140807 Marc Morano’s Round-up August 14, 2007
UK Officially Admits Global Warming Has Stopped!
[Marc Morano statement for attribution on UK Met Office: “The UK Met Office has finally been forced to concede what the data has shown for almost a decade, global warming has officially stopped! In order to keep the alarmist media and the well financed global warming mega infrastructure from trembling about what this inconvenient data so obviously shows, the Met Office’s is now promoting more unproven dire computer model projections of the future. That is one of the ONLY bag of tricks left for the climate alarmists. They now claim “global warming will begin in earnest in 2009” because greenhouse emissions will overtake natural climate variability. Doesn’t this sound eerily similar to the 1930’s Great Depression slogan of: ‘Prosperity is just around the corner?’ The new slogan of the 21st Century ought to be: The only thing we have to fear are unproven computer model predictions of the future.” End Morano statement. (Background: A top climate expert called climate modelers akin to unlicensed “software engineers.” http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/02/28/unlicensed-engineers-part-1-by-hendrik-tennekes
A top UN scientist recently admitted climate models do not account for half the variability in nature and thus are not reliable. http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=23&Itemid=32
UK Met Office officially concedes; Global Warming has stopped!
- August 9, 2007 (UK Met Office (UK’s National Weather Service) bills itself as the “leading international research into what could happen under climate change” and it is a big proponent of man-made climate fears)
Excerpt: Natural weather variations have offset the effects of http://search.breitbart.com/q?s="global+warming"&sid=breitbart.com
for the past couple of years and will continue to keep temperatures flat through 2008, a study released Thursday said. But global warming will begin in earnest in 2009, and a couple of the years between 2009 and 2014 will eclipse 1998, the warmest year on record to date, in the heat stakes, British meteorologists said. Existing global climate computer models tend to underestimate the effects of http://search.breitbart.com/q?s="natural+forces"&sid=breitbart.com
natural forces on climate change, so for this analysis, http://search.breitbart.com/q?s="Met+Office"&sid=breitbart.com
Met Office experts tweaked their model to better reflect the impact of weather systems such as http://search.breitbart.com/q?s="La+Nina"&sid=breitbart.com
La Nina, or fluctuations in ocean heat and circulation.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070809225722.demeczc1&show_article=1
Flashback: Paleoclimate scientist Bob Carter shows global warming stopped in 1998 (June 18, 2007)
Excerpt: First, the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this eight-year-long temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2. Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, show little if any global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent). Third, there are strong indications from solar studies that Earth's current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21920043-27197,00.html
DiCaprio: 'I was terrified' after climate talk with Gore
Excerpt: Leonardo DiCaprio says it was years ago when then-Vice President Al Gore took the time to explain to him the phenomenon of global warming and what it means for Earth. "I was terrified, "DiCaprio said. "I think I was terrified, like anyone would be. And I didn't quite understand the connection that we had as human beings and the fact that we could literally alter our climate in that way." Now the 32-year-old actor, whose career skyrocketed even as the on-screen Titanic sunk, is a passionate advocate for the environment and saving the planet. His documentary "The 11th Hour," set for release this week, presents an argument that says, in a nutshell, "Time is running out. You need to listen and believe it." Like his mentor Gore in "An Inconvenient Truth," DiCaprio acts as an investigator presenting the ideas of 54 scientists and analysts. One of them says, "Not only is it the 11th hour, it's 11:59 and 59 seconds." Another, Kenny Ausubel, founder of the Bioneers Network, says in the documentary, "No civilization that has exceeded its ecological limits has ever recovered from that." "What is it, over 90 percent of the scientific community has a consensus that mankind does have an impact on our climate? I tend to side with them," DiCaprio said. http://www.abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=3466584&page=1
DiCaprio defends lifestyle: 'I drive a hybrid car, I have solar panels'
Excerpt: "This is last moment where we can implement a lot of these changes as far as green technology is concerned," he told The Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen. "And this film deals with the fact it's up to our generation." Determined to continue the environmental wake-up call ignited by Al Gore, DiCaprio searched out experts from around the world, including Kenny Ausubel who founded the group Bioneers. Their message is clear and foreboding: the time to go green is now.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/13/earlyshow/leisure/celebspot/main3160650.shtml
Before Gore: 1922 paper: 'Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt'
Excerpt: Page 2 headline in the Nov. 2, 1922 edition of The Washington Post: "Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt." The 1922 article, obtained by Inside the Beltway, goes on to mention "great masses of ice have now been replaced by moraines of earth and stones," and "at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared."
http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20070814/NATION02/108140063
UN Scientist slams IPCC, says 'consensus' is a lie & Notes Global Warming Stopped in 1998 & S. Hemisphere cooling!
