By Steven Pearlstein
Friday, April 16, 2010; A17

Six weeks ago, it looked as if there was no chance that Congress would approve climate change legislation this year.

The bill that had passed the House was so long, so complicated, so punitive to the coal-dependent Midwest economy, involved so many political compromises and so much money to be redistributed by the federal government, that it became the whipping boy of choice for conservative politicians and commentators.

Passage of health-care legislation, however, may have changed all that.

Democrats and their liberal supporters saw how much good could be accomplished by not allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good. And Republicans and the business lobby were reminded of the concessions they could have won but didn't by their decision to abandon bipartisan compromise and instead try to kill the legislation altogether.

Now, thanks to the heroic efforts of two dogged senators -- Democrat John Kerry and Republican Lindsey Graham -- and the quiet support of the White House, there looks to be a 50-50 chance the Senate will pass a simpler and more moderate version of a bill this year that would begin to substantially reduce carbon emissions in the United States.

Many in the environmental community have come around to Kerry's view that this is the best shot they are going to have anytime soon at passing comprehensive energy and climate change legislation. And parts of the business community have come around to Graham's view that they can't afford another decade of uncertainty over regulatory issues, particularly with an activist Democrat in control of the regulatory agencies, just as they cannot afford to alienate an entire generation that has a keen interest in the environment and doesn't look kindly on their intransigence.

At this point, it's a bit of a stretch to call this a bipartisan compromise -- the bill that Kerry, Graham and independent Joe Lieberman are expected to introduce a week from Monday is likely to have no other Republican as an initial co-sponsor. But its terms have been crafted to appeal to a handful of Republican senators who, either out of personal belief or political necessity, are eager to find themselves on the right side of history.

They include: retiring senators such as George Voinovich of Ohio and Richard Lugar of Indiana, whose Midwestern states would fare even better under the Senate bill than the House-passed version; Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who will surely like all of the goodies for the nuclear power industry included in the bill; Susan Collins of Maine, whose idea for rebating to consumers money collected by the government through the sale of carbon-emission rights to electric utilities and oil refiners is a central feature of the Senate compromise; and Scott Brown of Massachusetts, the newbie senator who so far has lived up to his promise to be an "independent" Republican.

Although the Senate bill retains the cap-and-trade structure of the House bill, it would apply, at least initially, only to electric power producers, with other manufacturers coming under the regime after 2016. The oil and gas industry would be handled under a separate regime that requires refiners to buy emissions permits for all the carbon contained in the gasoline or other fuels they sell -- in effect, a fee or tax on carbon. The amount of the fee would be determined by the price at which carbon emissions allowances are bought or sold by utilities on open exchanges. And while the fee would almost certainly be passed on to consumers in the form of higher fuel prices, most of it would be rebated through payroll and other tax credits. By paying more for energy and less for taxes, the idea is that Americans will use less energy and wind up with roughly the same amount of money to spend on everything else. Read more here.

A Complete List Of Bad Things Attributed To Global Warming

 Posted 04/05/2010 05:05 PM ET

Hardly a day goes by that the media don't blame something on global warming. Or so it seems. The British-based science watchdog, Number Watch, wondered just how many and went to the trouble of documenting them.

It has kept on its Web site a near-comprehensive set of links to a long list of things attributed by either scientific research or the media to global warming. As you read it, some items will strike you as contradictory. Others, perhaps, as merely absurd. And still others as factually impossible.

However they strike you, in perusing the list one thing will become clear: just how much the fear of global warming has come to taint both science and news reporting on the issue.

Following is the list of phenomena (756 entries in all) linked at one time or another to warming. They range from acne, bubonic plague and a drop in circumcisions to Yellow fever, whale beachings, walrus stampedes, witchcraft executions and the threat of zebra mussels.

Actual links to stories that make the claims listed below can be found at http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm. (Below the list are some claims that no longer have working Internet links.)  Read more here.

Great slide show HERE.

Global Warming Is Frozen Over
By Phyllis Schlafly

Whether or not the groundhog sees his shadow on February 2, there's no denying that January put into a deep freeze the claims of crisis by global warming alarmists. Frigid temperatures destroyed fruit and coral in Florida, and snow fell on Al Gore's palatial home in normally warmer Tennessee.

The 20,000 delegates and journalists who gathered in Copenhagen to discuss climate change had to spend some of their energy hiding their embarrassment about the revelation of emails and documents from the Climate Research Unit, which is an official collaborator of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Those disclosures told the world about some scientists' willingness to suppress climate-change data and rig the process in order to pretend there is consensus among scientists about global warming, to ostracize contrary views, and to promote their globalist agenda.

Obama's State of the Union demand for cap-and-trade legislation fell on deaf ears. Maybe that's because Obama is on record as promising that U.S. emissions in 2050 will be reduced to our 1910 level of emissions, when we had a population of 92 million.

Such a massive reduction in our energy use would mean lowering our standard of living to 19th century levels. The only Republican Senator willing to work with the Democrats on climate change legislation, Lindsey Graham, admitted that "the cap-and-trade bills in the House and Senate are going nowhere."

Even the New York Times admitted that "prospects grew dimmer" for the global warming advocates because Scott Brown repudiated cap-and-trade in his winning campaign in Massachusetts. Some incumbents who voted for the House bill find that challengers are scoring points with the public by attacking that vote.

January ended with a cold blast reportedly from Osama bin Laden blaming the United States for not halting what he called "the global warming crisis" and for failing to sign the Kyoto Protocol. He wants to punish us by getting the global economy to abandon the U.S. dollar.

What was to have been the baptism of the major nations into the religion of global warming in Copenhagen, Denmark, turned out to be a dry run. President Obama came and left empty handed, Communist China refused to limit emissions, and the Third World dictators didn't get the $100 billion handouts they expected.

At the close of the Copenhagen confab, Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus made this same point about global warming. "I'm convinced that after years of studying the phenomenon," he said, "global warming is not a matter of temperature. Global warming is a new religion, a religion of climate change. . . .

"This religion tells us that people are responsible for very small increases in temperatures, and they should be punished. . . . I'm absolutely convinced that the very small global warming we are experiencing is the result of natural causes. It's a cyclical phenomenon in the history of the Earth.

"The role of man is very small, almost negligible. Politicians, their fellow travelers, and the media understood that this is a good topic to take on, because talking about the world in the years 2050, 2080, and 2200 is an excellent way to escape from current reality."

President Klaus sent a message to the world: Do not dictate to humanity how to live based on an "irrational ideology." Man's natural ingenuity can create new technologies that will lessen any impact that mankind has on the planet's environment.

Vaclav Klaus concluded: "I lived in a Communist world where politicians told us what to do. I don't think politicians or presidents should tell business what to do. That is always a mistake."

Nevertheless the propaganda continues. A father's letter to the editor of the Education Reporter described what his 5th-grade daughter Lily, at Three Oaks Elementary, Fort Myers, Florida, said she had learned in school. "I would rather just shoot myself in the head because it would be a less painful death than to suffer and die from global warming."

Thousands of public school students have been shown Al Gore's propaganda movie "An Inconvenient Truth." Another movie called "The Story of Stuff" is also shown in classrooms to teach students the evils of human consumption.

