By Jmaes Taylor, Forbes.com

The mainstream media has been spiking the football in the proverbial end zone ever since a paper released last Friday claimed two-thirds of global temperature stations show some warming occurred during the past century. The media have been claiming the new paper delivers a death blow to skepticism, but the paper itself brings almost nothing new to the global warming debate and instead shows how far global warming advocates are from presenting credible evidence of a crisis. Rather than delivering a death blow to skepticism, the media has merely invented and shredded an insignificant straw man.

University of California, Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller analyzed land-based temperature readings from temperature stations around the world and found two-thirds indicate warming temperatures and one-third indicate cooling temperatures. As a result, "Global warming is real," summarized Muller in an editorial he wrote in the October 21 Wall Street Journal.

Muller acknowledged that many of the stations produced incomplete temperature records and had poor quality control. He claimed that he nevertheless included them in the study to avoid "data-selection bias." Scientists such as Anthony Watts have pointed out several additional flaws in the Muller paper. But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Muller's paper is flawless in its conclusion that two-thirds of land-based temperature stations report warming rather than cooling. Even under such an assumption, Muller's paper does nothing to dispel skeptical objections to the theory that humans are causing a global warming crisis.

Read the rest of the article here.

Green energy, high prices, and political manipulation
By: Ron Arnold, washingtonexaminer.com

Three years ago, a winner was chosen to make Rhode Island the nation's first state with an offshore wind farm.

Republican Gov. Donald Carcieri made the announcement: Deepwater Wind Inc., -- a well-capitalized New Jersey wind power development company with hotshot lobbyists -- won the contract.

Carcieri unveiled the $1.3 billion, 800-job venture in language fit for a legacy: "This is much more than an energy project. This is about creating a new industry in Rhode Island; an industry that puts Rhode Island at the epicenter of the emerging alternative energy market."

And it would all come from private investment sources, said his news release.

Not everyone was so delighted. Residents of Block Island, the Rhode Island Sound site chosen for Deepwater's windmill factory, wondered how they'd supply water, streets, sewers, schools and homes for the 800 new families that would come with the jobs.

Then the regional electric utility company, National Grid, got a nasty shock when the state General Assembly passed a law forcing them to buy an unexpectedly high 150 megawatts of electricity from the Deepwater Wind project in a 20-year power purchase agreement.

by Paul Driessen, Wattsupwiththat.com

This Mann-made global warming lawsuit could backfire on the Penn State alarmist

Lewis Carroll died too soon. Just imagine the fun he'd have with the cliquish clan of climate catastrophe researchers who seek to control science, debate and public policy on global warming and energy - and then get outraged when someone challenges their findings, methodologies or integrity.

On October 1, Dr. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University and "hockey stick" fame published an angry riposte in Colorado's obscure Vail Daily Voices (circulation 15,000), expressing his umbrage over an article that had appeared in the free coffee shop newspaper a day earlier.

"An individual named Martin Hertzberg did a grave disservice to your readers by making false and defamatory statements about me and my climate scientist colleagues in his recent commentary in your paper," Mann began. (Hertzberg is a research scientist and former US Navy meteorologist.) The thin-skinned Penn State scientist then ranted:

"These are just lies, regurgitation of dishonest smears that have been manufactured by fossil fuel industry-funded climate change deniers, and those who do their bidding by lying to the public about the science."

Meanwhile, NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen, recipient of huge monetary awards for strident climate disaster claims, wants oil and coal company CEOs prosecuted for "crimes against humanity."

So Mann and Hansen are honest scientists, trying to do their jobs. But Hertzberg and anyone else who questions the "imminent manmade climate change catastrophe" thesis are dishonest crooks, liars, Holocaust deniers, hired guns for fossil fuel interests, criminals threatening all humanity.

Read the read of the article here.

Unadjusted data of long period stations in GISS show a virtually flat century scale trend

Abstract
The GISS dataset includes more than 600 stations within the U.S. that have been in operation continuously throughout the 20th century. This brief report looks at the average temperatures reported by those stations. The unadjusted data of both rural and non-rural stations show a virtually flat trend across the century.

The Goddard Institute for Space Studies provides a surface temperature data set that covers the entire globe, but for long periods of time contains mostly U.S. stations. For each station, monthly temperature averages are tabulated, in both raw and adjusted versions.

One problem with the calculation of long term averages from such data is the occurrence of discontinuities; most station records contain one or more gaps of one or more months. Such gaps could be due to anything from the clerk in charge being a quarter drunkard to instrument failure and replacement or relocation. At least in some examples, such discontinuities have given rise to "adjustments" that introduced spurious trends into the time series where none existed before.

