Up With That?

Now, how much is this 10% increase in global plant production worth? Well, the marvelous FAO database called FAOSTAT puts the value of the annual plant production at $3.3 trillion dollars. Assuming that a 10% increase from some smaller value is due to increased CO2, that puts the annual value of this one single solitary social benefit of CO2 at about $300 billion dollars.

The Royal Society Disaster Movie: starring the Ehrlichs and The Prince of Wales | Watts Up With That?

This is funny and sad at the same time. The funny part is the fact that none of Paul Erhlich’s doom and gloom predictions about the human condition from the 70′s on have even come remotely close to true, the sad part is that the Royal Society, whose motto is Nullius in verba, Latin for “Take nobody’s word for it”, is taking the word of this doomer that can’t predict his way out of a paper bag. The focus now? You guessed it: global warming causing “escalating climate disruption”, which is unsupportable when you look at the data...

One Reason Why NOAA Is Lying About US Temperatures | Real Science

1936 had almost three times as many 100 degree readings as 2012.

The entire basis of the report is a complete fraud, and it is supported by completely fraudulent claims from NOAA. The frequency of 100 degree days in the US is down 40% since the 1930s.

Twitter / AssExtranious: Breaking: Six people have been ...

Breaking: Six people have been treated for heat exposure across NSW ... ( http://bit.ly/WMLw18  ) Out of 7,238,819 (Census, 2010)

Pie-throwing warming Mark Lynas: "I hold the UCS responsible for a significant proportion of modern-day global warming, thanks to its fiercely-held anti-nuclear ideology... Any scientists working for the UCS leave their credentials at the door. It is one of the most ideological of all the green groups"

Mark Lynas » Response to UCS ‘Science, Dogma and Mark Lynas’

This piece confirms my long-held opinion that the Union of Concerned Scientists is in dire need of a name change. I hold the UCS responsible for a significant proportion of modern-day global warming, thanks to its fiercely-held anti-nuclear ideology, which it has promoted via a dramatically unscientific campaign of fear for the last three decades, and which helped turn the US and other countries back towards coal dependency from the 1970s onwards.

Any scientists working for the UCS leave their credentials at the door. It is one of the most ideological of all the green groups, and the fact that the author of this piece takes issue with none other than the AAAS over the safety and efficacy of GMOs shows that it has no respect for scientific consensus in areas where real scientists conflict with its biases. The rest of the piece consists of personal attacks on me and a highly-skewed and selective scattering of references of the sort that any ‘climate denier’ would be proud of.

Hottest year ever update: "Minnesota sees record corn, sugar beet production in 2012"

Minnesota sees record corn, sugar beet production in 2012 - TwinCities.com

Minnesota farmers produced the largest corn crop in state history in 2012, harvesting a record 1.37 billion bushels, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Friday, Jan. 11, in its final grain report of the season.
...
The state's sugar beet production was 12.3 million tons, also a state record, USDA said.

Al's Journal : Soggy year for the UK

The climate crisis is changing rainfall patterns around the world, making wet areas wetter, and dry areas drier.  [Hey Al:  How, specifically, do we know that wet areas aren't getting drier, or dry areas aren't getting wetter, or all areas aren't fluctuating in ways statistically indistinguishable from their natural fluctuations over the last 10,000 years?]

Finally, one of Gore’s trained presenters debates a climate skeptic | Watts Up With That?

While I don’t know the details, I suspect the video quality has to do with an apparent long standing policy of Gore’s presenters refusing to allow their presentations to be video taped. My impression is that this appears to be a clandestine recording made by an audience member.
...
“I am very happy that this debate is now available on the Internet so people can see the for themselves, without having to wade through media filters, who possesses and presents the best evidence in a fair and balanced debate,” said Taylor.

Global Warming Alarmists Pick and Choose Data to Support Theory

The “think globally” people become very parochial when the global warming story isn’t as scary sounding as the local one.

MIT warmists throw Obama's whole "we'll all enjoy a green jobs paradise!" sales pitch under the bus: "This is a deeply unpalatable political message. It means immediate spending and economic sacrifice by present-day voters in order to achieve benefits that will be realized decades from now"

MIT to Obama: Only 4 years left to stop global warming

MIT urged Obama to make climate change his No. 1 priority. "The potential for global warming over the next decades threatens consequences so dire that they could overwhelm any progress you make toward other long-term economic, social and political goals," said the letter.
...
The letter said Obama should act now to cut carbon emissions and begin the path to ending global warming:

"This is a deeply unpalatable political message. It means immediate spending and economic sacrifice by present-day voters in order to achieve benefits that will be realized decades from now. And it must be done while millions of Americans are still skeptical that global warming is taking place or that it is caused by human activity. But as extensive and exacting analyses over the last decade have shown, we can no longer wait without risking dramatic upheavals in global security and the health and welfare of hundreds of millions of the world's inhabitants."

Pielke Jr: "It is the logical end of the extreme weather hype to say that we can stop bad events from happening. It is also akin to astrology and voodoo"

Twitter / RogerPielkeJr: It is the logical end of the ...

It is the logical end of the extreme weather hype to say that we can stop bad events from happening. It is also akin to astrology and voodoo

Twitter / RyanMaue: @RogerPielkeJr alchemists, ...

@RogerPielkeJr alchemists, witches, soothsayers including Winter Storm Gandolf also want in on the hype ;-) e.g. http://www.weather.com/news/weather-winter/why-we-named-gandolf-20130109 …

Twitter / RogerPielkeJr: Such nonsense is so commonplace ...

Such nonsense is so commonplace these days it is not even blogworthy. Thank you Twitter and the BS button;-)

Really?: Warmist federal report co-author Susan Cutter claims that "Climate change affects everything that you do"

Federal report: Warming is changing US daily life

"Climate change affects everything that you do," said report co-author Susan Cutter, director of the Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute at the University of South Carolina. "It affects where you live, where you work and where you play and the infrastructure that you need to do all these things. It's more than just the polar bears."
...
The report uses the word "threat" or variations of it 198 times and versions of the word "disrupt" another 120 times.

NPR tells us that environmentalists and climate scientists claim that we can "stop the droughts, wildfires and super storms" if we "accelerate the pace that we move off of all fossil fuels"

Coal Loses Crown As King Of Power Generation : NPR

"We're not even close to the pace of reductions that we need to see," [Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune] says. "If we really want to stop the droughts, wildfires and super storms, we're going to have to accelerate the pace that we move off of all fossil fuels."

It's not just environmentalists who say this. Climate scientists agree.

Unique paper looks for natural factors in station data–shows significant probabilities of natural signal | Watts Up With That?

...As a result, the probabilities that the observed temperature series are natural have values roughly between 40% and 90%, depending on the stations characteristics and the periods considered. ’Natural’ means that we do not have within a defined confidence interval a definitely positive anthropogenic contribution and, therefore, only a marginal anthropogenic contribution can not be excluded.

