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Posted on April 10, 2012 by Anthony Watts Taken at the Energy Crossroads conference in Denmark on 12 March 2009. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Though, he still thinks we are all funded by some sort of “machine”. It never occurs to him that he’s fight a guerrilla war and that most skeptics are self motivated.Update: the UK telegraph has a similar story hereScientist hits climate change skepticism – UPI.com EDINBURGH,Scotland,April 9 (UPI) –Environmentalists and climate scientists,facing public skepticism,are losing the debate on global warming,a U.S. scientist who first raised the issue says.James Hansen,director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies,who issued...

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Anthony Watts An embarrasing image for NASA: James Hansen, arrested in front of the White House in Keystone pipeline protest. Image: via Wonk RoomLooks like another GISS miss, more than a few people are getting fed up with Jim Hansen and Gavin Schmidt and their shenanigans. Some prominent NASA voices speak out.Former NASA scientists, astronauts admonish agency on climate change positionFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEContact: Blanquita Cullum 703-307-9510 bqview at mac.comJoint letter to NASA Administrator blasts agency’s policy of ignoring empirical evidence HOUSTON, TX – April 10, 2012.49 former NASA scientists and astronauts sent a letter...

A new paper in Quaternary Science Reviews titled: Combined dendro-documentary evidence of Central European hydroclimatic springtime extremes over the last millennium…demonstrates that there is evidence for extreme weather during both the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age, in fact it was seen as common according to the tree ring records examined. Unlike the Yamal debacle, it seems they did a much broader sampling of trees, both living and historical fir (Abies alba Mill.), and sampled across France, Switzerland, Germany, and the Czech Republic. Even better, unlike the irascible Dr. Mann, they didn’t have to truncate the tree samples...

China will accelerate the use of new-energy sources such as nuclear energy and put an end to blind expansion in industries such as solar energy and wind power in 2012, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao says in a government report published on March 5.China will instead develop nuclear power in 2012, actively develop hydroelectric power, tackle key problems more quickly in the exploration and development of shale gas, and increase the share of new energy and renewable energy in total energy consumption.The guidance indicates a new trend for new-energy and renewable energy development in China from 2012. Analysts believe that the...

Let’s be as generous as we can. The IPCC say feedbacks amplify CO2′s warming by a factor of about three. Without the amplification from positive feedback there is no crisis So being nice people, let’s assume it’s warmed since 1979 and assume that it was all due to carbon dioxide. If so, that means feedbacks are …. zero. There goes that prediction of 3.3ºC. Feedbacks are the name of the game. If carbon dioxide doesn’t trigger off powerful positive feedbacks, there was and is no crisis. Even James Hansen would agree — inasmuch as he himself said that CO2 would...

No Global Warming For 15 Years New UK Met Office global temperature data confirms that the world has not warmed in the past 15 years. Analysis by the GWPF of the newly released HadCRUT4 global temperature database shows that there has been no global warming in the past 15 years - a timescale that challenges current models of global warming. Whether the global temperature standstill of the past 15 years continues or is replaced by warming, as the IPCC predicts, only future data will tell. In the meantime the length of the standstill means that the challenge it offers for...

Why would Dr. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, and chairman of an American Geophysical Union task force on "scientific ethics and integrity," break the law to engage in a smear campaign against a small think-tank called The Heartland Institute that resulted in "Fakegate"? As Alan Caruba related in the opening paragraph of his article published on Tuesday, April 3rd, titled "Fatetgate: The War on Science," "[g]enerations of Americans have been raised to venerate science and those who have enhanced and extended our lives through its application. The rise of environmentalism, however, has generated a...

Sen. Dick Durbin reacts to the tornadoes in Dallas, Texas earlier this week. Durbin calls for more laws regulating carbon output while he sends a dire warning that we must convert to hybrid cars or lose our life. Durbin says we must spend money now to fix the problem. "It's your money or your life," he said a press conference. "We are either going to dedicate ourselves to a cleaner, more livable planet and accept the initial investment necessary or we're going to pay a heavier price in terms of loss of human life, damage and costs associated with it."

As a climate scientist, I am quite familiar with the background facts that Prof Michael E. Mann (now at Penn State U) so shamelessly distorts in his new book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines. Mann's claim to fame derives from his contentious (and now thoroughly discredited) "hockeystick" research papers (in Nature 1998 and Geophysical Research Letters 1999).

Bill Flax Popular in Opinion 1 PETA vs. people ... and animals 2 EPA's new farcical carbon mandate 3 Manhattan Moment: One word hurting growth: Zero 4 Examiner Editorial: Obama's budget, not Ryan's, is 'antithetical' to history 5 How many incumbents voted themselves a pay raise this year? Last week the Environmental Protection Agency issued new standards for carbon dioxide requiring that fewer than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide be released per megawatt-hour of electricity. Plants running on natural gas already average below 850 pounds. Coal-fired plants, which emit on average 1,768 pounds per megawatt-hour, cannot achieve this without prohibitively...