Dr. Madhav L. Khandekar retired Environment Canada scientist and was an expert IPCC reviewer in 2007:
Excerpt: Brant Boucher, in his letter "Scientific consensus" (The Hill Times, Aug. 6, 2007), seems to naively believe that the climate change science espoused in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC documents represents "scientific consensus." Nothing could be further than the truth! As one of the invited expert reviewers for the 2007 IPCC documents, I have pointed out the flawed review process used by the IPCC scientists in one of my letters (The Hill Times, May 28, 2007). I have also pointed out in my letter that an increasing number of scientists are now questioning the hypothesis of GHG-induced warming of the earth's surface and suggesting a stronger impact of solar variability and large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns on the observed temperature increase than previously believed. I would further politely ask Mr. Boucher to do a simple reality check regarding the earth's temperature change. Since mid-1998, the earth's mean temperature as a whole has not increased at all, despite billions of tonnes of human-added CO2 in the earth's atmosphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, the land-area mean temperature has slowly but surely declined in the last few years. The city of Buenos Aires in Argentina received several centimetres of snowfall in early July, and the last time it snowed in Buenos Aires was in 1918! Most of Australia experienced one of its coldest months of June this year. Several other locations in the Southern Hemisphere have experienced lower temperatures in the last few years. Further, the SSTs (sea surface temperatures) over world oceans are slowly declining since mid-1998, according to a recent world-wide analysis of ocean surface temperatures. It is important to first develop an improved understanding of the earth's temperature trends and changes before committing millions (billions!) of dollars to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs). Unfortunately, the IPCC climate change documents do not provide an objective assessment of the earth's temperature trends and associated climate change.
http://www.thehilltimes.ca/html/cover_index.php?display=story&full_path=/2007/august/13/letter4/&c=1
Prominent UK physicist Freeman Dyson: Climate models are rubbish
Excerpt: British-born physicist Freeman Dyson has revealed three "heresies", two of which challenge the current scientific orthodoxy that anthropogenic carbon causes climate change."The fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated," writes Dyson in his new book Many Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe, published on Wednesday. He pours scorn on "the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models". "I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry, and the biology of fields and farms and forests," writes Dyson. Biomass holds the key to carbon, he writes - leaving us to infer that he thinks the human contribution is negligible. Overall, Dyson issues a plea for more scientific research into the behaviour of the planet's biomass. "Many of the basic processes of planetary ecology are poorly understood. They must be better understood before we can reach an accurate diagnosis of the present condition of our planet," he says. "We do not know whether intelligent land management could increase the growth of the topsoil reservoir by four billion tons of carbon per year, the amount needed to stop the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. All we can say for sure is that this is a theoretical possibility and ought to be seriously explored." That's the first heresy - and it's not the first time he's made it. For several years, Dyson has argued that the carbon religion is self-indulgent, when there are more urgent, fixable problems to face.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/14/freeman_dyson_climate_heresies/
Freeman Dyson joins Global Warming skeptics
Excerpt: Professor Freeman Dyson enjoys an awesome reputation in theoretical physics. He works at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, Albert Einstein's old stamping grounds. It is therefore a landmark event when Dyson fiercely denounces the Global Warming mess. Freeman Dyson takes no prisoners. Dyson on climate models: They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models."
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/08/freeman_dyson_joins_globwarm_s.html
Red faces at NASA over climate-change blunder
– 1934 Now Hottest year in U.S. History, Not 1998 [Note: 80% of human caused CO2 emissions occurred after 1940]
Excerpt: In the United States, the calendar year 1998 ranked as the hottest of them all – until someone checked the math. After a Toronto skeptic tipped NASA this month to one flaw in its climate calculations, the U.S. agency ordered a full data review. Days later, it put out a revised list of all-time hottest years. The Dust Bowl year of 1934 now ranks as hottest ever in the U.S. – not 1998. More significantly, the agency reduced the mean U.S. "temperature anomalies" for the years 2000 to 2006 by 0.15 degrees Celsius. < > Puzzled by a bizarre "jump" in the U.S. anomalies from 1999 to 2000, McIntyre discovered the data after 1999 wasn't being fractionally adjusted to allow for the times of day that readings were taken or the locations of the monitoring stations. McIntyre emailed his finding to NASA's Goddard Institute, triggering the data review. "They moved pretty fast on this," McIntyre said. "There must have been some long faces."
