Archive for the ‘Global Warming’ Category

‘Tipper certainly deserves better than this buffoon’

by Joe Kovacs

Al Gore’s now infamous “Bullsh–” speech is evidence the former U.S. vice president is becoming a raving lunatic, charges a meteorologist who exposes the prime disciple of so-called global warming in a brand-new book.

“He’s clearly becoming mentally unstable,” says Brian Sussman, author of “Eco-Tyranny.”Sussman, a weather expert turned journalist, cites an August 2011 speech Gore gave in Colorado to a gathering of elites at the Aspen Institute, an address that turned into a wild rant filled with repeated obscenities.

During his address, Gore claimed special interest groups “pay pseudo-scientists to pretend to be scientists to put out the message: ‘This climate thing, it’s nonsense. Man-made CO2 doesn’t trap heat. It may be volcanoes.’

“Bullsh–!”

‘It may be sun spots.’

“Bullsh–!”

‘It’s not getting warmer.’

“Bullsh–!”

“It was a gorebasm in which Al totally lost it,” Sussman said, explaining that gorebasms are Al’s pejorative statements directed toward deniers and skeptics of climate change.

“Listening to audiotape of the speech makes it abundantly evident even the Aspen audience was uncomfortable witnessing the ravings of a madman.”

In case someone had been present with a view contrary to his, Gore then intimidated the crowd, blustering:

“When you go and talk to any audience about climate, you hear them washing back at you the same crap over and over and over again. They have polluted the sh–. There’s no longer a shared reality on an issue like climate even though the very existence of our civilization is threatened. People have no idea!”

Gore continued: “It’s no longer acceptable in mixed company, meaning bipartisan company, to use the G– damn word ‘climate!’”

Based on Al’s unhinged behavior, Sussman offered some condolences for Gore’s ex-wife, saying, “My heart goes out to you,
Tipper. You certainly deserve better than this buffoon. I hope you’ve received a big cut from the divorce. And there is a lot of green – as in cash – to be divided.”

An audio clip of Gore’s obscenity-packed address can be heard here: (WARNING: Profane and obscene language is used).

Gore’s antics are not the only target in “Eco-Tyranny.” President Obama and his agenda are also of top concern.

Sussman claims the environmentalist movement isn’t about protecting the environment at all. He says it’s about destroying private property, controlling behavior, and expanding government – and the Obama administration has a secret plan to further all of it.

Sussman is now blowing the whistle on the real nature of environmentalism. He reveals secret memos from inside Obama’s Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, outlining a covert plan “to pursue a program of land consolidation” for the federal government to secure tens of millions of acres of land that will be permanently out of reach for entrepreneurs, businessmen and private citizens.

The plan, entitled “Our Vision, Our Values,” notes that 130-140 million acres under BLM management are worthy of consideration as “treasured lands.” Because ecosystems defy “jurisdictional boundaries,” the memo outlines strategies by which the federal government can “rationalize and consolidate” its fragmented landholdings in order to properly “manage-at-scale.” While an ecosystem can simply refer to a single pond or small area, it can also refer to entire geographic regions, thus giving the government an almost unlimited justification to seize private property adjacent to “treasured lands.”

Sussman exposes this is not just theoretical discussion within the White House. The Obama administration is already moving to implement this as policy without consulting Congress by issuing an executive order entitled “America’s Great Outdoors Initiative.”

The unilateral order explicitly sets as a goal “reconnecting” huge swaths of land under federal ownership, creating large “corridors” compromising millions of acres that will be unavailable for use by private citizens.

New satellite data of the Karakoram Mountains in Asia has revealed the glaciers in that area have actually been getting bigger, which would be contrary to other data of glaciers worldwide showing retreat.

New Scientist (via Gizmodo) reports that the range, which is remote and the largest in Asia next to the Himalayas, grew 11 centimeters in thickness of water per year, according to data collected from 1999 to 2008 and analyzed by Julie Gardelle of the University of Grenoble in France. New Scientist points out that by “growing” and therefore taking up more water it also prevented about 0.01 millimetres of sea level rise each year during this time.

With this data being counter-intuitive compared to that from other glaciers showing retreat, Gardelle admits the exact reason for the growth is unknown, but states she believes it’s “due to a very specific regional climate.”

