Climategate

"Carbon (Dioxide) trading is now the fastest growing commodities market on earth.....And here’s the great thing about it. Unlike traditional commodities markets, which will eventually involve delivery to someone in physical form, the carbon (dioxide) market is based on lack of delivery of an invisible substance to no-one. Since the market revolves around creating carbon (dioxide) credits, or finding carbon (dioxide) reduction projects whose benefits can then be sold to those with a surplus of emissions, it is entirely intangible." (Telegraph)

This blog has been tracking the 'Global Warming Scam' for over ten years now. There are a very large number of articles being published in blogs and more in the MSM who are waking up to the fact the public refuse to be conned any more and are objecting to the 'green madness' of governments and the artificially high price of energy. This blog will now be concentrating on the major stories as we move to the pragmatic view of 'not if, but when' and how the situation is managed back to reality. To quote Professor Lindzen, "a lot of people are going to look pretty silly"


PS: If you have arrived here on a page link, then click on the HOME link...

Sunday 31 July 2011

David Cameron supports Australian carbon (dioxide) tax

Telegraph
"David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, has written to Australian leader Julia Gillard in support of her planned tax on carbon to combat climate change. "

ED: It is just a TAX,it will NOT alter the climate,it is a TAX on the poor.

update:David Cameron's Labor Support 'Misplaced', Says Nigel Lawson

As Germany Cools, Projections Of Warming Heat Up

NoTricksZone
"A few days ago the Deutscher Wetterdienst, DWD, (German Weather Service) in a press release warned that Germany’s temperature were likely to rise 2 to 4°C by the year 2100 and that action was necessary. ......But there’s a small problem at the DWD. Like the outlier sea level projections made by the PIK, the temperature projections made by the DWD just don’t match observations. For example Germany’s annual temperature over the last 11 years has shown COOLING, and not warming, see chart above produced by EIKE."

Saturday 30 July 2011

Rajendra Pachauri is back to tell us: Trust me

Telegraph,Christopher Booker.
"One of the more bizarre episodes of the week was the arrival in London of Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as part of what appears to be a concerted bid to rehabilitate the IPCC after the deluge of scandals that assailed it last year. ......What this campaign is trying to erase, of course, is the memory of just why those scandals so damaged the IPCC’s authority that it can never be recovered. The absurd claim about the Himalayan glaciers, derived via the WWF and deliberately inserted over protests from one of the IPCC’s own senior scientists, was only one of the report’s alarmist predictions which turned out to have no scientific basis at all. Other scary claims, such as that global warming threatened to halve African crop yields or to destroy 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest, were shown to have been simply the inventions of activists. All this took place under the chairmanship of Dr Pachauri, who continues to insist that the IPCC based its report solely on “peer-reviewed science”. Yet an exhaustive study has shown that some 30 per cent of its 18,531 sources were drawn – in flagrant breach of the IPCC’s own rules – not from peer-reviewed science, but from press clippings, student theses and propaganda by environmental pressure groups. "

Fallout from Our Paper: The Empire Strikes Back

WUWT,by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
"I am quite frankly getting tired of the climate ‘alarmists’ demanding that we ’skeptics’ be held a higher standard than they are held to. They claim our results don’t prove their models are wrong in their predictions of strong future warming, yet fail to mention they have no good, independent evidence their models are right.

For example…. "

Friday 29 July 2011

Polarbeargate?

Telegraph
"Something about this story is very odd. Surely, under the Obama administration any government official who was discovered to have been “emotionalising the issue” in order to raise public awareness of the terrible dangers of ManBearPig would be given a promotion, and a Congressional Medal of Honor at the very least? Can it really be possible that BOEMRE remains so principled and inviolate that it still insists its employees cleave to the truth?

It’s definitely one to watch, anyway. After all, the “drowning polar bear” story was instrumental in the US Interior Department’s controversial decision in 2008 to have Ursus maritimus declared a “threatened species.” (Despite evidence that polar bear populations have increased roughly five-fold in the last 50 years: not so much a threatened species, you might say; more like a plague or an infestation). It also prompted the silly scene in Al Gore’s fantasy movie An Inconvenient Truth where an animated polar bear is shown drowning because of “global warming.”

Canadian Scientists and the World Wildlife Fund

Donna Laframboise (Canada)
"I stumbled across a document the other day that rendered me speechless. ‘This can’t be right,’ I said to myself. ‘You’ve been parked in front of this computer so long you’ve begun to hallucinate.’

But my eyes were not, in fact, deceiving me. In December 2009 hundreds of Canadian scientists really did choose to publicly align themselves with a left-leaning advocacy organization. They actually thought this was a smart strategy – that this is how you persuade a Tory national government to take action on climate change.

I mean, come on."

Warmist scientist investigated over Gore’s polar bear scare

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
"We all know now that early warmist claims that polar bears were severely endangered by global warming were severely exaggerated. So this is interesting:

A US Federal wildlife biologist whose observation that polar bears likely drowned in the Arctic helped galvanise the global warming movement seven years ago was placed on administrative leave as officials investigate scientific misconduct allegations.

Although it wasn’t clear what the exact allegations are, a government watchdog group representing Anchorage-based scientist Charles Monnett said investigators have focused on his 2004 journal article about the bears that garnered worldwide attention.


Sure did. Here’s an example of the poley panic Monnett unleashed:

Inspector general’s transcript of drowned polar bear researcher being grilled

WUWT
"This fellow, Charles Monnett has been suspended pending an investigation into his polar bear research. You may recall that he single-handedly inspired Al Gore (not that it takes much) into producing this piece of science fiction for his even larger fiction, An Inconvenient Truth. Gore cited Monnett’s research."

Junk Science Unravels

Investors.com
"Climate Change: The scientist who claimed that global warming threatens polar bears is under investigation. There's a hole in Earth's greenhouse. A cooler era lies ahead. That hiss is the hot air coming out of alarmists' balloon. The global warming fraud is coming apart faster than the alarmists can repackage and rebrand their fairy tale. Their elaborately constructed yarn can't hold together much longer. There are just too many loose ends:"

Global Warming Industry Rocked by Polar Bear Fraud

Fox News
"Just five years ago, Charles Monnett was one of the scientists whose observation that several polar bears had drowned in the Arctic Ocean helped galvanize the global warming movement.Now, the wildlife biologist is on administrative leave and facing accusations of scientific misconduct." (H/T Climate Depot)

Arctic scientist under investigation(Yahoo News)

Thursday 28 July 2011

Fuel Poverty: Britons Are Paying The Price For Green Energy Folly

GWPF
"Politicians beware: rising green energy prices via domestic charges is not a vote winner.