NOAA Temperature Fraud Expands (Part 2) | Real Science

The Climate Central claim of 2012 being the hottest year ever is based on two big lies. The US temperature data has been massively tampered with, and the US does not represent the planet.

This whole “peer reviewed” scandal is disgusting beyond words. The claim that 2012 is unprecedented is sheer, unmitigated nonsense. EPA data clearly shows that the 1930s was the hottest decade, just as NASA and NOAA did – before they tampered with the data.

Richard Lindzen On Climate Science: “The Field Is Corrupt – Without Any Question.”

From 2009, a good refresher – especially if you haven’t seen it yet. Yes it’s a scam.

Twitter / BigJoeBastardi: I do think it hits 0 in Chicago, ...

I do think it hits 0 in Chicago, Indianapolis within next 15 days and hits 9 in NYC before Jan 26.Still wont be coldest for them

Zookeepers, growers prepare for California freeze after snow shuts major highway overnight - The Washington Post

A low of 12 degrees was recorded in the Big Bear mountain resort east of Los Angeles.

Major storm clogs state, more snow coming Saturday | The Salt Lake Tribune

Commuter hell » More than 80 crashes, slideoffs reported by UHP Friday.

Harsh winter brings new difficulty for 600,000 Syrians

GENEVA, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) -- The severe winter conditions across Syria and the surrounding region in the past week have brought new difficulties for over 600,000 Syrian refugees fleeing the conflict, said the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) on Friday.

Federal report: Warming is changing US daily life - SFGate

WASHINGTON (AP) — A massive new federal scientific report says global warming is already changing America from sea to rising sea and how Americans live.

The government issued Friday a 1,146-page draft report that details in dozens of ways how climate change is already disrupting the health, homes and other facets of daily American life. It warns that those disruptions will increase in the future.  [So 55.3 degrees F.  is too warm, and 54.5 degrees F. is "just right"?  If that's the case, why do so many of us prefer home temperatures much warmer than that?]

Byron York: For Jon Stewart, Gore-Al Jazeera deal is chance to attack Fox | WashingtonExaminer.com

It seemed like classic Daily Show material: Former Vice President Al Gore, recipient of the Nobel Prize and the Academy Award for his work warning of the dangers of global warming, selling his struggling network Current TV to Al Jazeera, of the oil sheikhdom of Qatar, for 500 million petro-dollars. How could Jon Stewart not have some fun with that? But a week went by, and the Comedy Central mainstay said nothing about the deal.

Until Thursday night...It was a tough assignment for the liberal comedian to deal with a high-profile embarrassment involving a Democratic icon.

Miranda Devine: Green arrogance burns fiercely (also inc. 2GB Radio Link) | Climate Realists

Tasmania is a petri dish, demonstrating the consequences of green ideology run rampant. No jobs, the forestry industry on its knees, and bushfires feasting on fuel built up over two mild fire seasons. Yet, instead of facing up to their errors, the Greens conveniently blame climate change. They pretend imposing a carbon tax or destroying the coal industry will prevent bushfires, while reducing the actual fuel which powers the flames is "futile".

End Climate Silence Now: Draft Climate Assessment Warns Of Devastating 9°-15°F Warming Over Most Of U.S. | ThinkProgress

Continued lengthening of the growing season across the U.S. is projected.
...
Global sea level has risen by about 8 inches since reliable record keeping began in 1880. It is projected to rise another 1 to 4 feet by 2100.

This must be why climate scientists NEVER attempt to use hot weather or storms for political advantage: "climate scientists...reject the notion that short-term changes in weather, let alone individual storms, bear *any* relevance to the global warming debate"

Conservatives Once Again Cite Extreme Cold To Deny Climate Change | Blog | Media Matters for America

In addition to the fact that scientists have found enormous evidence of climate change and the human causes behind it, the existence of cold weather does not disprove global warming. Despite the right-wing media regularly claiming that cold or snowy weather is evidence that global warming isn't happening, climate scientists -- including at least one who has disputed aspects of the scientific consensus on global warming -- reject the notion that short-term changes in weather, let alone individual storms, bear any relevance to the global warming debate.

Oops: After Alaska cooled 2.4 degrees F. last decade, super-scary new federal government report claims that the most dramatic global warming evidence is in....wait for it....ALASKA!!!

Climate change set to make America hotter, drier and more disaster-prone | Environment | guardian.co.uk

By the end of the 21st century, climate change is expected to result in increased risk of asthma and other public health emergencies, widespread power blackouts, and mass transit shutdowns, and possibly shortages of food.
...
Night-time temperatures will also stay high, providing little respite from the heat.
...
But nowhere will see changes as extreme as Alaska, the report said.

"The most dramatic evidence is in Alaska, where average temperatures have increased more than twice as fast as the rest of the country," the draft report said. "Of all the climate-related changes in the US, the rapid decline of Arctic sea ice cover in the last decade may be the most striking of all."

Flashback: The fastest warming place on Earth cooled 2.4 degrees F. during the Hottest Decade Ever?

The thought that Alaska may be headed into an ice age “may not be news to Alaskans coping with another round of 50-below during the coldest winter in two decades,” the article continues. Nor would it be news to the “mariners locked out of the Bering Sea this spring by record ice growth.”

“In the first decade since 2000, the 49th state cooled 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit..."

Alarmists Inconsistent On Importance of U.S. Temperature Record

However, a previous blog by Joe Romm should be kept in mind when considering the significance of the 2012 record. In 2010, Romm provided an answer to skeptics who point out that 1934 was the warmest year in the U. S. historical record: “1934 is the hottest year on record in the USA which only comprises 2% of the globe.”

Yes, that’s right, the United States comprises an insignificant 2% of the world’s surface area when we’re talking about the American heat wave in 1934, but it’s a highly significant 2% when we’re talking about last year’s high temperatures.

Climate change costs are not that critical compared to economic development of poor countries – Prof. Per Krussel « The k2p blog

“When we consider the effects of climate change, we expect also that there will be a cost especially in poor countries, but it sums up to no great critical issue for the world. It is more important to get the poor countries to develop. I’m a little worried that “environmental thinking” leads to more important issues being ignored.”

Climate change is underway in United States, report says - The Washington Post

Human health is likely to suffer as a result of warmer temperatures, according to the assessment. Studies show that a 1.8 degree Fahrenheit rise in temperature could boost the number of premature deaths by 1,000 annually because of worse smog and fine particle pollution. By 2050, the report notes, there could be an additional 4,300 premature deaths per year, costing $6.5 billion nationwide.

Editorial: Deciding Whether It’s Climate Or Weather | The Australian

In a field where temperature variations over a decade are barely sufficient to confirm a trend, the focus by some on annual, monthly or even daily temperatures to support particular cases can be inane. While activists continually urge people to “accept the science”, often too little attention is paid to the deliberations and debates within the scientific community. New Scientist this week published research suggesting sea level rises caused by global warming could lead to cooler oceans that could in turn reduce global temperatures, creating greater weather variability. We will always be confronted by floods, fires, droughts and storms. Whether climate or weather, we still have much to learn, as we look to take appropriate precautions in dealing with both.

