Thursday, April 29, 2010

The Climategate Investigation

By Dexter Wright
Last month, while the American media were distracted by the health care vote in Congress, the British Parliament published the results of its investigation into East Anglia University's Climate Research Unit (CRU) that has been at the center of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) controversy. It seems that many were hoping that no one would read this report, at least not beyond the milquetoast executive summary.

Buried deep within the report is a compelling piece of evidence. In volume two, there is a memorandum submitted as evidence from Lord Lawson of Blaby, chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which was in response to four very significant questions from the investigating committee. This memo confirms the claims by many global warming skeptics that the scientists at CRU were trying to hide data and silence the skeptics. The questions asked by the investigative committee are as follows:

(i) Have the CRU scientists been manipulating the raw surface temperature data in a way that is less than wholly objective and dispassionate?
(ii) Have they refused dissenting scientists and/or other outsiders with a bona fide interest in global warming access to the raw data, contrary to the proper canons of scientific research and to the demands of scientific integrity?
(iii) Have they been improperly seeking to avoid answering Freedom of information Act requests?
(iv) Have they actively sought to prevent papers by dissenting scientists, statisticians, or other informed commentators from being peer-reviewed and/or published, again contrary to the proper canons of scientific research and to the demands of scientific integrity?
Lord Lawson's response to these questions is damning:

We believe that there is compelling evidence both independent of the leaked email exchanges and arising from those emails to suggest that the answers to (ii), (iii) and (iv) above are clearly 'yes'.
However, Lord Lawson chooses his words more carefully in answering the smoking-gun question at the top of the list:
Moreover, we are disturbed by the CRU scientists' treatment of the so-called divergence problem. That is the fact that, for that period of time where both a proxy global temperature series and a recorded global temperature series are available, the two series markedly diverge. This clearly suggests either that the proxy series is unreliable or that the recorded series is unreliable (or possibly both: the point is that they cannot both be true). The CRU scientists' attempt to hide the problem by concealing the divergence demonstrates, we believe, a lack of integrity.
Integrity is at the very heart of the AGW debate -- not just the integrity of the discredited scientists involved, but also the integrity of the data used by the CRU. For many years, the global warming skeptics have been citing that the differing data sets are not in agreement and have asked the simple question "why?" Their assertion has always been that until a scientific explanation for the differences is found, there can be no definitive conclusion concerning AGW. This question was always avoided by the now-discredited Dr. Jones, who headed up the CRU. But finally, some light has been shed onto the question of integrity of the data. In this same memo, Lord Lawson clarifies some of the confusion concerning the differing data sets:

[T]here are, in fact, four (not two) other international data sets, all based in the United States. Two of them - NASA and NOAA - are neither wholly independent of each other (unsurprisingly, since they are both US Government agencies) nor wholly independent of the CRU set, as indeed some of the leaked emails indicates. The third, and fourth, which -- unlike CRU, NASA and NOAA - use not surface weather stations but satellite observations, are compiled by the University of Alabama at Hunstville (UAH) and Remote Sensing Systems (RSS). They are entirely independent of the CRU. They use the same satellite data as each other but different methodology and produce similar results to each other, which differ from those of the CRU.
It seems that the only reliable data sets are satellite-derived data. However, those data were not used in the Nobel Prize-winning U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). So the Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize to a report which was compiled by discredited scientists using discredited data. Does this discredit the Nobel Committee? Read more.

Man steals electricity with meat hook

I didn't know you could do this - but this guy did it.
(Reuters) - German police are investigating a man for theft after he siphoned electricity off a high-voltage overhead transmission line for one month with the help of an ordinary meat hook, authorities said on Tuesday.
The 36-year old man from Sibbesse in Lower Saxony concocted the plan to steal electricity after the power company cut him off for failure to pay his bills, police said.

The man attached a cable to the meat hook and tossed it onto an overhead power line. He then drew power from the transmission line to his home, located about 150 meters away.
"I've never seen anything like this in my 34-year-career," said Friedrich-Wilhelm Lach, chief executive of regional utility Ueberlandwerke Leinetal GmbH, told Reuters. "It's incredibly dangerous and utterly stupid."
An employee of the utility noticed the meat hook during a routine check. Lach said the man was lucky he is still alive and warned copycats not to try it: "It will kill you," he said. Read more.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Apocalypse soon - Steyn

By Mark Steyn
In 1968, in his best-selling book The Population Bomb, scientist Paul Ehrlich declared: "In the 1970s the world will undergo famines - hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death."

