The academic face of the anti-fracking movement - Cornell marine ecologist Robert Howarth - increasingly looks like he’s willing to turn science into farce.

Last spring, the once-obscure professor became the go-to expert for anti-fracking journalists and lawmakers when he published a report claiming shale gas pollutes more than coal. The New York Times featured his study in two uncritical articles in one week, he was interviewed on dozens of talk shows - and the media echo chamber did the rest: He was a star.

Since then, other scientists have almost universally challenged his findings - but now he’s doubled down.

Last week, Howarth released another scientifically questionable study, now warning that fracking could push the world over a tipping point, sending temperatures irreversibly higher - an inflammatory and demonstrably incorrect assertion.

Here’s the backstory. Shale gas is acknowledged as an ideal “bridge fuel” to a cleaner energy future. It’s become cost-attractive thanks to fracking: a proven extraction technique used for decades, technologically tweaked to mine shale gas - notably the Marcellus Formation beneath a large swath of New York.

Thanks to fracking, America is poised to transform itself from a fuel pauper, dependent upon the whims of Mideast madmen and Russian oligarchs, into an energy exporter.

But hard leftists have always opposed any energy other than wind or solar. That’s where Howarth and the anti-fracking Park Foundation come in.

In an interview, Howarth told me his goal was to make the anti-fracking movement mainstream and fashionable. He said he met with the Ithaca-based foundation two years ago, agreeing to produce a study challenging the conventional wisdom that shale gas is comparatively clean.

The polluting impact of shale gas revolves around one key issue: how much methane gas is released during extraction. Methane has more short-term global-warming impact than any other fossil fuel. Howarth emerged from academic nowhere when he claimed shale-gas wells leak like sieves, venting methane half the time, spewing 7 percent to 8 percent of reserves into the atmosphere.

“That’s absurd,” says Michael Levi, director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change at the Council of Foreign Relations. “Most methane gas is either “delivered to sales” with no leakage, or it’s burnt off through flaring, which diminishes its greenhouse impact.”

Renowned geologist Lawrence Cathles, also at Cornell, who published a scathing deconstruction of Howarth’s paper this month, says that he “doesn’t document venting but what the industry calls ‘capture.’”

Almost every independent researcher - at the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Energy Department and numerous independent university teams - has slammed Howarth’s conclusions. At a minimum, the evidence suggests he either acted in bad faith or is ignorant of gas technology.

The core problem: Howarth uses Environmental Protection Agency estimates dating to 2007 - ancient data, given how quickly the technology is evolving.

Crucially, he fails to account for innovation. Gas lost through leakage is money lost, literally into thin air. For that reason, new wells are now “green completed” - meaning most leaking gas is captured and sold rather than vented.

Cathles notes the latest Devon study, now being verified by the EPA, documenting that shale gas is vented in only 5 percent of wells. The Energy Department estimates only 1 percent to 2 percent of methane is now lost during production.

Bottom line, almost all nonindustry-linked researchers believe Howarth exaggerates the impact of shale-gas leakage by 10 to 20 times. “His conclusions are more a politically charged articulation than a balanced scientific assessment,” Cathles says.

Howarth hired an aggressive PR firm, the Hastings Group, to promote his politicized viewpoint. Scientists aren’t buying it, but many journalists fall for the fear-mongering.

Howarth doesn’t have to convince anyone he’s right to devastate New York’s budding shale industry and put tens of thousands of jobs into question. He wins if he muddies the waters enough to give cautious Albany bureaucrats reason to stall.

Almost every news story now frames this issue as a standoff between equally valid scientific experts. In fact, it’s really a debate between science and ideology.

Jon Entine is a senior research fellow at the Center for Health & Risk Communication at George Mason University/STATS.

Some one or some organization is attempting to influence the upcoming annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS).

According to WCTV-TV’s story Urging American Meteorological Society to Get Tougher on Climate Change, a program called Forecast the Facts is attempting to lobby the AMS to change their 5-year policy on climate change to a new policy “drafted by a panel of [unidentified] experts” (emphasis added).

A new campaign, Forecast the Facts (www.forecastthefacts.org), launches Sunday to pressure TV meteorologists to inform their viewers about climate change. The launch coincides with the kick-off of the American Meteorological Society’s (AMS) annual meeting in New Orleans, LA.

Enlarged.

“This is an important moment in the history of the AMS,” said Daniel Souweine, the campaign’s director. “It’s well known that large numbers of meteorologists are climate change deniers. It’s essential that the AMS Council resist pressure from these deniers and pass the strong statement currently under consideration.”

The “Campaign Director” is identified as Daniel Souweine. The Forecast the Facts web site turns out to be a product of “Citizen Engagement Laboratory (CEL).”

And who is the Chief of Staff of CEL? You guessed it: Daniel Souweine. Here’s his Facebook page.

The web site describes CEL as: “a non-profit, non-partisan organization that uses digital media and technology to amplify the voices of underrepresented constituencies. We seek to empower individuals to take collective action on the issues that concern them, promoting a world of greater equality and justice in the process.”

But as we see elsewhere, in the green incubator building description of CEL at the David Browner Center at 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, that “non-partisan” claim doesn’t match this description:

So much for the “truth in advertising”.

They also go to trouble to obfuscate their website domain, here is the WHOIS results for forecastthefacts.org and .com:

Interesting thing though, is that when you check to see what other web servers are at the same domain IP address, you discover a whole flock of political activist websites.

READ MUCH MORE AND SPREAD THE WORD.

UPDATE: Forecastthefacts.org (operated by Citizen Engagement Lab) is a George Soros funded activist website. Here’s the proof (h/t to WUWT reader Jan). See.