It seems like scientists keep rediscovering something that was discovered over 230 years ago

By Elmer Beauregard

Since I've been doing this blog I keep posting study after study about the effects of CO2 on plants. Another study just came out today put out by the University of Michigan. Last week there was this study about how plants gobble up more CO2 than thought. I think these are good studies and I agree with them because they show that CO2 is not a pollutant but rather a trace gas without which there would be no life on this planet. But didn't Joseph Priestley and others prove that in the late 18th century?

I remember learning about photosynthesis and the carbon cycle in 8th grade science and I thought it was the coolest thing. To me it showed that our planet was designed with very intricate and symbiotic systems that could produce and sustain life, surely these systems couldn't have happened by accident. But why after all this time does science seem to be questioning the integrity of these systems?

It could be they are just doing it for the money, they know that politicians are gullible and are easily scared into forking over big dollars to "save" the planet. But after talking to a few true believers at the AGS Convention, I think there may be another reason.

Wattsupwiththat

U-M ecologist: Future forests may soak up more carbon dioxide than previously believed

An aerial view of the 38-acre experimental forest in Wisconsin where U-M researchers and their colleagues continuously exposed birch, aspen and maple trees to elevated levels of carbon dioxide and ozone gas from 1997 through 2008. Credit: David Karnosky, Michigan Technological University

ANN ARBOR, Mich.--North American forests appear to have a greater capacity to soak up heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas than researchers had previously anticipated.

As a result, they could help slow the pace of human-caused climate warming more than most scientists had thought, a U-M ecologist and his colleagues have concluded.

The results of a 12-year study at an experimental forest in northeastern Wisconsin challenge several long-held assumptions about how future forests will respond to the rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide blamed for human-caused climate change, said University of Michigan microbial ecologist Donald Zak, lead author of a paper published online this week in Ecology Letters.

"Some of the initial assumptions about ecosystem response are not correct and will have to be revised," said Zak, a professor at the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

By Dan Mcgrath, globalclimatescam

Creator of discredited "hockey stick" chart caused US, world much harm, say demonstrators

Dr. Michael Mann was welcomed to Minneapolis today by a group of demonstrators who blame Dr. Mann's research and publications for damage to the US and world economies and fostering distrust in scientists. The demonstrators believe Mann's oft-referenced work to prove anthropogenic global warming theory is fraudulent and showed up at the Minneapolis convention center where he was speaking at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America to tell him so.

Mann was made infamous by discredited tree ring research used to create the so-called "hockey stick chart" that purported to demonstrate recent, runaway man-caused global warming. His name came up in the "climategate" email scandal that emerged out of the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University, in connection to a "trick" employed by Dr. Mann for a paper published in Nature Magazine. That trick involved obfuscating the results of proxy temperature data when it didn't match actual temperatures recorded by instrumentation. Discovery of that trick called into question the validity of the entire pre-instrumentation climate history constructed from Mann's work.

The hockey stick chart was the key element in Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and the United Nations' 1997 Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change's 4th Assessment. The IPCC report has been the underpinning of United States and global warming policy for over a decade. Based upon it's conclusions, governments have implemented expensive carbon taxes and new overbearing regulations designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, cap and trade schemes, a phased-in ban on incandescent light bulbs, the forced relocation of whole populations of people to make room for carbon credit producing plantations and numerous other far reaching and expensive initiatives.

By Cory Kampschroer, KSTP

A small group of demonstrators was on hand in Minneapolis today for the arrival of a global warming author and speaker. Dr. Michael Mann spoke Wednesday at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Mann is a physicist and climatologist and is best known as one of the originators of a graph of temperature trends in the past one-thousand years, known as the 'hockey stick graph."

Members of the organization, Minnesota Majority, protested Mann's Minneapolis speech calling it "fraudulent." Dan McGrath was among the roughly 10 people protesting, calling Mann "among the most guilty parties in what we call the global warming scam."

When asked about the protest Mann said "I talk about these ongoing attacks against me and all of climate science in my upcoming book 'The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars'."

Mann is the director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University.

NOTE***In an earlier story we reported Michael Mann told KSTP.COM that he did not want to comment on the protestors. Actually, a spokesperson for the Geological Society of America told us we should e-mail Dr. Mann about his availability in the future. As you read, Mann provided comment for this story.

Michael Mann the self proclaimed creator of the "Hockey Stick Chart" will be speaking at the Minneapolis Convention Center tomorrow afternoon. He will be discussing Climate Scientists in the Public Arena: Who's Got Our Backs?.

In honor of this historic visit there will be two chances to carry signs and welcome Mr. Mann to the Twin Cities.

What: Welcoming Committee Demonstration
Who: Concerned citizens, Minnesota Majority, Minnesota Free Market Institute, Minnesotans for Global Warming
When: Wednesday, October 12th, 1:00-2:00 PM with a follow-up demonstration from 5:00-6:00 PM
Where: Sidewalk, North Side of Minneapolis Convention Center
Contact: Dan McGrath, 612-605-3303 ext. 703

UPDATE: I added more signs to download.