In 1972, in their influential landmark study The Limits to Growth, the Club of Rome announced that the world would run out of gold by 1981, of mercury by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, petroleum by 1992, and copper, lead, and gas by 1993.
In 1977, Jimmy Carter, President of the United States incredible as it may seem, confidently predicted that "we could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade."
Now, in 2002, with enough oil for a century and a half, the planet awash in cut-price minerals, and less global famine, starvation and malnutrition than ever before, the end of the world has had to be rescheduled. The latest estimated time of arrival for the apocalypse is 2032. Last week, the United Nations Global Environmental Outlook predicted "the destruction of 70% of the natural world in 30 years, mass extinction of species, and the collapse of human society in many countries ... More than half the world will be afflicted by water shortages, with 95% of people in the Middle East with severe problems ... 25% of all species of mammals and 10% of birds will be extinct ..." Etc., etc., for 450 pages. But let's cut to the chase: As The Guardian's headline writer put it, "Unless We Change Our Ways, The World Faces Disaster."
Ah, yes. The end of the world's nighness is endlessly deferred but the blame rests where it always has. With us - with what the UN calls "the current 'markets first' approach." Klaus Toepfer, the UN Environment Program executive director, believes that "under the 'markets first' scenario the environment and humans did not fare well."
Really? The "markets first" approach was notable by its absence in, say, Eastern Europe, where government regulation of every single aspect of life resulted in environmental devastation beyond the wildest fantasies of the sinister Bush-Cheney-Enron axis of excess. Fortunately in Communist Romania there was very little clear-cut logging because Ceausescu had the tree. But in Iraq, the report points out, 30% of arable land has had to be abandoned because of bad irrigation practices. Those crazy speculators on the Baghdad Stock Exchange with their Thatcherite economics will kill you every time, eh?
But what's this? "In richer countries water and air pollution is down, species have been restored to the wild, and forests are increasing in size." So the environment's better in rich countries? Rich countries with ... market economies?
Thirty years after the first doom-mongering eco-confab in Stockholm, it should be obvious even to the UN frequent-flyer crowd: Markets aren't the problem, but the solution to the problem. The best way to clean up the neighbourhood is to make people wealthier. To do that, you need free markets, democracy, the rule of law and public accountability. None of those things exist in the Middle East, which is the real reason they'll be taking communal showers once a month in 2032.
Since 1970, when the great northern forest was being felled to print Paul Ehrlich best-sellers, the U.S. economy has swollen by 150%; automobile traffic has increased by 143%; and energy consumption has grown 45%.
During this same period, air pollutants have declined by 29%, toxic emissions by 48.5%, sulphur dioxide levels by 65.3%, and airborne lead by 97.3%. For anywhere other than Antarctica and a few sparsely inhabited islands, the first condition for a healthy environment is a strong economy. President Carter and the other apocalyptic prognosticators of the Seventies made a simple mistake: In their predictions about natural resources, they failed to take into account the natural resourcefulness of the market. The government regulates problems, but the market solves them. So if, as Kyoto does, you seek to punish capitalism in the West and restrict it in the developing world, you'll pretty much guarantee a poorer, dirtier, unhealthier planet.
I'd like to be an "environmentalist," really I would. I spend quite a bit of my time in the environment and I'm rather fond of it. But these days "environmentalism" is mostly unrelated to the environment: It's a cult, and, like most cults, heavy on ostentatious displays of self-denial, perfectly encapsulated by the time-consuming rituals of "recycling," an activity of no discernible benefit other than as a communal profession of faith.
Think globally, act locally, they say. But, in fact, environmentalists, like most cultists, are crippled by tunnel vision. "As long as we believe that our biggest threat is terrorism, we will never be truly prepared," wrote Carl Russell of Bethel, Vermont, to The Valley News after September 11th. "Humans are behaving like all living organisms whose habitat becomes depleted of necessary resources. Global warming, pollution, soil depletion, plant and animal extinction etc., are all signs of environmental degradation, too complex for most of us to agree on, let alone find solutions to. Our subconscious reflex to this lack of control is anxiety. Anger, intolerance and violence, however inappropriate, are common expressions of anxiety." Osama bin Laden might have thought he was ordering his boys into action because he hates America, but subconsciously he was merely acting out, however inappropriately, his anxieties about plant extinction.
"We are going through a maturing process for the human species, and for the Earth," concluded Mr. Russell. "Human lives have been lost and devastated, but our connections go deeper than that. Think of our Earth." So September 11 was about soil depletion? Wow. That's what I call a root cause.
In fact, the eco-cultists and the Islamofascists share the same Year Zero: 1492, the year not just of the "tragedy of Andalucia" - the fall of Moorish Spain that Osama's always boring on about -- but also of the most cataclysmic setback for the global environment. As Kenneth Branagh solemnly intoned, narrating the documentary The Last Show On Earth, "It was Columbus, 500 years ago, who heralded the modern age of discovery and environmental destruction." Hmm. Remind me again what was it he discovered.
And who knows what the Columbuses of tomorrow are planning to wreck? This weekend, Professor Rick Steiner proposed that the moon be designated a UN World Heritage Site, even though, technically, it's out of this world. But the point is: Think globally, act lunarly. As far as I know, there's not a lot of development planned for up there, though a British men's magazine recently announced plans to screen a giant image of Jennifer Lopez's bottom on the surface of the moon. J. Lo's butt would be visible from anywhere on earth without a telescope. So what's new? But, if Professor Steiner has his way, this sort of commercial exploitation would be forbidden. As Nick Denton commented on his Web site, "The moon is an airless, lifeless, pockmarked ball of rock. I would far rather industrial development took place off-planet, or in Antarctica, for that matter. English meadows, or California redwood forests, are far more valuable to me than a wasteland that most human beings will never visit. And, if anyone is worried that development will spoil the view of the full moon, we can always put the industrial zone on the far side."
Well, here's my prediction for 2032: Jean Chretien will be the oldest serving Prime Minister in Commonwealth history. Other than that, I'm inclined to be cautious. But, at the risk of scaremongering, let me say this: unless we change our ways the world faces a future ... where things look pretty darn good. If we change our ways along the lines advocated by the UN, all bets are off. As the great Australian wag Tim Blair puts it, "If the UN's doomsday scenario turns out to be correct, I'll donate every single thing I own in 2032 to the UN and Secretary-General Chelsea Clinton-Mathers. If the UN turns out to be wrong - man, what are the odds of that? - I get France. Deal, Kofi?"
Personally, I'm inclined to be more charitable. Looking back on all the doomsday extrapolations of 30 years ago, the economists Charles Maurice and Charles Smithson pointed out that, if you were to extrapolate from 1970s publishing trends, there would now be 14 million different doomsday books, or more than half as many books as in the entire Library of Congress. But there aren't. The Seventies doomsday book went the way of the trolley car and the buggy whip. So we should cherish these 450 pages of apocalyptic UN eco-guff. Like the peregrine falcon, despite all the odds, the doomsday book is still hanging in there.
Well, I've changed my mind a bit since that breezy penultimate paragraph: The world faces a future that looks pretty darn bad - not for any of the reasons touted by the eco-crowd but by the one problem no progressive soul gives a thought to: the self-extinction of the civilization that's done most for human progress and prosperity. As for the climate-change cult, it's had a rough year, but it's still done an awful amount of damage. Here's my column from Earth Day two years ago:
Last week, Time magazine featured on its cover the iconic photograph of the U.S. Marine Corps raising the flag on Iwo Jima. But with one difference: The flag has been replaced by a tree. The managing editor of Time, Rick Stengel, was very pleased with the lads in graphics for cooking up this cute image and was all over the TV sofas talking up this ingenious visual shorthand for what he regards as the greatest challenge facing mankind: “How To Win The War On Global Warming.”
Where to begin? For the last ten years, we have, in fact, been not warming but slightly cooling, which is why the eco-warriors have adopted the all-purpose bogeyman of “climate change.” But let’s take it that the editors of Time are referring not to the century we live in but the previous one, when there was a measurable rise of temperature of approximately one degree. That’s the “war”: one degree.
If the tree-raising is Iwo Jima, a one-degree increase isn’t exactly Pearl Harbor. But General Stengel wants us to engage in preemptive war. The editors of Time would be the first to deplore such saber-rattling applied to, say, Iran’s nuclear program, but it has become the habit of progressive opinion to appropriate the language of war for everything but actual war.
So let’s cut to the tree. In my corner of New Hampshire, we have more trees than we did a hundred or two hundred years ago. My town is over 90 percent forested. Any more trees and I’d have to hack my way through the undergrowth to get to my copy of Time magazine on the coffee table. Likewise Vermont, where not so long ago in St Albans I found myself stuck behind a Hillary supporter driving a Granolamobile bearing the bumper sticker “TO SAVE A TREE REMOVE A BUSH.” Very funny. And even funnier when you consider that on that stretch of Route Seven there’s nothing to see north, south, east, or west but maple, hemlock, birch, pine, you name it. It’s on every measure other than tree cover that Vermont’s kaput.
So where exactly do Time magazine’s generals want to plant their tree? Presumably, as in Iwo Jima, on foreign soil. It’s all these third-world types monkeying around with their rain forests who decline to share the sophisticated Euro-American reverence for the tree. In the Time iconography, the tree is Old Glory and it’s a flag of eco-colonialism. Read more.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

This Earth Day, Thank Big Oil


What about the benefits of oil?
This Earth Day, take a moment to thank the Greens’ biggest punching bag: Big Oil.
Most of us think of oil simply as the stuff that puts gasoline in our car. But oil, thanks to the ingenuity of the oil industry, does so much more. For one, it’s the building block for thousands of petroleum products — everything from Blu-Ray discs to asphalt to stitches to lipstick. And it provides the safest, most powerful, most convenient fuel, not only for automobiles but for the freighters, jets, trucks, and industrial machinery that power our global economy.