The Telegraph points out this research, published in Nature Geoscience, comes at a controversial time regarding climate change in the region, as just last month it was revealed melt in the Himalayans may have been overestimated due to monitoring methods. The method used to evaluate glacier data by Gardelle et al of the Karakoram range used 3D altitude maps. The Guardian reports one scientist not involved with the study calling this method a “ground-breaking” approach:

By Alan Caruba

In 1517 Martin Luther set off the Protestant revolution against the Catholic Church that led to the spread of the then-new movement as a response to the corruption of the Church. It took time for it to establish itself as an alternative and was greatly aided by the invention of printing and spread of literacy, but mostly because ordinary people had grown weary of the Church’s extravagance, poor governance, and resistance to change.

The selling of worthless “indulgences” as a means to wipe one’s sins clean was the final straw.

Environmentalism has become a modern religion and its “cap and trade” scheme to sell worthless permission slips for the emission of so-called “greenhouse gases”—based on United Nations Kyoto Protocol calling for a reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere—is being rejected by many nations .

As it has become common knowledge that CO2 is vital to all life on Earth and plays no role in affecting the climate, ordinary people have concluded that global warming in particular and environmentalism in general is a giant fraud.

No one argues that nations should not attend to the basic maintenance of clean air and water. That iew predates the environmental movement, but the stranglehold on nation’s economies and the ability to engage in any form of commerce has reached a breaking point. The fact is, the U.S. has made great strides over the years and there are limits to how “clean” the air and water can or even should be. The EPA wanted to regulate “dust” at one point until Congress put an end to that insanity.

The lies required to maintain environmentalism and its vast matrix of laws and regulations are being publicly rejected and a recent example is a letter sent to NASA administrator by fifty present and former astronauts, scientists, and engineers who work for NASA is a seminal moment, not unlike Martin Luther’s 95 theses nailed to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg.

The NASA employee’s letter demanded that its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) “refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe that the claims of NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data.”

It should be noted that the global warming hoax can be dated to testimony by James Hansen before Congress in 1988 and he is still the GISS administrator! His apocalyptic predictions helped launch a U.S. response currently seen in the Environmental Protection Agency power-grab, based on the false CO2 claims, that will eliminate one fifth of the coal-fired plants providing electricity to a large swath of the nation and likely end the building of new comparable facilities.

On April 9th, Rasmussen Reports, a polling organization, release the results of a poll that found that 52% of likely voters “think there’s a conflict between economic growth and environmental protection, thoough 31% disagreed.” Rasmussen stated that “support for investing in fossil fuels like oil and gas is also at a new high amidst near-record gas prices and the on-going development of the Keystone XL pipeline which President Obama blocked for environmental reasons.”

The following day, April 10th, Rasmussen released results of another poll that found that 44% of likely voters “believe, generally speaking, that the EPA’s regulations and actions hurt the economy. Just 17% disagree.”
On February 21st, Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com, was published in The Washington Times in an opinion about EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s testimony before Congress writing that “Over the past three years, the Obama EPA has conducted a scorched earth campaign against fossil fuel producers and users, especially the coal-fired power industry, with multibillion-dollar rules that provide no meaningful environmental or public health benefits.”

The environmental revolution—a Communist agenda—is being resisted piece by piece by scientists and others who no longer will submit to its utterly false “science” and its UN-inspired Agenda 21 plans to impose control over all aspects of life on planet Earth. A June Rio conference will largely abandon the fear-mongering of global warming in favor of “sustainability”, a matrix of controls that will enslave the world’s population with the worst totalitarian precepts since the rise of Communism and Nazism in the last century.

Agenda21 has been at work in America for decades at this point and few have any idea what it represents. It is destroying property rights in America and that’s just for starters.
On Earth Day—April 22nd—the birthday of Vladimir Lenin, the dictator who imposed Communism on Russia in 1917, the various elements of the environmental movement will flood the world with propaganda. The connection between these two events should not be ignored.

Environmentalism should be soundly rejected and the emerging movement to overthrow it should redouble its efforts.
© Alan Caruba, 2012