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/246027
NASA Scientist James Hansen Dismisses mistake making 1934 now hottest in U.S. history
Excerpt: Hansen wrote: No need to read further unless you are interested in temperature changes to a tenth of a degree over the U.S. and a thousandth of a degree over the world.< > My apologies if the quick response that I sent to Andy Revkin and several other journalists, including the suggestion that it was a tempest inside somebody's teapot dome, and that perhaps a light was not on upstairs, was immoderate. It was not ad hominem, though. Jim (Hansen) <> McIntyre posted a lengthy response. One paragraph of that response was particularly interesting: I haven't seen the original letter and don't know who the comment was about. However, it certainly sounds like an ad hominem remark and one that is highly inappropriate for a federal civil servant. I have a number of comments about other aspects of the letter.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/345876/nasa_scientist_james_hansen_places.html
James Hansen not concerned with Temp Station violations
Excerpt: I asked Hansen by e-mail last week “How important is the data from these (1,221 ground) weather stations in your climate modeling?” “It has no effect on modeling,” Hansen replied. “Of course we compare modeling results with observed temperatures. But the observational analysis is based mainly on measurements at places remote from human influence. “The large observed warming’s are in remote regions, e.g., the Arctic, Siberia, Canada -- the warming is clearly real, as verified in many different ways, as described in our papers. At any given station there can be significant problems, but the uncertainty in global temperature change is rather small.” I also asked Hansen if he was confident that these weather stations were "providing accurate/reliable temperature readings or readings that can be accurately tweaked/adjusted to take into account any heat-island effects or poor site placements.” “We have enough reliable stations to get a reliable temperature change for the U.S., which covers only 2 percent of the globe,” Hansen answered.
Noting that Watts has found many sites whose readings are clearly compromised, I asked Hansen if that concerned him “about the long-term reliability of the temperature readings.” “No,” Hansen's e-mail said.
http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=18E47A61-B9EC-407B-812A-A6150DDAB5C8
Profiles in Courage: 4 Aussie politicians have the guts to insist there's no proof humans are causing catastrophic climate change
Excerpt: Four Coalition MPs on Georgiou's 10-man committee rightly pointed out there was, in fact, no proof man was doing much to heat the world. Their dissenting report - written by former nuclear physicist Dennis Jensen, the only scientist on Georgiou's committee - refers to some 15 scientific papers, and quotes eight climate experts who worked with the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and deny there is a scientific "consensus" that man is baking the globe. Jensen, backed by Danna Vale, Dave Tollner and Jackie Kelly, also listed problems with man-made global-warming theory - the globe hasn't warmed since 1998; warming has been detected on four other planets with no humans to blame; Antarctica is gaining ice, not losing it; a new study found no ocean warming this century and so on. And, to be sure, Jensen had his report checked for accuracy by six climate experts, including the former head of our National Climate Centre, William Kinnimonth, and Professor Richard Lindzen, MIT's famed professor of meteorology. So how were these scientific arguments reported and rebutted? Observe. Sydney Morning Herald writer Annabel Crabb simply called one of the four MPs, Danna Vale, "daffy", and said these "aberrant" MPs acted "just as insects" to produce what was merely "a thumping vindication for those of us who have always suspected Vale is from another part of the universe". Georgiou, meanwhile, announced Jensen was wrong because 43 of the 46 submissions the committee had from activists, carpetbaggers, grants-chasers and scientists said so. (Jensen, in reply, quotes Einstein's retort to 100 writers who'd said his theory of relativity was wrong: "To defeat relativity one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact.") Even more laughably, the committee's deputy chairman, Labor's Harry Quick, dismissed Jensen's science as "a philosophical waffle". < > But Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius had advice for those - like the jeerers above - who prefer the ignorance of the many to the facts of the few: "The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22246204-5000117,00.html
New Book chronicles how scientists are starting to doubt man-made global warming
Excerpt: The crashing sounds reverberating throughout the globe aren’t solely from melting glaciers smashing into warming seas. They’re also the reverberations of scientists all over the world dropping their belief in the greenhouse gases theory of climate change.
