Junkscience.com -- Archives, January 2010

WASHINGTON - The United States on Thursday formally notified the United Nations that it has embraced the Copenhagen Accord setting nonbinding goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that was negotiated last month.

Todd Stern, the top U.S. climate negotiator for the Obama administration, also gave notice that, as expected, it will aim for a 17 percent reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming by 2020, with 2005 as the base year.

A final emissions reduction target will be submitted, the U.S. said, once the U.S. Congress enacts domestic legislation requiring carbon pollution cuts. But such legislation has an uncertain fate in the Senate. (Reuters)

President Obama gave his first State of the Union speech last night and while his delivery reminded many Americans of the man they saw on the campaign trail, his rhetoric was much of the same. Although the president did call for offshore drilling and an expansion of nuclear, his focus was clean energy jobs. He declared,

President Obama refused to back down from his ambitious energy and climate change agenda during last night's State of the Union address, prodding the Senate to pass a comprehensive bill despite complaints from moderates in both parties that the issue is too big to tackle in an election year. (ClimateWire)

WASHINGTON - Senators are examining ways to fashion a climate control bill to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which might not include a cap-and-trade system, key senators said on Thursday.

President Barack Obama called for a "comprehensive" bill during Wednesday's State of the Union address. (Reuters)

Watch as Obama is laughed at during his state of the union address after referring to the "overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change". First the audience laughs, then Pelosi, next Biden and finally Obama himself smirks at the insanity of his remark.

So here's a money line from President Obama's global warming riff during tonite's SOU:

Now, put aside the rather thin empirical or even theoretical evidence for his economic hypothesis, and recall then-senator Tim Wirth's eerily similar formulation in 1988 — the very same year he helped invent global warming as a policy issue with his "stagecraft" hearing featuring James Hansen, with Al Gore accompanying him on the Alarmacord:

Twenty-two years. Still waiting for warming. Still using the threat as the vehicle for their agenda. And with rhetoric either cribbed or so closely paraphrased Wirth ought to demand a script credit. The very boldness of these fresh ideas and approaches send a thrill down my leg. (Chris Horner, Planet Gore)

Switzerland - Business executives and policy officials said a U.S. cap and trade scheme must give way to a clean energy law, after U.S. President Barack Obama favored "green jobs" in his State of the Union Address.

Cap and trade works by limiting carbon emissions from polluters, which then pass on the extra cost to consumers. That model is proving a hard sell during a slow U.S. economic recovery. (Reuters)

Keeping climate change alive - In his state of the union address, Obama seemed willing to trade nuclear power and offshore drilling for climate bill votes

Greens probably didn't reckon the "change you can believe in" would mean building more nuclear power plants when Barack Obama was first elected. But that is what they are going to get – in return for getting a climate change bill through Congress.

Last night Obama delivered the signal Congress – and much of the world – had been watching for that the White House is ready to throw itself into the effort to get a climate change bill through the Senate.

But what kind of bill? One deliberately crafted to prise off at least a handful of Republican votes – which means expanding nuclear power, offshore drilling, and money for clean coal technology. (The Guardian)

A study commissioned by the National Corn Growers Association says costs to commodity growers from current climate legislation would be minimal in the short run, but high in the long run.

The study analyzes the impacts of HR2454, the bill that passed the House of Representatives in June, to the nation's corn, wheat and soybean producers.

The bill would increase the cost of fuel and farm inputs.

The magnitude of costs to producers hinges on fertilizer prices. Until 2025, the bill would not cap emissions from fertilizer production. But through the following 10 years, that exemption would phase out, expanding costs of fertilizer production and raising its price.

The study says the increase could total $50 per acre above 2009 costs. It also warns that the cost could be higher if the fertilizer allowances prove insufficient to keep up with rising natural gas prices. (Capital Press)

The National Corn Growers Association last week added its voice to those of a number of farm organizations that oppose climate change legislation passed last summer by the U.S. House of Representatives.

HR2454, which narrowly passed the House last summer, would impose increasingly strict restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions over the next 40 years. A similar bill awaits action in the Senate. Both would increase the cost of fuel and drive up prices for farm inputs, transportation and processing.

By some estimates, the bills would cause farm profits to drop an average of 57 percent through 2035 because of the increased costs. The USDA says the long-term impact will be a 7 percent reduction in farm profits. Either way, farmers lose. (Capital Press)

A new and vastly improved climate change policy has come out of nowhere to capture the imagination of state and national policymakers: "Cap and dividend." It works like this: Step one, impose a carbon cap. Step two, auction off all carbon allowances. Step three, return the revenues generated to all households on a per capita basis. (Star Tribune)

KEVIN Rudd's emissions trading scheme is dead but he can't let it go. Politically he should shift ground to alternative action on climate change, blame Tony Abbott for the failure of a scheme previously favoured by Liberal leaders, and use the global failure to agree on a concerted plan as a reprieve before the election.

The Prime Minister can still campaign on taking steps against climate change and adopt the high moral ground on the environment, but he doesn't have to cling to an ETS that no longer fulfils his stated aims of leading the world on climate change, cutting greenhouse gas emissions and providing "business certainty" - and which is vulnerable to the Coalition's "great big tax" claims.

He could also alleviate the subterranean angst in his own ranks among Labor MPs who are feeling the heat on an ETS in electorates concerned about jobs, and head off industry-funded advertising campaigns that have already had an impact in some areas.

Yet Rudd, like Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, can't bring himself to face political reality and dump a dud, at least until there are signs of real international progress that doesn't make Australia look like it's tilting at windmills (or coal-fired generators) without effect and at great cost.

Rudd's attachment looks dangerously like an ideological commitment to a scheme that is opposed from both ends of the political spectrum and unlikely to find any validating action from the world's biggest producers of greenhouse gases. (Dennis Shanahan, The Australian)

This winter's extreme weather -- with heavy snowfall in some places and unusually low temperatures -- is in fact a sign of how climate change disrupts long-standing patterns, according to a new report by the National Wildlife Federation.

It comes at a time when, despite a wealth of scientific evidence, the American public is increasingly skeptical that climate change is happening at all. That disconnect is particularly important this year as the Obama administration and its allies in Congress seek to enact legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions and revamp the nation's energy supply.

"It's very hard for any of us to grasp how this larger warming trend is happening when we're still having wintry weather," said National Wildlife Federation climate scientist Amanda Staudt, the new report's lead writer. (Juliet Eilperin and David A. Fahrenthold, Washington Post)

SYDNEY - Australia faces a possible 300 percent increase in extreme bushfires by 2050 unless world leaders can agree to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions, a new report said on Thursday.

The report, commissioned by Australia's firefighters and environmental group Greenpeace, said the failure of U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen to agree on a treaty to tackle climate change had left Australia facing future catastrophic bushfire seasons. (Reuters)

A claim that the University of East Anglia broke the law by refusing a climate sceptic's request for scientific data was last night disputed by under fire officials who said they had “grave concern” about the findings.

The Information Commissioner's Office yesterday released a statement which said UEA had breached Freedom of Information (FOI) rules in its handling of requests from a retired Northampton engineer but would not face action because the time limit for prosecutions had run out.

Professor Edward Acton, UEA vice-chancellor, last night stressed the FOI requests had been dealt with in consultation with the ICO. (EDP24)

GLACIERS that don’t melt, polar bears that aren’t dying, temperatures that haven’t increased – why global warming is nonsense

This newspaper has been vociferous in challenging the wisdom of the powerful climate-change lobby which insists humans have put the planet in peril. Yet it seems every week another “green” warning is repudiated by a scientific community reassessing how much danger we are really in. A few days ago, for instance, a new book was released that exposes one of the bedrocks of global warming – the so-called hockey stick graph – to be fatally flawed. It’s a confusing debate so here, with the help of investigative journalist Christopher Booker, we debunk the most commonly held myths. (Adrian Lee, Daily Express)

Monday, 25 January 2010 Alan Jones invites Lord Christopher Monckton into the studio to discuss Climate Change.

A university unit involved in a row over stolen e-mails on climate research breached rules by withholding data, the Information Commissioner's Office says.

Officials said messages hacked in November showed that requests under the Freedom of Information Act were "not dealt with as they should have been".

But too much time has passed for action against the University of East Anglia.

The UEA says part of a probe into the case will consider the way requests by climate change sceptics were handled. (BBC)

To investigate fears of retreating glaciers in the Himalayas, the British government in 2001 funded a major field study major code-named "Sagarmatha". Reporting in June 2004, it found that the threat, that all of the region's glaciers may soon disappear, "would seem unfounded" and that "the catastrophic water shortages forecast by some experts are unlikely to happen for many decades, if at all."

Of the "experts" who were forecasting catastrophe, by far the most vocal was Dr Sayed Hasnain, the scientist currently at the centre of the "Galciergate" storm. Yet, days before the British government report was officially published, Hasnain was telling the media – including the New Scientist - that "... after 40 years, most of the glaciers will be wiped out and then we will have severe water problems."

This was despite the fact that Dr Hasnain had assisted the Sagarmatha team and was aware of its findings. And, when the IPCC Working Group II came to write up the section on Himalayan glaciers, it ignored the Sagarmatha report in preference to Dr Hasnain's alarmism – dating back to 1999 - despite it having been discredited by the more recent British study, which had been commissioned in response to that self-same alarmism. (Richard North, EUReferendum)

Deltoid (aka Tim Lambert) tries to attack Monckton (again). The bottom line? Deltoid agrees that Monckton’s calculations are correct, and accuses him of getting a figure wrong (which Monckton got right). As per form, there is plenty of bluster, and minimal substance. Deltoid repeats over and over that there are lots of mistakes and they’re all “important”, but cannot demonstrate any beyond a squabble over the exact phrasing of whether the IPCC included a formula or not. (It’s debateable, but it’s not important.)

Monckton’s letter to Rudd was big-picture stuff, yet Lambert avoids the heavy-weight items–the falling credibility of the IPCC, the starving poor, the cost-benefit analysis. Deltoid attacks phraseology, job titles, funding, but not the crux of Monckton’s points.

To put some perspective on it: the IPCC has grossly exaggerated climate sensitivity, ignored valid criticisms, and repeatedly used non-peer reviewed references (when it has repeatedly claimed to do otherwise). IPCC lead-authors are under investigation, have withheld data, conspired to delete data, and selectively ignored 75% of the global temperature record because it didn’t give them the “right” answer. (See the four Gates of the IPCC, and Horrifying examples of data manipulation)

To put a pointier perspective on it: Monckton pointed out in his letter to Rudd the real cost of misguided policies…

What’s Deltoid’s view of the deaths of the poor? He reckons it’s a “war on science” even for a newspaper to print these comments. Thus Deltoid confirms that he will launch attacks on anyone and anything that threatens his own blogger-reputation (who cares if it means poor people die?). This grand selfishness would merely be petty and sad except that Deltoid’s misleading bluster has been repeated in at least one major newspaper. (And BTW I’ve debunked Ben Cubby before too.)

My comments are in green below on right hand side. Deltoid’s comments are on the left, gray background (with quotes from Monckton there too).

Once again, like the last two times I “translated” him (Goldilocks Graphs, and Reply to Deltoid), Deltoid fails to come up with anything significant, and still can’t find any empirical evidence to support his favored theory. More » (Jo Nova)

Dr Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, writes in The Times today, of the "Glaciergate" scandal, that:

George Monbiot is cwoss. Weally, WEALLY cwoss. And I don’t blame him one bit. God it must be an awful thing when you’ve squandered half your career acting as cheerleader for a cause which, on closer examination, turns out to have been a complete load of cobblers. Hugh Trevor-Roper’s humiliation after the Hitler Diaries is surely as nothing to what poor George – Britain’s second-most-famous Old Stoic after Perry Worsthorne – must be experiencing now. (James Delingpole, TDT)

The IPCC gets a global drubbing for peddling recycled WWF glacier-ganda, Al Gore loves astroturf and there’s more green-on-green action than a superbowl between the Eagles and the Jets. (Daily Bayonet)

It’s been the hardest winter for 30 years – but how bad has it really been for wildlife, and especially for birds? The first large-scale attempt to find out will take place this weekend, when half a million people will be counting the birds on their bird tables, patios and frozen lawns, in the Big Garden Birdwatch of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. (The Independent)

A 10 percent drop in water vapor ten miles above Earth’s surface has had a big impact on global warming, say researchers in a study published online January 28 in the journal Science. The findings might help explain why global surface temperatures have not risen as fast in the last ten years as they did in the 1980s and 1990s.

Observations from satellites and balloons show that stratospheric water vapor has had its ups and downs lately, increasing in the 1980s and 1990s, and then dropping after 2000. The authors show that these changes occurred precisely in a narrow altitude region of the stratosphere where they would have the biggest effects on climate.

Inspecting the balloon payload for flight worthiness.
High resolution (Credit: NOAA)

Water vapor is a highly variable gas and has long been recognized as an important player in the cocktail of greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, halocarbons, nitrous oxide, and others—that affect climate.

“Current climate models do a remarkable job on water vapor near the surface. But this is different — it’s a thin wedge of the upper atmosphere that packs a wallop from one decade to the next in a way we didn’t expect,” says Susan Solomon, NOAA senior scientist and first author of the study.

Since 2000, water vapor in the stratosphere decreased by about 10 percent. The reason for the recent decline in water vapor is unknown. The new study used calculations and models to show that the cooling from this change caused surface temperatures to increase about 25 percent more slowly than they would have otherwise, due only to the increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

An increase in stratospheric water vapor in the 1990s likely had the opposite effect of increasing the rate of warming observed during that time by about 30 percent, the authors found.

The stratosphere is a region of the atmosphere from about eight to 30 miles above the Earth’s surface. Water vapor enters the stratosphere mainly as air rises in the tropics. Previous studies suggested that stratospheric water vapor might contribute significantly to climate change. The new study is the first to relate water vapor in the stratosphere to the specific variations in warming of the past few decades.

Authors of the study are Susan Solomon, Karen Rosenlof, Robert Portmann, and John Daniel, all of the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) in Boulder, Colo.; Sean Davis and Todd Sanford, NOAA/ESRL and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado; and Gian-Kasper Plattner, University of Bern, Switzerland.

A geoengineering project to block the sun by simulating volcanic eruptions would be 100 times cheaper than cutting greenhouse gas emissions, climate change scientists said. (TDT)

A team of British geographers has discovered a group of previously uncharted glaciers in an inhospitable European mountain range.

The academics from Manchester University found the four glaciers in the Prokletije or “cursed” mountains of Albania. They have formed at an altitude of 2,000 metres, relatively low for such a southerly latitude. Other glaciers at this latitude survive only on higher mountains further north. (The Times)

If you've ever lived in a city, near a city, or been on the roof of a city building in the summer, you know the urban jungle gets hot as hell. Growing up on Long Island, it wasn't uncommon for my nearest metropolis, New York City, to be close to 10 degrees hotter than my home town.

There are lots of reasons why this is the case in cities around the world, at least some if it can be attributed to all those black, tar-paper roofs soaking up rays all day long. If we were to paint urban rooftops white, a new report suggests, the Big Apple's fever would go down by as much as 2 degrees Fahrenheit on a warm summer day.

The new modeling study, due to appear in Geophysical Research Letters, puts the first hard numbers behind Energy Secretary Stephen Chu's suggestion earlier this year to paint roofs white as a way of saving energy and fighting global warming.

Given that cities around the world vary a whole lot in their climate and construction, the benefits of painting roofs white to ward off the Sun's heat is going to have an array of effects. For example, if you live in Reykjavik, Iceland you might want to keep your black roof because you're way more concerned with keeping your place warm than cool. Santorini, Greece is so hot that they went white a long time ago (pictured above). The amount of insulation in your building matters a whole lot, too.

But overall, researchers conclude that white roofs could cut the so-called urban heat island affect by as much as 33 percent globally, or an average of 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

For temperate places like New York, you've got to balance the amount of energy saved on less air-conditioning in the summer with the increase in heating in the winter. So maybe what we really need are roofs that can change colors depending on the energy needs of the building. (Michael Reilly, Discovery)

Carbonaceous aerosols cause strong atmospheric heating and large surface cooling that is as important to South Asian climate forcing as greenhouse gases, yet the aerosol sources are poorly understood. Emission inventory models suggest that biofuel burning accounts for 50 to 90% of emissions, whereas the elemental composition of ambient aerosols points to fossil fuel combustion. We used radiocarbon measurements of winter monsoon aerosols from western India and the Indian Ocean to determine that biomass combustion produced two-thirds of the bulk carbonaceous aerosols, as well as one-half and two-thirds of two black carbon subfractions, respectively. These constraints show that both biomass combustion (such as residential cooking and agricultural burning) and fossil fuel combustion should be targeted to mitigate climate effects and improve air quality. (Science)

LONDON - Oil use in rich industrialized countries will never return to 2006 and 2007 levels because of more fuel efficiency and the use of alternatives, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency said on Thursday.

The bold prediction, while made previously by some analysts, is significant because the IEA advises 28 countries on energy policy and its oil demand forecasts are closely watched by traders and policymakers.

"When we look at the OECD countries -- the U.S., Europe and Japan -- I think the level of demand that we have seen in 2006 and 2007, we will never see again," Fatih Birol told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"There may be some zig zags up and down but as a trend I think it will be a downward trend in terms of oil consumption." (Reuters)

Calgary-based Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. is buying into a proposed technologically advanced plant to upgrade bitumen from the Alberta oilsands and produce low-sulphur diesel fuel.

The oil and gas producer said Thursday it plans to buy 50 per cent of the assets in North West Upgrading Inc., another Calgary company, and form a partnership to operate the refinery, planned for northeast of Edmonton.

The project still requires the approval of the Alberta government.

Canadian Natural didn't provide an estimated cost for the project or how much it would spend to buy the stake in North West Upgrading, a privately held company formed in 2004.

Canadian Natural is one of the largest companies in Canada's oil industry and operates the Horizon oilsands project north of Fort McMurray. (CBC News)

To its fans, jatropha is a miracle crop, an eco-friendly answer to India's growing energy needs, but some experts are starting to question whether the wonder-shrub is too good to be true.

The seeds of the wild plant, which grows abundantly across India, produce non-edible oil that can be blended with diesel, to make the biofuel that is part of government efforts to cut carbon emissions and combat climate change.

That, combined with the shrub's much vaunted ability to flourish on poorly irrigated land, should make it the perfect crop for wasteland in the drought-prone nation.

But new research shows jatropha, which has received huge government backing in recent years, yields less than experts had first predicted and is now being grown on fertile farmland - undermining two of its best selling points.

"Jatropha is being talked of as a crop that will grow on marginal and uncultivated land, and which will not compete with mainstream cultivation," said Sharachchandra Lele, a senior fellow at ATREE, an Indian environmental research group promoting sustainable development.

"But this is not what is happening in practice. Some state governments are promoting its cultivation on regular agricultural land, where it will displace existing crops, including food crops," said Lele.

"We are basically subsidising the urban elite's petrol consumption at the cost of rural livelihoods and food production." ( The Independent)

Using biofuel in vehicles may be accelerating the destruction of rainforest and resulting in higher greenhouse gas emissions than burning pure petrol and diesel, a watchdog said yesterday.

The Renewable Fuels Agency also warned that pump prices could rise in April because of the Government’s policy of requiring fuel companies to add biofuel to petrol and diesel. More than 1.3 million hectares of land — twice the area of Devon — was used to grow the 2.7 per cent of Britain’s transport fuel that came from crops last year.

Under the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation, a growing proportion of biofuel must be added to diesel and petrol. This year fuel must be at least 3.25 per cent biofuel on average. By 2020 the proportion will be 13 per cent. (The Times)

Press reports in the Financial Times and other news outlets describe a wind project in Oregon with 338 machines of 2.5 MW each, giving a total capacity of 845 MW. The project sponsors claim that they will provide enough energy to serve 235,000 households and reduce CO2 output by 1.5 million tonnes annually.

Part I demonstrated that the served-household claims is fanciful. In reality, no more than 49,000 households could be “supplied”, and these with only a minimal degree of assurance. Indeed, the wind project is more costly than a diesel backup scheme that would actually be capable of supplying reliable power to several hundred thousand households. The wind project is also three times more costly than a replacement of just 211 MW of older coal capacity with new technology that would provide a similar reduction in emissions, while supplying firm power to the NW Power Pool’s customers.

The key to wind’s providing some degree of fuel and emissions savings is its ability to deliver reliable electricity without shadowing or backup by hydrocarbon-using plants. These shadowing/backup requirements in the Northwest (NW) Power Pool may be able to take advantage of existing surplus hydro capacity in that region during off-peak periods (spring and fall), thereby permitting the proposed plant to reduce hydrocarbon consumption and emissions somewhat during those periods. It is not reasonable to expect to achieve the claimed emissions savings, but lower figures, less than half the publicized savings, may be possible.

In particular, the addition of wind generation, with shadowing/backup provided by reservoir hydro, may be able to reduce overall CO2 emissions in California, the ultimate customer for the electricity produced by the GE project during Oregon’s two surplus seasons. But during the winter and summer peak demand periods, less hydro output is available, peak demand is greater and the shadowing backup will be provided by some combination of gas-fired and coal plants. What it is critical to keep in mind is that maintaining stability in the NW Power Pool requires the pool to shadow/backup not only the proposed new project, but the other 6.4 GW of existing wind as well.

Going further, our analysis shows there are less costly and more effective alternatives readily available that rival or exceed the claimed benefits of this wind project. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

Environmental activists have invited some of the UK's leading architects to design an "impenetrable fortress" to be built on land earmarked for the third runway at Heathrow.

Greenpeace plans to build the winning design at the centre of the site where airport operator BAA hopes to construct a £7bn runway and a sixth terminal.

The charity bought the parcel of land last year and then distributed ownership to more than 60,000 supporters around the world.

Organisers say the small individual plots will create a legal headache for any government trying to push ahead with the expansion plans. (The Guardian)

The doctor who sparked a worldwide panic over the MMR vaccine could be struck off after being found guilty yesterday of a series of misconduct charges related to his “unethical” research.

Andrew Wakefield, who in 1998 claimed an unfounded link between the vaccination and autism, “showed a callous disregard” for the suffering of children, subjecting them to unnecessary, invasive tests, a hearing found.

The General Medical Council (GMC) ruled that he abused his position of trust as he researched a possible link between the MMR vaccine, bowel disease and autism in children.

It found that Wakefield and two colleagues acted dishonestly and irresponsibly in carrying out research on children against their best interests and without official permission.

The GMC ruled that Wakefield, who was working at the Royal Free Hospital in London as a gastroenterologist at the time, did not have the ethical approval or qualifications to oversee the study, which involved children undergoing colonoscopies, lumbar punctures, barium meals and brain scans.

He was also found to have brought the medical profession into disrepute after taking blood samples from youngsters at his son's birthday party in return for payments of £5 and failing to disclose vital conflicts of interest.

He received £50,000 to carry out the research on behalf of solicitors acting for parents who believed that their children had been harmed by MMR, but could not account for how at least half this money had been spent.

He also did not declare any conflict of interest to The Lancet medical journal, which published the research.

The GMC found the charges against Wakefield, and the professors John Walker-Smith and Simon Murch were “sufficient to amount to serious professional misconduct”. (The Times)

Andrew Wakefield, the doctor who suggested the MMR vaccine might cause autism, leading to a collapse in immunisation levels nationwide, "showed a callous disregard" for the suffering of children and "abused his position of trust" during the conduct of his research, a disciplinary panel ruled yesterday. (The Independent)

(Jan. 28, 2010) — Adults aged over 70 years who are classified as overweight are less likely to die over a ten year period than adults who are in the 'normal' weight range, according to a new study published in the Journal of The American Geriatrics Society. (ScienceDaily)

NEW YORK - Having type 2 diabetes in the family more than doubles a woman's own risk of developing the disease, new research shows.

But the fact that fat -- and certain dietary habits -- also run in families accounts for a "substantial part" of this increased risk, Dr. Rob van Dam of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and his colleagues found.

Having a close relative with type 2 diabetes -- the kind closely linked to obesity -- is a key risk factor for the disease, but known gene variants that increase diabetes risk only explain part of this relationship. (Reuters Health)

New research suggests that animals living at high latitudes grow better than their counterparts closer to the equator because higher-latitude vegetation is more nutritious. The study, published in the February issue of The American Naturalist, presents a novel explanation for Bergmann's Rule, the observation that animals tend to be bigger at higher latitudes.

Ever since Christian Bergmann made his observation about latitude and size in 1847, scientists have been trying to explain it. The traditional explanation is that body temperature is the driving force. Because larger animals have less surface area compared to overall body mass, they don't lose heat as readily as smaller animals. That would give big animals an advantage at high latitudes where temperatures are generally colder.

But biologist Chuan-Kai Ho from Texas A&M University wondered if there might be another explanation. Might plants at higher latitudes be more nutritious, enabling the animals that eat those plants to grow bigger? (University of Chicago Press Journals)

The study by a panel of independent experts found that the irritation caused by the noise around wind farms can effect certain individuals.

Scientists dismissed the idea of a "wind turbine syndrome" where the vibrations in the air or the particular sound waves from wind turbines cause headaches, nausea and panic attacks.

However, they did concede that the swishing sound caused by wind turbines can "annoy" some people, keeping them awake at night and even causing psychological problems because of the stress.

The Government is planning on building thousands more wind turbines onshore and the report has led calls for more research into the noise effects caused by the turbines.

But the wind industry said if wind turbines were harmful, it would be impossible to live in a city given the sound levels normally present in urban environments.

The Government insisted that wind farms do not have a direct impact on health.

Wind farms have traditionally been seen by protesters as a blot on the British countryside, but it has now emerged that their noise may make people ill. (TDT)

Rich countries are raiding their aid budgets to bankroll a new global fund to help poor countries adapt to climate change, one of the world's leading development campaign groups warned today.

Jamie Drummond, executive director of the One group co-founded by the rock stars Bono and Bob Geldof, said the west was being "dishonest" about the $30bn (£18bn) of fast-track finance proposed in Copenhagen last month to persuade developing countries to agree a deal on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Drummond said the proposal to spend $10bn a year over the next three years involved no additional money, but was instead being diverted from existing budgets. (The Guardian)

Western food manufacturers are buying so little sustainable palm oil that the system set up to limit damage to tropical forests caused by the world's cheapest vegetable oil is in danger of collapse. Palm-oil producers say the industry may quit the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) because so few firms are financially backing the scheme. (The Independent)

In a previous article on Quadrant Online I suggested that the Tony Abbott’s proposal to introduce a ‘Green Army’ dedicated to tackling concrete environmental issues at the grassroots level might also provide an opportunity to contest the ideological role of fanatical environmentalism, and in particular the prevailing notion that there is an inevitable link between socialism and conservationism.

In fact, this assumption is extremely deeply embedded in politics, the media, and the education system, and reflects not only the Left’s success over the past three decades in hijacking the conservation movement, but also its ability to use that movement as a vehicle for the most extreme political, social, and cultural ideas.

An excellent example of this is provided in a recent collection of articles on revolutionary environmentalism explicitly published as a manifesto of eco-extremism (Steven best and Anthony J Nocella (eds.) Igniting a Revolution, AK Press, Edinburgh, 2006). Blaming every problem in the modern world on Western liberal democracies, the ‘Introduction’ condemns the “omnicidal assault” on the world “waged by powerful and greedy forces, above all, by transnational corporations … banks, and G8 alliances. Stretching their tentacles across the Earth, they hire nation states as their cops, juntas, hit men, dictators, and loan sharks to extract natural resources, enforce regimes of total exploitation, and snuff out all resistance”. (Merv Bendle, Quadrant)

Just 24 homebuyers have taken advantage of a high-profile scheme devised by Gordon Brown to encourage the construction of environmentally-friendly houses across the country.

In his final Budget as Chancellor, Mr Brown announced that stamp duty would be scrapped on all new properties worth up to £500,000 which are given a zero carbon rating. The average saving per purchase was estimated to be £10,000.

Mr Brown set aside £15m for the tax relief, which he hoped would “accelerate” the building of carbon-neutral homes as a key weapon in the fight against global warming.

But tonight the scheme was condemned as a “shocking failure” after the Government admitted that only 24 buyers had claimed the tax break since it was introduced in October 2007 – less than one a month.

So few homes have qualified that ministers would not provide further details of the sums involved in case individual properties are identified as a result. (The Independent)

ENVIRONMENTAL red tape is stopping dangerous roadside trees being removed for motorists' safety, the Local Government Association states.

The LGA says councils should be allowed to remove these trees - to improve visibility and clearance - without being forced to pay hefty compensation.

The call comes just days after another crash claimed the lives of three teenage boys when the car in which they were passengers hit a pine tree on Wood Cone Rd, Mt Compass.

Inquiries by The Advertiser have revealed a complaint was made after one project by Victor Harbor council was delayed for two years because the Native Vegetation Council wanted $1.5 million compensation after 32 trees were to be removed for a $250,000 upgrade of a local road.

LGA spokesman Chris Russell said a number of new road projects and realignments were delayed every year because of red tape in the Native Vegetation Act. ( The Advertiser)

San Francisco— The Center for Biological Diversity today filed notice of intent to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for failing to adequately evaluate and regulate nearly 400 pesticides harmful to hundreds of endangered species throughout the nation, which also threaten human health. The EPA has violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to consult with wildlife regulatory agencies about the impacts of pesticides on hundreds of protected species that are threatened by pesticide use. The agency has also violated the Migratory Bird Treaty Act by registering pesticides that are known to kill and harm migratory birds. (Press Release)

A catastrophic heat wave appears to be closing in on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. How hot is it getting in the scientific kitchen where they’ve been cooking the books and spicing up the stew pots? So hot, apparently, that Andrew Weaver, probably Canada’s leading climate scientist, is calling for replacement of IPCC leadership and institutional reform.

If Andrew Weaver is heading for the exits, it’s a pretty sure sign that the United Nations agency is under monumental stress. Mr. Weaver, after all, has been a major IPCC science insider for years.

If we're serious about restoring science to its rightful place, the head of the U.N.'s panel on climate change should step down. Evidence shows he quarterbacked a deliberate and premeditated fraud. (IBD)

Like a star footballer headed for the goal, Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has seemingly been rushing toward his own dismissal. After a report debunking IPCC claims that Himalayan glaciers were melting faster than other glaciers and that they would be fully melted by 2035, Pachauri termed the research “voodoo science” and accused the Indian environment ministry of “arrogance” for its report. As it turns out, it was the IPCC's claims that were bogus, based on third hand speculation from a little known scientist. (The Resilient Earth)

So asks the French blog Objectif Liberté, a question effectively answered in the affirmative by the Indian news agency DNA.

Previously a Pachauri supporter, it retails how the Indian government is distancing itself from one of its erstwhile favourite sons, with the news that the government is thinking again about appointing the good doctor to the prestige position of head of the prime minister's national solar mission.

This is the national programme which is leading the drive to produce 20,000 MW of solar electricity by 2022 and one that would have cemented Pachauri even more firmly in the halls of power – with plenty of opportunities to drive some lucrative consultancy business in the direction of his institute, TERI.

But "sources" are now saying that the embarrassment over Pachauri is so acute in Delhi's power corridors that he is no more on the list of hopefuls likely to head the unit. Until a few weeks ago, government sources say, he was leading the race and considered a shoe-in.

Pachauri's fall from grace seems roughly to coincide with a certain article in The Daily Telegraph on 20 December. But his contemptuous treatment of environment minister Jairam Ramesh cannot have helped.

Ramesh is actually quoted by DNA, complaining: "I was dismissed for peddling voodoo science, but the ministry was right on the report on Himalayan glaciers." And it has now emerged that there was a crisis meeting held in New Delhi on 28/29 December, under the aegis of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) – one of the sponsoring bodies for the IPCC - to discuss the 2035 claim on glaciers.

Although the meeting was held at the TERI offices, Pachauri was not present in a group of glaciologists brought together from throughout the world, but Ramesh was. Dr Syed Hasnain was also present and the UK was represented by Dr Viju John of the Met Office's Hadley Centre.

At the meeting, Prof Murari Lal, one of the lead authors of Chapter 8 which made the 2035 claim, admitted it had been made on the basis of a report of the WWF report that had quoted Hasnain. But he dismissed media claims that the year 2035 had "crept in the report by mistake." However, Hasnain denied mentioning any such date "in his scientific papers".

The meeting decided that the rate of retreat stated by the IPCC "does not appear to be based upon any scientific studies and therefore has no foundation", concluding that: "The upshot is that the critics are correct ... there appears to be no scientific foundation for the IPCC's prediction for the year 2035."

Despite that, it took the IPCC until 20 January to issue a grudging statement, regretting "the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures" but making no admission that the claim had "no scientific foundation".

Yet, right up to the day before the statement, Pachauri was telling reporters: "We are looking at the issue and will be in a better position to comment on the report after examining all facts," with no hint that a statement was imminent – or that the issue had been settled nearly three weeks earlier.

That, of course, was after the "non-mistake" had been outed on 17 January by Jonathan Leake in The Sunday Times, raising the question of whether Pachauri had any intention of correcting the IPCC report.

It is possibly this reluctance to admit error, as much as anything, which has done the damage. Now, as Leake points out in the video above, the man lacks credibility.

Rubbing that in, the DNA report goes on to note: "A recent report in the British media had found that IPCC's prediction that 40% of the Amazon rainforests were threatened by climate change was not based on scientific knowledge, but documents compiled by a journalist," and then adds for good measure:

Revelations about how the United Nations and its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have manipulated scientific data to support their contention that man-made carbon emissions are altering the world’s climate are now flying out like bees from a wet hive — fast and furious. ( National Post)

The United Nations makes a claim that can't be supported by science, and U.S. researchers ignore temperature data from frigid regions. The crack-up of the global warming fraud is picking up speed.

With so much of the science behind climate change coming under attack, especially among scientists, it's been a harsh winter for the global warming crowd: (IBD)

WASHINGTON—Political feuding over global warming reached the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday when commissioners, divided on party lines, voted to encourage companies to disclose the effects of climate change on their business.

SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro, an Obama administration appointee, said the agency wasn't weighing in on the global-warming debate and wanted to ensure that investors get reliable information.

The agency's two Republican commissioners voted against issuing the guidance. "I can only conclude that the purpose of this release is to place the imprimatur of the commission on the agenda of the social and environmental policy lobby, an agenda that falls outside of our expertise," said Republican Commissioner Kathleen Casey.

Two Republican lawmakers from the House Energy and Commerce Committee also took a swipe at the SEC in a letter sent Tuesday, calling the move "transparently political and such a breathtaking waste of the commission's resources." (WSJ)

“Despite growing scientific evidence that global warming will have serious impacts worldwide, public opinion is moving in the opposite direction,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change, in a statement on the poll. (Bloomberg)

Washington, DC (Jan. 27) - Ahead of the State of the Union address and in the wake of recent and ongoing climate science scandals, President Obama should appoint an independent panel of experts to evaluate the purported climate change-national security link, urged Adm. James A. Lyons, Jr., USN (Ret.), former Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet and Chairman of the Center for Security Policy's Military Committee.

The supposed relationship between climate change and national security "is too important an issue to be driven by unsubstantiated claims, tainted by scandal, and to result in counterproductive policies," Adm. Lyons stated in the open letter.

Adm. Lyons' letter points out that both the ongoing Climategate scandal involving senior United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists and the IPCC's recent admission-of-error and retraction of the claim that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 have rocked confidence in often-repeated assertions that capping emissions of greenhouse gases will improve national security.

"Before we adopt policies that affect military-preparedness and national security, it is imperative that we act on honest assessments of the best available information," Adm. Lyons said. "When it comes to the climate change-national security link and the cap-and-trade legislation now being considered by Congress, any confidence in scientific pronouncements that may have existed in 2009 does not exist in 2010," Adm. Lyons added.

"In light of media reports that President Obama plans to emphasize the climate change-national security link in his State of the Union address, I am asking the President to acknowledge recent developments and to appoint an expert panel whose independence is beyond reproach to sort out fact from fiction," Adm. Lyons concluded.

Today, the Orlando Sentinel reports that President Obama will introduce a budget next week which will cut future exploration funding from NASA, including the planned missions to the Moon and Mars set in motion following the Columbia disaster. On first glance, this may appear to be a budget cutting move to fall in line with the drop-in-a-bucket spending freeze Obama has proposed. But it isn’t. In fact, NASA’s budget is increasing. So if NASA’s budget is increasing, why are exploration plans being put on hold? Obama is halting America’s exploration of the unknown so we can explore…global warming.

According the Sentinel: “…the White House will direct NASA to concentrate on Earth-science projects — principally, researching and monitoring climate change.” NASA will reportedly receive a budget increase of $200-$300 million over its current $18.7 billion budget.

But for the first time in his administration, government money does not actually equate to government jobs. “One administration official said the budget will send a message that it’s time members of Congress recognize that NASA can’t design space programs to create jobs in their districts. ‘That’s the view of the president,’ the official said.” So this is actually a jobs-cutting outlay. Continue reading... (The Foundry)

The university at the centre of the climate change row over stolen e-mails broke the law by refusing to hand over its raw data for public scrutiny.

The University of East Anglia breached the Freedom of Information Act by refusing to comply with requests for data concerning claims by its scientists that man-made emissions were causing global warming.

The Information Commissioner’s Office decided that UEA failed in its duties under the Act but said that it could not prosecute those involved because the complaint was made too late, The Times has learnt. The ICO is now seeking to change the law to allow prosecutions if a complaint is made more than six months after a breach. (The Times)

The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia is under government investigation for fraud, data manipulation and withholding or destroying scientific data in defiance of freedom of information requests. Many of the disgraced scientists working at the CRU were closely involved in putting together the now ferociously suspect Fourth Assessment Report for the notoriously unreliable Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) headed by the lethally compromised Dr Rajendra Pachauri.

Is this really the best time, you might wonder, for the future King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to praise the CRU for the “quality” of its work and to dismiss the Climategate scandal as a “little blip”? (Hat tip: Roddy Campbell)

Well the Prince of Wales clearly thinks so or he wouldn’t have paid a visit to Norwich yesterday to deliver a jolly little fillip to the beleaguered scientists. In his sublime wisdom, Prince Charles clearly believes they have done no wrong at all. (James Delingpole, TDT)

Jonathan Leake at The Sunday Times Revealed UK To Seek Change in FOI Law……. But that’s not the whole story.