Oil makes every aspect of our lives better. For instance, say you’re fixing yourself a quick, All-American breakfast: eggs, bacon, fruit, and toast. What does that have to do with oil? Everything.
For example, you take for granted that the ingredients will be fresh and healthy. But for most of history people have often had to live with moldy vegetables and spoiled meat, because they lacked the refrigerator you have — a refrigerator with an oil-based, plastic interior that resists moisture and bacteria (imagine if it were made of wood!), not to mention the plastic packaging that keeps the bacon unspoiled and tasty and the bread fresh. If you’re frying the eggs and bacon with a coated pan for speed and easy clean-up, that’s a coating engineered from oil — which is also the material used for the insulated power cords that keeps you safe from the potentially deadly electricity flowing to your toaster and refrigerator.
And your breakfast is not only prepared and preserved with oil, it was grown with oil. Food today is dirt-cheap by historical standards only because of industrial-scale farming using industrial farm equipment powered by the cheapest, most concentrated, most abundant fuel: oil (usually diesel). Oil is also the base of the fertilizer and pesticides that have dramatically increased crop yields and lowered food prices.
Finally, your eggs, bacon, fruit and bread were transported to you — not just from your local grocery store (for pennies) via your gasoline-powered automobile, but from around the world. Once upon a time, you could only get food that was grown within walking or buggy distance. Now, even if you live on an island (say, Manhattan) you can dine on apples from Washington state, eggs from Iowa, oranges from California, and pineapple from Hawaii — all thanks to our fast, cheap, oil-powered transportation network that makes possible all of world trade.
Remember this when you hear calls to cut — and even renounce — our use of oil, because of its supposed impact on the climate. Then ask yourself: why do we never hear what life would be like without oil? What does that reveal about the attackers of oil? Is their anti-oil agenda compatible with human progress and prosperity?
To learn more about the ideas driving the attacks against oil and the value of this resource, visit “In Defense of Oil.” Read more.

Give it up Michael! This is not a winner.

I think he is issuing a threat - shades of Stéphane Dion - it should seal the fate of Michael Ignatieff.
Statement by Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff on Earth Day

...A future Liberal government will put in place a credible, achievable climate and clean energy plan that will create jobs and make our economy – and our country – one of the cleanest and most competitive in the world.

The Liberals seem hell-bent on destroying the country any why they can. If it isn't the environment it will be immigration or taxation to pay for "social fairness".

Happy Earth Day? Thank Capitalism


by Jerry Taylor
Earth Day (April 22) is traditionally a day for the Left -- a celebration of government's ability to deliver the environmental goods and for threats about the parade of horribles that will descend upon us lest we rededicate ourselves to federal regulators and public land managers. This is unfortunate because it's businessmen -- not bureaucrats or environmental activists -- who deserve most of the credit for the environmental gains over the past century and who represent the best hope for a Greener tomorrow.

Indeed, we wouldn't even have environmentalists in our midst were it not for capitalism. Environmental amenities, after all, are luxury goods. America -- like much of the Third World today -- had no environmental movement to speak of until living standards rose sufficiently so that we could turn our attention from simply providing for food, shelter, and a reasonable education to higher "quality of life" issues. The richer you are, the more likely you are to be an environmentalist. And people wouldn't be rich without capitalism.
Wealth not only breeds environmentalists, it begets environmental quality. There are dozens of studies showing that, as per capita income initially rises from subsistence levels, air and water pollution increases correspondingly. But once per capita income hits between $3,500 and $15,000 (dependent upon the pollutant), the ambient concentration of pollutants begins to decline just as rapidly as it had previously increased. This relationship is found for virtually every significant pollutant in every single region of the planet. It is an iron law.
Given that wealthier societies use more resources than poorer societies, such findings are indeed counterintuitive. But the data don't lie. How do we explain this?

The obvious answer -- that wealthier societies are willing to trade-off the economic costs of government regulation for environmental improvements and that poorer societies are not -- is only partially correct. In the United States, pollution declines generally predated the passage of laws mandating pollution controls. In fact, for most pollutants, declines were greater before the federal government passed its panoply of environmental regulations than after the EPA came upon the scene.
Much of this had to do with individual demands for environmental quality. People who could afford cleaner-burning furnaces, for instance, bought them. People who wanted recreational services spent their money accordingly, creating profit opportunities for the provision of untrammeled nature. Property values rose in cleaner areas and declined in more polluted areas, shifting capital from Brown to Green investments. Market agents will supply whatever it is that people are willing to spend money on. And when people are willing to spend money on environmental quality, the market will provide it.
Meanwhile, capitalism rewards efficiency and punishes waste. Profit-hungry companies found ingenious ways to reduce the natural resource inputs necessary to produce all kinds of goods, which in turn reduced environmental demands on the land and the amount of waste that flowed through smokestacks and water pipes. As we learned to do more and more with a given unit of resources, the waste involved (which manifests itself in the form of pollution) shrank.
This trend was magnified by the shift away from manufacturing to service industries, which characterizes wealthy, growing economies. The latter are far less pollution-intensive than the former. But the former are necessary prerequisites for the latter.

Property rights -- a necessary prerequisite for free market economies -- also provide strong incentives to invest in resource health. Without them, no one cares about future returns because no one can be sure they'll be around to reap the gains. Property rights are also important means by which private desires for resource conservation and preservation can be realized. When the government, on the other hand, holds a monopoly on such decisions, minority preferences in developing societies are overruled (see the old Soviet block for details).
Furthermore, only wealthy societies can afford the investments necessary to secure basic environmental improvements, such as sewage treatment and electrification. Unsanitary water and the indoor air pollution (caused primarily by burning organic fuels in the home for heating and cooking needs) are directly responsible for about 10 million deaths a year in the Third World, making poverty the number one environmental killer on the planet today.
Capitalism can save more lives threatened by environmental pollution than all the environmental organizations combined.
Finally, the technological advances that are part and parcel of growing economies create more natural resources than they consume. That's because what is or is not a "natural resource" is dependent upon our ability to harness the resource in question for human benefit. Resources are therefore a function of human knowledge. Because the stock of human knowledge increases faster in free economies than it does in socialist economies, it should be no surprise that most natural resources in the western world are more abundant today than ever before no matter which measure one uses.
This is not to say that government regulations haven't had an impact or aren't occasionally worthwhile. It is to say, however, that free markets are an ally -- not an enemy -- of Mother Earth. The Left, accordingly, has no special claim on Earth Day. Read more.

The Global-Warming Tax

Climategate, Copenhagen, Snowmageddon in the nation's capital, the EPA ruling that CO2 endangers us all, and Senate Republicans pushing for a global-warming tax. Has it been a great run-up to Earth Day, or what?

Never has a public-policy agenda been pursued with so little regard for scientific fact or for public opinion. In March, 48 percent of Americans agreed that global warming, while real, is exaggerated. When Gallup first asked this question in 1997, only 31 percent thought the threat exaggerated.
Despite this shift in sentiment, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and John Kerry (D., Mass.) and President Obama insist upon ramming a new global-warming tax (called a "fee") through the Senate. The bill is slated to be introduced next week, and vulnerable Democrats — weary already from the pugilistic health-care debate — are fleeing the legislation in droves.
And for the measure's primary backers, the backdrop of recent developments on the climate-science landscape could not possibly be less fortuitous.
Climategate revealed that a small but influential coterie of climate scientists did everything they could to present messy global-warming data as a "nice tidy story," meticulously crafted to "hide the decline" in tree-ring-based temperatures. (I use quotes because those are the words of the warming-alarmist scientists themselves.)