This news — which won’t be on television or in newspaper headlines any time soon — is from the latest book by Mitch Battros, called “Global Warming—A Convenient Disguise.” In his just-published tome, Battros collects and conveys recent opinions and observations from scientists in Australia, Canada, Europe and the United States who have investigated the greenhouse gases theory of global warming and come to the same conclusion. It’s wrong. Part of the problem is that accurate measurements of changes in the Earth’s atmosphere reveal that carbon dioxide levels lag temperatures. In other words, previous climate cycles show that the world starts to heat up before CO2 levels rise, not the other way around. This negates the cause-effect relationship at the heart of the greenhouse gases theory, which argues that rises in atmospheric levels of CO2 caused by human beings burning fossil fuels have made global temperatures go up steadily, with life-threatening consequences.
http://www.northstarwriters.com/ct048.htm
USA Today: New Study cools global warming fears
(Kudos to USA Today for reporting on this!)
Excerpt: How clouds react to a warming world remains one of the great unknowns in climate change research. In fact, the http://www.ipcc.ch/
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report earlier this year noted that cloud behavior is the biggest source of physical uncertainty in climate projection. Another salvo in this debate was fired this week by http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/atmos/christy.html
John Christy and Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama-Huntsville. Their study, published in http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007GL029698.shtml
Geophysical Research Letters, found that instead of creating more clouds, their research found a decrease in the coverage of heat-trapping cirrus clouds (above). Christy and Spencer have both been outspoken in their skepticism about human influence on global climate change. "All leading climate models forecast that as the atmosphere warms there should be an increase in high- altitude cirrus clouds, which would amplify any warming caused by manmade greenhouse gases," Spencer says in a press release. "That amplification is a positive feedback. What we found in month-to-month fluctuations of the tropical climate system was a strongly negative feedback. As the tropical atmosphere warms, cirrus clouds decrease. That allows more infrared heat to escape from the atmosphere to outer space." In addition to Spencer and Christy, the paper was also authored by Alabama-Huntsville's W. Danny Braswell and Justin Hnilo of the http://www.llnl.gov/
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif.
http://blogs.usatoday.com/weather/2007/08/cloudy-forecast.html
'GOING Green' Bandwagon Stalls Among Consumers
Excerpt: "Consumers are not drinking the Kool-Aid when it comes to green," said J. Walker Smith, president of Yankelovich. "While they're highly aware of environmental issues due to the glut of media attention, the simple fact is that 'going green' in their everyday life is simply not a big concern or a high priority."
http://media.prnewswire.com/en/jsp/main.jsp?resourceid=3535093
Interview with Bjorn Lomborg author of new book: Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming (Knopf)
Excerpt: Lomborg: Right now we talk about cutting CO2 emissions, which is expensive and which quite frankly will do very little good. < > The idea that we are going to see a 20-feet sea level rise is just simply not in the cards. The UN climate panel tells us it’s going to be about a foot. There’s a huge difference in telling us the sea level rise is going to be a foot over the next 100 years or it’s going to be 20 feet. < > But of course increasing temperatures also means that fewer people will die in cold waves. And since in most parts of the world there are many more people dying from cold than from heat, we’ll actually see more people not dying from cold waves than extra people dying from heat waves. < > Perhaps it’s important to say that in a world where 15 million people die each year from easily curable infectious diseases, it seems to me that we are missing our priorities when we focus so exclusively on one problem and forget that there are many others – and many others, mind you, where we can do much more good. So it comes down to this: What do we want to be remembered as this generation’s big achievement? Do we want it to be that we did a little bit about climate change? Or do we want it to be that we did a lot about many of the other problems in the world, like HIV/AIDS, malaria, malnutrition, clean drinking water, the list goes on?
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/BillSteigerwald/2007/08/13/coolit-_interview_with_bjorn_lomborg?page=full&comments=true
Twisted Science Bullies of the Beltway
(By Dr. Michael R. Fox, nuclear scientist)
Excerpted: We have been told by Al Gore and others that there should be a grand debate about global warming. Yet there has been precious little debate worthy of the name. In fact the alarmists have spent much of their time hurling insults, ad hominem attacks, suppression of speech, termination of miniscule funding, calling for Nuremburg Trials, treating opponents as traitors, etc.
