Over the weekend on “The Score” radio show, we followed-up on the story of how Chris Horner, working with the American Tradition Institute, had filed a freedom of information request with the University of Virginia for emails and materials former UVA Prof. Michael Mann generated during his time at the school. What we learned from our interview with Horner is jaw-dropping.

When what Horner termed “a gaggle of pressure groups” got wind of people lurking around Mann’s emails, they descended on UVA stating, in effect “don’t you dare co-operate with law enforcement to release the records the taxpayer paid for in a fraud pre-investigation under a statute that passed unanimously [in the Virginia General Assembly],” that nowhere provides an exemption for academics.

Horner says that once these groups made their displeasure known, UVA “reversed course” and decided to fight, spending “$500,000 with [former U.S. Senator] John Warner’s law firm in Washington, D.C. to keep the taxpayer from seeing the records.”

He recounts how he discovered UVA had a FOIA compliance officer - the same office that was eager to turn over the emails of former university climate scientist Pat Michaels to Greenpeace (once the group paid the appropriate fee) - and decided to file his own FOIA request for Mann’s emails.

But we know all this. UVA and the interest groups have been in Mann�s corner, fighting Ken Cuccinelli’s request for documents for months.  But it was that Greenpeace request of UVA for Pat Michaels’ work product that has legs. The environmental group filed similar requests with other institutions seeking the records of climate skeptics, and in a couple of cases, mounted campaigns to have those skeptics fired from their positions. Where were the voices of academic freedom of expression during those campaigns? Sitting on their hands.

Now, though, they have sprung into action because Michael Mann, who shares their climate change beliefs, is under what they deem to be attack.  Horner says these groups are “a little bit late to the party,” because, as noted above, UVA has already said it’s willing to release an academic’s emails, “so long as he’s a climate skeptic.”

Horner noted that the first of several installments of Mann’s records were supposed to be delivered by now. But he is concerned that this latest intervention by Mann’s supporters will convince UVA’s leadership to decline to provide them. He views this as a disturbing possibility.

So why are they fighting so hard? Horner said, referring to UVA’s legal bill, “they’ve given us half a million reasons to believe there’s something [in Mann’s emails] to hide.” Horner has been told that Mann’s own lawyer has contacted UVA asking whether the school intended to release the records, indicating that he is worried about what they may reveal if they are made public.

We may know soon enough.

OSU tries to expel PhD candidate children of scientist who ran against Cong. Peter DeFazio

Confused visitors will be forgiven for thinking Oregon State University is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Congressman Pete DeFazio and the “progressive-socialist” wing of the Democratic Party. Or for likening what’s going on there to political retribution as practiced in Third World thugocracies.

The idea that three outstanding students - PhD candidates at OSU - could face dismissal, and worse, shortly before receiving their degrees, is simply shocking. That this could be happening because their father had the temerity to challenge an entrenched 12-term Democratic congressman (and OSU earmark purveyor) could make people think the university is in Zimbabwe, not America.

Dr. Art Robinson is president of the nonprofit Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, on the family farm in southwestern Oregon, 180 miles from Corvallis. OISM focuses on biochemistry, diagnostic medicine, nutrition, preventive medicine and aging - and improving emergency preparedness and basic education.

After his wife died in 1988, Robinson raised and home-schooled his six children - all of whom became remarkable scholars, collaborating on research and a popular DVD series on math and science for home-schooled students and their parents. Five of the children have BS degrees in chemistry; one a degree in mathematics. Two earned doctorates in veterinary medicine; one a PhD in chemistry.

The three youngest are all at OSU, working on PhDs in nuclear engineering. They entered the field at a young age, helping their father write and publish the pro-science, pro-technology, pro-free enterprise” newsletter, Access to Energy, which explains and advocates nuclear energy.

Dr. Robinson is well known for the Oregon Petition Project, which says “there is no convincing scientific evidence” that humans are causing “catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere” or disruption of its climate. It urges Congress to reject the Kyoto global warming agreement - and has been signed by more than 32,000 Americans with university degrees in physical sciences (including yours truly and over 9,000 PhDs).

The petition, and Robinson’s support for DDT in combating the malaria pandemic, drew anger and outrage from the political Left, climate chaos industry and “mainstream media,” giving him his first brush with the politics of personal destruction. But it did not prepare him for the lengths and depths his opponents would go to “discourage” his political activities.

With our nation drowning in debt, energy prices skyrocketing, and unaccountable pseudo-scientific agencies like EPA and Interior hobbling economic growth with endless delays and red tape, Dr. Robinson decided to run for Congress. As a scientist and thoughtful, Christian family man, with proven math and budgetary skills - he felt he could bring much needed expertise and perspectives to the House of Representatives.

He challenged DeFazio, who initially figured he would have a cakewalk against this political neophyte. But Robinson raised $1.3 million from over 5,000 individual donors (against DeFazio’s $1.5 million from special interests, MoveOn.org and other contributors), gave numerous speeches and ran a highly effective campaign. With polls showing his lead narrowing, an increasingly desperate DeFazio struck back.

Bristling with a sense of entitlement, the congressman ran print, television and radio ads, painting Robinson as a nutcase who would promote racism, put radioactive wastes in drinking water, end Social Security and Medicare, close schools, repeal taxation of oil companies and destroy Oregon jobs. With help from Rachel Madow and MSNBC, DeFazio claimed Robinson lived off Social Security in a survivalist compound and was funding his campaign with cash from money launderers and drug dealers.

Despite the libelous attacks, Robinson garnered a very respectable 44% of the vote - and promptly announced that he would run for DeFazio’s seat again in 2012. If the soft-spoken father of six thought DeFazio�s campaign had been in the sewers, what happened next beggared belief. Now the targets became Robinson’s three youngest children.

During the election campaign, OSU President Edward Ray and other faculty and administrators improperly used the campus to campaign for DeFazio and against Robinson. Then, almost immediately after the 2010 election, they launched a series of despicable and unprincipled actions designed to ensure that Joshua, Bethany, and Matthew never receive their degrees - regardless of their outstanding academics, examinations and research, or the thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars they had invested.

Even though they have been working on their PhDs for almost five years at OSU, and have about a year to go, Joshua has been forbidden access to the equipment he built for his PhD work, while Bethany has been told she will be dismissed from school. Matthew, who turned down a nearly “full ride” from MIT to go to OSU, has been there for two years - but now is waiting for the ax to fall on his work, and on his thesis professor, Dr. Jack Higginbotham, who came to the students’ defense.

Nuclear engineering professor Higginbotham has been at OSU 24 years; he is president of the OSU Faculty Senate and director of a large NASA program on the campus. His inside knowledge of what the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics deans and certain faculty were doing to railroad the Robinson children made him Public Enemy Number One to the department Torquemadas who are trying to destroy his career and get him fired for his impertinence.

Right now, Higginbotham�s salary and career hang by a thread, preserved only by attorneys he has hired to protect himself from OSU attacks. The Robinsons’ studies have been severely disrupted. Meanwhile, however, public outcry in favor of Higginbotham and the students has grown in intensity, especially in Oregon, and a group of prominent alumni donors has offered to pay for the student’s remaining PhD work and legal costs to settle the dispute. (Higginbotham is a nuclear power guy; the culprits are in “nuclear medicine” and generally anti-nuclear power.)