While on extended leave in New York, I often pondered conditions in this huge city, versus in Uganda and most of Africa. Perhaps most of all, I reflected on electricity and the economic activity, modern living standards and improved health that this amazing technology makes possible. I thought about that as I read articles about climate change “reparations” and other foreign aid, oil and gas discoveries in Africa, and impediments to African electricity and economic development.

Several European and US energy companies recently announced major natural gas discoveries in East Africa, both onshore and offshore. Other companies are using hydraulic fracturing to unlock natural gas from the continent’s shale rock formations.

There is a lot of talk about building LNG (liquefied natural gas) terminals to ship gas overseas. “I’m convinced that in 10 years’ time Tanzania, Mozambique and Kenya will together form a major gas hub for Asian and Far Eastern markets,” Cove Energy CEO John Craven told the Wall Street Journal.

There is a lot of gas in West Africa too, especially in Angola and Nigeria, and companies are often criticized for “flaring” gas - burning it off at the wellhead, instead of using it for something productive. (The same thing happened in the United States, until people figured our how to use this previously unwanted byproduct of oil production to heat homes, generate electricity, and make fertilizers, plastics and chemicals.)

Why should this valuable energy resource be flared? In fact, why should we just talk about sending it to Asia, the Far East and other markets? Why aren’t we talking more about using it right here in Africa?

Why aren’t we talking more about using it right here in Africa?

East African gas could easily be used all over the Great Lakes region to generate electricity for homes and businesses, hospitals and schools, jobs and economic growth - turning dreams into reality. All we’d need to do is provide legal, tax and other incentives to attract investors who could build a few gas-fired generating plants and pipelines to connect them to gas fields.

There would still be plenty of gas for export, but the reliable, affordable electricity would launch an economic boom unlike anything we have ever seen.

That’s what happened in the southeastern United States, when the Tennessee Valley Authority began building hydroelectric dams and other projects. One of America’s poorest regions was transformed into an economic powerhouse. Dams built in the Southwest and Pacific Northwest regions of the USA during the Great Depression did the same thing.

Recognizing the immense value of electricity, South Africa is racing to build the Medupi coal-fired power plant and many other generators and transmission lines. In just one example, when an electrical line finally reached a remote area of the country, two furniture makers were able to install power equipment, hire local workers, sell far more furniture of much higher quality - and help launch a local economic revolution that has enabled families to improve their living standards greatly.

Just imagine what could happen if people all over Africa could have access to affordable electricity, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year!

Meanwhile, Ghana is building a 130-MW gas-fired power plant, even though the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation refused to support the $185-million project. Other investors stepped forward, the plant is being built, the country will send some of its abundant natural gas to the plant, and numerous Ghanaians will finally enjoy the blessings of modern living through electricity.

Just imagine what could happen if people all over Africa could have access to affordable electricity, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year!

As Zambian Dambisa Moyo and South African Leon Louw have often said, foreign aid causes more harm than good- whether it is traditional aid or new-fangled “climate reparation” aid. Most of it ends up in just a few hands. Poor families see little or no improvement in their lives. And people have few incentives and little money to make investments, launch businesses or improve their homes and communities.

Foreign aid keeps people alive, but barely. It ties them to international welfare, in perpetual poverty, with little or no chance to become middle class.

Let them eat cake!

Access to electricity changes everything. It puts people in charge of their future. It unleashes the human spirit, and people’s innovative and entrepreneurial instincts. It gives people one of the most important tools they need: affordable, reliable energy for lights, refrigerators, computers and machinery - along with good jobs, so that they can afford electricity, more nutritious food, healthcare and other basics.

Some say putting more carbon dioxide into the air from burning natural gas will affect the climate. However, many scientists say CO2 plays only a minor role in climate change - and Africans already put millions of tons into the air by burning wood, grass and dung, which are far less efficient fuel sources and cannot generate electricity.

The rest of the world - especially Europeans, Americans, Chinese and Indians – are burning enormous amounts of coal and natural gas to generate the electricity that runs their countries. Why shouldn’t Africa? Besides, carbon dioxide makes plants grow better, even in droughts, and companies like General Electric are developing cleaner, more efficient gas turbine technologies that African nations could purchase.

Kenya, Uganda and other African countries would not need extensive gas pipeline systems. They just need to build a few pipelines to carry gas to large generating units that would provide electricity for homes, hospitals, schools, shops, factories and water treatment plants. Miracles would happen.

As my wife, businesswoman and fellow malaria and economic development activist Fiona Kobusingye, has pointed out, “Not having electricity means millions of Africans die every year from lung infections, because they have to cook and heat with open fires; from intestinal diseases caused by spoiled food and unsafe drinking water; from malaria and other diseases that we could prevent or treat if we had proper medical facilities.”

All that would change if our countries had electricity.

The modern world runs on electricity. It’s time for Africa to take its rightful place among the healthy and prosperous nations of the world. Our growing supplies of natural gas could help make that happen.

Cyril Boynes, Jr. is co-chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality - Uganda.

Update: See the well deserved credit given to Anthony Watts and WUWT bloggers for the collapse of the Global Warming Charade in this Pat Michael’s editorial on Forbes. Because of Anthony’s surface stations.org effort the Government’s own GAO also pushed NOAA to upgrade the siting of 1000 stations in the Climate Reference Network instead of the originally planned 114 after finding t least 42% failed to meets acceptable standards. In a fair world Anthony should be given an award by AMs instead of Hansen, Gore, Emanuel (3).

By Joseph D’Aleo

NASA announced this week that 2011 was the ninth warmest year since 1880 (132 years) despite a quiet sun (not really the case) and La Nina.

