The Death of the Global Warming Myth

[American Patriot]

main goal was to get it, and KEEP it visible somewhere from now on.

[Ryan Ruck]

Photographic proof of global warming...

[American Patriot]

I need to get in there and pull that file now...

I'm in the middle of a little... er... project and need to see this evidence.

[Malsua]

http://thewellrats.com/malbor2/taa/FOI2009.zip

I have it on my site at the above link.

[American Patriot]

Thanks, Mal!

I thought I read that, I guess I didn't look far enough back. I've got about 30 pages of notes alone on the connection of the "Green Agenda", Socialism, Communism, names, organizations and groups.

Correction, 40 pages. And I haven't even started culling through the emails as of yet!

Wow...

[American Patriot]

If there ever was an article that was written by "the other side" of this controversy, it's this one: http://21stcenturysocialism.com/arti...fic_01880.html

Internationalism and localism
Capitalism is a global system. Like the life of an animal it exists at the micro (workplace, shop, household - molecular and cellular) level, at the meso (firm, organ) level and at the macro level (conglomerate, industry, economy State - whole animal) as well as existing over time from generation to generation and through nested cycles of energy transactions, production, consumption, reproduction. Everywhere you look you see it. Everywhere you turn it is there before you. More than that it is you – in your food, your thoughts, your emotions and the systems that tie these together. Around you and in you and beyond you.


This means that it has to be fought in many places at once – locally, nationally, globally, through local projects, conversations, struggles, alliances and through actions that tie together across territories and globally. While we take the view that the bioregional level is particularly important for interventions that prefigure (another Gramscian reference) a better way of organising society, this is not to deny the importance of making alliances at other levels. It is not enough to think globally – act locally. It is necessary to act and think both locally and globally – just like Capital does.

Reform and revolution

Much of what has been written above will sound revolutionary and unremittingly oppositional. The system is dominant but its dominance is not complete. Those working within its institutions are not its unthinking servants, and their actions are not entirely constrained and determined by Capital.


There are various spaces where Capital has been tamed – for example within the institutions of the local state, or where alternative social and even economic modes are in play, if only partially – like cooperatives and some non-government and community organisations. Working for transformation, being part of the new to-be-hegemonic social movement requires a strategy of simultaneous insider - outsider tactics. Where a city administration is working on a climate change action plan, for example, it is essential both to work with them to develop the plan and to work outside to keep up the pressure for real and radical action.


Indeed we should aim for proposals that cannot be delivered under capitalism as part of a broader strategy of weakening the very causes of unsustainable economic activity, both to change the system but also because such proposals are the right thing to support – in this case the only way to deliver carbon reductions of sufficient size to avert catastrophic warming. As an infamous politician would say – There Is No Alternative.

[Ryan Ruck]

A Snowy Dusting In Victoria, Australia's Summer

December 11, 2009

Most people consider summer a time to wear shorts and thongs wherever one pleases, with little thought of ski jackets or snowboards. However Victoria's Mount Baw Baw saw a light dusting of snow, and it's already two weeks into summer.

A cold front crossed the nation's southeast during Thursday, bringing gusty winds and some good falls to southern Victoria.

Mount Baw Baw was one of the many locations to receive these falls, 31 millimetres in fact. Part of this was snow, around five centimetres, not enough to rejuvenate the ski season, but enough to create an excited buzz.

Melbourne itself didn't miss out. The city recorded 10 millimetres, now making a total (so far) of 30 millimetres.

Surrounding suburbs also had quenched rain gauges, with the largest falls over the eastern suburbs, right in the way of the southwesterly winds behind the front.

Saturday will see winds ease and isolated showers abate in southern Victoria. It is also unlikely that there'll be any more summer snow... at least until next Thursday.

[Ryan Ruck]

Seoul Buried In Heaviest Snowfall In 70 Years

January 4, 2009

Seoul residents slogged through the heaviest snowfall in modern Korean history after a winter storm dumped more than 11 inches (28 centimeters) Monday, forcing airports to cancel flights and paralyzing traffic in South Korea's bustling capital.

The snow and icy roads snarled traffic in and out of Seoul, and at least three people died in traffic accidents. Many commuters squeezed into packed subways to get to work, and a Cabinet meeting was delayed because ministers were stuck in traffic.

The snowfall, which continued through Monday afternoon, was the heaviest in a single day since Korea began conducting meteorological surveys in 1937, the state weather agency said.