Rather than being chastened, though, President Ray and his staff have refused even to speak with the alumni group. University administrators have become incensed that their actions are now public knowledge, and that alumni and other donors are vocally supporting Higginbotham and the children. Ray and his entourage have circled the academic wagons, stonewalled public inquiries and refused to talk to the Robinsons

They appear to think they own the university, and “academic freedom” means they are entitled to deny academic degrees to children of parents whose politics differ from their own. As more alumni join this effort, however, and the university’s reputation becomes increasingly radioactive, OSU appears to be wavering. Perhaps a dose of sanity may yet take center stage.

Oregon State is a prime example of what happens when educational institutions fall under progressive-socialist control, and dependency on taxpayer handouts from political overseers in Washington. DeFazio and his fellow congressional Democrats gave OSU a reported $27 million in earmark funding during the last legislative cycle alone. That’s $9 million per Robinson student denied a PhD.

No wonder President Ray and the Nuclear Engineering deans have given new meaning to “payback,” while DeFazio smirks in silence in the congressional office that he seems convinced should be his for life.

In depressing testimony to how far America has strayed from its Constitution and founding principles, we have reached the point where congressmen can lavish key supporters with tax dollars - and in return get votes, campaign contributions, rallies and volunteers on our campuses ...and be assured of vicious retribution against the families of anyone rash enough to run against them.

If you want to read all the gory details in this sordid case, visits www.OregonStateOutrage.com. If you want to tell OSU what you think of its actions, send a message to President Ray at pres.office@oregonstate.edu and todd.simmons@oregonstate.edu in the OSU press office. Or contact Rep DeFazio’s office to express your opinion.

If you thought the last Robinson-DeFazio bout was a humdinger, stick around. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.

In honor of Earth Day 2011, here are the Top 10 Environmental Scams:

1.  Global warming alarmism:  Predictions from the early global warming alarmists that the Earth was rapidly heating, and would suffer untold damage as this trend continued, have already failed to come true.  There has been no discernible warming since the mid-1990s.  Coupled with Climategate’s disclosures showing bias among key scientists, and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s laughable report predicting melting Himalayan glaciers, with no evidence to back it up, it is hard to accept the global warming alarmists’ constantly changing theories as anything other than hysteria.

2.  Earth Day:  Earth Day’s solutions to save the planet often include calls for stricter government environmental regulations that would strangle the economy.  The Washington Times was right when it editorialized several years ago that Earth Day has “anti-business overtones and [a] message of guilt and limits....Earth Day is a global guilt-fest that views the future with a sense of dread....Rather than increasing their productivity, people are told to decrease their carbon footprints.”

3.  Cap and trade:  The cap-and-trade legislation that failed last year in a Democratic-controlled Congress was a maze of environmental regulations that would have resulted in lost jobs and an energy tax for the American people.  The Heritage Foundation estimated the cap-and-trade bill would cost the economy $161 billion in 2020 - $1,870 for a family of four, rising to $6,800 for a family of four by 2035.

4.  Green jobs:  By giving czar status to Van Jones, Obama chose an ex-Communist to come up with a plan to create green jobs.  That pretty much tells you all you need to know about the economic viability of such a government-subsidized enterprise.  Spain�s attempt at actualizing a green jobs revolution ended up costing the country more than $774,000 for each green job created, according to a study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid.

5.  Environment activism:  Many environmental activists are as eager to denounce capitalism as they are to save the planet.  Their activities are often aimed at preventing the development of abundant energy resources in the United States that would help the nation move toward energy independence.

6.  Hollywood hypocrisy:  The Lords of Malibu love to preach about saving Planet Earth from the evils of corporate America even while they dump tons of pollutants into the atmosphere from their high-octane cars and opulent mansions.  Memo to Leonardo DiCaprio, Harrison Ford, and James Cameron:  No more lectures about reducing our carbon footprint until you ground your private jets.

7.  Wind power hypocrisy:  Wind power is another environmental dream that has proven to be too expensive to be effective on a massive scale.  And even environmentalists can’t agree on where wind projects should be located when it soils a pristine scene.  Members of the Kennedy clan opposed Cape Wind, a wind energy project in Massachusetts, because it threatens the view of Nantucket Sound.

8.  Carbon trading:  The attempt to set up a system for trading carbon emission allowances to thwart global warming gave purveyors of alarmism a way to cash in on their hysterical ranting.  Former Vice President and global warming guru Al Gore founded a private equity firm, Generation Investment Management, which trades in carbon offsets, and he made a fortune.  He even purchases carbon credits from the company for his own personal use, which comes to $30,000 a year just for his posh Belle Meade mansion in Nashville, Tenn.

9.  Greenwashing:  Greenwashing is a term used to describe companies that use marketing to portray false claims that they are turning green.  Usually these companies spend more on advertising than any real effort to save energy.  The next time you see a hotel room sign promoting the reuse of towels to save the environment, recognize that it is just spin.

10.  Al Gore:  Al Gore transformed his movie An Inconvenient Truth into a mega-money maker (see No. 8).  What is truly inconvenient about his Nobel Prize-winning film were the 11 falsehoods that it contained, as determined by a British court, including the misleading suggestion that Hurricane Katrina was caused by global warming.

See the report. In this analysis we take a look at the failings of IPCC based science.

By Joseh D’Aleo, CCM, WeatherBell

We talked about this would be a season of major floods and severe weather in our first posts on WeatherBell and Icecap in early March. Last week we warned the middle of this week would see another outbreak like the one in Mid April. And earlier this week we predicted the count would top 200 tornadoes before it was all said and done.

It started Sunday in the southern Plains with 13 tornadoes and 201 severe storms reports.


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Monday it ramped up with 44 tornado and 432 severe weather reports.

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Tuesday action shifted slightly east and increased further with 61 tornadoes among 702 severe weather reports.

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For yesterday, the preliminary count is an amazing 160 tornado tornadoes and 635 severe weather reports. The Gulf States were especially hard hit but with tornadoes up to Virginia and even New York State.

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The preliminary total for the 4 days came to 278 tornado reports and an amazing 1970 reports of severe weather.

Today is the last day if this onslaught (not the last this season).

SPC has a slight risk along the east coast.

Enlarged.

Tornado watches are in effect this morning from Virginia to Georgia and severe thunderstorm watches for New York State and Pennsylvania. We are likely to add dozens of additional reports to this 5 day parade of storms reaching 300 reports of tornadoes and over 2100 of severe weather including hail and damaging winds.

The actual number of tornadoes will be reduced as with the longer track storms like we often see in this kind of situation, the same tornado can be reported multiple times. The Tuscaloosa tornado reportedly was on the ground in four states reaching the Carolinas! It will take them awhile to sort this out.  Especially given the same people will be busy with the next severe weather. It looks like it will be mostly associated with squall lines ahead of more rapidly moving cold fronts in this new pattern with increased blocking at least for the next week or so.

Clearly though this week’s onslaught will rank among the most significant outbreaks in history Sadly the death toll this morning stood at over 200 and climbing.