UAH had 2011 as the 18th warmest (thus 15th coldest) in their 33 years of record keeping. That alone should raise your eyebrows. Obviously the 15th coldest year in the last 33 years could not also be the ninth warmest in 132 years.

Here is a plot of the UAH and NASA GISS temperatures versus the CO2 in the last 10 years.

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Temperatures are flat even as CO2 has risen almost 8%. It looks like the third coldest year of the ten in NASA and UAH data sets. The anomalies are supposed to be greater (1.2 times) for the lower troposphere as measured by UAH than the surface as measured by GISS because the atmosphere is where the CO2 is supposed to do its trapping work according to the theory. Instead the surface anomalies are three times higher suggesting surface contamination and a failed/incomplete theory.

Notice how much warmer NASA GISS is than UAH.

Back in 2007, Steve McIntyre found a millenium bug that elevated the temperatures after 2000 in the NASA data for the US. See how they adjusted down for that for 2007 data. Notice a few years later it all returned as the NOAA USHCN removed the UHI adjustment. Again this year they seem to find more warmth in recent years.

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They also have found ways to cool off the prior warm period in the 1930s-1950s to make the current warm cycle look even more impressive. This chart uses an old Hansen temperature plot from 1980 and one from 2010.

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E-mail messages obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that NASA concluded that its own climate findings were inferior to those maintained by both the University of East Anglia’s Climatie Research Unit (CRU)—the scandalized source of the leaked Climate-gate e-mails—and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center.

The e-mails from 2007 reveal that when a USA Today reporter asked if NASA’s data “was more accurate” than other climate-change data sets, NASA’s Dr. Reto A. Ruedy replied with an unequivocal no. He said “the National Climatic Data Center’s procedure of only using the best stations is more accurate,” admitting that some of his own procedures led to less accurate readings. “My recommendation to you is to continue using NCDC’s data for the U.S. means and [East Anglia] data for the global means,” Ruedy told the reporter.

Hansen seems to have a teflon coat. Despite all his failures (including predictions of the West Side Highway being underwater by 2010 made in 1980 - sea level rises are about 1 inch) and data issues, he escapes scrutiny.

Just to put some numbers to this global manipulation, here is a selection from Iceland the change since last year’sversion. Enhancing warming trend by cooling off the past.
Reykjavik (degrees C)
Year Last This Diff
1911 5.31 4.21 1.1
1941 5.28 4.09 1.19
1971 5.85 4.65 1.2
1991 6.12 4.92 1.2
2011 5.58 5.58 0

NASA was not alone. the three data centeres collaborated as the climategate emails suggest.

The CRU global records changed similarly.

Enlarged

They accomplished this ‘kockey sticking’ by cooling off old data and warming later data, in part through elimination of a UHI adjustment in the US. They also cooled ocean temperatures near the bothersome warm blip around 1940, The climategate emails included one by Wigley of UEA and later NCAR suggesting a cooling then of about 0.15C would be effective but still plausible.

I am working on a document the next few weeks for the broadcasters and forecasters that gives reasons why we should remain objective about climate science and why resources should be spent on research into these natural factors so we can better foresee the large scale oddities like we have seen this winter. 

Think Progress has raised the alarm about arctic and Alaskan warming based on a release from the evil advocacy group WWF which uses ficticous arctic readings taken from Hansen’s NASA GISS data set. Hadley and the UAH/RSS arctic make no estimates for the arcttic where there are no reporting stations. Hansen, estimates based on readings taken from 1200 km or more away. In his latest post on Think Progress, another George Soros (a malevolent philanthropist who made his fortunes destroying world economies and peoples), comedy blog, chief comic Joe Romm implies Alaska cold has left for India.  Based on the drum beating of the looney left, concerned about mounting evidence that Arctic thawing is accelerating carbon emissions to the atmosphere, the Ranking Member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Henry Waxman (Democrat, California a fellow loon), has called for a hearing on the issue.

Temperatures dropped to -40F the earliest ever in November in Fairbanks. Record snows fell in southern Alaska from Anchorage east - some place 160 inches above normal through early January.

Here is the latest plot for January Fairbanks high and low daily temperature and then anomalies. 13 days below -40F, an average of -25.7F, a departures from normal of -17.6F, ranking it among coldest ever Januarys. Temperatures as low as -56F were seen in Alaska mid month. Balmy indeed.

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And the hits just keep on coming, also in Think Progress, they lament that the Soros-funded astroturf campaign has been exposed and denounced for what it is.

ThinkProgress reports:

Right-wing weathermen who publicly reject climate science have responded with anger and vitriol to a campaign that exposes their influence on the American public. More than half of TV weather reporters don’t believe in human-induced climate change, even as our poisoned weather grows more extreme. Forecast The Facts challenges the American Meteorological Society to take a clear stand against these anti-science ideologues.

After ThinkProgress Green promoted the campaign, listing dozens of the prominent television weathermen who publicly heap scorn on scientific reality, the anti-science weatherguy community has lashed out:

- Rush Limbaugh’s “good guy” meteorologist Ryan Maue complained about the “left-wing sh*t website black-listing on-air meteorologists.”

- Accuweather Senior Vice President Mike Smith agreed that the ThinkProgress article “amounts to blacklisting.”

- San Diego’s KUSI-TV weatherman John Coleman said it was “very disturbing” that “the activists now feel the need to campaign to get us under control.”

- Cleveland’s WJW-TV weatherman Andre Bernier said: “The day the AMS strong arms anyone to tow the AGW is the day I disown them.”

- Retired TV weatherman John Ghiorse called the campaign “the ultimate in gestapo tactics.”

Strangely, they didn’t complain when Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) compiled a list of science-denying weathermen in 2007…

These looney progressives prove that not all people are left or right brained. Some are neither.