Gimpo International Airport in western Seoul canceled 224 flights before resuming service Monday afternoon when the snowfall stopped, airport official Choi Choon-ja said.

More than 20 flights between Incheon International Airport, just west of Seoul, to cities in China also coping with snowfall were canceled. More than 100 flights to other regions were delayed, Incheon airport official Kang Soo-kyung said.

In southern South Korea, three people were killed in a traffic accident blamed on icy roads, according to the Yonhap news agency. However, officials said no deaths or serious property damage was directly related to the heavy snowfall.

About 3,600 workers and 5,000 soldiers were mobilized to clear the snow in Seoul and surrounding Gyeonggi Province, officials said.

The snow and freezing temperatures didn't stop 50-year-old Park Hee-soon from delivering milk and yogurt to homes and offices in western Seoul. However, Park — trudging through the streets in her regular yellow uniform — said the snow and ice were dangerous.

"I slipped on streets several times today, and my back hurts because of that," she said.

The snow forced American figure skater Michelle Kwan to cancel appearances in South Korea on Monday. The five-time world champion, visiting the country as goodwill ambassador for the U.S. State Department, had been slated to give a master class to South Korean figure skaters.

She is scheduled to meet with students, U.S. soldiers and participate in a Special Olympics event this week, U.S. Embassy officials said.

Beijing also was digging out Monday from a weekend winter storm.

More than 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) of snow accumulated in the city center Sunday, according to China's National Meteorological Center. State media called it the highest snowfall in the capital in a single day in January since 1951. Upward of 8 inches (20 centimeters) was recorded in the suburbs of Changping near the Great Wall of China.

Hundreds of flights from Beijing were canceled or delayed Sunday because of the snowfall.

Primary and middle schools were closed in Beijing and the nearby port of Tianjin, and with snow plows in short supply, more than 300,000 people were assigned to clear snow in the capital with shovels, scrapers and brooms.

Heavy snow also blanketed Sapporo on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, forcing the main airport to cancel nearly 80 flights since last Wednesday.

In South Korea, not everyone was complaining.

"It's something unique in Seoul," Kang Kyung-hye, a 58-year-old housewife, said after taking a photo of the snow-covered statue of 15th-century ruler King Sejong downtown.

Nearby, dozens of police in neon uniforms used shovels and shields to clear away the snow and helped push cars stuck in snowdrifts.

[Ryan Ruck]

Solar Geomagnetic Index Reaches Unprecedented Low – Only "Zero" Could Be Lower – In A Month When Sunspots Became More Active

December 12, 2009

Solar geomagnetic activity is at an all time low – what does this mean for climate?

We then had a string of sunspots in December that marked what many saw as a rejuvenation of solar cycle 24 after a long period of inactivity. See December sunspots on the rise

It even prompted people like Joe Romm to claim:

[URL=http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/31/science-the-hottest-decade-ends-maunder-mininum-solar-cycle-24-global-warming/The hottest decade ends and since there's no Maunder mininum — sorry deniers! — the hottest decade begins[/URL]

But what Joe doesn't understand is that sunspots are just one proxy, the simplest and most easily observed, for magnetic activity of the sun. It is the magnetic activity of the sun which is central to Svensmark's theory of galactic cosmic ray modulation, which may affect cloud cover formation on earth, thus affecting global temperatures. As the theory goes, lower magnetic activity of the sun lets more GCR's into our solar system, which produce microscopic cloud seed trails (like in a Wilson cloud chamber) in our atmosphere, resulting in more cloud cover, resulting in a cooler planet. Ric Werme has a nice pictorial here.

When I saw the SWPC Ap geomagnetic index for Dec 2009 posted yesterday, my heart sank. With the sunspot activity in December, I thought surely the Ap index would go up. Instead, it crashed.



When you look at the Ap index on a larger scale, all the way back to 1844 when measurements first started, the significance of this value of "1″ becomes evident. This graph from Dr. Leif Svalgaard shows where we are today in relation to the past 165 years.



With apologies to Dr. Svalgaard, I've added the "1″ line and the most current SWPC value of "1″ for Dec 2009.

As you can see, we've never had such a low value before, and the only place lower to go is "zero".

But this is only part of the story. With the Ap index dwindling to a wisp of magnetism, it bolsters the argument made by Livingston and Penn that sunspots may disappear altogether by 2015. See Livingston and Penn – Sunspots may vanish by 2015


Above: Sunspot magnetic fields measured by Livingston and Penn from 1992 – Feb. 2009 using an infrared Zeeman splitting technique. [more] from the WUWT article: NASA: Are Sunspots Disappearing?