The devastation from the severe weather mentioned is made worse with the massive flooding occurring in the nations midsection and in the interior parts of the northeast. The cooling and stabilizing air mass off the still cold Atlantic usually knocks the legs out from the thunderstorms that move east and even diminish the rains so eastern and southern New England will probably get off relatively easy.

One last point. the great Stanley Changnon, formerly director of the Illinois Water Survey had done a study probably in the 1990s that I reported on about how although the media attention was mainly on the feared El Ninos, that La Ninas were far more dangerous and costly with more cold and heavy winter snows that paralyze economies and transportation, more spring flooding and deadly and damaging severe weather outbreaks and more landfalling hurricanes than El Nino. The last few years and especially this year is an illustration of this. The severe weather season is not over and then we have the hurricane season which both JB and I think will be more impactful.

See posts on Weatherbell.com.

No doubt there will be some suggesting the severe weather and floods is due to global warming but as we discussed in numerous posts on Weatherbell (like this from last week advertizing this outbreak), it was a combination of the most spring snowcover across the hemisphere in a quarter century, unusual cold across the north (Billings MT 118 straight days with lows below 40, a new record and soil temperatures in Iowa and other parts of th Upper Midwest still mostly in the 40s, which is why corn planting is well behind normal) which increases the contrast and enhances the jet stream which energizes the storms that ride along it, and finally warm dry air flowing out of the droughty southern plains into mid levels making the air convectively unstable. These classic severe weather iongredients were common in the last cold PDO when the La Ninas occurred (1965 Palm Sunday outbreak, the 1967 Belvidere and St Louis outbreaks and then the 1974 Superoutbreak).  The last time we had these active springs was the last time the globe was COOLING - fromthe late 1940s to th mid 1970s. Don’t let them tell you its warming. 

By Willis Eschenbach on Watts Up With That

I took a lot of flak last year for my post saying that the global 50% drop in phytoplankton claimed by Boyce et. al was an illusion. I had said:

So where did the Nature paper go wrong?

The short answer is that I don’t know ...but I don’t believe their results. The paper is very detailed, in particular the Supplementary Online Information (SOI). It all seems well thought out and investigated ...but I don’t believe their results. They have noted and discussed various sources of error. They have compared the use of Secchi disks as a proxy, and covered most of the ground clearly ...and I still don’t believe their results.

In other words, I took my chances on my experience and went way, way out on a limb with my statements. And of course, people didn’t let me forget it.

Figure 1. Life Cycle enlarged of Phytoplankton

Now we get these two “Brief Communications Arising”, from Nature magazine (emphasis mine).

Nature Volume: 472, Pages:  E6-E7

Brief Communication Arising (April, 2011) Arising from D. G. Boyce, M. R. Lewis & B. Worm Nature 466, 591-596 (2010)

Phytoplankton account for approximately 50% of global primary production, form the trophic base of nearly all marine ecosystems, are fundamental in trophic energy transfer and have key roles in climate regulation, carbon sequestration and oxygen production. Boyce et al.1 compiled a chlorophyll index by combining in situ chlorophyll and Secchi disk depth measurements that spanned a more than 100-year time period and showed a decrease in marine phytoplankton biomass of approximately 1% of the global median per year over the past century. Eight decades of data on phytoplankton biomass collected in the North Atlantic by the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey2, however, shown increase in an index of chlorophyll (Phytoplankton Colour Index) in both the Northeast and Northwest Atlantic basins 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (Fig. 1), and other long-term time series, including the Hawaii Ocean Time-series (HOT)8, the Bermuda Atlantic Time Series (BATS)8 and the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI)9 also indicate increased phytoplankton biomass over the last 20-50 years. These findings, which were not discussed by Boyce et al.1, are not in accordance with their conclusions and illustrate the importance of using consistent observations when estimating long-term trends.

Along with this one:

Nature 472, E5-E6 (14 April 2011)

Brief Communication Arising (April, 2011) Arising from D. G. Boyce, M. R. Lewis & B. Worm Nature 466, 591-596 (2010)

Closer examination reveals that time-dependent changes in sampling methodology combined with a consistent bias in the relationship between in situ and transparency-derived chlorophyll (Chl) measurements generate a spurious trend in the synthesis of phytoplankton estimates used by Boyce et al.1. Our results indicate that much, if not all, of the century-long decline reported by Boyce et al. is attributable to this temporal sampling bias and not to a global decrease in phytoplankton biomass.

OK, so I was right. The Boyce paper was nonsense, the claimed trend was spurious, plankton biomass is holding somewhere near steady or even increasing, and a number of independent records show that the Boyce et al. paper is garbage built on bad assumptions.

I bring this up for three reasons. The first is to show the continuing shabby quality of peer-review at scientific magazines when the subject is even peripherally related to climate. Nature magazine blew it again, and unfortunately, these days that’s no news at all. It’s just more shonky science from the AGW crowd… and people claim the reason the public doesn’t trust climate scientists is a “communications problem”? It’s not. It’s a garbage science problem, and all the communications theory in the world won’t fix garbage science.

The second reason I posted this is just because I enjoy it when it turns out that I’m right, particularly on a risky statement made with no data and in the face of opposition, and I wanted to enter that fact into the record. Childish, I know, but at least I’m adult enough to admit it.

The third reason is a bit more complex. It is to emphasize the value of actual experience. I didn’t disbelieve Boyce et al. because I had any data. I had no data at all.

What I did have was a lifetime spent on and under the ocean. Phytoplankton form the basis of all life in the ocean. If the phytoplankton had actually gone down by 50%, all life in the ocean would have gone down by 50% and my experience said no way that was true. Fish catches haven’t gone down like that, numbers of species on the reef and along the coast haven’t gone down like that, I would have noticed, people around the world would have been screaming about it.

So I put my neck on the chopping block, and I trusted my experience ...and in the end, despite the people who laughed at me and abused my claims, my experience won out over Boyce’s “science”.

Does this mean that we should always trust our experience over science? Don’t be daft. Science is hugely valuable, and often shows that our experience has misled us completely.

But far too many scientists forget to check the obvious - their own experience. Not one of the Boyce authors thought “Wait a minute ... since the oceans live almost entirely off the phytoplankton, if plankton is down by half why haven’t I seen oceanic populations from krill to whales and octopuses dropping by half?” Or perhaps they just didn’t have the experience to check the obvious.

The moral of this story? Well, the moral for me is that trusting my experience over the “science” of high-powered scientists living in an ivory tower far above the ocean worked out well ... this time.

But the real moral is that scientists need to pay more attention to the “laugh test”. I know when I first heard the Boyce claim, I busted out laughing...and when our experience is that strong in saying that science is wrong, it’s likely worth checking out.

Read more and especially his added commentary on “the smell test, the laugh test, and the eyeball test:” as they apply to plethora of shoddy AGW science and epitomized in the advocacy rag that Nature has become.

See Tom Nelson reports “Warmist Revkin admits that he knew last year about problems with highly-publicized, peer-reviewed plankton alarmism, but he failed to write about it”.  On Plankton, Warming and Whiplash - NYTimes.com

By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow

The 2010 as expected caused a global spike in temperatures. The subsequent La Nina caused a cooling. The stasis is going on a decade. Even Phil Jones admitted little significant change since 1998 (and a cooling of 0.12C from 2002-2009).