The fact is that tree rings are pretty poor indicators of annual warmth, especially in recent years. Dendrochronologists call this the "divergence" problem (cynics call it other names). Phil Jones, the central figure in Climategate, actually eliminated the "divergence" rather than "hiding the decline."
The amount of "explained variance" or statistical correlation between rings and temperatures during the summer growing season tends to run about 40 percent. That means more than half of the temperature changes for a fraction of the year (and even more for the entire year) are unexplained.
The famous "Hockey Stick" temperature history, by Penn State's Michael Mann, is composed largely of marginally explanatory tree-ring data, which he subjected to a statistical analysis that produces different results depending on what portion of the data is chosen to represent the average condition. If there are 1,000 years of data, and one uses only the last 100 years to calculate the average against which to measure all the other years, that will help to produce an upward-pointing "hockey stick." Using all of the data to form an average will give a smoother result.
Last week, David Hand, president of the Royal Statistical Society, acknowledged that "the particular technique they used exaggerated the size of the blade at the end of the hockey stick. Had they used an appropriate technique, the size of the blade of the hockey stick would have been smaller. . . . The change in temperature is not as great over the 20th century compared to the past as suggested by the Mann paper."
That revelation was accessible to the public, but not through the American legacy media. Sophisticated Internet sites such as climateaudit.org, wattsupwiththat.com, and rankexploits.com are creating a parallel universe to that of the refereed science literature, largely in response to the obviously manipulated peer-review process evinced in the Climategate e-mails.
The data on these sites are every bit as technical as those in the standard literature. The sites' contents would be published in such literature if some of the Climategate scientists weren't so pathologically thin-skinned, and didn't attempt to quash everyone and everything that deviates from their catechism.
As Climategate unfolded, so began the fiasco in Copenhagen, where global warming froze. The environmental world expected the December summit to produce a global commitment to specific reductions in carbon-dioxide emissions. President Obama famously barged in on a meeting of Brazil, South Africa, India, and China — and fled prematurely with nothing, hopping on Air Force one to reach Washington before the first of the season's three blizzards did. Read more.

National Security Risk Posed by Climate Change Policy, New Report Finds

by Christine Hall
Climate change alarmists have tried marketing their “fix-it” solutions to the public in several ways. Their latest tactic? Convincing people on the center-right that climate change is a national security threat. It’s a plausible argument—but is it accurate? More importantly, don’t climate policies pose security risks of their own?

In a new CEI On Point, The Department of Defense Should Assess the Security Risks of Climate Change Policies, CEI Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis explains that climate change national security risks of climate change policy likely outweigh those of climate change itself. He shows that even if the alarmist interpretation of climate change science is correct, the alarmist national security conclusions are not.
“One of the principal ways in which climate change supposedly undermines stability is by intensifying droughts and water shortages, thus leading to crop failure, famine, and armed conflict,” Lewis said. “Yet real-world evidence doesn’t support this gloomy prediction.”
The real threat to American national security is not climate change, but climate change regulations. For example, Lewis explains that:
▪ The Waxman-Markey bill and other ‘green’ policies could dramatically increase motor fuel prices, driving up the cost of operating military vehicles.
▪ Carbon-suppression policies threaten to cripple the American economy; a weak economy could impose budget cuts that reduce combat readiness, force modernization, and power projection capabilities.
▪ The global warming movement’s campaign to stop the production of coal plants in developing countries could increase global poverty and desperation.
▪ Carbon tariffs could damage America’s security relationships with important trade partners like China.
“The Department of Defense should be skeptical of alarmist assessments of climate change risk,” Lewis warns. “Climate campaigners tout their proposals as cures for everything—from global warming to energy dependence to high jobless rates to the alleged spiritual crisis of a world in search of a ‘generational mission.’ They never acknowledge the potential for harmful side effects.”  Read more.

Seeing is Believing

700 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of "Man-Made" Global Warming

The following papers support skepticism of "man-made" global warming or the environmental or economic effects of. Addendums, comments, corrections, erratum, replies, responses and submitted papers are not included in the peer-reviewed paper count. There are many more listings than just the 700 papers. The inclusion of a paper in this list does not imply a specific position to any of the authors. This list will be updated and corrected as necessary. See List.

Catastrophe Denied: The Science of the Skeptic’s Position

Once upon a time, Al Gore had a PowerPoint deck. Several years ago, I came to the conclusion that Gore’s presentation was deeply flawed, so I made my own PowerPoint deck in response, and have been updating it ever since. Here is the most recent version. Adobe Acrobat .pdf file
Then, Al Gore made a movie from his PowerPoint deck. He won an Oscar and a Nobel prize for his movie. Those are a bit out of my reach, so I will have to settle for actually being right. My previous movie showed my PowerPoint deck presented to a live audience, and can still be found online here. I felt the sound quality could be improved and the narration could be tighter, so I went into the “studio” to create a tighter version. The product of this is what I believe to be my best effort yet at explaining, in a comprehensive but simple manner, the science of the skeptic’s position to laymen.
I have become a big fan of Vimeo because I don’t have to break videos up into 10-minute chunks as on YouTube. The Vimeo version is here and is embedded below: Read more.

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

Obama’s climate of fear

Washington Times
The purported science behind the global-warming fad is in full retreat these days, but word has yet to reach the White House. President Obama is determined to promote the alleged climate crisis as a lever for pushing through his big-government agenda. The O Force doesn’t believe in wasting a crisis, even if it’s a mirage.

In mid-March, the White House Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force did its bit for climate terror. “Climate-change impacts are pervasive, wide-ranging and affect the core systems of our society: transportation, ecosystems, agriculture, business, infrastructure, water and energy, among others,” its report stated. The panel also expressed concern that “Climate change already is affecting the ability of federal agencies to fulfill their missions,” which - if true - many Americans would view as a positive development.
This month, the State Department released the draft of the 2010 Climate Action Report, as required by the United Nations. The report makes the blanket statement that global warming “is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases,” despite growing skepticism about this claim in the scientific community. This new document is based on the “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” report from June 2009, which uncritically used the increasingly discredited 2007 U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change study as a base line and then extrapolated a series of improbable disaster scenarios. Read more.

Earth Day: An Assault on Man

By Brian Sussman
In recent weeks while addressing Tea Party rallies here on the left coast, I ask the assembled patriots what appears to be an odd question: "Would all those from the former Soviet Union please raise your hands?"

A notable number of hands are always raised -- the San Francisco Bay Area is home to a diverse population.
I then ask another curious question: "What does April 22 signify to you?"
Without exception, someone will shout with great displeasure, "Lenin's birth date!"
The crowd clearly sees that I'm on to something. I next ask the former Soviets, "And as a young child in school, who were you told is your grandfather?"
At this point several painfully respond, "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin!"
"And in the United States, do you know what we celebrate on April 22?" I ask. "Earth Day. Grandfather Lenin has been conjoined with Mother Earth -- and it's no coincidence."
In my new book Climategate (released today), I detail the doings of Earth Day's devious founders. It seems that this crafty crew were cut from cloth that resembles Marx and Lenin, as opposed to Madison and Jefferson.
In 1970, Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WS) was Congress's leading environmentalist activist. Nelson was the mastermind behind those ridiculous teach-ins, which were in vogue in the late sixties and early seventies. During the teach-ins, mutinous school instructors would scrap the day's assigned curriculum, pressure their students to sit cross-legged on the floor, "rap" about how America is an imperialist nation, and discuss why communism really isn't such a bad form of government -- it just needs to be implemented properly.
Nelson's teach-in efforts were aided by a young man named Denis Hayes. Hayes was student body president while an undergrad at Stanford, and well known for organizing anti-Vietnam war protests. Later, while pursuing a masters degree in public policy at Harvard, Hayes heard about Senator Nelson's teach-in concept and eventually helped Nelson institute the practice nationwide. Denis Hayes would also conspire with the senator to found Earth Day.
Rounding out the troika was Professor Paul Ehrlich of Stanford. In 1968 Ehrlich authored the Malthusian missive, The Population Bomb, in which he infamously spouted wild allegations which included equating the earth's supposed surplus of people with a cancer that needs to be eradicated: "A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. ... We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions."
In 1969, following a much-hyped oil spill off the Santa Barbara coast, an overblown patch of fire on Cleveland's Cuyahoga River, and the pharmaceutically induced vibes cast across the nation via the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, Senator Nelson met with Ehrlich and reportedly said, "My God -- why not a national teach-in on the environment?" Hayes was brought in to play a pivotal role with organization and implementation. After careful consideration, a name and date for the event were chosen: The inaugural Earth Day would be celebrated April 22, 1970.
Skeptical historians immediately noted a bizarre coincidence. The date coincided with the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Lenin. Earth Day organizers have since tried to brush aside the odd synchronization of dates with lame retorts like "Lenin wasn't an environmentalist." But he didn't have to be. Lenin's core political philosophy was linked at the hip with these newfangled eco-zealots, who maintained that America's government must be altered, its economy planned and regulated, and its citizens better-controlled. The environment would be the perfect tool to force these changes, and the most efficient way to gain converts would be through the public school system -- the earlier, the better.
Nelson and Ehrlich were already known as non-traditional crackpots, but young Hayes was that and more. In a New York Times article published the morning after the first Earth Day entitled "Angry Coordinator of Earth Day," young Hayes bragged that five years earlier, he fled overseas because "I had to get away from America." Hayes was so committed to his anti-capitalist cause that he made sure that his organization did not even produce Earth Day bumper stickers. "You want to know why?" He explained to the Times: "Because they go on automobiles." Read more.