By Steve Goddard

Gore, Hansen, and Trenberth are travelling to Antarctica (where sea ice has been steadily increasing for 30 years- latest anomaly chart below enlarged here) to showcase melting ice. The leader of Gore’s project thinks it is winter in Antarctica.

Former Vice President Al Gore is taking his fight against climate change to Antarctica next week as part of a cruise organized by his Climate Reality Project.

Gore and more than 100 fellow travelers will depart from Argentina late next week. Scientists, including climatologists James Hansen of NASA and Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, will give talks during the journey.

The Antarctic voyage is part of a larger campaign to focus attention on the threat climate change poses to the world’s ice sheets and glaciers - a subject Gore highlighted in his 2007 documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and at a 2009 conference he convened with Norway’s foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Støre.

“This winter we will be talking about Antarctica as part of our ‘Living on Thin Ice’ campaign which will focus on how people around the globe are being impacted by the melting of the world’s ice,” Climate Reality Project spokesman Eric Young said. “As part of that effort, we are journeying to Antarctica with our chairman, Vice President Gore, and leading scientists and thinkers to see firsthand how the climate crisis is unfolding.” EENEWS

A possible hint for them about the season would be the fact that Antarctica is completely surrounded by hundreds of miles of ice during the wintertime, and that it is also very dark and cold. Given that nobody lives in Antarctica, that sea ice is increasing there, and that temperatures are declining - one might question how anyone there is being impacted by melting ice.

h/t to Marc Morano and http://junkscience.com

Also the climate criminals are counting on the media and public not knowing it is summer in Antarctica now and the sea ice melts alomng the edges in the summer. This is the same trick NBC’s Tom Brokaw or Scott Pelle used standing at the edge of a dripping glacier in summer and claiming it was the ‘canary in the coal mine’.

Another stooge, proven liar, Naomi Oreskes heard from in another progressive rag ”The verdict is in on climate change - When it comes to climate change, open-mindedness is the wrong approach.

We have to get over that flawed notion. Scientists don’t play the role of prosecutor trying to prove a case. Rather, they are the jury trying to evaluate the evidence. And they have rendered their verdict. The problem is not that scientists have become advocates, as some have claimed. The problem is that there is no judge, no recognized authority giving us instructions we accept, and no recognized authority to accept the scientists’ verdict and declare it final.

Obama-EPA Destroying More Jobs in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland

Link to Press Release

Washington D.C. - Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said that FirstEnergy’s announcement today that it will shut down six power plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland due to EPA’s Utility MACT rule is a prime example that while President Obama is talking the talk on an ‘all-of-the-above’ energy approach, his administration is aggressively working to shut down American oil, gas, and coal development.

“Today, hundreds of Americans learned that they will be losing their good-paying jobs because of the Obama EPA’s destructive regulatory agenda,” Senator Inhofe said. “Due to EPA’s forthcoming Utility MACT rule, FirstEnergy will be closing six power plants, which will put 529 Americans out of work in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland - states that have already been hit hard by the recession.

“Meanwhile, President Obama has been taking his State of the Union campaign speech on the road in an effort to distance himself from his cap-and-trade agenda, which no longer sells. Knowing that Americans want the good-paying jobs, the increased energy security, and the stronger economy that domestic fossil fuel development brings, the President has begun peddling an ‘all-of-the-above’ energy approach - but today’s announcement tells us the real story. President Obama’s regulatory agenda is the most harmful, aggressive and expensive in history and it is aimed squarely at shutting down the development of oil, gas and coal. That’s why the EPA’s Utility MACT rule is unnecessarily burdensome and costly - it’s intended to undermine the viability of coal, one of our country’s most abundant and reliable energy sources.

“The 529 jobs lost today are just the tip of the iceberg, as economic analyses predict up to 1.4 million American jobs will be lost by EPA’s rules for power plants.  Utility MACT will cost $11 billion, which contrasts sharply with the mere $6 million in direct benefits EPA projects will be gained from the rule’s implementation.

“In the weeks ahead I will be introducing a resolution under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) that will give Congress the ability to stop EPA from destroying jobs with Utility MACT.  Several Democratic members of the Senate have said that they would like to rein in EPA - with my CRA, they will have the chance to do so.”

More than 400 people jammed into a Portland hotel ballroom Wednesday night to hear a panel of global warming skeptics assert that manmade increases in greenhouse gases are not driving climate change.

The event, hosted by the 150-member Oregon chapter of the American Meteorological Society, was open to the general public and drew an attentive and mostly sympathetic audience. Chapter President Steve Pierce asked for a show of hands beforehand, then estimated that 90 percent of the crowd favored the statement that human activities are not the main cause of global warming.

Three Oregon-based panelists—physicist Gordon Fulks, meteorologist Chuck Wiese and former Oregon state climatologist George Taylor—used long- and short-term temperature measurements and other data to bolster their case.

Skepticism about climate models was prominent, particularly given a general flattening of temperatures since 1998, a relatively warm El Nino year. Water vapor, sun cycles and natural weather patterns are more powerful in changing climate than increases in carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, the panelists said.

“The effects of future changes in CO2 are likely to be modest and manageable,” said Taylor, who added that Northwest records do not indicate that temperatures have risen or snowpack has fallen, subjects of substantial debate.

The Oregon AMS moved the presentation to the Portland Airport Shilo Inn after the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry canceled it in November for lack of balance, and the ensuing controversy likely boosted in interest in the event.

“Thank you OMSI,” Wiese said, surveying the crowd. “This turnout is absolutely fantastic.”

In the question-and-answer period afterward, all but one of the questioners sided with the panelists. Andreas Schmittner, a researcher at Oregon State University who recently published a study analyzing the climate’s reaction to carbon dioxide levels, was the lone dissenter.