The movie projects a very negative view of capitalism and paints human use of natural resources as "exploitation," which is supposed to be synonymous with trashing the planet. The movie accuses us of chopping down the trees, blowing up mountains to get the metals inside, using up all the water, and wiping out the animals.

The main cause of unemployment and poverty is the lack of enough energy. Rather than expanding government to limit energy, we should be increasing the use of energy to eradicate hardship.

Further reading:

• Global Warming

1. World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown

2. Global warming alarmism falling apart in light of 'Climategate' and IPCC errors
By E. Calvin Beisner
Jan 22, 2010

E. Calvin Beisner

BURKE, Va. (BP)--One of the most alarming warnings in the 2007 Assessment Report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was that Himalayan glaciers -- on which hundreds of millions of people depend for regular water supply from their annual contraction and recovery -- are in grave danger from global warming. "[I]f the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high," the report said (NOTE (1)).

But to the curious, there was a telltale sign that something might be amiss. The IPCC's rules require that all assertions in its assessment reports be based on published papers in refereed journals. But in this instance, the citation at the end of the sentence was "(WWF, 2005)." "WWF" is the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental advocacy organization that publishes no refereed journal and has a well deserved reputation for exaggerated claims.

As it turns out, "(WWF, 2005)" wasn't the end of the story. As reported this week in TimesOnline in the UK (2), "the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before...." And news stories aren't refereed. Further, this news story was "based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist...." And to make matters worse, "Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was 'speculation' and was not supported by any formal research."

That's not all, though. Hasnain says his "speculation" was based on a report he was bringing to Britain -- a report that was not, and never would be, peer reviewed or published. But even that report didn't say or imply that the glaciers could disappear by 2035. But WWF cited it in a campaign piece in 2005 -- and it was that campaign piece that the IPCC cited as its source. But even the campaign piece didn't suggest that the likelihood of the glaciers' disappearing by 2035 was "very high." That, apparently, was the utterly baseless addition of whoever wrote that part of the IPCC report. In reality, even if the IPCC's predictions about anthropogenic (manmade) global warming (AGW) are true, it would take hundreds of years -- not 28 -- for the Himalayan glaciers to disappear, if they ever would.

"If confirmed," TimesOnline continued, "it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research." Well, it is confirmed (3). And it is a serious failure. And there are others. For just three examples, the IPCC wrongly claims that

-- global warming has led to increased economic losses from hurricanes -- citing as support work by Roger Pielke Jr. that actually says the opposite (4).

-- sea level rise accelerated in the late 20th century because of global warming and constitutes a grave threat to low-lying population centers; but in reality the late 20th century had no acceleration in sea level rise (5) and, contrary to widespread claims, low-lying south Pacific island nations like Tuvalu are not endangered by sea level rise, because there has been no sea level rise there during the period in question (6).

-- late-twentieth-century global temperature rise was more rapid than other temperature rises from 1850 onward, giving rise to the assertion that it must be manmade, when the claim rested on what statisticians call an "end point fallacy," and a valid graph of the same data showed no increase in warming rate (7).

COUNTER ARGUMENTS

There is much more, though, to cause thoughtful people to doubt even the best documented of the IPCC's claims about AGW. The claims rest on the assertion that twentieth-century warming was more rapid, and brought global temperature higher, than anything in history. And those claims rest on the reliability of two things: our knowledge of twentieth-century temperatures, and our knowledge of pre-twentieth-century temperatures, with which to compare them. But both of these are highly in doubt. If recent warming was matched in the past, it could just as easily be a repetition of natural warming. And unprecedented warming is an absolutely essential piece of the argument for AGW. Read more here

The Indian head of the UN climate change panel defended his position yesterday even as further errors were identified in the panel's assessment of Himalayan glaciers.

Dr Rajendra Pachauri dismissed calls for him to resign over the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change’s retraction of a prediction that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.

But he admitted that there may have been other errors in the same section of the report, and said that he was considering whether to take action against those responsible.

“I know a lot of climate sceptics are after my blood, but I’m in no mood to oblige them,” he told The Times in an interview. “It was a collective failure by a number of people,” he said. “I need to consider what action to take, but that will take several weeks. It’s best to think with a cool head, rather than shoot from the hip.”

The IPCC’s 2007 report, which won it the Nobel Peace Prize, said that the probability of Himalayan glaciers “disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high”.

But it emerged last week that the forecast was based not on a consensus among climate change experts, but on a media interview with a single Indian glaciologist in 1999.

The IPCC admitted on Thursday that the prediction was “poorly substantiated” in the latest of a series of blows to the panel’s credibility.

Dr Pachauri said that the IPCC’s report was the responsibility of the panel’s Co-Chairs at the time, both of whom have since moved on.

They were Dr Martin Parry, a British scientist now at Imperial College London, and Dr Osvaldo Canziani , an Argentine meteorologist. Neither was immediately available for comment.

“I don’t want to blame them, but typically the working group reports are managed by the Co-Chairs,” Dr Pachauri said. “Of course the Chair is there to facilitate things, but we have substantial amounts of delegation.” Read more here.

COMMENT:  The YouTube video, "Is Obama Poised to Cede US Sovereignty?" went 'viral' in a hurry. I probably received it from 15 or more people.  Before passing any information on to our members and subscribers, I did some research, so let's slow down and take a deep breath. While the situation is serious, the sky is not falling, at least not yet.

Yes, the Climate Change Conference will be held in Copenhagen, December 7-18, 2009.  Prior to that there will be a final round of negotiations November 2-6 in Barcelona, Spain. As you can see from the articles, included by date, this proposed treaty is in a steady state of flux.  The final language has not been determined, so we will not know for awhile exactly what will be in it.  If the United States does end up signing the treaty, that does not mean that its provisions will become binding.  Treaties have to go to the US Senate for approval where they must received 67 votes.
(That is a serious matter as Article VI of the US Constitution states: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.")
Although, things can certainly change, it now looks as if President Obama may not even be attending (see below). This is not the time to panic, but to pay attention and be vigilant. We will keep you updated in a timely fashion.

COP stands for "Conference of the Parties" and the December Copenhagen conference will be the 15th under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), hence COP15. According to their website, it will be one of the largest conferences ever held outside the New York or Geneva headquarters, with an anticipated attendance of over 10,000 people, including governmental representatives from 189 countries, industry groups, and other non-governmental organizations.

The theme of the December 7 - 18 conference is "Hope," so perhaps Mr. Obama will have more luck this time. Instead of soliciting the International Olympic Committee with trite clichés and no payoffs, he will be doing something much easier: selling out our country. After all, ceding power, relinquishing billions in U.S. tax dollars and destroying U.S. economic competitiveness is a pretty easy sell to the countries that will benefit, and he has had a lot of practice doing the same thing here at home. He will have a hard time screwing this one up.  Read more here.
 

In preparation for the December 7-18 summit, The Heritage Foundation will be covering all the details - up to, during, and after the conference. From energy, to free trade to sovereignty, we’ll address all the angles and provide background information, frequent updates and international perspectives.
Read more here.