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Anthony Watts From the Daily Globe and Mail in Canada:Healthy polar bear count confounds doomsayers The debate about climate change and its impact on polar bears has intensified with the release of a survey that shows the bear population in a key part of northern Canada is far larger than many scientists thought, and might be growing.The number of bears along the western shore of Hudson Bay, believed to be among the most threatened bear subpopulations, stands at 1,013 and could be even higher, according to the results of an aerial survey released Wednesday...

Get rid of hippies, save the planetThe Green movement needs to rethink its philosophy from the ground-up. That's according to Peter Kareiva, a leading conservation expert and chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy, the world's biggest environmental group.It must abandon the idea that nature is "feminine" and in particular that it's "fragile", he said, because not only is this artificial, it's wrong, and so many bad ideas follow.When people believe that a fragile "Mother Nature" is harmed by anything humans do, it's actually the humans who suffer, Kareiva argues in the co-written essay Conservation in the Anthropocene. It's little wonder...

The Planet Under Pressure conference has brought out the clawing powermongers. The Commentator.com team who were brave enough to attend, tell us that no one got very excited about the science, but the word “regulation” was received, well… ecstatically. The conference was largely focused on how scientists and activists can coalesce to deconstruct the Western way of living and moving to something entirely different, where economic growth and wealth creation is abandoned and replaced, instead, with sustainability targets, trade barriers, regulation and taxation. Indeed there were numerous occasions during the main sessions whereby even the mention of the word ‘regulation’...

Recently, various media outlets have reported on Romney’s statement in which he expressed support for global warming: “I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that.” This despite the last two winters being among the coldest in recent history and the recent evidence revealing pro-global warming scientists to have made fraudulent claims and suppressed contrary views. Romney also called for America to “reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases,” which, will, of course entail massive new government programs despite air quality in the United States being among the cleanest in the world....

  Carbon Emissions Are Good By Robert Zubrin April 3, 2012 4:00 A.M.   Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its intention to enforce regulations that would effectively ban new coal-fired power plants in the United States. As coal is by far America’s cheapest and most plentiful fossil fuel, and coal-fired power stations account for 45 percent of all electricity generated in the U.S., the destructive economic effects of this edict can hardly be overstated. It is therefore imperative to subject the EPA’s logic to a searching examination. According to the EPA, despite their disastrous economic effects,...

We haven’t written on this item yet because, well, it’s so easy to kick ‘em when they are down. But we’ll deign to indulge just this once: The global warmists are at it again. Remember ClimateGate? They call this one FakeGate. James Taylor at Forbes sums it up nicely today: . . .

Soon, the moment will come when the crowd will say “I always knew it was fake”.Here are three signs we are at the beginning of The End.1. Op-Ed writers will be pointing out how governments are unwinding policies: Dominic Lawson: Britain Has Finally Rejected The Bogus Economics Of Climate Change. Germany (home of half the worlds solar energy production) is winding up its pursuit of renewables, and eight Eastern European nations said “No Thanks” (legally) to the EU’s authoritarian dictat on carbon emissions, and hardly anyone complained… And which energy source is ecologically correct Germany now developing faster than...

This just smacks of the same mentality that inspired climate change activists to say global warming deniers should be purged from meteorology. Kari Mari Norgaard, a professor of sociology and environmental studies at the University of Oregon, suggests that resistance to the threat of climate change at individual and societal levels must be “recognized and treated” before real action can be taken to effectively address the problem global warming poses. From a University of Oregon press release: “Climate change poses a massive threat to our present social, economic and political order. From a sociological perspective, resistance to change is to...

Climate-change scepticism must be 'treated', says enviro-sociologist Dubious on warmo peril? You're the kind who'd own slaves Scepticism regarding the need for immediate and massive action against carbon emissions is a sickness of societies and individuals which needs to be "treated", according to an Oregon-based professor of "sociology and environmental studies". Professor Kari Norgaard compares the struggle against climate scepticism to that against racism and slavery in the US South. Prof Norgaard holds a B.S. in biology and a master's and PhD in sociology. "Over the past ten years I have published and taught in the areas of environmental sociology,...

Scepticism regarding the need for immediate and massive action against carbon emissions is a sickness of societies and individuals which needs to be "treated", according to an Oregon-based professor of "sociology and environmental studies". Professor Kari Norgaard compares the struggle against climate scepticism to that against racism and slavery in the US South. Prof Norgaard holds a B.S. in biology and a master's and PhD in sociology.

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...