“Most scientists who are actively working in the field have very different opinions than what I’ve heard tonight,” he said. “C02 is a very important driver.”

As a national body, the American Meteorological Society asserts that human activities are “a major contributor to climate change,” while the Oregon chapter has decided to take “no formal position” on global warming.

Wiese said water vapor is the main greenhouse gas, and his calculations, which he plans to have peer-reviewed, indicate that carbon dioxide increases can explain at most 8 percent of temperature increases from 1960 to 2011.

The event had no built-in rebuttal. But a 2010 study published in the journal Science concluded that “ample physical evidence shows that carbon dioxide is the single most important climate-relevant greenhouse gas in Earth’s atmosphere.”

That was just one of many points stressed Wednesday night. The chapter will post the speakers’ presentations, which include charts and data citations, and a video of the meeting on its Web site—ametsoc.org/chapters/oregon—in one or two days, Pierce said. The Web site realclimate.org, run by climate scientists, disputes skeptics’ arguments. (ICECAP Note: Of course “realclimate.org” is run by shills for government and green industry. He needs to see http://nipccreport.org/

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Steve Pierce
President, Oregon Chapter of the American Meteorological Society
Oregon AMS web site: http://www.ametsoc.org/chapters/oregon/
E-mail: stevejpierce@comcast.net
Phone: 503-504-2075

Capacity Crowd of 500+ Attends Global Warming Meeting In Portland

(See Event Photos Attached)

Disclaimer: Permission granted to reuse information below. Please quote directly.

Vancouver, Washington (January 26th 2011) - “The much-talked-about Oregon Chapter of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) meeting on human caused global warming drew a capacity crowd of just over 500 attendees last night in Portland and spilled over to nearly three hours. Last night’s meeting was the single largest gathering in the history of our AMS chapter, eclipsing that of the George Taylor / Phil Mote global warming debate at OMSI back in 2007. This meeting was months in the making and I am happy to say that it was a logistical success. Voluntary donations at the door far exceeded our expectations and essentially covered the entire cost of having to reschedule the meeting. There is no doubt that the anticipation leading up to last night’s meeting was elevated on both sides of this debate. Everyone has an opinion on this topic and some folks are quite direct in how they feel about it. We anticipated a heightened level of anxiety over this meeting from the beginning, yet at the same time we felt it was important to uphold our chapter’s mission statement. In the end it was professional, informational and engaging. I was generally pleased with the tone of the overall meeting from both an audience and presenter perspective. If there were audience disagreements with what any of our guest speakers presented, it was done so respectfully and only occurred during the formal Q&A session. Both the audience and the presenters for the most part stuck to the science of the topic at hand and left the politics out.”

“The Oregon Chapter of the American Meteorological Society has no formal position on the subject matter of climate change. Our society is committed to our mission statement which reads: The purpose of this society shall be to advance professional ideals in the science of meteorology and to promote the development, exchange, and application of meteorological knowledge. To that end, we are planning to host a future meeting with the opposing side of this subject matter. We plan to have all of last night’s presentations uploaded to the Oregon AMS website within the next 48 hours, along with a complete video of the meeting to follow that.” Check back soon for the presentations at: http://www.ametsoc.org/chapters/oregon. Please see four selected event photo’s attached. Also, here is also a link to a complete slide show of all pictures from last night.. Please courtesy Tyler Mode for all the photos contained in this press release, if reused.

For Immediate Release

Washington, D.C. January 25, 2012

On Tuesday the American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center sent the University of Virginia and Michael Mann copies of 40 emails selected as examples of the 27 categories identified as benefitting from the Court’s review of UVA and Mann’s claims that emails in the taxpayer-funded school’s possession are properly subject to the specific exemptions under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act (VFOIA). These categories range from discussions of professional retaliation against other scientists who challenged Mann’s work, to those sent to or from Mann from or copying an email account covered by other FOI laws, such as the federal Freedom of Information Act.

This was part of a process agreed to by ATI, the University and Mann’s attorneys as ATI continues to seek Thomas Jefferson’s university to release a cache of 12,000 emails covered under VFOIA that tell an important part of the history of climate alarmism and the often unsettling ways taxpayer money was spent in promoting it.

“The UVA emails are a key part of a history that taxpayers are trying to piece together to place the early climate alarmism, and taxpayer financing of it, in context,” said Dr. David Schnare, Director of the ATI Environmental Law Center. “The alarmist professors who in some of these emails speak about ‘the cause’ have complained that their emails have been taken out of context. Release of the full UVA email collection, all sent or received by Mann after expressly agreeing he had no ownership of or expectation of privacy about them, will provide that context. Considering the behavior of this former UVA professor as documented in many emails already available to the public, these emails are the only means he has to claim exoneration without being accused of a whitewash.”

The selected emails include graphic descriptions of the contempt a small circle of largely taxpayer-funded alarmists held for anyone who followed scientific principles and ended up disagreeing with them. For example, in the fifteenth Petitioners’ Exemplar (PE-15), Mann encourages a boycott of one climate journal and a direct appeal to his friends on the editorial board to have one of the journal’s editors fired for accepting papers that were carefully peer-reviewed and recommended for publication on the basis that the papers dispute Mann’s own work. In PE-38, he states that another well respected journal is “being run by the baddies,” calling them “shills for industry.” In PE-39 Mann calls U.S. Congressmen concerned about how he spent taxpayer money “thugs”.

PE-18, 20 & 27 illustrate the typical fashion with which Mann used a UVa email account to accuse co-authors and other respected scientists of incompetence, berating them in emails copied to colleagues living throughout the world. UVA claims this is somehow exempt from VFOIA as scientific research.