Recently Jonathan Leake has been covering one story after another regarding the corruption of the IPCC process and results. Yesterday by email, he’s received and passed on a press release from the Norfolk police regarding the release of the Climategate emails . This breaking news is an official recognition by the police that not only was FOI law broken but it ABSOLUTELY will NOT be prosecuted and INSTEAD the information commissioners office intends to seek a change in FOI law to prevent future intentional abuse. (Jeff Id, The Air Vent)

Via a correspondent, I have obtained a copy of the form that the police are sending round to sceptics as part of their investigation of the climategate leaks. Some of the questions being asked are pretty surprising:

Is it just me, or is this rather sinister from a civil liberties point of view? I simply can't see that contributing to a blog is relevant to the inquiry. One can't help but get the impression of innocent people having police files being built on them, simply because the forces of law and order (in the shape of NDET) haven't got anything better to do.

Meanwhile, it is interesting to note that the offence being investigated is described in the form as, variously, a theft, a leak and a breach. But never a hack.

One thing we can say about the hacker/leaker is that he/she was possessed of some relatively sophisticated IT skills, so it's also interesting to see that the police seem to have no interest in whether any of the people they are quizzing have this skillset.

Healthy science is not a list of orthodox beliefs, but more like an endless, running debating club.

Good science is a Darwinian enterprise. Only the best ideas survive and spread over the long run, because they pass test after test after test. Everybody tries to shoot holes in them. In good science, bad ideas are knocked down in the nastiest, meanest, knock-down, drag-out fight this side of the Spanish Inquisition.

Bad ideas get trashed in good science. If you doubt it, just read James Watson on the heated fight with Linus Pauling over the structure of DNA. Craig Venter outraged the competition by discovering the human genome three years before they expected to get there. Or see what Isaac Newton said about Leibniz. It gets nasty.

That’s for healthy science, which is not a list of orthodox beliefs, but more like an endless, running debating club. You could tell that global warming was in trouble the moment that James Hansen, NASA’s chief climate astrologer and enforcer of The Faith, said that “climate deniers” should be put in jail.

Good science is full of “deniers,” who are also called “skeptics.” I’ve never met a scientist who wasn’t one. Albert Einstein was a lifelong skeptic about quantum mechanics. Nobody wanted to throw him in jail. Einstein was (and still is) admired for the brilliance of his skepticism. When somebody wants to jail a skeptic you know their favorite orthodoxy is tottering and about to slip down some rat hole. James Hansen was seeing the end of the global warming fraud, and he was afraid.

Climate alarmism is now destined for history’s garbage heap, as it should be. It never made any sense. Even Science magazine — which was run by a close friend of doomsayer Paul Ehrlich until last year — has suddenly dropped any mention of global warming. No more climate change, all of a sudden! Problem solved. (James Lewis, PJM)

The special “Global Warming: The Other Side” featured several interviews with experts and scientists, none more important to me than the one with E. Michael Smith, who had used his great computer programming skill to unravel the complications of the U.S. Government’s national and world temperature database to expose some highly questionable manipulations that have taken place. The TV program had extreme time limitations and only a couple of small segments of this interview were included. That is where the internet provides a great outlet and educational plus. Here I am able to present the entire interview. You will learn a lot when you watch it. I have never done a worse job of interviewing someone as I did with E. Michael Smith, while no one I have interviewed has ever done a better job of presenting their material and themselves than Mr. Smith. Never mind my interviewer issues, if you can. I have to reject any self protection and let you see it "as is," because this interview is too important. The work E. Michael Smith has done and what it reveals is information our policy makers must have. It goes a long way towards totally derailing the global warming campaign. Will the networks ever put this man on the air? Will congress ever take testimony from him? I hope playing this entire interview helps. Please click the video button and watch this interview in its entirety.

For more info, visit http://chiefio.wordpress.com

In preparation for the recent program “Global Warming: The Other Side” I conducted several interviews with scientists in remote cities. TV time constraints and that old thing about TV Producers feeling the need to keep the pace of the program moving rapidly along, meant that what you saw on TV in each case is only a snippet of the complete interview. That is where the internet comes in very handy. Here on my webpage, we can post the complete interview with each scientist for those who have a larger appetite for the global warming debunking information.

The first interview I am posting is with Joseph D’Aleo, Certified Consulting Meteorologist and Fellow of the American Meteorological Society. He was in the Boston studio of WCVB television. I was in our KUSI TV studio here in San Diego. There was limited time to do the interview (They charge by the minute for the across county fiber optic feed.) so I had to keep the interview rolling. We were interrupted by a technical switch at one point. I have cut that out. Otherwise, as the clock ran down, I raced to get everything I could from Joe.

Click to see the complete 15 minute interview.

Authors veteran meteorologists Joe D’Aleo and Anthony Watts analyzed temperature records from all around the world for a major SPPI paper, Surface Temperature Records – Policy-driven Deception? The startling conclusion that we cannot tell whether there was any significant “global warming” at all in the 20th century is based on numerous astonishing examples of manipulation and exaggeration of the true level and rate of “global warming”.

That is to say, leading meteorological institutions in the USA and around the world have so systematically tampered with instrumental temperature data that it cannot be safely said that there has been any significant net “global warming” in the 20th century. (SPPI)

Despite the failure of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, climate protection cannot be allowed to retreat into the shadows. However, leading climate researcher Prof. Mojib Latif takes the view that little can be achieved at UN level. Instead, he advocates deploying all the technological means at our disposal.

“If we carry on along the same vein, we can expect an increase in the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere of around 4°C in the course of this century,” forecast Latif on Tuesday evening at an event hosted by the Munich Re Foundation. From a scientific point of view, a rise of 2°C at the most is tolerable. The climate expert from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel seriously doubts whether this objective can be achieved by political means alone. “The failure of Copenhagen has clearly shown that politicians and the complex UN process are not in a position to bring about a reasonable and viable climate agreement.” (Munich Re press release)

WASHINGTON - The four-letter word that will dominate President Barack Obama's State of the Union address on Wednesday -- jobs -- could be the savior for faltering climate control legislation, or at least that's environmentalists' latest hope.

Supporters of a global warming bill have failed to captivate the country with warnings of drought, disappearing polar ice caps, refugees fleeing floods and worsening disease. So, they are ramping up a more positive-sounding argument.

Forget environmental benefits and saving the planet. Clean energy, they say, could create millions of new jobs, a potentially powerful argument amid a 10 percent U.S. unemployment rate, the worst in more than a quarter-century. (Reuters)

Seeking to put at rest doubts over the status of the Copenhagen Accord agreed upon at the 15th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP) in the Danish capital last year, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has issued a clarification saying that the agreement was not a legally binding document but merely a political one.

In a notification addressed to the Parties, Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, said that since the COP neither adopted nor endorsed the Accord, but merely took note of it, its provisions do not have any legal standing with the UNFCCC process even if some Parties decide to associate themselves with it. Secondly, since the Accord is a political agreement, rather than a treaty instrument subject to signature, a note verbale to the secretariat from an appropriate authority in the government concerned was sufficient to communicate the intention of a party to associate itself with the accord. (The Hindu)

BRUSSELS - The European Union has decided to stick to its lowest offer for cutting carbon emissions under a U.N climate accord, but will maintain a conditional pledge to do more if others follow suit, EU diplomats said on Wednesday.

Their comments after EU ambassadors met in Brussels confirmed the 27-nation bloc's commitment to unilateral target carbon dioxide emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels over the next decade. (Reuters)

THE Rudd government has committed to introducing an emissions trading scheme with a floating carbon market in 2012 regardless of what the rest of the world does to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Penny Wong yesterday revealed Australia's target for greenhouse gas emissions cuts by 2020 under the Copenhagen Accord would be an unconditional, minimum of 5 per cent and a possible maximum of 25 per cent, with an emissions trading scheme using a market price for carbon in 2012.

The 5 per cent target is the minimum the government had announced before the UN's Copenhagen climate conference in December. It has Tony Abbott's support, although the Coalition and Greens oppose the government's proposed ETS.

The Climate Change Minister said the government was committed to starting an emissions trading scheme next year with a fixed price for a year, and would not be deterred from introducing a market price for carbon if the rest of the world failed to act on greenhouse gas emissions. (The Australian)

POLITICIANS are trying hard to pretend that the Copenhagen climate summit was not a complete failure. After raising expectations that they would broker a significant, binding treaty on carbon emission reductions, they are now telling us we should view Copenhagen's empty, non-binding agreement as a small but important "first step" on the journey towards solving global warming. We have heard this one before. When politicians from wealthy countries met in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and promised to cut emissions by 2000, the French diplomat chairing the negotiations declared, "It's just a first step."

When leaders met again in Kyoto in 1997 and promised stricter reductions, president Bill Clinton told us that the treaty was a "huge first step" that "opened the way" to further action. Neither of these "first steps" actually took us anywhere: wealthy countries failed to meet their promises and global carbon emissions have continued to climb.

So what now? After 17 years of wasted effort, we can ill afford to squander more precious time continuing on this pointless road to nowhere. Climate change needs addressing smartly. We can only hope that December's failure will be the jolt we need to once and for all drop the Rio-Kyoto-Copenhagen approach and start tackling this challenge effectively. (Bjorn Lomborg, The Australian)

THE EUROPEAN Commission should immediately bring forward proposals for “carbon tariffs” on goods imported from countries such as China or India that are failing to take strong action on climate change, according to a new analysis published yesterday.

The analysis by Joseph Curtin, climate and energy specialist with the Dublin-based Institute for International and European Affairs (IIEA), looks at how the EU should respond to the outcome of last month’s UN climate change summit in Copenhagen.

The extent to which the EU was marginalised in its final hours had been shown by the fact that European Commission president José Manuel Barroso had found out about the deal done by the US, China and others “by way of a text message on his phone”. (Irish Times)

CHANDIGARH: Glaciers are here to stay in the Himalayas. Studies conducted by glaciologists across the Himalayan region in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand have shown that global warming has little to do with their melting.

The conclusion was drawn by glaciologists after studying the behaviour of 35 Himalayan glaciers. The Mentossa glacier in Miyar valley of Lahaul-Spiti in Himachal Pradesh has, in fact, expanded in the last few years while there is no change in the Kangriz glacier in Zanskar valley of J&K since 1913.

Glaciologists, claiming that global warming and melting of glaciers have no relation with each other, say each glacier is behaving in a different manner. Had global warming been responsible, then all of them would have behaved in a similar manner, they claimed.

The prediction that glaciers would melt by 2035 by Professor Syed Iqbal Hasnain may have landed the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chairman R K Pachauri in a tight spot, but data collected by glaciologits across the Himalayan region shows that such claims do not hold water, and the major rivers orginitaing from the Himalayas would continue to flow for the years to come as the glaciers are going to stay. (Times of India)

Karen Clark and Co. have an interesting new report out which evaluates the performance of short-term hurricane predictions issued by the catastrophe modeling industry. In short, they are not doing so well, as the image above indicates, with predicted losses far exceeding actual losses. Here is an excerpt from the report:

A recent article has appeared in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society regarding trends in tropical cyclone damages in China. The article was generated by three Chinese scientists from the China Meteorological Administration’s National Climate Center and Nanjing University’s Laboratory of Meteorological Disaster. The authors note that “This research was supported by Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China through the National Science and Technology Support Project and the National Natural Scientific Foundation of China.”

Let’s start with a key figure (Figure 1) in which Zhang et al. reveal an upward trend in damage from tropical cyclones (a.k.a., hurricanes, typhoons) over the 1983 to 2006. They note that “In addition to the heavy economic losses in individual years, the time series shown” “contains an upward trend over the past 24 yr, which is statistically significant at the 95% level. On average, the losses caused by landfalling tropical cyclones in China mainland increased by 1.19 billion yuans each year.” We could see this result spun several different ways. On one hand, we could write about how poor China is being ravaged by hurricanes fueled-up thanks to global warming. On the other hand, we could say, see, China is now the world leader in greenhouse gas emissions, and they are suffering the consequences. As we are about to see, there is a lot more to this story about increasing damages in China. (WCR)

Internationally coordinated research and field-testing on 'geoengineering' the planet's atmosphere to limit risk of climate change should begin soon along with building international governance of the technology, say scientists from the University of Calgary and the United States. (ScienceDaily)

First, it was a series of e-mails that led many to begin doubting the veracity of climate scientists. Then, the United Nations climate body itself had to reverse dire predictions about the melting of glaciers in the Himalayan Mountains. Other claims have raised doubts as well.

The Siachen Glacier is home to the world's highest crisis region. Here, at 6,000 meters (19,680 feet) above sea level, Indian and Pakistani soldiers face off, ensconced in heavily armed positions.

The ongoing border dispute between the two nuclear powers has already claimed the lives of 4,000 men -- most of them having died of exposure to the cold. (Spiegel)

For years, malaria expert Paul Reiter of the Paris-based Pasteur Institute has criticized the warning, as expressed in the third IPCC report, that climate change will lead to the spread of malaria, saying that there is no evidence to support such a claim. Reiter accuses many climatologists of perceiving themselves too strongly as activists who are more interested in spreading an alarmist message.

Scientists already feel that the second part of the IPCC report, which addresses the consequences of global warming, is not as sound as the first part, which deals with the underlying physical factors contributing to climate change. This could, in fact, explain how the erroneous Himalayan prognosis slipped into the report in the first place. The report's lead author, Murari Lal, defends himself by saying that "the melting of the glaciers is such a huge threat to so many people" and, for that reason, had to be included in the report. According to malaria researcher Reiter, it is precisely this passion that is so dangerous to science. (Spiegel)

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

Much has been written of late regarding the impending projected demise of the world’s coral atoll islands due to CO2-caused sea level rise. Micronesia is suing the Czech Government over CO2 emissions that they claim are damaging their coral atolls via sea level rise. Tuvalu and the Maldives are also repeating their claims of damage from CO2. If the sea level rises much, they say they will simply be swept away.

Recently, here in the Solomon Islands, the sea level rise has been blamed for salt water intrusion into the subsurface “lens” of fresh water that forms under atolls. Beneath the surface of most atolls, there is a lens shaped body of fresh water. The claim is that the rising sea levels are contaminating the fresh-water lens with seawater. On other atolls, increased sea levels are claimed to be washing away parts of the atoll.

In this paper, I will discuss the three inter-related claims that people are making as illustrated above. The claims are:

1. Increasing CO2 causes increased sea level rise.

2. Sea level rise causes salt water to intrude into the freshwater lens

3. Sea level rise gravely endangers low-lying coral atolls like Tuvalu, Kiribati, and the Maldives. A mere 1 metre rise would see them mostly washed away.

I will look at the real causes of the very real problems faced by atoll dwellers. Finally, I will list some practical measures to ameliorate those problems.

And before you ask, how do I know this atoll stuff? For three years I lived on and worked on and had wells dug on and watched the moon rise over and dived in the lagoon and on the reef wall of a coral atoll in the South Pacific … hey, somebody has to … that plus a lot of study and research. (WUWT)

In this weekly dose of peer-reviewed literature denying the "climate consensus", we look at a paper in a journal called Nature. David Frank, Jan Esper, Christoph Raible, Ulf Büntgen, Valerie Trouet, Benjamin Stocker, and Fortunat Joos (a mostly Swiss team) just published a new article:

I have posted a number of times on the role of soot as a first order climate forcing (e. g. see) as well as published papers on this topic (e.g. see). Soot (black carbon) results from industrial and biomass burning and alters regional diabatic heating of the atmosphere when it is suspended in the air and when it changes the surface albedo when it deposits at the surface (particularly over snow and ice). It is a first order climate forcing that not only affects the global average radiative forcing, but regional climate forcings which have a direct effect on atmospheric and ocean circulation patterns. (Climate Science)

What can we learn from the IPCC climate models based upon their ability to reconstruct the global average surface temperature variations during the 20th Century?

While the title of this article suggests I’ve found evidence of natural climate cycles in the IPCC models, it’s actually the temperature variability the models CANNOT explain that ends up being related to known climate cycles. After an empirical adjustment for that unexplained temperature variability, it is shown that the models are producing too much global warming since 1970, the period of most rapid growth in atmospheric carbon dioxide. This suggests that the models are too sensitive, in which case they are forecasting too much future warming, too. (Roy W. Spencer)

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A recent study at Oregon State University indicates that some past approaches to calculating the impacts of forest fires have grossly overestimated the number of live trees that burn up and the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere as a result.

The research was done on the Metolius River Watershed in the central Oregon Cascade Range, where about one-third – or 100,000 acres – of the area burned in four large fires in 2002-03. Although some previous studies assumed that 30 percent of the mass of living trees was consumed during forest fires, this study found that only 1-3 percent was consumed.

Some estimates done around that time suggested that the B&B Complex fire in 2003, just one of the four Metolius fires, released 600 percent more carbon emissions than all other energy and fossil fuel use that year in the state of Oregon – but this study concluded that the four fires combined produced only about 2.5 percent of annual statewide carbon emissions.

Even in 2002, the most extreme fire year in recent history, the researchers estimate that all fires across Oregon emitted only about 22 percent of industrial and fossil fuel emissions in the state – and that number is much lower for most years, about 3 percent on average for the 10 years from 1992 to 2001.

The OSU researchers said there are some serious misconceptions about how much of a forest actually burns during fires, a great range of variability, and much less carbon released than previously suggested. Some past analyses of carbon release have been based on studies of Canadian forests that are quite different than many U.S. forests, they said.

“A new appreciation needs to be made of what we’re calling ‘pyrodiversity,’ or wide variation in fire effects and responses,” said Garrett Meigs, a research assistant in OSU’s Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society. “And more studies should account for the full gradient of fire effects.”

The past estimates of fire severity and the amounts of carbon release have often been high and probably overestimated in many cases, said Beverly Law, a professor of forest ecosystems and society at OSU. (Oregon State)

Carbon dioxide is the gas we most associate with global warming, but methane gas also plays an important role. For reasons that are not well understood, methane gas stopped increasing in the atmosphere in the 1990s. But now it appears to be once again on the rise. Scientists are trying to understand why — and what to do about it.

Methane gas comes from all sorts of sources including wetlands, rice paddies, cow tummies, coal mines, garbage dumps and even termites. Drew Shindell, at NASA's Goddard Institute in New York, says, "It's gone up by 150 percent since the pre-industrial period. So that's an enormous increase. CO2, by contrast, has gone up by something like 30 percent." (Richard Harris, NPR)

The government says wind power could supply the eastern half of the U.S. with a fifth of its electricity by 2024. Just don't try building wind farms where someone might see them.

A claim is contained in a new study released by the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and technically it might be true. But we've heard these overblown predictions before, and experience around the world with heavily subsidized alternative energy has not worked out well.

The area in question, called the Eastern Interconnection, is a grid extending roughly from the western borders of the Plains states through to the Atlantic Coast, excluding most of Texas. It includes Nantucket, where supporters of the Cape Wind project have been tilting at windmills for years.

The Cape Wind project proposes erecting 130 wind turbines that would generate electricity equivalent to about 75% of Cape Cod's energy needs.

The best site is Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound. Unfortunately, this body of water sits between the Kerry home on Nantucket Island and the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port on the Cape and might spoil the view.

Considering the resistance this one project has had, one wonders how you build the wind farms and the 22,697 miles of EHV (electric high voltage) transmission lines to service the Eastern Interconnection. The time frame is short: 14 years. The cost is exorbitant: $93 billion just for the transmission lines. And the question is a big one: Where do you put them for proper power reach?

As we've evolved from a NIMBY (not in my backyard) nation to a full-fledged BANANA (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody) republic, power lines aren't too popular. Seems that every other square foot is the protected habitat of an endangered critter or a "pristine" part of the earth that must be preserved. (IBD)

In the midst of a bitter winter in North America and Europe, General Electric has announced a large wind project to be built in Oregon. Press reports in the Financial Times and USA Today describe a project of 338 machines of 2.5 MW each, giving a total capacity of 845 MW.

With power grids strained due to heating demand, increments to generating capacity are to be welcomed. But along with the usual hoopla about homes served and CO2 emissions savings, it is time for some “devil’s advocacy” by asking: – how much energy and capacity will this project really create? How much CO2 will be saved? And when the chips are down will consumers and grid operators be pleased that their funds have gone into wind rather than into some other generating source?

We strongly suspect that neither consumers nor grid operators will benefit greatly from this plant. Our brief analysis of this announcement shows that the claims for houses served and carbon saved are not supported, though some incremental, useful energy supply may be possible under some circumstances. All such claims depend on the system operator’s ability to use the wind farms’ output to offset hydro generation, the key generation resource in the Northwest United States (NW).

In the service area where the new wind project will be located, total generating capability is 84 GW. Hydro accounts for 60% of this total (nominally). Current peak demand in the NW power pool, into which the wind project will inject energy, stands currently at just over 60 GW, about the same size as the UK grid. In the winter season provisions for other claims on the water (irrigation, flood control, endangered species protection, etc.) reduce the available capacity of hydro by some 7 GW. The pool’s own capacity assessment notes that “A severe weather event for the entire Power Pool area will add approximately 6,000 MW of load while at the same time reduce [sic] the capability by 7,000 MW.”

In other words, when the chips are down, hydro’s contribution to meeting a larger peak demand may fall by as much as 7 GW, with another 6 GW less capacity from other generation sources. Let’s do the arithmetic: the “normal” winter peak (50% probability) is 61 GW, generating capability (not the same thing as firm capacity) is 84 GW. Comes the storm and the peak rises to 67 GW, while the “capability” falls to 71 GW, providing just a bit more than the minimum reserve requirement of 5 GW.

How likely is it that wind can add to capacity in the midst of a winter demand surge and capacity restriction? [Read more →] (MasterResource)

A couple weeks ago, after I published yet another story on corn ethanol “Yet More Outrages of the Corn Ethanol Scam,” Chris Thorne, the director of public affairs for Growth Energy sent us an email objecting to the story. [Read More] (Robert Bryce, Energy Tribune)

Haiti’s pre-earthquake condition has cast a harsh light on the best-laid redistributionist plans of the Davos men

The World Economic Forum doesn’t really seem like Stephen Harper’s cup of Orange Pekoe. The Swiss mountain schmoozefest is the epicentre of what British economist David Henderson has called “Global Salvationism.” That is the belief that what the world needs is more morally-charged, UN-style, super-management, organized by a self-selected elite. This self-Chosen Few regards politicians and corporate executives as its puppets, and radical non-governmental organizations as its storm troopers.

Still, Canada’s financial system is the object of admiration for having survived the global banking meltdown intact. Also, Mr. Harper can do a little advance work for the G8 and G20 meetings scheduled to take place in Canada this year. Meanwhile escaping the prorogation kerfuffle must also be appealing. So tomorrow he’ll be addressing the Great and the Good in Davos, and they’ll be listening.

Time and time again, congressional leaders have denied that the proposed health care legislation would result in a federal takeover of health care. Proponents of Obamacare claim that consumers would retain personal choice in selecting health plans and physicians. For example, consider President Obama’s comments at a Raleigh, NC town-hall meeting on July 29, 2009: “Nobody is talking about some government takeover of health care. I’m tired of hearing that…Under the plan I’ve proposed…if you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan.”

The President and Congressional leaders fail to mention that, under the House and Senate bills, the federal government would determine the kind of health plans Americans get— the kinds of insurance Americans would get, the level of coverage they can receive, and the premiums, co-payments and taxes they would pay. It even mandates that all individuals purchase a government-defined level of health insurance coverage, regardless of their personal wants or needs. Continue reading... (The Foundry)

Recent budget results tell a cautionary tale for a soak-the-rich tax policy.

Corporate tax revenues dropped precipitously in 2009. Simultaneously, the deficit shot upward. Even though economic conditions devastated earnings, the deficit tempts policymakers to further worsen them by raising taxes. Global competition advises otherwise.

Overall federal revenues fell 16.6% in the 2009 fiscal year ended Oct. 1. Leading the decline was a 54.4% plunge in corporate income-tax receipts.

America already has a tax system highly dependent on top earners. The top fifth of tax filers pay almost 97% of the nation's income taxes, according to Congress' nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.

Fueled by an economic downturn that began in the financial community, there is now an added populist sentiment to punish the seemingly unscathed by extracting even more revenue from the top.

Such a soak-the-rich sentiment finds its perfect target in America's corporations. A faceless entity, the corporation creates the useful illusion of being "no one." Therefore, "no one" seems to bear the impact of corporate taxes.

In reality, just the opposite occurs. Corporations are more and more "everyone" — from employees, to investors, to customers. And the taxes placed on corporations are passed on to them all. (J.T Young, IBD)

BERKELEY — Women with higher blood levels of PBDEs, a type of flame retardant commonly found in household consumer products, took longer to become pregnant compared with women who have lower levels of PBDEs, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

The study, to be published Jan. 26 in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found that each 10-fold increase in the blood concentration of four PBDE chemicals was linked to a 30 percent decrease in the odds of becoming pregnant each month.

"There have been numerous animal studies that have found a range of health effects from exposure to PBDEs, but very little research has been done in humans. This latest paper is the first to address the impact on human fertility, and the results are surprisingly strong," said the study's lead author, Kim Harley, adjunct assistant professor of maternal and child health and associate director of the Center for Children's Environmental Health Research at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health. "These findings need to be replicated, but they have important implications for regulators."

PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers, are a class of organobromine compounds that became commonplace after the 1970s when new fire safety standards were implemented in the United States. The flame retardants are used in foam furniture, electronics, fabrics, carpets, plastics and other common items in the home. (UC Berkeley)

More than half of the experts who advised the World Health Organisation (WHO) to declare swine flu a "pandemic" are linked to drug-makers that have reaped huge profits from untested vaccines and flu drugs.

This is from the Institute of Science in Society which tells us that eleven of the 20 members of the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) have profited from work done for the pharmaceutical industry or are linked to it through their universities. Many have declared interests in GlaxoSmithKline, the vaccine maker that stands to benefit the most from the pandemic.

At the height of the pandemic scare, UK's Chief Medical Officer warned of up to 65,000 deaths. The death toll now stands at 251; and the UK Government is now trying to offload up to £1 billion worth of unwanted swine flu vaccines.

Among the three UK experts with industrial links is Prof Sir Roy Anderson – of Foot and Mouth fame - rector of Imperial College, London, also non-executive director of GlaxoSmithKline. He received £87,000 for six board meetings in 2008 and £29,000-worth of shares. Since the swine flu outbreak the shares have risen in value by more than 10 percent.

Earlier, we are told, a Danish newspaper revealed, through the Danish Freedom of Information Act, that Prof Juhani Eskola of SAGE and director of the Finnish research vaccine programme THL received nearly €6.3 million in 2009 for his research centre from GlaxoSmithKline, which was not declared on the WHO website. Seven other WHO experts have ties to the pharmaceutical industry, most of them not declared on the WHO website.

One member of SAGE, Dr. Albert Osterhaus at Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands, heads the European Scientists Fighting Influenza, and is financed by Baxter, Crucell, Novartis, Hoffmann-La Roche, MedImmune, Nobilon, Sanofi Pasteur, MSD, Glaxo SmithKline and Solvay. He was under investigation for gross conflict of interest, which dates back to the earlier bird flu scare.

And there we have another classic example of the nexus between "science", government and international organisations – especially the UN. Anyone who thinks the climate change industry is any different is in the land of the fairies. With global warming, as with any other scare, follow the money. (Richard North, EUReferendum)

To the EPA, "safe" is a constantly moving target--and that's the way it likes it. Always something new to regulate, always a new hobgoblin from which to save us. Take the agency's proposal to yet again lower allowable ozone levels. It's another one of those win-win regulations for which the EPA is famous, supposedly saving both lives and money. But its assertions collapse when you examine the science on which they're allegedly based. (Michael Fumento, Forbes)

The innermost secrets of fire's role in the rebirth and renewal of forests and grasslands are being revealed in research that has identified plant growth promoters and inhibitors in smoke. In the latest discovery about smoke's secret life, an international team of scientists are reporting discovery of a plant growth inhibitor in smoke. The study appears in ACS's Journal of Natural Products, a monthly publication. (ACS)

This brings up the question: why is the Chamber of Commerce negotiating with the enemies of true (consumer-driven) economic recovery? (MasterResource)

We thought it interesting that the Securities and Exchange Commission, charged by statute with ensuring investor protection and the efficient functioning of the Nation’s securities markets would be doing an interpretive release on global warming. We can’t think what the SEC’s statutory authority would be to regulate in this area. As far as we know, there are no climate scientists working at the SEC.

Ranking Member’s Barton and Walden thought they would ask the SEC Chairman for some context to this unusual foray into environmental science and energy policy by the SEC.

We thought you might like to see their questions.

Abstract: Barbara Boxer and John Kerry are pushing their climate-change legislation in the Senate. Like the Waxman-Markey bill, passed by the House last year, Boxer-Kerry is a cap-and-trade bill. Why is that bad? Because severely restricting greenhouse gas emission places an enormous burden on American families--higher gasoline prices, higher heating costs, higher energy taxes, higher unemployment. The Heritage Foundation's team of economic and climate-change experts details the extraordinary costs that will fall on businesses and families across the country should this legislation become law. (Heritage Foundation)

The Copenhagen climate change conference achieved too little, but a modest global carbon tax would make amends (Oliver Tickell, The Guardian)

ONCE global warming was the “great moral challenge of our generation”. Or so claimed the Prime Minister.

But suddenly it’s the great con that’s falling to bits around Kevin Rudd’s ears.

In fact, so fast is global warming theory collapsing that in his flurry of recent speeches to outline his policies for the new decade, Rudd has barely mentioned his “moral challenge” at all.

Take his long Australia Day reception speech on Sunday. Rudd talked of our ageing population and of building stuff, of taxes, hospitals and schools - but dared not say one word about the booga booga he used to claim could destroy our economy, Kakadu, the Great Barrier Reef and 750,000 coastal homes.

Answer: in just the past few months has come a cascade of evidence that the global warming scare is based on often dodgy science and even outright fraud.

Here are just the top 10 new signs that catastrophic man-made warming may be just another beat-up, like swine flu, SARS, and the Y2K bug. (Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun)

The impact of global warming has been exaggerated by some scientists and there is an urgent need for more honest disclosure of the uncertainty of predictions about the rate of climate change, according to the Government’s chief scientific adviser.

John Beddington was speaking to The Times in the wake of an admission by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that it grossly overstated the rate at which Himalayan glaciers were receding.

Professor Beddington said that climate scientists should be less hostile to sceptics who questioned man-made global warming. He condemned scientists who refused to publish the data underpinning their reports.

He said that public confidence in climate science would be improved if there were more openness about its uncertainties, even if that meant admitting that sceptics had been right on some hotly-disputed issues. (The Times)

Here's a novelty in a Fairfax publication: Be alert but wary on climate claims - Doubts over modelling and emissions trading schemes are justified.

PRE-COPENHAGEN, the global warming debate had been captured by prophets of doom and the language of apocalypse. This was particularly off-putting in a discussion that depends on high-quality science, cool logic, and careful argument. It raises old suspicions. The West has already experienced theories of impending environmental disaster-with the Club of Rome launching a successful scare campaign in the 1970s about the world running out of food. Its book, Limits to Growth, sold 30 million copies. Hardly a decade had passed before its predictions were proved wrong.

Of course, the objective case for global warming is separate from the manner in which some of its proponents have publicised it. And, it should be judged on its own merits. Nevertheless, I must confess to being wary of causes that attract pseudo-religious enthusiasm and intellectual fanaticism. (The Age)

The bloggers are all over the UN IPCC 2007 report, the bible of global warming, which predicted all manner of dire outcomes for our planet unless we got a grip on rising temperatures -- and it seems to be crumbling in some pretty significant areas. (Andrew Neil, BBC)

Climate scientists are "only humans" who can make mistakes like everyone else, the deputy leader of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said. (TDT)

A senior Canadian climate scientist says the United Nations' panel on global warming has become tainted by political advocacy, that its chairman should resign, and that its approach to science should be overhauled.

Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at the University of Victoria, says the leadership of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has allowed it to advocate for action on global warming, rather than serve simply as a neutral science advisory body.

"There's been some dangerous crossing of that line," said Weaver on Tuesday, echoing the published sentiments of other top climate scientists in the U.S. and Europe this week. (Richard Foot, Canwest News Service)

Environment Canada says climate scientists who track global temperature trends may be underestimating the amount of warming in the Canadian Arctic, because they are working with data from a declining sample of weather stations across the region. (Richard Foot, Canwest News Service)

An extensive survey of the literature and data regarding ground and sea surface temperature records uncovers deception through data manipulation, reports the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI).

Authors veteran meteorologists Joe d’Aleo and Anthony Watts analyzed temperature records from all around the world for a major SPPI paper, Surface Temperature Records – Policy-driven Deception? The startling conclusion that we cannot tell whether there was any significant “global warming” at all in the 20^th century is based on numerous astonishing examples of manipulation and exaggeration of the true level and rate of “global warming”. (TransWorldNews)

Jan. 27 -- Australia’s ruling Labor Party, seeking to pass a carbon trading scheme, will reintroduce the already-rejected climate change proposal to the House of Representatives when parliament returns next week.

“This is the most efficient way of us addressing climate change in this country,” Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard said in an interview on ABC Radio. “We will put it in the House of Representatives and we will debate and we will vote on it.” (Bloomberg)

MASSACHUSETTS is a long way from Australia. Even so, you can count on the Rudd government paying close attention to what happened in the Bay State last week. A little known Republican, Scott Brown, won the Senate election by campaigning against the US President's radical healthcare plan. Massachusetts is sacred Democrat turf, held by the Kennedy clan for more than 40 years and by Democrats since 1952. It was the only state to vote for George McGovern over Richard Nixon in 1972.

Barack Obama's overreach on health care has plenty in common with Kevin Rudd's dogged pursuit of an emissions trading scheme. The Morgan Poll shows support for the ETS sliding from 50 per cent in August to 46 per cent last week, with disapproval growing from 24 per cent in August to 36 per cent in the most recent survey. If that trend-line continues, Obama's healthcare disaster could well be a mirror of Rudd's ETS nightmare in the coming months. (Janet Albrechtsen, The Australian)

Tiny Kivalina, Alaska, does not have a hotel, a restaurant or a movie theater. But it has a very big lawsuit that might affect the way the nation deals with climate change.

Kivalina, an Inupiat Eskimo village of 400 perched on a barrier island north of the Arctic Circle, is accusing two dozen fuel and utility companies of helping to cause the climate change that it says is accelerating the island’s erosion. (NYT)

A false claim by the IPCC shows up in several grant applications for companies with IPCC members on their boards.

What if there really are people exploiting the anthropogenic global warming panic purely for personal gain? A lot has happened in the climate change debate in the two months since the Climategate files were first revealed to the world. Oddly, the latest news hasn’t been making the papers in the U.S., but it sure has been in London.

One thing that has become clear is that the science in the IPCC reports was suspiciously slanted. Last weekend one of the IPCC principals, Dr. Murari Lal, admitted that they had introduced 2035 as the year the Himalayan glaciers would disappear — even though they knew it was questionable — in order to have more political impact:

But why? Are they simply true believers who feel that the risk of anthropogenic global warming is so great that skewing the science would be justified? As scientists, that would be bad enough. But there’s another explanation. Could it be that the skewing of the results is not just being done by true believers, but instead by cynical manipulators intent on their own gain?

A painstakingly detailed review of the Climategate e-mails bolsters the picture they paint of deliberate data manipulation by "scientists" bent on blaming mankind for climate change.

"Climategate Analysis," available from the nonprofit Science & Public Policy Institute ( scienceandpublicpolicy.org ), presents all the leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit -- in chronological order, with commentary.

John P. Costella, the 149-page report's author, does a tremendous service by documenting, step by step, how science was perverted to advance misguided ideology, cynical politics and personal and professional interests.

Mr. Costella says massive "research" funding -- with strings attached requiring production of "evidence" backing preordained eco-wacko "findings" -- helped spread such venality far and wide among "scientists." What Climategate reveals and his report itemizes is "science" unworthy of the name -- and on a vast scale.

With rampant ignorance of how science should work, the public's gullibility hardly is surprising. Kudos to Costella and the institute for lessening that ignorance -- and the influence of the unsupported beliefs, masquerading as fact, espoused by what he calls "the Church of Climatology." (The Tribune-Review)

Having barely covered the ebb and flow of the controversy over "Glaciergate", The Daily Telegraph today weighs in with a lead editorial demanding: "Climate change: give us science we can trust".

Nonetheless, the trigger for this sudden concern is indeed the Himalayan glacier story, on the back of which we are blithely informed that: "The IPCC quickly admitted the error ... ".

The temptation, at this point is to stop reading. This is not information – it is disinformation. Followers of the saga know well that, through the whole process of constructing the passage on melting glaciers, the IPCC ignored reviewers' comments and we are all aware of Pachauri's arrogant dismissal of Raina's contrary view last December as "voodoo science".

Only after the "mistake" had been comprehensively outed by Jonathan Leake in The Sunday Times did the IPCC finally react, and then grudgingly, dismissing it – as the DT leader records - " ... as an aberration carried on just one page of a report thousands of pages long."

The leader, however, then notes that the weekend brought further disclosures that claims in the report blaming rising temperatures for an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods had not been properly reviewed by other scientists.

But then we get a bizarre assertion, that: "It is true that the first people to apologise for these errors and to promise to rectify them were the IPCC scientists themselves ... ". Last I heard (on a live link with NDTV to New Delhi) was Pachauri dismissing this report – as he so often does – as "lies", declaring that the IPCC would make a statement on it later this week, which it has yet to do. Currently, though it is denying any error.

Nevertheless, the Daily Telegraph – through rose-tinted glasses so dense that vision can hardly be possible – tells us that these scientists "... understand how important it is for the credibility of their case that the evidence on which it is based is copper-bottomed," then telling us: "it becomes difficult to resist the blandishments of the sceptics if a purportedly scientific document cannot be wholly relied on." (Richard North, EUReferendum)

First there was Climate Gate, showing that the peer review process has descended into a criminal farce of scientific malpractice where adjusting and hiding data was de-rigueur. Hello Fraud. ClimateGate also spread to the US, where 75% of worldwide data is systematically ignored or “adjusted” until it tells the right story.

Then there was PachuriGate, showing that the man in charge of the IPCC was chairman of boards of companies that profit handsomely as the scare-factor is ramped up.

Along comes GlacierGate: about the IPCC “accidentally” using a WWF report instead of peer reviewed science papers. After calling a 60 page Indian Govt report on glaciers “voodoo science” they were forced to apologize for that “one paragraph that was wrong”. Then Donna LeFramboise in just one day of hunting, found 16 other references in the IPCC 4th report to the “scientific journal” called “WWF”. Proving that really, the big safety-mechanism of the IPCC reputation was not in it’s exhaustive reviews but was in the way it made it’s documents so big, so dull and so unreadable, that hardly anyone actually … reads them. Call it the thousand-page-cloak-of-invisibility.