The Government has released the latest figures on fuel poverty, revealing that from 2008 to 2009 the number of fuel poor households in the UK (households which cannot afford to keep adequately warm at a reasonable cost) rose by one million, reaching a staggering total of 5.5 million. This disturbingly high leap has rightly set off alarm bells at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, which has readily admitted that this increase is due to rising fuel costs rather than the recession.The Department has, however, been slower to identify the trigger behind these inflated fuel bills, even though the answer is clear: green levies designed, but failing, to deliver low-carbon energy."

Threat To Coral Reefs Exaggerated, Says New Study

NoTricksZone
"The world’s largest coral reef off the east coast of Australia is not going to disappear as fast as once previously thought, according to a new study. Warnings that the Great Barrier Reef could die off due to climate change over the next 20 to 30 years are exaggerated says Sean Connolly of the James Cook University.”

New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism

Yahoo News / Forbes
"NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA's Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA's Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models."

Wednesday 27 July 2011

MUST LISTEN: Alan Jones talks to President of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus about Climate Change.

Climate Realists
"Alan Jones is joined in the studio by the President of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus, who is in Australia to talk about climate change. "

Can Prof Rajendra Pachauri really survive 'Glaciergate’?

Telegraph
"Yet the question mark over the future of the straight-backed man sitting in front of me in a London office, during a brief stay in the UK, just won’t go away. “Until what has inevitably become known as 'Glaciergate’,” says this paper’s respected environment analyst, Geoffrey Lean, “I would always have turned to the IPCC reports expecting that they would err, if anything, on the cautious side. I’m not so confident now.”

How the IPCC Defines ‘Distinguished Scientist’

Donna Laframboise (Canada)
"Pachauri has said IPCC reports are written by the world’s top scientists when, in fact, many of those involved are 20-something grad students, green activists, and people appointed with an eye to filling “diversity” quotas.In yesterday’s article Pachauri dismissed concerns that a lead author of a recent IPCC report is a Greenpeace activist: "

2000 Years Of Mega Extreme Weather Events (When CO2 Was Only 280 PPM

NoTricksZone
"What follows are just a couple of examples from James A. Marusek’s A Chronological Listing of Early Weather Events (may take a few minutes to load)."

Greenpeace: give me a child until he is seven…

Telegraph
"Have you seen the latest Greenpeace propaganda campaign? Here it is, above: have a glance and see whether you agree with me that the whole business stinks to high heaven."

Tuesday 26 July 2011

It wasn’t CO2: Global sea levels started rising before 1800

Climate Change Dispatch
"Fans of man-made global warming frequently tell us seas are rising, but somehow forget to mention the rise started 200 years ago, long before our coal-fired electricity plants cranked up, and long before anyone had an electric shaver, or a 6 cylinder fossil-fuel-spewing engine. Something else was driving that warming trend."

A down under slide show on the folly of the carbon tax

WUWT
"A reminder to PM Gillard: you are a carbon based life form. Here’s the entire slide show online from Philip R. Wood in Australia given July 14th."
--------------------
Powering Australia on make-believe (Herald Sun,Australia)
"Martin Nicholson says the Gillard Government’s plan to cut our emissions to the global target agreed to at Copenhagen is unbelievable: "

Gov't Report: Australia just experienced the 'coldest autumn since at least 1950'

The hockey Schtick
"According to a report recently issued by the Australian National Meteorological Service, the country experienced the coldest autumn (March 1 - May 31, 2011) "since at least 1950" with mean temperatures 1.15C below the historical average. By way of comparison, the total global warming since the end of the Little Ice Age around 1850 is only 0.7C. In addition, Australia is currently experiencing the best ski season since 1990."

Monday 25 July 2011

Greenwash for sale

Climate Change Dispatch
"...Don’t be surprised. The WWF, like Greenpeace, is only in it for the money, because there’s gold in them thar green hills:

WWF, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, makes about $500m a year from donations and corporate endorsements but has been criticised by other environment groups and NGOs for its links to forestry, mining, tobacco, banks, palm oil, biofuel and other companies.

The WWF will sell greenwash credentials to anyone, as long as the price is right.

Ethics is hard, greenwash is easy."

Britain's most useless windmills ?



Are these windmills the most useless in Britain ? Running at 7 percent efficiency , these turbines at Blyth, Northumberland taken today show that all the nine windmills on the left are static -shut down- with only the two right hand turbines in the harbour working.

Sunday 24 July 2011

Wintry blast brings country to a standstill

Stuff, New Zealand
"The worst snow fall in 15 years has brought large parts of the country to a standstill, with Christchurch blanketed overnight and residents told to stay at home. Flights out of the South Island have been badly disrupted with Christchurch and Dunedin airports closed, while Queenstown and Invercargill airports were experiencing delays. ....Meanwhile, 200 people were stranded in a hall north of Dunedin this morning. Dunedin police said the group were staying warm with hot tea and coffee after getting stuck in snow on State Highway 1. ...Student Alison Grant, from Riccarton, looked outside her window and couldn't help but gasp. "Wow so much snow, wow" she said. "There is a lot of snow, ankle-deep at least. It's still going really quite hard." She was planning to spend the day enjoying the snow outside as the university was closed, she said. "I played outside last night as well. I'm going to enjoy the snow while it lasts." "It's the first time I've seen snow like this," she said. Sarah Joynson, from Redwood, was up early and also went outside to enjoy the snow, and said friends had done the same. "We don't have snow like this ever."
----------------
Yesterday was Wellington's coldest since records began in the 1940s and Auckland had its fifth-coldest day on record.

Australian sea-levels respond to CO2 by slowing down…

Jo Nova (Australia)
"But a new study with the radical idea of looking at Australian and New Zealand tide gauge data (“what! actual data, not models?!”) shows that far from sea-levels around Australia rising “faster than projected”, or being at the “lower level of estimates” — they are decelerating. The 700,000 Australian addresses that are within 3 km of the beach don’t have so much to worry about."

Greenpeace and the IPCC – The Edenhofer Excuse

WUWT
"It has been a recurring pattern that the most dramatic of conclusions arrived by the IPCC, are shown to arise from unsubstantiated or exaggerated claims in literature put out by environmental pressure groups. The latest addition to the list is the Greenpeace-generated factoid that ‘80% of the world’s energy demand could be met by renewable sources’ which found its way onto the IPCC pedestal. ...."

Saturday 23 July 2011

Polar blast sweeps up country

NZ Herald
"An Antarctic blast sweeping up the country is expected to bring the first snow to some unlikely towns today. The freezing conditions were due to bring dustings of snow to Wellington's hilltop suburbs, Palmerston North, Masterton and Taupo today, and temperatures were expected to plummet to -6C this evening in the ranges. Weatherwatch analyst Philip Duncan said it was the first time he had ever seen snow forecast for some regions. "You don't associate Palmerston North, for example, with snow. It will be borderline between rain and snow. ...Meanwhile, ski fields were brimming with skiers and snowboarders during the first week of school holidays. "

The world’s biggest carbon dioxide tax

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"AN industry group representing millions of businesses will today launch a mass television campaign against the carbon tax, claiming it would hurt Australian families.

