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Australia is stepping back from the cliff We shouldn’t underestimate shift that has just taken place. The psychology of Australian politics moved as the large swinging center was revealed. Not only was the Queensland election worse for Labor than anyone predicted, the message was clear, voters rejected the lies, and rejected the carbon tax. The smear campaign by the Labor leader (Bligh) did more harm to her than it did to her target. Finally, the Hype-&-Spin Machine ran off the rails.This is real progress. Today both Queensland and Victoria are peeling back the warmist bureaucracy. I’m happy.The new premier of...

THEY are responsible for some of the government's most important policies - but staff at the Department of Energy and Climate Change are too ashamed to admit where they work. Staff morale is so low the government has spent almost $175,000 on consultants to lift staff's flagging spirits. A negative public image of the department, changing environmental policies and lack of internal support had left them feeling miserable and disengaged, an internal report has found. The report was conducted by consultants Right Management in July 2010 when the department was under the responsibility of Finance and Deregulation Minister Penny Wong....

(FOX News) - The Green Climate Fund, which is supposed to help mobilize as much as $100 billion a year to lower global greenhouse gases, is seeking a broad blanket of UN-style immunity that would shield its operations from any kind of legal process, including civil and criminal prosecution, in the countries where it operates. There is just one problem: it is not part of the United Nations.

More peer-reviewed science contradicting the warming-alarmist "scientific consensus" was announced yesterday, as a new study shows that the well-documented warm period which took place in medieval times was not limited to Europe, or the northern hemisphere: it reached all the way to Antarctica. The research involved the development of a new means of assessing past temperatures, to add to existing methods such as tree ring analysis and ice cores. In this study, scientists analysed samples of a crystal called ikaite, which forms in cold waters. “Ikaite is an icy version of limestone,” explains earth-sciences prof Zunli Lu. “The crystals are...

“Sea level rise is like an invisible tsunami, building force while we do almost nothing,” Strauss told The New York Times. “We have a closing window of time to prevent the worst by preparing for higher seas.”

Living along New Jersey’s 127 miles of coastline has always posed something of a risk. Terms like coastal flooding, erosion and nor’easter have long been a part of the vocabulary of residents on the Shore. But new research predicts rising sea levels due to global warming will more than triple the likelihood of devastating coastal flooding by the year 2030, putting more than 230,000 beach and bay-side residents in the flood zone. Put simply, the once in a lifetime coastal storm may soon come around once in a generation. "Sea level rise is not some distant problem that we can...

The groups currently drafting new science standards for American classrooms have decided to include a section addressing the issue of climate change. The Congressionally chartered National Academies, including the National Research Council, plan to include a document drafted last year that says that human activities have at least a partial impact on climate.Although there’s a strong consensus in scientific literature on anthropogenic climate change, in America the issue is a source of significant controversy and debate. Just how strident the debate over climate change had become came as a surprise to one California middle school teacher: When Treena Joi, a...

Little by little, the federal Department of Education appropriates ever more power for itself. (Never mind that the department might very well be unconstitutional in the first place.) Today, most public schools are dependent one way or another on federal funds. Those funds don’t come without strings — and, under the Obama administration, bureaucrats have tightened those strings considerably. Through the Race to the Top competition, the Ed Department enticed states with reward funds to adopt national standards. (Some state leaders — like Texas Gov. Rick Perry — turned down the funding, but they were the exceptions.) The common core...

MILLIONS of dollars in government research funding is being ploughed into studies of emotion in climate change messages, ancient economic life in Italy and the history of the moon. Studies of sleeping snails and determining if Australian birds are getting smaller because of climate change have also been allocated funding in the latest round of grants totalling $300 million by the Australian Research Council. Another project titled "Sending and responding to messages about climate change: the role of emotion and morality" by a Queensland university secured $197,302. The council said it was an important psychology project. The study to determine...

James Garvey, a philosopher and the author of The Ethics of Climate Change has written a defence of Peter Gleick at the Guardian:What Heartland is doing is harmful, because it gets in the way of public consensus and action. Was Gleick right to lie to expose Heartland and maybe stop it from causing further delay to action on climate change? If his lie has good effects overall – if those who take Heartland's money to push scepticism are dismissed as shills, if donors pull funding after being exposed in the press – then perhaps on balance he did the right...

From Amazon’s list of Gleick book reviews hereMust read — for the real history of the climate debate and the war by deniers,February 8, 2012 This review is from: The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines (Hardcover) Michael Mann — a world class scientist and communicator about the seriousness of climate change — has finally put all of the recent history (sordid, indeed) about climate denial, attacks on climate scientists, and serial and intentional efforts by climate “skeptics” and “deniers” (a word many of them self-apply) into a book. As the title suggests, there IS...