The professionals in this group remain silent about these insults in apparent silent support of the nastiness and unprofessional conduct. This is not a debate, this is not science, this is bullying. This suggests there are weaknesses in the global warming theory which can’t stand scrutiny. One explanation of this may be described by John Ray (M.A., Ph.D.), writing from Brisbane, Australia: “The Holy Grail for most scientists is not truth but research grants. And the global warming scare has produced a huge downpour of money for research. Any mystery why so many scientists claim some belief in global warming?” This is not a scientific debate, it is not even science. It is too many people, some which Ph.D.s, hardwired into the $5 billion annually spent in the US on global warming issues. This amount of government money available each year is enough to alter human behavior and personal ethics for some people. < > Mr. Gore had even contacted Ted Koppel in 1994 to look into the skeptics of global warming. It backfired when Koppel concluded “There is some irony in the fact that Vice President Gore---one of the most scientifically literate men to sit in the White House in this century——[is] resorting to political means to achieve what should ultimately be resolved on a purely scientific basis.” < > The calls for a debate on global warming are empty. There has been little debate and instead personal attacks, threats, loss of funding, calls for speech suppression, and even Nuremburg Trials. In fact Al Gore has a number of unanswered standing offers to debate the global warming issues. (http://tinyurl.com/ypzsyt
This isn’t science and it never was. It is naked power politics and very destructive and dangerous in the potential impact on the U.S. energy systems. To the extent that CO2 is the source of nearly all life on Earth, the control of CO2 would be a national nightmare. In the words of Richard Lindzen, the regulatory control of all life would be a bureaucrat’s dream. All of this needs to be understood and avoided.
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?b74defbe-8703-4e23-ae0f-7f33e5611a9a
Bad News for Science in Newsweek
Excerpt: The cover article in this week’s Newsweek is another breathless piece detailing its version of the history of climate change “deniers” and how a few groups with a paltry budget, have successfully, over the course of the past two decades, influenced the course of American politics on the issue of anthropogenic climate change. Newsweek acts appalled at this course of events. The article is basically a telling of history from a one-sided perspective, and is noticeably lacking in hard science. What little science Newsweek tries to slip in, demonstrates the bias and lack of understanding of the most basic issues and facts.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/sppi_originals/bad_news_for_science_in_newsweek.html
Scientists: Newsweek Erred in Global Warming Coverage
Excerpt: A recent Newsweek magazine cover story on global warming contained significant errors and used outdated scientific material in its representation of global climate data collected by satellites, according to the scientists who maintain that dataset at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. Dr. John Christy and Dr. Roy Spencer, who created and maintain the global temperature dataset, are available to answer questions about how instruments aboard NOAA satellites collect temperature data, and about the accuracy of that data. The most recent monthly update of global temperatures shows a warming trend of about 0.25° Fahrenheit per decade (about 0.14 C) since satellites started collecting the data in late 1978. "One of the more egregious errors in the Newsweek article is the misrepresentation of the satellite data relative to a January 2000 report from the National Academy of Sciences," said Christy, who is director of UA-Huntsville's Earth System Science Center and who participated in writing the 2000 NAS report. "That report did not 'skewer' the satellite data, as the Newsweek article contends. Instead, it found that the apparent disagreement between surface temperature records and the satellite record was not so significant as to invalidate either dataset. "There were also at least two major Newsweek errors relating to research that helped us correct an error caused by degrading orbits. < > "There has been significant research since 2000, continuing to both refine and confirm the accuracy of our satellite dataset," said Spencer, a principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center. "This research has been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and is part of the public record. It is troubling that a major news organization devoting significant resources to a story about an important environmental issue would choose to cite data from seven years ago rather than current data, and would still get it wrong."