Camouflage for poor science, poor standards, bad logic, and too many vested interests to name.

Now there is AmazonGate. The IPCC fabricates disastrous claims about the Amazon forest, and references a document written by activists that doesn’t even support the claim. More » (Jo Nova)

Prof Andy Pitman, lead author for the IPCC and Co-Director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, claims skeptics are winning because they are so well funded and tell lies. (And don’t we Australian taxpayers feel good about funding his career so he can throw baseless insults at polite volunteers?*) The ABC Interview is here. Case Smit took issue and wrote to Pitman in reply:

” I am one of the two retirees organising the Australian Tour of Lord Monckton. We receive not one dollar of funding from corporations or government! Nor have any other sceptics (true scientists) that I know.

We have underwritten the tour with our own money and are in the process of recouping the costs with donations which, so far have come from individuals who, like us, look into the science of global warming nd have come to the conclusion that humankind’s carbon dioxide contribution has nothing to do with it. Donations are coming in from as little as $10 from supporters of the Tour.

I could write a lot more, but I’m busy organising Monckton functions which are selling out fast all over Australia.”

Pitman wrote back that he was sympathetic, and sorry to hear Case had been hoodwinked by the liars, and that global warming was real. Though the only evidence Pitman even attempted to give was a long list of all the subjects of science that would be “wrong” if global warming was not real AND dangerous. Somehow all of biology will be debunked if man-made global warming turns out to be only minor and inconsequential. Really. I didn’t realize the theory of evolution now depends on carbon emissions. Crickey.

The climate surrounding climate change has changed, and not for the better for those seeking to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

First there's public perception. Hurricane activity in every ocean last year was below normal. Global temperatures remain no warmer now than a decade ago. The Arctic Sea ice, at least temporarily, has modestly recovered. And the United States is having one of its coldest winters in a long time.

Then, in November, a slew of e-mails from a British climate center were released that appear to show, at the very best, unseemly behavior by top climate scientists. Branded Climategate, it only resulted in accusations that researchers are willing to cook the books and further eroded public trust in climate science. (Eric Berger, Houston Chronicle)

Bob Ward, Policy and Communications Director at the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics, where Nicholas Stern in the Chair, has kindly written in to the comments, responding to my post on how the Stern Review Report misused the Robert Muir-Woods paper and quietly altered a typo that revealed the fuzzy math. Bob's comments are below, with my responses in the inset boxes, with a black line around them. I thank Bob for his engagement. (Roger Pielke Jr)

UN body rebutts Sunday Times allegation that it exaggerated link between costs of natural disasters and climate change (The Guardian)

Bob Ward is at it again. It is interesting that no scholars have stepped up to the IPCC on the disasters and climate issue, leaving the task to Lord Stern's spokesman. Below is a piece that he had on the Guardian site today, defending the IPCC against claims that it had sexed up its sections on disasters and climate change. Bob is a PR pro, and while there is enough spin in his piece to make anyone dizzy, the piece is remarkable for how little there is in it to contradict my claims. Ward seems to rest his critique on the notion that this is old news.

As the UK is expected to emerge from recession, the New Economics Foundation says endless growth is pushing the planet's biosphere 'beyond its safe limits' (The Guardian)

A £1.5bn pledge by Gordon Brown to help poor countries cope with the ravages of climate change will drain funds from existing overseas aid programmes to improve health, education and water supplies, the government admitted today.

The move, revealed in an email exchange between campaigners and an official at the Department for International Development (DfiD), appears to undermine repeated government pledges that such climate aid should be additional to existing overseas development aid (ODA). (The Guardian)

Some aspects of global warming may not be entirely understood and data may be sparse, but scientists do not dispute that global temperature has increased, especially since 1950, as pointed out in the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Indian scientists note the rise in the levels of the Indian Ocean along three cities in the country are close to the global averages stated in the report.

...

The impact on India alone will be serious. Ocean experts say the mean sea-level rise along the coasts of Mumbai, Kochi and Visakhapatnam is due to the effects of global warming. “The Indian Ocean is rising by 1.3 mm every year,” A S Unnikrishnan, senior scientist at the National Institute of Oceanography, told Business Standard.

The UK is one of the least forested countries in Europe. The growing maturity of UK woodlands means that carbon sequestration is falling rapidly. From Carbon Commentary, part of the Guardian Environment Network

In Chase et al. (2006) we documented the June, July, and August averaged thickness temperature anomalies in terms of standard deviations exceeded and concluded that, while the European heatwave was unusual, natural variability in terms of ENSO and volcanic eruptions exceeded the extremes of the European heatwave. In subsequent commentary on this paper, Connelly (2006) found that the European heat wave was indeed quite unusual if surface temperature data was used prompting Chase et al. (2008) to conclude, along with others, that the unusual heat wave was confined near the surface was the result of surface processes and not a general warming of the troposphere as would be expected in a global warming scenario. We also concluded that with the updated time series that an upward trend in extreme variability was starting to appear.

Here we update the original time series through 2009 as shown in Figures 1a,b,c which show the percentage of the Northern Hemisphere extratropics affected by 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5 SD anomalies, respectively. There is now a clear and significant upward trend in the most extreme variability (Table 1) with the summer of 2008 being the most extreme yet. This is due to very large warm anomalies in northeastern Canada, around Greenland, and also in Siberia (Figure 2). Interestingly, these extremes in SD exceeded are largest in the near-surface layers of the atmosphere than in the mid-troposphere despite the temperature variability at high latitudes being much larger near the surface than in the mid troposphere (e.g., Peixoto and Oort, 1992; Figure 7.8) again suggesting that surface processes are more responsible than generalized climate warming. (Climate Science)

which (correctly) reports that the recent cold and snowy weather in the UK (and elsewhere) is a result of regional atmospheric circulation patterns. Excerpts from the article read

“IT IS an ill wind that blows no good, as people have been remarking to each other since at least the 16th century. In the case of the bitter easterlies that have brought Britain colder, snowier weather than has been seen for a couple of decades…”

“The atmosphere cannot make heat, or even hold that much of it. There is more heat stored in the top four metres of the oceans than in all the Earth’s atmosphere.

So when the atmosphere cools down one part of the globe, it is a good rule of thumb that it is warming some other part. In the case of the current mid-latitude chill, it is the high latitudes that are seeing the warming. In Greenland and the Arctic Ocean, December was comparatively balmy. The air above Baffin Bay and the Davis Strait was 7ºC warmer than usual (though that still left it pretty cold).

This pole-centred roundel of warm-in-cold is symptomatic of what climatologists call the negative phase of the Arctic oscillation (AO). It is a mode of atmospheric circulation in which the stratosphere is unusually warm and westerly winds, which normally bring warmth from the oceans to northern Europe, are unusually weak.”

However, there is a significant misunderstanding that is presented in the article. It is written that

“The atmosphere is not just about temperature, though. Wind patterns matter too.”

The article is correct that wind patterns matter (as this is what transports the cold air from the higher latitudes and warm air from lower latitudes). However, the wind pattern is determined by the three-dimensional wind field. This temperature field creates the three dimensional pressure field, and this pressure field produces the wind patterns. This is well understood in synoptic meteorology, as I have summarized in my lecture notes

Pielke Sr., R.A. 2002: Synoptic Weather Lab Notes. Colorado State University, Department of Atmospheric Science Class Report #1, Final Version, August 20, 2002.

The cold air in the troposphere at higher latitudes, for example, is why the winds in the middle and upper troposphere generally blow from west to east (i.e. the “westerly jet stream; also called the “polar jet”). This also explains why these winds are stronger in the winter than in the summer, since the higher latitudes are colder in the winter. If you fly from New York to London, you typically arrive more quickly than when you fly from London to New York. The Arctic Oscillation which is the reason for the cold snowy period in the UK is a result of the spatial distribution of tropospheric temperatures.

Thus, despite the implication in the Economist article that wind patterns are distinct from the temperatures, they are intimately related to each other with the temperature field determining the wind patterns. This is why alterations in the spatial pattern of diabatic heating by human activity, such as we identified in our paper

is so important. These alterations affect the wind field, and thus the weather than is experienced regionally. This is a much more important issue than changes in the global average surface temperature in terms of the effects on society and the environment. (Climate Science)

This webpage from the Danish Centre for Ocean and Ice has interesting graphics showing the temperature of the arctic above 80 north since 1958 using the climate reanalysis ERA40.

I have made an animation with 2 second frames.

I can add 2010 later. ( Warwick Hughes)

Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week:
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 801 individual scientists from 476 separate research institutions in 43 different countries ... and counting! This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from Impiltis Archaeological Site, Northwest Lithuania. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here.

Subject Index Summary:
Little Ice Age (Regional - South America: Venezuela): The back-and-forth nature of millennial-scale warming and cooling evident in proxy-derived temperatures from various places in Venezuela -- and throughout all of South America -- as well as the extreme cold of the Little Ice Age, add to the wealth of data that testify to the non-uniqueness of 20th-century global warming everywhere.

Plant Growth Data:
This week we add new results of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature for: Purple Clover (Wu et al., 2009), Sorghum (Prasad et al., 2009), Sugar Beet (Burkart et al., 2009), and Tomato (Wang et al., 2009).

Journal Reviews:
New York City's Urban Heat Island: Just how high above the non-urban background can the temperature of the urban core of the Big Apple rise? ... and what can be done to mitigate its magnitude?

Widely blamed for an acceleration in global warming, man-made carbon dioxide has become something of a symbol for human-induced environmental degradation. And in the debate about how to minimize future volumes of this greenhouse gas in the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans from the burning of fossil fuels, many people are pinning their hopes on somehow capturing and storing the gas deep in the earth, in underground places where it can do no harm.

In fact, this type of long-term storage, a technique referred to as carbon capture and sequestration, or carbon capture and storage, underpins most strategies for minimizing future levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, including those of the world’s foremost energy research group, the International Energy Agency, or IEA.

But, how close is the possibility of the widespread use of CCS, given there are only a handful of CCS applications in commercial operation? And what are the issues involved in the most commonly considered CCS approach, that of taking the carbon dioxide out of fuel or exhaust gas streams, and then pumping it deep underground? (GoO)

A unique £1.1 million research project is investigating how coppiced trees and grass crops can be used both to generate renewable energy and to trap carbon in the soil over the long term. (PhysOrg)

A bipartisan group of six House members from coal-producing and coal-reliant states has formed a new caucus to “provide a voice for coal communities in Congress.”

The Congressional Coal Caucus comes as lawmakers consider climate and energy policies that will determine the future of the abundant resource. Coal supplies half the electricity in the U.S. but emits far more greenhouse gases than natural gas, nuclear power and renewable sources. (E² Wire)

NEW DELHI: Close on the heels of the inconclusive end to the Copenhagen Accord, the US government has stepped up pressure on the World Bank not to fund coal-fired power plants in developing countries.

In a letter sent to the World Bank, a copy of which is with TOI, United States Executive Director Whitney Debevoise said, "The Obama Administration believes that the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) have a potentially critical role to play in the future international framework for climate finance, and, in particular, to assist developing countries in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and strengthening their economies' resilience to climate risks.''

Referring to the guidelines as a product of "internal US government deliberations'', Debevoise has advised MDBs to "remove barriers to and build demand for no or low carbon resources''. Though the US Treasury Department (USTD) is a statutary body and its recommendations are not binding on the World Bank, the move, the first-of-its-kind, is believed to have created pressure on the bank.

While India, with its history of funding its own coal-fired power plants, does not stand to be affected immediately, representatives of developing countries like China, India and others in the World Bank have reacted sharply to this development. Calling the guidelines "an unhealthy subservience of the decision-making processes in the Bank to the dictates of one member country'', they have said that the US should instead raise these issues during discussions in the Board on the Bank's Energy Sector Strategy. (Times of India)

D espite signs of a revival in Alberta's oilsands, one of the world's largest oil companies plans to limit growth in the sector in the coming years, its CEO said Monday.

Speaking to the Londonbased Financial Times in his first major interview since he became the company's chief executive in July, Royal Dutch Shell CEO Peter Voser said the company will slow its oilsands expansion plans and shift focus to conventional exploration in other parts of the world.

In the report, Voser said the company had "clearly scaled down" its earlier plans to triple production from the Athabasca Oil Sands Project to 750,000 barrels per day.

"Over the past two years and certainly over the past six to eight months, I've taken the pace out of that because we have enough other growth opportunities," he told the newspaper.

In the interview, Voser complained that costs in Canada were still too high. ( Calgary Herald)

HOUSTON - A group of shareholders who focus on the environment said on Tuesday they are targeting companies operating in the Marcellus Shale to ensure development of natural gas does not pollute or endanger human health.

The shareholder proposal campaign, aimed at 12 companies including Chesapeake Energy Corp, EOG Resources Inc and Exxon Mobil Corp, was sparked by mounting worry about chemicals used in a process to extract gas from rock called hydraulic fracturing, the groups said.

"There is real business risk here," said Larisa Ruoff, an official with the $100 million Green Century Funds. "Companies and regulators must ensure this development is done in a way that protects the environment and drinking water." (Reuters)

For China, 2009 was supposed to be a year of economic slowdown and thus, lower energy demand. In the US, after years of increasing demand, oil consumption fell by about 5%, to about 19 million barrels per day. [Read More] (Michael J. Economides and Xina Xie, Energy Tribune)

WASHINGTON - U.S. wind power capacity soared 39 percent last year but job growth stalled as uncertainty about renewable energy policies and the recession slowed manufacturing, an industry group said. (Reuters)

There is growing tension between the pro-gun parties to the upcoming Supreme Court gun-rights case. Perhaps concerned about the direction this case was going, the Court has taken the unusual step of granting the NRA’s motion to be given separate time to speak during oral arguments. Round One in this historic fight for the right to bear arms goes to the NRA.

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on March 2 in McDonald v. City of Chicago, presenting the question of whether the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is only enforceable against the federal government, or whether it is also a right against city and state governments. This lawsuit challenges Chicago’s gun ban, which is essentially identical to the federal ban in D.C. that the Supreme Court struck down in 2008.

The lawyers for Otis McDonald and his co-plaintiffs are libertarian activists, who are pushing an aggressive and potentially risky constitutional theory to the Court. Without getting too much in the legal weeds, McDonald is arguing that the Court should extend gun rights to the states through the little-known Fourteenth Amendment Privileges or Immunities Clause, and overrule a venerable precedent from 1873 called the Slaughter-House Cases, which protects state sovereignty by limiting the reach of Congress and the courts. The Slaughter-House Cases is only one step removed from Marbury v. Madison as one of the most important cases in American history.

The libertarian activists behind McDonald openly explain that the reason they are pushing the Court to overrule Slaughter-House has nothing to do with guns. Instead, they want to advance a libertarian economic agenda, where federal judges could sit in judgment of state and local laws involving labor, employment, business regulations and other economic issues. Although the Constitution is silent on these matters, these activists want the courts to start declaring constitutional rights against such things, and using the power of the federal judiciary to strike down laws of this sort that the judges don’t like. (Ken Klukowski, Townhall)

The World Health Organization (WHO) has defended its handling of the swine flu pandemic last year, after the Council of Europe cast doubt on its actions.

Countries rushed to order thousands of vaccine doses when the pandemic was declared in June, but the virus proved to be relatively mild.

The WHO's links to drug companies were questioned at a hearing by the Council of Europe's health committee. (BBC)

STRASBOURG, France, Jan 26 - The World Health Organisation (WHO) denied on Tuesday that it was unduly influenced by drugs companies to exaggerate the dangers of the H1N1 flu virus.

Pharmaceutical firms picked up multi-million dollar vaccination contracts when the United Nations health agency declared the flu a pandemic last June. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON - Political turmoil, a brain drain of scientists and waning interest have transformed Russia from a nation that launched the first satellite into an increasingly minor player in the world of science, according to a Thomson Reuters report released on Tuesday.

An analysis of research papers published by Russian scientists shows an almost across-the-board decrease, which reflects Russia's shrinking influence not only in science but in science-based industries such as nuclear power, the authors of the Thomson Reuters report said.

"Russia's research base has a problem, and it shows little sign of a solution," the report reads.

"Russia has been a leader in scientific research and intellectual thinking across Europe and the world for so long that it comes not only as a surprise but a shock to see that it has a small and dwindling share of world activity as well as real attrition of its core strengths."

In October, more than 170 expatriate Russian scientists signed a letter to President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, complaining about "the catastrophic conditions of fundamental science."

"While other countries have increased their research output, Russia has struggled to maintain its output and even slipped backwards in areas like physics and space science, historically its core strengths," said Jonathan Adams, director of research evaluation at Thomson Reuters, parent company of Reuters. (Reuters)

The first phase of the Upper Hudson River dredging project spread significantly more PCBs in the river and in the air than predicted and did not meet standards established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, GE said in a draft report to the agency. The company said the data shows practical adjustments are needed to ensure that the project does not spread more PCBs to the air and water and achieves the benefits EPA projected. (GE)

In an important book, A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character, which appeared in 1992, Charles Sykes speaks of “victim chic” and deplores its “catalog of immanent grievance and infinite self-assertion.” Sykes quotes former Assistant Education Secretary Chester Finn, who had it exactly right: “In our no-fault society, it is acceptable to be a victim but not to be held responsible for one’s own situation or for that of one’s children.” We have, Sykes argues, torn up the moral contract underwriting “shared middle-class values” and installed a “victimist” ideology in its place, eliminating social distinctions “based on individual success.” We all experience unfairness and injustice, he concludes, “but that does not mean we need to turn them into all-purpose alibis.”

The confirmation of Sykes’ thesis is all around us. It seems as if we now live in societies filled mainly with victims: victims of mainstream culture, victims of exclusionary daycare policies, victims of transfats, victims of the schoolyard game of tag where some poor child is made to feel “it,” victims of secondhand smoke, victims of the tax system, victims of anti-terror laws, victims of those who pose as victims, victims of state lotteries, victims of potentially lethal glass mugs in British pubs, victims of our genes, victims of “puritanism” (i.e., moral propriety), victims of this and victims of that — those who make up what Bruce Thornton in Plagues of the Mind has aptly called “the conga line of victimhood,” to which the nanny state materially contributes. (David Solway, PJM)

NEW YORK - Children who start swimming before the age of 2 may be at increased risk of a common infant lung infection, and possibly asthma and respiratory allergies later in life, a new study suggests.

The findings, reported in the European Respiratory Journal, add to evidence that exposure to chlorinated pools may affect children's respiratory health -- particularly if they have a family history of asthma or respiratory allergies like hay fever.

Experts have suspected that the air quality around pools, particularly indoor ones, is to blame. When the chlorine used to disinfect pools combines with swimmers' sweat, saliva or urine, irritating chlorine byproducts are formed, and over time these chemicals may damage the airways.

In the new study, Belgian researchers found that infant swimming -- whether in indoor or outdoor pools -- was linked to a heightened risk of bronchiolitis.

Bronchiolitis is an infection of the lungs' small airways, usually caused by the respiratory syncytial virus, that is common in infants.

In this study, infant swimmers who developed the infection were also at increased risk of developing asthma or respiratory allergies by kindergarten. (Reuters Health)

Now we have the thin fat... The Scales Can Lie: Hidden Fat - New Study Argues Even Thin People Can Face Health Risks From Fat; It's 'Normal Weight Obesity'

Can you be normal weight and fat at the same time?

That's the implication of a provocative recent report from the Mayo Clinic, which suggests that fat in your body can get you and your heart into trouble even if you don't look fat and if the scale tells you you're healthy.

The Mayo researchers, led by cardiologist Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, have coined a term for the phenomenon: normal weight obesity. In a study that looked at data from 6,171 Americans with normal body size, as measured by body mass index, those with a high percentage of body fat were at significantly greater risk of future heart problems than those with low amounts of fat. Their bodies "behave like they are obese, but they are not," Dr. Lopez-Jimenez says.

People don't have to be overweight to have excess body fat. Instead, these people have a higher ratio of fat to muscle tissue than do people with low body fat. Indeed, even people of the same weight, or those with comparable body mass index, which factors together weight and height, can have different body-fat percentages. (WSJ)

By as early as 7 years of age, being obese may raise a child's risk of future heart disease and stroke, even in the absence of other cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure, according to a new study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). (ScienceDaily)

NEW YORK - People with high blood pressure who want to drop some pounds may want to choose a low-carb diet, a new study shows.

In the study, overweight or obese individuals who went on a low-carb diet lost about the same amount of weight as those who cut down on their fat intake and took the weight-loss aid orlistat (sold as Xenical or Alli). However, the low-carb diet produced more favorable effects on blood pressure.

Most studies of weight loss methods have enrolled overweight or obese volunteers who were healthy, aside from weighing too much. The current study, in contrast, enrolled "real patients" with common conditions like diabetes and heart disease, William S. Yancy Jr. of the VA Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, told Reuters Health. People with these health issues are often excluded from weight loss studies, Yancy said. (Reuters Health)

On Friday, State Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines testified before a State Senate hearing that a tax on sugary drinks would cut New Yorkers' consumption of these beverages by 15 percent.

The tax, with a proposed implementation date of September 1, 2010, would increase the price of non-diet soda, sweetened water, sports drinks, energy drinks, sweetened bottled tea or coffee, and juice drinks by about 17 percent. The $1 billion raised over one year would go toward funding health programs that would otherwise be slashed given New York's dire financial situation. (Examiner)

Massachusetts schools would phase out fries in favor of fruit under a proposal the House is scheduled to consider this week.

Under a proposal sponsored by 57 members of the House and Senate, state authorities would restrict schools’ ability to sell high-calorie, high-fat and high-sodium snacks, a move aimed at curbing childhood obesity.

Iterations of the bill have stalled for several sessions, encountering resistance from the grocery lobby and those who have argued nutritional values should be instilled at home and not by government. (Kyle Cheney, Statehouse News Service)

BEIJING, CHINA - Primary school students in China's capital Beijing are being enlisted to help with the weighty issue of growing obesity.

The students have been given tape measures to size up the waistlines of their parents and themselves during the winter holiday, which starts Friday.

The move was initiated by Beijing educational and health authorities in an attempt to understand and combat obesity and encourage a healthier lifestyle.

An official from the Beijing Municipal Commission of Education said more than 600,000 cloth tapes had been sent to students. The waistline data will be collected at the start of next semester. (Asia One)

Expansion has progressed so far that key resource boundaries have been broken: we're teetering on the edge of an ecological cliff (The Guardian)

Such an initiative sounds grandiose. Is it delusionary for the World Economic Forum to try to pull off such an ambitious undertaking? (Globe and Mail)

Environment secretary says a way must be found to take account of the economic impact of decisions on biodiversity (The Guardian)

CHURCHVILLE, VA—In a normal year, Haiti must start now preparing for the spring planting season, which ends in May. The spring crop usually produces 60 percent of the country’s food. Unfortunately, many families have had to eat or share the seeds they were saving for the next crop. Any improved seed varieties brought in now as aid are all too likely to be hijacked for immediate consumption by the portside mobs and thugs. Almost no chemical fertilizer is available, and Haiti has neither trucks nor usable roads to get it to the farms.

Most Haitians are underfed in their good years, with about 60 percent of kids under five suffering anemia and other diseases of malnutrition. Many of the kids will go blind or die due to severe Vitamin A deficiency, because they get few livestock calories. In hurricane years, the people suffer even more. In 2008, for example, the country suffered three hurricanes and a tropical storm. And now the massive earthquake. Food supplies are at urgent risk.

Over the years, poor Haitians who couldn’t afford to burn kerosene turned their local trees into charcoal.. Now most of the forest is gone, and soil erosion ravages the steep slopes. Mudslides overrun roads and irrigation systems. (CGFI)

THE use of herbicide has been found by a group of scientists to prevent soil erosion, preserve soil structure and ensure the replenishment of its fertility.

A research team, headed by Gil Magsino of the University of the Philippines at Los Baños, said one way of controlling soil erosion is through the use of agricultural technology to conserve soil health and prevent its erosion, especially during storms and floods.

“Soil is the most important element of human existence, for it is where agriculture is based. It is a well-known fact that degraded land or sloping areas are more prone to flooding. Eroded soils pollute the environment,” Magsino said.

Magsino made the remarks as the scientific panel reported the results of the fourth year of the five-year study entitled “Sagip-Lupa: Soil Conservation Technology and Weed Management.”

The study tracked herbicide use over four years in demo sites in Benguet, Batangas, Quezon, Isabela and Nueva Ecija, and concluded that the use of herbicides dramatically reduced soil erosion by minimizing hand weeding and tilling.

Traditional weeding and tilling methods break up and loosen the soil structure. (Business Mirror)

Could glyphosate, arguably one of the world’s most important herbicide compounds, become practically useless for all but a few “niche” markets in the next few years? Steve Powles thinks that is a real possibility.

In the last 15 years, glyphosate has become one of the most widely used herbicides in the world, eclipsing even atrazine as the workhorse of chemical weed control in row crops and a myriad of other uses.

So could glyphosate, arguably one of the world’s most important herbicide compounds, become practically useless for all but a few “niche” markets in the next few years? Steve Powles thinks that is a real possibility.

Powles, professor of plant biology at the University of Western Australia and director of the Western Australia Herbicide Resistance Initiative, gave that assessment during remarks at the Pan-American Weed Resistance Conference in Miami Jan. 19. The conference was attended by 284 scientists and media representatives from North America and South America.

“Glyphosate will be driven to redundancy in the cotton, corn and soybean belt,” said Powles, a widely respected authority on herbicide resistance. “Outside of these areas of the U.S., then glyphosate should continue to be effective because it is not massively used.

“Within the cotton, corn and soybean belt the massive reliance on glyphosate means that it will be driven to redundancy because many of the big driver weeds such as Palmer pigweeds, waterhemp, ragweed and Johnsongrass will be resistant. There may be many weed species still controlled by glyphosate, but glyphosate will fail on the driver weeds and that means overall failure.” ( Farm Press)

The U.S. Geological Survey requested that the National Research Council review and provide guidance on the direction and priorities of the National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program. This initial letter report concerns the scientific priorities of the NAWQA program as expressed in its NAWQA Science Framework, assessing whether the framework sets forth adequately the priorities for the future which will be addressed in the third cycle of the NAWQA program. This letter report includes guidance on the nature and priorities of current and future water quality issues that will confront the Nation over the next 10-15 years. (NAP)

It is time for the embattled Rajendra Pachauri to resign as Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC). He is steadfastly refusing to go, but his position is becoming more and more untenable by the day, and the official climate science body will continue to leach credibility while he remains in charge. (Geoffrey, Lean, TDT)

How typical it is for the BBC to enter the Glaciergate fray, giving a subtly distorted and one-sided account of events, without mentioning the "conflict of interest" issues that have been highlighted by this blog and subsequently by a number of MSM outlets.

As I have observed before, censorship and distortion is manifest most strongly in what organs like the BBC don't say, as much as what they do.

Thus, all we get from the Beeb is a travesty of the "state of the art" in their supposed summary, where they state: "Some commentators maintain that these developments, taken together with the contents of e-mails stolen last year from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, it undermines (sic) the credibility of climate science."

Having presented this shallow pastiche, they then give the floor to the chairman of the IPCC, with this laughably distorted narrative, on the issue of his resignation:

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been heavily criticized for erroneous projections. In the following editorial, climate researchers Richard Tol, Roger Pielke and Hans von Storch call for a reform of the IPCC and the resignation of its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri.

We have seen a crisis of confidence gathering momentum around climate science in recent weeks. Following the unauthorized release of e-mails from the University of East Anglia, showing climate scientists not at their best, now comes a flurry of attention to errors in official reports and accusations of conflicts of interest. (Der Spiegel)

And so here I’ll add my small contribution: because the IPCC authors and reviewers have managed to collate evidence for climate change where even James Hansen and Reto Ruedy agree that the climate has not (yet) changed. Time to ditch AR4-WG2-Chapter1 altogether? (Maurizio Morabito, OmniClimate)

A UK parliamentary committee, the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Commons, on Friday announced an investigation into the Climategate emails, entitled “The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.” This is the sixth body known to have opened investigations into Climategate, and the first parliamentary body.

The terms of reference for the parliamentary inquiry, which will hold an oral evidence session March 10, relate to the integrity of the data produced by the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University, the Independent Review that the university established to look into Climategate, and the extent to which CRU’s data has been integrated into the datasets of other international organizations. The parliamentary committee’s terms of reference are:

The Science and Technology Committee today announces an inquiry into the unauthorised publication of data, emails and documents relating to the work of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA). The Committee has agreed to examine and invite written submissions on three questions:

—What are the implications of the disclosures for the integrity of scientific research?

—Are the terms of reference and scope of the Independent Review announced on 3 December 2009 by UEA adequate?

The members of the Science and Technology Committee includes several climate change skeptics.

Apart from this committee’s inquiry, the other known investigations are being undertaken by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UK Met Office, East Anglia University in Norfolk in the UK, Penn State in the U.S., and the Norfolk police, with the assistance of Greater London’s Metropolitan Police. (Financial Post)

This “explanation” obviously explains very little and simply opens up a series of new questions:

Words of wisdom to the big cheeses at the IPCC: please stop digging! (Maurizio Morabito, OmniClimate)

Apart from Al Gore, NASA’s Dr James Hansen, and the soon-to-be-much-missed head of the IPCC Dr Rajendra Pachauri, no one on earth has been a more voluble and extravagantly hysterical harbinger of Man-Made Eco Doom than Lord Stern of Brentford. (hat tip: Climategate.com and others) ( James Delingpole, TDT)

AGW theory is toast. So’s Dr Rajendra Pachauri. So’s the Stern Review. So’s the credibility of the IPCC. But if you think I’m cheered by this you’re very much mistaken. I’m trying to write a Climategate book but the way things are going by the time I’m finished there won’t be anything left to say: the battle will already have been won and the only people left who still believe in Man Made Global Warming will be the eco-loon equivalents of those wartime Japanese soldiers left abandoned and forgotten on remote Pacific atolls. ( James Delingpole, TDT)

The IPCC also made false predictions on the Amazon rain forests, referenced to a non peer-reviewed paper produced by an advocacy group working with the WWF. This time though, the claim made is not even supported by the report and seems to be a complete fabrication

Thus, following on from "Glaciergate", where the IPCC grossly exaggerated the effects of global warming on Himalayan glaciers – backed by a reference to a WWF report - we now have "Amazongate", where the IPCC has grossly exaggerated the effects of global warming on the Amazon rain forest. (Richard North, EUReferendum)

On Wednesday evening January 27th a discussion of the latest developments in climate change science will be held on the campus of Rice University (directions below for those nearby). This discussion/debate is cosponsored by the Shell Center for Sustainability and the Center for the Study of Environment and Society at Rice. Here is the flyer:

Defending the IPCC consensus regarding natural-versus-anthropogenic climate change is Gerald R. North, Distinguished Professor of the Physical Section, Department of Atmospheric Sciences and the Department of Oceanography at Texas A&M University.

Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts of Technology, will challenge the IPCC consensus, arguing that real-world climate sensitivity lies below the iconic range of 2c–4.5C. Questions about ‘Climategate’ and the newly emerged ‘Himalayangate’ (the latter emphasized by Dr. North’s Texas A&M colleague, John Nielsen-Gammon) are expected to be covered in the question/answer period after the scientists’ formal 30-minute presentations.

Having this climate debate is very good news. The last climate science debate at Rice University was in the summer of 2000 at the James A. Baker Institute. Therein lies a story…. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

Christopher Monckton’s debate this morning with Australian IPCC reviewer Ben McNeil on Sunrise, a minor temple of the warming faith, did not go well - for the alarmists. My goodness, but McNeil did seem awfully green (again) for an academic who demands such drastic changes to the way we live.

Even David Koch, long a fierce preacher of the warming faith, seemed no longer so sure of his old gospel.

I suspect Monckton will cause a lot more damage to the warmists before his tour is over - not least by simply getting the hearing that many local sceptics have been denied:

Monckton’s interview with Alan Jones here. But this debate will be a complete mismatch. Poor Graham! Poor Barry! (Andrew Bolt)

THE head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, has ignored calls to resign and has defended the integrity of the body's climate change report.

The IPCC is reviewing two passages in its report - one to do with the melting times of Himalayan glaciers, the other with the link between the rising costs of wild weather damage and climate change.

In this charged atmosphere, the Federal Government has been emailing invitations to Australian scientists to volunteer as ''expert reviewers'' for the IPCC's next report in four years.

While there is not expected to be a shortage of volunteers for the work, some Australian climate scientists are concerned that to work on IPCC projects in the present environment could expose scientists to attacks from climate sceptics.

''I've cautioned some of my colleagues to think very carefully about whether they want to be exposed to the kind of campaign against science that is running at the moment,'' said Andy Pitman, one of the authors of the 2007 report.

''That's not to mean they shouldn't necessarily do it but they do need to think carefully about whether they have the capacity to endure the attacks from the vested interests who want to discredit the scientific work they're doing.'' (Ben Cubby, SMH)

Professor Andy Pitman, an Australian IPCC author, says his side is losing the global warming debate simply because they’re all selfless angels, while the other side are corrupt, deceitful and unemployed conspiracists:

That explains everything to Pitman’s satisfaction. The absence of any proof for his absurd claims explains everything to the rest of us.

Oh, and here’s a list of Pitman’s grants. My word, but he seems well funded by the warmist lobby. Oddly enough for a man who claims he does his IPCC work “out of hours, voluntarily for no funding”, his long list of grants include these:

Look, it’s just a wild hunch, but might it be that Pitman’s side is losing because the evidence is growing that its arguments are exaggerated or even false?

NEW DELHI - Four nations led by China pledged on Sunday to meet an end-month deadline to submit action plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions and challenged rich countries to come up with funding to help fight global warming. (Reuters)

As recently as ten weeks ago, there used to be a nearly complete consensus concerning the causes of climate change among the political representatives of the scientists paid by 6.8 billion people on this planet.

Things are finally starting to melt a little bit. As BBC reported today and The Guardian wrote yesterday, China's envoy stated that "they think that we need an open attitude to science." ClimateGate, GlacierGate, and other recent scandals are are at least partially responsible for the new position of China. Well, you should better subtract 1.34 billion people (20% of the world population) from the figure above.

Xie Zhenhua declared that the reasons of climate change are not known and there exist views that natural cycles are the cause. These views should be included in the next IPCC report, he stressed.

Once after these new official Chinese views were publicized, the other envoys of the "BASIC" emergent markets were asked for their opinions. South Africa's minister Ms Buyelwa Sonjica - see the picture - decided that she didn't speak English while Jairam Ramesh of India argued that the Chinese statement was just a mistake caused by a malfunctioning audio system. You don't need to think twice who are the true deniers today. :-)

Most of the "BASIC" big cheeses emphasized that 1 IPCC error is equal to 0 IPCC errors and mathematical induction may be used to generalize this equivalence as far as needed. ;-)

While e.g. Lord Monckton reasonably wants to disband the IPCC, the United Nations, and send the people who have been linked to the IPCC to the jail ;-), China may eventually manage to convince him to replace discredited and defunct Mr Rajendra Pachauri as the new IPCC boss who will supervise the creation a more sensible fifth report. I think he could ask Fred Singer, the boss of the NIPCC, to do the job instead.

Aside from China, Russia's prime minister Vladimir Putin recently argued that Russia has to prepare for global cooling as carefully as for global warming.

I feel that we should be seriously and professionally thinking about the ways to use the political influence of these powers to create the seed of new structures that will eliminate institutionalized yet one-sided climate alarmism from this blue planet because it doesn't have any right to exist. There's no doubt that in general, the Western countries are more democratic than the Eastern powers I mentioned. It just happened that when it came to the climate hysteria, it's the other way around.

(Jan. 26, 2010) — The hole in the ozone layer is now steadily closing, but its repair could actually increase warming in the southern hemisphere, according to scientists at the University of Leeds.

The Antarctic ozone hole was once regarded as one of the biggest environmental threats, but the discovery of a previously undiscovered feedback shows that it has instead helped to shield this region from carbon-induced warming over the past two decades.

High-speed winds in the area beneath the hole have led to the formation of brighter summertime clouds, which reflect more of the sun's powerful rays.

"These clouds have acted like a mirror to the sun's rays, reflecting the sun's heat away from the surface to the extent that warming from rising carbon emissions has effectively been cancelled out in this region during the summertime," said Professor Ken Carslaw of the University of Leeds who co-authored the research. (ScienceDaily)

When Melbourne company Greenfleet won the right to display the Federal Government's Greenhouse Friendly logo in early 2008, the non-profit tree-planting organisation was congratulated by the Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong.

"Greenfleet's biodiversity forest projects will not only result in a reduction of greenhouse gases, they will also provide valuable habitat for native fauna and assist in the regeneration of the Australian landscape," Senator Wong said.

Greenfleet was the first non-profit organisation to achieve Greenhouse Friendly accreditation as an ''approved abatement provider'', a title it won after a long and expensive process, its chief executive, Sara Gipton, says.

However, for an operation trading in Australia's fledgling voluntary carbon offsets market, one that relies on its reputation to convince supporters to buy its offsets, the credibility bestowed by Federal Government accreditation was worth the time and expense.

But a year after Greenfleet was accredited, Senator Wong announced that the Greenhouse Friendly program would be dumped. It would be superseded by the Government's centrepiece green policy, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and replaced by a new national carbon offset standard.

It has meant Greenfleet's return on its substantial investment in Greenhouse Friendly is much less than it should have been. But that is not its only problem.

Under the Government's timetable, Greenhouse Friendly will cease to exist on June 30, at which point the carbon offset standard, which was released with little fanfare at the start of December, will come into force. The standard is designed to complement the reduction scheme, but it is uncertain whether the scheme will be passed by Parliament by June 30.

No scheme means no carbon offset standard and no Greenhouse Friendly - a situation that creates a regulatory vacuum for Greenfleet and its peers. (SMH)

LONDON - Still reeling from disappointing UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December, clean energy project developers were dealt another blow this week when U.S. Democrats lost their Senate supermajority, potentially killing a federal cap-and-trade scheme for years to come.

Although the passage of a U.S. bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions in 2010 was far from certain, the election of a Republican in Massachusetts to the Senate on Tuesday derailed any momentum President Obama had following his healthcare push toward introducing a cap-and-trade scheme this year.

This, coupled with a disappointing UN climate summit in the Danish capital last month where leaders from over 190 countries failed to agree a legally-binding pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, is causing concern for some clean energy project developers and forcing them to reassess their game plan. (Reuters)

Carbon bubble about to implode? Copenhagen dampens banks' green commitment - Banks are pulling out of the carbon-offsetting market after Copenhagen failed to reach agreement on emissions targets

Banks and investors are pulling out of the carbon market after the failure to make progress at Copenhagen on reaching new emissions targets after 2012.

