August 2010 Archives

By Donna Bowater, www.express.co.uk

The world's leading climate change body has been accused of losing credibility after a damning report into its research practices.

A high-level inquiry into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found there was "little evidence" for its claims about global warming.

It also said the panel had emphasised the negative impacts of climate change and made "substantive findings" based on little proof.

The review by the InterAcademy Council (IAC) was launched after the IPCC's hugely embarrassing 2007 benchmark climate change report, which contained exaggerated and false claims that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.

Rest of the article.

By Matt Patterson, The Washington Times

Eco-autocrats are exposed as frauds

Poor Al Gore. As if an impending divorce and allegations of sexual misconduct from an Oregon masseuse weren't bad enough (he has since been cleared of wrongdoing), the apparent collapse of "cap-and-trade" legislation in the U.S. Senate has driven the former vice president to despair.

As reported by Steve Milloy on his blog Green Hell, Mr. Gore recently admitted to supporters in a conference call, "[T]his [cap-and-trade] battle has not been successful and is pretty much over for this year." Mr. Gore blamed everyone and their monkey for the failure of Congress to pass comprehensive climate legislation, including his former colleagues: "The U.S. Senate has failed us," he lamented, "the federal government has failed us."

Illustration: Al Gore melting by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times

The fortunes of Mr. Gore's global-warming crusade certainly are in decline: A recent Rasmussen poll found that just 34 percent of respondents "feel human activity is the main contributor" to global warming and that the percentage of those who consider global warming a "serious issue" has "trended down slightly since last November."

Read the rest of the article.

Reminds me of the Brave Sir Robin sketch from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

By Marc Morano - Climate Depot

From King of the World to Chicken of the Sea: Director James Cameron challenges climate skeptics to debate and then bails out at last minute

ASPEN COLORADO: Hollywood director James Cameron challenged three high profile global warming skeptics to a public debate at a global warming and energy conference. But Cameron backed out of the debate at the last minute after environmentalists "came out of the woodwork" to warn him not to engage in a debate with skeptics because it was not in his best interest.

Cameron challenged Andrew Breitbart, Climate Depot's Marc Morano and filmmaker Ann McElhinney of 'Not Evil Just Wrong.' The debate was already in the program for the Aspen American Renewable Energy Day (AREDAY) summit. The website program described the agreed to debate as "AREDAY Climate Change Debate: Reality or Fiction?"

After setting up the public global warming debate, Cameron and his negotiator then changed formats multiple times and initially said it would be open to the media and then said he would only participate if it was private with no recording devices. The skeptics agreed to all the changes. According to AREDAY organizers, activist Joseph Romm of Climate Progress urged Cameron not to go ahead with the debate as well.

Cameron's cancellation of the agreed to debate did not happen until one debate participant (Morano) was already in mid-air, flying from DC to Aspen on Saturday August 21 to attend the debate.

Rest of the article.

Russell Cook, American Thinker

In his August 18 piece, Thomas Lifson mentions part of the logic behind Speaker Nancy Pelosi's call to investigate the funding of opposition against the Ground Zero mosque. When we also consider how the liberal left has aimed this 'funding accusation' tactic with great success over a period of 15+ years at scientists skeptical of man-caused global warming, her otherwise bizarre suggestion sounds like something that should be no surprise.

That is the accusation saying 'big coal and oil' funds those scientists, thus they are hopelessly corrupt and not worthy of consideration. The mainstream media seems to have taken this accusation at face value. Considering the sheer amount of anti-skeptic bias I found at the PBS NewsHour from 1996 to the present, as I detailed in my 7/29 American Thinker article "The Left and Its Talking Points", it may very well explain why the general public has not had the widespread opportunity to hear about skeptics' side of the issue.

Rest of the article.

Here we go...

Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune

Every time there's a big blizzard or an extended cold snap, you can count on the climate-change skeptics, particularly those who host radio shows or draw editorial cartoons, to make "Inconvenient Truth" jokes and rehash an ironic appeal for more global warming.

Such wags go completely silent when we're clobbered by a heat wave, as we are being clobbered this weekend. Which, while inconsistent, is appropriate. Weather is not climate. Temperatures and precipitation levels are always going to exhibit dramatic swings.

Consulting today's thermometer for evidence either way about climate trends is ""like assessing how the economy is doing by looking at the change in your pocket," said a Columbia University professor quoted last month in the New York Times.

You knew this was going to happen, we have a warm summer (as was predicted because of the recent increased solar activity) and all the Chicken Littles in the mainstream press are running around screaming "The Globe Is Warming! The Globe Is Warming!"