OccupyHockeyStick.pdf
StopFunding.pdf
MedievalWarmingPeriod.pdf
HockeyStick Sign.pdf
EricTheRed.pdf
NatureTrick.pdf
Occupy.pdf
Tree Rings.pdf
M4GW.pdf

1pm Facebook event here
http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=220800637984539

5pm Facebook event here
http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=259206997454807

Posted by Kim Crockett, Free Market Institute

What if you could find a way to make money off other people's trash? On top of that, you'd be helping the environment, turning that trash, in this case plastic agricultural film, into anything from outdoor decks to plastic furniture. Even better, in the midst of a recession, the company becomes an oasis of employment and economic development.

Genesis Poly Recycling was supposed to do all of that. Taking old silage bags and hay wraps and turning them into plastic pellets to be sold to other companies. But it never got off the ground, and is currently bankrupt... but not before taking millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

Two years ago, Genesis Poly CEO Dan Hauschild said, "We'll be creating quite a few jobs. 30 to 40 right away and in a couple years be around 120... and then there's more opportunity to expand we'll go way beyond that in the next five years."

Hearing those numbers, Mankato was happy to oblige. The city pulled out plenty of stops... acting as an intermediary of sorts, by purchasing the property at 480 North Industrial Road for $850,000, money acquired through a grant with the state's Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). The old Spartech site would be rented out to Genesis Poly. Along with the site purchase, Mankato lent Genesis Poly half a million dollars for equipment.

Read the rest of the story.

Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet.com

23 farmers in Honduras were slaughtered in cold blood by hired mercenaries as they tried to protect their land from being seized by a corporation who wanted to use the land to produce biofuels as part of a United Nations-accredited EU carbon trading scheme.

"Protests erupted in July when six international human rights advocacy groups presented a report to the EP detailing what they called murders and forced evictions of peasants in El Bajo Aguán Valley of northern Honduras, " reports the New American.

"The International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) report accuses UN-sanctioned palm oil mills of stealing farmland from Honduran natives and killing or wounding them when they attempt to defend their property. It says the companies, acting with government impunity, regularly target members of local land-rights movements who end up murdered in feigned car accidents or hunted down and shot by private security guards."

The United Nations' CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) responded to news of the killings with a collective shrug of the shoulders.

Read the rest of the article here.

Disclosure Obtained by ATI Environmental Law Center Shows the Wealth Keeps Flowing for Dr. James Hansen

Monday, October 3, 2011Contact: Paul Chesser, Executive Director, paul.chesser@atinstitute.org

As it waits for the resolution of its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit ( http://bit.ly/nnKpxS ) against the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which seeks the outside employment permission records of global warming activist Dr. James Hansen, American Tradition Institute's Environmental Law Center has received the belatedly filed 2010 public financial disclosure of the renowned director of the NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

ATI obtained Dr. Hansen's Form SF 278, which is required to be filed annually, also under the Freedom of Information Act. The disclosure revealed that Dr. Hansen received between $236,000 and $1,232,500 in outside income in 2010 relating to his taxpayer-funded employment, which included:

• Between $26,008 and $72,500 in honoraria for speeches;

• Between $150,001 and $1.1 million in prizes;

• Just under $60,000 in the form of in-kind income for travel to his many outside-income generating activities

The travel reporting marked the first time Hansen detailed such "in-kind" benefits, which included apparent first-class travel for him and his wife on trips to Australia, Japan, and Norway. The new detail raises the question of whether Dr. Hansen wrongly submitted forms in previous years, which he left blank and attested "none" in the space where he is required to report travel expenses taken as part of his outside employment, all in years in which he was busy with numerous paid outside activities of the same sort as he was in 2010.

Martin Hertzberg, Vail daily

Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the handmaiden of truth" -- Robert Weston.

Since I am a long-time denier of human-caused global warming and have been described as an "inaccurate" and "irresponsible" "fool" by Scott Glasser's commentary in Monday's Vail Daily, I feel compelled to respond.

I am a research scientist who also served as a meteorologist for the U.S. Navy. I am also a lifelong progressive Democrat.

For the 25 years that I have been studying the theory that human emission of carbon dioxide is causing global warming and climate change, it has never ceased to amaze me how many otherwise intelligent people, including our president, have been taken in by that scam.

There is a simple way to tell the difference between scientists and propagandists. If scientists have a theory, they search diligently for data that might actually contradict their theory so that they test it rigorously or refine it. If propagandists have a theory, they carefully select only the data that might agree with their theory and dutifully ignore any data that might contradict it.

The anecdotal drivel cited in the Glasser article regarding atmospheric carbon dioxide, average global temperatures, ice area coverage and rate of sea-level rise was carefully cherry picked or is totally false.

Original article here.