Why I Am Enlarging My Carbon Footprint

By Robin of Berkeley

As a psychotherapist, I try my best to calm down my anxious clients. But in this case, I inadvertently triggered a panic attack.

My twenty-something client Emma, a survivor of the Berkeley public schools, had a coughing fit during our session. I helpfully got up to get her some water. When I handed her a cup, she looked at it, incredulous.
Her voice quivering, she asked, "Is this Styrofoam?"
I said yes. She stared at the cup, mesmerized by this forbidden fruit. When she finally found her words, she said, "I've never seen Styrofoam before. We learned in school that it kills baby birds."
Worried that Emma would bolt, I quickly defended the contraband, "Actually, I bought the cups years ago, and still have a few left."
When Emma returned the next week (thankfully), I asked about her reaction. She flooded me with stories about indoctrination by teachers. One of her earliest memories was singing songs on Earth Day, prayerfully, when she was five.
A sensitive soul, Emma became terrified that her beloved Earth would perish, and that she'd be culpable. Starting in third grade, she became an environmental fanatic. Emma went ballistic on her disabled grandmother when the old woman threw a bottle in the trash.
After school, she and her friends would sift through other people's garbage to root out recyclables. While Berkeley has plenty of homeless folks going through trash, Emma and her friends were out to save the world.
The poor thing would even sob in her car when she had to drive more than a few miles. She envisioned the pollution burning up the rain forests and asphyxiating polar bears.
A year into our therapy/cult deprogramming, I asked Emma about her fixation with all things ecological. She replied, "I'm over it."
Emma hasn't morphed into a consumer-glutton. But she's not making herself a stress case anymore. Emma even told me, with obvious pride, that for the first time in her life, she took a road trip.
How did I help Emma snap out of her trance? I simply imparted truths that someone should have communicated years ago, like the following:
Emma, you're a wonderful, good-hearted person. You deserve to be here. Your life is a blessing. It's OK to drive your car or to take a bag from the store. You deserve all these things and more. Besides, the earth has been here for millions of years and will be here long after your great grandchildren are gone.
Now, if the planet is not about to crash and burn, why turn children like Emma into eco-warriors? Why condition them to take three-minute showers and lambaste their elders?
The Left's underlying goal: to convince all of us that we don't matter. Our happiness, our cleanliness, our ease of living, our money, and our time...it's the government's business, not ours. While Marxist theory celebrates the proletarian, in actuality, people become interchangeable cogs in the collective wheel. Read more.

At 40, Earth Day Is Now Big Business

So strong was the antibusiness sentiment for the first Earth Day in 1970 that organizers took no money from corporations and held teach-ins “to challenge corporate and government leaders.”

Forty years later, the day has turned into a premier marketing platform for selling a variety of goods and services, like office products, Greek yogurt and eco-dentistry.
For this year’s celebration, Bahama Umbrella is advertising a specially designed umbrella, with a drain so that water “can be stored, reused and recycled.” Gray Line, a New York City sightseeing company, will keep running its buses on fossil fuels, but it is promoting an “Earth Week” package of day trips to green spots like the botanical gardens and flower shopping at Chelsea Market.
F. A. O. Schwarz is taking advantage of Earth Day to showcase Peat the Penguin, an emerald-tinted plush toy that, as part of the Greenzys line, is made of soy fibers and teaches green lessons to children. The penguin, Greenzys promotional material notes, “is an ardent supporter of recycling, reusing and reducing waste.”
To many pioneers of the environmental movement, eco-consumerism, creeping for decades, is intensely frustrating and detracts from Earth Day’s original purpose.
“This ridiculous perverted marketing has cheapened the concept of what is really green,” said Denis Hayes, who was national coordinator of the first Earth Day and is returning to organize this year’s activities in Washington. “It is tragic.”
Yet the eagerness of corporations to sign up for Earth Day also reflects the environmental movement’s increased tolerance toward corporate America: Many “big greens,” as leading environmental advocacy organizations are known, now accept that they must take money from corporations or at the least become partners with them if they are to make real inroads in changing social behavior.
This year, in an updated version of a teach-in, Greenpeace will team up with technology giants like Cisco and Google to hold a Web seminar focused on how the use of new technologies like videoconferencing and “cloud” computing can reduce the nation’s carbon footprint. Daniel Kessler, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said it was necessary to “promote a counterweight to the fossil fuel industry.”
In 1970, Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York addressed a crowd of tens of thousands in Union Square on Earth Day, in an atmosphere The New York Times likened to a “secular revival meeting.”
This year, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will be in Times Square to announce measures to reduce New York’s impact on the environment. Using the same stage, Keep America Beautiful, an antilittering nonprofit organization, will introduce “dream machines,” recycling kiosks it is introducing with PepsiCo. The machines are meant to increase the recycling rates for beverage containers, which is estimated at about 36 percent nationwide.
Of course, a fair portion of the more than 200 billion beverage containers produced in the United States each year are filled with PepsiCo products like Mountain Dew and Aquafina; such bottle trash contributes to serious pollution on beaches, oceans and inland waterways.
Still, Matthew M. McKenna, president and chief executive of Keep America Beautiful, and a former PepsiCo senior vice president, said he jumped at the opportunity to have his former employer introduce its new kiosk at the event.
“We are not being asked to encourage the purchase of Pepsi or the consumption of their products,” he said. “We are asked to deal in the field with what happens when they get thrown out.”
While the momentum for the first Earth Day came from the grass roots, many corporations say that it is often the business community that now leads the way in environmental innovation — and they want to get their customers interested. In an era when the population is more divided on the importance of environmental issues than it was four decades ago, the April event offers a rare window, they say, when customers are game to learn about the environmentally friendly changes the companies have made. Read more.

Will Obama’s Goldman Sachs Attack Expose Al Gore? Or Other Dems?