Twitter / BigJoeBastardi: Heh,Know nothings making big ...

Heh,Know nothings making big deal about 2 hurricanes 2yrs e coast.How about 6, 5 majors in 2 years,54-55.  You're either ignorant or deceptive

Climate Revision Validates Sceptics | The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)

Professor Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics Group at the University of Oxford, effectively said the revision provided a lesson in the dangers of spin.

“A lot of people (not the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) were claiming, in the run-up to the Copenhagen 2009 conference, that ‘warming was accelerating and it is all worse than we thought’. What has happened since then has demonstrated that it is foolish to extrapolate short-term climate trends.”

TIm Ball: Remember a few months ago, when NCDC told us that the July 1936 temperature was 77.4 degrees? They just remembered that the actual July 1936 temperature was 76.4 degrees

HARRIS AND BALL: 2012 probably not the hottest on record, after all - Washington Times

Strangely, NCDC changes temperature data even from the distant past without notification. For example, NCDC now asserts that the average temperature in July 1936 was 76.4 degrees, a full degree cooler than the 77.4 degrees that they claimed for the month in the July 2012 SOTC report. This allows them to continue to say that July 2012 set a record.

Al Fin: Germany's Bad Energy Choices Leading into Cul de Sac?

Today's bad choices by German leaders will have the effect of limiting possible good choices in the future. Germany is being painted into a corner, led into a cul de sac, by faux environmental greens who have been given too much power across the EU.

The green ideology is doing for Germany and the EU what the communist ideology did for the former USSR.

Your weatherman probably denies global warming - Salon.com

For instance, when it comes to weather forecasters, a recent Rolling Stone magazine assessment of the local news scene found that “there’s a shockingly high chance that your friendly TV weatherman is a full-blown climate denier.”

Nissan’s In Hot Water With Leaf Owners In Hot-Ass Arizona | JunkScience.com

EV batteries don’t stand up to the heat.
"...Nissan has bought back several of them under Arizona’s Lemon Laws.”

As depth of betrayal sinks in, followers of Al Gore feel confused and mislead | From the Right | IrishCentral

Former vice president, Al Gore, is a prime example of a modern day cult figure to his followers.

Twitter / KHayhoe: #FF Anything you ever, ever, ...

#FF Anything you ever, ever, wondered about climate science, @ClimateOfGavin Schmidt has already figured it out. And will tell you if asked!

Bummer: U.S. government report suggests that trace amounts of atmospheric CO2 can lead to "threats to mental health"

Report: Climate change triggers extreme weather events - Andrew Restuccia - POLITICO.com

Human activities play a primary role in causing climate change, and evidence is mounting that those changes will lead to more frequent extreme weather events, according to a major draft report that will be released later Friday.
...
“Climate change threatens human health and well-being in many ways, including impacts from increased extreme weather events, wildfire, decreased air quality, diseases transmitted by insects, food and water and threats to mental health,” the report says.

37 chitals (spotted deer) died at Kanha Tiger Reserve since January 4 - The Times of India

The cause of their death appears to be severe cold

Now even Pravda admits the 'global warming' jig is up – Telegraph Blogs

A spokesman for the New York Times, quoted in the Guardian, has reaffirmed the paper's commitment to environmental issues.

"We devote a lot of resources to it, now more than ever. We have not lost any desire for environmental coverage. This is purely a structural matter."

Absolutely. It's what newspapers always do when they're committed to a particular field: close down the entire department responsible for covering it.

Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog : A record 199 days without a tornado death

The U.S. has set a weather record of the sort we like to see: the longest continuous stretch without a tornado death. We've had 199 days without a tornado fatality, beating the record of 197 straight days that ended on February 28, 1987.

Duke C Punctures More Attempted UEA Obtuseness « Climate Audit

The UEA has a history of wilful obtuseness in carrying out FOI searches.

New Decadal Forecast From The Met Office « NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

So there is a probably statistically insignificant increase of 0.02C over 6 years, that would translate to 0.33C per century.

Even this is likely to disappear when the AMO enters the cold phase, probably sometime in the next 10 years or so.

Bummer from Australian warmist Tim Flannery: "large parts of the continent will be uninhabitable"

As Australia burns, attitudes are changing. But is it too late? | Tim Flannery - The Guardian

This summer, life in Australia resembles a compulsory and very unpleasant game of Russian roulette.
...
The superheated air currently monstering the continent is fickle. This week, Sydneysiders watched in relative thermal comfort as those living just 100km to the south endured scorching heat, blustering winds, and unstoppable fires.
...
Australia's average temperature has increased by just 0.9 of a degree celsius over the past century. Within the next 90 years we're on track to warm by at least another three degrees. Having seen what 0.9 of a degree has done to heatwaves and fire extremes, I dread to think about the kind of country my grandchildren will live in. Even our best agricultural land will be under threat if that future is realised. And large parts of the continent will be uninhabitable, not just by humans, but by Australia's spectacular biodiversity as well.

Twitter / RyanMaue: From CFSR hourly reanalysis ...

From CFSR hourly reanalysis data, I have 2012 avg. Australia temp at 70.2°F, which is 4th coolest out of 34-yrs (1979-2012). 2011 is coolest

One-hour video: Global warming debate between Ray Bellamy, a public presenter for Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project, and James Taylor of the Heartland Institute

Global Warming: A Fair and Balanced Debate - YouTube

"...prior to adjustment, 1934 was hotter than 2012...The past has been massively cooled, and the present has been massively warmed. A cooling trend has been turned into a warming trend, by adjusting the data"

NOAA Temperature Fraud Expands (Part 1) | Real Science

The current NOAA claim is that 2012 is 1.0 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than 1998, but 1934 used to be 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than 1998. This means that prior to adjustment, 1934 was hotter than 2012.

The blink comparator below shows the huge changes which have been made to the US temperature record since 1999. The past has been massively cooled, and the present has been massively warmed. A cooling trend has been turned into a warming trend, by adjusting the data.

Michael Mann retweet compares carbon dioxide to Hitler: Closing the NY Times environmental desk is "like pulling your German and Japan correspondents in 1930"

Twitter / fredbartels: @MichaelEMann @Planet3org "NY ...

[retweeted by Michael Mann] @MichaelEMann @Planet3org "NY Times kills environment desk" It's like pulling your German and Japan correspondents in 1930.

EU carbon dioxide hoax scam swindle fraud credits plunge 61% to their lowest-ever price: 27 cents per metric ton

UN Developed-Country Carbon Drops to Record on EU Ban Proposal - Businessweek

United Nations carbon credits for December slumped to their lowest ever after the European Union proposed to ban some offsets imported from countries including Russia unless they undergo additional checks.