In a blow to Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s bid to sell the unpopular tax, the Australian Trade and Industry Alliance is opposing the Government.

Spokesman Greg Evans yesterday said the tax was the world’s “largest and most damaging carbon tax” and one of the most “ill-conceived policy responses in a generation”.An alliance advertisement, due to be aired tonight, compares the $4.9 billion revenue from the first six years of Europe’s emissions trading scheme with a predicted $71 billion from Australia’s carbon tax over six years."

Steve Jones tells the BBC: don't give 'denialists' so much air-time

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
"The real scandal of the BBC’s coverage of climate issues is that, journalistically, it has been so unprofessional. The little group of environmental correspondents most obviously responsible for pushing the BBC line inhabit a bubble in which they only report what they are told by other supporters of the orthodoxy.

To anything outside that increasingly claustrophic bubble they remain oblivious, and thus have missed out on one of the most important scientific stories of our time. In this way they reinforce the folly of our politicians, bent on policies so misconceived and so costly that they threaten the country with an unprecedented act of economic self-destruction. "

The BBC Endeavours to Provide More Biased Coverage on Climate Change

WUWT
"The BBC’s governing body, the BBC Trust, has released a report on its coverage of climate change, that is based partly on “an independent review” by Steve Jones, a Genetics Professor at University College London (UCL).

The report states that “Professor Jones describes incidents of what he calls “false balance” and suggests there may sometimes have been “an over-rigid application of the (editorial) guidelines to what is essentially a fact-based field. This can produce an adversarial attitude to science which allows minority, or even contrarian, views an undue place. The BBC has tried hard to find a suitable balance. .......As such, the BBC’s reporting is currently biased, .......Furthermore, the BBC is now planning to increase the bias of its reporting to prevent “false balance”. As such, the BBC is not a trustworthy source of information on Earth’s climate system."

Friday 22 July 2011

Sea-Level Rises Are Slowing, Tidal Gauge Records Show

GWPF
"Climate change researcher Howard Brady, at Macquarie University, said yesterday the recent research meant sea levels rises accepted by the CSIRO were "already dead in the water as having no sound basis in probability".

"In all cases, it is clear that sea-level rise, although occurring, has been decelerating for at least the last half of the 20th century, and so the present trend would only produce sea level rise of around 15cm for the 21st century."

Dr Brady said the divergence between the sea-level trends from models and sea-level trends from the tide gauge records was now so great "it is clear there is a serious problem with the models".

"In a nutshell, this factual information means the high sea-level rises used as precautionary guidelines by the CSIRO in recent years are in essence ridiculous," he said. During the 20th century, there was a measurable global average rise in mean sea level of about 17cm (plus or minus 5cm)."
---------------------------

The battle over sea level in JCR(WUWT)

Thank the Gods for Climategate

WUWT
"Having been caught trying to rig the game and even lying and fudging the data – and do be aware that much of the public does see it that way – The Team and the IPCC are struggling to gain the ascendancy and monopoly they once had. And it truly does not look like they are winning the battle. But once a witness or ‘expert‘ is caught in a lie, can they ever get the people who witness it to believe them again?"

Thursday 21 July 2011

Parts of Chilean Patagonia covered by nine feet of snow; 6.500 feared isolated

Merco Press,Montevideo.
"President Sebastián Piñera declared much of La Araucania in Chilean Patagonia, disaster areas on Wednesday, as four days of non-stop snowfall have isolated the region’s predominantly rural communities and wreaked havoc on basic utilities. ...Lonquimay, the borough with the second most extensive area in Chile, was affected by a polar front that submerged the town of just over 10,000 into chaos.

Intermittent since Sunday, the snowfall has piled as high as nine feet in some areas. Although this part of the country is no stranger to the cold weather, Piñera described the current polar front as the worst the region has seen in 30 years.

Mayor Guillermo Vásquez told local press on Wednesday that temperatures had plunged to -23 degrees Celsius (-9.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in some of the more rural areas."
(The Santiago Times)

The BBC's secular inquisition

Melanie Phillips
"I am open-mouthed. The BBC Trust is recommending that its journalists ditch balance for propaganda.

A report being published today has apparently decided that the BBC no longer needs to interview man-made global warming sceptics because there is a consensus on this issue that the theory is true.

Its conclusions are said to be based in part on recommendations by the geneticist Professor Steve Jones. Astonishingly, he is said not only to have found no evidence of bias in the BBC’s output on climate change, but suggests that on issues like this where he says there is a ‘scientific consensus’ – also including the MMR vaccination and genetically modified crops – there should be no need for the BBC to find opponents of the mainstream view.

This is as terrifying as it is outrageous. First of all, the claim that there is a consensus on man-made global warming is itself false. The wickedly cynical propaganda strategy to promote this false belief in a consensus was described in an eye-opening blog post by James Delingpole in the Telegraph last year: "

Farr out on Monckton

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
"We’re told repeatedly that Lord Monckton is no scientist and his arguments against global warming alarmism are nonsense. So it’s very telling after having been grudgingly granted a debate at the National Press Club that no scientist or journalist has come forward as yet to demonstrate some fraud or foolish error in Monckton’s arguments. "

Global warming causing poor education, forced marriage, forced labor, and sexual violence

The Hockey Schtick
"Amazing what a 0.7C change in temperature over the past 161 years can do. Add them to The List."

'BBC's biased climate science reporting isn't biased enough' claims report

Telegraph
"The report, as you may be aware, was written by my fellow Telegraph columnist Steve Jones. Besides being a fine and engaging writer, Dr Jones is a geneticist of distinction and I would certainly never dream of questioning his judgement in his fields of expertise (notably Drosophila and snails). Fortunately, as becomes quite clear reading the report, climate science isn’t one of them. ......In other words, Dr Jones thinks that the growing numbers of people in Britain (and around the world) who are sceptical of man-made global warming are victims of “false consciousness.” There speaks the authentic voice of the left-leaning cultural establishment. The BBC must be very proud: they chose the right man for the job."

Wednesday 20 July 2011

Monckton wins National Press Club debate on climate

WUWT
"Love him or hate him, the man can win a debate. Andrew Bolt shares the results of the National Press Club Debate in Australia... ...Watch the video of the debate in full: "

No wonder the warmists hate debate

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
"The National Press Club debate’s results:

Lord Monckton - 10

Former Greens adviser Richard Denniss - 1

Journalists - 0.