The SEC civil charges against Goldman Sachs challenge a firm with ties to many Democrats, including Al Gore and the entire carbon trading establishment.
by Richard Pollock
Whether Wall Street colossus Goldman Sachs has committed a crime remains to be seen, but the investigation may well uncover the environmental lobby and its public figurehead. For nearly a decade, Goldman Sachs has been a quiet but major investor in cap and trade. And Goldman’s main investment partner has been Al Gore.
About a decade ago, Goldman executives recognized that personal fortunes could be made with the invention of a carbon trading system through the passage of a U.S. cap-and-trade bill. This area was well suited to Goldman Sachs, the architects behind the complex world of futures trading and exotic derivatives.
Goldman joined Al Gore in 2004 and capitalized his investment company, Generation Investment Management. Strangely for a man who was a heartbeat away from the presidency, Gore decided to register his company in London — not the United States.
In November 2004, Gore unveiled GIM. Standing at his side was David Blood, the CEO of Goldman Asset Management. Blood was to become his co-founder (the new company was quickly nicknamed “Blood & Gore”). It was established with the initial capital of $206 million, much of it from Blood clients at Goldman Sachs.
Gore also turned to Goldman Sachs guru (and later Bush Treasury Secretary) Henry Paulson to help him establish GIM. At the time, Paulson himself was an eco-warrior of sorts, serving as chairman of the board of the Nature Conservancy.
Today, seven of Gore’s GIM chief partners are from Goldman Sachs. The company is now valued at $2.2 billion.
It doesn’t stop there. The Goldman Sachs/Gore team then established the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), a new cap-and-trade carbon trading platform, and partnered with the UK-based Climate Exchange, Plc (CLE), a holding company listed on the London Stock Exchange. CLE does carbon trading in Europe. In late 2004, they also created the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange (CCFX).
In September of 2006, Climate Exchange Plc acquired the remainder of CCX it didn’t own and placed £12.2 million of new shares with Goldman Sachs.
Goldman is reported to have made an investment of $23 million in the venture. Between Gore and Goldman, they are the largest investors in the Chicago Climate Exchange, owning 20% of it. Read more.

Carbon trading's dubious salesmen:Goldstein

Today's question is this:

Would you buy a used carbon market from the following self-proclaimed "masters of the universe"?
That is, the same giant investment houses that just finished helping to crash the global economy by recklessly trading in risky subprime mortgage loans and other bizarre investment vehicles few people understood?
Would a glowing endorsement of a mandatory, North American cap-and-trade market in carbon dioxide emissions by, say, American International Group (AIG), recipients of $173 billion in bailout money from U.S. taxpayers, make you more or less well disposed to the idea?
How about praise for carbon trading from the folks at JP Morgan Chase & Co. ($25 billion in bailout money), Morgan Stanley ($10 billion) or Merrill Lynch ($10 billion)?
How about from Goldman Sachs, Wall Street's mightiest bank, recently accused of civil fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over the sale of subprime mortgage securities? (The company denies the charges.)
How about a big cheer for carbon trading from its earliest corporate boosters -- the fraudsters at Enron -- who giddily predicted it would "do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries" and would be "good for Enron stock?"
Save for the now-defunct Enron, all the other big investment houses, some of which have paid back their bailout loans but not the unimaginable amounts of cash they cost the global economy, are enthusiastically gearing up for mandatory carbon trading.
Many are spending big money lobbying U.S. politicians to deliver it, complete with all the exotic investment opportunities it will provide.
That's because carbon trading -- cap-and-trade -- amounts to creating a new stock market out of, pardon the pun, thin air.
Governments in North America are about to create a new trading commodity -- carbon dioxide -- by putting a price on its emission into the atmosphere, along with several other greenhouse gases, when fossil fuels are burned for energy.
The basic stock unit of this new market worth, potentially, trillions of dollars, will be a carbon permit -- the market cost of emitting one tonne of carbon dioxide, a colourless, odourless gas, which can then be traded by businesses and governments -- theoretically -- to meet their emission reduction targets.
Gee, what could possibly go wrong?
Europe already has a carbon market, the Emissions Trading Scheme, which has not only failed to lower emissions (the global recession did a much better job of that), but is beset by multi-billion-dollar frauds.
Meanwhile, the UN's Clean Development Mechanism, where developed countries can obtain carbon credits by investing in third-world emission reduction schemes, is rife with allegations of corruption, profiteering and fraud.
The major problems are that many of the claimed emission reductions are phoney, or would have happened anyway, without carbon trading.
If all this causes you to think that maybe carbon trading isn't such a good idea, then you have to ask yourself:
Why do U.S. President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and so many other politicians across North America, keep insisting that it is?
In fact, cap-and-trade is, demonstrably, such a bad idea that even a carbon tax would be better, in the sense of being the lesser of two evils.
Or, put another way, the least stupid way of doing something stupid. Read more.

Confirmed! Global warming is 'settled' – as a scam

By Bob Unruh

Al Gore's insistence that global warming is "settled science" has been used to defend claims humanity is on the edge of destroying the world. Now author Brian Sussman, whose book "Climategate" is being released Thursday – Earth Day – agrees it's "settled," as a scam.

Sussman unveils in his book evidence that the move to restrict carbon dioxide emissions, tax a multitude of energy programs and create a "Big Brother" that would limit household energy use, among other programs is a move to give government unlimited control over people.
National Public Radio reported in 2007 how Gore took his "climate change crusade" to Congress and said the science on the issue was "settled." Then in 2009 the Environmental Protection Agency declared carbon dioxide and other emissions are endangering the future of the world.
Be the first to see the full documentation of how your life could be changed by climate-related laws, taxes and regulations, in "Climategate"
Sussman's book, the newest title by WND Books, has been charting for several weeks already among Amazon's top 10 preordered titles. It warns that believing global warming is "settled science" is a danger itself.
He writes that the now-notorious intercepted e-mails that reveal leading global warming supporters exchanging plans to squelch critics and falsify data are just the tip of the iceberg.
If you thought the record cold winter, expanding polar ice and other factors would make global warming supporters "chill out," guess again, he writes.

"These people have a plan and they intend to control much more than your thermostat," the book says.
In "Climategate," he explains the science of the subject and how politics have taken control of the data. Further, he explains how many of the global warming promoters are out to make a buck for themselves.
"It's obvious to everyone that this global warming facade is in meltdown mode," said Joseph Farah, publisher of WND Books and founder and CEO of WorldNetDaily.com. "Now Brian's important book comes along just in time to reveal exactly why this Big Lie was foisted on us to begin with and what we can do to stop it cold."
Among other things, "Climategate" reveals the underlying fraud of environmentalism in America. It also depicts the myth that global warming is the consensus of the scientific community. Read more.

Where did the Heat Go?

By R.A. Pielke Sr.
Comments On Two Papers By Kevin Trenberth On The Global Climate Energy Budget
Kevin Trenberth (and Josh Willis) should be commended for providing us an open discussion of the issue of the energy budget of the climate system, as I posted yesterday with their permission;

Further Feedback From Kevin Trenberth And Feedback From Josh Willis On The UCAR Press Release.
We need more such collegiality.
Today, I want to discuss two papers by Kevin. These are
Trenberth, K. E., and J. T. Fasullo, 2010: Tracking Earth’s energy. Science, 328, 316-317
Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001.
Since Kevin Trenberth is an internationally respected climate scientist, his views on this issue are worth discussing further.
First, in terms of agreement, his goal of attempting to quantify the individual contributions to the climate system energy budget in terms of fluxes (watts per meter squared) is very much-needed. I support Kevin on this effort. His various versions of Figure 2 in Trenberth (2009) have been one of the most cited in global climate science.
There are substantive issues with this figure, however, which include



■the uncertainties in the observational accuracy of each flux (in +/- Watts per meter squared) is not included.
■the figure represents a long term average of these fluxes, but in the actual climate system these fluxes are never in equilibrium as solar irradiance varies through the year (e.g. see our paper for the resulting effect on the global average tropospheric temperatures as a function of the time of year).


■the figure provides a global average of the fluxes, but in the actual climate system, these fluxes are spatially variable (e.g. see).


■the radiative imbalance is only about 0.26% of the global average incoming solar radiation and only about 0.31% of the global average outgoing long wave radiation so it is quite a challenge to diagnose a change in the resulting radiative imbalance (which is about 0.9 Watts per meter squared from Kevin’s paper).