UN Emission Reduction Units issued after 2012 from countries without new emission goals under the Kyoto Protocol may be held in the EU registry as long as it is certain they represent carbon cuts taking place before the end of last year, according to a draft regulation presented by the European Commission yesterday. ERUs for December plunged 61 percent, a record drop, to 20 euro cents ($0.27) a metric ton on the ICE Futures Europe exchange as of 11:59 a.m. in London.

Doorstep Renewable Energy Sellers Prey On The Elderly « Tory Aardvark

Next time you read about the huge take up in micro generation, and how wonderful solar is, stop and think for a moment about how many elderly people were bullied into taking part by some low life scum sucker of a renewable energy salesman.

The Answer To UN COP Failures, Make The COP Last All Year « Tory Aardvark

Pande is typical of those stuck in the Green bubble, the fad of Climate Religion as a political force to reckoned with has long past, no amount of talking, junk science, event attribution and scary fear stories is going to change that.

Neither will 150 days of pointless politically motivated eco babble come to that.

Twitter / BigJoeBastardi: Amazing amount of Nhemisphere ...

Amazing amount of Nhemisphere land masses ( where most people are affected) covered by cold north of 30 north pic.twitter.com/UZP36QBs

California cold snap: Snow shuts major mountain highway for hours

SAN DIEGO — The California Highway Patrol on Friday partially reopened a 40-mile stretch of Interstate 5 north of Los Angeles that was closed by snow as a cold snap sent temperatures plummeting throughout the state.

The CHP began escorting southbound cars through the Grapevine section of the major north-south route after a 16-hour shutdown that prompted hundreds of truckers and other motorists to pull over and spend the night by the side of the road.

"There must have been 1,000 Mack trucks lined up," Heidi Blood, 40, said early Friday.

David Cameron is irresponsible to omit climate change from his G8 priorities | Environment | guardian.co.uk

It's one of greatest threats to global stability, yet climate change is nowhere to be found in the UK's G8 priorities.

Fox News Questions Whether Government Faked Hottest Year On Record

Peter Thorne, a climate scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites who was quoted by FoxNews.com, wrote in an email to Media Matters that recent changes to the data served to improve accuracy.

New York Times Dismantles Environmental Desk ... | Facebook

I was never fan of standalone environment desk even when I worked for it. Creates a ghetto for the subject and reporters. Environment is not a beat. Environmental impacts are a result of human decisions and actions. I do think it's a mistake, however, to end position of environment EDITOR. More than ever, the paper needs someone to track, coordinate and vet the environmental content  [If someone blames carbon dioxide for record cold, will that survive the vetting?] coming through any desk...

California to net less than planned from carbon market - News - Point Carbon

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 10 (Reuters Point Carbon) - Weaker-than-anticipated demand for permits at California's inaugural carbon auction has caused the state to lower its forecast for expected cap-and-trade revenue from $1 billion to $200 million for the year, dealing a blow to the governor's plans to use the money to fund a costly high-speed rail project.

Where has all the warming gone? — The Daily Climate

So where has all the warming gone? Many fathoms down, probably.

NYT pushes crazy claims about “extreme weather” but public interest wanes | Watts Up With That?

It seems that “extreme weather” is not catching on. I’m sure the doomers would say it is a “communications problem”. Compare “extreme weather” to the peak from Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth in 2007. All terms seem to be in an interest slump now.

On Temperature Records, Climate Models and the like | Clearing the Air | NCPA.org

Those darned Alaskans, defying statists once again! The nerve!

The Australian: Climate results validate sceptics | JunkScience.com

“It is in part why “global warming” has been strategically rebranded as “climate change”: to overcome a conundrum that global temperatures have not followed a linear increase in a way that lobby groups find easy to explain.”

California faces epic cold snap | JunkScience.com

Cap-and-trade really works!

“California was going from cold to colder Friday as a chill expected to bring the biggest mercury dips in years descended on much of the state.” [AP]

Reuters on the lack of global warming that allegedly threatens to kill us all: It's "an extra headache for politicians". Also, did we mention that the solar minimum is "potentially a potent force for cooling" according to James Hansen?

Global warming slows but beware complacency: Gerard Wynn - Reuters

LONDON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - The latest forecasts from a foremost climate research institute that global warming has slowed present a new challenge to policymakers on how to inject urgency into the campaign to cut emissions of greenhouse gases.
...
But the research indicates the rate of warming has slowed in the past decade and a half due to temporary natural factors.

Most scientists had dismissed the idea of a slowdown, citing the chaotic nature of weather which they say makes analysis of short-term trends meaningless, and an exceptional natural warming event (a strong El Nino) in 1998, which muddied the effect of rising human greenhouse gas emissions.

Warming has slowed, however, not only by comparison with 1998 but in the years since then. The new modelling from Britain's Hadley Centre, which forecasts global average temperatures to 2017, suggests the present decade may turn out to be no hotter than the last one.

That is something of a bombshell to the previous climate narrative of inexorable temperature rises decade by decade.
...
The basic physics of greenhouse gases still leaves no doubt that rising carbon emissions will push global temperatures up this century, and dangerously so.

But the recent slower warming trend and the influence of natural variability present an extra headache for politicians trying to agree on climate targets for the next two decades, which already fall pitifully short of solving the problem.
...
The solar cycle may also help explain a recent fall in the Earth's surplus heat, U.S. climate scientist James Hansen and co-authors reported in a 2011 paper, "Earth's energy imbalance and implications".
...
"The longevity of the recent protracted solar minimum, at least two years longer than prior minima of the satellite era, makes that solar minimum potentially a potent force for cooling," Hansen and his co-authors said.
...
Its forecast of a slowing warming trend may appear to buy governments more time, but that is not at all the case. The trend results from temporary natural factors, and temperatures will rebound when their effects disappear.

Getting to Vegas, Baby? Forget High-Speed Rail

The federal government has no business speculating on high-speed rail with taxpayer funds.

Twitter / RogerPielkeJr: With tabloid fare like this ...

With tabloid fare like this http://nyti.ms/XTJ7Zk  the end of NYT enviro desk couldn't come soon enough. Now where did I put that button?

The Marshall Institute - The Infant Industry Argument and Renewable Energy Production

Evidence for wind energy seems particularly discouraging: despite considerably increased capacity in recent years, expected cost decreases have not materialized.

New York Times Dismantles Its Environment Desk | InsideClimate News

Times says demise of the nine-person team, created in 2009, won't affect climate coverage.

Stop the presses: Ryan Maue has run out of colors to communicate the record cold that may be coming to Canada

Twitter / RyanMaue: End times are near with the ...

End times are near with the final 5-days of the GFS 00z forecast. Days 11-16 record cold in Canada? pic.twitter.com/IySnZB2t

Twitter / RyanMaue: It is hard to decide what colors ...

It is hard to decide what colors to include that look more cold or dangerous than what I have created. Global warming makes maps obsolete

Twitter / RyanMaue: Unfortunately, I can't tell ...