October 20, 2009
WASHINGTON — With the clock running out and deep differences unresolved, it now appears that there is little chance that international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December will produce a comprehensive and binding new treaty on global warming.
The United States and many other major pollutant-emitting countries have concluded that it is more useful to take incremental but important steps toward a global agreement rather than to try to jam through a treaty that is either too weak to address the problem or too onerous to be ratified and enforced.
Instead, representatives at the Copenhagen meeting are likely to announce a number of interim steps and agree to keep talking next year.
“There isn’t sufficient time to get the whole thing done,” Yvo De Boer, the Dutch diplomat who leads the United Nations climate secretariat and oversees the negotiations, said late last week. “But I hope it will go well beyond simply a declaration of principles. The form I would like it to take is the groundwork for a ratifiable agreement next year.”
Negotiators have accepted as all but inevitable that representatives of the 192 nations in the talks will not resolve the outstanding issues in the time remaining before the Copenhagen conference opens in December. The gulf between rich and poor nations, and even among the wealthiest nations, is just too wide.
Representatives of the 16 largest emitting countries and the European Union, who concluded a meeting in London on Monday, said that they had made progress on the level of aid needed to help poor countries adapt to climate change and adopt less-polluting energy technology.
They also said they had settled some questions on the “architecture” of any agreement reached in Copenhagen, while acknowledging that it would fall short of a binding treaty. Read more here.

5. Ottawa dashes hope for climate treaty in Copenhagen

October 23, 2009
Hope is vanishing that a historic deal to address climate change can be concluded in Copenhagen, and Environment Minister Jim Prentice says the best chance is for a political agreement that would pave the way for a treaty to be signed later.

But Canada will continue to insist that it should have a less aggressive target for emission reductions than Europe or Japan because of its faster-growing population and energy-intensive industrial structure, Mr. Prentice said in an interview Thursday.

Canadians must also recognize that any national emissions cap has to reflect differing conditions across the country so as not to punish high-growth provinces, he added. The minister has been consulting with provinces on a plan that would impose a cap on industrial emissions, but allow Alberta's energy-intensive, emissions-heavy oil sands to continue expanding. Read more here.

President Obama is "leaning toward not going" to the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December, a senior administration official told Fox News.

The current thinking in the administration is that since the conference is not a "head of state" event, Obama will not attend. Obama will be accepting the Nobel Prize in Oslo on the second day of the Copenhagen conference and may use that platform to address climate change issues.

October 24, 2009
President Obama will almost certainly not travel to the Copenhagen climate change summit in December and may instead use his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech to set out US environmental goals, The Times has learnt.

With healthcare reform clogging his domestic agenda and no prospect of a comprehensive climate treaty in Copenhagen, Mr Obama may disappoint campaigners and foreign leaders, including Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband, who have urged him to attend to boost the hopes of a breakthrough.

The White House would not comment on Mr Obama’s travel plans yesterday, but administration officials have said privately that “Oslo is plenty close” — a reference to the Nobel ceremony that falls on December 10, two days into the Copenhagen meeting.

The White House confirmed that the President would be in Oslo to accept the prize, but a source close to the Administration said it was “hard to see the benefit” of his going to Copenhagen if there was no comprehensive deal for him to close or sign. Another expert, who did not want to be named, said he would be “really, really shocked” if Mr Obama went to Copenhagen, adding that European hopes about the power of his Administration to transform the climate change debate in a matter of months bore little relation to reality. The comprehensive climate change treaty that for years has been the goal of the Copenhagen conference was now an “unrealistic” prospect, Yvo de Boer, the UN official guiding the process, said last week. Read more here.

COMMENT:  Be encouraged!! While we will certainly keep watch (as you know, things in DC can 'change on a dime') I believe this apparent postponement of the 'cap-and-tax' effort is because we have been relentlessly involved.  Keep that in mind as we continue to fight the government take over of health care.  What YOU DO makes a difference.

Senate Democratic leaders said Tuesday they would put off debate on a big climate-change bill until spring, in a sign of weakening political will to tackle a long-term environmental issue at a time of high unemployment and economic uncertainty.

Legislation on health care, overhauling financial markets and job creation will be considered before the Senate takes up a measure to cap emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to climate change, Senate Democratic leaders said Tuesday.

Climate legislation will be taken up "some time in the spring," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said Tuesday after a Democratic caucus meeting.

The delay was "just a matter of reality, they can't get anything done at this time," said Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), who has previously supported climate legislation. He has said he wouldn't support the current Senate proposal because of disagreements over its handling of nuclear energy.

The climate-bill delay sidetracks one of President Barack Obama's top domestic priorities. Mr. Obama has said action to curb greenhouse gases would unleash investment in clean-energy technology and create jobs.

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said Tuesday Mr. Obama was working with lawmakers to move the legislation as quickly as possible.

"This is an economic opportunity for the nation that will create millions of clean energy jobs while reducing our dangerous dependence on foreign oil, and it's an opportunity that other countries like China and India are racing to take advantage of," Mr. LaBolt said in an email.

Momentum for a climate bill has been undermined by fears that capping carbon-dioxide emissions -- the inevitable product of burning oil and coal -- would slow economic growth, raise energy costs and compel changes in the way Americans live.

"It's really big, really, really hard, and is going to make a lot of people mad," said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.).

Democrats looking ahead to the 2010 midterm elections are concerned about a backlash from voters in industrial and heartland states dependent on coal. Republicans are portraying Democrats' "cap and trade" proposals, which call for capping overall U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions and allowing companies to buy and trade permits to emit those gases, as a "cap and tax" scheme.Read more here.

[Eyewitness report from Texas Eagle Forum leader.]

March 10, 2009

By Pat Carlson

We have been told repeatedly by Al Gore and the mainstream media, the vast majority of scientists agree the 'debate is over' and 'the science is settled' proving humans are causing global warming, but 680 of the world's leading scientists, economists, and policy analysts met March 8-10, 2009 in New York City for the second Heartland International Conference to discuss "Global Warming: Was It Ever Really A Crisis?" These authorities say the majority of scientists worldwide do not agree with human induced or in scientific lingo, anthropogenic global warming or even that the earth is still warming, so it follows there is disagreement with the science.

It has become obvious to the ever growing numbers of scientists coming forward to question the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, it is no longer about the science but it is all about the politics and the money. Many of these men and women by questioning the science of the IPCC report have put their careers or their funding for research or their standing in the scientific community in jeopardy.

The most interesting of the speakers was the President of the Czech Republic and rotating President of the European Union, Vaclav Klaus. He has written a book titled Blue Planet in Green Shackles - What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? What is happening with global warming reminds him of the communist era and how frustrated people felt. "Whatever you said, any convincing and well prepared arguments you used, any relevant data you assembled, no reaction. It all fell into emptiness....they [the communist] did not listen....They did not argue back...They considered....you uninformed....a complainer, someone not able to accept their only truth."