“If at first you don’t succeed, double down…”
It’s no secret that by funding various “green” energy initiatives with taxpayer money, the Department of Energy (DOE) has engulfed itself in a cloud of scandal. What with the magnificent and expensive failures of Ener1, Energy Conversion Devices, Solyndra, Solar Trust, Mountain Plaza Inc., Fisker Auto, etc., etc., the DOE, under the guidance of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, has been making quite a name for itself — and not a very good one.
So rather than dial back some of its activities, cut losses, and perform a post mortem on failed taxpayer-backed projects, the DOE is rushing forward and investing $5 million into “the construction of a ‘biogas anaerobic digester’ that will use cow manure to heat an ethanol plant and create 15 permanent jobs,” the Washington Examiner’s Joel Gerhke reports.
Western Plains Energy, LLC, a Kansas company, will use the money to “utilize waste energy resources from a local cattle feedlot to replace almost 90 percent of the fossil fuels currently used” at the plant, he adds.
And although the above sentence dresses it up a little, it’s what it sounds like: the Obama administration is investing $5 million so that cow manure can be converted into energy.
“Projects such as this are a key part of the Obama Administration’s all-of-the-above approach to American energy that is supporting the development and usage of renewable energy, revitalizing rural economies and creating an America built to last,” USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement.
“Animal waste from a local feedlot will be the primary feedstock that Western Plains will use for the digester,” USDA added. “Support for renewable energy projects such as these is an example of the many ways USDA is helping revitalize rural economies.”
But here’s the kicker: the USDA expects the project will only create 15 permanent jobs and 100 temporary construction jobs.
Fifteen permanent jobs? You realize what that means, right? That’s about $330,000 per job. Great investment?
“We only wish this was a joke,” Zero Hedge writes, summing up the sentiments of pretty much everyone who read the Examiner article.

Durbin says that we must buy electric cars because of tornadoes.

Sen. Dick Durbin reacts to the tornadoes in Dallas, Texas earlier this week. Durbin calls for more laws regulating carbon output while he sends a dire warning that we must convert to hybrid cars or lose our life. Durbin says we must spend money now to fix the problem.
“It’s your money or your life,” he said a press conference. “We are either going to dedicate ourselves to a cleaner, more livable planet and accept the initial investment necessary or we’re going to pay a heavier price in terms of loss of human life, damage and costs associated with it.”

By Wesley Pruden
Global warming: Been there, done that. Forward-looking folks are adjusting their fretting machinery now to something called Cycle 25. Button up your overcoats. Ice is on the way.

Global warming, which was mostly a scam invented by researchers looking for government grants, is over. The great warming phenomenon, which was supposed to have sent polar bears to vacation in Miami Beach by now, ended in 1997.
Britain’s Met Office, which tracks weather and makes forecasts, and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, the source of much global warming research (some of it faked, some of it not), agree, according to the London Daily Mail, that Planet Earth could even be heading for an icy patch “to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th century.” They call this Cycle 25.

Global warming was pushed by high priests of the god Science, not scientists in pursuit of secular knowledge.

The report of the findings in Old Blighty follows an op-ed essay in the Wall Street Journal, signed by 16 eminent scientists, including both physicists and other climate researchers, that the panic promoted over global warming is not now, and never has been, shared by “large numbers of scientists, many very prominent.”

The number of these “heretics” is growing, and “the reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.” The chief among these “stubborn scientific facts” is that the global warming scare was bunk from the beginning, promoted by high priests of the great god Science, not actual scientists in pursuit of secular knowledge. (Think Al Gore.)

“Why is there so much passion about global warming,” these 16 eminent scientists asked, “and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society . . . refused the seemingly reasonable request by so many of its members to remove the word ‘incontrovertible’ from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question of ‘cui bono?’ Or the modern update, ‘follow the money.’”

The rising temperatures which led some researchers to panic, like frightened teenage girls fretting over prom dates, actually began to subside when sunspot activity began to subside. According to this new research, sunspot numbers are less than half of those recorded during the cycle peaks when scientific hysteria was at its wildest at the end of the 20th century. The sun is moving now toward a “grand minimum” of sunspot activity, which would threaten cooler summers, colder winters and shorter growing seasons. It’s all part of the natural cycle of something the rest of us call “nature.”

Sunspots appear to be the villains. Since the sun is beyond the control of scientists, this makes their hair hurt and teeth itch. Scientists at the Met Office, which concedes that global warming has subsided, nevertheless argue still that the impact of the sun on climate is far less than man-made carbon dioxide (or cow-made, since bovine flatulence has been cited as contributing to climate change). “Our findings,” says the Met Office, “suggest [that] a reduction of solar activity to levels not seen in hundreds of years would be insufficient to offset the dominant influence of greenhouse gases.”

This frustrates cooler heads in the Church of Science. Says Henrik Svensmark, director of Denmark’s sun-climate research: “It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.

The Met Office, like most of the global warmist strongholds, relies on computer models for emanations of the penumbras of doom. These models did not foresee the pause in global warming, but the Met insists the models are still valid. Judith Curry of Georgia Tech, regarded as one of the most eminent American climate scholars, finds the prediction of a “negligible” impact of sunspot activity on climate difficult to understand.