Rep Edward Markey of Massachusetts has written to Heartland asking for them to document the inaccuracies in the Fakegate documents and asking for originals. In a letter to Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast, Markey asked the group for an explanation of any inaccuracies in the leaked documents as well as accurate versions of those documents. “These documents appear to indicate that the Heartland Institute is receiving large donations from corporations for the direct purpose of discrediting the mainstream science of climate change and has planned to engage in a campaign to undermine the teaching of well-established science at our public...

EPA, do you know where your grants are?Additional grants (possibly as much $647,000) to Peter Gleick’s Pacific Institute seem to have disappeared from the EPA Grants Database.A source tells us: I do government work as you probably know. That means I know how to search the system.I followed your link to his article on the EPA scrubbing its website of his grants. Since he got a screenshot I was able to look at it and then do some sleuthing. Here is what I found.I did a search on their Dun and Bradstreet Number (DUNS), which is a requirement for them...

The Chicago-based free market Heartland Institute has called in the FBI and threatened other legal action against a global warming proponent who has admitted stealing emails from the institute in a bid to embarrass and discredit the group’s questioning of climate change. Heartland officials tell Washington Secrets that they have been in talks with the FBI over the case against prominent global warming proponent Peter Gleick, co-founder of the respected Pacific Institute. Heartland is getting ready to reveal their probe of the affair, which they hope the FBI will act on.

WUWT commenter “The Duke” writes:I just sent the following letter to Senator Joe Simitian (D- Palo Alto) regarding Dr. Gleick’s apparent violation of SB 1411 which went into effect January 1st, 2011. Dear Senator Simitian:I am writing to you regarding possible violations of the impersonations law (SB 1411) you authored and successfully guided through the California legislature into law. It appears that Bay Area Scientist Dr. Peter Gleick has violated the law you wrote by impersonating a member of the Board of Directors at the Heartland Institute in Chicago in order to obtain privileged information from that private organization. Mr....

Many households in Germany are no longer able to pay their electricity bills. As a result, around half a million households are sitting in the dark. The sharp price increases for electricity and gas is leading to serious payment problems for more and more consumers – even to dark apartments. Because of unpaid bills an estimated 600,000 households in Germany had their power cut off in 2010, said the consumer watch dog Verbraucherzentrale Nordrhein-Westfalen which is based in Düsseldorf. This estimate is based on a survey of local energy providers in Germany’s most populous state. "Price increases of around 15...

Editor's Note: The authors of the following letter, listed below, are also the signatories of "No Need to Panic About Global Warming," an op-ed that appeared in the Journal on January 27. This letter responds to criticisms of the op-ed made by Kevin Trenberth and 37 others in a letter published Feb. 1, and by Robert Byer of the American Physical Society in a letter published Feb. 6. --------- We agree with Mr. Trenberth et al. that expertise is important in medical care, as it is in any matter of importance to humans or our environment. Consider then that by...

The promoters of the global warming hysteria never really recovered from Climategate, the release of e-mails and data which demonstrated that climate insiders were using questionable data, promoting misleading arguments, and conspiring to block dissenting views from the scientific literature. It... --snip-- This is the dead giveaway that the "confidential strategy memo" is a fake, and that is what the real scandal has become. The Atlantic blogger Megan McArdle helped break this open with an initial post raising questions, as well as a detailed follow-up. McArdle gets a little too far into the weeds of information technology, not to mention...

Yesterday I had the pleasure of chairing a packed meeting in the Palace of Westminster (don’t tell the Clerk of the Parliaments), at which Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT spoke even more brilliantly than usual on “global warming”, and engagingly answered many questions from Parliamentarians and the public. Afterwards, Dick went to brief a Cabinet Minister (who shall be nameless, but he is a good egg, and privately regards catastrophic manmade “global warming” as nonsense). The Minister indicated – in effect, and with scarcely-concealed regret – that the party line set by David Cameron in response to various opinion polls,...

AGU weighs in on Gleick: “AGU is disappointed that Dr. Gleick acted in a way that is inconsistent with our organization’s values.” AGU Encourages Integrity in all Aspects of Climate Change Discourse Scholarly Society Rejects Deception Regarding Heartland Institute Documents February 21, 2012AGU Release No. 12-11For Immediate Release In response to a blog post late yesterday, 20 February 2012, by Dr. Peter Gleick regarding documents purportedly from the Heartland Institute which he disseminated, AGU President Michael McPhaden issued the following statement: “AGU is disappointed that Dr. Gleick acted in a way that is inconsistent with our organization’s values. AGU expects...

WASHINGTON — In the field of climate science, when someone — especially skeptics — did something ethically questionable or misrepresented facts, scientist Peter Gleick was usually among the first and loudest to cry foul. He chaired a prominent scientific society’s ethics committee. He created an award for what he considered lies about global warming.Now Gleick admits that he posed as a board member to get and then distribute to the media sensitive documents from a conservative think tank that is a leader in denying mainstream climate change science.