President Klaus has taken a bold position against global warming in international circles. He recently attended the World Economic Forum in Davos spending six hours in closed session with heads of state and officials from the IPCC. He was the only opponent of climate change in the room. These officials were trying to decided what would be a good target for global emissions cuts - 20, 30, 50 or 80%. President Klaus said, "It was difficult to say anything meaningful and constructive" but he finally turned their attention to the fact they were making "such radical proposals even though their own countries had not fulfilled even the relatively modest Kyoto Protocol obligations." There was no reaction. The former eastern block communist countries are the only force standing against the EU on this issue. They are still trying to rebuild their economies after 40 years of communist rule.

THE SCIENTISTS

Other speakers were Senator and former astronaut Harrison Schmitt and John Coleman, the founder of the Weather Channel, who calls this "the greatest scam in history." We heard from retired Senior NASA Atmospheric Scientist John Theon. Dr. Theon was formerly the supervisor of Dr. James Hansen a radical global warming activist. Hansen recently stated that climate change skeptics are guilty of "high crimes against humanity and nature." Dr. Theon said Hansen is an embarrassment to NASA and he should be fired.

There were many more speakers almost all with PhD.'s in their specific field. The science was discussed sometimes in such detail that only other scientific minds could comprehend the significance. This is important because in comparison, at United Nation's Conferences science is never discussed or debated - it has been accepted without question.

POLAR BEARS

I introduced myself to the man sitting next to me at a meal during the conference. His name was Dr. Mitchell Taylor and he was a Polar Bear Biologist with a PhD. He lives in one of the northern regions of Canada. I realized as I was speaking to him his name was very familiar. I had used quotes from him when writing about the polar bear being declared an Endangered Species. I asked him how the polar bears were doing and if they were indeed endangered (although I knew the answer). He said the polar bear is definitely not in danger of extinction. The numbers hold steady at about 24,000. He said where he lives it's not unusual to see one crossing the road at night. I can't wait to meet someone from the Sierra Club. I will ask that person who uses pictures of mother and baby polar bears stranded on the last piece of a melted iceberg to raise money, have you ever talked to a polar bear biologist? My answer will be, I have.

CONCLUSION

This conference was so different from the UN conferences I have attended. There was discussion and debate trying to seek the truth with concern for the future of humanity, not facilitated consensus building with a predetermined outcome based on 'their only truth' with concern for the future of the planet at the expense of humanity.

Lord Christopher Monckton who was a former policy advisor to Margaret Thatcher said, "This conference is not about climate change. It is about freedom."

Arctic Sea Ice Underestimated for Weeks Due to Faulty Sensors
By Alex Morales
Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- A glitch in satellite sensors caused scientists to underestimate the extent of Arctic sea ice by 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles), a California- size area, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said.
The error, due to a problem called “sensor drift,” began in early January and caused a slowly growing underestimation of sea ice extent until mid-February. That’s when “puzzled readers” alerted the NSIDC about data showing ice-covered areas as stretches of open ocean, the Boulder, Colorado-based group said on its Web site.
Read more here


Bucking the media trend on global warming 'crisis'
Pete Chagnon - OneNewsNow
NEW YORK CITY - Speakers at a conference on climate change are making the case that the alarmism behind the global-warming bandwagon is politically motivated, has nothing to do with science, and could affect the sovereignty of the U.S.
The second annual International Conference on Climate Change hosted by The Heartland Institute is well under way in New York City. More than 700 registrants have gathered in the Big Apple to hear more than 70 scientists -- representing the views of tens of thousands of their colleagues -- make the argument that media and environmental advocacy groups have it all wrong, that global warming is not a crisis.
One of the headlining speakers to open the event Sunday evening was European Union and Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus, who was welcomed with a standing ovation. Klaus, one of the most outspoken critics of manmade global warming in Europe, says those who propagate global-warming hysteria are like the communists of old Europe. Like global-warming alarmists, he stated, the communists did not listen to opposing views.
Read more here

What if there is no Man-Made Global Warming?
What then?

February 25, 2009

By Tom DeWeese 

Here are some questions every American should ask their elected officials – especially those supporting “climate change” legislation: If it is proven that climate change is not man-made, but natural, will you be relieved and excited to know that man is off the hook? Will you now help to remove all of the draconian regulations passed during the global warming hysteria, since it was all wrong headed and harmful to the economy and our way of life?

Their answers to these questions should be very illuminating as to the true agenda they seek to impose. Is their agenda really about helping to protect the environment, or is it about creating a new social and economic order, using the environment as the excuse?

If they are supporting climate change legislation because of a genuine concern for the environment, then they should now be greatly relieved to know that true science is showing more and more evidence that there is no man-made global warming, and in fact, a natural cooling period has begun.

Last year, 52 scientists authored a much hyped report issued by the UN’s IPCC which said global warming was man-made and getting worse. But in the past year, more than 650 scientists from around the world have now expressed their doubts about the reports findings – 12 times the number of IPCC global warming alarmists now agree it’s bunk.

“I am a skeptic…Global Warming has become a new religion,” says Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever. “Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly…as a scientist I remain skeptical,” says Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, formally with NASA and called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.” Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in history… When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists,” said UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh. “It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming,” said U.S. Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B, Glodenberg. Top these very few quotes with the fact that 34,000 scientists have now signed a petition saying global warming is probably natural and is not man-made.

Instead, they say the science shows warming actually stopped in 1999. That the brief warming period we experienced in the past decade was completely natural, caused, in part, by storms on the sun, not CO2 emissions from SUVs. The Sun storms have ended and now, a cooling period has begun. That’s it. Done. Crisis over. Man is not to blame.

Read more here

By Christopher Booker

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.
Read more here

Beware your children: They might be 'Climate Cops'
Company recruits kids to keep records, bust parents for 'energy crimes'
Posted: July 28, 2008
8:44 pm Eastern
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

A new website campaign designed by a British power company recruits children through games, badges and cartoons to enlist as "Climate Cops," actively keeping records on their parents and neighbors for violations of "energy crimes" against the planet.

The "Climate Cops" website encourages children to investigate family and friends and "then build your 'Climate Crime Case File' and report back to your family to make sure they don't commit those crimes again (or else)!" The site also warns children that they "may need to keep a watchful eye" to prevent future violations.

A link on the site for teachers to download free materials for building lesson plans indicates the website is targeting children from ages 7-11.

The so-called crimes children are to watch for are listed on a poster (visible at right) and range from leaving the tap running and failing to use energy-saving light bulbs to running the dryer on a sunny day and putting hot food in the refrigerator.

The website also encourages children to download a series of "Climate Crime Cards" (such as the one pictured below) in which enlisted "Climate Cops" can keep an ongoing record of their family's violation of energy "crimes."
 

Recruiting children to spy on and keep records of their parents' infractions reminds some of Adolf Hitler's Nazi youth program, only with an environmentalist bent. The author of the blog EU Referendum wrote: "In a system which has echoes of Hitler's Deutsches Jungvolk movement … perhaps successful graduates can work up to becoming block wardens, then street and district 'climate crime Fuehrers,' building a network of spies and informers."

Hitler's youth program, which began in the 1920s and ended in 1945, enlisted children to be trained in the ideals of the Nazi party. Eventually folded into the German Sturmabteilung, also known as the SA or the "brownshirts," the Hitler Youth were given authority over different regions to report and keep records on neighbors, especially Jewish neighbors, as part of Nazi Germany's fear- and propaganda-based social control efforts.
 