“The responsible thing to do would be to accept the fact that the models may have severe shortcomings when it comes to the influence of the sun,” she told the Mail. She thinks it more likely that the rising and falling of the temperature of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans have more influence on climate than man-made carbon dioxide.

“If we don’t see convincing evidence of global warming by 2015,” says Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, “it will start to become clear that the models are bunk.” Heavy-breathing humans and flatulent cows will be off the hook, and a lot of scam artists will be pushed away from the public trough and on the street looking for work.

Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

The US is refusing to sign off on a flagship global climate fund, as already fraught negotiations intensify ahead of next week’s UN climate summit and carbon prices plummet to an all-time low.

It was already feared that souring economic conditions and next year’s US presidential election would make it difficult for the UN summit – which opens on Monday in Durban, South Africa – to make headway on a new deal to tackle global warming before the main provisions of the existing Kyoto protocol climate treaty expire at the end of 2012.

Breaking news: two years after the Climategate, a further batch of emails has been leaked onto the internet by a person – or persons – unknown. And as before, they show the “scientists” at the heart of the Man-Made Global Warming industry in a most unflattering light. Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Ben Santer, Tom Wigley, Kevin Trenberth, Keith Briffa – all your favourite Climategate characters are here, once again caught red-handed in a series of emails exaggerating the extent of Anthropogenic Global Warming, while privately admitting to one another that the evidence is nowhere near as a strong as they’d like it to be.

In other words, what these emails confirm is that the great man-made global warming scare is not about science but about political activism. This, it seems, is what motivated the whistleblower ‘FOIA 2011′ (or “thief”, as the usual suspects at RealClimate will no doubt prefer to tar him or her) to go public.

As FOIA 2011 puts it when introducing the selected highlights, culled from a file of 220,000 emails:
“Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day.”
“Every day nearly 16.000 children die from hunger and related causes.”
“One dollar can save a life” — the opposite must also be true.
“Poverty is a death sentence.”
“Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize
greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels.”
Today’s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on
hiding the decline.
FOIA 2011 is right, of course. If you’re going to bomb the global economy back to the dark ages with environmental tax and regulation, if you’re going to favour costly, landscape-blighting, inefficient renewables over real, abundant, relatively cheap energy that works like shale gas and oil, if you’re going to cause food riots and starvation in the developing world by giving over farmland (and rainforests) to biofuel production, then at the very least you it owe to the world to base your policies on sound, transparent, evidence-based science rather than on the politicised, disingenuous junk churned out by the charlatans at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
You’ll find the full taster menu of delights here at Tall Bloke’s website. Shrub Niggurath is on the case too. As is the Air Vent.
I particularly like the ones expressing deep reservations about the narrative put about by the IPCC:
/// The IPCC Process ///
<1939> Thorne/MetO:
Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical
troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a
wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the
uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these
further if necessary [...]
<3066> Thorne:
I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it
which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.
<1611> Carter:
It seems that a few people have a very strong say, and no matter how much
talking goes on beforehand, the big decisions are made at the eleventh hour by
a select core group.
<2884> Wigley:
Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive [...] there have been a number of
dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC [...]
<4755> Overpeck:
The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s
included and what is left out.
<3456> Overpeck:
I agree w/ Susan [Solomon] that we should try to put more in the bullet about
“Subsequent evidence” [...] Need to convince readers that there really has been
an increase in knowledge – more evidence. What is it?
And here’s our friend Phil Jones, apparently trying to stuff the IPCC working groups with scientists favourable to his cause, while shutting out dissenting voices.
<0714> Jones:
Getting people we know and trust [into IPCC] is vital – hence my comment about
the tornadoes group.
<3205> Jones:
Useful ones [for IPCC] might be Baldwin, Benestad (written on the solar/cloud
issue – on the right side, i.e anti-Svensmark), Bohm, Brown, Christy (will be
have to involve him ?)
Here is what looks like an outrageous case of government – the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – actually putting pressure on climate “scientists” to talk up their message of doom and gloom in order to help the government justify its swingeing climate policies:
<2495> Humphrey/DEFRA:
I can’t overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a
message that the Government can give on climate change to help them tell their
story. They want the story to be a very strong one and don’t want to be made
to look foolish.
Here is a gloriously revealing string of emails in which activists and global warming research groups discuss how best to manipulate reality so that climate change looks more scary and dangerous than it really is:
<3655> Singer/WWF:
we as an NGO working on climate policy need such a document pretty soon for the
public and for informed decision makers in order to get a) a debate started and
b) in order to get into the media the context between climate
extremes/desasters/costs and finally the link between weather extremes and
energy
<0445> Torok/CSIRO:
[...] idea of looking at the implications of climate change for what he termed
“global icons” [...] One of these suggested icons was the Great Barrier Reef [...]
It also became apparent that there was always a local “reason” for the
destruction – cyclones, starfish, fertilizers [...] A perception of an
“unchanging” environment leads people to generate local explanations for coral
loss based on transient phenomena, while not acknowledging the possibility of
systematic damage from long-term climatic/environmental change [...] Such a
project could do a lot to raise awareness of threats to the reef from climate
change
<4141> Minns/Tyndall Centre:
In my experience, global warming freezing is already a bit of a public
relations problem with the media
Kjellen:
I agree with Nick that climate change might be a better labelling than global
warming
Pierrehumbert:
What kind of circulation change could lock Europe into deadly summer heat waves
like that of last summer? That’s the sort of thing we need to think about.
I’ll have a deeper dig through the emails this afternoon and see what else I come up with. If I were a climate activist off to COP 17 in Durban later this month, I don’t think I’d be feeling a very happy little drowning Polie, right now. In fact I might be inclined to think that the game was well and truly up.