Enlarged.

The greenhouse models as shown in the top of the following graphs forecast the greatest global warming high up in the tropics where the greenhouse gas ‘heat trapping’ and condensation from enhanced convection and increased moisture is greatest. Notice however in this hart how weather ballooons don’t see the warming at that level. The data here is NOAA ARL data from Angell. Other radiosonde compilations such as RICH show less cooling but no warming.


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The Hadley 20N-20S data compilation in the same tropical belt (20N-20S) at 200mb show also no warming (actually a slight cooling) in over three decades.

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The University of Alabama MSU satellite data is optimized lower down at 600mb. See how they show little change in the 32 years.

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The oceans are modelled to warm significantly due to greenhouse gases with increased heat content. Buoys provide a very good depiction of ocean temperature profiles (not contaminated by factors like urbanization). The average temperature of the sea in the belt from 5N to 5S and through the depth of 300m shows a slight not statistically significant cooling since 1979.

Enlarged.

Again see how that matches up with model forecasts here.

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This is another series of facts that call into serious question the greenhouse models and theory. See story here.

By Chris Moody, Daily Caller

Speaker John Boehner that Congress should “be looking into” quelling subsidies for oil and gas companies, President Obama sent a letter to House and Senate leaders urging them to pass his proposal to end tax credits for oil companies and transfer them to other companies that produce energy through other means.

“I am writing to urge you to take immediate action to eliminate unwarranted tax breaks for the oil and gas industry, and to use those dollars to invest in clean energy to reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” Obama said in a letter addressed to Boehner, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

In an interview with ABC News this week, Boehner said that oil and gas companies will “pay their fair share in taxes and they should,” adding that subsidies for oil companies are “certainly something that we oughta be looking at.”

Boehner’s spokesman said in reaction to Obama’s letter that the president�s proposal would do nothing to lower gas prices, suggesting Republicans would not take up the measure.

“The Speaker wants to increase the supply of American energy and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and he is only interested in reforms that actually lower energy costs and create American jobs,” said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel. “Unfortunately, what the President has suggested so far would simply raise taxes and increase the price at the pump.”

Daniel Kish, senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research, an oil industry think tank, said Obama has long supported policies that would increase the price of oil, including limits on oil production in the United States, and is now pointing fingers at the oil companies for high gas prices.

“Now that his plan is bearing expensive fruit Americans don’t like, his attempt to shift blame away from his actions is pathetically akin to what we would expect from Hugo Chavez or some other third world populist.  His chickens are coming home to roost,” Kish said.

In the past, Congress has not shown much interest in Obama’s call to transfer the subsidies. The president’s budget proposals for the past two years have called for removing the subsidies for oil companies, but the proposals never made it through Congress. The Senate last year defeated a measure shortly after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that would effectively end all tax breaks and subsidies now being targeted by the White House.

Citing last year’s vote, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment, also suggested that Obama’s initiative was unlikely obtain the votes needed to pass through Congress.

“My bet is this won’t happen,” he said.

While in the Senate, even Obama voted for an energy bill in 2005 that extended the 14.6 billion in subsidies and tax breaks for oil and gas companies. The bill passed the Senate 74-26. Read story and comments here.

See this Trading on Thin Air story on HULU on the scam that Cap and Trade/Tax is.

By Bob Carter, David Evans, Stewart Franks, Bill Kininmonth & Des Moore

Government misadvised on global warming

On November 10 last year, the government’s Multi-party Climate Change Committee (MCCC) received a summary of the state of global warming science from its sole scientist member, ANU’s Professor Will Steffen. (see Powerpoint presentation here).

All policy discussion conducted within the committee since has been predicated upon the accuracy of Professor Steffen’s advice, which was that a high risk of human-related dangerous warming exists and that urgent steps need to be taken to curtail carbon dioxide emissions.

In a more recent speech last week, Climate Minister Combet indicated his continuing reliance upon the views of Professor Steffen, who had advised him that:

there is 100% certainty that the earth is warming, and that there is a very high level of certainty it will continue to warm unless efforts are made to reduce the levels of carbon pollution being sent into the atmosphere.

By quoting just this one statement acceptingly, the Minister encapsulates the ignorance of the government to the underlying science of climate change, which has long since moved on from the alarmist global warming simplicities of the IPCC and its Australian cheer leaders.

Politically committed to introducing a new carbon dioxide tax, the government campaign to condition public acceptance of it has moved into overdrive over the last few months. Steps taken since the election include the establishment of a parliamentary Multi-Party Climate Change Committee, a Climate Commission chaired by Professor Tim Flannery and an address at the National Press Club by Climate Minister Combet.

These and other conduits of government influence are transmitting messages based on the same unaudited, partial IPCC advice that has dominated global warming politics worldwide for the last 10 years.

Yet the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an unelected, unaccountable (to Australian citizens) United Nations body made up of government officials, and its reports on climate change are authored by persons selected by the IPCC and supported by their respective governments.

There has never been a comprehensive independent scientific review of any IPCC report by a member government or by an official audit body. Nonetheless, the following five events, drawn from a much larger group of happenings, have demonstrated to all the political nature of the IPCC and its scientific advisers, and greatly damaged the credibility of the organisation as a source of accurate policy advice on climate change:

In December, 2008, 103 scientists, including 24 Emeritus Professors, wrote to the Secretary General of the United Nations about what they saw as the unsubstantiated, alarmist projections of warming by the IPCC, concluding that the “approach of curbing CO2 emissions is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it - because attempts to drastically cut CO2 emissions will seriously slow development”.

In November, 2009, the leaking of the “Climategate” papers drew public attention to the malfeasant way in which scientists at the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, undertook their research on the IPCC’s global temperature record;

During 2010, a group of more than 40 Fellows of the Royal Society of London insisted on a revision of the Society’s (formerly alarmist) statement on global warming; the revised document acknowledged, inter alia, that “It is not possible to determine exactly how much the Earth will warm or exactly how the climate will change in the future”.

In February this year, 36 leading US scientists wrote an open-letter to Congress in which they disagreed with the IPCC’s conclusions, citing 678 peer-reviewed references in support; and

Also this year, a large group of members of the American Physics Society described the IPCC account of climate change as an “international fraud, the largest we have ever seen”.

It is clear, therefore, that large groups of highly qualified, professional persons exist who reject both the IPCC�s dangerous global warming paradigm, and also the need for government action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

In the absence of an official audit of IPCC science, in 2009 the four scientists among us were asked by Senator Steve Fielding to help him in his discussions with then Climate Minister Penny Wong over emissions trading legislation. Like her successor, Minister Wong turned to Professor Steffen for advice, which written advice we then audited for Senator Fielding (see PDF here).

Over the last few weeks, we have produced similar due diligence reports on the Geelong meeting of the Climate Commission, the Labor Party’s internal strategy document on climate change, a letter written by Minister Combet in response to a request for information as to the cost of AGW policy, Mr Combet’s policy address at the Press Club, and Professor Steffen’s November, 2010, advice to the MCCC (see powerpoint here or pdf here).