Carbon financiers have already begun leaving banks in London because of the lack of activity and the drop-off in investment demand. The Guardian has been told that backers have this month pulled out of a large planned clean-energy project in the developing world because of the expected fall in emissions credits after 2012.

Anthony Hobley, partner and global head of climate change and carbon finance at law firm Norton Rose, said: "People will gradually start to leave carbon desks, we are beginning to see that already. We are seeing a freeze in banks' recruitment plans for the carbon market. It's not clear at what point this will turn into a cull or a rout." (The Guardian)

KEVIN RUDD'S former climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, has urged the Government to put behind it the ''fiasco'' of Copenhagen and to forge ahead with a scheme to reduce greenhouse gases, even if that means turning its emissions trading scheme into a de facto carbon tax.

In a speech yesterday, Professor Garnaut said a binding international agreement to reduce greenhouse gases would never be reached at such open forums as the United Nations conference in Copenhagen last month.

''The important decisions will need to be made wisely by a group of major countries, drawing on detailed numerical work by experts representing heads of government,'' he said. (SMH)

RIYADH - United Nations climate talks are a bigger threat to top oil exporter Saudi Arabia than increased oil supplies from rival producers, its lead climate negotiator said on Sunday.

Saudi Arabia's economy depends on oil exports so stands to be one of the biggest losers in any pact that curbs oil demand by penalizing carbon emissions.

"It's one of the biggest threats that we are facing," said Muhammed al-Sabban, head of the Saudi delegation to U.N. talks on climate change and a senior economic adviser to the Saudi oil ministry.

"We are worried about future demand ... oil is being singled out. We are heavily dependent on one commodity."

Saudi depends on oil income for nearly 90 percent of state revenue and exports make up 60 percent of its gross domestic product.

Rival producers such as Iraq and Brazil have plans for significant increases in output, with Baghdad agreeing deals that could raise its capacity to around 12 million barrels per day and threaten Saudi market dominance. The kingdom has a production capacity of 12.5 million barrels per day.

Climate talks posed a bigger threat, Sabban said, and subsidies for the development of renewable energy were distorting market economics in the sector, he said. (Reuters)

As we continue to develop biomass as a renewable source of energy, it is important to keep the cost of energy in mind, because this has a very strong influence on the choices governments and individuals will make. I sometimes hear people ask "Why are we still using dirty coal?" You will see why in this post. (Robert Rapier, Energy Tribune)

BANGALORE- The cold spells sweeping across the globe could brighten the prospects for U.S. thermal coal producers as early as the first quarter, with huge stockpiles of the commodity being burned to keep homes and offices warmer.

Demand for thermal, or steam coal -- used to fuel about half the electricity generated in the United States -- was earlier expected to pick up only in late 2010 or in 2011, after the economic slowdown and unseasonably cool summers put a damper on energy demand.

Large production cuts undertaken for about a year at miners that primarily ship coal to utilities -- including the nation's top three companies Peabody Energy Corp, Arch Coal Inc, Consol Energy Inc -- has also helped keep inventory under check.

"Cold weather globally has led to favorable burn ... In the U.S., we believe this has the potential to bring utilities back into the market earlier than expected, which should support pricing power," Morgan Stanley analyst Mark Liinamaa said. (Reuters)

In November, China faced major natural gas shortages. Now, the country is grappling with shortages of coal and electricity and those shortages have come amid periods of record cold and snow fall. [Read More] (Energy Tribune)

SEATTLE - Bill Gates, the world's richest man and a leading philanthropist, said on Sunday spending by rich countries aimed at combating climate change in developing nations could mean a dangerous cut in aid for health issues.

Gates, the Microsoft Corp co-founder whose $34 billion foundation is fighting malaria, AIDS, tuberculosis and other diseases in developing countries, expressed concern about the amount of spending pledged at December's Copenhagen global climate meeting.

Participants at the meeting agreed to a target of channeling $100 billion per year to developing countries to combat climate change by 2020. Gates said that amount represents more than three quarters of foreign aid currently given by the richest countries per year.

"I am concerned that some of this money will come from reducing other categories of foreign aid, especially health," Gates wrote in a letter, released late on Sunday, describing the work of his foundation. (Reuters)

NEW YORK - Many processed foods contain too much salt, and sauces, spreads, and processed meats are the top offenders, new research shows.

People who consume lots of salt are more likely to see their blood pressure rise as they get older, with a corresponding increase in their heart disease risk.

Public health officials are increasingly looking to the food industry for help in cutting people's salt intake; the United Kingdom and France, for example, have been able to achieve significant reductions in salt consumption through industry collaborations, while New York City has just launched a campaign to cut US salt intake by 25 percent over the next five years. (Reuters Health)

Putting nutrition labels on fast food may lead parents to pick lower-calorie meals for their children, researchers say.

In a small study, parents ordered about 20 percent fewer calories for their kids when they chose from a menu with nutrition information on it, Dr. Pooja Tandon of the University of Washington and colleagues reported online in the journal Pediatrics. (MedPage Today)

It’s official. Britain’s premier medical journal Lancet has been completely Palestinianized. It no longer bears any relationship to the first-rate scientific journal it once was. Perhaps Lancet is no longer a standard-bearer but has become a follower in the global movement in which standards have plunged, biases have soared, and Big Lies now pass for top-of-the-line academic, scientific work.

The post-colonial academy is itself thoroughly colonized by the false and dangerous ideas of Edward Said (please read my dear friend Ibn Warraq’s most excellent book Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism). However, I once believed that Said’s paranoid perspective had primarily infected and indoctrinated only the social sciences, humanities, and Middle East Studies. We now see his malign influence at work in a new article, just out today, by professors who work at the Department of Medicine at Harvard University; the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health at Minnesota University’s School of Public Health; The Boston University School of Medicine; the School of Nursing at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey; and at the School of Social Work and Social Welfare at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.

Their study is titled: “Association between exposure to political violence and intimate-partner violence in the occupied Palestinian territory: a cross-sectional study.” And yes, they have found that Palestinian husbands are more violent towards Palestinian wives as a function of the Israeli “occupation”— and that the violence increases significantly when the husbands are “directly” as opposed to “indirectly” exposed to political violence.

I believe that Arab and Muslim men, including Palestinian men, are indeed violent towards Arab and Muslim women. I also believe that war-related stress, including poverty, usually increases “intimate partner violence,” aka male domestic violence. But beyond that, how does one evaluate this study? (Phyllis Chesler, PJM)

In the end, the justification for continuing a government program rests on the care and feeding of the bureaucrats who run it.

Georgia State Route 400, commonly known to Atlantans as “Georgia 400,” is the state’s only toll road. The sole toll plaza on “400” was opened in 1993, on a new express extension running from the trendy Buckhead community up into the north-eastern suburbs. Like most toll roads, the pay-to-drive section of Georgia 400 was sold to taxpayers and commuters on the notion that the new stretch of highway would pay for itself, in this case at fifty cents a car.

State Route 400 quickly became one of Atlanta’s most trafficked highways, in a class with the dual interstates of I-75/I-85 and the infamous I-285 loop. All those pairs of quarters piled up, and by early 2009, the toll booths had raised funds well in excess of that required to retire the original bond issue. So in accordance with the original intent of the law that created them, the toll booths were removed around the last Fourth of July.

Whoops, sorry — that’s not what actually happened. It’s what should have happened, but true to Wilson’s famous paper, the bureaucracy that grew around the Georgia 400 toll booths did not go quietly.

In fact, it didn’t go at all. The Georgia 400 toll plaza is still running, 24-7, despite the fact that by March of 2009, the state had banked over $32 million on an outstanding debt (including interest) of $26.6 million. (Will Collier, PJM)

A lack of transparency is hampering efforts in the green market, write Mathew Murphy and Ruth Williams.

It was the consumer group Choice that first suspected the GreenPower provider GreenSwitch was still selling renewable energy to eco-conscious customers in late 2008, weeks after it had been deregistered.

GreenSwitch, owned by a company called Global Green Plan, had been banned that September after taking money from customers to buy GreenPower certificates, but failing to buy all the certificates promised.

Sure enough, Choice was able to buy renewable energy from GreenSwitch in November, and says that, at the time, GreenSwitch's website was still spruiking ''100 per cent accredited GreenPower''. (SMH)

The consumer regulator has reported an alarming surge in complaints about ''green'' advertisements, particularly those by energy retailers.

It has warned that unless delayed legislation is passed, its ability to clamp down on shoddy operators is limited.

Graeme Samuel, the chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, said a sharp rise in complaints about green advertising claims - from almost none two years ago to about 500 since early 2008 - was ''very unusual''.

''Five hundred suggests there's more than a moderate problem,'' Mr Samuel said. ''It's a new area and in some cases marketers don't understand - but in most cases marketers do understand and they are overselling.'' (SMH)

If buying an organic apple instead of one caked in pesticides eases your conscience, there's a good chance that your next ethical decision might not be a good one.

According to the results of a University of Toronto study, participants who assigned more social value to 'green' shopping were more likely to cheat and steal in subsequent tests than those with less stringent shopping habits.

The study, to be published in the new year in the journal Psychological Science, is the latest in a growing field of research called "moral licensing."

It's a relatively new concept that posits humans might store up a reserve of good karma only to squander it later. It's a little like Tiger Woods spending thousands of hours on golf and earning hundreds of millions of dollars on the PGA tour, only to fritter it all away with a few nights of extramarital indiscretion.

Co-authors Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong, professors at the university's Rotman School of Business, set up tests for a sample of university students, which asked them to purchase a basket of goods at either a hypothetical organic shop or a typical grocery store. Those who bought more green items were found in separate tests to be significantly less likely than their conventional counterparts to share money with an anonymous recipient and more likely to cheat on and lie about the results of a simple quiz.

Just why this happens is unclear, said Mazar, noting that she and Zhong would like to look at the potential biological underpinnings for such decisions. (Mike Barber, Canwest News Service)

WASHINGTON - Researchers announced a new project on Monday to sequence all the genes in childhood tumors to try to discover previously unknown causes of cancer. (Reuters)

MONDAY, Jan. 25 -- Researchers have identified four regions of the human genome that predict a heightened risk of pancreatic cancer as a result of what they describe as the biggest-ever sweep of the genome for genes related to the disease.

Though some of the locations had been linked to other cancers, the discovery of others apparently surprised the researchers.

"This lets us go places we had never thought of before," said senior study author Dr. Stephen Chanock, chief of the laboratory of translational genomics at the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

However, he cautioned that though the regions "are conclusively associated with the risk of developing pancreatic cancer, it doesn't mean if you have a variation in that region you're going to get pancreatic cancer."

It simply means risk is increased, and, more than likely, environmental factors would have to come into play to complete the picture, he explained. (HealthDay News)

As huge corporations merge and get even huger, we find ourselves yearning for some old-fashioned competition, and maybe a little diversity. (NYT)

NEW DELHI, Jan 24, 2010 - As environment ministers from Brazil, South Africa, India and China (BASIC) prepared to meet in the Indian capital on Sunday to draw up a post-Copenhagen strategy, there were great expectations on the role they could play in pushing a consensus on how the world should go about dealing with climate change.

"The BASIC countries should push for a legally binding agreement on the two-degree Celsius limit in temperature rise that was driven by science and ensure that all other countries that were left out sign on before the [November] Mexico meet, according to a timetable,’’ said Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, chief of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), speaking to reporters in the Indian capital on Saturday.

The Latin American country is hosting a key climate change conference toward the end of this year. Mexico had said it hoped to see a binding international agreement adopted by both rich and poor countries.

Pachauri was emphatic that what was called for was as simple as all the developed countries agreeing to a "change in lifestyle" and giving up "wasteful and profligate practices." (IPS)

NEW DELHI: The climate is changing on climate change. And IPCC chief R K Pachauri is feeling the heat. The latest dent to claims that the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035 has clearly ruffled the climate man.

But while his credibility and that of the IPCC has taken a battering, Pachauri maintains his chutzpah in the face of growing skepticism, arguing that his acceptance that the research on glaciers had been dodgy had actually somehow enhanced the credibility of the body.

Speaking to the media on Saturday, Pachauri refused to accept that he needed to quit as chair of IPCC and said he was set to table the fifth report on climate change.

He seemed unmindful that gross misreading of the fate of the Himalayan glaciers based on what is now acknowledged to be bad research, has affected the global body more than leaked emails of university researchers saying they had tampered with climate data on which the IPCC report was based.

Earlier this week, Pachauri was compelled to acknowledge the scientific error of research on Himalayan glaciers by a TERI fellow, Syed Iqbal Hasnain, after a report by The Sunday Times, London. But on Saturday, Pachauri skated over thin ice, claiming virtue in his admission. The acceptance of the error "only strengthened the credibility" of the global body, he insisted baldly.

But the IPCC chief seems to be feeling some unease, particularly as he has even had to recently defend himself against attacks on his own integrity, with the British press accusing him of using his position to help companies he was associated with, pointing to a clear conflict of interest. (Times of India)

You need a steady nerve if, like me, you think it is a matter of evidence, not belief, that the world is warming as a result of human activity. After Climategate — the emails that appeared to show scientists using tricks to “improve” the evidence for global warming — comes Glaciergate, the disclosure that the Nobel prize-winning panel on the world’s climate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published an unsubstantiated assertion that Himalayan glaciers were in danger of melting away by 2035.

When you stop to think about it, the assertion made in 1999 by an Indian scientist, who now disowns the statement, is absurd. Some of the Himalayan glaciers are a third of a mile thick and those on Everest, for instance, start at more than 20,000ft. So even though glaciers the world over are melting, a date for the total disappearance of the ones in the Himalayas is more likely to be nearer 2350, if ever.

How did the 2035 figure get pasted into an IPCC report that was apparently scrutinised by experts from the countries most familiar with the annual Himalayan snow-melt?

While we ponder that question, it looks this weekend as though Glaciergate could be followed by Disastergate, Hurricanegate, Floodgate and Droughtgate. It is beginning to look as though the more alarming assertions published by the IPCC — that climate change is behind the increasing frequency of, and damage caused by, natural disasters — may not have been properly peer-reviewed. They lack the gold standard of credibility that we have been assured the panel’s 3,000-page assessment enshrines.

It is a mess. And politically it couldn’t have come at a worse time, just as the election of a Republican senator in Massachusetts brings the end of Barack Obama’s super-majority in the Senate, in a Congress in which only one party believes in doing anything about global warming. The drip, drip of error gives ammunition to even the most scientifically illiterate Republican senator who wants to talk down Obama’s climate bill. The frail global pact to reduce emissions that survived the ill-fated Copenhagen conference will not survive the defeat of cap-and-trade in America. (Charles Clover, Sunday Times)

A claim that the mountain glaciers of the Himalayas will vanish by 2035 has been debunked. Climate-change sceptics are jubilant. They shouldn't be, says Steve Connor. Their disappearance is still only a matter of time. (The Independent)

Inaccurate claims predicting Himalayan meltdown have handed gainsayers a big victory. But nothing material has changed (Robin McKie, The Observer)

The Global Warming Policy Foundation today rejected as baseless claims by Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that the IPCC's erroneous doomsday prediction about the fate of Himalayan glaciers was an isolated and wholly uncharacteristic mistake.

According to the GWPF, and contrary to Dr Pachauri’s claims, there is already ample evidence to show that the IPCC review process is neither robust nor transparent.

In this latest instance, the GWPF has just released, for the first time, details of the defective process by which the 2035 Himalayas date got into an IPCC report. Inherent and serious flaws in the review process clearly emerge from this new evidence.

As a result of a Freedom of Information request, David Holland, a GWPF researcher, gained access to the responses by the IPCC’s lead authors. The documents show that most doubts and questions that were raised about the 2035 date were ignored and that the Review Editors failed to take any note of it. Since their reports, which were only signed statements, were never sent to Governments who commissioned the IPCC report, no one would have known had they recorded the contentious nature of the chapter anyway.

“Clearly questions were raised about the 2035 predictions, but they were not properly dealt with. Had the IPCC been open and transparent and published online to the world the drafts, Expert Reviewers' comments, Lead Authors' responses and Review Editors' reports, this and the many other flaws would not have made it into to the finally published IPCC text,” said David Holland who wrote the GWPF report.

During the drafting process, doubts were raised by Government and Expert Reviewers who submitted comments to the Lead Authors. Until now, however, neither the IPCC nor the working groups have put these internal documents into the public domain. Up till now, Lead Authors could be confident that neither the Expert Reviewers nor anyone else would find out if their views had been accepted, rejected or ignored.

"Not just in this case, but on other contentious climate issues, the IPCC has consistently promoted alarmist predictions. Research and data that questions the IPCC’s assertion of looming catastrophe are routinely ignored, uncertainties are disregarded and highly unlikely disaster scenarios exaggerated. The time has come to completely overhaul the structure and workings of the IPCC," said Dr Benny Peiser, the director of the GWPF.

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’
Glacier

Dr Lal’s admission will only add to the mounting furor over the melting glaciers assertion, which the IPCC was last week forced to withdraw because it has no scientific foundation. (David Rose, Mail on Sunday)

The chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has used bogus claims that Himalayan glaciers were melting to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. (Jonathan Leake, Sunday Times)

Dr Pachauri has rapidly distanced himself from the IPCC's baseless claim about vanishing glaciers. But the scientist who made the claim now works for Pachauri, writes Christopher Booker (TDT)

THE United Nations climate science panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.

It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny — and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report's own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough.

The claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that global warming is already affecting the severity and frequency of global disasters, has since become embedded in political and public debate. It was central to discussions at last month's Copenhagen climate summit, including a demand by developing countries for compensation of $100 billion (£62 billion) from the rich nations blamed for creating the most emissions. (Jonathan Leake, Sunday Times)

More mistakes about Himalayan glaciers seem to have been uncovered in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) latest report, further threatening its credibility and undermining the position of its chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri. (Geoffrey Lean, TDT)

All the years I’ve been in TV news, I’ve observed that every story has a tipping point. In news, we know when it has reached that point when we say it “has legs” and the story takes on a life of it’s own. The story may have been ignored or glossed over for weeks, months, or years until some new piece of information is posted and starts to galvanize people. The IPCC glacier melt scandal was the one that galvanized the collective voice that has been saying that the IPCC report was seriously flawed and represented a political rather than scientific view. Now people are seriously looking at AR4 with a critical eye and finding things everywhere.

Remember our friends at World Wildlife Fund? Those schlockmeisters that produced the video of planes flying into New York with explicit comparisons to 9/11?

The caption in the upper right reads: “The tsunami killed 100 times more people than 9/11. The planet is brutally powerful. Respect it. Preserve it.”

Well it turns out that the WWF is cited all over the IPCC AR4 report, and as you know, WWF does not produce peer reviewed science, they produce opinion papers in line with their vision. Yet IPCC’s rules are such that they are supposed to relay on peer reviewed science only. It appears they’ve violated that rule dozens of times, all under Pachauri’s watch.

A new posting authored by Donna Laframboise, the creator of NOconsensus.org (Toronto, Canada) shows what one can find in just one day of looking.

Here’s an extensive list of documents created or co-authored by the WWF and cited by this Nobel-winning IPCC AR4 report: Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

The Nobel Prize committee that saluted President Obama last year for a mere changed rhetorical tone and anticipated improvements in international affairs, gave its 2007 award to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) for a supposedly courageous report on climate change. The IPCC report included the prediction that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035 or sooner. Now it turns out that the predictions for the glaciers not only were based on flimsy, unsupportable data (see January 20 post), but that the whole section of the report in which it is found is flawed. It is being disowned.

Once again it was the skeptics, not the science journals and the big science foundations of government and the professional associations that like to pronounce on various subjects, that revealed the flaws.

We are in a time when news developments are tumbling over one another so fast that one barely can keep track, let alone assess the consequences: the Massachusetts election, the sudden death of Obamacare (at least in its present form), the faux populist assault on the banks (in the process of backfiring) and here, the continuing, collapse of the alarmist position on global warming. Yesterday it was revealed that the "breakthrough" hailed by President Obama at the Copenhagen Climate Summit--puny as it seemed at the time--has not even survived the winter. It should be renamed "the Copenhagen Breakdown."

Add now the collapsing reputation of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. (Discovery News)

Here’s the NASA Climate Change “evidence” page where they list a series of visual earth topics that support AGW as factual. In the sidebar they have heavy reference on IPCC AR4.

click for NASA website

Scrolling down through the page you come across the section that talks about glacier melt. Here is the screencap of that section BEFORE (courtesy of Google Cache) and AFTER as it appears now: Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

[UPDATE BELOW!]

There is another important story in involving the Muir-Wood et al. 2006 paper that was misrepresented by the IPCC as showing a linkage between increasing temperatures and rising damages from extreme weather events. The Stern Review Report of the UK government also relied on that paper as the sole basis for its projections of increasing damage from extreme events. In fact as much as 40% of the Stern Reivew projections for the global costs of unmitigated climate change derive from its misuse of the Muir-Wood et al. paper.

I documented this in a peer reviewed paper published in 2007, which you can see here in PDF. In that paper I wrote:

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) is pressing Energy Secretary Steven Chu for information about department ties to the U.K. climate institute at the center of the controversy over the infamous hacked climate science emails.

Barton, the top Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) wrote to Chu Friday asking about DoE funding for projects connected to the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.

Emails among scientists connected to CRU made public last year prompted allegations by climate skeptics -- including Barton and several other Republicans -- that the researchers squelched inconvenient data. But many scientists and Obama administration officials say the emails have done nothing to dent evidence of human-induced global warming. (E² Wire)

Climategate was born in late November 2009 with the release of more than a thousand e-mails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England. One of the prominent figures in these e-mails is Penn State’s Michael Mann, a professor in the university’s Department of Meteorology. Mr. Mann, a contributor to the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is known mostly for the now discredited “hockey stick” graph, which shows purported man-made global warming during the last century. But it is his role in Climategate that has him in the news lately.

The e-mails reveal that Mr. Mann might have committed a variety of acts that constitute significant and intentional scientific misconduct, including data manipulation, inappropriately shielding research methods and results from peers, and retaliating against those who publicly challenged his conclusions and political agenda.

To Penn State’s credit, the university announced it would investigate Mr. Mann’s alleged misconduct. But the school has a serious conflict of interest that legitimately calls into question its ability to conduct a thorough and unbiased investigation.

There is good reason to believe that a Penn State-managed investigation would amount to a whitewash given Mr. Mann’s financial and reputational value to the university—and the embarrassment that would result from an adverse finding.

The only way to resolve the conflict of interest is for the Pennsylvania General Assembly to commission an external and independent investigation of Mr. Mann’s research and conduct. (Matthew J. Brouillette, The Bulletin)

The Commons Science and Technology Committee has launched an inquiry into “the unauthorised publication of data, emails and documents relating to the work of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA)” – ie Climategate. (hat tip R. Campbell; Platosays). (James Delingpole, TDT)

Here's an introduction to the members of the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee, gleaned from Wiki pages, TheyWorkForYou and so on. For each member, I've given details of constituency, party, educational/professional background and details of their voting records on climate change issues. (Bishop Hill)

Not surprisingly, the blatant corruption exposed at Britain’s premiere climate institute was not contained within the nation’s borders. Just months after the Climategate scandal broke, a new study has uncovered compelling evidence that our government’s principal climate centers have also been manipulating worldwide temperature data in order to fraudulently advance the global warming political agenda. (Marc Sheppard, American Thinker)

Sen. Lisa Murkowski introduces a resolution that would prevent the agency from treating greenhouse gases as poison.

On Thursday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, introduced a resolution of disapproval, under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), to overturn EPA’s endangerment finding (the agency’s official determination that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare) . Murkowski’s floor statement and a press release are available here.

The resolution has 38 co-sponsors, including three Democrats (Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana). If all 41 Senate Republicans vote for the measure, Sen. Murkowski will need only seven additional Democrats to vote “yes” to obtain the 51 votes required for passage. (Under Senate rules, a CRA resolution of disapproval cannot be filibustered and thus does not need 60 votes to ensure passage.)

Murkowski’s resolution of disapproval is a gutsy action intended to safeguard the U.S. economy, government’s accountability to the American people, and the separation of powers under the Constitution. Naturally, Sen. Barbara Boxer and other apostles of Gorethodoxy denounce it as an assault on the Clean Air Act, public health, science, and “the children.”

Washington, DC: An "environmental justice" public relations tour of economically-disadvantaged communities being led by EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson and members of the Congressional Black Caucus is being criticized by Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli as a desperate attempt to play the "race card" to bolster the Obama Administration's "cap-and-trade" emissions proposal.

Borelli contends energy limits, such as those in the Waxman/Markey bill approved by the U.S. House last year, would devastate the communities the EPA-CBC tour is highlighting as in need of help. (National Center)

The Indian and Chinese governments have had a rethink on signing the Copenhagen Accord, officials said on Saturday, and the UN has also indefinitely postponed its Jan 31 deadline for countries to accede to the document. (IANS)

The conventional wisdom is that the chances of Congress passing a bill that puts both a cap and a price on greenhouse gases are somewhere between terrible and nil. President Obama can start to prove the conventional wisdom wrong by making a full-throated case for a climate bill in his State of the Union speech this week. (NYT)

WASHINGTON, Jan 21 - Most Americans want the jobs and clean energy that Democratic-backed climate-change legislation could help bring but its backers are presenting the wrong messages, according to a prominent U.S. pollster.

The House of Representatives last June passed a climate bill featuring a cap-and-trade market on so-called greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming. But the measure has been bogged down in the Senate and faces an uncertain future.

"If you really want to scare Americans it's not about glaciers that are melting or the struggle of the polar bear," said the pollster and political adviser Frank Luntz, most known for his work with Republicans.

"What scares Americans is the idea that this great technological industry will be developed in China or India rather than America," said Luntz, who once advised former President George W. Bush's administration to emphasize that there was a lack of scientific certainty about climate change.

Luntz is a paid adviser to 21 companies in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership that are urging Congress to pass legislation requiring reductions in greenhouse gases. (Reuters)

Then let’s have a closer look at the character and motives of the man in charge of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), Dr James Hansen. Last year, he was described by his former course supervisor at NASA, Dr John Theon, as an “activist” and an embarrassment.

Now reader Michael Potts has drawn my attention to yet further evidence of Dr Hansen’s radical, virulently anti-democratic instincts. He has lent his support to an eco-fascist book advising on ways to destroy western industrialisation through propaganda, guile and outright sabotage.

In a scary new book called Time’s Up – whose free online version titled A Matter Of Scale you can read here – author Keith Farnish claims:

Like so many deep greens, Farnish looks forward to the End Times with pornographic relish (masquerading as mild reasonableness): (James Delingpole, TDT)

It's been an eventful period since the leak of the Climategate emails. I think we should look at events together and see if they tell us anything.

Before we start, an update on the book Steven Mosher and I wrote. It is called Climategate: The CRUtape Letters. We're extremely pleased with the reception we've gotten and pleasantly surprised at its success in the marketplace. It is available on CreateSpace here. You can buy it on Amazon here. It is available on Kindle here. And it is available in electronic format on Lulu here.

Amazingly, Climategate is in danger of being eclipsed by subsequent events related to the politics of global warming. Since that time,

The head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, has come under fire for how he handles the finances of the organisation he is affiliated with outside the IPCC, called TERI.

A second series of emails from GISS has exposed practices that, like those at CRU that we covered in our book, were more focused on politics and message purity than on science.

And today, in the UK's Times Online, comes independent confirmation of Roger Pielke Jr.'s claims that the IPCC distorted their reporting on the destructiveness of hurricanes due to global warming.

It's been one disaster a week for a couple of months now. I said six months ago that it was time to bring some grownups onto the team representing the activist agenda for global warming. I said last week that I didn't think Pachauri would last until June 30th of this year. Looking around the warming blogs--like Real Climate, Climate Progress and others of that type--there seems to be no comprehension of the hole they are digging for themselves. Nor do reports in the major media reflect serious concern on the part of politicians who have championed the fight for so long.

Is it possible that they think nothing's wrong? That they don't need to do anything? It would be an absurdist end to this story to watch the fight against global warming end with a whimper... (Thomas Fuller, Examiner)

China's most senior climate change official surprised a summit in India when he questioned whether global warming is caused by carbon gas emissions and said Beijing is keeping an "open mind". (TDT)

A state committee charged five years ago with fighting global warming has added more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than it's taken away.

And the committee has cost taxpayers more than $70,000 to have 20 meetings over four years, with few concrete results.

Created in 2005, the Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change studies the potential effects of global warming on North Carolina, and what, if anything, the state can do about it. When the General Assembly established the committee, it ordered a final report, with policy proposals, by Nov. 1, 2006. (Winston-Salem Journal)

The Warmists are looking increasingly foolish and wrong. But they aren’t going to go down without a fight. Consider, Exhibit A, this nauseating email currently being sent out to Conservative candidates. It seems that in the last week a couple of hundred Tory candidates have received variations on the theme below. Note that these emails do not come from a named organisation but from individual voters in each of the different prospective parliamentary candidates’ constituencies. (James Delingpole, TDT)

THE UN has dumped the deadline to tackle climate change, leaving Kevin Rudd isolated in his view that "to delay any longer would be reckless and irresponsible for our economy and our environment".

Rudd made that dire pronouncement at the National Press Club just over a year ago, in December 2008, when he, former US vice-president Al Gore and an assortment of others were hell-bent on introducing the greatest wealth redistribution scheme the world had ever seen.

Now, even the UN has realised that the scam has been exposed and that the support base for its massive global swindle has melted more rapidly than any Himalayan glacier.

The Copenhagen Conference may have been as chaotic as an inner-urban ALP branch meeting, but the fallout has been devastating.

The only firm agreement for which there was general support among the freeloading nations present was to set a deadline of the end of this month for the first part of the ongoing process to deal with anthropogenic global warming.

Now the UN has waived that deadline. (Piers Akerman, The Sunday Telegraph)

How to stack the IPCC. First, let the Rudd Government have sole power to nominate Australia’s IPCC authors:

What chance this side of Armageddon that Kevin Rudd or Climate Change Minister Penny Wong will nominate a sceptical scientist to the IPCC? Ditto for Britain and other nations when alarmist governments rule. (Andrew Bolt)

It is statistically appropriate to point to this year's frigidity as evidence that the theory of man-made global warming is suspect.

Sure is cold out there, unusually so. By “unusual,” I mean the temperature is on the low end of the observed temperatures from previous winters.

Of course, we don’t have any more than about 100 years of reliable measurements, so it’s possible that the freeze we’re experiencing now isn’t as unusual as we suspect. But, anyway, it still sure is cold.

If you recall, a lot of global warming models predicted it would be hot and not cold, and to risk redundancy, it sure is cold. Does this dissonance between the models’ predictions and what is actually happening mean that those models are wrong?

Here’s the thing: No matter how cold the winter is, no matter how much snow falls, the global warming models will not be disproved. In technical language, they cannot be falsified by the observations.

Another way to say this is that the winter we’re seeing is consistent with what the models have been predicting. Again — does this consistency mean that the models are right and that the theories of man-made warming are true?

Forests, we know, absorb CO2 which helps curb global warming. These natural carbon sinks are the basis of offset programs, climate models, and most future-looking policy. Forests also absorb and retain heat, however, and new research is suggesting that, in at least one type of terrain, this heating effect outweighs the benefit of the tree's carbon capture.

For 10 years, Professor Dan Yakir has been leading a Weizmann Institute research team looking at data from a FluxNet station in the Yatir Forest, at the edge of the Negev Desert. His research has showed that the semi-arid pine forest is a remarkably effective carbon sink, outpacing European pine forests and matching the global average.

When they looked at the total energy budget of the forests, however, they uncovered some unsettling results. They found that the dark-green trees absorbed a large amount of solar radiation, especially when compared to the nearby shrubs and desert. Furthermore, the cooling mechanism of the pine trees—in which leaves transfer heat to passing air currents—leads to a large amount of the absorbed heat being retained in the forest.

Together, these factors create a heating affect that, at least in the short term, surpasses the benefits of the forests' carbon absorption. Yakir explained:

Semi-arid forests, like the one studied, cover an estimated 17 percent of the earth's land surface.

Yakir's team also looked at the impact expanding deserts had on heating and cooling. By applying their data to existing models they found that desertification, at least in the short term, actually creates a cooling effect by reflecting large amounts of solar radiation back into space. The result contradicts the common belief that desertification contributes to global warming.

The team estimates that, over the last 35 years, desertification of semi-arid land may have reduced warming by as much as 20 percent when compared to the rise expected based on CO2 increases.

It is important to note that this new data should not be interpreted as a rebuttal of the importance of forests. Indeed, the findings only comment on the short term impact of desertification and the heat retention of some forests.

The point, he added, was that these advantages and tradeoffs must be considered together when crafting plans for the future. (David DeFranza, TreeHugger)

With all the predictions of short term climate catastrophes proffered by global warming alarmists it is hard to look forward to a future time on Earth. What does the future hold a thousand, ten thousand, a million years from now? Science has some predictions about that as well, though the news media have not picked up on them. What environmental changes await us on the long road ahead?

The Northern Hemisphere has been hammered by the coldest winter in decades. Chinese provinces prepared to introduce power rationing as electricity supplies lagged behind demand amid harsh winter weather. In the UK things have been so bad that Keith Mitchell, the leader of the Oxfordshire County Council, accused county residents of lacking the “British spirit that defeated Hitler” in the wake of the freezing weather. Just to confuse things, a new report in report in Science says NASA's GISS proclaimed “2009 Hottest Year on Record in Southern Hemisphere.”

In the US, AccuWeather meteorologist Joe Bastardi reports: “The coldest start to an El Niño winter since the '70s, in the wake of the thaw, may have a top 10-15 cold February nationwide.” Outlook India's headline proclaimed “North India Reels Under Cold Wave, 154 Dead.” There were reports of frozen sheep in Scotland, and snow fell Down Under during the Australian summer.

In Europe, the protesters at the Copenhagen Climate Conference were treated to snow and record cold temperatures that some blamed on the Gore Effect. The term “Gore Effect” comes from the observation that unseasonable weather seems to accompany former US Vice President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore whenever he appears at a global warming event or public hearing. Since 2004 these coincidences have occurred with increasing frequency.

President Obama left Copenhagen early in an attempt to avoid the weather, only to arrive back in Washington for a major winter storm that engulfed the entire east coast. Florida experienced the its longest stretch of cold weather in 100 years. In southern Florida frozen iguanas were falling out of the trees. So-called “kamikaze” iguanas are an urban legend among Floridians but became a common sight as temperatures dropped almost to freezing.

All of this wicked weather comes with the often repeated warning that weather is not climate. So what is going on with the climate? It looks like a combination of El Niño and the multi-decadal oscillations in the Pacific and Atlantic are conspiring to cause a temperature downturn world wide. In the near term we are in for the usual multi-decadal variations in hot and cold. Prof Anastasios Tsonis, head of the University of Wisconsin Atmospheric Sciences Group, has recently shown that these MDOs move together in a synchronized way across the globe, abruptly flipping the world’s climate from a ‘warm mode’ to a ‘cold mode’ and back again in 20 to 30-year cycles. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)

LOS ANGELES — At the Sundance Film Festival four years ago, the global-warming debate took center stage with the premiere of an alarming work, the director Davis Guggenheim’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”

This year Ondi Timoner, a judge in the festival’s United States documentaries competition — in which Mr. Guggenheim’s “Waiting for Superman,” about the failures of public education, is an entry — is taking a break from a directing project of her own. Titled “Cool It,” Ms. Timoner’s partly completed film, based on the work of the environmental writer Bjorn Lomborg, aims to quiet the global-warming alarm bells that Mr. Guggenheim and his narrator, Al Gore, set ringing.

The documentary world, rife with impassioned advocacy, may now be poised for some genuine debate. (NYT)

In the push to cut the amount of carbon we release into the atmosphere, solutions usually focus on how to reduce our power use (drive less, insulate our houses better) or how to replace our carbon fuels (coal, oil) with renewable sources (solar, wind, biofuels).

But even in the most optimistic scenario, we will be using fossil fuels such as coal for years to come. China and India aren't going to suddenly shut down all their new coal power plants, nor will Western industrial giants close their factories overnight. Solar and wind may be today's sexy new energy sources, but coal is the fastest-growing fuel in the world, boasting twice the known gas reserves and three times the known oil reserves. "Coal is here to stay," Milton Catelin, head of the World Coal Institute, told the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi on Jan 19. (Simon Robinson, Time)

The economics of sequestration are expensive on a per-tonne basis (Jeffrey Simpson, Globe and Mail)

When government and industry talk about green energy, what they mean by green is the green stuff that will be going into the pockets of special corporate and government interests.

In a dramatic move yesterday, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty struck a green electricity deal -- allegedly the biggest of its kind in the world -- that will transmit a subsidy worth as much as $10-billion into the hands of a Korean state enterprise and corporate giant Samsung.

The subsidy means that over the next 25 years Ontario electricity users will pay 50% more for the wind and solar electricity produced under the Samsung deal than they would buying the same power from conventional sources. In return for the subsidy, the only thing the average consumer will receive is a warm and fuzzy feeling for having saved the planet from global warming.

Premier McGuinty has committed Ontario to a generous deal for a soon-to-be forgotten energy source

In a signing ceremony Thursday for a $7-billion deal with Samsung to build wind and solar facilities, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said: “This means Ontario is officially the place to be for green energy manufacturing in North America.”

Quite right. Texas lost that title last week when billionaire T. Boone Pickens abandoned his plan to build 4000 MW of wind capacity in Texas — twice as much as the Samsung wind plan — when no financier could see how building the things made any financial sense. Other jurisdictions have also seen plans for wind vanish, along with plans for solar and other forms of renewable energy. Stock prices of most players in the wind industry, such as Broadwind Energy, GE’s supplier, are heading south.

But Ontario is different.

Britain's energy policy faces new controversy as it can be revealed that electricity customers are paying more than £1 billion a year to subsidise windfarms and other forms of renewable energy. (TDT)

Algae biofuels certainly hold lots of promise in terms of yields. Certainly lots of fossil fuel companies seem to be betting on them to be what comes next in liquid transportation fuels. A new study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, done by researchers at the University of Virginia's Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, calculates the environmental impact of algae biofuels as currently produced to be higher than than many first generation fuel feedstocks such as switchgrass and corn. The silver lining in that is that the report also identifies ways in which this can be remedied:

In completing their life-cycle analysis the researchers found that algae had greater net greenhouse gas emissions and uses more water in its production than other biofuel sources. In terms of area required for production algae did come out ahead.