The theory goes that once the magnetic strength falls below 1500 gauss, sunspots will become invisible to us.

Note where we are on this curve that Dr. Svalgaard also keeps of LP's measurements:



It appears that we are on track, and that's a chilling thought.

[Ryan Ruck]

The Mini Ice Age Starts Here

January 10, 2010

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world's most eminent climate scientists.

Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy's most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in
summer by 2013.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.



The scientists' predictions also undermine the standard climate computer models, which assert that the warming of the Earth since 1900 has been driven solely by man-made greenhouse gas emissions and will continue as long as carbon dioxide levels rise.

They say that their research shows that much of the warming was caused by oceanic cycles when they were in a 'warm mode' as opposed to the present 'cold mode'.

This challenge to the widespread view that the planet is on the brink of an irreversible catastrophe is all the greater because the scientists could never be described as global warming 'deniers' or sceptics.

However, both main British political parties continue to insist that the world is facing imminent disaster without drastic cuts in CO2.

Last week, as Britain froze, Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband maintained in a parliamentary answer that the science of global warming was 'settled'.

Among the most prominent of the scientists is Professor Mojib Latif, a leading member of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has been pushing the issue of man-made global warming on to the international political agenda since it was formed 22 years ago.

Prof Latif, who leads a research team at the renowned Leibniz Institute at Germany's Kiel University, has developed new methods for measuring ocean temperatures 3,000ft beneath the surface, where the cooling and warming cycles start.

He and his colleagues predicted the new cooling trend in a paper published in 2008 and warned of it again at an IPCC conference in Geneva last September.

Last night he told The Mail on Sunday: 'A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these cycles – perhaps as much as 50 per cent.

'They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely. Summers will also probably be cooler, and all this may well last two decades or longer.

'The extreme retreats that we have seen in glaciers and sea ice will come to a halt. For the time being, global warming has paused, and there may well be some cooling.'

As Europe, Asia and North America froze last week, conventional wisdom insisted that this was merely a 'blip' of no long-term significance.

Though record lows were experienced as far south as Cuba, where the daily maximum on beaches normally used for winter bathing was just 4.5C, the BBC assured viewers that the big chill was merely short-term 'weather' that had nothing to do with 'climate', which was still warming.

The work of Prof Latif and the other scientists refutes that view.

On the one hand, it is true that the current freeze is the product of the 'Arctic oscillation' – a weather pattern that sees the development of huge 'blocking' areas of high pressure in northern latitudes, driving polar winds far to the south.

Meteorologists say that this is at its strongest for at least 60 years.

As a result, the jetstream – the high-altitude wind that circles the globe from west to east and normally pushes a series of wet but mild Atlantic lows across Britain – is currently running not over the English Channel but the Strait of Gibraltar.

However, according to Prof Latif and his colleagues, this in turn relates to much longer-term shifts – what are known as the Pacific and Atlantic 'multi-decadal oscillations' (MDOs).

For Europe, the crucial factor here is the temperature of the water in the middle of the North Atlantic, now several degrees below its average when the world was still warming.

But the effects are not confined to the Northern Hemisphere. Prof Anastasios Tsonis, head of the University of Wisconsin Atmospheric Sciences Group, has recently shown that these MDOs move together in a synchronised way across the globe, abruptly flipping the world's climate from a 'warm mode' to a 'cold mode' and back again in 20 to 30-year cycles.

'They amount to massive rearrangements in the dominant patterns of the weather,' he said yesterday, 'and their shifts explain all the major changes in world temperatures during the 20th and 21st Centuries.

'We have such a change now and can therefore expect 20 or 30 years of cooler temperatures.'

Prof Tsonis said that the period from 1915 to 1940 saw a strong warm mode, reflected in rising temperatures.

But from 1940 until the late Seventies, the last MDO cold-mode era, the world cooled, despite the fact that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continued to rise.

Many of the consequences of the recent warm mode were also observed 90 years ago.

For example, in 1922, the Washington Post reported that Greenland's glaciers were fast disappearing, while Arctic seals were 'finding the water too hot'.

It interviewed a Captain Martin Ingebrigsten, who had been sailing the eastern Arctic for 54 years: 'He says that he first noted warmer conditions in 1918, and since that time it has gotten steadily warmer.