Note that Denniss’s entire argument was to follow the “consensus”. There was no attempt at all to explain the evidence contradicting this manufactured consensus. "

Some facts about deaths due to heat waves

WUWT
Cold-related deaths are far more numerous than heat-related deaths in the United States, Europe, and almost all countries outside the tropics, and almost all of them are due to common illnesses that are increased by cold.”

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Climate Common Sense
"Julia Gillard ,swanning around a wind farm today would do well to heed the words of George Santayana and instead of holding green-bankrupted Spain up as an example check her facts. The ambitious wind and solar experiment in Spain has been an unmitigated disaster and one which Australia should not emulate."

Tuesday 19 July 2011

France criticized for approving wind farms on D-Day coast

The Star (Canada)
"Even after 67 years, the memory of Normandy’s bloodied waters is still with Major Roy E. Eddy. He was just 20 years old on June 6, 1944, when he piloted a landing craft filled with soldiers on Juno Beach. Most of them he never saw again. Now 87 and living in Mississauga, Eddy — who has returned to Europe 22 times since the war ended — is struggling to understand why the French government is planning to build a wind farm off Juno Beach, where 340 Canadians died on D-Day. “It would completely remove the sanctity of the place,” said Eddy. “For a place that has represented thousands of soldiers that were killed, I think it would be an awful distraction.”

Climate change sceptics should get less BBC coverage and be challenged 'more vigorously', says report on science output

Daily Mail
"Opponents of global warming should be given less coverage by the BBC than the climate change lobby, the corporation will rule. The BBC is set to publish a report tomorrow on its science output announcing changes to rules on impartiality. Following the overhaul, programme makers and broadcasters will be compelled to give less prominence to those who oppose the scientific community's majority view."

Economics Professor: “Germany’s Energy Transition Is Going To Be Very Expensive”

NoTricksZone
"German leaders seem to have a habit of driving their country into a wall. This time it’s their desire to show environmental supremacy. Many really do believe they are powerful enough to control the climate and at the same time defy the laws of economics."

Monday 18 July 2011

Britain's Economic Suicide

Matt Ridley
"British Gas is putting up the cost of heating and lighting the average home by up to 18 per cent, or about £200 a year. Indignation at its profiteering is understandable.
....So what does the Government plan to do? This week it publishes a white paper on electricity market reform that will be predicated upon, indeed proud of, pushing up prices even faster. To meet its self-imposed green targets, the Government’s policy is to tax carbon, fix high prices for renewable electricity and load extra costs on to people’s electricity bills — but without showing them as separate items.

This policy is beyond foolish. While you might just get away with driving up energy bills in a boom, to add green stealth taxes on top of supply-driven price increases at a time of economic misery is asking for political trouble."

Sunday 17 July 2011

Recent Site Visitors....

Manufacturing(?) consensus

Judith Curry
"Goodwin makes a strong argument that the IPCC is a manufactured consensus that has been reached by intent. As such, Lehrer argued in 1975 that such a consensus is conspiratorial and irrelevant to our intellectual concern."
--------------------

Devastating paper on IPCC consensus (WUWT)

Illegitimate IPCC (Bishop Hill)
"We shall argue that consensus among a reference group of experts thus concerned is relevant only if agreement is not sought. If a consensus arises unsought in the search for truth and the avoidance of error, such consensus provides grounds which, though they may be overridden, suffice for concluding that conformity is reasonable and dissent is not. If, however, consensus is aimed at by the members of the reference group and arrived at by intent, it becomes conspiratorial and irrelevant to our intellectual concern."

Saturday 16 July 2011

Queensland floods and Russian heatwave will be used to justify 'climate change' policies

Christopher Booker,Telegraph


"Chris Huhne's 'carbon saving' measures could double energy bills within nine years - so Australian floods might help to wash down the British voter's bitter pills ....Sir John Beddington may have thought he was earning his £165,000 a year as the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser when he was last week reported as proposing that it should “use climate-related disasters overseas to persuade British voters to accept unpopular policies for curbing carbon emissions”. .....A new paper in Geophysical Research Letters confirms that the parts of Russia affected by last year’s heatwave “show no significant warming trend” over the past 130 years. Similar studies have shown that the 2010 Paikstan floods were no worse than those in 1929.

The flooding in Queensland was lower than that in 1974. It was only turned into a disaster by the sudden release of water from a dam, which had been held back on the orders of state politicians who were obsessed with the need to store water because of their fear that global warming would cause droughts. Even the UN now says that the Horn of Africa’s worst drought for 60 years cannot be ascribed to climate change. "

Islanders need $millions to cope with 3.6 mm/yr sea level rises

ACM
"Torres Strait Islanders have warned Prime Minister Julia Gillard they could become Australia’s first climate change refugees if she continues to ignore the effects of rising sea levels in the area. .......However, the Bureau of Meteorology National Tide Centre database for Darwin tells a rather less urgent picture (as usual): A fairly gentle 3.6 mm/year, in line with global sea level rises. At that rate it would take 277 years to rise one metre… "

Sweet irony: Pacific islands "growing, not sinking"

This is madness and it must be stopped

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
"It is lunacy to impose a carbon dioxide tax that will slow our growth on the eve of a financial clamity, and it’s utterly delusional to do on the expectation that this is the very time when sinking economies will impose similar taxes themselves. "

ED: We didn't have a choice - green madness was imposed via the EU.... Australia has a choice.

Pat Michaels: Why Hasn’t The Earth Warmed In Nearly 15 Years?

Climate Realists
"There is no statistically significant warming trend since November of 1996 in monthly surface temperature records compiled at the University of East Anglia. Do we now understand why there’s been no change in fourteen and a half years?"

Crap applause

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"I would bet real carbon - a diamond, for instance - that the writer had no idea he was writing crap.

No, Gillard’s tax is not on carbon, a solid-like soot, but on carbon dioxide, a colourless, odourless gas.

No, Gillard’s plan is not to fight climate change, which is inevitable and unstoppable, but to fight man-made warming which seems to have paused.

No, this plan will not fight even warming, since the difference it would make to the temperature would at the most optimistic be one-4000th of a degree.

No, it’s false to claim man-made warming has not been ruled out as a cause of the recent floods and cyclones.

Even the Climate Commission ruled out that link last month, in a report conceding the drought was probably just natural, too. And, no, carbon dioxide is not pollution, but a gas crucial to the circle of life. Scrub it from the air and plants will die, and, then, so will we. So in one standard piece of Government-friendly writing on global warming, we have buckets of crap. And how the authors of such stuff cheer when they’re told to stop. "

Friday 15 July 2011

Let There Be Light Bulbs

WSJ (USA)
"Environmental groups like the National Resources Defense Council maintain that the ban will save consumers some $14 billion a year in energy bills. But what these outfits have never explained is why, if the new bulbs are so superior, the government has to force people into buying them. Many Americans are now hoarding the old bulbs before they are outlawed for sale in the U.S.