By Jeremy van Loon
Canada, the country furthest from meeting its commitment to cut carbon emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, may save as much as $6.7 billion by exiting the global climate change agreement and not paying for offset credits.
The country’s greenhouse-gas emissions are almost a third higher than 1990 levels, and it has a 6 percent CO2 reduction target for the end of 2012. If it couldn’t meet its goal, Canada would have to buy carbon credits, under the rules of the legally binding treaty.
Canada, which has the world’s third-largest proven oil reserves, would be the first of 191 signatories to the Kyoto Protocol to annul its emission-reduction obligations. While Environment Minister Peter Kent declined to confirm Nov. 28 that Canada is preparing to pull out of Kyoto, which may ease the burden for oil-sands producers and coal-burning utilities, he said the government wouldn’t make further commitments to it.
“Canada is the only country in the world saying it won’t honor Kyoto,” said Keith Stewart, an energy and climate policy analyst for Greenpeace in Toronto. Under a previous Liberal government, Canada was one of the first countries to sign Kyoto in 1998. The current Conservative government made a non-binding commitment at 2009 United Nations talks in Copenhagen to reduce emissions by 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels, in line with a pledge by the U.S., its biggest trading partner.
The biggest polluters in the nation of 34 million say they’ll cut emissions without a treaty. “Kyoto no longer works,” said Rick George, chief executive officer of Suncor Energy Inc. (SU), Canada’s largest oil producer. “Whatever happens with Kyoto won’t change our direction” of reducing the environmental impact of oil production, he said.
Impact From Technology
For Suncor and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., technology improvements will have a bigger impact on Canada’s greenhouse gas output than an international climate-change treaty, said Jack Mintz, director of the school of public policy at the University of Calgary.
“Technology is the only way we’re going to make significant progress,” Mintz said in an interview. “A lot of companies are already anticipating that the federal government will look at new regulations. Kyoto hasn’t been a strong treaty.”
Canada would likely avoid penalties if it exits the treaty before the end of the year, said Matt Horne, climate change policy director at the Pembina Institute, a Canadian think-tank focused on sustainable energy. Kyoto’s first commitment period from 2008 until 2012 requires reductions only from so-called Annex I countries, the world’s wealthiest and most developed. It doesn’t include developing nations including India and China, the world’s biggest CO2 emitter.
Reputation Tarnished
“Penalties apply in the second commitment period,” said Horne. “More importantly though, Canada’s international reputation will be tarnished.”
The $6.7 billion cost of complying with Kyoto compares with an estimated C$75.9 billion ($74.8 billion) in combined budget deficits projected through the fiscal year ending March 2015. By rejecting the accord, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is putting the country’s economy at risk, Elizabeth May, leader of Canada’s Green Party, said in an interview.
“We’re condemning ourselves to rising costs from extreme weather events as well as opportunity costs like the failure to have a renewable-energy industry,” she said. “The world would be grateful for Canada to be constructive instead of the government consistently repudiating Kyoto.”
Durban Talks
Canadian delegates, including Kent, are in Durban, South Africa for United Nations climate talks. Negotiators are struggling to agree to a successor to Kyoto, which expires at the end of 2012 and is also opposed by Japan and Russia.
Negotiators from host South Africa urged Canada on Dec. 1 to reconsider its position about not entering another commitment period, highlighting the risks to the developing world with rising temperatures and sea levels.
“Our government believes that the previous Liberal government signing on to Kyoto was one of the biggest blunders they made,” Kent said Nov. 28. “Kyoto is the past, Copenhagen and Cancun are the future,” he said, referring to the 2009 Copenhagen Accord.
Canada will have likely emitted about 890 million tons of CO2 above its Kyoto target by the end of the first commitment period next year, based on annual emissions data compiled by Bloomberg. Carbon Emission Reduction credits, or CER, cost 5.62 euros ($7.55) a ton on Nov. 30, according to Bloomberg data.
No Policy
Unlike countries such as Germany, Canada has implemented no policy to reach its targets and will find it difficult to reach even the Copenhagen Accord goals, said Greenpeace’s Stewart.
Already 60 percent of the country’s electricity is generated by hydroelectric power plants, which emit fewer gases than coal or natural gas, while the government’s plan to become an energy superpower by exporting crude oil from Alberta’s oil sands means the country faces “steep” increases in emissions in the coming years, Stewart said.
Emissions of carbon from oil sands production has risen to about 6.5 percent of Canada’s total from about 1 percent in 1990, according to the Pembina Institute. That figure will likely double by 2020 as companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp., Suncor and Royal Dutch Shell Plc expand operations to refine bitumen with annual investments of C$20 billion.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jeremy van Loon in Calgary at jvanloon@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project set out to address criticism to climate change data and present findings for more discussion.
BEST looked at data from 15 sources totally 1.6 billion records dating back to the 1800s.
Draft papers of BEST, which took into account issues from climate skeptics, found that after reanalysis there was no change in data.
The Urban Heat Island effect — the effect that urban areas are warmer due to human activity — was specifically analyzed; BEST found it did not skew results of warming data.
Skeptics maintain that warming isn’t the question: the question is the cause.In March of this year, Richard Mueller, a physics professor at University of California, Berkeley, was reported in Scientific American (via New Scientist) as saying Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth wasn’t completely true and that there were flaws in global warming data. Mueller started the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project to reanalyze climate data while addressing some of climate skeptics’ claims.