Peter H. Gleick, a water and climate analyst who has been studying aspects of global warming for more than two decades, in recent years became an aggressive critic of organizations and individuals casting doubt on the seriousness of greenhouse-driven climate change. He used blogs, congressional testimony, group letters and other means to make his case. Now, Gleick has admitted to an act that leaves his reputation in ruins and threatens to undercut the cause he spent so much time pursuing. His summary, just published on his blog at Huffington Post, speaks for itself. SNIP---- The Heartland Institute had already signaled...

Richard North at the EU Referendum blog provides some interesting comment regarding funding. While the warmists are successfully focusing attention on the minor-league operations of the Heartland Institute, with a total budget for all its issues, which include health care, education, and technology policy, of around $4.4 million, their own funding arrangements, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, are largely evading scrutiny. .... The Climate Works Foundation, though, is of special interest as it was in 2008, awarded $460,800,000 from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a grant-making organisation with assets of $7.2 billion, which disbursed $353,400,000 in grants...

Dr Peter Gleick provides more evidence that the supporters of the Cause will stop at nothing. Magical thinking: a rainmaker in Kenya, whose credibility is being funded by British taxpayers Photo: DFID/International Development Research Centre/Thomas Omondi What a very odd situation we find ourselves in, due to the extraordinary transformation in recent years of the so-called debate over global warming. Last week, The Sunday Telegraph reported that, as part of Britain’s overseas aid budget, the Department for International Development is well on the way to spending £1.5 billion on a mass of climate-related projects across the world. These range from...

Earlier this month, the Internet lit up with a tantalizing whodunit. Someone had leaked to bloggers confidential internal fundraising and strategic documents from the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think-tank that questions global warming orthodoxy. The apparent goal: to discredit and embarrass those who raise doubts about the science behind climate change. Heartland officials cried foul, asserting that at least one of the documents was forged. They vowed to track down the leaker and pursue charges. This week, Peter Gleick saved them the trouble of a search. He confessed that he had assumed a false identity to obtain some of the...

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe years ago declared man-made global warming a hoax and more recently declared victory over his opponents in that long-running debate. Still, the Oklahoma Republican believes his work is not done. Next week, the senator said his plans for the book's introduction include interviews with several broadcast personalities known for being on the other side of the debate. Published by WND Books, which described it as a coup de grace to the global-warming movement, the book is titled "The Greatest Hoax," with the subtitle "How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future." Next week, the senator said,...

I’d ask EPA’s Lisa Jackson about the legality of “disappearing” the over $468,000 dollars in grants to Peter Gleick’s Pacific Institute from the EPA grants database, then putting them back, all without any public notice. Since 2007, Gleick’s PI has received over 1 million in taxpayer’s money. In 2007 they got $647,000 dollars in two grants from the EPA, which also “disappeared” this week. When an FOIA request was made to the EPA, they mysteriously returned. Showdown at the EPA corralSource: Junk Science By Steve MilloyMarch 2 should be a date that lives in infamy for the Obama Environmental Protection...

“Copner” alerts us in comments to this public document:Testimony of Dr. Peter Gleick, February 7, 2007 Senate Commerce, Science, and TransportationTable 1 Categories of Deceitful Tactics and Abuse of the Scientific Process (source: P.H. Gleick, Pacific Institute, 2007)There are many tactics used to argue for or against scientific conclusions that are inappropriate, involve deceit, or directly abuse the scientific process.Personal (“Ad Hominem”) Attacks This approach uses attacks against the character, circumstances, or motives of a person in order to discredit their argument or claim, independent of the scientific evidence. Demonization Guilt by Association Challenge to Motive (such as greed or...

Too many of their opponents are intellectual thugs. Steven F. Hayward March 5, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 24 The forlorn and increasingly desperate climate campaign achieved a new level of ineptitude last week when what had looked like a minor embarrassment for one of its critics​—​the Chicago-based Heartland Institute​—​turned out to be a full-fledged catastrophe for itself. A moment’s reflection on the root of this episode points to why the climate campaign is out of (greenhouse) gas.In an obvious attempt to inflict a symmetrical Climategate-style scandal on the skeptic community, someone representing himself as a Heartland Institute insider “leaked” internal...

Heartland have released both emails that Peter Gleick wrote under his name (below) as well as under a false name. The deceit is there for all to see. Heartland have at all times behaved impeccably. — Jo From James Taylor at Forbes.com The real story in this Fakegate scandal is how the global warming movement is desperate, delusional, and collapsing as global warming fails to live up to alarmist predictions. People with sound science on their side do not need to forge documents to validate their arguments or make the other side look bad. Also, people who are so desperate...