An accrued listing of these reports, with web links, is available here.

Having considered carefully all the arguments put forward by the government and its scientific advisors, we conclude:

(i) that there is no proven threat of dangerous warming of human origin,

(ii) that costly attempts to cut Australian carbon dioxide emissions will cause no change in future climate, and

(iii) that to the considerable degree that the science of climate change remains uncertain, the appropriate policy setting should be one of preparation for and adaptation to all climate events and hazards as they occur.

Despite the ready public availability of our reports, and of similar analyses by other independent scientists that also demonstrate there is no justification for continued alarm about global warming, neither the government nor its scientific advisors have offered answers to the criticisms presented. Meanwhile, the MCCC continues on its stately way, its members making major public policy decisions awhile that are based upon patently flawed and inadequate scientific advice.

Good public policy is seldom formulated on the back of determined ignorance, accompanied by an ostrich-like refusal to participate in rational public discussion.

Authors:

Bob Carter is a geologist, David Evans a mathematician and computer modeller, Stewart Franks a hydrologist and engineer, Bill Kininmonth a meteorologist and former Director of the National Climate Centre, and Des Moore a former Deputy Secretary of Treasury.

See the only legitimate Australian science community’s due diligence responses to Steffen and his band of psuedo-scientists and opportunist ideologs here.

By Joseph D’Aleo, Fosters, Sunday, April 24, 2011

The State Senate is considering a bill (HB 519) that passed the House, which pulls the state of New Hampshire out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) - the Northeast’s own version of “Cap and Trade.” Our senators should support this bill and get this state out of the program.

Participation in this plan over the past several years has cost family households in the state millions of dollars in higher electricity bills. The argument to justify this “tax” is that it funds “green energy” projects that will create jobs here in the state.

This is one of the biggest canards used to make people feel better about paying higher taxes and letting the government spend their money. Every program that big government supporters propose these days is put in the context of saving or creating jobs. This is the same language the Democrats used to get the stimulus bill passed which didn’t really impact the unemployment rate, but did result in huge deficits and debts. So what kind of job creation comes about when government enacts the type of “green energy” programs that RGGI funds? Fortunately there are numerous examples to look at.

One of the biggest green energy job creation programs in the world was enacted in Spain in the late 1990s. A study was performed in 2009 that looked at how well the program worked, as well as the economic impacts of Spain’s Renewable Energy program. The results should give every elected official pause before advocating for a similar program.

Some of the highlights of the study:

- Only one out of every ten “green jobs” was of a permanent nature that operated and maintained renewable energy resources. The rest were mostly temporary jobs for construction, installation, project engineering or marketing.

- The cost of each of these green jobs - both the temporary and the permanent ones - was over $750,000 per job.

- Worst of all, the study indicated that every green job created by the programs resulted in the destruction of 2.2 jobs in the private sector.

A similar study in Italy came up with a conclusion that 4.8 private sector jobs were destroyed to create each green job in that country. Like the Spanish program, each green job cost between $700,000 and $1.7 million.

We should not be surprised by these results. This is yet another example of government-imposed tax proceeds given to bureaucrats to pick winners and losers in an industry that is not economically viable on its own. In order to subsidize the “job creation” they have to take money out of the private sector. That is money which could have created jobs at a manufacturer, a hospital or numerous other industries. The result is insanely expensive job subsidies that provide little economic value while destroying jobs in the private sector. Why would we want to keep this type of program alive in New Hampshire?

Yes, each of us only pays a small amount to fund these programs, but this is no different from the programs that have failed in other places. What is worse is that some states have redirected the RGGI funds to help balance their budgets - which was one of the concerns opponents of RGGI raised in the first place. So in addition to keeping job-destroying subsidized industries afloat, the government can raid the fund for general operations.

What reasons are left to keep this state in RGGI? Supporters of the program can’t argue that it is to create green jobs. Numerous studies have debunked that notion. There is a tendency of the government to raid the funds as well, so that is another strike against it.

Of course, the other argument to continue RGGI is the idea that regulating CO2 will help combat global warming. This space doesn’t allow for a comprehensive discussion on the science, but let me show the readers some information in which they may not be aware.

There is no question that atmospheric CO2 levels have risen over the last century but it’s clear that temperatures in this state have not changed significantly over that time. In New Hampshire, temperatures have exhibited cyclical changes over the past 80 years, but without any significant warming (graph source NOAA NCDC).

Global Warming appears to be passing New Hampshire by, and if you look at data from other regions you will find similar trends.

I encourage our state senators to look at the studies and understand the data as they consider the bill to repeal RGGI. If similar programs like RGGI are destroying jobs to grossly subsidize the few permanent “green jobs” they create, if the environmental benefits of RGGI are speculative at best, and all we are doing is creating a pot of money for the state to raid - then there should be no doubt that the state should get out of RGGI now.

Joseph D’Aleo was the first Director of Meteorology at the Weather Channel and has over 30 years experience in professional meteorology. Mr. D’Aleo is a long time resident of Hudson.

See Ric Werme’s site on RGGI here. Here is a copy of my submitted senate testimony with links.

Global warming is a myth perpetrated by scientists and politicians with a vested interest, claimed an Arctic explorer presenting in Fort Smith last week.

Laurie Dexter, a former Anglican minister in Fort Smith who has hiked to the North Pole and now works on eco-tourism trips around the Arctic, said his personal experience has shown him that Arctic sea ice is not melting nearly as fast as many scientists and world leaders claim.

Dexter told an audience at Aurora College’s Thebacha Campus that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a result of global temperatures, not a cause.

He said scientific data on how carbon in the atmosphere relates to temperature has been skewed by scientists who profit from global warming, and repeated by world leaders using global warming for political gain.

“There is an industry of global warming,” Dexter said. “There has been a deliberate deception.”

Arctic explorer Laurie Dexter says the plight of polar bears has been greatly exaggerated, as has man-made climate change, by people with a vested interest in the ‘global warming industry’.

“The World Wildlife Fund is one of the most dishonest organizations,” Dexter said. “This is the first time in history a species has been declared endangered when its population is so high.”

http://srj.ca/

From Politico’s “Morning Energy”:

TOTAL RECALL - If environmentalists are going to get results in their push for clean energy, they need to pipe down about climate change and speak up about national security and job creation, Arnold Schwarzenegger told college energy clubs on a recent conference call [with Energy Secretary Steven Chu].

Er, that’s not even selective memory. More like amnesia. I understand the part about running from your Plan A—after all, this very marching order first came from pollster Stanley Greenberg and led to John Kerry saying of his cap-and-trade bill “This is not an environment bill” (oddly, it amended the Clean Air Act, granted power to EPA, mentions �environment’ 97 times, ‘climate’ 220 times, ‘greenhouse’ 650 more times...but, hey, the pollster said say something else!).

But the Secretary and Governator are also forgetting that the damage these policies wreak has been specifically, thoroughly and professionally exposed as regards the very countries Obama used to tell us to look because they were his models ( Spain, Denmark, Germany; the sole exception not receiving the full review is Japan).

He no longer cites them, obviously due to said expos�s, but he still pushes the costly schemes (he knows, and cares not. That is disturbing).