 Read more here
 

Scientist: 'Global warming' scheme to push global tax
Blames U.N. for using scare reports, 'mob rule,' to bully through agenda
Posted: June 19, 2008
11:15 pm Eastern
By Bob Unruh
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

A scientist whose reservations about "global warming" have been officially endorsed by tens of thousands of other scientists is accusing the U.N. of using "mob rule" to generate fear-mongering climate change reports intended to scare national leaders into submitting to its worldwide taxation schemes.

"Science has always progressed on the basis of observations, experiments, and thoughts published by individual scientists and sometimes pairs or small groups of scientific coworkers," Art Robinson, a research professor of chemistry and co-founder of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, said in a recent column in Human Events.

Except at the U.N., he said.

Robinson's concern over the political manipulation of science earlier led him to launch the Petition Project, a compilation of more than 31,000 scientists – with more names arriving daily – who have voluntarily signed their names to the following statement:

"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."

He said the scientific process begins with the results of individuals' work and their distribution of their ideas.

"A few of these published articles are especially valuable; a greater number, while not remarkable, provide relative mundane studies that add to the infrastructure of science; many are not useful at all; and some are completely wrong. As individual scientists read these articles, they use their own wisdom, knowledge, and judgment to separate new information that they find valuable from information that they find of no use," Robinson said. Eventually, the good, accurate and valuable information is advanced.
 

"Always, scientific progress is a result of a large number of individual decisions that trend in a specific direction," he said.

Not so, however, at the United Nations. Especially with the organization's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has generated many of the claims of catastrophic results of man's use of hydrocarbon fuels, including submerged coastlines and a deadly, massive expansion of African deserts.

The IPCC website boasts of sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore Jr. for "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change." It also notes its goals are to eradicate poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality, reduce child mortality, improve mothers' health, combat HIV/AIDS, ensure environmental sustainability and others.

"The IPCC provides its reports at regular intervals and they immediately become standard works of reference, widely used by policymakers, experts and students," the organization itself says. .

The IPCC conferences do, in fact, feature "a few hundred" people, including some with formal educations in science, some actively engaged in scientific work, some retired, holding discussions on "the entirely unsolved problem of climate prediction for time periods decades and even centuries in the future," said Robinson, who also publishes the Access to Energy newsletter. In 1973, Robinson co-founded the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine with Linus Pauling.
 

 Read more here
 

Committing technological genocide?

1.  31,000 Signatures Prove "No Consensus' About Global Warming
2.  Global Warming Heresy
3.  Hundreds of scientists reject global warming

1. 31,000 Signatures Prove ‘No Consensus’ About Global Warming

Briefing  |  By Melinda Zosh  |  May 22, 2008

 

Presidential candidate Barack Obama said on Monday that “we have to get used to the idea that we can’t keep our houses at 72, drive our SUVs and eat all we want.” Arthur B. Robinson, president and professor of chemistry at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, has a different response.

“I don’t want to give up eating all I want because of a failed hypothesis,” said Robinson at the National Press Club here on May 19. Robinson said global warming is not a threat to America. He said that the global temperature increased by just .5 degrees in the last century.

Robinson spoke about his petition signed by 31,000 U.S. scientists who reject the claims that “human release of greenhouse gases is damaging our climate.”  

“World temperatures fluctuate all the time,” said Robinson. “The temperature of the Earth has risen many times, far more times than carbon dioxide could drive it. There is no experimental evidence that humans are changing the environment…”

Robinson said that in recent years the U.N. and a group of 600 scientists, representing less than one percent of the scientific population, reached a “consensus” that global warming is happening. This has never been done before, Robinson insists.

Dennis Avery, Director for the Center of Global Food Issues at the Hudson Institute, agrees with Robinson. “Nobody can do science by a committee. You do science by testing,” said Avery. “To me it is appalling that an international organization of the stature of the U.N. would ignore the evidence of past climate changing.”

The signers of Robinson’s petition, including 9,000 Ph.Ds, all have one thing in common. They believe that human rights are being taken away.

When the U.N. and others want to limit hydrocarbons, which account for 85% of the current United States energy supplies, the consequences are disastrous, Robinson said.

“America is buying 30 percent of its energy abroad... Now we’re getting to the point where we can’t afford energy abroad,” said Robinson. “The problem was created by state and federal taxation against…now they want to [make]…further regulations that will stop these hydrocarbons.”

Robinson said that the results of high taxation and regulation of energy is evident in America right now with gas prices hitting over four dollars per gallon. When you take away energy, you lose critical technology, he said.

“Industry is required to give you all the things you want, ranging from pencils to cars,” said Robinson. “When you take away technology, you lose all those things. Anything that was created with any sort of technology was created by energy.”

Robinson said that without necessary energy, the world will see the “greatest technological genocide you can imagine.”

“We wouldn’t have six billion people on Earth without technology,” said Robinson.  “If you reduce energy, you [are also] reducing technology. The biggest problem is people in the third world who die in enormous numbers.”

Avery said that a vast number of people are already suffering in the third world, because they are forced to cook inside their homes.

“The indoor cooking fires in the third world are vastly more harmful to the health of women and children than smoking cigarettes,” said Avery.  “If you eliminate their opportunity to move up from burning dung and straw and wood to burning kerosene…then you are eliminating their possibility of having healthy lungs.”

In addition, Avery said that energy restrictions cause “an awful lot of premature deaths.” However, if Green Peace decides to eliminate nitrogen fertilizer, even more people will suffer.

“If we eliminate the nitrogen fertilizer, then that will cut the world’s crop fields in half immediately,” said Avery. “Half the world will be hungry.”

Robinson said that the U.N. is doing more harm than good.

“Every individual has a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness….and the  right to access technology that will help him prosper whether he is a wealthy man in the U.S. or an African that can barely feed himself,” said Robinson.
 

To continue reading, go here.

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2. Global Warming Heresy

by Walter Williams  (March 27, 2007)

Most climatologists agree that the earth's temperature has increased about a degree over the last century. The debate is how much of it is due to mankind's activity. Britain's Channel 4 television has just produced "The Great Global Warming Swindle," a documentary that devastates most of the claims made by the environmentalist movement. The scientists interviewed include top climatologists from MIT and other prestigious universities around the world. The documentary hasn't aired in the U.S., but it's available on the Internet. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU)

Among the many findings that dispute environmentalists' claims are: Manmade carbon dioxide emissions are roughly 5 percent of the total; the rest are from natural sources such as volcanoes, dying vegetation and animals. Annually, volcanoes alone produce more carbon dioxide than all of mankind's activities. Oceans are responsible for most greenhouse gases. Contrary to environmentalists' claims, the higher the Earth's temperature, the higher the carbon dioxide levels. In other words, carbon dioxide levels are a product of climate change. Some of the documentary's scientists argue that the greatest influence on the Earth's temperature is our sun's sunspot activity. The bottom line is, the bulk of scientific evidence shows that what we've been told by environmentalists is pure bunk.