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/532398/
Newsweek Editor Calls Mag's Global Warming 'Deniers' Article 'Highly Contrived'
-Newsweek Debunks Itself
Excerpt: Robert J. Samuelson, a contributing editor of Newsweek, slapped down his own Magazine for what he termed a "highly contrived story" about the global warming "denial machine.” Samuelson, writing in the August 20, 2007 issue of Newsweek, explains that the Magazine used "discredited" allegations in last week's issue involving a supposed cash bounty to pay skeptics to dispute global warming science and he chided the Magazine for portraying global warming as a "morality tale." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20226462/site/newsweek/page/0/
Samuelson’s article titled “Greenhouse Simplicities," also characterized the "deniers" cover story as "fundamentally misleading.""Unfortunately, self-righteous indignation can undermine good journalism. Last week's Newsweek cover story on global warming is a sobering reminder," Samuelson wrote. Who would have thought that Newsweek would debunk its own embarrassing cover story a week later in the very next issue? This kind of reversal does not happen very often in journalism. [Note: It previously took Newsweek 31 years to admit its 1970's prediction of dire global cooling was completely wrong. See October 24, 2006 article: Senator Inhofe Credited For Prompting Newsweek Admission of Error on 70's Predictions of Coming Ice Age –http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Facts&ContentRecord_id=616FD8F4-3292-44B9-BAE4-422E8C8E2DF9
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=58659aa0-802a-23ad-49d7-3d18075e69c3&Issue_id
Newsweek Editor: Our Warming Story Contrived
Excerpt: Marc Morano, communications director for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, also slammed the Newsweek cover story, as NewsMax.com reported last week. Following the publication of Samuelson’s piece, he noted: "Newsweek’s management must have realized that their global warming ‘denial’ cover story was so woeful that they were forced to run a complete rebuttal in the very next issue from one of their very own editors ... This kind of reversal does not happen very often in journalism.” Morano said a Senate report is scheduled to be released in the fall that will feature hundreds of scientists "who have spoken out recently against [Al] Gore, the U.N., and the media-driven climate ‘consensus.’”
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2007/8/13/113158.shtml?s=ic
'Green' fuel boom blamed for destroying great ape's habitat
Excerpt: As jungles are rapidly replaced by palm oil plantations, the great apes starve and are hunted, mutilated, burnt and snared by workers protecting their crops.At a rehabilitation centre run by the charity Borneo Orang-utan Survival, there are more than 600, mostly orphaned babies. Lone Nielsen, the centre's director, estimates that for each of the 227 animals they rescued last year, five more were killed in central Borneo alone.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/08/14/eaorang114.xml
Let the Poor have Water, not Ideology:
A New Paper from Alex Nash
Excerpt: This year’s World Water Week will see activists gather in Stockholm to discuss ways of getting clean water to the 1 billion people around the world who are currently without it. But, if water activists remain blinkered by ideology and continue to oppose private water provision, this goal will not be met – as explained in http://www.sdnetwork.net/files/pdf/Water_Provision_for_the_Poor.pdf
a new paper from the Sustainable Development Network. Even though private water provision sees clean and safe water delivered to millions around the world, many politicians and NGOs remain irrationally opposed to the idea that profit should be made from “essential resources” like water. According to the paper’s author, Alex Nash, a water engineer with experience of both public and private sector water projects in less-developed countries, this mindset is actively hindering universal access to water, and with it the achievement of several Millennium Development Goals. The truth is that many public utilities in less-developed countries suffer from endemic corruption and rarely deliver services equitably – even refusing to recognise and connect slum-dwellers: “The reality of many state run utilities is not pretty. Bribes, extortion, kickbacks, nepotism, patronage, shoddy technical standards; it’s all in a day’s work.” Meanwhile, it is the private sector - from individual water porters to larger companies - that fill in the gaps left by dysfunctional state utilities.
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002216.html
Breaking: Cutting Emissions May Cost U.S. Economy Up to $1.8 Trillion says new study
Excerpt: Making big cuts in emissions linked to global warming could come at considerable cost to the U.S. economy: between $400 billion and $1.8 trillion in reduced growth over the next four decades, a new study says. The study published Monday by a non-profit research group partially funded by the power industry concludes that reducing emissions of carbon dioxide -- the main greenhouse gas linked to global warming -- will require "fundamental" changes in energy production and consumption. < > The EPRI cost estimate is based on a 50 percent economy-wide cut in carbon emissions from 2010 levels by 2050. Without such a cut and the shifts in technology it would bring, the Energy Department projects that U.S. carbon emissions will rise from about 6 billion metric tons a year in 2005 to 8 billion metric tons by 2030. The report calls for more modest cuts in emissions than some proposals currently being considered in Congress. Bigger cuts could well be more expensive.