Co-Location With Wastewater Treatment Plants Touted
The large eco-footprint of algae cultivation is the result of upstream impacts such as CO2 and fertilizer, the U.Va researchers found.To remedy this the they recommend building algae production ponds near wastewater treatment facilities so that they can capture phosphorus and nitrogen needed for growing the algae that would otherwise be obtained from a fossil fuel source.

Lead author Andres Clarens warns, "If we do decide to move forward with algae as a fuel source, it's important we understand the ways we can produce it with the least impact, and that's where combining production with wastewater treatment operations comes in."

At Least One Industry Insider Says It's Sour Grapes
Tempering that warning, Biofuels Digest quotes an unnamed "biofuels industry professional" as saying that the paper is just "trying to scare people into funding more wastewater research."

Unnamed Source or Professional Journal? You Decide
While an unnamed industry source isn't exactly solid rebuttal of peer-reviewed research, the accusation is worth considering.

As is the warning made by the report authors: "Before we make major investments in algae production, we should really know the environmental impact of this technology."

In other words, just because algae was two significant advantages over other biofuel feedstocks--doesn't compete with food crops for land and has higher yields--doesn't mean we shouldn't critically examine the environmental impact.

But equally, take claims on all sides with a grain of salt. It's quite possible, being unnamed, that the industry professional did just get money from the DoE. File this one away until there's additional confirmation.

Most lawyers are like the opportunistic infections that attack the weakened immune system of heroin addicts. You can scrape off the scabs that encrust the skin, but if you don’t treat the underlying addiction, they’ll just grow back.

Or more plainly, lawyers are the symptoms and not the disease. That there are so many is an indication of deeper trouble, signs of a fundamental imbalance with the body politic. (William M. Briggs)

The American Geophysical Union Natural Hazards Focus Group, led by Professor Alik Ismail-Zadeh, Chair of the AGU Natural Hazards Focus Group [of which I am a member along with outstanding colleagues; see] has posted information on the earthquake in Haiti.

In this post, Professor Ismail-Zadeh wrote an excellent statement on what policymakers and others should learn from this tragic event. (Climate Science)

Glaucoma is called the "sneak thief of sight" since it has few early symptoms. This group of diseases represents the second leading cause of blindness (second only to diabetes). Vision loss derives from damage to the optic nerve, frequently identified with elevated intraocular pressure.

My latest HND piece takes a look at glaucoma, along with various treatment modalities, one which is a novel method called Pneumatic Trabeculoplasty (PNT). PNT is approved for use in many countries outside the US, including Canada and the EEC. US clinical trials are planned.

PNT's big advantage is that it is quick, easy, and non-invasive.

Read the complete article. (Shaw's Eco-Logic)

THERE are increasing calls to regulate and tax many supposedly harmful lifestyle products, such as fatty foods, soft drinks and even video games, under the guise of public health imperatives. It is relevant to scrutinise the ethics of the principles used to justify what amount to public health-inspired government lifestyle mandates.

The first point to make is that previous public health campaigns for things such as clean air and water differ fundamentally from those currently being discussed. The key difference is that no one chose to drink water that contained faeces; on the other hand, alcohol, hamburgers and even cigarettes bring utility as well as harm. What value is an exciting night out with friends, or the experiences gained from episodes of heavy alcohol consumption, or simply the experience of feeling relaxed for an evening? It is illegitimate to present a one-sided equation of harm unbalanced by utility. What is a harmful outcome to some might be an optimal balance to others.

The next issue relates to who should make the decision about whether something represents an overall net positive or negative for the individual. A central committee? No; in order to balance the infinite considerations in making such harm-benefit calculations, our society is built on deferment to the fundamental ethical principle of autonomy. (Michael Keane, The Australian)

Copper pipes could cause people over 50 to contract Alzheimer's Disease and heart disease, a study has found. (TDT)

Stopping children eating junk food is surely a better way to tackle the problem of Britain's overweight population

There is still time to sign up for one of the most rational dates of 2010: next week's mass homeopathy overdose. At 10.23am on Saturday 30 January, anti-homeopathy activists, organised by the Merseyside Skeptics Society, will down entire bottles of homeopathic remedies outside branches of Boots, the better to demonstrate that these preparations are worthless.

Even though sales of Hahnemann's potions are likely to be unaffected, there remains a chance that the survival of hundreds of sceptics might persuade officials at Nice, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, to re-examine the funding of homeopathy within the NHS. It remains one of the world's great mysteries that the health service, with its austere, cash-strapped commitment to evidence-based medicine, should continue to spend an estimated £4m a year on sugar pills. Just a few months ago, it refused to prescribe an effective liver cancer drug, because it would not be "cost-effective".

Inevitably, an NHS moratorium would inspire a backlash, probably led by Prince Charles, who is believed to attribute his survival from a broken arm to the generous application of arnica. But the NHS is, generally speaking, remarkably robust when accused of rationing, callousness and victimisation. Last week, it was the turn of the Royal College of Surgeons to protest that the unequal provision of gastric bands and other "bariatric" surgery within the NHS is "inconsistent, unethical and completely dependent on geographical location". (Catherine Bennett, The Observer)

This is the first in a series of articles that will examine issues arising from the increasing use of medical radiation and the new technologies that deliver it. (NYT)

Seawater in a vast and deep section of the northeastern Pacific Ocean shows signs of increased acidity brought on by manmade carbon dioxide in the atmosphere -- a phenomenon that carries with it far-reaching ecological effects -- reports a team of researchers led by a University of South Florida College of Marine Science chemist. (PhysOrg.com)

Marine biologist Jane Lubchenco now heads one of the U.S. government’s key agencies researching climate change — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Lubchenco discusses the central role her agency is playing in understanding the twin threats of global warming and ocean acidification. (Elizabeth Kolbert, e360)

A bill to establish an interagency committee to develop an ocean acidification research and monitoring plan and to establish an ocean acidification program within NOAA. (OpenCongress)

Early civilisations prospered by taming rivers, but as water gets scarce in some regions, populations rise and lifestyles remain the same, we might not be far from warring over water, writes SYLVIA THOMPSON

FORGET PEAK OIL. Forget climate change. Peak water is where it’s at, according to Scottish journalist and broadcaster, Alexander Bell, who has just written a fascinating book, Peak Water (Luath Press, Scotland).

“It’s the coming issue of our age,” says Bell. “Civilisation is thirsty. It has never stopped to think about what would happen if the water ran out.” And while Bell acknowledges tackling climate change is important, he firmly states peak water would have happened with or without it. (Irish Times)

Cap-and-trade may be appropriately shelved for the time being, particularly in light of the Massachusetts Senate upset, but that may only embolden “Action Jackson” and her gung ho EPA to more aggressively pursue regulatory measures that Congress won’t touch. Inside EPA (subscription required) speculates on whether or not the agency is taking on too much and risks endangering its own credibility. (The Chilling Effect)

Recent advances in air pollution monitoring and modeling capabilities have made it possible to show that air pollution can be transported long distances and that adverse impacts of emitted pollutants cannot be confined to one country or even one continent. Pollutants from traffic, cooking stoves, and factories emitted half a world away can make the air we inhale today more hazardous for our health. The relative importance of this "imported" pollution is likely to increase, as emissions in developing countries grow, and air quality standards in industrial countries are tightened.

Global Sources of Local Pollution examines the impact of the long-range transport of four key air pollutants (ozone, particulate matter, mercury, and persistent organic pollutants) on air quality and pollutant deposition in the United States. It also explores the environmental impacts of U.S. emissions on other parts of the world. The book recommends that the United States work with the international community to develop an integrated system for determining pollution sources and impacts and to design effective response strategies.

This book will be useful to international, federal, state, and local policy makers responsible for understanding and managing air pollution and its impacts on human health and well-being. (NAP)

I've never thought of environmental journalism as a particularly risky career (except to my bank account).

But in fact, reporters around the world face threats ranging from intimidation to murder for reporting on pollution, global warming, and other environmental abuses. The problem is not new, but is getting worse, according to Vincent Brossel, head of the Asia desk of Reporters Without Borders/Reporters Sans Frontiers. I heard him speak at a "side event" during the Copenhagen climate talks last month. ( Emily Gertz, OnEarth)

The “U.S. Army and The Conservation Fund to Sign National Memorandum of Understanding.”

If you hurry, you can be there to witness the treaty signing by the “Honorable Jo-Ellen Darcy, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, and Mr. Larry Selzer, President and CEO of The Conservation Fund.”

These two gentlemen will “announce a partnership between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and The Conservation Fund to promote the effective and balanced management of water resources, conservation of wildlife habitat and cultural resources, and sustainable development of communities.”

I am informed—by confidential sources—that there will be photo “opportunities”, so bring your cameras.

Where to go? 2000 Half Street Street, Washington, DC, which is the Earth Conservation Corps’ Matthew Henson Earth Conservation Center. This is not, for my non-military readers, an Army base. 11 am Friday, 22 January.

Now, unless that agreement runs along the lines of “Stay out our way and you won’t get hurt”, then the Army has no business signing a faux treaty with any non-governmental organization.

The next thing you know, the Navy will be courting the Sierra Club to give up its noisy ships. Don’t scoff! There are plenty of malcontents who are making this very claim. Seems whales don’t like the sound of passing aircraft carriers. Spinning propellers induce in them—just as the Beatles induce in your author—a severe case of the willies. (William M. Briggs)

Syngenta advocates transparent, scientific review of products.

For 50 years, sound science has governed U.S. regulatory decisions on atrazine, a well-studied herbicide that farmers rely upon worldwide to produce safe, healthy and abundant crops. Syngenta, as a science-based company, looks forward to a continuing, open and transparent safety review of atrazine by the U.S. EPA in 2010 and expects a positive outcome.

Last week, two environmental activist groups escalated their attacks on Syngenta and atrazine, urging a departure from the EPA's methodical, science-based approach to regulating crop protection products such as atrazine. Syngenta believes these claims are baseless and wrong.

These activist groups urge the removal of safe, regulated crop protection tools farmers rely on to produce safe and abundant food for the world. It is estimated forty percent of the world's food supply would not exist without the use of such products. (Press Release)

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 // -- A broad coalition of agriculture groups representing the Triazine Network have written to Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, in defense of the herbicide atrazine, which has become the target of a coordinated attack by environmental groups seeking to eliminate its use. See copy of the letter to the EPA and listen to audio file of nationwide teleconference here: http://www.ksgrains.com/corn. Atrazine, a critical tool in growing crops as diverse as corn, sorghum, sugar cane, and citrus, has been used safely in over 60 countries for 50 years. (PRNewswire)

Hundreds of invasive species, from grey squirrels to rats, are posing one of the greatest threats to wildlife across the world, conservationists have warned today. (TDT)

While Scott Brown's victory could have a catastrophic effect on health care reform, other parts of the Democratic agenda may survive the loss of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat.

3. Cap and trade: A cap-and-trade bill has a shot in the Senate – as long as the cap-and- trade part is removed. If Democrats dump that toxic measure and pursue a more modest climate and energy bill, they’ve actually got a shot at getting something done – and getting a few Republican votes to push them past 60.

Voinovich and Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) are working on a smaller-scale proposal that would limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. And moderate Democrats are pushing Senate leadership to drop the cap-and- trade provision in favor of an energy-only bill, which could include renewable fuels standard tax incentives for alternative energy

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), has also shown willingness to work on climate issues with the lead Democrat on the topic, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.).

"It is my assessment that we likely will not do a climate change bill this year, but we will do energy," Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) said Tuesday. "I think it is more likely for us to turn to something that is bipartisan and will address the country's energy interest and begin to address specific policies on climate change.”

They’ll have to work without the rookie Brown, who has expressed skepticism that climate change is being caused by humans. He's also backed away from his previous support for a cap-and-trade system. (Politico)

Calling for a necessary transition to a low carbon energy economy, 83 CEOs sent a letter to President Obama demanding movement on cap and trade legislation to create green jobs. According to the press release, “the letter was signed by 83 CEOs from some of the nation’s largest electric power, manufacturing, clean tech, technology and consumer facing companies.”

Imagine that. The politically invested companies that stand to gain the most from cap and trade and spent millions to lobby this bill through Congress want to see it passed at the expense of American energy consumers and the American economy. This is no different than Archer Daniels Midland sending a letter to the president asking for an increase in the ethanol mandate. Robert Bradley Jr. calls cap and trade the Enron Revitalization Act. He even includes a memo from Enron lobbyist John Palmisano about the Kyoto agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions:

Other people are getting paid by the federal government so why shouldn’t we? That’s the sentiment coming from the forest industry over reducing carbon dioxide emissions. This is how a bad bill becomes a bad law. When there’s money up for grabs, special interests and their lobbyists swarm like bees to honey seeking to protect or improve their bottom line. Inevitably, few win at the expense of many. And when you can get paid not to do anything, all the better. Jessica Leber of E&E (password required) reports:

The Economist looks at a recent letter from groups that have been pushing costly climate legislation and the order of their pleas:

We’ve been seeing this phenomenon for a while now (at least back to when gasoline spiked to $4 per gallon and the economy’s downward dive) so this is not necessarily new, but it’s important to keep an eye on.

It’s also worth remembering that for many of these groups, climate itself was never the number-one priority. Surely it was a nice side benefit of legislation that would shift billions from taxpayers to special interests through a cap and trade slush fund, but it was never the sin qua non for any but the craziest green fringe. (The Chilling Effect)

Today, Reps. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Sam Graves (R-MO), Trent Franks (R-AZ), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) sent a letter to Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator Cass Sunstein sharply critical of EPA’s December 7, 2009 finding that “air pollution” from carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) endangers public health and welfare.

“On the basis of EPA’s endangerment finding,” the legislators warn, “virtually every economic activity undertaken in America stands to come under the thumb of federal regulation.” They explain: “These actions begin with EPA’s and the Department of Transportation’s proposed new light vehicle emission standards, continue through greenhouse gas (GHG) preconstruction and operating permit requirements for stationary sources and extend as far as the mind can contemplate.” They continue: “In these ways,…

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, a leading Republican on energy policy, on Thursday moved to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions that are blamed for global warming. (Reuters)

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has sponsored a bill to nullify the EPA endangerment finding on greenhouse gases, saying it will harm the U.S. economy. She also wants lawmakers to enact legislation on climate change but says Congress needs more time. Scientists have deemed that greenhouse gases are detrimental to human health. Clean Skies hears from Murkowski, and reaction to the amendment. (Clean Skies News)

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) is joining forces with Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski in an effort to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases. (Politico)

WASHINGTON — In a direct challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, introduced a resolution on Thursday to prevent the agency from taking any action to regulate carbon dioxide and other climate-altering gases.

Ms. Murkowski, joined by 35 Republicans and three conservative Democrats, proposed to use the Congressional Review Act to strip the E.P.A. of the power to limit emissions of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court gave the agency legal authority to regulate such emissions in a landmark 2007 ruling. (NYT)

Three Democratic senators are joining an effort to block the Obama administration from taking steps to reduce the pollution blamed for global warming.

Democrats Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas have signed onto a resolution introduced Thursday by Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. The measure, which must pass Congress and be signed by the President, would bar the Environmental Protection Agency from issuing regulations to control greenhouse gases.

The EPA has taken steps to reduce greenhouse gases using existing law as it has waited for Congress to pass legislation. A Senate bill limiting heat-trapping gases has stalled.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Thursday that the President is unlikely to sign it. (Associated Press)

Don Blankenship is head of Massey Energy, one of biggest coal companies in the country. Robert Kennedy, Jr. is a famed environmentalist. The two squared off in a debate at the University of Charleston's Geary Auditorium. Blankenship has been a vocal critic of both U.S. trade policy and climate-change legislation. In a recent interview in Forbes, he referred to global warming as “a hoax and a Ponzi scheme”. Kennedy is President of Waterkeeper Alliance and chief prosecuting attorney for the Hudson Riverkeeper. He serves as a senior attorney for the National Resources Defense Council, was named a Time Magazine “Hero for the Planet,” and is the best-selling author of Crimes Against Nature. (Clean Skies)

The shifting ground in the climate debate means that now some of the Greens may realize they need to set their sights lower and accept a weaker ETS deal or get none at all.

Where before they would not accept Rudds proposals because they were too ineffective, they are now suggesting it’s possible. (I’d call them the “pragmatic Greens” except that the need for an ETS is based on out-dated science, stone age logic and fraudulent malpractice. )

The government needs 7 votes in the Senate. If they get the 5 Green votes, they need 2 others. There are rumours the last two votes could come from the two Liberals who crossed the floor to vote for the ETS in December (and against their new leader wishes and against the majority of their party).

The email campaign was a major success in November and December. I’m still hearing about it from members of Parliament. It burned an impression on Senators and their staffers that thousands of emails arrived, each one crafted individually, not “cut n paste automated emailling”. They had not seen anything like it before. They are still going through them.

These two Senators need to know how you (and your contacts in QLD and Victoria) feel about the introduction of a new tax system based on corrupt science. This is legislation that’s guaranteed to help large financial houses increase their profits, but not make any difference to lakes, wetlands, trees, birds or coral reefs:

Senator Boyce’s (Queensland) email address: senator.sue.boyce@aph.gov.au
Judith Troeth (Victorian): senator.troeth@aph.gov.au

We can focus on Green politicians soon too. I’ll write more about that because it needs a different kind of email. There are good people in the greens too. I don’t think they have any idea how damaging these rules-based-on-fraud would be.

Mr. Rudd's Climate-Change Pitch - The Australian prime minister tells voters they'll eventually accept the wisdom of a big, fat tax.

Climate-change legislation is declining in popularity the world over, so Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has concocted a new way to sell it—by telling voters they'll come to their senses, eventually.

"The government's focus is taking decisions, hard decisions," Mr. Rudd declared Tuesday, referring to his cap-and-trade bill and other expensive, big-government ideas. "Some of those decisions will not be popular, but decisions in the national interest need to be taken for the future otherwise we place the future at risk."

Australian voters seem to have a different idea of what's in their nation's interest. As the global economy struggled and global-warming science was discredited last year, climate change slipped as an item of concern in national polls. This presented a big problem for Mr. Rudd, who has spent a lot of political capital on his environment bona fides and took over 100 staffers to Copenhagen last month to lobby for a global deal.

Mr. Rudd also faces opposition in the Senate, where his Labor Party doesn't hold the balance of power. The rural National Party has come out strongly against cap-and-trade because it thinks—rightly—it's a huge tax on business, and an impediment to growth. The Senate has already rejected two versions of the bill to date, and will consider it again when the Rudd government tries anew next month. (WSJ)

The Carbon Sense Coalition today claimed that Australian PM Rudd was either promising poverty for his grandkids or blowing hot air.

The Chairman of Carbon Sense, Mr Viv Forbes, said that in Copenhagen, PM Rudd advocated cutting production of carbon dioxide by at least 20% by 2050.

“However, back in Canberra, PM Rudd says Australia’s population will increase from 22M now to 36M by 2050.

“A bit of simple math shows that he thinks our grandkids can exist on just half the carbon energy per person that we use now.

“But the PM also promises a nation building program of rail, road, and port construction. What fuels are all these new vehicles going to use? Is he expecting nuclear powered trains, solar powered trucks and wind powered bulk carriers?

“The Copenhagen Rudd is promising a poverty stricken future for our grandkids. Or maybe the Canberra Rudd is just a lot of hot air.”

Viv Forbes
www.carbon-sense.com (Carbon Sense Coalition)

Two months after "climategate" cast doubt on some of the science behind global warming, new questions are being raised about the reliability of a key temperature database, used by the United Nations and climate change scientists as proof of recent planetary warming.

Two American researchers allege that U.S. government scientists have skewed global temperature trends by ignoring readings from thousands of local weather stations around the world, particularly those in colder altitudes and more northerly latitudes, such as Canada.

In the 1970s, nearly 600 Canadian weather stations fed surface temperature readings into a global database assembled by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Today, NOAA only collects data from 35 stations across Canada.

Worse, only one station -- at Eureka on Ellesmere Island -- is now used by NOAA as a temperature gauge for all Canadian territory above the Arctic Circle. (Richard Foot, Canwest News Service)

Council and Commission statements – Outcome of the Copenhagen summit on climate change

The Science and Public Policy Institute has published an analysis of the leaked climategate emails. This 149-page document takes the emails in chronological order and shows, with comments on each message, how science was perverted.

In the introductory material the report says:

The entire industry of “climate science” was created out of virtually nothing, by means of a massive influx of funding that was almost universally one-sided in its requirement that its recipients find evidence for man-made climate change—not investigate whether or how much mankind had caused climate change.

Many “climate scientists” built their entire careers on this funding; and so it is not surprising that they became so completely reliant on this conditional lifeline, that they became single-mindedly focused on achieving the ends for which they were commissioned—and viciously attacking any intruders who may threaten that lifeline.

The PDF file may be download from either of these links:

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/climategate_analysis.pdf or http://tinyurl.com/yl8o3t8 (Tucson Citizen)

Everybody's favourite environmental journal, Nature, seems to have got itself into hot water. Hans von Storch reports on his Die Klimazwiebel blog that the quotes attributed to him in Quirin Schiermeier's article (see previous posting) did not form part of the interview between the two men.

Nature's reputation was already looking rather damaged, what with the "denialists" editorial and all. This kind of thing is hardly going to help. (Bishop Hill)

5. Just this week I learned that the IPCC simply made up a false response about my views when directly queried on this subject by an expert reviewer.

The IPCC treatment of the science of disasters and climate change is an even worse breech of scientific standards than the errors associated with Himalayan glaciers. (Roger Pielke Jr)

Energy Secretary Steven Chu today dismissed accusations of fraud in climate science generated by the release last year of hacked e-mails between researchers, saying e-mails showed "warts and bumps" in the scientific process.

Chu told a Senate panel there are "mountains" of evidence that climate change is real and the Energy Department will continue to rely on the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which critics say has been undermined by the so-called "Climategate" e-mails.

"That's a little snippet out of all the things that have shown the climate is changing," Chu said of the e-mails. "There are always little warts and bumps as science goes on."

Chu was responding to Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who had pressed him for his views about the reliability of the U.N. climate science during an Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing. ( Greenwire)

THE UN's admissions on Glaciergate are welcome, but the international body has sustained damage from its sloppiness in reporting climate change data. Its claim to speak as the authority on climate science is reduced now that its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been forced to back down over a claim that some Himalayan glaciers would probably disappear by 2035.

The IPCC's statement yesterday that the "clear and well-established standards of evidence" had not been properly applied to the claim, is an attempt to put the best possible spin on a blunder that has reverberated around the world since it was revealed last weekend. In fact Glaciergate, in large part, is about an extraordinary reliance on a third-hand source - a news story published in New Scientist almost a decade before it was included in the IPCC's fourth assessment report of 2007.

...

The real lesson is that our political leaders must continue to question, probe and analyse the evidence before committing to policies with profound consequences. This is not about letting the IPCC off the hook. Nor is is about denying the science. It is about applying a healthy degree of scepticism to scientific claims that drive policy. (The Australian)

[This is a guest post by Ben Pile.]

In September 2008, Oxfam published a report called “Climate Wrongs and Human Rights: Putting people at the heart of climate-change policy”. At our UK-based blog Climate Resistance, we were unconvinced already. Humans, by definition, cannot be at the heart of any eco-centric view of the world. Moreover, the climate issue has been adopted by one-time development agencies to instead emphasise not developing as the most ‘progressive’ course of action for the world’s poorest people. (Roger Pielke Jr)

According to the likes of Bob Ward, George Monbiot, Ben Goldacre and Steve Connor, it is a well established fact that the slump in global temperatures over three decades in the middle of the last century is the result of changes in the composition of atmospheric aerosols following various clean air acts in the western world.

Failure to acknowledge this fact is ’straightforward scientific dishonesty’, according to Monbiot, and ‘a major misrepresentation of the scientific evidence’, in the words of Ward. Goldacre described the question of the post-war temperature slump as a prime example of a denialist ‘zombie argument’ (it ’survive[s] to be raised again, for eternity, no matter how many times [it is] shot down’) and wrote that it has ‘been answered already, ages ago’. It’s the aerosols, stupid.

We have stated repeatedly that such certainty is not justified by the state of scientific understanding of atmospheric aerosols (see links above). So it’s good to see Quirin Schiermeier’s piece in today’s issue of Nature – The real holes in climate science – which identifies aerosols as one of four problematic areas of climate change research (the other three being Regional climate prediction, Precipitation, and The tree-ring controversy): (Climate Resistance)

The Ohio Section of the American Institute of Professional Geologists has adopted a position statement rejecting global warming alarmism and calling on Congress to defeat legislation aimed at restricting carbon dioxide emissions.

The position paper reflects growing scientific sentiment that humans are not causing a global warming crisis. ( Heartland Institute)

FBN’s John Stossel on all the fallacies in the White House’s push to go green.

A Miss World wants us all to go vegan, a city in the north of England may be hugely improved by global warming and the Met Office explains how it ensures the world is always warmer. (Daily Bayonet)

There is a post on the Nature website Climate Feedback by Olive Heffernan titled

This is a remarkable post in that it fails to properly assess all of the data sources for climate system heat changes. Excerpts from the post read

“New analyses provide preliminary evidence that temperature data from the UK Met office may under-estimate recent warming. That’s the conclusion of a talk given here today by Chris Folland of the Met Office Hadley Centre. Folland says that there is a very good chance that there has been more warming over land and over the ocean in the past decade than suggested by conventional data sets, but he says that the issues with land and ocean data are entirely unrelated.’

“For land, the problem of underestimating warming stems from data gaps in the average monthly temperature data set of the Met Office Hadley Centre, known as HadCruT3. Temperatures over the past decade were recently re-analyzed using a European climate model by Adrian Simmons of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Reading, UK and colleagues, and are soon to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research [subscription]. Simmons and colleagues compared air temperature and humidity data collected over the past decade by the Hadley Centre with re-analyzed data for the same period. Average warming over land was larger for the fully sampled re-analyzed data than for the HadCRUT3 temperature data. The difference between the data sets is particularly notable for northeast Canada, Greenland and northern parts of Asia, areas which are warming particularly rapidly.”

If the land surface temperatures were actually warmer than have been sampled, this results in even more divergence between the surface temperature and lower tropospheric temperature trends which we quantified in

Chris Folland also ignored the unresolved issues and systematic biases that we identified in our paper

“For the ocean data, it’s a different issue. John Kennedy of the Met Office and colleagues previously reported in Nature [subscription] that changes in the methods used to collect sea surface temperature (SST) data at the end of World War II caused problems in comparing pre- and post-war data. Now they have a new analysis (yet to be published) suggesting that smaller changes in data collection methods since the end of the war could also be significant.

Over the past 20 years, the primary source of SST data has changed from ships to ocean buoys. Because ships warm the water during data collection, there has been a drop in recorded SSTs since buoys, which are more accurate, became the main data source. So what could appear to be a relative cooling trend in SSTs over the past decade may actually just due to changes in errors in the data. Scientists are confident that the buoy data are more accurate because they compare favourably with reliable satellite data.”

The upper ocean heat data shows no appreciable warming in the upper ocean since at least 2005 (and perhaps since 2003) as I discussed in my paper

The satellite monitored surface temperatures similarly show a lack of warming over this time period; the current global sea surface temperature trends can be viewed at the GISS website (see) where for the period 2003 to 2009 on the annual average, there is a even negative trend in this time period for some latitude bands (see) [see also the land and ocean temperature changes figure in the section "Annual Mean Temperature Change for Land and Ocean in http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/ where a divergence between the land and ocean data trends in the last 10 years is quite distinct].

While, whether the trends are positive or negative from 2003 to 2009 does not refute a longer time global warming (which could, of course, recommence), statements by Chris Folland and John Kennedy that can be easily shown to conflict with even a cursory examination of the data, will result in a dismissal of their conclusions by objective climate scientists. (Climate Science)

A new article has just been published in the January 22, 2010 issue of Science magazine which finds that there will be a large increase in the frequency of the strongest hurricanes in the Atlantic basin as the climate changes from increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. But a closer look at the results shows that this model-based result is produced by a hurricane model which under-simulates the frequency of strong storms in today’s climate. And that, despite the projected increase in intense hurricanes, the frequency of those storms projected by the model to occur by the end of the 21st century is considerably less than the frequency of intense hurricanes actually observed in the current climate. If the model doesn’t work for the present, why should we trust it for the future? (WCR)

The pink-footed goose is an increasingly common sight on the waterways and fields of Britain. Smaller than a mute swan but larger than a mallard, the geese can currently be spotted all over estuaries such as the Wash and Solway, where they will stay until April, when they head for their Arctic breeding grounds.

The RSPB notes that the pink-footed goose is pinkish-grey with a dark head and neck, a pink bill and, not surprisingly, pink feet and legs. It likes to eat grain and potatoes. What was less well known about the pink-footed goose, until now, is that each bird is responsible for more than 100kg of carbon-dioxide emissions each year. The pink-footed goose: the bird with a carbon footprint four times larger than a patio heater.

Unlike cows and sheep, the geese do not fart and burp out their sizable contribution to global warming. Rather, they free the carbon from the ground when they grub around in the Arctic soil for food. (The Guardian)

It was a rubbing-the-eyes-in-disbelief headline even from an administration whose energy secretary, Steven Chu, suggested that America's energy dilemma could be solved by painting roofs white, and whose interior secretary, Ken Salazar, talked of garnering 3,000 megawatts of wind-power capacity off the East Coast. (The current total electricity capacity from all U.S. energy sources is about 1,000 megawatts.)

Under the title "U.S. raises concern over China oil policy," David Shear, deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told the House Armed Services Committee on Jan. 13:

"We are pursuing intensive dialogue with the Chinese on the subject of energy security, in which we have raised our concerns about Chinese efforts to lock up oil reserves with long-term contracts."

Shear was responding to Republican Rep. Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland, who said he was "worried that the Chinese were aggressively buying up oil all over the world and might not share it with other countries in the future."

Well, what do you know? The Obama administration, whose entire energy posture going back into the presidential campaign has been both ideologically and practically stridently anti-oil, both as an industry and as a form of energy, has suddenly become "concerned" about China's oil grab.

This is, to say the least, disingenuous.

The U.S. government under Barack Obama has yet to acknowledge once, in spite of widely held estimates, that oil will continue to account for 40% of world energy demand 25 years from now — this while total world energy demand will increase by 50%, at least.

Nor has the administration, mired in Kyoto and Copenhagen global climate rhetoric, acknowledged that fossil fuels, oil, gas and coal will still account by then for over 85% of world energy demand, a largely unchanged contribution from what it is today.

Instead there is constant rhetoric about solar (the president's favorite during the campaign), wind and "advanced biofuels" which, when combined, are not likely to account for more than 1% or 2% of the world energy demand over the next several decades. (Michael J. Economides, IBD)

The U.S. economy is sensitive to high energy prices. An aggressive push toward green power would result in the net loss of millions of jobs. There is a better way forward.

Unlike most products, electrical energy is fraught with thorny economic issues. These include market competitiveness (e.g., the generation and distribution of energy resembles monopoly more than perfect competition), the emission of pollution, and public safety. Consequently, government regulation of the power industry in some shape or form is common around the globe. Historically, when governments enmesh themselves in the regulation of industry, they have a nasty habit of micromanaging, picking “winning” firms and technologies. True to form, the current energy debate centers on what proportion of America’s electric energy should be generated by “green” sources, and what form those “green” sources should take (e.g., wind, solar, biomass, etc.). The answer to these questions will have significant ramifications for the U.S. economy for decades to come. In what follows, we explore these economic ramifications in greater detail, and compare wind power (currently the cheapest source of green energy) with what we believe is the best energy option: nuclear power. (Dustin Chambers and Dan Ervin, The American)

General Motors executive says solar flares are responsible for climate change, not car emissions or CO2.

Senior General Motors executive Bob Lutz has slammed scientists and environmentalists, saying global warming has little to do with humans and more to do with solar flares and sunspots.

The self-confessed petrolhead and man who proudly claims to be a progenitor of the Chevrolet Volt electric car (due in Australia in 2012) still scoffs at global warming.

Lutz, who in 2008 memorably described global warming as a “crock of shit”, once again aired his views while meeting with a group of Australian journalists at the Detroit motor show last week.

"I am not going to give a speech on this because every time I do I get in trouble,” Lutz said, then immediately began explaining his views. (SMH)

T. Boone Pickens is a pleasant guy. But the hard truth is this: he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. In fact, he doesn’t even know the most basic facts about the Pickens Plan.

I met Pickens on Tuesday in New York City. We appeared together to tape a segment for John Stossel’s new show, “Stossel,” which airs tonight on Fox Business at 8p EST. The theme of Stossel’s show: “energy independence.” And as you may know, “energy independence” is one of the key elements of the promotion of the Pickens Plan.

Before we got into the studio to tape the segment, Pickens and I started arguing in the green room. I said that while I agreed with him about the boom in US natural gas production and that America should use more of it, I said “your numbers don’t add up.” Pickens taken aback, said “what do you mean?” I explained that his claims he can cut US oil imports by one-third in ten years are simply not possible and that he is grossly exaggerating the ability of the US to make a quick transition to natural gas- fueled vehicles.

His response, “I haven’t said that.” I was stunned. But I was prepared. I pulled out a few pages on which I’d printed my talking points. On the Pickens Plan website, he claims that – and this is a direct quote -- “increasing the use of our natural gas resources can replace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports in 10 years.”

I read that line to Pickens. To which he replied “I never said that.” I was incredulous. I said, “this is from your own website. I simply cut and pasted your wording.” Jay Rosser, Pickens’ media advisor, was standing nearby, and asked to see it. I handed him my paper, with the citation.

I told Pickens that even if he were somehow able to manage a 100-fold increase in the number of natural gas-fueled vehicles in the US and do so in just ten years, he couldn’t meet the target that he is claiming. (For the math on this, see below). To that, Pickens responded, as I recall, with something to the effect of, “Well, it doesn’t matter.”

Again, I was flabbergasted. For the past 18 months, Pickens has been on nearly every news outlet in the US, promoting his wacky ideas about energy independence. His website claims that more than 66,000 people have signed his petition that seeks “energy independence now.” And yet, Pickens was telling me that his own claims about reducing foreign oil use don’t matter? The billionaire went on to tell me that what he really wants is to convert long-haul diesel trucks to natural gas. If he can convert 8 million long-haul trucks, then he could save lots of diesel fuel and thereby, he said, cut oil imports.

By that time, the show’s producers were getting impatient. They were ready to pull Pickens into the studio to begin taping the segment. “Sir, we need to go,” said a headset-wearing woman standing next to Pickens. She grabbed his hand. I was ready to continue the discussion about diesel, pointing out that by displacing diesel, Pickens would only displace part of the crude oil barrel. And then we started to discuss corn ethanol, a substance that Pickens said he favored, because, he said, “it’s domestic. I’m for anything that’s domestic.”

Again, I was stunned. How could Pickens actually favor the corn ethanol scam? But by that time, the woman was nearly ready to grab Pickens by the collar in order to pull him into the studio. We continued our debate on the set. The show airs tonight. Check it out. (Robert Bryce, Energy Tribune)

Coal is a four-letter word and forever will be so, but can it achieve a less pejorative status in the new decade?

In terms of contributions to atmospheric emissions, and to global warming according to the mainstream scientific view, Australian domestic emissions from coal are small beer, contributing less than 1 per cent of the worldwide total – but the fate of the industry here will be closely watched in major, industrialised coal-burning countries around the planet.

The basic arithmetic for Australia is straightforward: at the start of the new decade, generators here contribute more than 80 per cent of the domestic electricity supply, burning 52 million tonnes of black coal and nearly 70 million tonnes of brown coal each year. The recent downturn in emissions, as reported by The Climate Group, is a factor of the economic slump and cannot be expected to re-occur in 2010.

Ten years from now, allowing for growth in demand – itself an issue of considerable debate – those tonnages could be expected to exceed 65 million tonnes for black coal and be much the same for brown coal. Under that scenario, Australia’s domestic greenhouse gas emissions will rise – not fall – by at least 135 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide, the national political target.

The ALP and the Greens made much in 2007 about the sites for nuclear power stations under a continuing Coalition government. The political wheel having turned, it will be the Rudd Government’s task in the 2010 election to explain which coal-burning power stations will be closed under carbon policy and when. This is an important issue for the Latrobe Valley in Victoria, Port Augusta in South Australia, the Hunter Valley and Lithgow area in New South Wales and for central Queensland. (Business Spectator)

Scandia Wind Offshore (SWO) is being formed in response to the compelling attributes of West Michigan for offshore wind farm development. SWO is conducting a feasibility study in the waters outside of Mason and Oceana counties for a 1,000 Megawatt (MW) wind farm, the Aegir Project, and plans to leverage the many years of offshore wind farm development experience of its Norwegian partner, Havgul Clean Energy. Technical analysis is underway as well as an information exchange with the local community, local government officials, and the State of Michigan.

The Aegir Project is designed for harvesting the outstanding wind resource on Lake Michigan to produce clean, renewable energy while addressing the current need for job creation in Michigan. (The Aegir Project)

WEST MICHIGAN — There was an audible gasp at a public hearing Tuesday when the audience saw what the proposed Aegir Offshore Wind Farm would look like from Mears State Park in Pentwater.

Then there was uncomfortable laughter when they saw the even larger looking wind turbines on Lake Michigan in a computer-generated picture depicting the view from northern Silver Lake State Park.

For those accustomed to an unobstructed lakeshore in northern Oceana and southern Mason counties, the lake photos showing the proposed new wind farm were jarring. ( Muskegon Chronicle)

The higher costs and inferior reliability of government-mandated wind power and solar power are well known to students of the electricity market. Many analyses on wind and solar have documented their real-world problems.

But another negative aspect of wind and solar technologies is their failure to live up to their raison d’être: emissions reduction. As I have explained in a four-part post, firming intermittent electric generation requires very inefficient fossil-fuel generation that creates incremental emissions compared to a situation where there is not wind or solar and fossil-fired generation can run more smoothly. This is a huge insight, a game changer, that could take the renewable energy debate in a new direction entirely.

A number of studies are emerging that quantify both the cost premium of politically-forced renewables and the minimal amounts of emissions reduction (and even notable emissions increase) resulting from their use. Country-specific studies (such as the one under review) present a methodology that is applicable to other jurisdictions (such as the U.S.) to better assess policy options and their consequences for all stakeholders, including taxpayers.

Peter Lang’s important new study, Emissions Cuts Realities – Electricity Generation, analyzes five options for the Australian electricity system for cutting CO2 emissions over the period 2010 to 2050 compared to business-as-usual (BAU) in terms of cost. The range of CO2 emissions reductions by 2050 compared to 2010 is from zero to 80%.