Unfortunately, I can't tell u how cold compared to normal that GFS is b/c my colorbar stops at 52°F below average. pic.twitter.com/1avFbCDX

Planet-healer Peter Gleick to take completely unnecessary fossil-fueled trip to Abu Dhabi

Twitter / PeterGleick: International #Water Summit ...

International #Water Summit coming up in Abu Dhabi. Hope for new thinking to solve our water challenges. http://iwsabudhabi.com/Portal/summit/summit-program.aspx …

IWS 2013 Speakers | Summit | International Water Summit

Peter Gleick

The carbon trading money tree

Many people would never build their new factory on a foundation of sand, but they are happy to build it on a foundation of air. I say: “Be careful.”

If it turns out that man-made industrial CO2 is not leading to climate change then the whole carbon market could disappear faster than a puff of wind.

Scientists Mann and Hayhoe on politics and science of climate change | Minnesota Public Radio News

Geoscience professor Michael Mann and atmospheric science professor Katharine Hayhoe speak at the Commonwealth Club of California about how and why the study of climate science has become so politicized.

Twitter / KHayhoe: One of my all-time fav studies, ...

One of my all-time fav studies, still so relevant today-Luis Cifuentes on the health benefits of reducing GHG emissions http://bit.ly/RJvg4q

UK Ecologist: 'Wind Farms Driving Birds, Bats to Extinction' | Wind | ReWire | KCET

Hambler cites some distressing statistics from sources around the world. Between 6-18 million birds and bats are killed by Spanish wind farms each year Hambler says, including 400 griffon vultures per year just at Navarro. German wind turbines kill at least 200,000 bats per year, depressing populations up to 2,000 miles away. Wind turbines in the U.S. have been estimated to kill 70 bats per installed megawatt per year, on average, says Hambler. That would work out to about 320,000 bats per year in California.

China Working to Cut Idled Wind Farm Capacity, Official Says | JunkScience.com

If you don’t pay me, I’m not going to use it.

“It’s the lack of economic incentives that discourage grid companies to take in more renewable power,” said Beijing-based Ying. “It means extra work and costs, but no extra benefits for grid companies to do so.” [Bloomberg]

What dust may have to do with Earth's rapidly warming poles

(Phys.org)—As earth's climate warms, scientists have tried to understand why the poles are heating up two to three times faster than the rest of the planet [Are they doing that?]. Airborne dust, it turns out, may play a key role.

Twitter / fitness_running: Why on earth has Eastleigh ...

Why on earth has Eastleigh Borough Council adopted the tag line "Tackling Climate Change" Who voted for that? @JamesDelingpole

United States Experienced Hottest Year On Record In 2012 - Science News - redOrbit

[Illustrated with a picture of the Earth on fire! If that were actually the case, wouldn't the U.S. be warmer than 55.32 F?]

» Branco Cartoon – Gore-y Details - Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

[Via Skeptic's Corner]

THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: New NASA project may show how the Sun drives climate

A new NASA research project aims to study how changes in water vapor and ozone in the upper atmosphere result in "significant climate impacts" on the Earth surface. Prior research has shown that tiny changes in solar activity within and between solar cycles can have greatly amplified effects upon climate by altering the specific humidity of the upper atmosphere, as well as ozone production in the stratosphere due to large changes in solar UV. This new mission may add to our understanding of how small changes in solar activity can drive large scale changes in atmospheric circulation, ocean oscillations, weather, and climate.

Historic snow conditions in North Central Washington

“We’ve had historic, near-perfect snow conditions,” said Jordan Lindstrom, the Ridge’s marketing and sales director. “Early wet snow gave us a good, solid base, and lots of powder came soon after. It’s one of the best starts since we began keeping records 42 years ago.”

Green Hypocrisy as Al Gore Sells Out for Petro-Dollars - Energy TribuneEnergy Tribune

Not that Gore’s green hypocrisy is an isolated affair. Gore has long been criticized for his private jet-setting lifestyle, for shunning taxis for private limousines, and most famously, for the scandal over his energy-guzzling Tennessee mansion. A mansion that uses more energy in a single month than his neighbors use in an entire year. Upset by the level of media approbation, Gore treated himself to some retail therapy … purchasing yet another energy-guzzling mansion, this one overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Snow turns much of Lebanon white

BEIRUT: Snow blanketed much of Lebanon Thursday after a fierce overnight snowstorm, with many people trapped in remote villages by blizzards.

Snow settled on the Lebanese coast, in north and south, in a rare appearance in over a decade as the country experienced record low temperatures.
...
Schools across Lebanon were shut for a third day Thursday due to the storm and thousands of residents throughout the country remain without power.

Sign of slight improvement detected in IPCC green files « The View From Here

YMMV, but I find it quite astounding that they would go to all this trouble to make sure that source material is “adequately attributed”, yet they find it “too impractical” to include a simple flag which would identify non-peer-reviewed source material.

Greens say deception, fraud “for the planet” is OK « JoNova

A delusional anti-coal mining activist, Jonathan Moylan, impersonated a bank spokesman and issued a fake media release, falsely declaring that the bank had withdrawn a $1.2 billion loan facility from Whitehaven Coal because of ”unacceptable damage to the environment.” He created a dummy email inbox to push the deceit further to cause real damage. The story was picked up by some news outlets, and shares fell by 9% before people realized it was fake. Those who want to downplay the seriousness are calling it a “hoax”. The real world knows it is fraud.

Mum and Dad investors who may have sold too cheaply on the “news”, or even faced margin calls, could have lost thousands of hard earned dollars. The share transactions won’t be canceled. In response, two Greens leaders praised the liar.

Dear Christian Science Monitor: Wind Is Not Sacred but a Sacrilege — MasterResource

Please consider a very different view: that this industry is an artificial construct of cronyism; squanders resources at the expense of consumers and taxpayers; and toys with workers and their families who continually find themselves at the mercy of temporary political majorities.

Sen. Boxer adds climate change post to environment committee staff - The Hill's E2-Wire

Boxer said Thursday that environmental attorney Joe Mendelson would fill the newly created role. Mendelson was most recently policy director of climate and energy with the National Wildlife Federation.

“Dangerous climate change poses an urgent threat and we have a responsibility to address that threat. I am so pleased that Joe Mendelson will be joining the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee team. We will make the most of his expertise as we craft solutions to climate change,” Boxer said in a statement.

California temperatures to hit 6-year low

Strawberry growers covered their crops while San Diego zookeepers turned on heaters for the chimpanzees as Californians braced for a cold snap expected to drop temperatures to a six-year low.

Pakistan - Severe cold breaks all previous records - Video

Islamabad temperatures drop below zero. Natural gas shortage.

Flight schedules disrupted. Major highways shut down at night.

Snow chaos to cripple Britain with -15c weather predicted | UK | Express.co.uk - Home of the Daily and Sunday Express

BRITAIN is braced for weeks of heavy snow set to trigger the worst whiteout for years and cause chaos across the country.