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8R07OOG0.htm
Retired teacher challenges Gore with billboard decrying climate 'hoax'
Excerpt: Oswald Czolgosz, who believes environmental activists such as Al Gore are suppressing debate about global warming, spent about $3,000 to have a dissenting perspective publicized last week. "I am just an individual citizen. I am not a member of any organization, any political party. I just like to read up on the facts and be informed and I got the feeling that my sources of information were being stifled," he said. "Finally, the other side is being heard. Consensus [about global warming] has arrived, nobody is allowed to disagree, according to Al Gore. I am pointing out there is no consensus." The billboard in the city's northeast end reads: 'Al Gore is a warm monger!; Man-made globull [sic] warming is a huge hoax!' '' < > Mr. Czolgosz, 56, purchased the ad when he tired of peers who labelled him "a denier" for questioning the cause of the greenhouse effect. "I got fed up to the point where I was making arguments and everyone was calling me an 'idiot.' The consensus is out there and you're a 'denier' if you don't agree with [environmentalists]," he said. "Every issue has two sides and the other side has a right to speak out and be heard as well and not be closed down as a denier or a neo-con. I've been called every name in the book." Mr. Czolgosz has provoked ire in the past with bumper stickers that display a message much like that found on his billboard. His car has been egged and keyed, he said. "I don't even want to tell you about fingers. I have a guy down the road who beeps and fingers and angry scowls just because someone has a different opinion." Supporters, on the other hand, have honked at him on the highway, pulling over to collect the complimentary stickers he has on offer.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=4d4e740d-238c-4bce-823e-d7ddb7bbc5a8&k=65487
Sunspots Linked To Heavy Rains In East Africa: Helps Predict Disease (not global warming)
Excerpt: The scientists showed that unusually heavy rainfalls in East Africa over the past century preceded peak sunspot activity by about one year. "The hope is that people on the ground will use this research to predict heavy rainfall events," Stager said. "Those events lead to erosion, flooding and disease. With the help of these findings, we can now say when especially rainy seasons are likely to occur, several years in advance." "These results are an important step in applying paleoclimate analyses to predicting future environmental conditions and their impacts on society," said Dave Verardo, director of the National Science Foundation's paleoclimate program, which funded the research. "It's especially important in a region [East Africa] perennially on the knife-edge of sustainability." Sunspots indicate an increase in the sun's energy output, and peak on an 11-year cycle. The next peak is expected in 2011-12. If the pattern holds, rainfall would peak the year before.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070806090345.htm
Hypocrisy Alert: LA Mayor urges water conservation despite using more than twice the amount of typical property owner
Excerpt: Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa challenged residents this summer to "change course" and slash their water use by 10% in the face of a historic drought.
But records show that the mayor and several other top city officials have long been heavy water users themselves. In Villaraigosa's case, even if he had made a 10% reduction at the two homes where he has lived since winning election in 2005, he still would have used nearly twice as much water as comparable properties in the vicinity. City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo and Councilman Tony Cardenas surpassed the mayor, using more than twice the number of gallons over the last two years as typical property owners in their parts of town. In fact, a review of Department of Water and Power documents shows that at least nine of the city's 18 elected leaders used higher than average amounts of water -- sometimes a little, other times a lot -- over the last two years. Delgadillo, the largest user, consumed 2.7 times as much water at his home near Hancock Park as similar owners in central Los Angeles -- 890,120 gallons compared to a median of 328,524, according to figures provided by the DWP. During that period, Delgadillo's water service was shut off briefly after he and his wife failed to pay their utility bill.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-water10aug10,0,5789001.story?coll=la-home-local
Newsweek Burns Truth in Global Warming Story
Excerpt: The Newsbusters website has run a fascinating story that NASA has now quietly acknowledged that it was wrong in saying that nine of the hottest 10 years in history have occurred since 1995, and that now it appears to be only three of the top 10 since 1998.
Hence, a lot of hot air is going out of the global warming argument. Newsweek, of course, cannot be expected to report any of this. It would cast doubt on the theory it is falsely promoting as fact. Similarly, NBC and its affiliated networks turned over close to 75 hours of air time to Al Gore’s Live Earth concerts, constituting a massive endorsement of one side in this debate. Where’s the Fairness Doctrine when we need it?
http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_272615348.shtml
Kayaker promoting global warming awareness shocked by rural skeptics
Excerpt: A man paddling and pulling his kayak from Brisbane to Adelaide to promote the need for action on climate change says he is disappointed with the sceptical nature of outback Australians. Steve Posselt, who is pulling his kayak along the Darling River road due to a lack of water, says that many rural people do not believe in climate change. He says he did not expect so many people to doubt what the majority of climate scientists agree on. "I've been astounded by the actual lack of belief on this trip," he said. "Many people want to argue the issue about whether there is such a thing as global warming. "You can talk to blokes in the pub and they say yep winters aren't what they used to be, they're a lot shorter. "And you say, 'well do you believe in climate change? No, mate its just a cycle'."
