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An archaeological dig has unearthed new evidence of a three-day attack on Edinburgh Castle - on a site earmarked for a luxury hotel by Sir Richard Branson. Experts believe they have found a carved stone which would have been fired from a giant catapult during the pivotal siege in 1296. It led to Edward I seizing control of the medieval fortress, plundering its treasures and shipping them to London, and the castle being held under English rule for 18 years. Archaeologists made the discovery at the site of the proposed new Virgin Hotel, which is earmarked for a large swathe...

TORONTO -- 21 of 44 chapters in the United Nations' Nobel-winning climate bible earned an F on a report card released today. Forty citizen auditors from 12 countries examined 18,500 sources cited in the report – finding 5,600 to be not peer-reviewed.  Contrary to statements by the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the celebrated 2007 report does not rely solely on research published in reputable scientific journals. It also cites press releases, newspaper and magazine clippings, student theses, newsletters, discussion papers, and literature published by green advocacy groups. Such material is often called "grey literature." "We've been...

JULY 17--If you're looking to book Al Gore for a 75-minute "Environmental Multimedia Lecture," the former vice president will cost you $100,000, plus travel, hotel, security, and per diem expenses. Gore's standard speaker's contract, a copy of which you'll find below, also stipulates that the Democrat's ground transportation be "a sedan, NOT an SUV." Additionally, Gore requests that speech sponsors make every effort to use a hybrid vehicle for his transport. The Gore contract, which is more restrained than the one used by Rudolph Giuliani, stipulates that no press be permitted at the event and that the Democrat receive approval...

The United Nation process is in danger of collapsing unless countries are able to agree on the best way to stop global warming by the end of this year, the outgoing head of climate change negotiations has warned.

Six months after introducing a sweeping climate change bill that flopped in the Senate, Democrat John Kerry is preparing to offer a compromise measure that seeks to reel in reluctant senators. Kerry, collaborating with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and independent Senator Joseph Lieberman, might introduce a new bill promoting clean energy early next week, just days before the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, environmental sources said. Despite Kerry's consistently upbeat assessment of legislative prospects this year, the new bill also faces plenty of hurdles. On Friday, a new problem potentially arose when U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens announced...

There are not many empty seats in the dismal, echoing conference chamber in the ghastly concrete box that is the Hotel Maritim here in Bonn, where the UN’s latest attempt to maneuver the 194 States Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change gets underway today. The “international community”, as it is now called, is here in full force, in the shape of expensively-suited, shiny-shod bureaucrats with an urbane manner and absolutely no knowledge of climate science whatsoever. However, one empty chair is a pointer of things to come. The Holy See – a tiny nation in its own...

This is an essay professor Richard Lindzen of MIT sent to the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va for their Opinion Page in March, and was recently republished in the Janesville, WI Gazette Extra where it got notice from many WUWT readers. It is well worth the read. – Anthony ****************************************************** worth the read. – Anthony Richard Lindzen To a significant extent, the issue of climate change revolves around the elevation of the commonplace to the ancient level of ominous omen. In a world where climate change has always been the norm, climate change is now taken as punishment for sinful...

Godfather of the global warming hoax, James Hansen has received a $100,000 "environmental prize for decades of work trying to alert politicians to what he called an unsolved emergency of global warming." Climate scientist James Hansen wins Sophie Prize : The "Sophie Prize" is awarded for disrupting free-market capitalism and pushing the world toward centralized control. In its mission statement, the organization behind the prize states: Today’s economic system is at odds with the limits set by nature. Too many decisions are based on short-term profit for a few select groups rather than a moral and fair distribution of...

Climategate was a lot of fuss about nothing, claims Britain’s parliamentary inquiry into the scandal: The focus on Professor Jones and CRU has been largely misplaced. On the accusations relating to Professor Jones’s refusal to share raw data and computer codes, the Committee considers that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community but that those practices need to change… Insofar as the Committee was able to consider accusations of dishonesty against CRU, the Committee considers that there is no case to answer.

This is the beginning of many full-length articles that will come as the House of Mann-Made Global Warming collapses. It’s long, but when it’s from a professional feature writer drawing a story of a professional scam-buster who works at the highest levels, it’s a great read. Enjoy It’s not a grand scientific expose, but it does turn ClimateGate into a human interest story with momentum, and, as such, it may reach a wider audience than any scientific expose. Photo: Mackenzie StrohThis Man Wants to Convince You Global Warming Is a Hoax Marc Morano broke the Swift Boat story and effectively...