Throughout the Earth's billions of years there have been countless periods of global warming and cooling. In fact, in the year 1,000 A.D., a time when there were no SUVs, the Earth's climate was much warmer than it is now. Most of this century's warming occurred before 1940. For several decades after WWII, when there was massive worldwide industrialization, there was cooling.

There's a much more important issue that poses an even greater danger to mankind. That's the effort by environmentalists to suppress disagreement with their view. According to a March 11 article in London's Sunday Telegraph, Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, has received five death threats since he started questioning whether man was affecting climate change. Richard Lindzen, professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, said, "Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labeled as industry stooges." Nigel Calder, a former editor of New Scientist, said, "Governments are trying to achieve unanimity by stifling any scientist who disagrees. Einstein could not have got funding under the present system."

Suppressing dissent is nothing new. Italian cosmologist Giordano Bruno taught that stars were at different distances from each other surrounded by limitless territory. He was imprisoned in 1592, and eight years later he was tried as a heretic and burned at the stake. Because he disagreed that the Earth was the center of the universe, Galileo was ordered to stand trial on suspicion of heresy in 1633. Under the threat of torture, he recanted and was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.

To continue reading, go to http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4941

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3. Hundreds of scientists reject global warming
Basing policy on carbon dioxide levels
'potentially disastrous economic folly'

A new U.S. Senate report documents hundreds of prominent scientists – experts in dozens of fields of study worldwide – who say global warming and cooling is a cycle of nature and cannot legitimately be connected to man's activities.

"Of course I believe in global warming, and in global cooling – all part of the natural climate changes that the Earth has experienced for billions of years, caused primarily by the cyclical variations in solar output," said research physicist John W. Brosnahan, who develops remote-sensing instruments for atmospheric science for clients including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.

However, he said, "I have not seen any sort of definitive, scientific link to man-made carbon dioxide as the root cause of the current global warming, only incomplete computer models that suggest that this might be the case.
 

"Even though these computer climate models do not properly handle a number of important factors, including the role of precipitation as a temperature regulator, they are being (mis-)used to force a political agenda upon the U.S.," he continued. "While there are any number of reasons to reduce carbon dioxide generation, to base any major fiscal policy on the role of carbon dioxide in climate change would be inappropriate and imprudent at best and potentially disastrous economic folly at the worst."

The report compiled observations from more than 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen nations who have voiced objections to claims of a "consensus" on "man-made global warming."

Many of the scientists are current or former participants in the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose present officials, along with former Vice President Al Gore, have asserted a definite connection.

The new report, which comes from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's office of the GOP ranking member, cites the hundreds of opinions issued just this year asserting global warming and man's activities are unrelated.

"Even some in the establishment media now appear to be taking notice of the growing number of skeptical scientists," the introduction to the Senate report said. "In October, the Washington Post Staff Writer Juliet Eilperin conceded the obvious, writing that climate skeptics 'appear to be expanding rather than shrinking.'

"Many scientists from around the world have dubbed 2007 as the year man-made global warming fears 'bite the dust,'" the introduction said.

And there probably would be many more scientists making such statements, were it not for the fear of retaliation from those aboard the global-warming-is-caused-by-SUVs bandwagon, the report said.

"Many of my colleagues with whom I spoke share these views and report on their inability to publish their skepticism in the scientific or public media," noted Nathan Paldor, professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

The author of almost 70 peer-reviewed studies said, "First, temperature changes, as well as rates of temperature changes (both increase and decrease) of magnitudes similar to that reported by IPCC to have occurred since the Industrial revolution (about 0.8C in 150 years or even 0.4C in the last 35 years) have occurred in Earth's climatic history. There's nothing special about the recent rise!"

At an earlier hearing, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., confronted Stephen Johnson, administrator of the EPA, about a threatening e-mail from a group that includes the EPA. The e-mail from the American Council on Renewable Energy was addressed to Marlo Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and said, "It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on."

It was signed Michael T. Eckhart, president of ACORE.

The scientists cited in the new study hail from Germany, Brazil, the Netherlands, New Zealand, France, Russia and the United States. They defied the idea promoted by various political and environmental agendas that man's activities are endangering the future of the Earth through contributions to a rise in temperatures.

Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, professor in the department of Earth sciences at Carleton University in Ottawa, recently converted from a believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. Patterson noted that the notion of a "consensus" of scientists aligned with the U.N. IPCC or former Vice President Al Gore is false.

"I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall, and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority," he said.

The report was generated after U.N. IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri implied there were only "about half a dozen" skeptical scientists left in the world.

Gore has likened skeptics of the global-warming philosophy to "flat Earth society members."

But the Senate report noted the scientists who are expressing a dissatisfaction with such generalizations include experts in climatology, geology, oceanography, biology, glaciology, biogeography, meteorology, economics, chemistry, mathematics, environmental sciences, engineering, physics and paleoclimatology.

"Some of those profiled have won Nobel Prizes for their outstanding contribution to their field of expertise and many shared a portion of the UN IPCC Nobel Peace Price with Vice President Gore," the report said.

Besides the Nobel Gore shared over the issue of global warming, he also won an Oscar for his work on "An Inconvenient Truth," which proclaims the validity of man-made global warming and advocates urgent action.
 

However, Muriel Newman, director of the New Zealand Centre for Political Research, has told Academy President Sid Ganis and Executive Director Bruce Davis that the honor should be withdrawn.

That's because British High Court judge Michael Burton has concluded Gore's documentary should be shown in British schools only with guidance notes to prevent political indoctrination. The decision followed a lawsuit by a father, Stewart Dimmock, who claimed the film contained "serious scientific inaccuracies, political propaganda and sentimental mush."

To continue reading, go to http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59319
 

 COMMENT:  Thanks to Gore and friends efforts to reduce 'global warming' by focusing on biofuels is driving up the price of food and its availability.  Well, I guess if we have another ice age it won't matter anyway -- we won't have land available to raise enough food.

1.  Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh
2. Excessive government created vicious cycle
3. Food Crisis Starts Eclipsing Climate Change Worries

Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh
 

Phil Chapman | April 23, 2008

THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity.

What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot.

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.

It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.

This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.

It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.

There is no doubt that the next little ice age would be much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do. There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada. Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it.

Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it (such as planning changes in agriculture to compensate), and millions more will die from cold-related diseases.

There is also another possibility, remote but much more serious. The Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and other evidence show that for the past several million years, severe glaciation has almost always afflicted our planet.

The bleak truth is that, under normal conditions, most of North America and Europe are buried under about 1.5km of ice. This bitterly frigid climate is interrupted occasionally by brief warm interglacials, typically lasting less than 10,000 years.

The interglacial we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history, called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so the ice is overdue. We also know that glaciation can occur quickly: the required decline in global temperature is about 12C and it can happen in 20 years.

The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027.
 

To continue reading to go http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23583376-5013480,00.html
 

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Excessive government created vicious cycle

By RICHARD J. GRANT • April 25, 2008
 

The current "global food crisis" is not a crisis in its own right. It is a symptom of a broader intellectual crisis that has spawned a vicious cycle of increasing government intervention, here and abroad.