"Real"Climate: Sea-level rise: Where we stand at the start of 2013 — Part 2

But is this a real periodic behaviour, i.e. a climatic oscillation? I don’t think so. The variation in global temperature shown above probably is not an oscillation: it is the familiar time evolution of global temperature that can largely be explained by the history of radiative forcing. E.g., the temperature plateau from 1940-1970 (which in the detrended data shown above is a downswing) is explained by aerosol cooling balancing greenhouse warming, while the following upswing is due to the then dominant increase in greenhouse gases.

Warmist Eugene Robinson claims that the climate-change "denialists" have been silent lately

Eugene Robinson: Climate-change evidence before our eyes - The Washington Post

All right, now can we talk about climate change? After a year when the lower 48 states suffered the warmest temperatures, and the second-craziest weather, since record-keeping began?

Apparently not. The climate-change denialists — especially those who manipulate the data in transparently bogus ways to claim that warming has halted or even reversed course — have been silent, as one might expect. Sensible people accept the fact of warming, but many doubt that our dysfunctional political system can respond in any meaningful way.
...
Hurricanes striking where they don’t usually strike, fires burning where they don’t usually burn, drought everywhere — these anomalies begin to add up. Scientists have long told us that one impact of climate change will be increased volatility, and unpredictability, in weather events. This appears to be what we’re getting.
...To put it in context, breaking the record for hottest year by a full degree is like breaking the world record for the long jump not by an inch or two, but by nearly two feet, as Bob Beamon did at the 1968 Olympics.

Assuming the lower-48 U.S. (1.5% of the world) temperature record isn't deeply fudged, which it is, we're told that an increase of 285.5 Kelvin to 286.1 Kelvin is like the increase from 27 feet to 29 feet in the long jump.   Beamon's long jump margin was massively more impressive, and it was not accomplished by fudging the previous record down and the current record up.

Barking madness in the New York Times: Global warming blamed for coldest winter in China in 30 years and many other extreme cold events; story illustrated with a photo of snow on the palm trees of Jerusalem

Extreme Weather Grows in Frequency and Intensity Around World - NYTimes.com

Around the world, extreme has become the new commonplace.

Especially lately. China is enduring its coldest winter in nearly 30 years. Brazil is in the grip of a dreadful heat spell. Eastern Russia is so freezing — minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and counting — that the traffic lights recently stopped working in the city of Yakutsk.
...
Such events are increasing in intensity as well as frequency, Mr. Baddour said, a sign that climate change is not just about rising temperatures, but also about intense, unpleasant, anomalous weather of all kinds.

Here in Britain, people are used to thinking of rain as the wallpaper on life’s computer screen — an omnipresent, almost comforting background presence. But even the hardiest citizen was rattled by the near-biblical fierceness of the rains that bucketed down, and the floods that followed, three different times in 2012.
...
To the north, the extremes have swung the other way, with a band of cold settling across Russia and Northern Europe, bringing thick snow and howling winds to Stockholm, Helsinki and Moscow. (Incongruously, there were also severe snowstorms in Sicily and southern Italy for the first time since World War II; in December, tornadoes and waterspouts struck the Italian coast.)

In Siberia, thousands of people were left without heat when natural gas liquefied in its pipes and water mains burst. Officials canceled bus transportation between cities for fear that roadside breakdowns could lead to deaths from exposure, and motorists were advised not to venture far afield except in columns of two or three cars. In Altai, to the east, traffic officials warned drivers not to use poor-quality diesel, saying that it could become viscous in the cold and clog fuel lines.

Meanwhile, China is enduring its worst winter in recent memory, with frigid temperatures recorded in Harbin, in the northeast. In the western region of Xinjiang, more than 1,000 houses collapsed under a relentless onslaught of snow, while in Inner Mongolia, 180,000 livestock froze to death. The cold has wreaked havoc with crops, sending the price of vegetables soaring.
...
Israel and the Palestinian territories are grappling with similar conditions, after a week of intense rain and cold winds ushered in a snowstorm that dumped eight inches in Jerusalem alone.
...
“The intensity of the cold is unusual,” Mr. Lynn said. “It seems the weather is going to become more intense; there’s going to be more extremes.”

CO2 isn't the main climate driver: Seven tweets from Joe Bastardi

Joe Bastardi tweets:

I have dug into every paper I can on the physical process that is supposed to allow co2 to work and this magic.The weight against:staggering
What about water vapor, 400 times more prominent than co2. and its relation to the cycles of the ocean with its heat capacity and exchange?
The reason you are seeing the shut down of the warming is simple.. its climate cycle theory. The pacific is starting to cool.
The oceans warming added heat to atmosphere.Once that was accounted for, temps leveled off.Now that cooling of pacific starting planet cools
The biggest problem may be ice, not fire. what happens when the atlantic flips to its cold mode.
Its this simple. The oceans are the thermostat, the suns input starts the whole show. co2 is the driven, not the driver. Get over it
here is what u have to believe: gas that 1/400th of ghg is absorbing radiation and feeding back enough to heat even oceans 1kx heat of air

Was 2012 the Hottest Year? Alarmists Blowing Hot Air Again

Cooking the Books: Standard Operating Procedure at NOAA, NASA, Met, IPCC

Freed killer whales in Hudson Bay may not be out of danger - thestar.com

Warmer Artic waters caused by climate change and the need for food are the likely reasons a pod of orcas was trapped in Hudson Bay this week.  [Via BF]

U.S. Imports Corn in 2012: Another Strike Against Ethanol From Corn — When Will It Strike Out?

Ethanol from corn is another senseless policy leading to the United States staggering deficit in global trade balance of payments. This is another strike against the folly of requiring ethanol from corn as an automotive fuel.

Ethanol from corn is impractical from its inception. Many studies show it requires more energy to get ethanol from corn fields to car tanks than is contained in the product. Much of this energy is diesel fuel. For those concerned about carbon dioxide emissions; there is no reduction from use of ethanol as a fuel.

Twitter / RogerPielkeJr: @RyanMaue Dec 31 2012 15 deg ...

@RyanMaue Dec 31 2012 15 deg lower than Jan 1 2012

Twitter / BigJoeBastardi: how can you look at the facts ...

how can you look at the facts as shown in this chart,and not at least say, wait,this is not a open/closed case pic.twitter.com/iqvCfTl5

New Green Horror: Composting | JunkScience.com

Most people think of composting as a very ‘green’ thing to do, but few realize that composting actually generates a significant amount of the potent greenhouse gases (GHG), methane and nitrous oxide

1931 : Millions Killed By Climate Change | Real Science

CO2 was at very safe levels at the time

Twitter / climatebrad [Warmist Brad Johnson tries to convince us that because of our sins, the weather is "poisoned"]

Tel Aviv Port flooded during freak Israel storm 12/9/13 #poisonedweather #climate http://pinterest.com/pin/251568329157099268/ …

Twitter / RyanMaue: We *know* very accurately what ...