In PE-22, Mann alludes to his “dirty laundry” which cannot come out, requesting his correspondent to not pass the email or the data attached to it to anyone else (UVa has claimed no attachments to any emails were preserved on their system). In this email, Mann admits he has failed to follow the most basic tenet of science, to keep a record of exactly what he did in his research, and thus himself could not reproduce his own results.

PE-24 & 25 characterize the efforts of this small group of academics to hide what they are doing and to avoid their work being held up to inspection under the Freedom of Information Act. In PE-26, Mann goes so far as to ask a federal employee - impossibly, as he send it to an email account subject to the federal FOIA - to “treat this email as confidential” though all the email does is complain about a Wall Street Journal author’s efforts to report the science impeaching Mann’s early work. PE-26, like many other emails UVA wishes to keep secret, is subject to release under the federal FOIA.

These emails, if honestly representative of the entire collection, do not make Virginians proud of having paid Mann’s salary.

“ATI, like Greenpeace and its peers, as well as the media, is committed to using transparency laws to make science and government policy open to the citizens who underwrite it, to the exclusion of properly exempt information such as proprietary material,” said Chris Horner, ATI’s Director of Litigation. “Universities are routinely asked to produce emails under FOIA, and most do so quickly. This has recently been proved true at another Virginia university when the media sought emails of a Mann critic. Why UVA wishes to boast of such outlier status within the academic community makes one ask, ‘what is it they are trying to hide?’”

The Petitioners’ Exemplars are available at ATI’s site.

If you wish an interview with Dr. Schnare or Mr. Horner, please contact ATI at info@atinstitute.org.

There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy..

Editor’s Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: “I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.’ In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?”

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the “pollutant” carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific “heretics” is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 “Climategate” email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere’s life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

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Corbis.
Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.

Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word “incontrovertible” from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question “cui bono?” Or the modern update, “Follow the money.”

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.

Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to “decarbonize” the world’s economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.

A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.

If elected officials feel compelled to “do something” about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review.

Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of “incontrovertible” evidence.

Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

2009 ClimateGate email: Warmist MacCracken suggests that Phil Jones start working on a “backup” in case Jones’ prediction of warming is wrong

ClimateGate FOIA grepper! - if the sulfate hypothesis is right, then your prediction of warming might end up being wrong

In any case, if the sulfate hypothesis is right, then your prediction of warming might end up being wrong. I think we have been too readily explaining the slow changes over past decade as a result of variability--that explanation is wearing thin. I would just suggest, as a backup to your prediction, that you also do some checking on the sulfate issue, just so you might have a quantified explanation in case the prediction is wrong. Otherwise, the Skeptics will be all over us--the world is really cooling, the models are no good, etc. And all this just as the US is about ready to get serious on the issue.

We all, and you all in particular, need to be prepared.

Best, Mike MacCracken [Note that Obama’s chief science advisor, John Holdren, is copied on this email]

According to research jumped on in Reuters based on no domain knowledge by clueless bureaucrats on the dole (sound familiar?):

- A weaker sun over the next 90 years is not likely to significantly delay a rise in global temperature caused by greenhouse gases,a report said Monday.

The study, by Britain’s Meteorological Office and the university of Reading, found that the Sun’s output would decrease up until 2100 but this would only lead to a fall in global temperatures of 0.08 degrees Celsius.

Scientists have warned that more extreme weather is likely across the globe this century as the Earth’s climate warms.

The world is expected to heat up by over 2 degrees Celsius this century due to increased greenhouse gas emissions.

Current global pledges to cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions are not seen as sufficient to stop the planet heating up beyond 2 degrees, a threshold scientists say risks an unstable climate in which weather extremes are common.

“This research shows that the most likely change in the sun’s output will not have a big impact on global temperatures or do much to slow the warming we expect from greenhouse gases,” said Gareth Jones, climate change detection scientist at the Met Office.

Astrophysicist Meteorologist and Climate Forecaster Piers Corbyn responds:

This UK Met Office and BBC promoted statement (Reuters) is extremely delusional and dishonest and a cover-up of reality.

(Full article)

Their ‘expectation’ that the world will warm by 2C this century ‘due to increased greenhouse gas emissions’ is proven drivel based on their own failed self-serving fraudulent models.

They deliberately choose to know almost nothing about solar influences on earth’s weather and climate and create ‘information’ designed to deceive.

It is the largely predictable vast changes in solar charged particle flux and sun-earth magnetic connectivity which control weather and climate.

That is why we at WeatherAction.com long range forecasters:

1. Confidently predict that the world will continue general cooling to 2035 - see presentation in submission to UK parliament enquiry into Dec 2010 supercold which we predicted

and

2. Systematically predict and will continue to predict extreme weather events and situations many months ahead around the world

The CO2 driver theory of weather and climate is delusional nonsense propagated by a self-serving failed sect.  Their ‘theory’ fails to explain past weather and climate; all its predictions over the last ten years have failed and it cannot and never will predict anything.

The dangerous delusional CO2 sect must be destroyed before it’s diktats destroy the world economy and thousands more lives are lost from the chosen refusal of governments across the world to allow the application of scientific advanced forecasting of extreme weather which can help reduce disruption and destruction and save money and lives.

Thanks,
Piers Corbyn, MSc ARCS FRAS FRMetS,
WeatherAction.com long range weather and climate forecasters

See also some very different concluding solar research by David Archibald here.

Special to the Examiner.

Earth is not warming. According to Big Green enviros, only Luddites and lunatics would believe such a ludicrous statement.

Well, now government scientists must be added to the long list of the so addled. Here it is, straight from the (high tech) horse’s mouth, a new report from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies titled “Global Temperature in 2011, Trends, and Prospects:”

“Global temperature in 2011 was lower than in 1998.”