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/2007/s2000795.htm
Junk Science: New Science Challenges Climate Alarmists?
Excerpt: As NASA’s alarmist-in-chief James Hansen http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/abs_temp.html
admits, we have no definition of what we are trying to measure in the context of average global temperature. “For the global mean, the most trusted models produce a value of roughly 57.2 degrees Fahrenheit, but it may easily be anywhere between 56 and 58 degrees Fahrenheit and regionally, let alone locally, the situation is even worse,” says Hansen.
For a dimmer view of the concept of average global temperature, consider the
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k69HUuyI5Mk
thoughts of renowned theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson who says that average land temperature is “impossible to measure… is a fiction… nobody knows what it is… there’s no way you can measure it.” The UK researchers (and most other climate alarmists) are even wrong on the matter of 1998 being the warmest year on record – at least for the U.S. According to a new
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/new_rankings_for_warmest_years/
analysis which discovered an error in a NASA dataset, 1934 is the new warmest year on record for the U.S. In fact, four of the warmest 10 years in the U.S. date from the 1930s while only three date from the last 10 years. This is an embarrassing setback for alarmists, especially since about 80 percent of manmade carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions occurred after 1940. In the second Science study, Desert Research Institute scientists report that increased levels of industrial pollution (soot) in Arctic snow during the late-19th and early-20th centuries may have caused the warming occurring in that region at that time.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,292810,00.html
Claim: 'Cool farms' mask the extent of global warming
Excerpt: You've heard of http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19225751.900-the-word-urban-heat-island.html
urban heat islands. Now researchers have confirmed the existence of their opposite: cool farm patches. Whereas urban development generates pockets of hot air, irrigated fields tend to cool things down, they say - and there is evidence that the effects have been felt in California for over a century. In areas of intensive irrigation, such as the Central Valley in California, US, these "cool farms" have counteracted global warming, say Céline Bonfils and David Lobell of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. But they warn that a reduction in irrigation could spell the end of the relief that these regions have enjoyed. <> A rollback of the cooling effect of irrigation in the face of continued global warming could mean that California will be hit by substantial warming, say the researchers. The same is likely to be true of other regions of the world. India, Pakistan and China have become huge irrigators over the past 50 years, but the growth of irrigated areas is slowing down. This may mean that irrigated regions, which now provide about 40% of global food production, will feel more than their share of warming in the future. In turn, this will inevitably have an impact on food security.
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn12482-cool-farms-mask-the-extent-of-global-warming.html
Biofuel Boom Threatens Gummy Bears
Excerpt: A rise in crop prices is threatening to jack up prices on gummy bears and other sweets. Meanwhile, the food and beverage industry in Germany is lobbying for government subsidies for biofuel crops to be eliminated. If crops continue to be more lucrative as biofuels than foodstuffs, then gummy bears could soon become a candy only the rich can afford. DDP
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,499655,00.html
Beware of Rubber Duck Armada!
Thousands of rubber ducks to land on British shores after 15 year journey
Excerpt: They were toys destined only to bob up and down in nothing bigger than a child's bath - but so far they have floated halfway around the world. The armada of 29,000 plastic yellow ducks, blue turtles and green frogs broke free from a cargo ship 15 years ago. Since then they have travelled 17,000 miles, floating over the site where the Titanic sank, landing in Hawaii and even spending years frozen in an Arctic ice pack. And now they are heading straight for Britain. At some point this summer they are expected to be spotted on beaches in South-West England. While the ducks are undoubtedly a loss to the bath-time fun of thousands of children, their adventures at sea have proved an invaluable aid to science. The toys have helped researchers to chart the great ocean currents because when they are spotted bobbing on the waves they are much more likely to be reported to the authorities than the floats which scientists normally use. And because the toys are made of durable plastic and are sealed watertight, they have been able to survive years adrift at the mercy of the elements.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=464768&in_page_id=1770