We *know* very accurately what the temperature was in 2012 down to about 5-10 sq. kilometers. But, before 1980 or 1950, no effing clue.

Hottest year ever? Skeptics question revisions to climate data | Fox News

Aaron Huertas, a spokesman for the Union of Concerned Scientists, argued that the debate over the adjustments misses the bigger picture.

"Since we broke the [temperature] record by a full degree Fahrenheit this year, the adjustments are relatively minor in comparison,"

"I think climate contrarians are doing what Johnny Cochran did for O.J. Simpson -- finding anything to object to, even if it obscures the big picture. It's like they keep finding new ways to say the 'glove doesn't fit' while ignoring the DNA evidence."

Twitter / RyanMaue: Aaron Huertas, a spokesman ...

Aaron Huertas, a spokesman for the Union of Concerned Scientists -- needs to get some new material or a brain.
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/01/10/hottest-year-ever-skeptics-question-revisions-to-climate-data/ …

Hooray! Warmist Susan Solomon wins an award, because she allegedly knows how the climate system responds "to perturbations in atmospheric composition"

Susan Solomon wins the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award for establishing the links between atmosphere, climate and human activity

Carlos Duarte, the jury secretary and Director of the UWA Oceans Institute at The University of Western Australia, added during the announcement event that Solomon "has formulated a general theory of climate system response to perturbations in atmospheric composition."

Flashback: Susan Solomon claim: "IPCC has placed high priority on communicating uncertainty"

Flashback: 2008: Jones says that Susan Solomon got "tough" with McIntyre and "threatened to remove him from the reviewer's list"; Jones also reveals that he and Briffa "work on the sedimentary sequence approach to filing!"

She did get tough with McIntyre when he began requesting in press/submitted papers that were referred to in AR4 drafts - saying he couldn't do an adequate review without seeing them. He stopped once she threatened to remove him from the reviewer's list.

Flashback: Warmist Susan Solomon imagines that she emits incredibly long-lived CO2: "every pound of carbon that is emitted because I do something — drive a car or take an airplane or turn on a light — is going to influence the climate for a thousand years"

Flashback: Long Droughts, Rising Seas Predicted Despite Future CO2 Curbs

"I think you have to think about this stuff [carbon dioxide] as more like nuclear waste than acid rain: The more we add, the worse off we'll be," NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon told reporters in a conference call.

America the Independent: Oil Imports Reach New Low | Via Meadia

America is about to reach a new energy milestone: According to recent government forecasts, oil imports will will drop to the lowest level in more than 25 years in 2014. The FT reports that imports will fall to six million barrels per day, half of the 12 million barrels per day we imported from 2004–07, putting America well on the road to energy independence.

Our increasing energy independence has a lot to do with the new drilling technologies changing the domestic oil production landscape. Because of new extraction techniques like fracking and horizontal drilling, the International Energy Agency now believes that the U.S. will become the world’s largest oil producer by the end of the decade, perhaps even cutting net imports down to zero.

Met Office tries to figure out why the globe isn't warming as expected: Is it the sun? Is it "Sulphate-based aerosol deodorants"?

World’s cooler than we thought...and Chinese aerosols stop global warming | The Sun |Features

But the experts have admitted temperatures are not rising as fast as they expected and they have to figure out why.

Prof Julia Slingo, the Met Office’s chief scientist, this week admitted to The Sun that she has had a team working on the problem for a YEAR.

One theory is 1998 brought once-in-100-year temperatures, helped by swirling ocean-related weather pattern El Niño.

Other explanations are not so easy to prove — even with a £30million supercomputer. One, the professor says, could be the sun — currently in an 11-year cycle called the solar minimum, a period of less solar activity.
...
One theory under investigation involves aerosols in China.

Sulphate-based aerosol deodorants could be preventing the planet heating as fast as expected, Prof Slingo says.

She adds: “Aerosols have a cooling effect on the planet because they cause a layer in the air that reflects sunlight and we have an explosive growth of them in China.

“They can make quite a contribution to changes in short-term warming trends.”

Spencer and Goddard and Watts, oh my: Fox News features lots of quotes on revisions to climate data

Hottest year ever? Skeptics question revisions to climate data | Fox News

"2012 [wasn't] necessarily warmer than it was back in the 1930s ... NOAA has made so many adjustments to the data it's ridiculous," Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, told FoxNews.com.
...
But NOAA has adjusted the historical climate data many times, skeptics point out, most recently last October. The result, says popular climate blogger Steve Goddard: The U.S. now appears to have warmed slightly more than it did before the adjustment.

"The adjusted data is meaningless garbage. It bears no resemblance to the thermometer data it starts out as," Goddard told FoxNews.com. He's not the only one to question NOAA's efforts.

"Every time NOAA makes adjustments, they make recent years [relatively] warmer. I am very suspicious, especially for how warm they have made 2012," Spencer said.
...
"Is history malleable? Can temperature data of the past be molded to fit a purpose? It certainly seems to be the case here, where the temperature for July 1936 reported ... changes with the moment," [Anthony] Watts told FoxNews.com.

"In the business and trading world, people go to jail for such manipulations of data."

‘Exxon hates your children’ video ad debuts this Friday on MSNBC | JunkScience.com

“Here at Exxon, we hate your children.”

Click here for air times.

Performing Arts Conference in New York to Address Climate Change | The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media

More than 3,000 performing arts professionals from two-dozen countries expected at annual performing artists conference this month in New York City, with climate change the focus in two sessions.

Alert: NASA's James Hansen Declared Obama Has One Week Left To Save The Planet! -- 'On Jan. 17, 2009 Hansen declared Obama only 'has four years to save Earth' -- Only 7 Days left! | Climate Depot

Obama Mission Accomplished! 'Obama succeeded in reversing global warming' Global Temps Cooling Over past 4 years

Coldest temperatures of winter bring rare snow to Bay Area | abc7news.com

SANTA CLARA COUNTY, Calif. (KGO) -- Thursday morning's combination of freezing temperatures and showers created some rare Bay Area snow. By 11 a.m., the sun had melted most of the snow but it was still unusually cold.

The Guardian’s Verdict: Objection, M’Lud! | The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)

We are all, sceptic or otherwise, waiting for the global temperature to rise. We have been since 1997.

More On a Quest for Common Ground on Climate Change - NYTimes.com

Just to be clear, while Emanuel was long a registered Republican (he switched to independent status last spring, he told me) and Frumhoff is straight from Central Casting if you’re seeking a scientist who’s also a liberal Democrat, they have both long been calling for action to curb emissions of greenhouse gases. So this video hardly represents some “Hannity and Colmes” style collaboration (that one didn’t do too well, I recall).

Spot The Difference « NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

It would appear that the Met have deliberately fabricated a new version of their Dec 2011 forecast, in order to avoid making the original version look too ridiculous.