Excessive and poorly conceived government regulations, taxes and subsidies have created a cluster of crises, and now the fluctuating prices will be used as an excuse to increase government meddling even further.
 

We could start by looking at extreme cases, such as Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe has liberated his country from the status of net agricultural exporter and turned it into an aid-dependent exporter of hungry people. That's what you can do with just the right mix of bad economic policies and corrupt political practices. Third World governance begat and maintains our current portfolio of Third World countries.

With a little more effort we, too, could achieve that status. It will take awhile, but we do have some talented folks in Washington who are hard at work on it. Through the wonders of pseudo-science, they have converted most of us to the worship of the green goddess of global warming, which now explains all things. Who needs science when we have "consensus"? Those of us who actually understand something about mathematical models remain skeptical about their use in forecasting complex phenomena such as climate change and future economic conditions. But such "deniers" risk conversion by the sword or, worse, a loss of research funding.

Ethanol hinders progress

The green goddess now demands burnt offerings: We call it "ethanol." To ensure that we all practice what they preach, the pious folks in Washington have made our participation mandatory. The production of ethanol and other biofuels is promoted through subsidies, tax credits, grants, loans and import restrictions — burdens cheerfully borne by consumers and taxpayers. Corn producers are appropriately thankful, and vote predictably.

We are told ethanol will help us achieve energy independence and reduce the emission of unpopular gases. But it actually hinders both objectives. Further, ethanol is harmful to internal combustion engines and corrodes fuel-handling systems, including underground storage tanks. It is an expensive and wasteful energy source, so the government has to force us to use it in our gasoline.
 

To continue reading, go to http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080425/OPINION01/804250410/-1/ARCHIVE01
 

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Food Crisis Starts Eclipsing Climate Change Worries

COMMENT:  Let me HIGHLY recommend The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism) (Paperback), by Christopher C. Horner (Author).  It is available for $13.37 on Amazon.com.


Bush Raises Temp On Global Warming
By Tony Blankley
April 16, 2008

The last months of a presidential administration are often dangerous. Presidents -- looking to their legacies -- go to desperate lengths to try to enhance their reputations for posterity. A pungent example of such practices by the Bush administration was reported above the fold on the front page of The Washington Times Monday: "Bush prepares global warming initiative."

Oh, dear. Just as an increasing number of scientists are finding their courage to speak out against the global warming alarmists and just as a building body of evidence and theories challenge the key elements of the human-centric carbon-based global warming theories, George W. Bush takes this moment to say, in effect: "We are all global alarmists now."

It reminds me of the moment back in 1971 when Richard Nixon proclaimed, "We are all Keynesians now" -- eight years after Milton Friedman had published his book "A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960" and about an hour and a half before a consensus built that Friedman's work consigned Keynes to the dustbin of economic history.

Now it is Bush's turn to be the last man to join a losing proposition. In how many ways is this proposal not useful? First of all, as Chris Horner, the author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism," shrewdly has pointed out, the Democrats desperately want Bush and the Republicans "to take ownership" of the global alarmists' issues before he goes.

This is important. Whatever restraint likely to be exercised by the Democratic Party majority next year will be induced by the political fear that the Republicans would be able to say I told you so if the Democrats' policies contract the economy and put yet more people out of work.

That will give them political cover for the entire program, which, whatever it may try to do regarding "global warming," certainly will give governments and international organizations vastly more control over the United States economy.

Of course, the proposed carbon taxes will subtract hundreds of billions (or trillions) of dollars from productive private-sector economic activity and transfer it to "our friend the government" to spend "beneficially" for us all. Beyond even confiscatory taxation, reduced economic output, and higher unemployment, we have hints of other things to come with the talk of connecting private homes to the central electricity grid.

In its benign form, it is described by Rep. Nick Lampson in the Washington paper The Hill: "As demand for energy services grows, the nation's outdated grid is showing signs of strain due to congestion, sometimes resulting in large-scale outages, such as the blackouts and brownouts experienced in New York, California, and my home state of Texas during summertime heat waves in recent years. One solution to this problem would be to build scores of new power plants and thousands of miles of new transmission lines to increase overall grid capacity. A better way is to change how we manage electric power, by deploying smart-grid technologies.
 

"A smart grid uses information technology to transform a simple 'pipe' into an interactive energy-management system. Streams of real-time information are exchanged between users, producers, and the grid itself to allow dynamic power management that increases both efficiency and stability."

But one can well imagine what the global warming fanatics might wish government to do with interactive "dynamic power management." Energy pigs (for example, people like me, who want to have air conditioning on hot days) will not be permitted to destroy the planet. Our energy use can be "capped" easily by the dynamic system. One bureaucrat will be empowered to turn our electricity on or off -- according to the dictates of the current politically correct judgment.
 

To continue reading, go to http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/tblankley/2008/tb_04162.shtml
 

Sue Al Gore for Fraud

Global Warming? New Data Shows Ice Is Back

Are the world's ice caps melting because of climate change, or are the reports just a lot of scare mongering by the advocates of the global warming theory?

Scare mongering appears to be the case, according to reports from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that reveal that almost all the allegedly “lost” ice has come back. A NOAA report shows that ice levels which had shrunk from 5 million square miles in January 2007 to just 1.5 million square miles in October, are almost back to their original levels.

Moreover, a Feb. 18 report in the London Daily Express showed that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than usual, challenging the global warming crusaders and buttressing arguments of skeptics who deny that the world is undergoing global warming.

The Daily express recalls the photograph of polar bears clinging on to a melting iceberg which has been widely hailed as proof of the need to fight climate change and has been used by former Vice President Al Gore during his "Inconvenient Truth" lectures about mankind’s alleged impact on the global climate.

Gore fails to mention that the photograph was taken in the month of August when melting is normal. Or that the polar bear population has soared in recent years.

As winter roars in across the Northern Hemisphere, Mother Nature seems to have joined the ranks of the skeptics.

As the Express notes, scientists are saying the northern Hemisphere has endured its coldest winter in decades, adding that snow cover across the area is at its greatest since 1966. The newspaper cites the one exception — Western Europe, which had, until the weekend when temperatures plunged to as low as -10 C in some places, been basking in unseasonably warm weather.

Around the world, vast areas have been buried under some of the heaviest snowfalls in decades. Central and southern China, the United States, and Canada were hit hard by snowstorms. In China, snowfall was so heavy that over 100,000 houses collapsed under the weight of snow.

Jerusalem, Damascus, Amman, and northern Saudi Arabia report the heaviest falls in years and below-zero temperatures. In Afghanistan, snow and freezing weather killed 120 people. Even Baghdad had a snowstorm, the first in the memory of most residents.

AFP news reports icy temperatures have just swept through south China, stranding 180,000 people and leading to widespread power cuts just as the area was recovering from the worst weather in 50 years, the government said Monday. The latest cold snap has taken a severe toll in usually temperate Yunnan province, which has been struck by heavy snowfalls since Thursday, a government official from the provincial disaster relief office told AFP.

Twelve people have died there, state Xinhua news agency reported, and four remained missing as of Saturday.