Lang’s analysis is very conservative. The author’s preference seems to be to gain an unassailable beachhead in a very contentious debate. But in reviewing his data, I see confirmation that new wind or solar capacity provide marginal reduction in CO2 emissions at best. I would even argue that there are emission increases because any reductions due to new renewables are dependent upon solar thermal technology development by 2020 providing sufficient thermal storage to allow operation for 8,000 hours per year.

In summary, Lang’s study and other considerations provide another illustration of the failure of industrial-scale new renewables, particularly wind and in the near future, solar, to meet societies’ goals. They do not provide the impact that is needed in terms of energy independence, avoidance of fossil fuel use and reductions in CO2 emissions that conventional wisdom, with all its inadequacies, dictates.

SYDNEY/TOKYO - A sister company to Toyota Motor Corp secured a lithium supply deal in Argentina on Wednesday that could help the world's largest automaker keep its lead in gasoline-electric hybrid cars.

The deal sent shares in the lithium project's owner and operator, Australian-listed Orocobre Ltd, soaring almost 50 percent to an all-time high.

Lithium, a highly reactive and versatile metal, is expected to be in increasing demand as carmakers choose costly but more efficient lithium-ion batteries to power hybrid and electric vehicles. (Reuters)

This is not a time for compromise. It is a historic moment to be grasped by those of us who believe in individual freedoms.

The lesson of Massachusetts: all politics is local only during times of domestic tranquility, but at truly defining moments, all politics is ideological. Tuesday night, finally, in Massachusetts the battle turned from politics to ideology, a confrontation we had successfully avoided since the Civil War. While politicians dithered over details such as who would or would not pay taxes on Cadillac health plans (have you driven a Cadillac lately?), the people grasped the deeper issue.

The Enlightenment and religious reformations that swept Europe following the Renaissance threw out the old existing orders, and the great debate began between two acutely different variants of what constituted their proper replacement. The Anglo-Saxons concerned themselves with “the rights of men,” and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and our own magnificent uprising of 1776 affirmed the notion of individual rights derived from a higher power than man. The logical consequence of this was the notion of equity: that the public official might do only that which was explicitly permitted by law while the private citizen was empowered to act in any way that was not explicitly forbidden.

This idea, which dated back to the Magna Carta in 1218, was fine-tuned in the 17th and 18th centuries by insisting the governed had a right to consent to laws that inhibited their freedom.

The Europeans, on the other hand, preferred to think in terms of “the rights of man.” The movement from plural to singular is important for now individual freedoms would be determined by a collective will, a “social compact” that would predetermine what was good and just for everybody. So while Anglo-Saxons depended on “enlightened self-interest,” the Europeans felt the need to legislate virtue.

America was born as the former. But a corrupt academy, a narcissistic underpaid media (all of whom slavishly worshiped the Europeans), and a century-and-a-half of immigration brought the collectivist view into the American mainstream. The health care debate is not really about who should be covered, but about taking decisions that were once the responsibility of the individual and turning them over to the collective.

Although born long after the Civil War, I have lived through this struggle before. In the 1960s, Pierre Trudeau took Canada, then a country of self-reliant, broad-shouldered, rugged individualists, and by sheer force of political magnetism, transformed it into a post-modern society, a European clone of overtaxed politically correct worrywarts subject to heavy taxes designed to redistribute wealth. For a long time, it was a winning formula that even conservatives found seductive. After all, as George Bernard Shaw observed, if you rob Peter to pay Paul you can most certainly count on Paul’s vote. It took almost a half a century for Stephen Harper to reawaken Canadians’ sense of self-respect and begin the first faltering steps toward dismantling the monstrosity that Trudeaupian liberals had created.

It appears the voters of Massachusetts required a mere 11 months and 28 days. (Lionel Chetwynd, PJM)

IN THE aftermath of the Senate election in Massachusetts, the focus of attention is inevitably on what it means for Barack Obama. The impact on the Democratic president of the loss of the late Ted Kennedy’s seat to the Republicans will, no doubt, be significant (see article). Yet the result could be remembered as a message more profound than the disparate mutterings of a grumpy electorate that has lost faith in its leader—as a growl of hostility to the rising power of the state.

America’s most vibrant political force at the moment is the anti-tax tea-party movement. Even in leftish Massachusetts people are worried that Mr Obama’s spending splurge, notably his still-unpassed health-care bill, will send the deficit soaring. In Britain, where elections are usually spending competitions, the contest this year will be fought about where to cut. Even in regions as historically statist as Scandinavia and southern Europe debates are beginning to emerge about the size and effectiveness of government.

There are good reasons, as well as bad ones, why the state is growing; but the trend must be reversed. Doing so will prove exceedingly hard—not least because the bigger and more powerful the state gets, the more it tends to grow. But electorates, as in Massachusetts, eventually revolt; and such expressions of voters’ fury are likely to shape politics in the years to come. (The Economist)

WASHINGTON - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday she did not think the Senate's version of healthcare reform had enough support to pass the House of Representatives without changes.

"I don't see the votes for it," Pelosi told reporters, adding congressional leaders would take their time to find the right approach to passing a healthcare reform bill this year.

"In its present form, without any change, I don't think it's possible to pass the Senate bill in the House," she said.

Pushing the Senate's version of the healthcare bill through the House was an option considered by Democrats after Tuesday's Republican victory in a Massachusetts Senate race cost them their crucial 60th Senate vote needed to pass the measure.

But some House Democrats have objected to several provisions in the Senate bill, including a tax on high-cost insurance plans that is opposed by labor unions and a less-restrictive policy on using federal funds to cover abortions.

Democrats have limited options on how to proceed on the healthcare bill, President Barack Obama's top legislative priority, without 60 Senate votes, and have been divided on how to achieve final passage.

Pelosi said "everything is on the table," but congressional leaders would pause to find the right course. "We're not in a big rush," she said. (Reuters)

A year into the Obama administration, America’s dominant geography, suburbia, is now in open revolt against an urban-centric regime.

A year into the Obama administration, America’s dominant geography, suburbia, is now in open revolt against an urban-centric regime that many perceive threatens their way of life, values, and economic future. Scott Brown’s huge upset victory by 5 percent in Massachusetts, which supported Obama by 26 percentage points in 2008, largely was propelled by a wave of support from middle-income suburbs all around Boston. The contrast with 2008 could not be plainer.

Browns’s triumph followed similar wins by Republican gubernatorial contenders last November in Virginia and New Jersey. In those races suburban voters in places like Middlesex County, New Jersey and Loudoun County, Virginia—which had support President Obama just a year earlier—deserted the Democats in droves. Also in November, voters in Nassau County, New York upset Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi, an attractive Democrat who had carefully cultivated suburban voters. (Joel Kotkin, The American)

People who buy chewing gum, cigarettes or fast food should be made to pay a "clean up tax" to tackle Britain's growing litter problem, according to an influential committee of MPs. (TDT)

The First Amendment is a little stronger now. In a 5-4 decision announced today, the Supreme Court struck down another portion of McCain-Feingold, specifically the ban on corporate and union-funded issue ads in the closing days of an election. Even better, the Supremes also overruled a 20 year old ruling that banned corporate and labor money from funding any political campaign ads.

Finally, the Supreme Court displayed some sanity when interpreting the first Amendment. (Well, five justices, at least.)

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the main opinion, which reads in part that there is "no basis for allowing the government to limit corporate independent expenditures."

This should be obvious. The First Amendment reads: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." What part about "Congress shall make no law" don't the other justices understand? How can a Congressional ban on political speech, regardless of who pays for the printing press or ad space, especially when it's close to an election, make no "abridgment" upon the people's freedom of speech?

In Justice Stevens' worldview, groups have fewer rights than individuals. Government can pass laws affecting groups, but that same group does not enjoy the freedom to speak out against that action during an election campaign? That doesn’t make sense.

Steve Simpson, an attorney at the Institute for Justice, filed an amicus brief in the case and reacted to the ruling:

The growth of the computer generation and changing lifestyles among children are leading to a Vitamin D deficiency and a rise in cases of rickets, medical experts have warned. (TDT)

BOSTON - Shaving 3 grams off the daily salt intake of Americans could prevent up to 66,000 strokes, 99,000 heart attacks and 92,000 deaths in the United States, while saving $24 billion in health costs per year, researchers reported on Wednesday.

The benefit to the U.S. population would be comparable to cutting smoking by 50 percent, significantly lowering obesity rates and giving cholesterol drugs to virtually everyone to prevent heart attacks, said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo of the University of California, San Francisco and colleagues. (Reuters Life!)

FBN’s John Stossel and dietician Meme Roth break down the government battle over sodium intake.

LONDON - Scientists have linked a chemical used in consumer goods like non-stick pans and water-resistant fabrics with thyroid disease, raising questions about the potential health risks of exposure to the substance.

A study by British researchers found that people with high levels of the chemical perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) in their blood have higher rates of thyroid diseases - conditions which affect the body's metabolism.

PFOA is a common chemical, used in industrial and consumer products including non-stick cooking pans, stain-proof carpet coatings and waterproofing for fabrics.

The study, published in the Environmental Health Perspectives journal, did not establish whether PFOA was causing higher levels of thyroid disease.

The researchers said the link might be complex and indirect, and added that their work highlighted a need for further studies of the human health effects of low-level exposures to chemicals like PFOA. (Reuters)

Concern is heating up over whether common industrial chemicals found in plastics and other consumer goods could be harming our kids.

The Food and Drug Administration made headlines when it said last week that it would review the safety of Bisphenol A, an industrial chemical commonly used in plastic bottles and food containers. It is worried that the chemical might have subtle but deleterious effects on the neurological and reproductive development of kids. (Forbes)

Homoeopathy is a bizarre relic of the 18th century, a magical ritual cast over water or sugar pills, claiming to create medicines but failing to pass objective testing. In spite of this, a £40m homoeopathic industry prospers in Britain. You can buy homoeopathic vaccines, or go on a homoeopathic diet. Homoeopathic explorers travel to African clinics, claiming to be able to treat Aids. One site even advertises homoeopathic urine for your children, which is taking the, er, mickey.

Believers claim something that causes symptoms can cure them, as long as it's diluted so there's none of the original substance left. So caffeine could cure insomnia, if diluted to the extent that all you have left is water – the remedies contain no active ingredient. Supposedly the water keeps a "memory" of the caffeine that was in it. The memory is only activated when tapped in a certain way, allowing it to remember the active ingredient while conveniently forgetting the sheep that died upstream of the water supply.

These curious beliefs violate the laws of physics, and homoeopathy has never been convincingly shown to be effective. Some people do feel better after taking a homoeopathic remedy, but this is easily explained by the placebo effect, and the fact that most sick people get better anyway. (The Independent)

In what is being billed as "rationalism's Kool-Aid moment", a mass "overdose" is being planned next week in protest at the marketing of homoeopathic medicines.

More than 300 people who style themselves as "homoeopathy sceptics" will each swallow an entire bottle of homoeopathic pills in protest at the continued marketing of homoeopathic medicines by Boots, the high street chemist chain.

The protest is due to take place at 10.23am on Saturday 30 January. It is organised by the "10.23 Group", who take their name from Avogadro's constant, which they claim proves that homoeopathy cannot work. (The Independent)

(Jan. 21, 2010) — Obesity comes with plenty of health risks, but there's one that's perhaps not so well known: an increased risk of developing cancer, and especially certain types of cancer like liver cancer. Now, a group of researchers reporting in the January 22nd issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, have confirmed in mice that obesity does indeed act as a "bona fide tumor promoter." They also have good evidence to explain how that happens. (ScienceDaily)

ne out of every five U.S. teenagers has a cholesterol level that increases the risk of heart disease, federal health officials reported Thursday, providing striking new evidence that obesity is making more children prone to illnesses once primarily limited to adults.

A nationally representative survey of blood test results in American teenagers found that more than 20 percent of those ages 12 to 19 had at least one abnormal level of fat. The rate jumped to 43 percent among those adolescents who were obese.

Previous studies had indicated that unhealthy cholesterol levels, once a condition thought isolated to the middle-aged and elderly, were increasingly becoming a problem among the young, but the new data document the scope of the threat on a national level. (Washington Post)

WASHINGTON -- U.S. newborns are arriving a little smaller, says puzzling new Harvard research that can't explain why. Fatter mothers tend to produce heavier babies, and obesity is soaring. Yet the study of nearly 37 million births shows newborns were a bit lighter in 2005 than in 1990, ending a half-century of rising birth weights.

The change isn't big: The average birth weight of full-term babies is just under 7 1/2 pounds, a drop of about 1.8 ounces, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.

That's surprising considering doctor warnings about 9-pound, or bigger, babies. So the researchers double-checked.

The proportion born large for their gestational age dropped about 2 percent, which is good.

"What physicians are responding to is that the bigger babies are getting bigger," said lead researcher Dr. Emily Oken of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. Plus, "babies are still bigger than they were 30, 40, 50 years ago. It's just the trend seems to have flattened or reversed itself." (Associated Press)

The NHS is rationing obesity surgery to save money despite evidence it is the most effective treatment, surgeons warned. (TDT)

Access to weight-loss operations on the NHS is "inconsistent and unethical", the Royal College of Surgeons has said.

The RCS says some patients who meet the criteria for stomach surgery of England and Wales health watchdog NICE have to wait until they become even more obese.

It estimates the 4,300 operations such as gastric band fittings carried out by the NHS last year met only 2% of need. (BBC)

As thousands clamour for surgery for this risky condition there's little examination of its origins: instead, we'd rather blame the victims (The Guardian)

Scientists discover link between atmospheric ozone over US and pollution from burning fossil fuels during Asian economic boom

Ozone blowing over from Asia is raising background levels of a major ingredient of smog in the skies over western US states, according to a new study appearing in today's edition of the journal Nature.

The amounts are small and, so far, only found in a region of the atmosphere known as the free troposphere, at an altitude of two to five miles, but the development could complicate US efforts to control air pollution.

Though the levels are small, they have been steadily rising since 1995, and probably longer, said lead author Owen R Cooper, a research scientist at the University of Colorado attached to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.

"The important aspect of this study for North America is that we have a strong indication that baseline ozone is increasing," said Cooper. "We still don't know how much is coming down to the surface. If the surface ozone is increasing along with the free tropospheric ozone, that could make it more difficult for the US to meet its ozone air quality standard." (Associated Press)

A company belonging to the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser is opposing plans to create the world’s biggest marine reserve. His company holds a government contract to manage fishing in the area, which would be banned if the reserve were created.

The waters surrounding the Chagos Islands — or the British Indian Ocean Territory — are among the most pristine in the world. In November David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, announced a consultation on whether to ban all fishing in the area after a campaign by a coalition of conservationists and ecological scientists. A decision is expected in the spring.

The company owned by Professor John Beddington, the Chief Scientific Adviser, and his wife, argues there is no evidence that a ban would improve the environment and would in fact drive fishing boats into other areas of the Indian Ocean where there is less control over what they catch. (The Times)

The rivers of the South Wales coalfield once ran black with mining waste and were so polluted in places that no life could survive. But, in one of the most remarkable environmental turnarounds Britain has ever seen, a 20-year effort to clean them up has paid off – salmon have returned to all of them.

Watercourses such as the Ebbw, the Rhymney, the Taff and the Rhondda, whose names for many people are still redolent of a blighted landscape of pitheads and slag heaps, now have salmon running up them from the sea to spawn. (The Independent)

The traditional parks model of closing off areas and keeping people out simply may not work in Africa, where human demands on the land are great. Instead, what’s needed is an approach that finds ways to enable people and animals to co-exist. (Fred Pearce, e360)

OSLO/LONDON - The United Nations insisted Wednesday that it should keep guiding talks on a new climate pact despite near-failure at a summit last month when a few countries agreed a low-ambition "Copenhagen Accord."

Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N.'s Climate Change Secretariat, said negotiations in 2010 would be based on U.N. talks launched in 2007 about how to extend the existing Kyoto Protocol and on involving all nations in action.

The three-page Copenhagen Accord, championed by big emitters including the United States and China, could however be a valuable spur toward agreement at the next U.N. meeting in Mexico in November, de Boer said. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON — Just a month after world leaders fashioned a tentative and nonbinding agreement at the climate change summit meeting in Copenhagen, the deal already appears at risk of coming undone, the top United Nations climate official warned on Wednesday.

Facing a Jan. 31 deadline, major countries have yet to submit their plans for reducing emissions of climate-altering gases, one of the major provisions of the agreement, according to Yvo de Boer, the Dutch official who is executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which organized the climate meeting.

Fewer than two dozen countries have even submitted letters saying they agree to the terms of the three-page accord. And there has been virtually no progress on spelling out the terms of nearly $30 billion in short-term financial assistance promised to those countries expected to be hardest hit by climate change. Still unresolved are such basic questions as who will donate how much, where the money will go and who will oversee the spending. (NYT)

The UN has dropped the 31 January deadline by which time all countries were expected to officially state their emission reduction targets or list the actions they planned to take to counter climate change.

Yvo de Boer, UN climate change chief, today changed the original date set at last month's fractious Copenhagen climate summit, saying that it was now a "soft" deadline, which countries could sign up to when they chose. "I do not expect everyone to meet the deadline. Countries are not being asked if they want to adhere… but to indicate if they want to be associated [with the Copenhagen accord].

"I see the accord as a living document that tracks actions that countries want to take," he told journalists in Bonn. (The Guardian)

EVER SINCE his inauguration a year ago, President Obama has tried to motivate Congress with a strong ultimatum: Pass climate-change legislation, or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will use its authority under the Clean Air Act to curb carbon emissions without your input.

Instead of accepting this as a prod toward useful action, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) apparently wants to disarm the administration. This week she is set to offer a measure, perhaps as an amendment to a bill raising the federal debt ceiling, that would, one way or another, strip the EPA of its power to regulate carbon emissions as pollutants, perhaps for a year, perhaps forever. We aren't fans of the EPA-only route. The country would be better off if Congress established market-based, economy-wide emissions curbs. But hobbling the agency isn't the right course, either. (Washington Post)

Yesterday, as if he knew the results of the Massachusetts Senate race, retiring Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) ruled out the possibility of the Senate considering a cap-and-trade bill. The reluctance of the Senate to take up a comprehensive global warming bill coincides with increasing public skepticism. Despite these obvious warning signs that global warming policies are quickly becoming a third rail in American politics, intelligent insiders suggest the President will continue to emphasize cap-and-trade and its job creation ability in his State of the Union Address next week.

Of course, readers of the Foundry know that cap-and-trade does not create jobs – it destroys them. Heritage found that the House-passed cap-and-trade bill would result net job losses approaching 1.9 million in 2012 and 2.5 million by 2035.

An already tough climb to pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation in the Senate just got a bit tougher with Republican Scott Brown's upset victory yesterday in Massachusetts.

Brown's win takes a guaranteed "yes" vote off the board for advocates of setting up a mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions. It also could serve as a warning shot for moderate senators nervous about voting for a sweeping new government program headed into their own tough re-election campaigns.

At his victory rally in Boston, Brown warned that his election puts Democrats on notice that they may pay a political price come November if they do not take a second look as they work through the major pieces of President Obama's legislative agenda.

"When there's trouble in Massachusetts, rest assured there's trouble everywhere and they know it," Brown said.

Climate bill advocates yesterday noted that the Massachusetts special election never ventured into a debate on global warming policy. And given the likely Democratic defections, they added that the issue always required bipartisan outreach to cross the 60-vote threshold, unlike the health care bill that was a central battleground in the campaign to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D).

"The political atmosphere doesn't reduce the urgency of dealing with climate and energy, and the surest way to increase the anger at Washington is to duck the issues that matter in peoples' lives," said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in an e-mailed statement to E&E. ( ClimateWire)

The Environmental Protection Agency has signaled that it might not wait for Congress and instead move ahead with its own regulations in the coming months. (Industry Weekly)

As Democrats on Capitol Hill and the White House contemplated the fallout of the special election results in Massachusetts on Tuesday, proponents of major climate change legislation said they would persist in their efforts to win passage of a bill this year, despite a hostile political environment.

The effort to enact comprehensive energy and climate change legislation was in trouble even before the Republican, Scott Brown, won the Massachusetts special election for Senate.

Senate leaders had put off until spring any consideration of a measure capping greenhouse gas emissions similar to that passed by the House last June, because Senate Democrats were deeply divided on it.

White House officials continued to insist that a cap-and-trade measure to limit carbon dioxide emissions coupled with incentives for clean energy development remained a top priority of President Obama. (NYT)

Temperature trends, Climategate, Copenhagen, IPCC falsification, and now the Massachusetts Revolution–cap-and-trade is dead, the political pundits say. So much for the inevitability argument that I heard from my colleagues during the Enron years (“come on Rob, get out in front of it and shape it!”), as well as the science-is-settled that had been the Word.

But what about a scaled back energy/climate bill with the key provision of a federal renewables mandate? Has the ‘Massachusetts Revolution’ killed that too?

We will soon find out. But one thing can be certain: Americans from coast-to-coast and border-to-border are going to look more closely at wind power, and I do not believe they are going to like what they see. (Enron, anyone?) Witness the growing complaints from the grass roots–including in-the-trenches real environmentalists–that industrial wind is intrusive, costly, and unreliable.

As an indication of the grass roots revolution against wind, consider the summary I received today from Glenn Schleede on the activities of a group call the Industrial Wind Action. Schleede, a longtime voice in the wilderness on the problems of wind, said this in his note.

Perhaps you, too, have noticed that the negative environmental, energy and economic impacts of wind energy are totally ignored by the people on the payroll of the US DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (DOE-EERE), the DOE’s National “Laboratories” (particularly, NREL and LBNL), EPA, and Interior.

Since these folks are totally dependent on taxpayer dollars for their jobs, one might think they would be somewhat objective and responsive to the public interest — but perhaps they think that they have a higher calling.

Is the Obama Administration watching and listening to this “Environmental Tea Party”? They had better. Energy is the master resource and second only to health care as a percentage of the national economy. The masses want and expect affordable, reliable energy for their homes, businesses, and vehicles. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he plans to meet with U.S. Chamber of Commerce officials later on Wednesday to discuss energy and climate change as Graham continues efforts to craft a bipartisan plan.

Graham – who is working with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) – wants to merge expanded oil and nuclear power production with some kind of limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

He argues that only a mix of energy production and greenhouse gas measures can achieve 60 votes. (E² Wire)

With the election of Scott Brown and Senator Byron Dorgan’s recent comment that “it is unlikely that the Senate will turn next to a very complicated and very controversial subject of cap-and-trade, climate legislation,” the prospects for CO2 legislation are looking quite grim. But before American energy consumers can break out the champagne glasses, there are still economically threatening policies coming from the administration and Congress.

Just because carbon dioxide reductions won’t be passed by elected officials doesn’t mean unelected ones can’t do it. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is moving forward with its own set of global warming regulations. The EPA’s endangerment finding, which took effect last week, gives the EPA authority under the Clean Air Act (CAA) to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs).

BRUSSELS, Jan 20, 2010 - Barely a month after world leaders gathering in Copenhagen reached a weak accord on climate change, the European Union's top polluters are fighting a fresh battle to dissuade policy-makers from taking more robust action.

The European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC), one of the largest corporate interest groups in Brussels, has begun 2010 by urging the key EU institutions to refrain from setting more ambitious targets for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases than those already agreed. (IPS)

PARIS - France plans to tax big polluters on their carbon dioxide emissions until 2013, when a separate EU-wide scheme will make such firms pay for emissions permits, Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said on Wednesday.

In a shock move, France's Constitutional Court rejected an original version of the government's carbon tax late last year on the grounds that it exempted too many big firms and ran counter to the spirit of equality in the French tax system.

Borloo told reporters the planned compromise would be to tax companies temporarily in an attempt to avoid double-charging them or worsening their position in the global marketplace.

The government also said in a statement it would introduce measures to protect the competitiveness of certain sectors, and consult companies and environmental groups on the implementation of the tax before its introduction.

The Constitutional Court ruling represented a blow to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had billed the new tax as an important weapon in the fight against climate change.

The ruling will also hit state coffers, with the economy ministry saying it will lose up to 1.5 billion euros ($2.13 billion) in projected tax revenues in 2010, putting pressure on Borloo to come up with a new version rapidly. (Reuters)

Hot on the heels of Climategate — the leaking of thousands of emails and computer files that show many of the world’s leading climate scientists fudging the results of their global warming research and contriving to keep skeptics from being published in academic journals — comes what could be called Glaciergate. (National Post )

In separate statements of regret and remorse, the IPCC and World Wildlife Fund have confessed to their parts in getting unsupported statements about disappearing glaciers into the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report.

The IPCC refer in their press release to "poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers" to which one might be tempted to add the words "not credible in the first place".

This is an interesting admission, particularly for me, having just written a book that touches on several issues of failings in IPCC procedures and unbalanced statements finding their way into IPCC reports.

Oops! On the same lines, Roger Pielke Jnr has posted a particularly egregious example of IPCC authors simply making things up. When a reviewer thought that Pielke Jnr's views should be sought on a question of hurricane damage in the USA, instead of actually asking him, the chapter authors simply inserted a statement as follows:

What makes their error even worse was that Pielke had previously made it clear that he believed no such thing.

One of the world's largest tiger populations could disappear by the end of this century as rising sea levels caused by climate change destroy their habitat along the coast of Bangladesh in an area known as the Sundarbans, according to a new World Wildlife Fund-led study published in the journal "Climatic Change." (USA Today)

A good way to avoid giving succor to skeptics is to distinguish advice from advocacy, and to have in place transparent and credible guidelines for managing conflicts of interest. The IPCC does neither. (Roger Pielke Jr)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change belatedly admits to a grossly irresponsible bit of scaremongering, but when will it admit to the suspect role played in it by its deeply compromised chairman?

That, of course, was nonsense, and last November the Indian Government issued a report showing the Himalayan glaciers were melting much, much slower than the IPCC claimed, and there was no sign that any melting was unusual or linked to global warming..

Yet at first the IPCC thought it could defend its absurd claim with some of its old pre-Climategate shut-ups:

But in fact, as The Times then reported, the IPCC claim was based on pie in sky:

Note the IPCC’s instinctive reaction to criticism: to deny, deny, deny and then abuse. But the IPCC now admits its claim that the Himalayan glaciers will vanish by 2035 is indeed false:

The fact that this mad claim got into the IPCC report in the first place, almost cut and pasted from a report by the WWF green group (no peer review demanded from the IPCC this time), already says plenty. Here’s that 2005 WW report:

But let’s now hear from the IPCC an explanation for Pachauri’s initial refusal to even contemplate that this inherently ridiculous claim was wrong. That, I think, is the most telling part of this farce. (Andrew Bolt)

Excerpts from an interview with R K Pachauri, chairman of UN’s Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change on the controversies surrounding the Nobel peace prize winning scientific panel: (Times of India)

WASHINGTON -- Five glaring errors were discovered in one paragraph of the world's most authoritative report on global warming, forcing the Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists who wrote it to apologize and promise to be more careful. ( Associated Press)

Quirin Schiermeier has an article in Nature on the uncertainties in climate science, which will interest many readers. It tends to reiterate lines of argument that are familiar to anyone who has followed the pronouncements of the Hockey Team in recent years. This is hardly surprising when one looks at who he chose to interview - Gavin Schmidt, Jonathan Overpeck, Gabriele Hegerl, Susan Solomon, Hans von Storch, and an economist called Leonard Smith.

There are many points of interest. For example, Schiermeier claims that the divergence problem is restricted to "a few northern hemisphere sites", directly contradicting Keith Briffa who has referred to it as "a widespread problem" in the NH. Schiermeier also tries to defend the Nature "trick", although perhaps without quite the certainty that Jones' defenders have had in the past. "It could have been done better", seems to be the current preferred line for those who would try to justify hiding things from politicians. (Bishop Hill)

People are victims of the weather. But if “the weather” is not “the climate“, then people are not victims of “the climate“. Therefore: why should anybody care about “the climate“?

Alas, thanks to the staunch defence of AGW no matter what, it is about almost nothing. I have already written how very little there is to show for AGW (most if not all issues are firmly expected for sometimes in the future). And now, whatever AGW has become, it is turning into a ghost of itself in front of our very eyes, because of insurmountable problems of time (and space). ( Maurizio Morabito, OmniClimate)

Yes, the climate is indeed changing. The intellectual climate, that is, even at the CSIRO.

In fact, the political pressure until now has been entirely the other way. Here is the Tasmanian Planning Commission - a government instrumentality - just last year, claiming what the CSIRO now says may not be true, after all:

Global warming has many good and bad effects, but one that is becoming especially clear is that it makes us all weenies when it comes to colder weather.

You might have noticed that this winter is cold. OK. But it's not nearly as nasty as, say, the late 1970s, which brought the three coldest consecutive U.S. winters in the entire record (which started in 1895). The last winter of any consequence was 2000-01, but that was only the 26th coldest. Where this one will wind up no one can say, but I would be surprised if it even gets to the bottom 20. ( Patrick J. Michaels, USA Today)

PARIS - One hundred years ago, the river Seine burst its banks and filled the elegant boulevards of Paris with torrents of muddy water, forcing thousands of inhabitants out of their homes and cutting off power for months.

The same could happen again. Only this time the consequences will be 10 times worse, experts say.

"The flood is unavoidable," said Louis Hubert, director for the Paris region at France's ministry of ecology and sustainable development.

"What we can simply say is that we are almost certain to see new considerable floods, but we don't know when."

Paris' centennial flood of 1910 -- a flood which has a 1 in 100 chance of occurring every year -- affected 200,000 people in 1910 and cost 1.5 billion euros ($2.15 billion) in today's money, said Hubert.

A similar flood these days would affect around a million inhabitants and cost 15 billion euros, he added. On top of this, another two to three million people are likely to see their electricity cut off for several days, he added. (Reuters)

“RAY TAYLOR: Good morning Professor Pielke and thank you for agreeing to this interview for the European Union OurClimate portal.

What would your advice be to EU and African countries for the Copenhagen climate talks?

PROFESSOR ROGER PIELKE Sr: I recommend that the vulnerabilities, from a bottom-up, natural resources* perspective be identified, rather than starting with the inappropriate (and ineffective) narrow emphasis on carbon emissions. The vulnerability framework is more inclusive and will permit more effective policymaking.

There also needs to a recognition that climate change is much more than global warming. Even without global warming, humans are altering the climate system significantly.”

Read the rest of the interview here. As a clear message from the Haitian earthquake, there is a need to assess vulnerabilities of society to the entire spectrum of natural and human caused risks, and to develop policies to reduce these threats. The available financial and other resources need to be optimized in order to most effectively minimize these risks.

A focus on funding CO2 reductions which result in a reduction of funds for other actions, such as developing more earthquake resistant urban areas, is not a wise expenditure of financial resources.

Interested readers can view more of my perspective (and that of other AGU Fellows) in our article

Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union. (Climate Science)

What more could a skeptic ask? We’d organized our first ever skeptics social event, to celebrate that last month Australia missed an emissionary bullet. Forty people met, honored to be able to talk to the only man in Australian parliament with a PhD in science–Dennis Jensen. There were toasts all round for his insight and courage in speaking out years ago, when hardly anyone else did.

Then in one of those few moments in life when the truly unlikely happens, Christopher Monckton appeared. Having just flown from the UK to Sydney, arriving only this morning on the other side of the country, he and his wife Juliet had flown to Perth for a meeting tomorrow (an extra 4000 km each way). There was no other night this could have happened. The crowd were delighted.

I highly recommend connecting skeptics together. One of the rewards of working hard to expose the way science has been exploited is that I meet great people: independent thinkers, conscientious people, passionate and dedicated souls.

That’s one thing I’ll miss when every man and his pet fish knows how exaggerated the claims are for AGW–it won’t work as a filter to find the gems. More » (Jo Nova)

Abstract: Earth's Greenhouse Effect is constant and does not rise with human CO2 emissions. That is the main point of Dr Miskolczi's results, called to the attention of the EPA in the 'Endangerment Finding' evaluation process. The EPA could not disprove this or Miskolczi’s results. (Dr. Miklos Zagoni and Dianna C. Cotter, Examiner)

The United States may be experiencing one of the coldest winters in decades, but things continue to heat up in the Southern Hemisphere. Science has obtained exclusive data from NASA that indicates that 2009 was the hottest year on record south of the Equator. The find adds to multiple lines of evidence showing that the 2000s were the warmest decade in the modern instrumental record.

Southern Hemisphere temperatures can serve as a trailing indicator of global warming, says NASA mathematician Reto Ruedy of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, given that part of the globe is mostly water, which warms more slowly and with less variability than land. Ruedy says 2009 temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere were 0.49°C warmer than the period between 1951 and 1980, with an error of +/- 0.05°C.

That makes 2009 the warmest year on record in that hemisphere. That’s significant because the second-warmest year, 1998, saw the most severe recorded instance in the 20th century of El Niño, a cyclic warming event in the tropical Pacific. During El Niño events, heat is redistributed from deep water to the surface, which raises ocean temperatures and has widespread climatic effects. But last year was an El Niño year of medium strength, which Ruedy says might mean that the warmer temperatures also show global, long-term warming as well as the regional trend.

The data come a month after announcements by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and by the World Meterological Organization that the decade of the 2000s was warmer than the 1990s. (NOAA estimates that the decade was 0.54°C warmer than the 20th century average. The 1990s, by comparison, was 0.36°C warmer by their measure.)

Meanwhile, NOAA is expected to announce possible record highs in the tropics when it releases its final report on 2009 temperatures on Friday. “This is one of the coldest winters we’ve experienced in a while up here in the northern latitudes,” says Derek Arndt of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina. “But we’re piling up a lot of heat in the tropics.”

However, their claim fails the reality check when even a cursory examination of the data (the “multiple lines of evidence”) is made.

John Christy has also provided the Southern Hemisphere lower tropospheric MSU derived temperature anomalies and 2010 was the 4th warmest in the period 1979-2009: The other years and their anomalies are 1998 (+0.41); 2002 (+0.30); 2005 (+0.24) and 2009 (+0.21). The anomaly of 1998 was almost twice the anomaly of 2009 in the Southern Hemisphere. The RSS MSU anomalies are also in close agreement with the UAH MSU data that John has provided.

The Science article perpetuates the focus on an inappropriately narrow assessment of global (and hemispheric) warming. This is misleading policymakers, and, with respect to Science magazine itself, is confirming that it is not presenting a balanced view of climate science. (Climate Science)

Of the many pillars that support the alarmist view of global warming is that droughts will increase in many parts of the world. This prediction is fairly straightforward, for if temperatures increase, potential evapotranspiration (ETo) should increase as well. If precipitation stays the same in the future and ETo increases with higher temperatures, the area would see a reduction in soil moisture and a trend toward drought. Of course should precipitation be reduced while ETo rates increase, the trend toward drought could be severe. In the ultimate alarmist view, ETo increase and extreme precipitation increases, and the area would then see an increase in both floods and droughts. We have heard it all before and we have covered these topics in many essays, but the beat goes on and on. (WCR)

When you gas up your car, do you think that you're doing something evil? After all, I'm told that burning gasoline helps "murder the Earth," not to mention fills the coffers of terrorists and despots.

So we must move away from oil. Al Gore says, "The future of human civilization is at stake."

But I need the gas. I need to drive. I need electricity to light my home. What can I do? Is there an alternative? There is, I'm told.

"What if we could use fuels that are not expensive, don't cause pollution and are abundantly available right here at home? We have such fuels," Gore says.

"In fact, we can start right now using solar power, wind power and geothermal power to make electricity for our homes and businesses."

In 10 years, he says, we can get all our electricity from these carbon-free sources.

Global warming hysteria is just one reason Gore and others push for alternative fuels. We're also told that America's goal should be energy independence. Today, we do buy oil from some very nasty people: dictators in Venezuela and the Middle East. What if they cut us off? That fear is one reason almost every president and presidential candidate -- from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama -- promised to end our "intolerable" reliance on oil imports.

When Nixon was president, we imported 25 percent of our oil. Since then, our "leaders" have wasted billions on subsidies for alternative energy. The result? Today we import nearly 70 percent of our oil.

Terrible as that sounds, I say, "So what?" Interdependence is just fine! And journalist Robert Bryce, author of "Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusion of Energy Independence," agrees. He'll be my guest on "Stossel" [tonight] (Fox Business Network, 8 Eastern, and again Friday at 10).

Bryce points out that while Saudi Arabia and Iran are oil exporters, they are gasoline importers. "If even Saudi Arabia and Iran are energy interdependent, why wouldn't we be?" he says. "Energy interdependence" is just a way of saying "division of labor" and "comparative advantage." (John Stossel, Townhall)

The 2010 Auto Show held in Detroit recently concluded after generating photo ops for our politicians and much speculation about the future of the US auto industry. [Read More] (G. Allen Brooks, Energy Tribune)

TORONTO - The provincial government is on the verge of signing a multi-billion-dollar deal with the South Korean firm Samsung Group to develop green energy in the province.

Samsung will set up production facilities to manufacture wind turbines and other renewable energy equipment. The industrial giant would also develop large swathes of wind and solar farms.

The value of Samsung's investment is estimated at between $5 billion and $7 billion.

The deal would see Samsung receive preferential treatment from the province, in the form of priority access to the energy grid and higher-than-market rates for the renewable energy it creates as part of Ontario's new feed-in-tariff (FIT) program. ( Lee Greenberg , The Ottawa Citizen)

Britain’s forest cover could double under a plan to map every underused piece of land for potential conversion to plantations to feed wood and crop-burning power stations.

Millions of fast-growing trees, such as eucalyptus and willow, could be planted on moorland, hillsides, former industrial areas and even land owned by conservation bodies such as the National Trust .

The trees would be turned into pellets and used to generate electricity in the rapidly growing number of biomass power stations. These stations are due to play a key role in reducing Britain’s emissions of carbon dioxide because trees absorb it as they grow. The new forests would be cut down and replanted in a continuous cycle. (The Times)

Within a span of just a few hours this week, three seemingly unrelated events all, by happenstance, made headlines in America: the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s inauguration, a historically earthshaking election in Massachusetts, and the release of The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom. But perhaps there are no coincidences in life.

What narrative arc ties these headlines together? Our Index revealed today that the United States is no longer as economically free as it once was (and, in fact, dropped out of the “free” category altogether); President Obama spent his first year continuing – and exacerbating – dangerous economic policies that predated his swearing-in; and Scott Brown seized an unlikely victory in a true-blue state by campaigning on fighting the President’s disastrous economic policies. What’s more, he made it known to all that he would cast the 41st vote to be a firewall of conservative sanity to President Obama’s liberal agenda.