'Where formerly great masses of ice were found, there are now moraines, accumulations of earth and stones. At many points where glaciers formerly extended into the sea they have entirely disappeared.'

As a result, the shoals of fish that used to live in these waters had vanished, while the sea ice beyond the north coast of Spitsbergen in the Arctic Ocean had melted.

Warm Gulf Stream water was still detectable within a few hundred miles of the Pole.
In contrast, Prof Tsonis said, last week 56 per cent of the surface of the United States was covered by snow.

'That hasn't happened for several decades,' he pointed out. 'It just isn't true to say this is a blip. We can expect colder winters for quite a while.'

He recalled that towards the end of the last cold mode, the world's media were preoccupied by fears of freezing.

For example, in 1974, a Time magazine cover story predicted 'Another Ice Age', saying: 'Man may be somewhat responsible – as a result of farming and fuel burning [which is] blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the Earth.'

Prof Tsonis said: 'Perhaps we will see talk of an ice age again by the early 2030s, just as the MDOs shift once more and temperatures begin to rise.'

Like Prof Latif, Prof Tsonis is not a climate change 'denier'. There is, he said, a measure of additional 'background' warming due to human activity and greenhouse gases that runs across the MDO cycles.

But he added: 'I do not believe in catastrophe theories. Man-made warming is balanced by the natural cycles, and I do not trust the computer models which state that if CO2 reaches a particular level then temperatures and sea levels will rise by a given amount.

'These models cannot be trusted to predict the weather for a week, yet they are running them to give readings for 100 years.'

Prof Tsonis said that when he published his work in the highly respected journal Geophysical Research Letters, he was deluged with 'hate emails'.

He added: 'People were accusing me of wanting to destroy the climate, yet all I'm interested in is the truth.'

He said he also received hate mail from climate change sceptics, accusing him of not going far enough to attack the theory of man-made warming.

The work of Profs Latif, Tsonis and their teams raises a crucial question: If some of the late 20th Century warming was caused not by carbon dioxide but by MDOs, then how much?

Tsonis did not give a figure; Latif suggested it could be anything between ten and 50 per cent.

Other critics of the warming orthodoxy say the role played by MDOs is even greater.

William Gray, emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University, said that while he believed there had been some background rise caused by greenhouse gases, the computer models used by advocates of man-made warming had hugely exaggerated their effect.

According to Prof Gray, these distort the way the atmosphere works. 'Most of the rise in temperature from the Seventies to the Nineties was natural,' he said. 'Very little was down to CO2 – in my view, as little as five to ten per cent.'

But last week, die-hard warming advocates were refusing to admit that MDOs were having any impact.

In March 2000, Dr David Viner, then a member of the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, the body now being investigated over the notorious 'Warmergate' leaked emails, said that within a few years snowfall would become 'a very rare and exciting event' in Britain, and that 'children just aren't going to know what snow is'.

Now the head of a British Council programme with an annual £10 million budget that raises awareness of global warming among young people abroad, Dr Viner last week said he still stood by that prediction: 'We've had three weeks of relatively cold weather, and that doesn't change anything.

'This winter is just a little cooler than average, and I still think that snow will become an increasingly rare event.'

The longer the cold spell lasts, the harder it may be to persuade the public of that assertion.

[Ryan Ruck]

More photographic evidence of global warming. This photo was reportedly taken on 1/7/2010. It is a picture of England completely covered with snow.

[wallis]

You all might be interested in these stories:

http://www.technologyreview.com/business/24389/

Abstract:

One of the most alarming conclusions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a widely respected organization established by the United Nations, is that glaciers in the Himalayas could be gone 25 years from now, eliminating a primary source of water for hundreds of millions of people. But a number of glaciologists have argued that this conclusion is wrong, and now the IPCC admits that the conclusion is largely unsubstantiated, based on news reports rather than published, peer-reviewed scientific studies. (Jan 21, 2010)

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/gene...ot_an_accident

Abstract:

A London newspaper reports today that the unsubstantiated Himalayan-glacier melt figures contained in a supposedly authoritative 2007 report on climate warming were used intentionally, despite the report’s lead author knowing there were no data to back them up.

Until now, the organization that published the report – the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – had argued the exaggerated figures in that report were an accident: due to insufficient fact checking of the source material.
Uh, no. It now appears the incident wasn’t quite that innocent.