The results of these complexities is that a global average, long-term mean of the fluxes (while valuable as a starting schematic) can obscure how the climate actually works.
Figure 4 in his 2009 paper continues to focus on a global average, long-term mean perspective. While here the uncertainty is included, the temporal variation with a year (even in the long-term multi-year average) in the radiative forcings and feedbacks is not included.
As a result of these uncertainties, I recommend we start from the bottom row in Kevin’s figure 4. This is the total net imbalance which is given as about 0.9 Watts per meter squared (0.4 to 1.4 Watts per meter squared). This is where Trenberth and Fasullo conclude in their 2010 paper that there is missing heat. Read more.

Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed


Global warming alarmists have been discredited, but you wouldn't know it from the rhetoric this Earth Day.

By RICHARD S. LINDZEN, PhD
In mid-November of 2009 there appeared a file on the Internet containing thousands of emails and other documents from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain. How this file got into the public domain is still uncertain, but the emails, whose authenticity is no longer in question, provided a view into the world of climate research that was revealing and even startling.

In what has come to be known as "climategate," one could see unambiguous evidence of the unethical suppression of information and opposing viewpoints, and even data manipulation. The Climatic Research Unit is hardly an obscure outpost; it supplies many of the authors for the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Moreover, the emails showed ample collusion with other prominent researchers in the United States and elsewhere.
One might have thought the revelations would discredit the allegedly settled science underlying currently proposed global warming policy, and, indeed, the revelations may have played some role in the failure of last December's Copenhagen climate conference to agree on new carbon emissions limits. But with the political momentum behind policy proposals and billions in research funding at stake, the impact of the emails appears to have been small.
The general approach of the official scientific community (at least in the United States and the United Kingdom) has been to see whether people will bother to look at the files in detail (for the most part they have not), and to wait until time diffuses the initial impressions in order to reassert the original message of a climate catastrophe that must be fought with a huge measure of carbon control.

This reassertion, however, continues to be suffused by illogic, nastiness and outright dishonesty. There were, of course, the inevitable investigations of individuals like Penn State University's Michael Mann (who manipulated data to create the famous "hockey stick" climate graph) and Phil Jones (director of the CRU). The investigations were brief, thoroughly lacking in depth, and conducted, for the most part, by individuals already publicly committed to the popular view of climate alarm. The results were whitewashes that are quite incredible given the actual data. Read more.

Dr. Lindzen is professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

More unreliable “global warming” temperature readings

by Mark Landsbaum
You could write a book (in fact, people have) on the unreliability of the “settled science” behind the theoretical (certainly not proven) global warming. Here’s a good chapter:

“Look for yourself following these directions using the window into the NOAA, GHCN data provided by NASA GISS here,” write Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts on page 22 of their “Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception?”
“… You will see that the stations have a highly variable range of years with data,” they report. “Try to find a few stations where the data extends to 2009. If you find some, you may see gaps in the graphs. To see how incomplete the dataset is for that station, click in the bottom left of the graph Download monthly data as text.
For many, many stations you will see the dataset in a monthly tabular form has many missing data months mostly after 1990.”
“These facts suggest that the golden age of observations was in the 1950s to 1980s. Data sites before then were more scattered and did not take data at standardized times of day. After the 1980s the network suffered from loss of stations and missing monthly data. To fill in these large holes, data was extrapolated from greater distances away.”
Ah, that probably didn’t distort things. After all, the alleged increase was a whopping FRACTION of a degree. Do you think THAT might be within the margin of error? But ya gotta love this:
Remember when ClimateGate pulled back the wizards’ curtain and the Russians yelled foul?
“A prominent Russian climate sceptic and free-market economist says that the British HadCRUT global temperature database – much of which has now been released to the public following the “climategate” email scandal – has been manipulated to show greater warming in Russia than is actually the case.” – U.K. Register

Read more.

Mann Threatens Lawsuit Against Video Exposing His Hockey Stick

By The Hockey Schtick
I’m no lawyer, but believe that for a libel or slander lawsuit to be successful, the plaintiff must prove that the defendants knew what they said was false, and that truth is an absolute defense. Thus, if Michael Mann is foolish enough to proceed in his threatened lawsuit against Minnesotans 4 Global Warming for their Hide the Decline parody video, he will:

1. Need to prove that Phil Jones email to Mann about Mike [Mann's] Nature Trick to “hide the decline” doesn’t really refer to Mann “hiding the decline” in the tree ring data, which show decreasing temperatures after 1960.
2. Need to prove that Mann’s email to Phil Jones on June 4, 2003, stating “it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP” [Medieval Warming Period], even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back” does not show scientific malfeasance.
3. Need to prove that Mann’s hockey stick isn’t one of the the most thoroughly debunked scientific papers of the 20th century
4. Need to prove that Mann himself has not repeatedly deliberately distorted highly critical reviews of his work
5. Need to prove that it is ok for Mann to continue to flip temperature proxies upside down even in his latest papers, even though this egregious error has already been pointed out to him in the past and which he still refuses to acknowledge.
and so on…ad nauseum.
Minnesotans 4 Global Warming hope Mann will proceed with his lawsuit so that the legal discovery process will force exposure of data and methods Mann has still not released and that the official whitewash inquiries refuse to investigate. In the mean time, they have removed Mann’s name and produced the new Hide the Decline II video:

Read more.

Hide the Decline II

By Steve McIntyre
On March 8, Michael Mann’s lawyers, Cozen O’Connor, sent a legal letter to Minnesotans for Global Warming (of the famous Hide the Decline video) threatening them, ironically, with misappropriating Mann’s likeness and, almost as an afterthought, defaming him “by leaving viewers with the incorrect impression that he falsified data to generate desired results in connection with his research activities”:
We are writing to demand that you cease and desist any and all use of Dr Mann’s likeness, which you have misappropriated in various videos posted on your webpage www.minnesotansforglobalwarming.com, including the video Hide the Decline –Climategate. You are hereby advised that the use of Dr Mann’s likeness, which you clearly misappropriated from PSU’s webpage, www.meteo,psu.edu/~mann/MRG/index.html, is not authorized and infringes on various copyrights. Such use also improperly misappropriates Professor Mann’s likeness for commercial exploitation, given that the video clearly supports Minnesotans for Global Warming’s efforts to sell various products and merchandize. Finally, the referenced video clearly defames Professor Mann by leaving viewers with the incorrect impression that he falsified data to generate desired results in connection with his research activities. This false impression irreparably harms Dr Mann’s personal and professional reputation.

For these reasons, we demand that you immediately cease and desist using Dr Mann’s likeness and that you immediately remove the defamatory video from your webpage (including cashed [sic] versions.) If you persist with this defamatory activity, please be advised that we will be compelled to enforce Dr Mann’s rights, which may include the recovery of damages from you. Please contact me to confirm your intentions or if you wish to discuss this matter further.
The letter was copied to Mann and to Tom Cogill, Photographer.

The original video has been removed from Youtube.
However, the story doesn’t quite end.
Earlier today, the following announcement was made:

the No Cap-and-Trade Coalition, a group that includes M4GW, responded today at an event at the National Press Club, releasing Mann’s threatening letter and an updated version of the “Hide the Decline” video.


See a release of Hide the Decline II, available here. The new version carefully avoids any use of the “copyrighted” Mann photographs. It is also more precise in its presentation, evidencing a much clearer understanding of the trick than the wilfully obtuse Oxburgh “Report” or Willis Parliament Committee Report. Read more.

The Hockey Stick Illusion

"...a rattling good detective story and a detailed and brilliant piece of science writing."
Matt Ridley, The Spectator
Order now at:


 

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

This is Cool! and Hot.