New Scientist reports the BEST project revealed that the data being analyzed did not change even after taking into account skeptics’ concerns:

Contrary to earlier studies that are often quoted by climate skeptics, the BEST researchers find that including data from weather stations in cities – which are warmer than rural areas – makes little difference to the overall trend. “Urban warming does not unduly bias estimates of recent global temperature change,” they say.Blogger Anthony Watts of “Watts Up With That” has repeatedly claimed that temperature data is unreliable because weather stations are poorly placed – for instance, next to air-conditioning vents or other heat sources. However, BEST found no statistically significant difference in the trends seen at well-placed and poorly placed stations.
The Urban Heat Island effect, according to the American Meteorological Society, is the phenomenon that is warmer than its surrounding environment “most commonly associated areas of human disturbance such as towns and cities.” This effect has been cited by climate skeptics as a bias for global warming compared to areas that would not experience this phenomenon.

Calling the BEST project a “transparent approach based on data analysis,” Mueller and colleagues seek to address criticism of climate data (basically, set out to address the issues climate skeptics have with current data) and present it back to the scientific community. Here’s the goal according to the BEST project website:

Our aim is to resolve current criticism of the former temperature analyses, and to prepare an open record that will allow rapid response to further criticism or suggestions. Our results will include not only our best estimate for the global temperature change, but estimates of the uncertainties in the record.
In response to BEST’s draft results, New Scientist reports relief from climate change supporters, continued skepticism from some skeptics and others who are unwilling to comment until the documents have been peer reviewed:

“These initial findings are very encouraging and echo our own results, and our conclusion that the impact of urban heat islands on the overall global temperature is minimal,” says Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, the climatologist at the heart of the “climategate” scandal. Jones helped to compile the HadCRU dataset.
“They get the same result that everyone else has gotten,” says Michael Mann of Penn State University in University Park. “That said, I think it’s at least useful to see that even a critic like Muller, when he takes an honest look, finds that climate science is robust.”
[...]
“I haven‘t ever suggested that temperatures haven’t risen since the 19th century. Quite the contrary,” says blogger and mathematician Steve McIntyre of ClimateAudit. Nevertheless, McIntyre questions BEST’s analyses of urban heating and weather station quality.
“They’re concentrating on the wrong question,” says David Whitehouse, science adviser to The Global Warming Policy Foundation, a London-based think tank that has former British finance minister Nigel Lawson for chairman. “Everybody agrees that the temperature has warmed. The people who disagree about temperatures are the barking mad end of the spectrum.”
Whitehouse believes the argument is between natural warming cycles versus warming caused by human activity.