"The American people are overwhelmingly opposed to the government telling them what kinds of light bulbs they can and cannot buy," says Myron Ebell of Freedom Action, a coalition group that supports light bulb choice. "The fight to repeal the light bulb ban has become a classic battle of the people versus big business special interests and their environmental pressure group allies."

Thursday 14 July 2011

Scaring the public to accept a Tax....

Climate change evidence 'undeniable' (Stuff NZ)
"Antarctica was losing mass, and the West Antarctic ice sheet in particular was causing concern as much of it was below sea level. A change to its mass could see the ice sheet lift off and raise the sea level by three to five metres "

ED: Oh really? read this....
East Antarctic Ice Sheet getting thicker from underneath (WUWT)
and this...
Another overhyped global warming claim bites the dust (WUWT)

...and there are many more like them.....

Climate Science Myopia

Roger Pielke Sr.
"The claim that CO2 dominates climate change in the multi-decadal time period has been clearly FALSIFIED."

Australia counts the cost of environmental lunacy – and plots its sweet revenge

Telegraph
"$24.5 billion is too bloody much, too bloody much by far, for Australia to pay for the privilege of reducing the world’s temperature, by 2020, by 1/4000th of a degree.

Yep, you read that aright. Australian Prime Minister Julia “Toast” Gillard has hit on the ingenious idea of clobbering one of the world’s most thriving – and also one of the most carbon-intensive – economies with a tax on one of its main industrial by-products, CO2, which will punish business, hamstring economic growth, boost unemployment and make life for everyone outside the enviro-rent-seeking professions more difficult and expensive. And all in order to achieve the wonderful goal of ensuring that by 2020 the world’s temperature will be altered with such refinement and subtlety that not even the most sophisticated measuring equipment yet devised is likely to notice the difference."

Wednesday 13 July 2011

On a path to destruction

Dr Richard North
"......, Huhne's policy relies on four things: first, an effective ban on coal as a fuel; two, the provision of base load from nuclear; three, the use of renewables (mainly wind) for variable load; four, the provision of gas plants to provide back-up for when his renewables fail to deliver (most of the time)."

Archibald: Solar Based Climate Forecast to 2050

WUWT
"We now have the tools to predict climate out to the mid-21st Century with a fair degree of confidence, and a repeat of the Maunder Minimum is unlikely. A de Vries Cycle repeat of the Dalton Minimum is what is in prospect up to the early 2030s and then a return to normal conditions of solar activity, and normal climate."

Tuesday 12 July 2011

Families face £1,000 bill for green energy: Huge annual levy to appease the climate lobby

Daily Mail
"Families face punishing increases in energy bills of up to £1,000 a year to fund a switch to green energy and build new nuclear power stations.Energy Secretary Chris Huhne yesterday outlined a new regime that will encourage firms to build thousands of wind turbines, tidal power stations and nuclear plants.The scheme is part of a government plan to shift away from fossil fuels, particularly coal, and so dramatically cut carbon emissions to meet UK and EU targets.There is a fierce dispute between the Government, green campaigners, academics and industry analysts over the true cost of the programme. .....Industry regulator Ofgem calculates that the work will cost more than £200billion by 2020. It has also talked of a rise of 52 per cent in bills – which equates to around £600 a year. But analysts at the UniCredit bank believe the true cost will be even higher, with energy bills set to rise by around £1,000 a year – to £2,000. Billions will be spent on wind farms and wave power, while there will also be massive investment to replace existing nuclear power stations, which are coming to the end of their useful life."

Cold winds, heavy snow forecast

Stuff, New Zealand
"Strong cold winds and heavy snowfalls were expected to hit areas across the country again today. The MetService said it was another cold windy day for New Zealand with heavy rain or showers falling on western areas of both islands. The country has taken a bashing from storms, lightning, snow and tornadoes during the past week.Weather has closed roads, torn off roofs and blanketed town centres in snow."

Green energy 'gives power firms £7bn windfall'

Telegraph
"Britain’s biggest energy companies will be handed a £7 billion windfall by Government plans to boost “green” power generation, analysts have said. .....Some estimates suggest Government “green” energy measures could add £200 to the average household’s annual energy bill. Ofgem, the Government’s energy regulator, has said it expects prices to rise by at least 10 per cent. "

Heavy snow brings Bolivia to a halt

Aljazeera
"The cold winter weather which has affected much of South America is making its presence felt in Bolivia, after the heaviest snowfall in 20 years brought parts of the country to a standstill.Cold southerly winds, known as ‘surazos’ by local people, have brought the largest falls to the southwest Potosi region. The snow has blocked roads cutting off many rural communities.This region relies on agriculture and farmers report that crops have been destroyed and many herds of alpacas and llamas are struggling to find food below the snow cover."

H/T Climate Realists

Monday 11 July 2011

Transcript of Andrew Bolt’s “Carbon Sunday” interview with Richard Lindzen

WUWT
"Here is Lindzen’s damning conclusion (after demolishing any scientific basis for Australia’s new carbon tax):

If they can fool the people into thinking that they really want to pay taxes to save the earth, that’s a dream for politicians."

....AB: What effect would a carbon dioxide tax in Australia—the aim is to cut emissions by 5% by 2020—what effect would that have on the world’s temperature?

RL: I don’t think anyone could possibly detect it even with future technology. It would be nothing, for all practical purposes, and it would be nothing if the whole world did the same.

Stormy weather over much of NZ

NZHerald
"A nasty front packing thunderstorms and gales that prompted a severe weather warning along the entire west coast of the South Island last night was expected to move northward this morning, bringing with it the risk of quick-fire tornados similar to those that ravaged Waikanae on Saturday. Snow blanketed Queenstown yesterday and was forecast to spread to other parts of the South Island, with many alpine roads likely to be closed and heavy snowfalls possible in Fiordland and southern Westland. "

Our wacky weather: After the hottest spring in 118 years, forecasters predict the coolest summer in two decades

Daily Mail


"Experts from The Met Office said the average central England temperature in June reached just 13.8C (57C) – the coldest since 1991 which managed only 12.1C (54F). July has so far shown little signs of improvement with overcast conditions and long days of drizzle. Temperatures have averaged just 15.8C (60F) and forecasters are warning that the rest of the month is unlikely to pick up. That could mean an average Summer temperature of only 15.1C (59F). The cool temperatures would make this year the coldest summer overall since 1993, which averaged 14.9C (59F) from June to August. Even though London could struggle up to 25C (77F) today, the mercury in the rest of the country will reach just 16C to 19C (61F-66F). The cool Summer temperatures are a stark contrast to those earlier this year. Spring – which statistically means March, April and May – saw sizzling temperatures that made it the hottest season for 118 years."

More green scares....