Now they’re going to say ‘China!’. Which was not their first choice, but fifth, for a reason: to compare us with them is absurd.

And so about that ‘security’ thing.

Recall the recent ‘gathering storm’ (yes, Germans actually wrote that) and ‘it gets dark in Germany’ headlines. Now those headlines are popping up here, and for the same reason. Consider Climate Wire today (subscription required):

“RENEWABLE ENERGY: Fickle winds, intermittent sunshine start to stress U.S. power system”.

Keep that one handy for in the event O repeats his German example, which he seems to be holding on to in reserve, having whipped it out when he though no one was listening (in a Saturday radio address in December), but has otherwise avoided after Spain, Denmark and Germany were exposed. Such praise went the way praise for transport model, China, may now go (thanks to WaPo!)...though, as with renewables, the rail agenda itself will surely hang on, with only the rhetorical hints about where to look for how the story ends abandoned.

More on the importance of WaPo debunking the ‘China’s doing it!’ TP on high-speed rail later. But do bear in mind the relevance of one story to the other. The truth is that the president, like the movement he represents, opposes automobility and abundant energy because both liberate you. Just as George Will wrote about why liberals love trains, freedom of movement like abundant energy is “subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends [and . . .] encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.”

As regards their ‘say anything’ approach to create the world they seek to create, just remember as Mr. Alinsky taught them, the issue isn’t the issue. The reason (excuse) for doing what they demand is always changing, and this is because ere is no good reason for doing it. But if they told you what they really longed for it would be a non-starter. Which, in itself, is reason enough to stop this madness now.

A shadowy lobby group which pushes the case that global warming is a real threat is being funded by the taxpayer and assisted by the BBC.

The little-known not-for-profit company works behind the scenes at international conferences to further its aims. One of its key supporters headed the official investigation into the so-called “Climategate emails”, producing a report which cleared experts of deliberately attempting to skew scientific results to confirm that global warming was a real threat.

Another scientific expert linked to the group came forward to praise a second independent investigation into the Climategate affair which also exonerated researchers.

Set up with the backing of Tony Blair, then the Prime Minister, and run by a group of British MPs and peers the organisation, Globe International, started life as an All Party Group based in the House of Commons. It is now run as an international climate change lobbying group flying its supporters and experts club class to international summits to push its agenda. Last year, it said, it spent around 500,000 pounds flying its supporters to these meetings.

It has also paid out at least 75,000 pounds on travel for prominent UK politicians, including for its former presidents Elliot Morley, the ex-Labour environment minister now facing jail for expenses fraud, and Stephen Byers, the former Labour cabinet minister who was suspended from the Commons after he was filmed describing himself a “cab for hire” when offering to lobby his parliamentary contacts for cash.

Now Globe is planning a mass lobby of the United Nations Rio 2012 summit in Brazil, where world leaders will discuss climate change, by holding a World Summit of Legislators in the city to coincided with the event.

Next week the group’s current President Lord Deben, the former Tory Cabinet Minister John Gummer, is due to launch a major report on climate change policy alongside Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary.

Globe has also recently held behind-closed-doors meetings with William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, and other senior Coalition ministers.

Last year two prominent experts linked to Globe were drawn into the controversy over emails leaked from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit.

Lord Oxburgh, the organisation’s director, was called in to head an internal inquiry into the leaked emails which included one infamous message referring to a “trick” to “hide the decline” in global temperatures. The peer’s investigation cleared the scientists of malpractice. But critics claimed the report was a whitewash and Lord Oxburgh also failed to declare his involvement with Globe before he began his investigation.

Meanwhile Bob Ward, from the Grantham Institute, which works alongside Globe, praised a second inquiry by former civil servant Muir Russell, which also cleared the climate researchers. He said it had “lifted the cloud of suspicion” and demonstrated that “the integrity of climate science is intact.”

Globe International’s work is paid for with donations from multi-millionaire backers and through partnerships with other environmental groups. Globe also confirmed last night that it received direct funding from the Department of Energy and the Department of International Development (DfID). including a grant of 91,240 pounds provided by DfID since the Coalition came to power last year.

More cash from DfID is filtered through the Complus Alliance - a “sustainable development communications alliance” of broadcasters based in Costa Rica which is also supported by the BBC World Service Trust, the Corporation’s independent charity. Complus, which was awarded DfID cash last year and in 2006, says it has an “ongoing relationship with Globe” helping it run “shadow negotiation” teams at international summits of world leaders. A spokeswoman for Complus said: “The BBC is a founding member not a funding member. They can make in-kind contributions, like organising events, supporting logistics, sharing content.” She added that Complus did not fund Globe but work with them on “convergent objectives”.

Last night a DfID spokesman confirmed the department had given Complus 250,000 pounds in total to provide research, advocacy and communications work on the impact of climate change.
The spokesman said: ‘These contributions were awarded under the previous Government. The current Government has not given them any funding. ‘We only support projects that meet our strict conditions of delivering value for money and can prove their ability to reduce global poverty.’

The BBC trust’s money is drawn from the 15.2 million-a-year it gets from the Foreign Office and DFID and �800,000 from licence payers. The BBC charity failed to respond to questions about its relationship with the project and how much this involvement was costing. The Zoological Society of London, the world famous charity behind London Zoo, also provides Globe with scientific advice “providing high level input” from its top conservationists and zoologists. Globe said it paid ZSL for its expertise.

Last night Globe’s general secretary Adam Matthews said: “Globe is not a lobbying organisation. It is an international group of legislators. It was set up by the legislators themselves. “We facilitate them coming together to discuss environmental issues. Our members have multiple views - some quite sceptical on some aspects of the climate change debate.” “We are funded by the World Bank, the EU, international parliaments and Governments, including the UK Government. The coalition Government contributes to our work through DFID.”

Lord Deben declares his work for Globe as a “non-financial interest” to the House of Lords. He is also yet to declare any foreign travel funded by the organisation, although Globe confirmed last night that it had contributed to his travel and accommodation costs in the role. Lord Deben also runs an environmental consultancy company, Sandcroft International, which declared a turnover of almost 2 million in its last accounts. He is also chairman of Forewind, which has won the rights to build a controversial offshore wind farm in the North Sea off the Yorkshire coast.

Among Globe’s principle backers are a charity set up by the Swedish multi-millionaire Niklas Zennstrom, founder of the internet phone service Skype, and British-born wealth fund manager Jeremy Grantham, whose personal clients include Dick Cheney and John Kerry. Mr Grantham bankrolls the Grantham Institute at the LSE, which works alongside Globe. He believes “weather instability” is the world’s biggest “investment problem” and his $107 billion fund pushes alternative assets including a massive portfolio of forestry.

Pioneer Press

It is axiomatic that in any New York Times story about any aspect of the weather, it is only a matter of time before the reporter - they appear to be operating from a set of instructions - inserts the required admonition about global warming, which is now more frequently called climate change and might soon return to being called global cooling.

I mention the New York Times only because it is so reliably predictable.