The Sunday Mail’s David Rose reached Murari Lal, the coordinating lead author of the 2007 IPCC report’s chapter on Asia. Lal told Rose that he knew there were no solid data to support the report’s claim that Himalayan glaciers – the source of drinking and irrigation water for downstream areas throughout Asia – could dry up by 2035. Said Lal: “We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.” In other words, Rose says, Lal “last night admitted [the scary figure] was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.”
A noble motive, perhaps, but totally inexcusable. (Jan 24, 2010)

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog...ibilities.html

Abstract:

What's Keeping Earth Cooler Expected? New Report on Climate Change Explores the Possibilities

The planet has warmed much less than expected during the industrial era based on current best estimates of Earth's "climate sensitivity" -- the amount of global temperature increase expected in response to a given rise in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. The amount of CO2 and other heat-trapping gases added to Earth's atmosphere since humanity began burning fossil fuels on a significant scale during the industrial period would be expected to result in a mean global temperature rise of 3.8°F -- well more than the 1.4°F increase that has been observed for this time span.

Stephen Schwartz, team leader at the Brookhaven National Laboratory attributes the reasons for this discrepancy to a possible mix of two major factors: 1) Earth's climate may be less sensitive to rising greenhouse gases than currently assumed and/or 2) reflection of sunlight by haze particles in the atmosphere may be offsetting some of the expected warming.
"Because of present uncertainties in climate sensitivity and the enhanced reflectivity of haze particles," said Schwartz, "it is impossible to accurately assign weights to the relative contributions of these two factors. This has major implications for understanding of Earth's climate and how the world will meet its future energy needs."

A third possible reason for the lower-than-expected increase of Earth's temperature over the industrial period is the slow response of temperature to the warming influence of heat-trapping gases. Based on calculations using measurements of the increase in ocean heat content over the past fifty years, however, this present study found the role of so-called thermal lag to be minor. (Jan 21, 2010)

[wallis]

Who would have thought a few years ago that the campaign against CO2, an innocent gas that sustains all living things, would produce these wacko ideas:

• Dr.Pachauri, head of the IPCC, advocates that we should stop eating meat one day a week- because cattle produce too much greenhouse gas! Heather Mills says we should not even be drinking cow’s milk.
• Others propose we should go one better and become vegetarian. Vegetables don’t flatulate.
• Dr. Ross Garnaut’s Report on Climate Change to the Federal Government proposes that Australians could significantly reduce its carbon emissions by phasing out the cattle industry and raising kangaroos instead. (Since they are not ruminant animals, kangaroos don’t belch and flatulate like cows.)
• To stop climate change, some governments are now looking at imposing what New Zealand farmers call a “fart tax” on cattle and sheep.
• Scientists have been urged to develop a pill to reduce the belching and flatulence of cattle and sheep.
• David Cameron (the would-be Conservative Prime Minister of Great Britain) sets an example by cycling to work (then has his chauffeur follow behind in a car with papers and clean clothes).
• People who feel guilty about their “carbon footprint” are being encouraged to buy carbon “offsets” to atone for their sinful carbon indulgences. There is, for example, a company called Green Pig that sells carbon offsets to make your new baby, dog or cat carbon neutral for life, or offsets to make your wedding day celebration carbon neutral. Hurry, for sometimes you can buy these carbon indulgences at discount prices. By doing this you will prove the truth of the old saying, “There is one born every minute.”
• Some people religiously refrain from foods that are not grown in their own region. There is now a new word for this in the dictionary: locavore – a member of the Homo sapiens species who refrains from eating any food that incurs more than 100 food miles in the transportation process.
• One of Australia’s best known actresses has announced that she now washes her hair less frequently in order to do her bit to stop climate change. .
• On her website, singer/entertainer Cheryl Crowe calls for a ban on using too much toilet paper. She says we should fight climate change by using one and not more than two squares of toilet paper per visit to the loo. This certainly gives a new meaning to “clean and green.”
• Andrew Bolt lists other weirdo, even frightening things that people are doing to stop climate change. A woman announced that she had an abortion to save the planet from another carbon footprint. Others advocate culling the human race back to a billion people. Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot only managed to eliminate a few million!

[American Patriot]

The IPCC is NOT a widely respected organization. They are part of the United Nations.

There is NOTHING associated with the United Nations that is "widely respected", ethical, or even in some cases LEGAL.

[American Patriot]

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!


It's been weeks since I posted the above statement.