This is one story which will never be written by the MSM, and one thing Gore and the current envirowackos who run the gov't in DC do NOT want you to know about. As most people know, the Arctic sea ice grows and wanes with the seasons, and in recent summers, has fallen far below its 'historical' (1979-2000) averages. This has prompted the likes of Al Gore to claim the North Pole would be ice free in the summer within a decade or so. A funny thing is happening on the way to the ice free Arctic, and that is...

NASA was able to put a man on the moon, but the space agency can't tell you what the temperature was when it did. By its own admission, NASA's temperature records are in even worse shape than the besmirched Climate-gate data. 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 Climatic 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...

Australian climate scientist policy analyst Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen tells the British parliamentary inquiry into Climategate just how much global warming science is corrupted by politics and money. Excerpts: I was peer reviewer for IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)… Since 1998 I have been the editor of the journal, Energy & Environment (E&E) published by Multi-science, where I published my first papers on the IPCC. I interpreted the IPCC “consensus” as politically created in order to support energy technology and scientific agendas that in essence pre-existed the “warming-as -man-made catastrophe alarm."… 3.2 Scientific research as advocacy for an agenda (a coalition...

In his first major interview since the climate-change emails scandal, James Lovelock says he is disgusted by the actions of some scientists, applauds 'good' climate sceptics, and warns that global warming could even lead to warAs you travel along the drive to James Lovelock's house, located in a remote, wooded valley on the Cornwall-Devon border, you pass a sign by a gated cattle grid. "Experimental station," it reads. "Site of a new natural habitat. Please do not trespass or disturb."Thirty years ago, Lovelock planted 20,000 trees to create the much more biodiverse habitat around his home. But you suspect that,...

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory. It follows a tumultuous few months in which public opinion on efforts to tackle climate change has been undermined by events such as the climate scientists' emails leaked from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit. "I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a...

Political and business leaders gather this week in an attempt to revive the world's faltering challenge to global warming. But they face a battle to lift the cloud of scepticism that has descended over climate science and chart a new way forward. Some of the planet's most powerful paymasters will gather in London on Wednesday to discuss a nagging financial problem: how to raise a trillion dollars for the developing world. Those charged with achieving this daunting goal will include Gordon Brown, directors of several central banks, the billionaire philanthropist George Soros, the economist Lord (Nicholas) Stern and Larry Summers,...

The Gulf Stream does not appear to be slowing down, say US scientists who have used satellites to monitor tell-tale changes in the height of the sea. Confirming work by other scientists using different methodologies, they found dramatic short-term variability but no longer-term trend. A slow-down - dramatised in the movie The Day After Tomorrow - is projected by some models of climate change. The research is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The stream is a key process in the climate of western Europe, bringing heat northwards from the tropics and keeping countries such as the UK 4-6C...

For all you folks out there who take an interest in the doings of George Soros, here’s one I missed a few weeks ago — but just came across while catching up on some UN press releases. On March 4, the UN announced that Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon had picked a panel of “high-level experts” to form a UN “Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing.” Their assignment is to help “mobilize” the funding promised at the Copenhagen Climate Carnival this past December. Here’s the list. It includes an interesting mix of public and private officials, ranging from the prime minister of Ethiopia, the president of...

I attribute much of the recent rapid rise of the skeptics to the ongoing effects of ClimateGate. Yet, in a sense, the e-mails that were sprung from East Anglia did nothing more than confirm what most skeptics already suspected. Lawrence Solomon, author of The Deniers, has written an unusually good summary in the form of a speech for the Colorado Mining Association.With his permission, I’ve included my favourite points here, as well as a copy of the full speech. His blog is a part of the Energy Probe team. The Climategate emails confirmed much of what the sceptics had been saying for...

Rajendra Pachauri said he would focus in future on presenting the science on climate change rather than advocating policiesThe outspoken chairman of the UN’s climate change body is to adopt a neutral advisory role and has agreed to stop making statements demanding new taxes and other radical policies on cutting emissions. In an interview with The Times, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, apologised for his organisation’s handling of complaints about errors in its report. He also apologised for describing as “voodoo science” an Indian Government report which challenged the IPCC’s claims about the rapid melting...