In any event, there was another example Tuesday, when the Times reported that the tornado season seems to be intensifying, but no one seems to know why. I knew that by being patient, I would reach the big bugaboo, and I did: “Though climate scientists believe climate change will contribute to increasingly severe weather, including hurricanes and thunderstorms, there is little consensus about it how may affect tornadoes.’’

But the sentence clearly implies that it will, it being subsection C of paragraph 2B of the template, which states, “in any story about the weather, an effort must be made to introduce the idea that climate change is responsible for any and all weather events.’’

The same story quoted Howard Bluestein, a meteorology professor at the University of Oklahoma, who said a tough month of tornadoes “isn’t a sign that the world is about to end.’’

And another fellow, Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service, in accounting for an increase in reporting such a strong outbreak of tornadoes in April, said, “We seem to know about every single tree branch knocked down. We have eyes everywhere, and we have radar and satellite. It would be very difficult for a tornado to sneak through unnoticed.’’

Bingo.

Carbin appears to get it.

Let’s put it another way. Tornadoes are appearing in places where people did not used to be. How do we know how many tornadoes used to race across empty landscapes? But now that there are housing developments in those once-empty landscapes, it certainly stands to reason we will hear about them and see them, too, because everybody captures everything these days on cellphones.

In May 2008, a twister took out much of a development in Hugo, a new development west of Highway 61, not the old hamlet of Hugo, east of Highway 61. It was a dreadful event, harmful and frightening. It did not occur to me, or possibly even to scientists, that what is called climate change might have been responsible for that tornado. No, it was late spring, tornado season, and here came one barreling down on a cluster of homes that hadn’t been there 10 years previously, maybe even five years previously.

I am probably not alone when I am driving on the interstate and see a gathering of new homes on a yonder rural hill and think to myself, “Tornado targets.’’

There are more of us now, more of us living where we didn’t used to live, and the tornado doesn’t care that we have just built new homes, and a playground, and a ball field and a new school.

In the spring of 1958, I was driving around the north side of White Bear Lake when I saw what I now know to be a funnel cloud. It was over the White Bear Yacht Club golf course. I said to my dad, “Hey, what’s that?’’

He peered over me out the passenger window and said, “Judas Priest!’’

And floored it to get safely away. When we got around the lake, there were people standing out in their yards with binoculars to watch that big funnel turn darker and darker, gaining momentum. It took out some barns and maybe some animals.

When that happens again, as it did in that neck of the woods in 2008, it will take out more than barns and animals, because we are living where we didn’t used to live and the tornado does not take that into consideration.

"For those of you who are confused [about global warming], you’re forgiven. It’s my fault.”

So hysterically said retired Minneapolis anchorman Don Shelby during a speech at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, Tuesday:

After spending 32 years in front of the camera as an anchorman and investigative reporter for WCCO-TV in Minneapolis, Don Shelby wanted to apologize to people about climate change. [...]

Shelby was speaking at the University of Minnesota Duluth on Tuesday on what he called “The most important story since journalism began - global climate change.” His speech served as the kick-off for a two-day sustainability fair sponsored by UMD’s Office of Sustainability.

The TV newsman�s mea culpa about having misreported climate change came after of years of treating the story the same as he would any other, requiring the views of two opposing parties, Shelby told the packed lecture hall of the chemistry building.

But, he said, climate change is not a pro or con issue; it’s a scientific fact. And journalists who work to “balance” a story present an inaccurate picture when they give equal weight to sources promulgating inaccurate facts.

“If I report a story on abuse of children, I don’t go out and interview an abuser on the up-side of child abuse,” he said as an example of how an effort to balance can go too far.

Yes, global temperatures rising by about one degree Celsius in the past 160 years as we came out of a solar minimum, radically increased the population, and replaced grasslands and forests with cities, skyscrapers, concrete and asphalt is akin to abusing a child.

There’s therefore only one side to the story as to why the planet got hotter, and reporting the other far more logical one is like letting a child-abuser explain why beating kids is okay.

This is what passes as critical thinking in journalism today. And this man was speaking to a group of college students filling their minds with the same lack of objectivity.

Scarier still, for 32 years Shelby reported to the citizens of Minneapolis and St. Paul on television and radio. Makes you wonder what other biases the Emmy Award-winning “newsman” has been sharing all those years if he’s willing to stand up in front of an audience and claim he was misrepresenting this issue.

Having never lived in Minnesota and therefore not the slightest bit familiar with Shelby, I have no idea what his political leanings are beyond this bizarre mea culpa concerning global warming.

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Last hope for alarmists: “an extreme climatic event like a national draught”

An “extreme climatic event” William K. Reilly is looking forward to?

Climate change alarmists are getting desperate these days. Global warming has almost disappeared from the political agenda, and ordinary citizens have lost interest in the scaremongering propaganda offered by the warmists. The republican alarmist (yes there is one), former EPA chief William K. Reilly does not find many reasons for optimism, but in the interview published by German Der Spiegel he clings to one last hope:

“American politics can turn on a dime,” he says. “If our economy woes become smaller and we then face an extreme climatic event like a national draught, things might change.”

Read the entire interview here.

PS
One wonders what kind of persons Reilly and his likes really are? To openly hope for a national disaster in order to promote (bogus) climate change policy is both immoral and contemptible.  H/T Marc Morano

Hank Campbell

You might think that those who are skeptical (or downright intransigent) on a CO2 basis for global warming are bigger wasters of energy or greater polluters than those who accept climate science.

Not so.  Skeptics are just as green.  Their reasons may simply be different.

In 2008, Ed Maibach and colleagues did a survey (Who’s ‘Greener’, Democrats Or Republicans?) and found that percentages of people concerned about our climate future to varying degrees were about what you would expect; on the fringes were outright deniers that pollution could be bad on one side and on the other side were people who believe anything advocacy groups like Union of Concerned Scientists tell them.  In the middle were varying levels of skepticism and acceptance and that has likely gone up and down as issues like ClimateGate (and UN claims about 50 million people in a global warming Exodus by 2010) came to the fore or new studies showing melting ice came around.

So why wouldn’t skeptics be less environmentally considerate?  As discussed in Were Republicans Smart All Along? They Accept Climate Change But Not Global Warming disbelieving a CO2 basis for global warming does not mean lack of concern about the environment, it’s more that climate scientists and journalists chose to become cheerleaders for global warming - and that was never going to win hearts and minds when it came to good policy decisions.  Skeptics still care, they just aren’t convinced the other side is caring about the right thing.

Stephanie Pappas at LiveScience recently caught up with Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale University Project on Climate Change, who helped with the 2008 survey, and he noted all of the groups, from outright skeptics to true believers, conserved energy at the same rates.

“The dismissive are conserving energy and saving energy as much as anyone else,” Leiserowitz told LiveScience.  “It’s about thrift, conservation.  These are core American values.”

Why?  To some, conserving energy is saving money, to some, it is dislike of OPEC dictators who control much of the oil supply.  It doesn’t matter why, the fact is they do it.  Insisting that people not only act the right way but truly believe is religion, not public policy, so doing the right thing is good enough.