New Hydrogen Technology

A new, practical hydrogen science for clean and less expensive energy solutions: HyTech’s Aquygen™ gas!

What's the cost if Congress fails?

by Craig Rucker
If Congress fails, America wins. CFACT's response to Connie Hedegaard the European Union’s Commissioner for Climate Action.
Commisioner Hedegaard posed this question: "While some argue that the U.S. cannot afford climate and energy legislation, my question is: Can the U.S. afford not to have ambitious legislation that paves the way for a more energy-efficient future? We all know that we are in for a future where energy and resources will be still more expensive, and the companies and nations that are the most energy-efficient will prosper the most."
CFACT Executive Director, Craig Rucker responded to her question.
Commissioner Hedegaard's Denmark may have surrounded itself with wind turbines, but could not afford such feel good luxuries if it were not for the vast income and energy it derives from Danish North Sea oil and gas.
America and the world will be cleaner, greener and more prosperous with an abundant supply of energy. It was heartening to hear President Obama acknowledge this reality saying, “the bottom line is this: Given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth and produce jobs, and keep our businesses competitive, we are going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel.” Unfortunately, as the President took a step forward and finally permitted us to tap new areas of our offshore energy resources; he also took a step backward by closing off other areas that offered much potential. While we dither, other countries race to tap their oil and gas to sell to us. Russia is preparing to drill off the coast of Cuba, right outside our back porch.
We at CFACT hope President Obama and the Congress will make the full journey towards energy realism and concede that we can't run our country on subsidies and technologies that feel good, but don't meaningfully produce the energy needed to fuel our economy. So far the climate and energy proposals being floated in Congress have been all pain, no gain. Cap and trade, offsets, and subsidies will enrich a few carbon profiteers, but do nothing to secure our energy future, nor meaningfully affect our climate. Read more.

Hydrogen Fuel Cars 2010 - 2011

This page features hydrogen fuel cars that have been shown in the year 2010. Most of the hydrogen fuel cell cars and H2ICE vehicles on this page are prototypes, though some may be test vehicles as well.



The BMW Series 1 Hydrogen Hybrid electric car is a fuel cell vehicle that was unveiled in Munich, Germany in 2010. The vehicle contains both a UTC fuel cell and small four cylinder gasoline engine.

 
 
 
 
The Riversimple Hyrban is powered by a 6 kw Horizon fuel cell. Some of the design plans are published on the Internet making this the first Open Source fuel cell vehicle that will be designed by collaboration.
 
 
 
 
The Mercedes Benz F800 Concept was unveiled at the 2010 Geneva Auto Show. The Mercedes Benz F800 Concept uses a hydrogen fuel cell, 100 kw electric motor and has a range of around 370 miles.
 
 
 
The Hyundai Tucson ix35 FCEV was shown off at the 2010 Geneva Auto Show. The car featured that latest fuel cell technology with an eye towards full production in 2012.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Massive B.C. dam project approved

It can be done! But the fight is just starting.

The B.C. government has approved a $6.6-billion plan to build a massive hydroelectric dam on the Peace River, nearly 40 years after it was first proposed.
Premier Gordon Campbell and Energy Minister Blair Lekstrom announced the approval of the Site C dam project on Monday morning, while standing on the W.A.C. Bennett Dam, located near the project site in northeastern B.C.
"This is a foundational decision for the future of the province," the premier said in a speech peppered with references to the historic legacy of the W.A.C. Bennett Dam.
"Site C is an important part of B.C.'s economic and ecological future and we are ready to take it on."
Campbell said the project will now enter its third stage, which will include consultation with First Nations and detailed design work.
The mega-project will also go through an independent environmental assessment and broad stakeholder consultation, and where harmful effects cannot be avoided, BC Hydro will identify and evaluate potential options for mitigation, according to a statement released by the province after the announcement.
But one of the province's largest environmental organizations and some First Nations in northeast B.C. voiced opposition to the Site C plan Monday. Read more.

Hydrogen Hub Hosts Major Industry Conference

Washington, DC--19 April 2010 - In Long Beach, California next month, bright minds and big ideas will come together to advance an evolving industry and move it another giant step towards commercialization. Each year, the NHA Hydrogen Conference and Expo attracts big thinkers, stakeholders and change-makers from across all sectors of the hydrogen marketplace, as they gather at their premier event to share emerging research, learn about new developments, and foster the commercialization of hydrogen and fuel cell technology.  Read more.

Claptrap about Climategate claptrap

by Mike McGowan
I just read an interesting article at The Nation. It was posted by Johann Hari on April 15th, and is entitled “Climategate Claptrap, II“.

I’m not the world’s biggest supporter of the green movement. It’s fair to get that out of the way first, full disclosure and what not, because I think this is one of the least informed attacks on Climategate that I’ve seen, and trust me, that’s really saying something.
The author begins by crowing a bit, attempting to link Climategate with the fight against Big Tobacco, but it gets interesting quickly. In no time at all, the author engages us with visions of “deniers” being destroyed on the world stage…
It is happening again. The tide of global warming denial is now rising as fast as global sea levels–and with as much credibility as Cook Little. Look at the deniers’ greatest moment, Climategate, hailed by them as “the final nail in the coffin” of “the theory of global warming.” A patient study by the British House of Commons has pored over every e-mail from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and interviewed everyone involved. Its findings? The “evidence patently fails to support” the idea of a fraud; the scientists have “no case to answer”; and all their findings “have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified” by other scientists. That’s British for “it was a crock.”
Man, you know, sometimes I almost hate to do this to people… Oh well. Can’t be helped.

A “patient study by the British House of Commons”?
That one caused me to squirt chocolate milk out of my nose and earned me a funny look from the kid.
The real truth:
“Lawmakers stressed that their report which was written after only a single day of oral testimony did not cover all the issues and would not be as in-depth as the two other inquiries into the e-mail scandal that are still spending. [emphasis mine - MM]

Willis said the lawmakers had been in a rush to publish something before Britain’s next national election, which is widely expected in just over a month’s time.
“Clearly we would have liked to spend more time of this,” he said, before adding jokingly: “We had to get something out before we were sent packing.”
CBSNews (Which, ironically, I just made fun of here.)

The best part about the article?
It fails to mention the fact that a second panel investigating this has also declared Climategate to be 2 legit 2 quit:
“In the second of three investigations of the scandal known as “climate-gate,” a panel of academic experts said Wednesday that several prominent climate scientists did not engage in deliberate malpractice but did not use the best statistical tools available to produce their findings.”

Washington Post
However, if you keep reading, way down there, buried at the bottom of the piece, you’ll find this interesting little tidbit:
“Set up and funded by the University of East Anglia, the review panel was led by Ernest Oxburg — a geologist and former academic who is the honorary president of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association and is involved with the wind-energy company Falck Renewables.” [emphasis mine — MM]
It then gives you another paragraph detailing how each of the members of this panel are associated with cooperating Universities.

It’s getting hilarious by this point.
This is nothing more than a continuation of “This debate is OVER!”…
“YOU’RE LYING ABOUT CLIMATEGATE BECAUSE WE, THE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE HIGHLY INVESTED IN THIS SCAM, SAY SO!”
Well… That doesn’t exactly cut it in the real world people. I’m gonna need to see something that will get me to lose faith in the laws of mathematics and statistics, and it’s gonna have to be really damned convincing… Like some form of god or advanced alien culture or something is going to have to part the clouds, single me out, and tell me that humans are causing climate change in no uncertain terms.
That’s how strongly I believe in the truth of equations.
100 years’ worth of scientific data is not a large enough sample from a population of 4 billion years to make any scientifically valid claims about anything. Read more.