Even still, BBC environmental correspondent, Richard Black, writes that he thinks BEST‘s ’openness and inclusion’ could help reshape the mold for trust in climate science:

Perhaps it can take the big three temperature programmes back into open waters along with it. And perhaps, if it is entirely open with everything from the beginning, some of the sound and fury will abate.
The Huffington Post reports that the project has involvement from Judith Curry, a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology and president of Climate Forecast Applications Network (CFAN), and 2011 physics Nobel laurate Saul Perlmutter. The Post also notes that the Koch Brothers are one organization helping to fund the project.

If you have asthma and rely on an over-the-counter inhaler, you’ll need to switch a prescription-only alternative by 2012 as part of the federal government‘s latest attempt to protect the Earth’s atmosphere. And this switch will probably cost you.

The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday patients who use the epinephrine inhalers to treat mild asthma will need to switch by Dec. 31 to other types that do not contain chlorofluorocarbons, an aerosol substance once found in a variety of spray products but has since been removed from many.

But the switch to a greener inhaler will cost consumers more. Epinephrine inhalers are available via online retailers for around $20, whereas the alternatives, which contain the drug albuterol, range from $30 to $60.

 

Phasing out of epinephrine inhalers began in 2008. Watch this 2010 FDA video about the process:

 

Right now there is only one OTC inhaler on the market — Armstrong Pharmaceutical’s Primatene mist. Other manufacturers have already switched to the more environmentally-friendly propellant called hydrofluoroalkane. Both types of inhalers offer quick-relief to symptoms like shortness of breath and chest tightness. The inhalers containing hydrofluoroalkane are only available via prescription.

“If you rely on an over-the-counter inhaler to relieve your asthma symptoms, it is important that you contact a health care professional to talk about switching to a different medicine to treat your asthma,” said Badrul Chowdhury, FDA’s director of pulmonary drug division.

 

Chowdhury told reporters and doctors via teleconference that “in the worst case scenario we are looking at 1 to 2 million people using” Primatene, adding that most of those patients likely use multiple medications to treat their asthma.

 

NPR writes that the company’s label has been notifying users of the phase out. The action is part of an agreement signed in 1987 by the U.S. and other nations to stop using substances that deplete the ozone layer, a region in the atmosphere that helps block harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun.

 

byDavid Freddoso Online Opinion Editor
Follow on Twitter:@freddoso
It must have been that cap and trade bill he signed. Oh, wait…
Remember this famous speech from then-Senator Obama — the one from 2008, in which he declared that his election would cause the oceans to stop rising and the planet to heal?
Of course, this immediately became the butt of many conservatives’ jokes.
But who’s laughing now?
As it turns out, this is one of the few promises Obama has kept. Or at least, the oceans have kept it for him. Over at Climate Depot, Marc Morano has the details:
Earlier this month, theEuropean Space Agency’s Envisat monitoring, global sea level revealed a “two year long decline [in sea level] was continuing, at a rate of 5mm per year.”
In August 2011, NASA announced that global sea level was dropping and was “a quarter of an inch lower than last summer.” See: NASA: ‘Global sea level this summer is a quarter of an inch lower than last summer’
The global drop in sea level followed NASA’s announcement that sea level around the U.S. was declining in February 2011.
Most surprising, despite the fact that Obama only said he would only “slow” the rise of the oceans, his presidency has presided over what some scientists are terming an “historic decline” in global sea levels. Obama appears to have underestimated his own powers to alter sea level.
So who said Obama wasn’t the Messiah? (I mean, besides me?)