SAN FRANCISCO - The venerable Sierra Club on Wednesday appointed a 38-year-old executive director with a history of getting big companies to sign onto environmental efforts and a focus on climate change.

California-based Sierra Club is one of the biggest U.S. environmental groups and has taken on global warming as a top issue, while its new executive director, Michael Brune, is from the edgier, more activist-oriented Rainforest Action Network. (Reuters)

CHURCHVILLE, VA—The earthquake in Haiti has caused more than 100,000 deaths and destroyed the homes of 1.5 million people. It’s a devastating blow to Haiti—but we don’t know how to prevent earthquakes. All we can do is help Haiti rebuild.

On the other hand, we do know how to prevent 500,000 kids from going blind every year—and even dying—due to severe Vitamin A deficiency (VAD). But we’re not preventing the blindness or the deaths. Instead, we’re accepting the tragedy of millions of blind kids, plus the deaths of hundreds of thousands of pregnant women who die from needless birth complications, also due to VAD. The Vitamin A problem is far bigger than the Haitian earthquake, and it keeps on going, year after year.

We started trying to cure Vitamin A deficiency 20 years ago, after a Swiss government researcher bioengineered “golden rice.” The new rice contained a gene from the daffodil that codes for beta-carotene. The human body can then make Vitamin A out of the beta carotene. Kids in rich countries get most of their Vitamin A from meat, milk and eggs, but poor-country kids live mainly on such plant foods as rice, cassava and sweet potatoes. None provide much bio-available Vitamin A.

But Greenpeace and its eco-allies claimed—without evidence—that such genetic engineering is a “danger to the planet.”

Even after Syngenta developed a corn-based “golden rice II” with vastly more beta carotene—and offered it free to the Third World—Greenpeace still said no.

Only now, after 20 years of blockade and delay, are we finally seeing the dramatic benefits of growing Vitamin A crops in the local fields. In the Mukono District of Uganda, they’re growing bio-fortified sweet potatoes. Here, about 25 percent of the children used to be wan and sickly, prone to severe diarrhea, pneumonia, eye inflammations and blindness. Most of the kids are now healthy and vigorous. Pregnant women are thriving, along with their babies.

The difference? Orange-colored sweet potatoes, supplied by Uganda’s national agricultural research organization. They’re rich in beta-carotene, and they produce high yields because they resist local crop diseases. The germ plasm for the new sweet potatoes originated at HarvestPlus—Norman Borlaug’s international farm research organization that saved a billion people from starving in the Green Revolution of the 1960s.

“A danger to the planet,” of course is what Greenpeace has called virtually every recent advance in global food production. At the same time, they claim the earth cannot sustainably feed the people already here. The European Union, to its shame, has backed up Greenpeace with threats to boycott the farm exports of any country which allows biotech plantings. In India, rice farmers protested plantings of the new rice, for fear the EU’s ban on biotech foods would block their exports of high-value basmati rice.

HarvestPlus finally decided to breed around the Greenpeace blockade. It took more than a decade of laborious test plots and back-crossing, but now cross-bred beta-carotene is being planted in farmers’ fields—and the Mukono mothers say their kids have become remarkably healthier. All it cost was 20 more years, 10 million more blindings, and millions of maternal deaths.

HarvestPlus notes that much of the Third World’s population is caught in a health-poverty trap. Blind and ill family members and orphans need extra care from the able-bodied family members or from societies resources. They never get ahead. Instead, struggling people and their large families keep slashing-and-burning more subsistence crops and hunting endangered animals with cheap AK-47s.

Not even Greenpeace should want a poverty-stricken world full of blind children. (Dennis T. Avery, CGFI)

According to a report recently submitted to Congress by the Congressional Research Service over 1,000 regulations written by federal agencies over the past decade may be invalid. The reason: copies of the rules were never given to congressional oversight committees as required by law. As a result, pending enforcement cases and other actions under these rules could be thrown out of court. Continue reading... (The Foundry)

NEW YORK/LONDON - GlaxoSmithKline Plc hopes to seek approval by 2012 for its experimental malaria vaccine and said on Wednesday it would seek only a small profit and ensure it is widely available in hard-hit countries.

Chief Executive Andrew Witty also said the company would give away access to a stock of 13,500 potential malaria treatments for others to test and develop further if they show promise against the disease.

Glaxo will likely derive a "small 5 percent return" on the vaccine, Witty said, enough to help encourage other drugmakers to continue their own research against diseases that remain big killers in least developed countries.

"(Its) sales in dollars will be a very small number," he told reporters ahead of a planned speech on Wednesday to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

"We must ... ensure that we do not do anything which would discourage other companies from entering into this field," he said, adding that Glaxo's return would be reinvested into research on medicines for diseases in poor countries.

"If we set a precedent of not-for-profit (pricing), we could discourage others from doing research into malaria or other neglected tropical diseases." (Reuters)

WASHINGTON - A vaccine additive made by Novartis and used in its European influenza shots can boost the body's immune response to a wide range of viruses, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

Tests in the laboratory suggested the so-called adjuvant, called MF59, helped the immune system counteract not only the H5N1 virus in the current experimental bird flu vaccine, but mutant viruses as well.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration study, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, suggests using vaccines with adjuvants may protect patients against even more types of flu viruses than they are being vaccinated against.

"MF59 adjuvant improves the immune response to a H5N1 vaccine by inducing qualitative and quantitative expansion of the antibody repertoires with protective potential," Hana Golding of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and colleagues wrote.

Adjuvants, often as simple as an oil and water mixture, broaden the body's response to a vaccine, reducing the amount of active ingredient called antigen needed. (Reuters)

ZURICH - Switzerland's medical regulator recommended patients with serious autoimmune diseases should not use an H1N1 flu vaccine from Novartis, saying there were no studies assessing the inoculation in that segment of the population.

Swissmedic said on Wednesday it could not be ruled out that either or both of the adjuvant -- which can enhance the immune response -- and the antigen, or less active ingredient, could lead to an intensifying of autoimmune diseases.

Autoimmune diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis, are caused by an overly active immune system attacking its own body, targeting substances which are normally present.

Novartis was not immediately available to comment. (Reuters)

LONDON - A new fast-acting disinfectant that is effective against bacteria, viruses and other germs could help stop the spread of deadly infections in hospitals, German scientists said on Wednesday.

Researchers from the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin said they had developed a fast-acting, practical formula which would kill germs on surgical instruments without damaging them through corrosion.

Disinfectants are the first line of defence against the spread of hospital-acquired infections and effective cleaning of surgical instruments is vital to beating them.

The German formula works against a wide range of germs, including some that survive ordinary disinfectants, such as Mycobacterium avium bacteria which can cause a tuberculosis-type illness and enteroviruses that may cause polio.

Drug-resistant bacteria, the so-called "superbugs", are a growing problem in hospitals worldwide and poor hygiene among staff is often blamed for the spread of such infections.

They kill about 25,000 people a year in Europe and about 19,000 in the United States.

In previous studies, the German team found a simple alkaline detergent that could eradicate prions -- disease-causing proteins that are particularly hard to get rid of because they can become fixed onto surfaces through the use of some conventional disinfectants. (Reuters)

CHICAGO - U.S. researchers have discovered a distinct pattern of brain activity in people with post traumatic stress disorder that may give doctors an objective way to test for it, they said on Wednesday.

Using a brain imaging device called magnetoencephalography, which measures how the brain processes information, a team at the University of Minnesota and the Minneapolis VA Medical Center found differences in brain activity between people with PTSD and healthy people.

Having a test for PTSD could speed treatment and simplify insurance coverage, said Dr. Apostolos Georgopoulos of the University of Minnesota, whose study appears in the Journal of Neural Engineering.

PTSD, an anxiety disorder sometimes caused by wartime trauma, can cause flashbacks, nightmares, anger or edginess.

It currently is considered a "soft disorder," Georgopoulos said in a telephone interview.

"The thinking is people can suffer from it, but there is no biological marker." (Reuters)

LONDON - A "silent pandemic" of chronic disease is creeping up on poor countries and will force pharmaceutical firms to take a more tiered approach to pricing some of their most lucrative medicines.

Drugs for diseases which were previously dominant only in the rich, well-fed world, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer, are increasingly in demand in poorer nations in Asia and Africa, whose populations are now living longer.

But the price of many of these medicines and their unsuitability for emerging markets are high barriers to access.

And yet unless those hurdles are overcome, experts say, chronic diseases could swamp developing health systems and kill many millions -- and the hopes of drugmakers like GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Sanofi-Aventis of supplying vast new markets in emerging economies will struggle to come to fruition.

Discounting prices for poorer countries, a move already made by some big drug firms, is a start. But pharmaceutical bosses will also be under pressure to join patent pools to promote downward price pressure on drugs for major chronic diseases by increasing the number of producers, and may face legal challenges to force them to allow in more generic competition. (Reuters)

NEW YORK - If you suffer from ringing in the ears, imbibing caffeine won't make it worse, and giving up caffeinated beverages won't make it better, new research from the UK shows.

There's a widespread belief that kicking caffeine can help ease ringing in the ears, also called tinnitus. In fact, doctors may recommend caffeine restriction for patients with tinnitus, despite the lack of scientific evidence for any benefit.

Given that the symptoms of caffeine withdrawal, including headache, nausea, and irritability, are quite similar to those that accompany tinnitus, "it stood to reason that it might actually make things worse, at least in the short term," said Dr. Lindsay St. Claire of the Centre for Hearing and Balance Studies at the University of Bristol.

To investigate, St. Claire and her colleagues recruited 66 tinnitus sufferers who consumed at least 150 milligrams of caffeine daily, or the equivalent of about three 12-ounce servings of soda. Coffee can contain anywhere from around 50 to 160 milligrams caffeine per 5-ounce serving, while tea's caffeine content can range from 25 to 110 milligrams per 5-ounce serving.

Over a 30-day period, half of the study participants kept up their normal caffeine consumption, and then went through a "phased withdrawal" in which the researchers gradually reduced the caffeine content of the beverages study participants drank. (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK - There is no reason why pregnant women at low risk for complications during delivery should be denied fluids and food during labor, a new Cochrane research review concludes.

"Women should be free to eat and drink in labour, or not, as they wish," the authors of the review wrote in the Cochrane Library, a publication of the Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research.

Dr. Jennifer Milosavljevic, a specialist in obstetrics and gynecology at Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, who was not involved in the Cochrane Review, agrees that pregnant women should be allowed to eat and/or drink during labor. (Reuters Health)

LONDON - Greek researchers called on Wednesday for more safety studies into electronic cigarettes, saying scientific knowledge of them was "very limited".

Electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, were first made in China and are sold mostly on the Internet.

They are battery-powered devices which emit a "puff" or fine mist of nicotine into the lungs and are intended to replace normal cigarettes and help smokers quit.

The products are at the centre of a legal battle in the United States between manufacturers and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which regulates drugs and which wants to stop e-cigarettes from being imported into the U.S.

The FDA, which conducted research into e-cigarettes, has expressed concerns about their safety, and teams from Greece and New Zealand have also carried out studies into them.

But interpretations of the three reports vary, with the New Zealand study saying e-cigarettes should be recommended because they are safer than tobacco cigarettes, and the Greek study taking a broadly neutral stance. (Reuters)

Many Americans have made a resolution to lose weight in the new year. That’s admirable. What’s not so admirable is the recent barrage of efforts advanced by government officials to “help” them slim down by taxing or even outlawing foods deemed unhealthy.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom attracted national attention in late 2009 with his proposal for a tax on sugary beverages. It was his second attempt to levy a soda tax to fight obesity. Other big cities have mounted similar efforts. Most recently, New York City public health officials generated nationwide disgust with their graphic advertisements of a man guzzling liquefied fat as part of their anti-soda campaign.

Government efforts like these may be well-intentioned, but they’ve done nothing to curb the rise of obesity in this country. (Sally C. Pipes, The Examiner)

Weighing up the risks and benefits of surgery is a difficult but important task for any patient. New research into the outcomes of gastric bypass surgery for very overweight people may make that decision easier, by showing the likely increase in length of life for people of different ages, weights, and sex. (BMJ Group)

Airlines are waging a war on flab. Two international airlines are proposing to force overweight passengers to buy a second seat if they are unable to squeeze into a single one.

From next month Air France and KLM will make its larger passengers pay 75 per cent of the cost of a second seat as well as the full price for the first. (SMH)

PARIS - Air France KLM denied media reports on Wednesday that it planned an extra charge for overweight passengers if they were unable to fit into a single seat.

Instead, the national carrier said that from Feb 1. overweight passengers who had freely chosen to buy an extra seat for comfort would get their money back on flights that were not fully booked.

"Contrary to reports in the press this morning, Air France is not planning to force corpulent passengers to pay for a second seat," the statement said. (Reuters)

An international conservation watchdog has ruled that polar bears aren't endangered enough to need a global ban on trade that would place their hides in the same category as elephant ivory.

The ruling will make it tough for U.S. attempts to use the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species to end Canada's commercial polar bear hunt and will be welcomed by Inuit hunters who depend on the industry for millions of dollars a year.

"Trade is not a significant threat to the species," concludes Traffic International in its recommendation released Wednesday.

The average annual export of 300 bear skins a year from Canada isn't big enough to threaten overall numbers, said Traffic.

Traffic, an international wildlife trade monitoring network that reports to CITES, looked at the issue of polar bear populations after the U.S. said it will ask the 175 countries that have signed the treaty to move polar bears to its highest level of protection. That level would effectively end all international trade in bear hides or other parts and cripple commercial hunting.

However, Traffic concluded that while the great white predators may be slowly declining, numbers aren't falling fast enough to require a trade ban. (Canadian Press)

(SolveClimate) - Climate change activists say 2010 is starting out with an uphill battle.

In 2009, a new president moved into the White House, Congress inched toward passing a bill to cap U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and the Copenhagen climate summit waited as a hopeful coda to a year of climate action.

It ended up being a year of mixed results, however, and the prospects for climate action this year appear equally mixed.

Congress gets back into full swing this week, and several senators have made assurances that climate change will be one of the first issues they discuss.

For Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), that means a new attempt to block greenhouse gas regulation by the EPA. Comprehensive climate change legislation, called for by President Obama called a year ago, may find itself just one more fish in a rather full legislative pond this year. Health care and financial reform are expected to be the main priorities for Congress this year, with issues like immigration policy and lowering greenhouse gas emissions fighting for the remaining attention.

"I think there is still definitely a shot for getting a climate measure this year," Manika Roy, vice president of federal government outreach at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, told SolveClimate.

"One essential ingredient is the president's commitment to this issue. If the president says an energy bill is one of his top two or three priorities this year, then there is a good chance," he said.

But the discussion on Capitol Hill will not just be about how best to fight climate change.

In December, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared that greenhouse gases were a danger to public health and welfare. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON, Jan 19 - Republican Scott Brown's upset victory on Tuesday in the special U.S. Senate race has dealt a further blow to Democrats' drive to pass a climate control bill in 2010.

Last June, the House of Representatives narrowly passed a cap and trade bill that would require reductions in industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases over the next four decades. It also would allow pollution permits to be traded in a new regulated market.

But the global warming bill has languished in the Senate, where some members have been trying to find a compromise. Once Brown takes office, Democrats will hold 59 of the 100 votes in the Senate and the Republicans 41. The bill needs 60 votes to overcome procedural hurdles that could block passage.

Here's a look at possible impacts of the Massachusetts election on the climate bill: (Reuters)

The era of massive global climate meetings may finally be ending. Thank goodness.

The collapse of the Copenhagen climate change conference in December killed the Kyoto Protocol—and not a moment too soon. (Ronald Bailey, Reason)

Probably wishful thinking, unfortunately: Obama faces emissions U-turn with new Congress challenge - Senator Lisa Murkowski is expected to put forward a proposal that would seek to prevent federal regulation of carbon emissions

The Obama administration faces a challenge in Congress that could strip it of its powers to cut greenhouse gas emissions, barely a month after committing to action at the Copenhagen climate change summit.

An Alaska Republican, Senator Lisa Murkowski, is expected to put forward a proposal for a vote as early as tomorrow that would seek to prevent the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

A show of support for Murkowski's proposal would be a personal humiliation for Obama who told the Copenhagen summit that America was committed to action on climate change. It also threatens to remove a fall-back position if Congress fails to pass a climate change law. (The Guardian)

Senator Lisa Murkowski’s home state of Alaska is ever so slowly melting away, courtesy of a warming planet. Yet few elected officials seem more determined than she to throw sand in the Obama administration’s efforts to do something about climate change.

As part of an agreement that allowed the Senate to get out of town before Christmas, Democratic leaders gave Ms. Murkowski and several other Republicans the chance to offer amendments to a must-pass bill lifting the debt ceiling. Voting on that bill begins this week. Although she has not showed her hand, Ms. Murkowski has been considering various proposals related to climate change — all mischievous.

One would block for one year any effort by the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. This would prevent the administration from finalizing its new and much-needed standards for cars and light trucks and prevent it from regulating greenhouse gases from stationary sources.

Ms. Murkowski also is mulling a “resolution of disapproval” that would ask the Senate to overturn the E.P.A.’s recent “endangerment finding” that carbon dioxide and other global warming gases threaten human health and the environment. This finding flowed from a 2007 Supreme Court decision and is an essential precondition to any regulation governing greenhouse gases. Rescinding the finding would repudiate years of work by America’s scientists and public health experts.

Ms. Murkowski says she’s concerned about global warming but worries even more about what she fears would be a bureaucratic nightmare if the E.P.A. were allowed to regulate greenhouse gases. She says she would prefer a broad legislative solution. So would President Obama. But unlike Ms. Murkowski, he would not unilaterally disarm the E.P.A. before Congress has passed a bill.

Judging by the latest and daffiest idea to waft from Ms. Murkowski’s office, she may not want a bill at all. Last fall, the Senate environment committee approved a cap-and-trade scheme that seeks to limit greenhouse gas emissions by putting a price on them. The Democratic leadership’s plan is to combine the bill with other energy-related measures to broaden the base of support; by itself, it cannot pass.

Knowing that the bill is not ripe, Ms. Murkowski may bring it up for a vote anyway as an amendment to the debt bill. Why? To shoot it down. The tactic would give us a “barometric reading” of where the Senate stands on cap-and-trade, one Murkowski staffer said recently. What it really gives us is a reading on how little the senator — or for that matter, her party — has to offer. (NYT)

Dr. Rob Bradley, CEO of the Institute for Energy Research, documents in Political Capitalism how fraud and corruption at Enron were the inevitable consequence of a business strategy emphasizing the political pursuit of market-rigging regulations as a strategy to reap windfall profits and grow market share.

Enron, for example, was a key lobbyist for the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty calculated to increase demand for Enron’s services as a natural gas distributor, renewable energy seller, and cap-and-trade broker.

Today at MasterResource, the free-market energy blog, Bradley reveals that Enron also spearheaded the push for renewable energy mandates that made Texas the leading windpower state in the country.

Bradley worked at Enron for 16 years and frequently clashed with senior management over its infatuation with get-rich-quick green energy schemes. “Oh how sad I am…

But carbon levy 'could come later' says candidate for future EU climate commissioner role. From BusinessGreen, part of the Guardian Environment Network (Tom Young for BusinessGreen)

It is fascinating to see how a good theory can produce a bad policy. All economists agree: the best way to fight against a negative externality (a cost imposed on others by a polluter who does not pay for this cost) is to tax it. CO2 emissions are an externality, let us tax them. At 32 euros per ton (17 at the start), all reductions that cost less than 32 euros per tonne, and only those, will be implemented, and that is enough to reach our goals and achieve them at a lower cost. A price signal is better than a quantity signal. This theory, well-argued in the Rocard report, is a classic and solid one. Yet the carbon tax which it yields has been rejected by almost all Frenchmen, from farmers to members of the Constitutional Council. What went wrong ? (GWPF)

The international community must quickly agree to specific rates and timetables to reduce greenhouse emissions if the world is to be spared possible catastrophic consequences, the Minister of Environment and Water told the World Future Energy Summit yesterday on the opening session of its second day.

“Wasting time does not serve the interests of anyone,” Dr Rashid bin Fahad said, introducing the debate, “What now after Copenhagen?” (The National)

After the disappointment of Copenhagen, many climate activists feel wholly dispirited about the world’s ability to prevent catastrophic global warming. But all is not yet lost, as one of Britain’s key climate experts made clear in a debate in the House of Lords on Friday.

Lord Stern of Brentford, author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming, admitted the outcome of the Copenhagen climate change talks was “disappointing” and “chaotic” , but said despite this there had been significant progress.

Lord Stern: Huge opportunities to tackle climate change

In particular Lord Stern, who is also chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, highlighted the agreement that temperatures must not be allowed to rise by more than 2˚C.

While it was true that governments had failed to agree explicit overall emissions targets, these rose naturally from the 2˚C limit, he said.

“We have to get specific on what the 2˚C means. It means at least 50% cuts for the world as a whole from 1990 to 2050, going well below 20 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2050,” he said. (Bristol 24-7)

It's not quite up there with Princess Diana shaking hands with an HIV sufferer, in 1987, when Aids was still a subject of panic.

But the picture of David Cameron surrounded by huskies as the frozen wastes of the Arctic stretch out behind him qualifies, like that haunting Diana picture, as an iconic image: it unforgettably represents the moment when an attitude changed.

You can call it staged, you can call it a stunt, but there is no doubt that this image marks a wholly new psychological departure, and that it would have occurred to none of Mr Cameron's three failed predecessors as Tory leader, William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard, to mark a shift in emphasis in Conservative policy by going to northern Norway to tickle a dog.

Embracing the issue of climate change – by visiting the Arctic where it is most visible – was an essential part of the first half of the Cameron project, the second half of which, of course, is to be elected to power. The first half was to become electable, and we are starting to forget that for all of the Hague, Duncan Smith and Howard tenures, from 1997 to 2005, that's what the Tory party wasn't. The Tories were seen by much of the electorate as "the nasty party" – Tory frontbencher Theresa May said so herself. And thus the first half of the Cameron project was to "decontaminate the brand". (The Independent)

Ten Conservative election candidates were sent on a green “re-education” day by Steve Hilton, the Tories’ head of strategy.

The move came amid evidence that party leader David Cameron’s enthusiasm for a climate-change agenda is not shared by many Conservatives.

The scientific event last week in Whitehall, organised by a think-tank called Green Alliance, featured eminent speakers such as Sir Brian Hoskins, a climate-change expert from Imperial College London, and David Kennedy, chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change.

Environmental groups believe they have support from only a small caucus within the Conservative party that includes Mr Hilton; Greg Clark, shadow energy secretary; and Greg Barker, shadow climate-change minister.

A survey of 144 prospective parliamentary candidates showed that climate change was rated their lowest priority out of 19 issues. Their main focus was on reducing the deficit and cutting red tape, according to the poll by ConservativeHome, the activist website.

Mr Cameron’s climate-change policies have also caused disgruntlement on the back benches. (Financial Times)

The next generation of Conservative MPs do not share David Cameron's enthusiasm for making climate change a priority for a Conservative government, according to a survey to be published tomorrow.

The poll of 141 Tory candidates in winnable seats found that "reducing Britain's carbon footprint" was rated the lowest of 19 possible priorities for a Cameron government. The finding is embarrassing for the Tory leader, whose strong personal commitment to the environment has become a symbol of his drive to modernise the party. (The Independent)

DAVID Cameron was given a stark warning yesterday that his enthusiasm for green policies is unlikely to be shared by the coming influx of Tory MPs.

A poll of the 240 Conservative candidates best placed to win seats at the election found most ranked tackling climate change as their lowest priority.

Reducing Britain’s soaring deficit was rated the most important issue facing the country.

The poll, published by the conservativehome website for Tory supporters, will come as a blow to the party leader. Mr Cameron has repeatedly campaigned on the slogan “vote blue, go green” and was famously pictured with huskies in the Arctic to highlight the threat of global warming.

He is under increasing pressure from within party ranks to scrap plans for swingeing green taxes. (Express)

TONY Abbott will rule out the use of prime agricultural land for carbon sinks when he announces a new policy on climate change in a move aimed at avoiding a damaging split with the Nationals.

The new Coalition policy, expected to be released ahead of next month's parliamentary showdown with Kevin Rudd on the emissions trading scheme, is expected to hold back on declaring an emissions-reduction target before the Prime Minister names his final position. The policy will also include incentives to boost soil carbon levels and revegetate land.

"We're about improving farm productivity, strong support for soil carbon, revegetation - and we're not going to provide incentives for foresting over prime agricultural land," opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt told The Australian yesterday.

Tree planting on prime agricultural land has been a long-running source of strife between the Coalition partners with the Nationals implacably opposed to encouraging the practice because of its effect on the cost of farmland and its potential effects on agricultural production. (The Australian)

BRUSSELS bureaucrats gave climate change groups more than £1.5million of taxpayers’ money last year to promote the theory that human activity is causing global warming, it emerged yesterday.

The European Commission handed out huge cash sums to Climate Action Network, Friends of the Earth and the World Wildlife Fund. In one case, British and other European taxpayers paid out more than £700,000 to Friends of the Earth Europe – more than half the pressure group’s 2009 budget.

The payouts came to light after questions by UKIP Euro MP Godfrey Bloom. He said the cash was perpetuating unfounded claims about global warming.

Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas insisted that the groups’ aims and objectives were in tune with EU policy. (Daily Express)

Mon, 18 Jan 2010

Researchers in the School of Environmental Sciences are playing an important role in leading a new €7 million EU-wide Network of Excellence, which aims to provide a focus for international research on the use of evidence, science and assessment tools in policy-making.

Professor Andrew Jordan and Dr John Turnpenny are leading a critical area of work on understanding the needs of those producing and using policy analysis tools such as cost benefit analysis and computer models.

The aim of the LIAISE (Linking Impact Assessment Instruments to Sustainability Expertise) network is to build bridges between those who design such tools and those who actually use or (as is often the case) do not use them to make policy.

The network, which is funded until 2014, brings together 15 European partner institutions, many of whom have defined the research agenda in relation to these issues over the last ten years.

“There are many tools available to support decision-making, but these are only intermittently employed by policy makers” said Dr Turnpenny. “LIAISE will help us understand why this is the case, and help improve their design and use.”

LIAISE’s centrepiece will be a shared toolbox, simultaneously accessible to and used by policy makers and researchers. LIAISE will also develop a shared research agenda and support capacity-building and training to ensure its research results are fully applied. (University of East Anglia)

ON the first day of the Copenhagan climate change conference last month, two semi-retired septuagenarian engineers sat down to lunch with their wives on a beautiful Noosa day and thought the environment looked pretty good.

John Smeed and Case Smit had always been sceptical about whether the case for global climate change was as dire as had been presented, but on this day they could not help but contrast the beauty of the sun "shining on the sparkling waters of the Noosa River" with the supposed coming climate apocalypse.

"It just struck us that that whole process going on over there in Copenhagan was just insane and likely to damage the world quite a bit," Mr Smeed said.

"One of us brought up the Edmund Burke quote about evil triumphing by good men doing nothing, so we decided to do something about it. So we just got on the phone and rang Lord Monckton to come to Australia on a speaking tour. It was done as simply as that." ( The Australian)

IS it too much to ask for a measured climate change debate in 2010? Looking back at 2009, it's hard to think of a more frustrating debate than the one about anthropogenic global warming.

One side says the science is settled and will not countenance dissent. Within that group sit the alarmists who preach death and destruction, those who define humanity as the problem and those who have long harboured an ideological grudge against Western progress. Those on the other side of the debate say man-made global warming is all bunkum. Though they describe themselves as sceptics, for many of them the science is equally settled: in their favour.

And in between is a far larger group of people, those who are open-minded and genuinely sceptical, who are trying to understand the debate as best they can. Yet frustration only grows at the extremism on both sides. (Janet Albrechtsen, The Australian)

Scientists at the helm of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have spent weeks on the defensive after e-mails uncovered by hackers revealed private messages in which they criticized papers relevant to their 2007 report. That behavior has led to accusations of bias, or worse, and undermined the credibility of the climate research community. Now the IPCC leadership is preparing its response, with steps that may include additional training for the authors of the next report, due out in 2013, and a review of the incident by an outside organization. At least one key scientist is unhappy with those options.

In December, the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, said that the discussions in the e-mails raised "a serious issue and we will look into it in detail." Atmospheric chemist Pauline Midgley, a support scientist on staff for the 2013 IPCC report, says that officials asked themselves three questions: Were there problems with the IPCC's procedures for 2007? Were those procedures sufficient? Are changes needed in preparing the 2013 version?

IPCC never conducted a formal investigation of the issue, but the scientists who run the organization and their support staff members have looked over the messages, and found no evidence that the authors were lax in their review of the papers. Still, says Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science, a co-chair of one of the 2013 IPCC reports’ three working groups, it hasn't been "a particularly good period."

Still, he says: “So far in our exploration of this, and it is far from complete, this has been a stress test of IPCC procedures, but the IPCC procedures have held up extremely well." In December, 28 Republican members of Congress wrote to the United Nations, questioning whether IPCC could conduct a truly "independent investigation" of its authors’ behavior.

The panel’s 10-member executive team, led by Pachauri, is now considering a series of steps to further address the issue. One concept is new training for chapter authors. Field says that training would help them deal with what he expects will be "intense pressure" by outside critics. Midgley says that training could also help authors "to deal with papers contrary to the consensus view" on particular issues. (Science Insider)

http://roadtoadoption.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/2435863597_2ebcbcc894.jpg?w=370&h=277

Fetching water in Ethiopia

Jonathan Leake and Chris Hastings of the Times of London this weekend spotlighted an IPCC error of Himalayan proportions, namely, that, contrary to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, the Himalayan glaciers will not have melted away by 2035. This error, they attributed to a series of blunders, bad quality control and poor scholarship.

I want to spotlight another error in the IPCC report. This is an error, based not on blunders or poor scholarship but on selective reporting of results, where one side of the story is highlighted but the other side is buried in silence. In other words, it’s a sin of omission, that is, it results, literally, from being economical with the truth. It succeeds in conveying an erroneous impression of the issue — similar to what “hide the decline” did successfully (until Climategate opened and let the sunshine in).

I have written about this previously at WUWT in a post, How the IPCC Portrayed a Net Positive Impact of Climate Change as a Negative, and in a peer reviewed article on global warming and public health. Both pieces show how the IPCC Working Group II’s Summary for Policy Makers (SPM), which deals with the impacts, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change, hid the projected decline in the future global population at risk of water shortage due to climate change. Not surprisingly, news outlets (e.g., here and here) routinely report that climate change could increase the population at risk of water shortage, despite the fact that studies show exactly the opposite regarding the net global population at risk of water shortage. (WUWT)

Glenn McGregor is a climatologist who is best known to sceptics from his appearances in the Climategate emails where Hockey Team members explain that he is willing to delay sceptic papers and pick "suitable reviewers" for warmist ones, in order to make life difficult for those who might question the global warming hypothesis.

McGregor made a brief appearance in the New Zealand Herald over the weekend, where he is quoted in an article about Kiwis' lack of confidence in global warming science:

Professor McGregor has been caught red-handed and nobody is going to be fooled by an argument that they are too stupid to understand.

Syed Hasnain (pictured), the scientist at the centre of the growing controversy over melting Himalayan glaciers (not), is now working for Dr R K Pachauri's TERI as head of the institute glaciology team, funded by a generous grant from a US charity, researching the effects of the retreat.

Highlighted in The Sunday Times yesterday, Dr Hasnain was the scientist responsible for claiming that the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035. This was picked up by the New Scientist and then by a 2005 WWF report, and subsequently published as a definitive claim in the IPCC's 2007 fourth assessment report, masterminded by Dr R K Pachauri.

But, while Dr Hasnain, who was then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, has admitted that the New Scientist report was based on "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research, he is now a direct beneficiary of that speculation. (EUReferendum)

The man blamed so far for the false alarm about the Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035 surfaced on Tuesday to say he never made such an exact assertion and, worse, he had been misquoted.

“On the basis of our research in 1999 I must have said that glaciers in the Central and Eastern Himalayas will lose mass during the next 40/ 50 years at their present rate of decline,” Hasnain told Hindustan Times.

But a date was put to this “approximation”, Hasnain said, by a journalist, Fred Pearce, who quoted him in an article in New Scientist, a respected London-based magazine.

Was Hasnain aware that he had been misquoted? If yes, did he seek a clarification?

Yes, he was aware of the misreporting. And no, he didn’t seek a clarification. “It was not a scientific journal, just a news report. Therefore, I did not ask for a clarification.”

The date of 2035 mentioned in the New Scientist was picked up by R.K. Pachauri-led Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to issue an alarm that set off international concern.

Global warming was killing the Himalayan glaciers, it was stated.

They were all wrong.

Hasnain said he was misquoted.

New Scientist blamed Hasnain. And IPCC, which went on to win a Nobel Prize with former US vice-president Al Gore, blamed New Scientist.

Hasnain says he was using a commonly used scientific tool of “approximation” — projections based on certain indicators — and that he was completely misread. (Hindustan Times)

The Sunday Times and The Australian both picked up the scandal of the IPCC claims that the Himalayan glaciers might melt by 2035. The claim turned out to be based only on a World Wildlife Foundation report, which in turn was based on a New Scientist article from 1999. The Australian story today was headline front page news: UN’s Blunder on Glaciers Exposed.

A much-publicized estimate from a United Nations panel about the rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers from climate change is coming under fire as a gross exaggeration.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in 2007 — the same year it shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore — that it was “very likely” that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 if current warming trends continued.

That date has been much quoted and a cause for enormous consternation, since hundreds of millions of people in Asia rely on ice and snow melt from these glaciers for their water supply. (NYT)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for two decades the most important guide for the global community to the causes and consequences of the phenomenon, is facing a series of challenge over its practices, both from within and without.

The latest comes as basic flaws have been exposed in a panel finding on thawing Asian glaciers that, while buried in the back matter of the panel’s 2007 report on impacts of warming, had become a prime talking point among campaigners calling for action to curb emissions of greenhouse gases.

...

The situation is particularly embarrassing for the climate panel because its chairman, Rajendra K. Pachauri, had strongly criticized the Indian government for issuing a report last November challenging the idea that the glaciers feeding its rivers and farmers are in meltdown mode. At the time, Dr. Pachauri dismissed that report as lacking peer review and scientific citations.

Now, it’s evident that one of the panel’s own conclusions on glaciers appears to have precisely the same level of authority. (Andy Revkin. Dearth)

A warning that most of the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035 owing to climate change is likely to be retracted after the United Nations body that issued it admitted to a series of scientific blunders.

Two years ago, the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) headed by India's Rajendra Pachauri, issued a benchmark report that claimed to have incorporated the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming.

A central claim was that world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035. (PTI)

The IPCC's error with respect to Himalayan glaciers has all of a sudden gained enormous traction. Here is a quick round up of the latest.

Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC, says that the Panel is revisiting the erroneous claims on glaciers:

NEW DELHI: The furore over the validity of data used by UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has taken some of the sheen off the Nobel prize-winning institution's reputation.

A day after it emerged that IPCC's dire prediction that climate change would melt most Himalyan glaciers by 2035 was based on mere "speculation", environment minister Jairam Ramesh slammed the processes of the celebrated body saying "due diligence had not been followed by the Nobel peace prize winning body".

"The health of glaciers is a cause of grave concern but the IPCC's alarmist position that they would melt by 2035 was not based on an iota of scientific evidence," the environment minister said.

Ramesh recalled how IPCC chief R K Pachauri had scornfully dismissed doubts raised by a government agency about the veracity of the UN body's sensational projection about melting of glaciers. "In fact, we had issued a report by scientist V K Raina that the glaciers have not retreated abnormally. At the time, we were dismissed, saying it was based on voodoo science. But the new report has clearly vindicated our position," he said.

This may not be the first time that climate science relating to India has been found to be fallacious or incorrect. However, revelation that the data on glacial melt in Himalayas was unverified has dented the image of the IPCC -- which has set the agenda for climate change talks. It has given a handle to climate sceptics who have long accused the IPCC of being biased. (Times of India)

PARIS - A top scientist said Monday he had warned in 2006 that a prediction of catastrophic loss of Himalayan glaciers, published months later by the UN's Nobel-winning climate panel, was badly wrong.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report said in 2007 it was "very likely" that the glaciers, which supply water to more than a billion people across Asia, would vanish by 2035 if global warming trends continued.

"This number is not just a little bit wrong, but far out of any order of magnitude," said Georg Kaser, an expert in tropical glaciology at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

"It is so wrong that it is not even worth discussing," he told AFP in an interview. (Agence France-Presse)

The fallout from the IPCC Himalayan glacier situation gets stranger and stranger. Now an IPCC lead author has stepped forward claiming that the error has been known by the IPCC all along. From Agence France-Presse:

Climate change sceptics may seize upon WWF's unfortunate mistake over Himalayan glaciers, but this doesn't change the truth about global warming (Bob Ward, The Guardian)

This is a big post in two parts. The first is our take on the current story about the Himalayan glaciers. The second is a similar case of non-scientific research being passed off as ’science’.

A story in the Sunday Times demonstrates the murky nature of the process by which ‘scientific facts’ become established in the climate debate.

The No Scientist has, in recent years, become something of an organ of the environmental movement, abandoning cool, rational, empirical scientific detachment for high moral tones, shrill alarmist stories, and a rather one-sided treatment of both the politics and science of the climate debate. No surprises here – we’ve covered the NS’s appalling commentary in many previous posts. What is interesting is how the partiality of science journalists exists as part of its own positive-feedback mechanism, such that oversight turns into ‘scientific fact’. So how does a journalist’s credulousness actually produce ‘consensus science’? (Climate Resistance)

The IPCC treatment of Himalayan glaciers and its chairman's conflicts of interest are related. The points and time line below are as I understand them and are informed by reporting by Richard North.

1. In 2007 the IPCC issues its Fourth Assessment Report which contains the false claim that the Himalayan glaciers are expected to disappear by 2035.

2. The basis of that statement was a speculative comment made to a reporter by Syed Hasnain in 1999, who was then (and after) a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

3. Following the publication of the IPCC report, and the widespread media coverage of the false claim about Himalayan glaciers, Dr. Hasnain joins TERI as a Senior Fellow, where Dr. Pachauri is the director.

4. Drs. Pachauri and Hasnain together seek to raise fund for TERI for work on Himalayan glaciers, justified by the work of the IPCC, according to Dr. Pachauri just last week:

Of course, neither Dr. Pachauri nor Dr. Hasnain ever said anything about the error when it was receiving worldwide attention (as being true) in 2007 and 2008, nor did they raise any issues with the IPCC citing non-peer reviewed work (which is a systemic problem). They did however use the IPCC and its false claims as justification in support of fund raising for their own home institution. At no point was any of this disclosed.