But don’t worry. Even as climate scientists—and an ever-gullible media—are forced by new data to admit that the Earth is not warming, they take pains to assure us that the Earth is still warming.

The Associated Press was typical in its contortions, as in this Jan. 20 statement: “The world last year wasn’t quite as warm as it has been for most of the past decade, government scientists said Thursday, but it continues a general trend of rising temperatures.”

Not as warm, but still a “general trend” of rising temperatures. Got that? No? Well, don’t worry. The high priests of warming have apparently assumed a plane far above our mere mortal logic.

Besides, it all depends on how you define “trend,” doesn’t it? If you go far enough back, you can prove any trend you like about global temperatures. If you start at about 650 million years ago, when the Earth was covered pole to pole in ice, you can say current data show we are in a “general trend” of rising temperatures. If you go back to 1998, not so much.

It is cute, in a pathetic kind of way, to watch the global warming cult try and fudge and spin this fact like nobody’s business. Here’s another hilarious example, from the same AP story:

“‘It would be premature to make any conclusion that we would see any hiatus of the longer-term warming trend,’ said Tom Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. ‘Global temperatures are continuing to increase.’”

Yes, it would be premature to draw a conclusion (that global warming is not happening) based on current data (that global temps are lower today than in 1998). That’s what we foolish mortals do.

Government scientists, and the functionaries and bureaucrats they serve, however, know better. Aren’t we lucky?

In another sickening example, NASA scientists admit that while the new data is “suggestive of a slowdown in global warming, this apparent slowdown may largely disappear as a few more years of data are added.”

An apparent slowdown that may disappear. Talk about covering your bases. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.

One can understand this disappointment. Lucrative climate-scaremongering careers are at stake. So it is no surprise that many cling to the hope that maybe we will burn up after all, that maybe this new data is just a fluke, a blip, a natural respite from man’s descent into an unnatural global conflagration.

The truth is this: There is no such thing as an “average” global temperature. The history of our planet is a history of wildly fluctuating temperatures, locally and globally, from season to season, century to century, epoch to epoch.

Only a generation as narcissistic as the baby boomers would assume that the temperature they were accustomed to as they came of age in the mid-20th century is the “correct” or “average” global temperature, which must be maintained in perpetuity no matter the costs.

Again, from NASA: “Global temperature in 2011 was lower than in 1998.” Now there’s an inconvenient truth for you.

Matt Patterson is the Warren Brookes fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and senior editor at the Capital Research Center.

Some one or some organization is attempting to influence the upcoming annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS).

According to Urging American Meteorological Society to Get Tougher on Climate Change, a program called Forecast the Facts is attempting to lobby the AMS to change their 5-year policy on climate change to a new policy “drafted by a panel of [unidentified] experts” (emphasis added). The “Campaign Director” is identified as Daniel Souweine.

The Forecast the Facts web site turns out to be a product of “Citizen Engagement Laboratory (CEL).”

And who is the Chief of Staff of CEL? You guessed it: Daniel Souweine.

The web site describes CEL as: “a non-profit, non-partisan organization that uses digital media and technology to amplify the voices of underrepresented constituencies. We seek to empower individuals to take collective action on the issues that concern them, promoting a world of greater equality and justice in the process.”

The CEL web site lists 350.org as a “Partner,” which describes itself as: “building a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis. Our online campaigns, grassroots organizing, and mass public actions are led from the bottom up by thousands of volunteer organizers in over 188 countries.”

Sounds like birds of a feather, even though they are both attempting to lobby a major national organization to change a policy that affects all of its members… from the top down. Hardly grass roots organization. And hardly on behalf of “underrepresented constituencies.”

Evidently, grassroots meteorologists are insufficiently toeing the line when it comes to laying weather patterns at the feet of “global warming.” Someone unnamed wants them to publicly join the global warming bandwagon in blaming human CO2 emissions for observed climate change, ignoring the uncertainty of climate science, ignoring all evidence to the contrary, insisting on one single simplistic explanation for climate change.

TeeVee weather presenters, even those who are qualified meteorologists, are the most visible source of public information about weather and climate. They appear daily to billions of people, and whether or not it is a good idea, their “opinions” about climate change carry a lot of weight in popular culture. It’s no wonder that those whose interests are served by spreading fear of climate change in support of a predetermined economic outcome are after these “grass roots” who fail to tremble in fear of natural climate phenomena.

This is not grass roots, this is Big Money come to the service of shadowy figures in the background of international politics and economics. Who profits from fear of climate change? Who is funding this program to gag independent meteorologists and TeeVee weather presenters?

This is part of a concerted behind-the-scenes program funded by monied interests to subvert all elements of environmental awareness and activism to the cause of money and power, political and economic influence. Global warming hyperbole has been used to discredit free-thinking, independent scientific research, free expression, free thought and free action. The individuals and corporations funding this movement are laying the ground work for society controlled by corporate-government-military oligarchies to maintain the economic and political status quo.

Follow the money…

A campaign starting this weekend will urge meteorologists to cite man-made climate change when they report on strong storms and flooding.

“Forecast the Facts” - a campaign by the League of Conservation Voters, 350.org and Citizen Engagement Lab—aims to persuade the American Meteorological Society to adopt an official position linking higher instance of extreme weather events to emissions of heat-trapping gases.

The groups will deliver petitions to the society next week during its annual meeting in New Orleans.

The campaign ultimately hopes to persuade weather forecasters to discuss climate change when they report on the weather, campaign director Daniel Souweine said.

“The aim of the campaign is really to shift how TV meteorologists report on climate change,” he said.