Eric, you're right, it is hot out there, so I am officially changing my position, as of now I am for Global Cooling!

Of course this happens to me almost every August and in September I probably will be more neutral on the issue, but by January I'm pretty sure I'll be rooting for Global Warming again.

Natural News

A recent report issued by the European Union has revealed that biofuels, or fuel made from living, renewable sources, is not really all that beneficial to the environment. Rather than reduce the net carbon footprint as intended, biofuels can produce four times more carbon dioxide pollution than conventional fossil fuels do.

Common biofuels like corn ethanol, which has become a popular additive in gasoline, and soy biodiesel, which is being used in commercial trucks and other diesel-fueled vehicles, are often considered to be environmentally-friendly because they are renewable. But in order to grow enough of these crops to use for both food and fuel, large swaths of land around the world are being converted into crop fields for growing biofuels.

In other words, millions of acres of lush rainforests are becoming corn and soy fields in order to provide enough of these resources for their new uses. The net carbon footprint of growing crops for fuel is far higher than what is emitted from simple fossil fuel usage.

Entire article here.

From Farmfest 2010, with all the previous coverage of various candidates this must be noted as no retraction from the Emmer camp has been received. per the Associated Press:

Tom Emmer and the 3 Democrat front runners all appear in favor of SUBSIDIZING Biofuels with our tax dollars during these dire economic times. To us at Minnesotans for Global Warming seems irresponsible at best.

The Associated Press: Emmer, Dems skirmish over biofuels at Farmfest
www.google.com
REDWOOD FALLS, Minn. -- The sharp differences on ethanol and biofuels between Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer and the three Democrats vying to challenge him in the fall became clear Wednesday during a farm-focused debate.

...After the debate, he said he wouldn't cut ethanol subsidies the state has promised existing ethanol plants. But he declined to elaborate on his plans for ethanol after state subsidies end in 2013. He said he would wait to see whether the federal government adopts an ethanol mandate.

Kelliher and her Democratic rivals, Mark Dayton and Matt Entenza, all support the mandates and subsidies...

While we haven't heard from any other candidates we welcome their comments.

What do you folks in Minnesota think?

Record cold in Argentina? Per a China News Service...

Cold wave in Argentina leads to 28 deaths

BUENOS AIRES, July 19 (Xinhua) -- At least 28 people had died, 16 from hypothermia, as a polar cold wave swept across Argentina during the past week, authorities said Monday...

Then Per Bloomberg news Argentina Colder than Antarctica Argentina is importing record amounts of energy as the coldest winter in 40 years drives up demand and causes natural-gas shortages, prompting Dow Chemical Co. and steelmaker Siderar SAIC to scale back production.
....
Ironically why does this go hardly mentioned by main stream media and why do I have to get this from the Chinese media? instead they try to make us believe 2010 is the hottest on record... yeah right!
...
On Record : Discovery News - Aug 9

Jul 16, 2010 ... Last month was the warmest June on record, and so far, 2010 is the warmest year ever recorded, according to data released yesterday by the ...
news.discovery.com/earth/heat-record-climate-change.html
...

The US Media reports on this: per Google the search
"hottest year on record 2010" About 14,700,000 results 2010 on Track to Be Warmest
How can they draw this conclusion its only august and I don't trust their data or their agenda.

The "coldest year on record" yielded on google About 902,000 results (0.26 seconds)

While all this occurs, the media focuses on the Arctic melting in the summer and the Antarctic melting in the winter. While ignoring the natural cycle where the Antarctic GROWS in the summer and the Arctic GROWS in the winter time. Instead they focus on 1/2 the story which sells sensational climate change, ignoring that the climate has been changing since the beginning of time.

There are rumors of Brett's retirement and I say don't believe them. This was made last year but it still holds true, to the tune of Donavon's "There is a Mountain".

Now available for download!

Is It Hot in Here? Must Be Global Warming.

By Tom Zeller Jr., New York Times

In any debate over climate change, conventional wisdom holds that there is no reflex more absurd than invoking the local weather.

And yet this year's wild weather fluctuations seem to have motivated people on both sides of the issue to stick a finger in the air and declare the matter resolved -- in their favor.

"Within psychology, it's called motivated reasoning, or the confirmation bias," explained Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Project on Climate Change Communication at Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. "People are looking for evidence of any kind that validates or reinforces or justifies what they already believe."

Last February, for example, as a freak winter storm paralyzed much of the East Coast, relatives of Senator James M. Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who is a skeptic of climate change, came to Washington and erected an igloo.

They topped it with a cheeky sign asking passers-by to "Honk if you ♥ global warming." Another sign, added later, christened the ice dome "Al Gore's new home."

Rest of the article.