Inhofe is calling on Congress to do a congressional investigation of Al Gore and the "Global Warming Hoax". He said EXACTLY what I said above. The IPCC is NOT a respected organization!


ROTFLMAO

I am so glad I am a half century old and can see through the bullshit so well these days.

[Ryan Ruck]

World’s Biggest Coal Company Brings U.S. Government To Court In Climate Fraud

February 17, 2010

The world’s largest private sector coal business, the Peabody Energy Company (PEC) has filed a mammoth 240-page “Petition for Reconsideration,” a full-blown legal challenge against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The petition must be answered and covers the entire body of leaked emails from ‘Climategate’ as well as those other ‘gate’ revelations including the frauds allegedly perpetrated under such sub-headings as ‘Himalayan Glaciers,’ ‘African Agricultural Production,’ ‘Amazon Rain Forests,’ ‘Melting Mountain Ice,’ ‘Netherlands Below Sea Level’ as well as those much-publicized abuses of the peer-review literature and so called ‘gray literature.’ These powerful litigants also draw attention to the proven criminal conduct by climate scientists in refusing to honor Freedom of Information law (FOIA) requests.

Peabody is, in effect, challenging the right of the current U.S. federal government to introduce cap and trade regulations by the ‘back door.’ In this article we summarize Peabody’s legal writ.

PEC has pulled out all the stops to overturn the EPA findings ‘Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act’ made on December 7, 2009. Those findings were in turn premised on the Supreme Court decision of April 2, 2007 of Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007), where the court ruled that greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act.

PEC argues inter alia that the law requires that the federal agency must articulate a “rational connection between the facts found and the choice made” as per the case of Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass’n of the United States, Inc. v. State Farm Mutual Auto Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 43 (1983).

The PEC arguments are based primarily on the release of email and other information from the University of East Anglia (“UEA”) Climatic Research Unit (“CRU”) in November of last year. Their civil action lists most of the principle scientists such as Professor Phil Jones, of the UK’s Climatic Research Unit, who recently admitted there has been no ‘statistically significant’ global warming for 15 years and agreed the Medieval Warm Period may have been just as warm, if not warmer than current global temperatures.

The petition argues the EPA must reconsider its Endangerment Finding based on all the new material from Climategate that was not available during the original EPA ‘comment period’ and which is central to the outcome that EPA reached in promulgating its Endangerment Finding.

The petition further states that the EPA failed to properly exercise its judgment as required by the Clean Air Act (“CAA”) and acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” fashion by relying almost exclusively on flawed reports of the IPCC in attributing climate change to anthropogenic greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions and which were influenced by political rather than scientific concerns.

Among their submissions the PEC legal team attacks the “Nice Tidy Story of Unprecedented 20th Century Warmth” using emails written while climatologists were making preparations for the Third IPCC report. Among them Keith Briffa stated that:

“I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple.” [CRU email 938018124.txt (Sep. 22, 1999)]

Briffa went on to say that:

“I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago.” [CRU email 938018124.txt (Sep. 22, 1999)]

The PEC legal eagles then cite another key researcher, Ed Cook, who in a lengthy email bristles at the effort to eliminate the MWP and wrote:

“I do find the dismissal of the Medieval Warm Period as a meaningful global event to be grossly premature and probably wrong.”

[CRU email 988831541.txt (May 2, 2001)]

The PEC action criticizes the discredited IPCC reports that were not the product of a rigorous, transparent and neutral scientific process. PEC argues:

“The CRU information reveals that many of the principal scientists who authored key chapters of the IPCC scientific assessments were driven by a policy agenda that caused them to cross the line from neutral science to advocacy.”

As an example of bias, Dr. Kevin Trenberth – Senior Scientist, Head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research is cited for his admission:

“I tried hard to balance the needs of the science and the IPCC, which were not always the same.”

Hide the Decline

The coal company’s lawyers argue that to hide the decline in the correlation between recent temperatures and what was showing in the proxy data, Professor Michael Mann and then Phil Jones unethically and fraudulently grafted on actual temperature data to the end of their proxy reconstructions rather than using the same proxy data as had been used throughout the reconstruction.

By this ‘trick’ they made the graphic presentations of the proxy reconstructions misleading, since the effect is to make it seem as if the proxy data shows rising 20th century warming when it doesn’t. But the real deception in the trick was in hiding what became known as the “divergence” problem.