Meteorologists usually don’t mention man-made climate change in reports on extreme weather, the activists say, even though many scientists say human emissions are making those events more common.

Souweine said many TV weather forecasters doubt climate change is occurring or that it’s linked to human activities.

A survey by George Mason University found 26 percent of meteorologists believe man-made climate change is “a scam.” Seventy-eight percent of respondents said reporters should provide “balance” when discussing climate change, treating it as a political issue, and two-thirds said weather broadcasts are not an appropriate place to discuss the issue.

Souweine said meteorologists should begin reporting that climate change is a scientific consensus, even though he acknowledges that no individual storm or drought can be linked to the phenomenon.

“We think it’s important to tell their viewers what is behind those phenomenon,” he said. “We think that is actually their professional responsibility.”

AMS did not immediately return calls for comment.  PDF with comments.

And SEPP reports: New Tactics: Global warming alarmists have taken a new tactic in their efforts to brand global warming skeptics as anti-science. Skeptics, such as SEPP, insist that climate change is natural and normal and that the UN IPCC has failed to produce rigorous scientific research demonstrating that carbon dioxide emissions are causing unprecedented and dangerous global warming. The models used failed to predict current temperature trends, thus the results are nothing but speculation.

In an effort to distort issues, organizations such as the self-styled National Center for Science Education (NCSE) are attempting to lump skepticism about global warming with skepticism about evolution. The subjects are separate and distinct, and any rational discussion needs to separate them. To SEPP, this is but one more example how desperate the global warming alarmists have become over their failure to conduct the necessary research.

The web site of NCSE states: “To ensure the accuracy of the models at projecting future climate trends, the models are often run backwards in time to “retrodict” past climate changes, and then compared with paleoclimate observations. The models through this process have become remarkably accurate and give the climate research community confidence that the future projections are robust.” [Boldface added.] The climate models are failing the most critical test - the ability to predict the current temperature trend of no increase. Please see links under ”Expanding the Orthodoxy.”

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False Positives: No matter how scrupulously conducted, sometimes studies will produce a false positive by sheer random chance. There is no way of knowing when this will occur. As reader Tom Sheahen pointed out, Judith Curry had an interesting post on false positives on her web site, linked in TWTW last week and this week.

To help assure that false positives do not enter into government policy requires demanding repetitive, rigorous, transparent studies. Of course, this is of little use when agencies, such as the EPA in its new mercury rules, pick and choose the studies they wish to use and discard the rest without written justification. Please see link under “Seeking a Common Ground.”

Climatologists vs. Weather Forecasters

Climatologists believe in man made global warming, because without it they receive little funding or recognition. They can make predictions 100 years in the future, and change them every few months.

Weather forecasters don’t believe in man made global warming, because their job depends on being continuously accurate and telling the truth.

a survey conducted by George Mason University in 2010* that found 63% of weathercasters believe global warming is due mainly to natural causes compared to just 31% who think it’s mostly a result of human causes. Some 27 percent of weathercasters referred to global warming as “a scam.”

A new study by the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School has produced a result that its authors want to hide:

People with better knowledge of science and stronger reasoning skills are more likely to be skeptical of climate change than people with lower levels of comprehension.

This is without doubt the most importantant finding in the new study, but because it does not fit into the warmist authors’ agenda, they choose to bury it in a heap of sociological gobbledygook:

The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change

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Global Warming: A U.S. Presidential Candidate Actually Uses His Common Sense & Scientific Evidence
C3 Headlines

Ron Paul makes candid comments regarding global warming and climate change - employs empirical evidence instead of highly speculative predictions

Read here. ‘C3’ readers are well aware that there is absolutely zero empirical evidence to suggest that human CO2 emissions will cause rapid global warming with catastrophic climate change being the result. Likewise, ‘C3’ readers know well that all the global climate models have an absolutely atrocious record regarding their catastrophic climate predictions.

It would appear Ron Paul agrees and approaches the global warming issue and human CO2 emissions with a reliance on empirical-based science, not the Ouijia-board science of climate model predictions.

“I try to look at global warming the same way I look at all other serious issues: as objectively and open-minded as possible. There is clear evidence that the temperatures in some parts of the globe are rising, but temperatures are cooling in other parts. The average surface temperature had risen for several decades, but it fell back substantially in the past few years...Clearly there is something afoot. The question is: Is the upward fluctuation in temperature man-made or part of a natural phenomenon.”

It’s refreshing to hear a candidate who does not pander to the climate hysteria of the anti-science left / liberal mainstream press.

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

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

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

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

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

Heartland VI conference videos are now available for viewing in the web.

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

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

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

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

“The above papers support skepticism of “man-made” global warming or the environmental or economic effects of. Addendums, comments, corrections, erratum, replies, responses and submitted papers are not included in the peer-reviewed paper count. These are included as references in defense of various papers. There are many more listings than just the 900-1000 papers. Ordering of the papers is alphabetical by title except for the Hockey Stick, Cosmic Rays and Solar sections which are chronological. This list will be updated and corrected as necessary.”

The less intelligent alarmists have written a paper allegedly connecting the scientists to Exxon Mobil. Here is the detailed response from some of the featured scientists. Note that though this continues to be a knee jerk reaction by some of the followers, there is no funding of skeptic causes by big oil BUT Exxon has funded Stanford warmists to the tune of $100 million and BP UC Berkeley to $500,000,000. Climategate emails showed CRU/Hadley soliciting oil dollars and receiving $23,000,000 in funding.

See still more annotated here.

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

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

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

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

See full size display here.

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

See sister sites:

WeatherBell Analytics here.

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

Coleman’s Corner here.

Science and Public Policy Institute here.

RedNeck Engineer Energy and Innovation here.

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