Wars, food shortages and mass immigration: How global warming poses dire threat to Britain's security (Daily Mail)
".....Benny Peiser, of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: 'This is an attempt by Chris Huhne to re-frame the climate scare by linking it to national security. 'He is not alone in applying this new tactic. In recent months, green campaigners have focused attention on security issues in the hope of reviving their flagging campaign.

'Public concern and media coverage of climate change has dropped significantly in the last 12-18 months. In response, green groups have concluded that accentuating national security may give the issue greater immediacy, not least among conservative voters who are more sceptical about environmental scares but more open to security concerns. 'We are dealing with a very speculative linkage given that warmer periods, historically, have been more peaceful than colder periods.'

Sunday 10 July 2011

Labor's Suicide Sunday: Australian Voters Reject Julia Gillard's Carbon Tax

GWPF
"ANGRY Australians have vowed to vote Julia Gillard from office at the next election after yesterday's controversial carbon tax announcement. Just 8.5 per cent of Australians say they would support a Labor government.

Scores of voters rejected the plan soon after details of the $24.5 billion package to tackle climate change were revealed, with more than 80 per cent who voted in a national News Limited online poll saying Australia shouldn't have a carbon tax.

Almost 100,000 people voted across four polls in the national plebiscite with 87.1 per cent saying they planned to change their vote at the next election in light of the tax.

More than 70 per cent of voters, or 15,866 people, said they now planned to vote for the Coalition at the next election while just 8.51 per cent said they would support a Labor government."

Column - A fraud on the Australian people

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
"JULIA Gillard’s carbon dioxide tax is the most brazen fraud to be perpetrated by an Australian government.

Warming believers should be outraged that the tax is so useless.

Sceptics should be outraged it’s so pointless.

It offends the intelligence of everyone and threatens the jobs of thousands. For nothing. "

Pressure grows for green tax to be axed to ease burden of soaring fuel bills

Daily Mail
"Ministers were under pressure last night to ease the burden of hidden green charges on soaring fuel bills. According to energy regulator Ofgem, the UK’s climate change policies add £100 – or nearly 10 per cent – to a typical household fuel bill. Consumer groups and MPs say all energy suppliers should be forced to reveal on bills how much hard-pressed families are forced to pay to subsidise green energy and end Britain’s dependence on dirty coal, oil and gas.

Benny Peiser, director of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, called for hidden climate change levies to be slashed. He said: ‘If Energy Secretary Chris Huhne has his way, Britons will be forced to subsidise renewable energy by approximately £100billion in the next 20 years. ‘Electricity prices are likely to double as a direct result. Enough is enough."

Saturday 9 July 2011

Flaming cheek! British Gas whacks £200 on your energy bill - and that's on top of crippling green taxes

Daily Mail
"The surge in bills is being accelerated by a host of controversial ‘green’ taxes designed to drive a shift to wind, wave, solar and nuclear power.These add around £100 a year to energy bills, according to the industry regulator Ofgem, though experts suggest the figure could be as much as £150. High bills have thrown millions of families and pensioners into ‘fuel poverty’, which means that they face a nightmare choice each winter between heating and eating. The latest price hikes, if all suppliers follow suit, are predicted to push up the number in this situation by some 2.8million to almost 12million."

The Phoenix dust storm shows that, whatever the weather, it's always 'climate change'

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
"One of the more touching features of our global warming zealots is their remarkable ignorance of history. As their religion crumbles, they clutch ever more desperately at any “extreme weather event” to support their sad creed. Hot or cold, dry or wet, droughts, heatwaves, floods or record falls of snow are all inevitably cited as evidence of mankind’s “disruption of the climate” – even if cussed old Mother Nature has produced such things hundreds of times before. "

Europe’s Temperatures Show No Evidence Of Warming Since 1998

NoTricksZone
"There is nothing in the above graphs and figures that would warrant the drastic reductions being planned for carbon dioxide emissions and the extremely expensive green energy options being planned by Europe in light of the most difficult economic environment that exists in Europe and the globe. Surely there are much more pressing problems that confront the world and Europe than solving an apparently non-existing problem that is only speculated to exist 100 years from now."

Friday 8 July 2011

UN reveals its master plan for destruction of global economy

Telegraph
"What’s amazing about this stuff – and believe me, there’s plenty more where this came from – is the unblushing shamelessness with which it advocates this economic insanity. Here is the world’s most powerful intergovernmental institution essentially arguing for the destruction of the global economy, enforced rationing, Marxist wealth redistribution, greater regulation, the erosion of property rights and global governance by a new world order of technocrats and bureacrats. And being so upfront about it they actually issue press releases, telling us what they’re planning to do and encouraging us to write about it."

Thursday 7 July 2011

Nutters Corner.....

Attack of the jellyfish: Sea creatures shut down ANOTHER power station amid claims population surge is due to climate change (Daily Mail)

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Fat planet: Melting ice caused by global warming is adding to Earth's girth (Daily Mail)

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Coal-burning China's rapid growth may have HALTED global warming (Daily Mail)

The green tax con: Climate change levies are swallowed up by Treasury

Daily Mail


"Millions of people believe soaring green taxes are simply an excuse to take more money from their pockets, MPs say. In a hard-hitting report they warned that environmental levies - supposedly there to help the planet - are badly tarnished.They called on the Government to 'put its money where its mouth is' and use receipts from fuel and aircraft duties to improve public transport rather than just fill Treasury coffers.

A Quarter Of Brits Are Living In Fuel Poverty As Energy Bills Rocket

GWPF
"Ann Robinson, director of consumer policy at uSwitch.com, says: “Rocketing energy prices mean that the middle classes are no longer immune to social ills such as fuel poverty. The fact is that we can now find the fuel poor amongst all walks of life and in all types of households. Start to factor in housing costs such as mortgage and rental payments and we are left with the shocking image of a third of all British households living in fuel poverty.

“The sad truth is that consumers are paying a heavy price for this country’s disjointed, incoherent and unaffordable energy policy."

Mantria Corporation: The biggest green Ponzi scheme ever?

MNN
"It probably seemed too good to be true: A corporation promising to build a carbon-negative residential community powered by a groundbreaking new type of alternative energy, all of which would yield investors returns of anywhere from 17 to "infinite" percent.It turns out it was too good to be true, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which on Nov. 17, 2009, charged Philadelphia-based Mantria Corporation with securities fraud, calling it a "green investment Ponzi scheme." But by that time, Mantria investors — most of them from the Denver area — had already been bilked out of a reported $54 million."

Driest place on Earth: Atacama desert in Chile buried under feet of snow

WUWT
"According to the national emergency centre in Chile, the area had not seen this amount of snow in close to 20 years. Some areas received up to 80 centimeters (32 inches) of snow, leading to closed roads and stuck vehicles. The temperature in Santiago, Chile dropped to as low as -8.5 degrees Celsius on Wednesday. Other countries in Latin America such as Uruguay and Argentina have also been affected by the cold front."