The divergence problem is where the proxy data are contradicted by actual data, as they are for a significant period of the time when direct temperature measurements exist, the accuracy of the proxy data over the entire period of the proxy reconstruction is called into question so that the science cannot be determined to be “settled.”

In a robust attack lawyers for the PEC further assert:

“Moreover, the Information Commissioner’s Office of the United Kingdom (“U.K.”), the agency that oversees and enforces the U.K.’s freedom of information laws, after investigation, recently concluded that CRU broke those laws in refusing to respond to information requests.”

The petition concludes that:

“In sum, given the seriousness of the flaws that the CRU material and other information reveal in the development of the IPCC reports, the Agency must reexamine the Endangerment Finding. The Agency can no longer have confidence that those reports present a fair, unbiased and accurate assessment of climate science.”

Moreover, PEC is demanding that the EPA shall convene a full evidentiary hearing as a part of such reconsideration. If this element of the petition were granted it is highly probable that the weight of the new evidence now freely available since Climategate would expose the criminal and fraudulent component within the science of man-made global warming, and would likely succeed in having all the EPA’s findings on carbon dioxide invalidated.

Thereby, from accomplishing their civil task Peabody will lend further weight to the likelihood of criminal charges being brought against those individuals implicated in international fraud on the largest scale ever known.

[American Patriot]

Damned STRAIGHT!

[vector7]

Is Cap and Trade around the corner?

Obama backs drilling in Atlantic, Gulf

President’s move aimed at reducing reliance on foreign oil

msnbc.com staff and news service reports
updated less than 1 minute ago

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama announced on Wednesday he will stick with a Bush-era plan to drill oil and natural gas off the coast of Virginia but will not pursue energy development in waters off the U.S. Northeast and the West Coast that were recently opened to drilling.

Obama, who wants Congress to move a stalled climate change bill, has sought to reach out to Republicans by signaling he is open to allowing offshore drilling, providing coastlines are protected. Allowing offshore drilling also would create jobs and reduce U.S. long-term dependence on foreign oil.

Joined by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Obama detailed an updated plan for offshore oil and natural gas development.

Speaking at Andrews air base outside Washington, Obama said, "This is not a decision that I've made lightly." He addressed the expected outcry from disappointed environmentalists by saying he had studied the issue for more than a year and concluded it was the right call given the nation's voracious thirst for energy and the need to produce jobs and keep American businesses competitive.

"We're announcing the expansion of offshore oil and gas exploration but in ways that balance the need to harness domestic energy resources and the need to protect America's natural resources," Obama said, standing in front of a Navy F-18 fighter scheduled to fly on Earth Day with a half-biomass fuel mix.

The president said his decision is part of a broader strategy that also includes expanding the production of nuclear power and clean energy sources, to "move us from an economy that runs on fossil fuels and foreign oil to one that relies more on homegrown fuels and clean energy."

"The only way this transition will succeed is if it strengthens our economy in the short term and the long run," the president said. "To fail to recognize this reality would be a mistake." For more than 20 years, drilling was banned in most offshore areas of the United States outside the Gulf of Mexico because of concerns that spills could harm the environment.

The administration has been weighing the pros and cons of offshore drilling since it took office and put the brakes on a Bush-era proposal that called for drilling along the U.S. East Coast and off the coast of California.

Obama made no secret of the fact that one factor in his decision was attracting Republican support for a sweeping climate change bill that has languished in Congress. "Drill, baby, drill" was a mantra of the GOP during the 2008 presidential campaign.

"While our politics has remained entrenched along worn divides, the ground has shifted beneath our feet," the president said. "Around the world, countries are seeking an edge in the global marketplace by investing in new ways of producing and saving energy."

But Obama also has long been up front about his support for expanding offshore drilling — as well as other energy sources less popular with die-hard environmentalists. In his State of the Union speech, he said he wanted the United States to build a new generation of nuclear power plans, invest in new coal technologies and make "tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development."

An Interior Department official said the department will conduct the first new offshore oil and gas sale in the Atlantic Ocean in more than two decades as part of a lease sale 50 miles off the coast of Virginia.
Republicans criticized the plan, saying it keeps the biggest U.S. offshore energy resources from being developed.

"Opening up areas off the Virginia coast to offshore production is a positive step, but keeping the Pacific Coast and Alaska, as well as the most promising resources off the Gulf of Mexico, under lock and key makes no sense at a time when gasoline prices are rising and Americans are asking 'Where are the jobs?'" said House of Representatives Republican Leader John Boehner.