An ongoing record-long spell of cold weather in Vietnam's northern region, which started on Jan. 14, has killed nearly 60,000 cattle, mainly bull and buffalo calves, local press reported Monday. By Feb. 17, the spell had killed a total of 59,962 cattle in the region, including 7,349 in the Ha Giang province, 6,400 in Lao Cai, and 5,571 in Bac Can province, said Hoang Kim Giao, director of the Animal Husbandry Department under the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, according to the Pioneer newspaper.

In Britain the temperatures plunged to -10 C in central England, according to the Express, which reports that experts say that February could end up as one of the coldest in Britain in the past 10 years with the freezing night-time conditions expected to stay around a frigid -8 C until at least the middle of the week. And the BBC reports that a bus company's efforts to cut global warming emissions have led to services being disrupted by cold weather.
 

************for remainder, go to************
http://newsmax.com/newsfront/global_warming_or_cooling/2008/02/19/73798.html
 

COMMENT: Not that I accept the 'global warming' argument, but this should throw its supporters into a tizzy.  See second article in this email.

1.  Study: Ethanol May Add to Global Warming
2.  Biofuelds and Food Prices
3.  Transformational Education and the Global Warming Fantasy

Study: Ethanol May Add to Global Warming

By H. JOSEF HEBERT – 12 hours ago
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gG6RDP96uZ_A1auof7LysRqbgDxAD8ULPD0G0

WASHINGTON (AP) — The widespread use of ethanol from corn could result in nearly twice the greenhouse gas emissions as the gasoline it would replace because of expected land-use changes, researchers concluded Thursday. The study challenges the rush to biofuels as a response to global warming.

The researchers said that past studies showing the benefits of ethanol in combating climate change have not taken into account almost certain changes in land use worldwide if ethanol from corn — and in the future from other feedstocks such as switchgrass — become a prized commodity.

"Using good cropland to expand biofuels will probably exacerbate global warming," concludes the study published in Science magazine.

The researchers said that farmers under economic pressure to produce biofuels will increasingly "plow up more forest or grasslands," releasing much of the carbon formerly stored in plants and soils through decomposition or fires. Globally, more grasslands and forests will be converted to growing the crops to replace the loss of grains when U.S. farmers convert land to biofuels, the study said.

The Renewable Fuels Association, which represents ethanol producers, called the researchers' view of land-use changes "simplistic" and said the study "fails to put the issue in context."

"Assigning the blame for rainforest deforestation and grassland conversion to agriculture solely on the renewable fuels industry ignores key factors that play a greater role," said Bob Dinneen, the association's president.

There has been a rush to developing biofuels, especially ethanol from corn and cellulosic feedstock such as switchgrass and wood chips, as a substitute for gasoline. President Bush signed energy legislation in December that mandates a six-fold increase in ethanol use as a fuel to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022, calling the requirement key to weaning the nation from imported oil.

The new "green" fuel, whether made from corn or other feedstocks, has been widely promoted — both in Congress and by the White House — as a key to combating global warming. Burning it produces less carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas, than the fossil fuels it will replace.

During the recent congressional debate over energy legislation, lawmakers frequently cited estimates that corn-based ethanol produces 20 percent less greenhouse gases in production, transportation and use than gasoline, and that cellulosic ethanol has an even greater benefit of 70 percent less emissions.

The study released Thursday by researchers affiliated with Princeton University and a number of other institutions maintains that these analyses "were one-sided" and counted the carbon benefits of using land for biofuels but not the carbon costs of diverting land from its existing uses.

"The other studies missed a key factor that everyone agrees should have been included, the land use changes that actually are going to increase greenhouse gas emissions," said Tim Searchinger, a research scholar at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and lead author of the study.

The study said that after taking into account expected worldwide land-use changes, corn-based ethanol, instead of reducing greenhouse gases by 20 percent, will increases it by 93 percent compared to using gasoline over a 30-year period. Biofuels from switchgrass, if they replace croplands and other carbon-absorbing lands, would result in 50 percent more greenhouse gas emissions, the researchers concluded.

Not all ethanol would be affected by the land-use changes, the study said.

"We should be focusing on our use of biofuels from waste products" such as garbage, which would not result in changes in agricultural land use, Searchinger said in an interview. "And you have to be careful how much you require. Use the right biofuels, but don't require too much too fast. Right now we're making almost exclusively the wrong biofuels."

The study included co-authors affiliated with Iowa State University, the Woods Hole Research Center and the Agricultural Conservation Economics. It was supported in part indirectly by a grants from NASA's Terrestrial Ecology Program, and by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Searchinger, in addition to his affiliation with Princeton, is a fellow at the Washington-based German Marshall Fund of the United States.

The study prompted a letter Thursday to President Bush and Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress from nearly a dozen scientists who urged them to pursue a policy "that ensures biofuels are not produced on productive forests, grassland or cropland."

"Some opportunities remain to produce environmentally beneficial biofuels" while "unsound biofuel policies could sacrifice tens of hundreds of million of acres" of grasslands and forests while increasing global warming, said the scientists, including four members of the National Academy of Sciences.
 

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You will want to listen to this piece. 

Biofuelds and Food Prices

Listen Now [4 min 33 sec] add to playlist

Weekend Edition Saturday, November 17, 2007 · Scott Simon speaks with ecologist David Tilman about how much biofuels benefit the environment, and whether growing crops for biofuel manufacturing could drive up food prices

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16389598

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COMMENT:  At a Conference I attended in St. Louis the end of January the author (Christopher C. Horner) of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming" spoke. In addition, Phyllis has interviewed him on her radio program as well as had him speak at our Eagle Collegians annual conference. I highly recommend this book especially those who still have children at home and want to counter the near hysteria about 'global warming'.  It is available at a discount at Amazon.com.
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"Issues and Action in Education"

Transformational Education and the Global Warming Fantasy

by Allen Quist

An e-letter produced by EdWatch, a nonprofit organization.

In early 2007 the government of the United Kingdom sent copies of Al Gore's global warming DVD, An Inconvenient Truth, to all secondary schools in England, Wales and Scotland. This action was part of a nationwide "Sustainable Schools Year of Action" which had been launched in 2006.

Showing the Gore DVD in UK public schools was challenged in the courts, however, on the basis that the schools are legally forbidden to promote partisan political views and that UK schools are required, when dealing with political issues, to provide a balanced presentation of opposing views.

Presiding court judge, Michael Burton, ruled that the Gore film contains numerous errors made in "the context of alarmism and exaggeration." As a consequence, said Judge Burton, the film could be shown only on the condition that it be accompanied by guidance notes to balance Gore's "one-sided" views in order to point out that the film's "apocalyptic vision" was not an impartial analysis of climate change.

At the same time, however, Gore's movie of "alarmism and exaggerations" has been shown, and continues to be shown, in countless American schools-shown to children at all grade levels not just high school-and shown without any warning labels whatsoever.

In this way our school children are being subjected to a massive propaganda campaign of the global warming fanatics. Such programs are not intended to educate our children but rather to indoctrinate them with the attitudes, values and beliefs of the leftists.

To continue reading go to

http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/08/ed-watch/1-14-warming-fantasy.htm