Carbon Dioxide Tax is just another tax on the poor.

Carbon tax bumps up B.C. fuels prices (Canada)
"B.C. residents face another across-the-board increase in fuel taxes in what's become a Canada Day convention. The province's carbon tax on gasoline, diesel and all oil-based fuels, as well as natural gas and coal, has jumped every July 1 since 2008. .....B.C. introduced its carbon tax as part of former premier Gordon Campbell's plan to legislate cuts to greenhouse gas emissions by more than 33 per cent by 2020.The most recent statistics provided in the government's Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report indicate the province has a long way to go to meet its reduction targets. .....There are no scheduled carbon tax increases after 2012. The current government budget forecasts $740 million in carbon tax revenues this year and $950 million next year."

H/T Prof Bunyip

There has been no global warming since 1998

Telegraph
"For years the Warmists have been telling us that they’re so sure of their computer models that they know, they just know, that CO2 has a forcing effect on global temperatures and that combined with positive feedbacks this is going to cause catastrophic warming. And now they’re saying, without a blush, “Well all right, some of those feedbacks might actually be negative and, er, completely cancel out the terrifying thing we were telling you to worry about. But don’t stop worrying, for God’s sake. Whatever is happening is still worrying, very worrying. And if you give us a bit more time we’ll come up with a paper explaining just why it’s worrying.”

NYT Admits That The Whole Story Boils Down To Computer Modelers

Real Science
"Climate modelers have demonstrated little skill at forecasting the climate, but they control the debate. Temperatures remain below scenario C, but the modelers are academics and as such are never expected to be correct. ......The message of the computer modelers is now the prevailing wisdom of the National Academy and other distinguished scientific bodies around the world."

Wednesday 6 July 2011

Column - Things I never thought I’d see here

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"Here’s another thing I never thought I’d see in this country I’ve loved for its fair go.

I never thought I’d see academics sign a petition demanding someone be stopped from simply arguing.

But in Western Australia last week, that’s just what was done by 50 academics, from professors to a PhD candidate specialising in the representation of the Salvation Army in Finnish cinema, who demanded the University of Notre Dame stop warming sceptic Christopher Monckton from speaking there.

I’ve seen pictures of people being silenced for heresy before, of course, but they were in history books, drawn from inquisitions centuries ago, in another continent.

But this is Australia. Today.

Oh, and I never thought I’d see people getting doctorates in Australia on how Finnish films depicted the Salvation Army. But they do in the University of Western Australia, and, to be honest, that’s a first anywhere.

Here’s another thing I never thought I’d see in this country, which I’ve loved for those great home-making suburbs that artists once mocked for being boring.

I never thought I’d see parents killed after telling off naughty teenagers, or great masses of people brawling in our streets.

Yet this week, a Melbourne mum, with her 11-year-old daughter beside her, was stabbed to death after confronting youths who’d egged her house. Yet this week, 300 youths fought each other and police in a Melbourne suburb.

Oh, I’d heard of such stuff about the meanest streets of the United States, years ago.

But this is Australia. Today. ...."

Hillman: a tax that will kill jobs and not change the climate a flicker

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"Ralph Hillman, head of the Australian Coal Industry, gave a powerful speech in Canberra today.

All that marred it was the supercilious smirks on the faces of two young journalists, one a former Labor staffer, as they put to him what they thought were “gotcha” questions to make Hillman seem an alarmist. My own criticism is that Hillman still dares not question the basis for global warming catastrophism."

GE, Fujitsu Back Australia Carbon Plan Amid Gillard Campaign

San Fransico Chronicle
"July 6 (Bloomberg) -- General Electric Co. and Fujitsu Ltd. backed Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's bid to initiate carbon trading to cut emissions in the developed world's biggest polluter per capita.

The companies are two of 55 who signed a letter sent to Gillard last night from the Carbon Markets & Investor Association supporting her plan for an emissions trading system to start in 2012. Coal producers today said they will start a public campaign against policies they say will cost the industry A$22 billion ($23.6 billion)."

Nils-Axel Mörner: Arctic Environment by the Middle of this Century

WUWT
"Nils-Axel Mörner, best known for his career of studying sea level and sea level records, reported in the April 2011 issue of the journal Energy & Environment that:

At around 2040-2050 we will be in a new major Solar Minimum. It is to be expected that we will then have a new “Little Ice Age” over the Arctic and NW Europe. The past Solar Minima were linked to a general speeding-up of the Earth’s rate of rotation. This affected the surface currents and southward penetration of Arctic water in the North Atlantic causing “Little Ice Ages” over northwestern Europe and the Arctic.

Tuesday 5 July 2011

Carbon Credits Billionaire to Strip Mine the Arctic.

hauntingthelibrary
"So, in the name of tackling global warming, European taxpayers have paid literally billions whilst losing jobs and tax revenue, production has moved to a lower wage country with an awful lot of the product being shipped back to where it was made, and now the the recipient of this money is strip-mining the Arctic to get at the ore there and there’s nothing climate campaigners in the West can do about it, as the factories are all in India and other countries which have made it quite clear they have no intention of imposing any restrictions on their manufacturing base."

Study: solar activity lull increases chances of cold UK winters

WUWT
"Put in context, the average UK winter temperature for the last 20 years has been 5.04 oC, however the last three winters have averaged 3.50 °C, 2.53 °C and 3.13 °C, with 2009/10 being the 14th coldest in the last 160 years. The increased probability of colder winters could hold great value for national infrastructure planning by government organisations who have struggled to adapt to the extreme weather conditions experienced in the UK over the past two years."

Cold snap brings snow

ABC News (Australia)
"Tasmanians have been warned to brace for heavier snowfalls as the first big winter chill sets in. The Bureau of Meteorology says snow falls to as low as 200 metres have been reported in some parts of the state's south.The road to Mount Wellington in Hobart is closed from gate three, and snow has been falling in some suburbs."

Monday 4 July 2011

Wow, Lynas tells it like it is.

WUWT
"This sums it up, he writes:

Our environment and energy problems are solvable — but can be tackled effectively only with pragmatism, rather than ideological wishful thinking. And the litmus test for that may well be the issue of nuclear power.

You mustn't believe the lies of the Green zealots. And I should know - I was one

Daily Mail
"It has taken me a long time to reach this conclusion. I used to passionately oppose not only nuclear power but GM crops. I once even threw a pie in the face of a Danish scientist who dared to question the orthodox environmental line. So what changed?Through research, I found that much of what I believed about environmental issues had little, if any, basis in science. Put simply, though my concerns were right, my solutions were wrong."