The plan is to stick with the Bush administration's goal to hold that Virginia lease sale in November 2011, but the official said that might be delayed by a few months at the most if required environmental reviews are not finished in time.

[vector7]

...after the elections?

U.N. official expects no climate deal until 2011

Posted 5h 22m ago | Comments 15 | Recommend

AMSTERDAM (AP) — A new legal agreement committing nations around the world to curb greenhouse gas emissions is unlikely to be completed until the end of 2011, two years later than originally envisioned, the top U.N. climate official said Wednesday.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. climate change secretariat, said countries need to restore confidence in U.N. negotiations following the dismal results of the Copenhagen summit in December, which ended in a vague agreement of principles and a pledge of finances for poor countries most threatened by climate change.

"There was a great deal of frustration at end the end of the Copenhagen conference in terms of process," de Boer said in a conference call with reporters from his office in Bonn, Germany.

The next annual conference in Cancun, Mexico, beginning in November should get negotiations "back on track" among the 194 participating nations, with the aim of agreeing on the main elements that could be enshrined in a binding agreement a year later in South Africa, de Boer said.

"My hope is that Cancun will deliver what I had hoped Copenhagen would deliver," said de Boer, who is resigning July 1 after nearly three years in office.

Negotiators will convene in Bonn next week for the first time since 120 heads of state and government met in the Danish capital. The weekend conference was expected to do little more than set a timetable for several more preparatory conferences leading up to the Cancun conference.

Formal U.N. negotiations were set in motion in 2007 to reach a deal within two years that would succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which set targets for 37 industrial countries to cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions blamed for raising the Earth's average temperature.

Scientists warn that global warming will cause disruptions in agriculture, increase water shortages and could lead to a dramatic rise in sea levels and coastal flooding if the arctic ice sheets melt.

The Copenhagen Accord, a three-page deal salvaged in the closing hours of the summit, set a target of limiting global temperatures to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels, but didn't say how that should be achieved. It pledged $3 billion over the next three years for poor countries to adapt to climate change and asked countries to submit pledges for curbing their carbon emissions.

On Wednesday, the U.N. climate secretariat released its official report on the Copenhagen conference and listed voluntary commitments from 75 industrial and developing countries to reduce or limit the growth of their emissions by 2020. The report said those countries represented 80% of global emissions from energy use.

De Boer said the commitments fell short of the cuts needed to keep the Earth's temperature from rising more than 2 degrees.

In London on Wednesday, Prime Ministers Gordon Brown of Britain and Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia were chairing the first meeting of the U.N. Climate Finance Group, which will discuss ways to raise and distribute the short-term financing promised in Copenhagen for countries that need to quickly adapt to changing climate conditions.

The Copenhagen Accord, brokered by President Obama, also envisioned $100 billion dollars annually from 2020 to fight climate change and its impacts on developing nations.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[Ryan Ruck]

Increase In Arctic Ice Confounds Doomsayers - But Does Not Spell The End Of Global Warming, Scientists Warn

April 3, 2010

The amount of sea ice covering the Arctic dramatically increased last month, reaching levels not seen at this time of year for nearly a decade.

Returning ice - after years of declining cover - has astonished climate scientists who blamed unusually cold weather over the Bering Sea.

Researchers said they recorded the most ice in March since 2001 - and that the cover is approaching long-term average levels for the first time in ten years.

The scientists who released the data stressed that last month's rise was part of yearly variations in ice cover and could not be taken as a sign that global warming is coming to an end.

But sceptics argued that the findings undermined 'alarmist' claims that the North Pole could be free of summer ice by 2013.

The unusual trend last month is revealed in figures published by the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.

In a typical year, Arctic ice cover peaks in mid-March and starts to fall as milder weather arrives.

But this year, levels continued to grow in the second half of March. Dr Mark Serreze, of the NSlDC, said parts of the Arctic were going through an unusually cold spring - but that other areas were warmer than normal.

He added: 'What this doesn't show is any indication that global warming is over. If you look at the Arctic as a whole we might get to average amounts of sea ice for the time of year. But the ice is thin and quite vulnerable and it can melt very quickly.'

The best measure of the health of the Arctic was not only the amount of cover, but also the thickness of ice, he said.

But Dr David Whitehouse, of the Global Warming Policy Foundation think-tank, said: 'The recent observations make the 2007 projections that the region would be ice free by 2013 look very unrealistic.'