Is this really what “science” has come down to?

Alarmists (again) trot out Kerry Emanuel as Republican global warming believer in video | JunkScience.com

Memo to the Union of Concerned Scientists: Not many Republicans are “ashamed to be an American” and not many wives of Republicans have renounced their citizenship.

Cogs in the Climate Machine « NoFrakkingConsensus

As naive members of the public, we imagine that “the world’s top climate scientists” would be held in such high esteem at the IPCC that they’d be the ones determining what is important and where emphasis should be placed.

But these scientists are actually told what to write about. They’re told how many pages they must say it in. And they’re urged again and again to ensure that their chapter doesn’t diverge from what earlier IPCC reports have already declared – or what other chapters will say.
...
The fact that IPCC expert reviewers frequently observe that the authors of one chapter are saying something rather different from the authors in a second chapter is important. It indicates that many of these matters are far from settled.

Hmm: At the moment, on the Met Office blog post rebuttal to James Delingpole, 100% of commenters support the Met Office!

Twitter / Steedore: @omnologos @JamesDelingpole ...

@omnologos @JamesDelingpole 11 out of 11 comments on MetOffice piece support MetOffice. Even Saddam couldn't do as well as that!

[But of course] Killer Whales Trapped by Climate Change - Live[Junk]Science

But what caused the pod of orcas to become trapped in the first place? Increasingly, experts are blaming climate change, which gave the orcas access to a place they normally abandon before winter.

Vivienne Westwood's Boys Are Sad About Climate Change | The Fashion Spot

Westwood is among the most politically outspoken designers working today: in 2007, she released her manifesto, Active Resistence to Propaganda (an insane dialogue between Alice, Pinocchio, Art Lover, Beautiful Slavegirl, Dryad of the Rainforest and others)
...
The designer did not back down when she showed her Men's line at the London Collections on Tuesday. Westwood styled her models with the same look she debuted at the Red Label Spring 2013 show in September — an expressive, clownish kind of warpaint, using broad black lines on pale faces and bright white paint for darker skin tones.

Together with posters printed with slogans advocating for eco-awareness more explicitly, the makeup was used to advance Westwood's message about climate change: makeup artist Pablo Rodriguez told the Telegraph that the look "represented an abstract image of a sad face of disapproval, so the models had a pointing down mouth and one sketchy round eye."

Climate change expert to speak at Texas State

Hayhoe was the lead author of the federal report “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States.”

TexMessage: Climate change should not be a partisan issue, says Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson | Texas on the Potomac | a Chron.com blog

[Johnson] Every new data point serves to highlight the folly of putting special-interest politics and partisanship before science and fact.

The Met Office – defending the indefensible, as per usual – Telegraph Blogs

Let's just remind ourselves of the key charges against the Met Office:

1. Since 1990, when it was taken over by the arch-warmist Sir John Houghton (founder of the IPCC), it has become so wedded to the cause of promoting the AGW "consensus" with the help of its dodgy computer models that it has grown increasingly out of touch with climate reality.

2. The dramatic warming it has been so assiduously been predicting these last few year simply hasn't materialised. This suggests there is a major flaw with the AGW theory on which the Met Office has rather foolishly decided to stake its credibility.

3. Rather than admit its failure publicly, the Met Office tried to adjust its forecasts by stealth – on Christmas Eve: a good time to bury bad news – and got found out, embarrassed and humiliated...

Twitter / keithkloor: Climate skeptics who say they ...

Climate skeptics who say they are fighting the good fight for truth must be proud to have @JamesDelingpole as their comrade in arms.

Twitter / keithkloor: I mean, it's not like ...

I mean, it's not like @JamesDelingpole makes climate skeptics look foolish, or anything like that. Now Monckton, there's a gold bullion!  [I'd pay good money to see Kloor attempt to debate Monckton on global warming.]

Live Chat: Can We Conquer Climate Change? - ScienceNOW

It's been called the greatest challenge in human history: curbing emissions of global warming gases so they don't cause catastrophic climate change—without wrecking the global economy and dooming billions to poverty in the process. Some say it will take breakthrough technologies and profound changes in how we live. Others argue we can make a major dent with existing technologies—if we get serious about acting now.

Join us for a live chat at 3 p.m. EST on Thursday, 17 January, on this page, with two scientists who have taken a careful look at what it will take to conquer climate change.

Aussie heatwaves and the Met Office reveal the certainties and uncertainties that are forgotten in the climate row – Telegraph Blogs

As Roger Pielke Jr points out in his book The Climate Fix, the best defence against the extreme events that climate change will probably cause is development. In the end warming itself doesn't matter, it's the droughts and heatwaves and (possibly) hurricanes that come with it that will kill people, and if we can mitigate their effects then anthropogenic climate change itself is less of a problem.
...Hundreds of millions of Indians don't even have electric light. I'd rather they had coal-powered lights than no light at all.

Grit and bear it! Britain prepares for a 2 week icy blast bringing snow across UK this weekend | Mail Online

Activists have warned that the elderly could be at risk from the cold conditions - particularly after soaring energy prices have discouraged many from putting on the heating even during a cold snap.

Twitter / RogerPielkeJr: Backwards? Outgoing political ...

Backwards? Outgoing political appointee EPA rebukes elected representatives on failure to reflect "will of the people" http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/276485-epa-chief-en-route-to-exit-rebukes-house-gop …

Video - Opinion Journal: Climate-Change Hot Air - WSJ.com

[4-minute video] WSJ Europe editorial writer Anne Jolis on what conclusions to draw from a report that indicates 2012 was the warmest year on record in the U.S.  [Jolis:  "Even the numbers from 1936, we're still revising!"]

Twitter / LFFriedman: Apparently our collective playing ...

Apparently our collective playing of Angry Birds is just as carbon polluting as international air flights. ($) http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2013/01/09/4 …

Twitter / keithkloor: That @MailOnline story by ...

That @MailOnline story by @JamesDelingpole on #climate change is horse shit wrapped in fish wrap. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/2013/01/10/the-daily-mails-funhouse-story-on-climate-change/#.UO7yaBzSpX8 …

Twitter / chriscmooney: Take heed, all you science ...

Take heed, all you science blogs who allow commenters to swear and insult--you're helping to advance irrationality http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/you-idiot-course-trolls-comments-make-you-believe-science-less …

Hey Chris: If you don't approve of insulting people, why are you constantly comparing me to a Holocaust denier?

Warmist Geoffrey Lean: "scientists increasingly believe that animals – including people – will get smaller if global warming runs out of control"

Hey Geoffrey:  Can we see some hard data to back up this claim?  Has there been ongoing polling of scientists to find out how many of them believe that CO2 will cause humans to shrink?  What percentage of scientists held that belief ten years ago, and what percentage believe it now?

Could climate change turn humans into hobbits? – Telegraph Blogs

It sounds far-fetched, but scientists increasingly believe that animals – including people – will get smaller if global warming runs out of control.