Gillard won’t tell you her tax won’t stop any warming

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"For months - years - I have asked this fundamental question: for all the pain of the Labor Government’s planned cuts to our emissions, what’s the gain? But how much will we cut the world’s temperature? This is a fundamental question because we need to know if our huge sacrifice is worth it. And it is a scandal that no Canberra journalists have asked it of any politician. That still has not changed. But yesterday, at last, there was a minor breakthrough. Yesterday, warmist journalist Lenore Taylor twice asked Prime Minister Julia Gillard to at least explain how much the world would warm even if we did all she asked. And the non-answers she got were not just an insult to Taylor and to all voters, but a partial admission of the utter futility of Gillard’s planned tax: ....."

Wind of change: Aussie 'farting camels' cull under attack

Yahoo News AP
"PARIS (AFP) – The world's association of camel scientists fought back angrily on Monday over Australian plans to kill wild dromedaries on the grounds that their flatulence adds to global warming.

The idea is "false and stupid... a scientific aberration", the International Society of Camelid Research and Development (ISOCARD) charged, saying camels were being made culprits for a man-made problem. "We believe that the good-hearted people and innovating nation of Australia can come up with better and smarter solutions than eradicating camels in inhumane ways," it said.

The kill-a-camel suggestion is floated in a paper distributed by Australia's Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, as part of consultations for reducing the country's carbon footprint.The scheme is the brainchild of an Adelaide-based commercial company, Northwest Carbon, a land and animal management consultancy, which proposes whacking feral camels in exchange for carbon credits."

Sunday 3 July 2011

Is Britain about to be plunged into a Little Ice Age?

Daily Mail
"Average temperatures in Britain could fall by two degrees centigrade, according to the study led by Mike Lockwood, professor of space environment physics at Reading University, because of a drop in the amount of sunspot activity. .....His findings, published by the Institute of Physics, (IoP) showed that in the next 50 years there is a one in 10 chance of the sun returning to conditions seen between 1645 and 1715 when the River Thames in London regularly froze over, as did the Baltic Sea. Known as the Maunder Minimum during these years astronomers could not see any sunspots and Europe endured unusually harsh winters which came to be known as the Little Ice Age."

Farmers enouraged to cash in on the scramble for wind

Telegraph
"It is the new gold rush sweeping its way across Britain. Except the scramble is not for some precious metal or rare commodity but for wind.

For after years, struggling to eke out a living, farmers are being offered a new way to get rich - by energy speculators determined to build wind turbines on their land.An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph reveals developers are exploiting a green energy subsidy, worth billions of pounds, to persuade landowners to turn their fields over for wind farms.The speculators - who have been compared to door-to-door double glazing salesmen - are 'cold calling' farmers with offers often too tempting to refuse. One farmer in Northumberland has reported receiving 12 separate offers from developers to build turbines on his land."

Subsidy Farms

GWPF
"One cold-calling letter passed to The Sunday Telegraph reveals how energy companies are trawling the Land Registry in the race to find suitable sites for turbines.

The letter, sent by a company in Suffolk to a farmer in Northumberland, states: "By hosting a wind energy project, this could provide a secondary source of income by diversifying the use of the land, which we would estimate could be in the region of £18,000 per turbine per annum." The letter suggests the piece of land identified would be suitable for four wind turbines with a capacity of two to three megawatts.

Dr John Constable, director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, a think tank which has criticised the cost of green subsidies for wind farms, said each turbine, which would need to be about 400ft high, would generate in the region of £660,000 a year in income for the developer. Approximately half of that income comes from selling electricity to the National Grid but the rest - about £330,000 - comes in the form of a consumer subsidy intended to encourage the growth in wind energy.

In other words, the one field in Northumberland identified by the energy company would generate about £2.64 million in income a year."

Canada dodges carbon bullet .Collapse of global cap-and-trade market vindicates Stephen Harper

Toronto Sun (Canada)
"What if they created a global cap-and-trade market in carbon dioxide emissions and nobody came?

That’s almost what’s happening now.

It underscores the wisdom of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s refusal to be railroaded into carbon trading by the opposition parties and all the usual “green” suspects.

The international trade in carbon credits, having proven ineffective at lowering carbon dioxide emissions, while raising consumer prices and riddled with the same kind of fraud, profiteering and reckless trading practices that led to the 2008 global recession, is now suffering its final indignity. Almost no one wants to buy carbon credits, which are the stock of carbon trading markets, with each credit permitting the bearer to emit one tonne of carbon dioxide through the burning of fossil fuels. The signs of a looming collapse in carbon markets are everywhere."

Saturday 2 July 2011

Abbott exposes the great con

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"Opposition Leader Tony Abbott in an excellent speech yesterday shows what a gift a carbon tax is to a cash-hungry Big Government:


On close consideration, carbon pricing turns out to be just another pot of gold for government. It’s instructive that the International Monetary Fund has just recommended a 25 per cent hike in Iceland’s carbon tax to address not an environmental problem but its fiscal crisis."

Proof that the Government is tilting at windmills

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
"In the week when it was reported that 20 per cent of the EU's fast-soaring, trillion-euro budget may soon be spent on "fighting climate change", it was timely that Britain's energy companies should have met with the Department of Energy and Climate Change to raise one of the best-hidden secrets of our Government's obsession with wind power.

Centrica and other energy companies last week told DECC that, if Britain is to spend £100 billion on building thousands of wind turbines, it will require the building of 17 new gas-fired power stations simply to provide back-up for all those times when the wind drops and the windmills produce even less power than usual.

We will thus be landed in the ludicrous position of having to spend an additional £10 billion on those 17 dedicated power stations, which will be kept running on "spinning reserve", 24 hours a day, just to make up for the fundamental problem of wind turbines. This is that their power continually fluctuates anywhere between full capacity to zero (where it often stood last winter, when national electricity demand was at a peak). So unless back-up power is instantly available to match any shortfall, the lights will go out. "

Friday 1 July 2011

Alarmists/warmists Panic !

Daily Mail
"Global warning: Scientists in U-turn as they claim extreme weather and climate change are linked"
From the comments:
They have to blame global warming else they'll lose their funding.

- Roy, Southend, UK, 01/7/2011 17:49

Why do warmists run from debate?

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
"The warmists’ strategy is two-fold: first, to deny there’s a debate by refusing to actually have one; and, second, to avoid subjecting their ludicrous claims to scrutiny by the informed. "

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Alan Jones tells carbon tax rally PM will go 'down the sewer'
"In Sydney there were banners saying "Ditch the witch" and others depicting Ms Gillard as the fairytale story character Pinocchio whose nose grew longer the more he lied. The crowd were angry about the Labor government's decision to raise the carbon tax in this term of government.They pilloried Ms Gillard for telling voters during the 2010 federal election there would be no carbon tax under her government."