Environmental advocacy groups have shrilly insisted they are being outspent and that is why they have lost ground publicly.  That was never true, not even close, but it brought in donations because activists wanted to believe it, much like they want to believe they’re the only ones who conserve energy or care about nature.  Matthew Nisbet, associate professor of communication at American University in Washington DC but more famous here for his staunch advocacy of framing science (cynical opposition to our belief that people out there are smart, they just don’t like being deceived or manipulated) did a study and showed that not only were advocacy groups not outspent, even the more generous agreement to accept environmental group statements for how much they spent on global warming ad campaigns was well beyond what detractors were able to mobilize.

Instead of lamenting a money cause for skepticism, the onus is back on climate science to rein in silly kooks who think they are trying to help and become trusted guides for the public once again.  But, no, the commentary on Nisbet’s work from the usual suspects is that it wasn’t peer-reviewed (it’s an analysis of money spent - yet the Himalayas are melting passed IPCC ‘peer review’ just fine, even though it was a comment from a magazine article printed as fact) while Joseph Romm of ClimateProgress.org panics and claims opponents of climate legislation outspent environmentalists 8 to 1 and thinks that because other true believers also don’t like Nisbet’s analysis it must be flawed.  Logical fallacies make lousy science.

I’m not a big fan of his framing stance but Nisbet is right on this one.  Because climate change is an issue that impacts all of us, it has to be acted on by all of us.  So why people use less energy or tackle charge is basically irrelevant - stopping terrorism, saving money, caring about Sierra Club - what is important is that they do.

Enlarged.

Dr. Jim’s 1988 projections weren’t looking so good, so he dropped an apple in the middle of his oranges. The red line is land only temperatures, but his projections were for global temperatures.

Let’s remove the inappropriate data and update it for 2011 so far.

Enlarged.

Not looking too good, even with their frantic pink crayon.

Enlarged.

Remarkable how Dr. Jim has managed to keep declining temperatures moving up through this millennium.

Enlarged.

Enlarged.

In climate science if you don’t like the data, you simply switch to a different type of data.

Sydney Morning Herald columnist Elizabeth Farrelly sighs for the virtue of a communist dictatorship, which, unike Australia, needs not pander to the 80 per cent of the population which has an IQ of just 80 and resists virtuous causes such as global warming:

Whether non-democracies such as China will negotiate the rapids of the coming century more adroitly remains to be seen. Certainly, freed from any need to pander to the 80/80 rule, they have at least one freedom Western-style democracies do not have – the freedom to act decisively.

Farrelly of course imagines herself in the 20 per cent of the intellectual elite, and thus born to dictate.

UPDATE

Farrelly joins other warmists in regretting the freedom of other citizens to disagree with them.

Here’s former Greens candidate Professor Clive Hamilton:

(T)he implications of 3C, let alone 4C or 5C, are so horrible that we look to any possible scenario to head it off, including the canvassing of “emergency” responses such as the suspension of democratic processes.

Here’s Emeritus Professor David Shearman, an IPCC assessor and honorary secretary of Doctors for the Environment Australia:

Government in the future will be based upon . . . a supreme office of the biosphere. The office will comprise specially trained philosopher/ecologists. These guardians will either rule themselves or advise an authoritarian government of policies based on their ecological training and philosophical sensitivities. These guardians will be specially trained for the task.

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A catalog of the collected papers from SPPI has just been updated through February 2011 and posted on our website. Papers cover many aspects of the energy/environment and science/policy arena. Click on the PDF file to open the catalog, and then click on the link to any particular paper to open its PDF for reading or printing. Many of the papers have a Summary for Policy Makers, convenient for highly busy readers.

The sets of papers once called “BlogWatch” , “ScareWatch” and “Commentary and Essays” have been replaced with postings at the SPPI Blog. The SPPI Blog has a pretty good search engines for key words.

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See John Coleman’s excellent video summary ”There is NO Significant Global Warming” on KUSI Coleman’s corner. No one communicates better to the public.

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See Dr. Doug Hoyt’s Greenhouse Scorecard on Warwick Hughes site here.

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From Jack Black’s Climate Change Dictionary

PEER REVIEW: The act of banding together a group of like-minded academics with a funding conflict of interest, for the purpose of squeezing out any research voices that threaten the multi-million dollar government grant gravy train.

SETTLED SCIENCE: Betrayal of the scientific method for politics or money or both.

DENIER: Anyone who suspects the truth.

CLIMATE CHANGE: What has been happening for billions of years, but should now be flogged to produce ‘panic for profit.’

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE: Leftist Nutcase Prize, unrelated to “Peace” in any meaningful way.

DATA, EVIDENCE: Unnecessary details. If anyone asks for this, see “DENIER,” above.

CLIMATE SCIENTIST: A person skilled in spouting obscure, scientific-sounding jargon that has the effect of deflecting requests for “DATA” by “DENIERS.’ Also skilled at affecting an aura of “Smartest Person in the Room” to buffalo gullible legislators and journalists.

JUNK SCIENCE: The use of invalid scientific evidence resulting in findings of causation which simply cannot be justified or understood from the standpoint of the current state of credible scientific or medical knowledge

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Speaking of junk science, see Lubos Motl’s excellent point by point counter to the John Cook 104 talking points document attacking the skeptical science here.

NOTE: Heartland has the presentations and powerpoints posted for the Heartland ICCC IV.  If you could not go, there is plenty to see there. Please remember the goldmine of videos and PPTs at the Heartland ICCC proceeding sites for 2008 NYC here, 2009 NYC here and 2009 DC here. Here is a PPT I gave at the Heartland Instutute ICCC Meeting in 2008 and here is the follow up in 2009. Here is an abbreviated PPT in two parts I presented at a UK conference last month: Part 1, Part 2.

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See C3 Headlines excellent collection of graphs and charts that show AGW is nonsense here.

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See Climate Theater with a collection of the best climate skeptic films and documentaries here. See additonal scientific youtubes here.

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900+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of “Man-Made” Global Warming Alarm and here a list of 1000 stories suggesting global cooling has begun.

“The above 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. These are included as references in defense of various papers. There are many more listings than just the 750 papers. Ordering of the papers is alphabetical by title except for the Hockey Stick, Cosmic Rays and Solar sections which are chronological. This list will be updated and corrected as necessary.”

See still more annotated here.

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Many more papers are catalogued at Pete’s Place here.

The science and economics of global warming are not too complicated for the average person to consider and make up his or her own mind. We urge you to do that. Go here and view some of the articles linked under “What’s New” or “A Primer on Global Warming.” Or go here and read about the new report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), which comprehensively rebuts the claims of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Go here for the sources for the factual statements in the ads.

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See the ICECAP Amazon Book store. Icecap benefits with small commission for your purchases via this link.

Also available now some items that will gore your alarmist friends (part of the proceeds go to support Icecap):

See full size display here.

And “My carbon footprints are bigger than yours and plants love me for it” items here and here

See sister sites:

WeatherBell Analytics here.

Website of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) here.

Coleman’s Corner here.

Science and Public Policy Institute here.

Intellicast Dr. Dewpoint Library here.

RedNeck Engineer Energy and Innovation here.

Weather/Climate and Health here.

The Weather Wiz here. See how they have added THE WIZ SCHOOL (UPPER LEFT) to their website. An excellent educational tool for teachers at all class levels. “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel” - Socrates (470--399 BC)