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News
The editor of a science journal has resigned after admitting that a recent paper casting doubt on man-made climate change should not have been published.
The paper, by US scientists Roy Spencer and William Braswell, claimed that computer models of climate inflated projections of temperature increase.
It was seized on by “sceptic” bloggers, but attacked by mainstream scientists.
Wolfgang Wagner, editor of Remote Sensing journal, says he agrees with their criticisms and is stepping down.
“I stand behind the science contained in the paper”
Dr Roy Spencer University of Alabama
“Peer-reviewed journals are a pillar of modern science,” he writes in a resignation note published in Remote Sensing.
“Their aim is to achieve highest scientific standards by carrying out a rigorous peer review that is, as a minimum requirement, supposed to be able to identify fundamental methodological errors or false claims.
“Unfortunately, as many climate researchers and engaged observers of the climate change debate pointed out in various internet discussion fora, the paper by Spencer and Braswell… is most likely problematic in both aspects and should therefore not have been published.”
Heated debate
The paper became a cause celebre in “sceptical” circles through its claim that mainstream climate models inflated temperature projections through misunderstanding the role of clouds in the climate system and the rate at which the Earth radiated heat into space.
This meant, it said, that projections of temperature rise made in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports were too high.
Dr Spencer is a committed Christian as well as a professional scientist
The paper, published in July, was swiftly attacked by scientists in the mainstream of climate research.
They also commented on the fact that the paper was not published in a journal that routinely deals with climate change. Remote Sensing’s core topic is methods for monitoring aspects of the Earth from space.
Publishing in “off-topic” journals is generally frowned on in scientific circles, partly because editors may lack the specialist knowledge and contacts needed to run a thorough peer review process.
In essence, Dr Wagner, a professor of remote sensing at Vienna University of Technology, is blaming himself for this failing.
But he also blames the researchers themselves for not referencing all the relevant research in their manuscript.
“The problem is that comparable studies published by other authors have already been refuted…, a fact which was ignored by Spencer and Braswell in their paper and, unfortunately, not picked up by the reviewers.
“In other words, the problem I see with the paper… is not that it declared a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents.
“This latter point was missed in the review process, explaining why I perceive this paper to be fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal.”
‘Honourable course’
Scientific papers that turn out to be flawed or fraudulent are usually retracted by the journals that publish them, with editorial resignations a rarity.
But Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, said Dr Wagner had done the decent thing.
Nasa’s Aqua satellite provides data on clouds, rain, ice and other earth parameters
“It was a mistake, he’s owned up to it and taken an honourable course, and I think he’s to be commended for it,” he told BBC News.
“I think it remains to be seen whether the authors follow a similar course.”
Mr Ward described the tactic of publishing in off-topic journals as a “classic tactic” of scientists dismissive of man-made climate change.
“Those who recognise that their ideas are weak but seek to get them into the literature by finding weaknesses in the peer review system are taking a thoroughly disreputable approach,” he said.
Roy Spencer, however, told BBC News: “I stand behind the science contained in the paper itself, as well as my comments published on my blog at drroyspencer.com.
“Our university press release necessarily put our scientific results in lay language, and what we believe they mean in the larger context of global warming research. This is commonly done in press statements made by the IPCC and its scientists, too, when reporting on research which advocates the view that climate change is almost entirely caused by humans.
“The very fact that the public has the perception that climate change is man-made, when in fact there is as yet no way to know with any level of scientific certainty how much is man-made versus natural, is evidence of that.”
Dr Spencer is one of the team at the University of Alabama in Huntsville that keeps a record of the Earth’s temperature as determined from satellite readings.
He is also on the board of directors of the George C Marshall Institute, a right-wing thinktank critical of mainstream climate science, and an advisor to the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, an evangelical Christian organisation that claims policies to curb climate change “would destroy jobs and impose trillions of dollars in costs” and “could be implemented only by enormous and dangerous expansion of government control over private life”.

by  Naked Emperor News

TALK ABOUT A TWISTED PERSONALITY

Does global warming make sense to you?

• In 1953, Time magazine issues their first global warming alert.
• In 1974 issue of Time, Dr. George Kukla warns us about an Ice Age (global cooling).
• In 1981, Dr. George Kukla finds evidence of global warming.

The “scientists” changed their conclusions three times in 28 years! Here we go again!

Court rules the movie “Inconvenient Truth,” is based on errors

•    In the UK, their Supreme Court ruled Al Gore’s movie “‘An Inconvenient Truth‘” had
nine key scientific errors, and was ruled a political movie, not a science movie.

UN Economist admits goal of Global Warming is redistribution of US wealth

•    In November 2010, UN environmental economist Ottmar Edenhofer states:
“developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world
community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth
by climate policy.

Was there ever a consensus?

• The scientist who created the famous “hockey stick graph” says GW stopped in 1995

Scientific Evidence

• UK researchers moved weather stations in Russia & Chinafor higher temperatures.
  • Nobel Prize winner Dr. Vincent Gray, was on the team of scientists who wrote the IPCC Kyoto report, and said Global Warming is junk science!

“No evidence that greenhouse gas emissions are harming the climate has been found from the extensive studies of the IPCC, but a series of scientific arguments which appear to support it have been assembled. If examined closely, these are found to be based on unsound scientific and mathematical foundations.”

To gain control of the world, the socialists/globalists needed a problem so complex that the masses would acknowledge that only the UN could save the world. Thus was born Global Warming, and its false by-product “sustainability.” The UN even admits: “Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System.” It’s promoted in the US by the UN’s training arm.