If the above facts and time line is correct (and I welcome any corrects to details that I may have in error), then what we have here is a classic and unambiguous case of financial conflict of interest. IPCC Chairman Pachauri was making public comments on a dispute involving factual claims by the IPCC at the same time that he was negotiating for funding to his home institution justified by those very same claims. If instead of climate science we were instead discussing scientific advisors on drug safety and funding from a pharmaceutical company to the advisory committee chair the conflict would be obvious.

Climate science desperately needs to clean up its act. (Roger Pielke Jr)

The Himalayan glaciers will still be around in 2035, contrary to oft-repeated alarmist claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Whether the IPCC’s head, Rajendra Pachauri, whose credibility is melting faster than the proverbial snowball in Hades, will make it to his next paycheque is another matter.

With Climategate still simmering and the collapse of Copenhagen reverberating, a fresh storm has blown up over the discovery that the IPCC’s claim that Himalayan glaciers were about to disappear is entirely bogus.

“If the present rate [of melting] continues,” said the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report in 2007, “the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high.”

There was no significant questioning of this claim until late last year, when the Indian government published a discussion paper that pointed out that there was in fact no sign of any “abnormal” retreat in the Himalayan glaciers. India’s environment minister Jairam Ramesh accused the IPCC of being “alarmist.”

Ooh! Bad timing! Eat less beef, save the earth - Eat none and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 18% - Grain fed to U.S. livestock could feed 840 million people on plant-based diet

Originally, this column was going to be about the environmental benefits of vegetarianism. Then I realized that was missing the point. Not everyone is going to become a vegetarian, but cutting back on meat consumption is a very realistic goal. And it can have definite environmental benefits. The call to eat less meat for environmental reasons has come from some pretty high places.

In September 2008, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said people should start with one meat-free day a week, and increase from there. (Thomas Gounley, GoO)

News that Himalayan glaciers are not receding as quickly as claimed shows we need new ways to assess the evidence. (Rob Lyons, sp!ked)

Benny Peiser wrote the text below for the Daily Mail on January 18 2010 as reported on his e-mail list CCNet (to subscribe – link to this site).

“The IPCC review process has been shown on numerous occasions to lack transparency and due diligence. Its work is controlled by a tightly knit group of individuals who are completely convinced that they are right. As a result, conflicting data and evidence, even if published in peer reviewed journals, are regularly ignored, while exaggerated claims, even if contentious or not peer-reviewed, are often highlighted in IPCC reports. Not surprisingly, the IPCC has lost a lot of credibility in recent years. It is also losing the trust of more and more governments who are no longer following their advice – as the Copenhagen summit showed.’

To provide documentation on the failure of the 2007 WG1 IPCC report to provide due diligence in their climate assessment, I provided a list of peer reviewed papers in the appendix to my report

Specifically, in Chapter 3 of the 2007 WG1 IPCC report which is titled “Observations: Surface and Atmospheric Climate Change”, the Coordinating Lead Authors were Kevin E. Trenberth (USA) and Philip D. Jones (UK), both of whom are, of course, involved in the CRU e-mails (e.g. see The Crutape Letters ). The Coordinating Lead Authors decided what was to be included in these chapters and what to exclude.

and in Chapter 8 of the 2007 WG1 IPCC report which is titled “Climate Models and Their Evaluation”, the Coordinating Lead Authors were David A. Randall (USA) and Richard A. Wood (UK).

The Coordinating Lead Authors in both chapters excluded available peer- reviewed papers which provide scientific evidence which conflicts with their conclusions in their chapters.

As the fall out from the CRU e-mails widens to include the IPCC reports, there is a need to assess and quantify the extent that these Coordinating Lead Authors (and those of other IPCC Chapters), excluded conflicting peer reviewed papers. It is clear that in Chapters 3 and 8, this inappropriate behavior occurred with the result that a balanced scientific assessment of climate observations and models was not achieved. (Climate Science)

Newly released FOIA’d emails from Hansen and GISS staffers show disagreement over 1998-1934 U.S. temperature ranking.

Now thanks to the efforts of Richard Henry Lee, a searchable PDF document of those files has been set up.

To reduce WUWT's server load here's a Scribd flash version you can browse, search and/or download:

With double-digit unemployment in a jobless recovery, half-a-million stimulus dollars have saved a ClimateGate scientist whose work could lead to economic disaster. To save this job, we'd lose millions of others.

As we've gone from jobs saved or created to jobs funded in ZIP codes and congressional districts that don't exist except in galaxies far, far away, many interesting nuggets have been mined from the government's recovery.gov, which tracks the administration's lack of progress.

It's one thing to fail to create real jobs. It is quite another to fund the jobs of people who would put millions of Americans out of work. This is what the administration has done by awarding $541,184 in economic stimulus funds to Penn State University to save, recovery.gov says, 1.62 jobs so that professor Michael Mann can continue his tree-ring circus fraudulently advancing the myth of man-made global warming.

Mann and Penn State received the money shortly before the unearthing of e-mails from Britain's Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia revealed Mann as a participant in a massive campaign of manipulation, suppression and destruction of climate data to advance the bogus claims of the warm-mongers.

"It's outrageous that economic stimulus money is being used to support research conducted by Michael Mann at the very same time he's under investigation by Penn State and is one of the key figures in the international Climate-gate scandal," says Tom Borelli, director of the Free Enterprise Project for the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank. "Penn State should immediately return these funds to the U.S. Treasury."

We agree. Stimulus funds should go to entrepreneurs and other job creators, not those whose research — and we use the word loosely — has been the basis for international redistribution-of-wealth schemes such as Kyoto, Copenhagen and our own job-killing versions of cap-and-trade, Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer. (IBD)

Yet another survey has come out showing that New Zealanders don't believe Global Warming is real - in fact half of New Zealanders.

A Herald survey has found that although United Nations experts have grown steadily more certain about climate change, the public is not so sure.

Almost one in five of 2296 respondents said the concept was a giant con, and a further 28 per cent said global warming had not been conclusively proved

This survey follows on from a WeatherWatch.co.nz poll which asked whether or not you were seriously worried about global warming - 800 people took part in the poll with 74% answering "no" they were not seriously worried.

To me this is yet more proof that politics have seriously harmed the voices of the world's scientific community. (Philip Duncan, NZ Herald)

Early on Friday morning, a thought struck: has anybody yet been stupid enough to connect the earthquake that has ravaged Haiti with the alleged phenomenon of global warming?

It sounds like a long shot, given that tectonic plate movements have nothing to do with the Earth’s surface temperature. If they were in fact related, recent heatwaves in Sydney and Melbourne would have had many of us buried in post-quake rubble, just like Haiti’s tragic thousands. But you’d be surprised at what people sometimes associate with global warming or climate change.

A clarification from Danny Glover’s representatives, following those global-warming-caused-the-Haitian-earthquake comments:

Apparently climate change doesn’t cause earthquakes. The effects of climate change are only “making countries like Haiti more and more vulnerable” to what they do. (Tim Blair)

People have been brainwashed by the climate hysteria for years. So it's not shocking that many of them began to uncritically repeat many of the misconceptions. Nevertheless, I am always surprised by the lack of independent rational thinking - even when it comes to the people who are expected to be sensible.

For example, let's ask what is the temperature change - the change of the global mean temperature - that would threaten the existence of life as we know it. By this statement, I mean an existential threat for humans and/or most of the species we know today.

I find it completely obvious that something like 13 °C of warming (10 times the change expected in the next 100 years, even if we extrapolate the recent 30 years) would not constitute such a threat. The most important picture in this discussion is the following map of the annual mean temperatures:

Click to zoom in.

God, how embarrassing. The Met Office is on the verge of being dumped by the BBC, because it keeps getting forecasts – especially long-term ones – wrong. Worse, its place as the supplier of TV forecasts to the nation may be usurped by Metra, a New Zealand operation.

For a quasi-governmental organisation (it's part of the Ministry of Defence) that was founded 150 years as a service to seamen and which has supplied BBC with forecasts since 1920, this is a matter of head-hanging shame. If the UK's national weather service is disowned by the UK's national public broadcaster, where on earth can it go? Who's going to trust it, after its own family has rejected it? And does this mean that the BBC may dispense with all Met Office productions and dump the – gulp – Shipping Forecast as well? (The Independent)

UPTON, NY – Planet Earth has warmed much less than expected during the industrial era based on current best estimates of Earth’s “climate sensitivity”—the amount of global temperature increase expected in response to a given rise in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO₂). In a study to be published in the Journal of Climate, a publication of the American Meteorological Society (the early online release of the paper is available starting 19 January 2010; the link is given below), Stephen Schwartz, of Brookhaven National Laboratory, and colleagues examine the reasons for this discrepancy.

According to current best estimates of climate sensitivity, the amount of CO₂ and other heat-trapping gases added to Earth’s atmosphere since humanity began burning fossil fuels on a significant scale during the industrial period would be expected to result in a mean global temperature rise of 3.8°F—well more than the 1.4°F increase that has been observed for this time span. Schwartz’s analysis attributes the reasons for this discrepancy to a possible mix of two major factors: 1) Earth’s climate may be less sensitive to rising greenhouse gases than currently assumed and/or 2) reflection of sunlight by haze particles in the atmosphere may be offsetting some of the expected warming.

“Because of present uncertainties in climate sensitivity and the enhanced reflectivity of haze particles,” said Schwartz, “it is impossible to accurately assign weights to the relative contributions of these two factors. This has major implications for understanding of Earth’s climate and how the world will meet its future energy needs.”

A third possible reason for the lower-than-expected increase of Earth’s temperature over the industrial period is the slow response of temperature to the warming influence of heat-trapping gases. “This is much like the lag time you experience when heating a pot of water on a stove,” said Schwartz. Based on calculations using measurements of the increase in ocean heat content over the past fifty years, however, this present study found the role of so-called thermal lag to be minor. (Brookhaven National Laboratory)

According to UAH, January 2010 will almost certainly be their warmest January on record, and by its anomaly (which is likely to exceed 0.70 °C), it will be one of the 4 warmest months.

Recent NASA MODIS pictures of the United Kingdom look like an ice age.

I was thinking how it was possible that such an unusually cool January is so warm according to this global methodology. Snow was almost everywhere on our hemisphere, wasn't it? Well, it may actually be a reason.

First, I thought that a problem could exist with the satellite measurements of the solar microwave radiation reflected from the snow. But the solar microwave and even infrared radiation is actually negligible. (The Reference Frame)

“……..‘researchers have an obligation to honor the trust that their colleagues place in them’. Science is a cumulative enterprise in which new research builds on previous results. If research results are inaccurate, other researchers will waste time and resources trying to replicate or extend those results. Irresponsible actions can impede an entire field of research or send it in a wrong direction, and progress in that field may slow. Imbedded in this trust is a responsibility of researchers to mentor the next generation who will build their work on the current research discoveries.” (page 2)

“Research is based on the same ethical values that apply in everyday life, including honesty, fairness, objectivity, openness, trustworthiness, and respect for others.” (page 3)

“Researchers who manipulate their data in ways that deceive others, even if the manipulation seems insignificant at the time, are violating both the basic values and widely accepted professional standards of science. Researchers draw conclusions based on their observations of nature. If data are altered to present a case that is stronger than the data warrant, researchers fail to fulfill all three of the obligations described at the beginning of this guide. They mislead their colleagues and potentially impede progress in their field or research. They undermine their own authority and trustworthiness as researchers. And they introduce information into the scientific record that could cause harm to the broader society, as when the dangers of a medical treatment are understated.”

Climate scientists, and the public and policymakers, would benefit by rigorously following the guidelines in this report. (Climate Science)

Back in September, this long study was based on the old trick of using climate models and “subtracting” the natural causes to see what’s left. It’s also known as “Argument from Ignorance”. Since we can’t predict the climate five years in advance, obviously there are factors or weightings in those climate models that aren’t right. Ruling out “what we know” doesn’t prove anything at all, except that there is a lot we don’t know.

When David Stockwell analysed climate models and Australian droughts, he found that random numbers were more likely to predict droughts successfully. The models failed validation tests. In the end, instead of using climate models, we’re better off with last week’s Lotto numbers. It’s cheaper too.

Irvine, Calif., Jan. 19, 2010 – Dispelling the notion that urban "green" spaces help counteract greenhouse gas emissions, new research has found – in Southern California at least – that total emissions would be lower if lawns did not exist.

Turfgrass lawns help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and store it as organic carbon in soil, making them important "carbon sinks." However, greenhouse gas emissions from fertilizer production, mowing, leaf blowing and other lawn management practices are four times greater than the amount of carbon stored by ornamental grass in parks, a UC Irvine study shows. These emissions include nitrous oxide released from soil after fertilization. Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas that's 300 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, the Earth's most problematic climate warmer.

"Lawns look great – they're nice and green and healthy, and they're photosynthesizing a lot of organic carbon. But the carbon-storing benefits of lawns are counteracted by fuel consumption," said Amy Townsend-Small, Earth system science postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the study, forthcoming in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The research results are important to greenhouse gas legislation being negotiated. "We need this kind of carbon accounting to help reduce global warming," Townsend-Small said. "The current trend is to count the carbon sinks and forget about the greenhouse gas emissions, but it clearly isn't enough."

Turfgrass is increasingly widespread in urban areas and covers 1.9 percent of land in the continental U.S., making it the most common irrigated crop. (University of California - Irvine)

Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week:
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 794 individual scientists from 473 separate research institutions in 42 different countries ... and counting! This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from Lamar Cave, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here.

Subject Index Summary:
Extinction (Philosophy-Policy): Are we shirking our real environmental duties to focus on an imaginary hobgoblin?

Plant Growth Data:
This week we add new results of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature for: Cotton (Yoon et al., 2009), Peanut (Tu et al., 2009), Sorghum (Prasad et al., 2009), and Wheat (Gutierrez et al., 2009).

Journal Reviews:
Holocene Glaciers of the European Alps: What does their behavior over the course of the entire Holocene suggest about the nature of their behavior over the course of the 20th century?

The American Petroleum Institute (API) released its annual oil statistics for 2009 to the press yesterday afternoon, and I participated in their media teleconference this morning covering the results. The numbers reveal some interesting shifts, and they provide another useful barometer on the state of the US economy, for which oil is still the largest energy input by a wide margin. [Read More] (Geoffrey Styles, Energy Tribune)

Shell's Gerry Ertel believes the fundamental issues of energy and the environment are clear and uncomplicated. "The debate about climate change is over and we need to take action," says Ertel, Shell Canada's climate change expert. (Brian Burton, Special Information Feature)

ABU DHABI // It is a pilot project with a potential golden payoff. Carbon dioxide, that dreaded greenhouse-gas chemical compound, not only harnessed to increase output from oilfields … but eventually stored underground. Permanently.

The test by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) promises to pave the way for the first commercial application of carbon capture and storage (CCS), a set of integrated technologies for preventing carbon emissions from power plants and other large industrial emitters from being spewed into the atmosphere.

In the most favourable scenario, the significant cost of CCS technology could be offset by using the captured carbon dioxide (CO2) for an economic purpose such as pushing more oil out of the ground. (The National)

BRUSSELS — A Pacific island nation has challenged plans by the Czech Republic to refit a coal-fired power station, in an appeal that environmental advocates on Monday described as the first of its kind.

The case focuses on efforts by a Czech utility, the CEZ Group, to prolong the life of the power plant in Prunerov, close to the German border. The Federated States of Micronesia maintains that doing so would result in continued emissions of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, which it says threaten its existence.

“Climate change is real and it is happening on our shores,” Andrew Yatilman, the director of Micronesia’s office of environment and emergency management, told Reuters. “It’s a matter of survival for us. If you look at the map of the Pacific, we’re just dots in the middle of the ocean.”

Micronesia submitted its arguments to the Czech Ministry of Environment on Jan. 4.

Greenpeace, which is supporting the action by Micronesia, demanded last month that the Czech Republic decommission the plant by 2016.

The Czech authorities were scheduled to take Micronesia’s complaint into account this week in deciding whether the plant was environmentally acceptable, said Jan Rovensky, an energy and climate campaigner with Greenpeace Czech Republic. (NYT)

You might not know it, but there’s already an alternative fuel for vehicles that cuts pollution, saves money and provides an “immediate solution to the nation’s energy security needs,” to quote the U.S. Department of Energy.

What’s that fuel? Natural gas.

For now, only about 2 percent of the energy used for transportation in the United States comes in the form of natural gas. But according to the DOE’s most recent Vehicle Technologies Market Report, the use of compressed natural gas grew by 40 percent in the middle of the last decade, and the use of liquefied natural gas jumped by 145 percent.

In all, there are more than 120,000 natural gas vehicles on the road today in the United States and about 10 million worldwide, according to Natural Gas Vehicles for America, a trade association promoting natural gas vehicles. (Stefan Milkowski, GoO)

January 7, 1997, some 13 years ago, was one of the worst days in my 16-year career at Enron. Enron had already entered into the solar business (1994) in partnership with Amoco (Solarex), and the U.S. wind industry was on its back. Zond Corporation was struggling, and rival Kenetech had recently suspended its dividend and was on the way to bankruptcy. Enron bought Zond on this day and renamed it Enron Wind Company.

Enron Wind would never turn a profit, and it would be sold in May 2002 by the bankrupt parent to GE. (GE and Enron would have other ominous parallels.)

Regarding the third point, the Texas mandate created an unholy business-government alliance of sufficient size for the state to increase its renewable mandate in 2005. Texas is the leading wind power state in the country–but hardly by consumer choice.

Right after Enron purchased Zond to enter into the wind business, I got a call from Hap Boyd, Enron Wind’s PR person. The Cato Institute had just published my windpower-cenric study, Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green’ (August 1997), and Hap was trying to sell me on the benefits of wind. One of his arguments I remember was that landowners were receiving royalties from allowing the use of their land for wind turbines, as if this really meant something.

My relationship with Enron Wind went downhill from there. The head of the subsidiary wanted to get me fired for my public opposition against this technology (see the interoffice memos posted at my political Capitalism website).

Oh how sad I am that Enron purchased Zond and did so much to enable the artificial windpower boom in Texas and United States. Houston Chronicle business editorialist Loren Steffy wrote about this in a column, Wind Whispers of Enron (June 3, 2008). [Read more →] (MasterResource)

The biggest wind farm in ice covered Antarctica and which can generate enough electricity to power 500 homes, was formally switched on this weekend.

The plant can provide enough energy to light 500 homes The plant can provide enough energy to light 500 homes

The joint New Zealand-US project's three huge turbines will provide 11% of the power needed to run the two nations' science bases on Antarctica's Ross Sea coast, cutting greenhouse gas output, lowering fossil fuel use and reducing the risk of fuel spilling in the continent's pristine environment, officials said.

The 11 million US dollar wind farm is located on Crater Hill, half way between the United States' McMurdo Station and New Zealand's nearby Scott Base. (MercoPress)

JUIZ DE FORA - Brazil on Tuesday opened the world's first ethanol-fueled power plant in an effort by the South American biofuels giant to increase the global use of ethanol and boost its clean power generation.

State-run oil giant Petrobras and General Electric Co, which helped design the plant, are betting that increased use of ethanol generation by green-conscious countries will boost demand for the product.

Brazil, the top global ethanol exporter, is already in talks with Japan to develop biofuels power generation there. (Reuters)

Scott Brown’s remarkable victory in the Massachusetts Senate election speaks loud and clear: Americans across the political spectrum are unhappy with the scale and cost of the congressional health reform legislation, and the lack of transparency in the process.

Congress would be wise to see this outcome as a referendum on health care reform. The proper conclusion? It’s time to hit the reset button and scrap the doomed bills in both chambers. Then President Obama should bring together the key leaders of both parties, and craft a far more modest approach in an open process that will actually address the concerns of Americans.

Householders will soon have to keep food waste in the modern equivalent of a slop bucket, the Government said yesterday.

Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, said that instead of being thrown away on landfill sites, food waste would be used for composting or turned into energy. (The Times)

Hidden within the latest edition of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's FluView was this sentence: "The proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza was below the epidemic threshold."

That's right: The great American swine flu epidemic - which led to two proclaimed national emergencies and thousands of spooky news stories - has ended with a whimper.

Like all infectious disease epidemics, swine flu followed a bell curve. It peaked in mid-October, before anybody was vaccinated. (Michael Fumento, Townhall)

Obesity rates for adults and children in the U.S. seem to be leveling off, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease and Prevention released online last week in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. According to some other studies those statistics aren't unique to Americans. A new paper finds obesity rates may also be leveling off among Greek children.

The study, done by Greek researchers, looked at trends in body mass index among 651,582 children age 8 to 9 in more than 80% of Greek schools from 1997 through 2007, according to data taken from 11 national school-based health surveys. (LA Times)

CORVALLIS, Ore., Jan. 19 -- One way to help address the epidemic of obesity in the United States is improved access to hiking trails, parks and recreational programs, researchers suggest.

Randy Rosenberger, an associate professor at Oregon State University, says some of the health issues that plague overweight and obese people can be alleviated by a stronger commitment to recreational opportunities.

"Research is now showing there's a close correlation between public health and recreational opportunities, both close to home and in state parks," Rosenberger said in a statement. (UPI)

Jan. 18 -- Synthetic versions of the hormone leptin, like those being developed by Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc., may yet hold promise for helping obese people keep off weight they manage to lose, Harvard University scientists said.

Leptin failed tests several years ago as a treatment for obesity. More recent studies have shown bioengineered versions of the hormone may help people who have low levels of it, including those who have lost weight, the researchers wrote in today’s issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. (Bloomberg)

Gordon Fleming is, by his own account, an environmentally sensitive guy.

He bikes 12 1/2 miles to and from his job at a software company outside Santa Barbara, Calif. He recycles as much as possible and takes reusable bags to the grocery store.

Still, his girlfriend, Shelly Cobb, feels he has not gone far enough.

Ms. Cobb chides him for running the water too long while he shaves or showers. And she finds it “depressing,” she tells him, that he continues to buy a steady stream of items online when her aim is for them to lead a less materialistic life.

Mr. Fleming, who says he became committed to Ms. Cobb “before her high-priestess phase,” describes their conflicts as good-natured — mostly.

But he refuses to go out to eat sushi with her anymore, he said, because he cannot stand to hear her quiz the waiters.

“None of it is sustainable or local,” he said, “and I am not eating cod or rockfish.”

As awareness of environmental concerns has grown, therapists say they are seeing a rise in bickering between couples and family members over the extent to which they should change their lives to save the planet.

In households across the country, green lines are being drawn between those who insist on wild salmon and those who buy farmed, those who calculate their carbon footprint and those who remain indifferent to greenhouse gases. (NYT)

WASHINGTON/CHICAGO - The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a request by the state of Michigan for an injunction to force the closing of two Chicago-area waterway locks to keep Asian carp from invading the Great Lakes.

The voracious Bighead and Silver carp are considered a dire threat to the lakes' $7 billion fisheries.

Michigan last month took the unusual step of asking the high court for an order that would close the two locks and would require authorities to take all other action necessary to keep the carp from entering the lakes.

Michigan asked that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the state of Illinois and Chicago's sewer authority take more steps to block the carp during flooding and ultimately to separate the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River watershed.

The invasive carp may have already reached Lake Michigan, with authorities saying on Tuesday that water samples recently taken in an Indiana harbor contained carp DNA.

However, sampling for environmental DNA is a new technique and authorities are seeking proof that actual Asian carp are swimming in the lake.

"We would like the confirmation of a physical specimen," said Major General John Peabody of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Netting and electro-fishing are being conducted. (Reuters)

Summary: Parallel to the climate warmongering, the same team of professional, and very well paid, “Earth-savers” aimed their political cannons at the seal hunt in Canada ( and elsewhere). But, just as their sub-par incompetence in climate-warming issues, their knowledge of basics of the seals hunt is beyond zero level ( though their political savvy is quite on par with the ad of Winston Cigarettes by “Flintstones” ). ( GLG)

Conservationists are investigating what has caused the largest roost of corn buntings in living memory to settle in a farmer’s field in Bedfordshire. (TDT)

ONE THIRD of Ireland’s snail species are threatened with extinction, according to new research compiled by the National Biodiversity Data Centre.

The State body, which monitor’s the country’s biological diversity, has found that declining water quality, the building boom and certain agricultural and forestry practices are contributing to the species’ decline.

Ireland is home to 150 types of snail. Of these, two are now considered to be extinct, five critically endangered, 14 endangered, 26 vulnerable and six “near-threatened”.

Researchers have found that two native species are already extinct. The lapidary snail (Helicigona lapicida), once found only in a gorge of the river Blackwater at Fermoy in east Co Cork, has “not been seen alive since 1968”, while the last recorded evidence of the mud pond snail (Omphiscola glabra) was in 1979 before it was “lost to habitat destruction”. (Irish Times)

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday said that there is room on the busy Senate calendar to bring up a sweeping energy and climate change bill this spring.

His comments – in a speech before a geothermal energy group in New York – come amid speculation that tackling controversial plans to impose limits on greenhouse gases may fall by the wayside.

“We have a lot on our plate. We have to finish reforming health insurance and Wall Street, and also must help bring Americans out of unemployment. But we are not so busy that we can’t find the time to address comprehensive energy and climate legislation,” Reid said, according to his prepared remarks. (E² Wire, The Hill)

I thought I was done writing about my trip to the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen last December, but just when you think you’re out, as Mario Puzo once put it, they pull you back in. And what did my pulling in in this instance was the CBS report on the amazingly lavish junket (well, not so amazingly really) of Nancy Pelosi & Co. to the Scandinavian capital. I learned therein that seventeen, count ‘em seventeen, Members (many with spouses and even children) went to the conference with their staffs, utilizing three military jets and booking 321 hotel nights at the posh Copenhagen Marriott. The carbon footprint of all that – assuming you believe in AGW, and most of them claim to – was immense. The amount of serious discussion that went on was practically nil.

And, yes, needless to say, there’s more, lots more, although LaPelosa has, also needless to say, resisted press inquiries about the details. She is now being bombarded, as she should be, by FOIA requests, so we will probably learn more anon. But the idea of all that absurd excess in the light of what is now going on in Haiti is particularly stomach-turning. (Roger L. Simon, PJM)

A national beef group is invoking the so-called "Climategate" controversy as it challenges a recent U.S. government ruling on climate change.

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association has filed a petition to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. to overturn the EPA's recent greenhouse gas "endangerment" ruling.

The ruling states that gases believed to cause global warming pose a human health risk and is the first step toward their regulation by the EPA under the Clean Air Act. The NCBA and other producer groups fear the ruling could lead to lawsuits and new restrictions on the nation's livestock industries.

The NCBA plans to argue the government's finding is based on faulty and incomplete science and that the Clean Air Act is the improper vehicle for regulating greenhouse gases, said Tamara Thies, the organization's chief environmental counsel. (Tim Hearden, Capital Press)

James Hansen is losing patience. He is upset at the Obama Administration and its advisors, such as John Holdren (read his futile letters). Hansen is mad at the New York Times; after all, he got suckered by their editors and by Paul Krugman regarding his pre-Copenhagen opinion-page editorial.

All this and more is in Dr. Hansen’s latest 3,600-word attack–reproduced in its entirety below–on the political establishment in what is a widening civil war on the Left regarding climate policy.

Temperature trends, climategate, and Copenhagen are major problems for climate alarmism/neo-Malthusianism in theory and practice. But add to this ‘perfect storm’ the problem of Enronesque climate policy. What is the party in power to do?

It is fair to ask some hard questions to the father of climate alarmism in the United States. Hansen said years ago that we had to quickly and fundamentally reverse the world’s energy mix to avoid his modeled doom. That is not going to happen. Is it time for him, both as a scientist and a layperson, to rethink the whole issue and reverse course? If climate stabilization is indeed a futile crusade, James Hansen should be part of the solution rather than continue to be part of the problem.

Here are some questions I have for Dr. Hansen that could help him get on track. I invite readers to add questions in the comments to this post.

ANALYSIS: It used to be cool to be a climate-change crusader. Now the sceptics are in fashion

IT HAS been a bad winter for the environmental movement. It started with climategate. Hacked or leaked e-mails from prominent climate scientists revealed a clique of academics who were sloppy with the science, tried to hide from outside scrutiny and worked hard to suppress contradictory evidence.

These scientists had made only minor contributions to the science of climate change. Climate change is as real now as it was before climategate. At the same time, these people were prominent in the public image of climate change and so climategate has shaken the public confidence in the impartiality of academics and the reality of climate change. A few months ago, one would rather admit to eating babies for breakfast than to any doubt about global warming or the need for drastic emission reduction. Climategate has changed all that. Climate doubt has become fashionable. (Richard Tol, Irish Times)

A California legislator pushes a November ballot initiative to free the state from the job-killing shackles of a 2006 law designed to fight climate change. The other choice is freezing in the unemployment line.

At last report, California's unemployment rate was 12.3%, with 2.25 million residents looking for work. So one would assume the first rule of holes would apply — when you're in one, stop digging.

Yet there was Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger touting his state's green initiatives in Copenhagen as California barrels toward full implementation of its own version of job-killing cap-and-trade.

"The desire and hope and desperate need for planetary transformation is what brought me here," Schwarzenegger said. "Is it a dream, a fairy tale, a false hope? If not, how can we make it real?"

"It" is Assembly Bill 32, signed by the governor in 2006, and Assemblyman Dan Logue wants it to go away or at least be put on hold.

Logue, who has advocated AB32's outright repeal, is busy collecting signatures for a November ballot initiative that would block full implementation of the measure, scheduled to take effect in 2012, until the state's unemployment rate falls below 5.5%.

California's animus toward fossil fuels has blocked further development of its considerable offshore oil resources, and its fear of nuclear power has denied the state access to nonpolluting nuclear energy. This has helped contribute to what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says is the second most business-unfriendly regulatory climate in the nation after New Jersey. (IBD)

TOKYO - Japan, one of the world's top shipping operators, will submit details of its proposal for an international levy on marine fuel ahead of a meeting of the U.N.'s shipping agency in March, a government official said on Friday.

Under the proposal, which was first touted last year as an alternative to an idea supported by some European countries to introduce an emissions trading system in the sector, money raised would be used to help cut carbon dioxide emissions relating to shipping in developing countries. (Reuters)

SEVILLE, Spain—European Union countries diverged on the level of cuts in greenhouse gas emissions the union wants to commit to, EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said Saturday.

Environment ministers of France, Germany and the U.K. at the sidelines of an EU ministers meeting said they favor increasing the EU's emission reduction target to 30% from 20% if others were to match that offer.

Which target level the EU should adopt after the near-failure of the December Copenhagen climate summit, however, was not unanimous, Mr. Dimas said. But he didn't specify which countries were against the more ambitious 30% target.

Poland and Italy oppose going beyond the 20% target, French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said.

German Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen blamed the hesitation by the U.S. to match the level of the EU's emission cut target and the attempt by China to block a global climate deal for the "setback" in Copenhagen. (WSJ)

Commitments by the EU, the US, China and others to cut greenhouse gas emissions address only one element of a global climate deal. Financing from developed countries is also required to help developing countries to limit their emissions and adapt to climate change without the poor becoming even worse off. Both public and private investment flows from developed countries will be critical to the development and deployment of renewable energy, carbon capture and storage, and other green technologies in fast-growing, developing countries.

Last month’s Copenhagen Accord promised €70bn (Dh370bn) to developing countries for mitigation and adaptation efforts. But the Accord does not specify whether this sum will be new money or redirected official development assistance (ODA). Given their experience with shortfalls in promised ODA and the disappearing donor problem, developing countries do not trust the rich countries to pay later what they promise now. Rich countries are suspicious that the funds they send will not be used effectively for mitigation. To break this impasse, a new institution – a global climate finance registry – should be established to monitor that promised funds are delivered to developing countries and that the latter are really reducing emissions.

The underlying reality is that significant new funding (in excess of that promised in Copenhagen) is needed to limit warming to 2°C. An estimated €55-€80bn in international financing is needed annually by 2020 to curb emissions in developing countries. Additional monies for adaptation will also be required. Most of this will come from public sources, including bilateral ODA, domestic emissions allowance auctions, the World Bank and other multilateral programmes, and international marine and aviation levies. But private finance must supply the balance, which could be up to €30bn annually. (The National)

The new generation of Conservative MPs due to take power after the election does not share David Cameron’s professed commitment to tackling climate change, a survey being published this week suggests.

“Reducing Britain’s carbon footprint” was rated as the lowest priority, out of 19 policies, by 144 Conservative candidates responding to the survey of the 240 most winnable Tory target seats.

Asked to rate each policy on a scale of one to five, where five was the most important to them personally, the candidates gave the climate change issue an average rating of 2.8, significantly below “more help for marriage”, 3.6, and “protecting the English countryside”, 3.57.

They rated “cutting red tape” as second only to tackling the budget deficit in terms of priorities, suggesting resistance to environmental regulation.

The results of the survey by the Conservativehome website, to be unveiled at a conference on the Tory manifesto on Wednesday, suggest a gap might be opening up between the leadership and rank-and-file MPs and activists on the issue. Mr Cameron is under pressure to drop pledges such as his commitment to increasing green taxes, as the right questions the rationale for taking unilateral action to combat global warming.

“This is a hugely controversial issue for the Conservative party. There’s almost no support among centre-right think-tanks for all this climate change, so the party has got to be incredibly careful,” Tim Montgomerie, editor of Conservativehome, told the Financial Times.

“I’m confident the sceptics are going to win,” Mr Montgomerie said. “It’s for Cameron to decide how he’s going to get out of this – he’s lost the battle already. (Financial Times)

The tragedy in Haiti can teach us something about the extreme policies of global warming alarmists.

The 1989 San Francisco earthquake measured a 7.1 on the Richter scale and the death toll was 62 people killed.

The recent earthquake in Haiti was measured at 7.0 on the Richter scale and the death toll could reach 50,000-100,00 people killed.

Why did Haiti suffer so many more lost lives than San Francisco? The answer is the country doesn’t possess the wealth necessary to build better infrastructure.

Yet, the alarmists want to push policies, such as cap and trade, which would drastically reduce our wealth. They want countries like Haiti and other developing countries to take steps to reduce carbon emissions at the expense of their national well-being, including their…

In a fascinating 2008 paper (click "download" over there to get the PDF file), the current White House regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, together with Adrian Vermeule - both at Harvard University - argued that the conspiracy theories are dangerous.

In this paper, it is claimed that groups including the global warming skeptics undermine the society and secretly conspire to start a global conflict. "Many millions of people" hold conspiracy theories and they are a threat. These people think that many important things and events were and/or are controlled by the U.S. agents. And all of it is crazy, Sunstein and Vermeule argue. So far, so good. Well, almost.

Food, climate or toys: Policy implications enter into every stage of risk assessment

In spite of the media treatment of them, there is nothing that is surprising about the now famous Climategate emails. Surprise could only come from a misunderstanding of the relationship between science, policy and politics. Of course the emails reveal that the climate scientists were affected by policy and political considerations. They had to be. Science, policy and politics are inextricably intertwined. What is surprising is how much our public discourse is still dominated by the quaint utopian view that science and policy can be strictly separated.

Scholars of science in policy have long ago shown that you can’t take policy out of science. Studies of scientific advising leave in tatters the notion that it is possible, in practice, to restrict the advisory practice to technical issues or that the subjective values of scientists are irrelevant to decision making.

Global warming under the Democratically controlled House of Representatives will add more bureaucratic boondoggles to the government payroll and give billions to the United Nations to squander while the taxpayers will foot the bill. As Yvo deBoer, the United Nations top climate official, stated: “Time is up. Over the next two weeks governments have to deliver.” To whom, the U.N? Billions of dollars are needed almost immediately and hundreds of billions of dollars annually within a decade.

If the Kyoto Protocol laid no obligations on countries such as India and China plus developing third world countries, what is the use of wasting billions while they continue to release emissions of carbon dioxide by the billion of tons annually into the atmosphere? This whole hoax is to create more bureaucracy in the world. They revealed the true objectives of their agenda in the book written by G. Edward Griffin, “The Creature from Jekyll Island.”

Al Gore’s global warming presentations remind me of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s creation of unfettered departments such as FCC, FDIC, FHA, MLB, NYA, WPA, SSB, TVA, and now over 80 other unnecessary bureaucratic departments. All did little to overcome the depression but did give the Democrats more patronage jobs. (Joseph R. Breslin, Daily Times)

January 14, 2010 -- The target posed by leading NASA climate scientist James Hansen of stabilising atmospheric carbon dioxide at 350 parts per million (ppm) is increasingly understood in conjunction with the need to keep cumulative emissions within a tight global “budget”. While the point at which budgeted emissions occur is not in theory crucial, in practice there is a need to ensure that emissions peak early and decline swiftly thereafter. (International Journal of Socialist Renewal)

While nations bicker about who should cut greenhouse gas emissions and by how much, scientists are dreaming up their own solutions to global warming. A German professor has created a filter which extracts more than a thousand times more carbon dioxide from the air than a tree.

The situation may not be nearly as grim as it looks. For Klaus Lackner, at least, human-induced global warming is a problem that can be controlled, perhaps even solved -- even if humankind doesn't manage to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Born in Heidleberg, Lackner, 57, is a geophysicist and director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy at the renowned Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York. He's also the man behind an ambitious new solution for the climate change problem. The scientist wants to build millions of CO2 catchers, machines the size of shipping containers fitted with chemical filters to pull greenhouse gases out of the air the same way trees do. The devices may be bulkier and less attractive than real trees, but they are thousands of times more efficient.

These carbon catchers could offset many hundreds of times as much CO2 as wind turbines using the same area, the researcher says, and they could be set up anywhere on Earth. They would even be capable of filtering out car or power station emissions pumped up into the atmosphere years ago. No other technology can do the same. (Der Spiegel)

SCOTTISHPOWER chief executive Nick Horler has revealed plans to develop a series of carbon capture hubs across the UK as he steps up moves to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.

Horler says the company and its partners in developing the technology – Shell and the National Grid – want to install the hubs in factories, foundries and refineries in the Forth Valley, Teesside and on the Thames. (The Scotsman)

Millions of pounds of British taxpayers' money is being paid to an organisation in India run by Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the controversial chairman of the UN climate change panel, despite growing concern over its accounts. (TDT)

When Douglas Alexander travelled to New Delhi last September to announce Britain was presenting £10 million to the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), standing alongside him was an imposing, bearded figure. (Christopher Booker and Richard North, TDT)

The Sunday Telegraph has an interesting story on TERI-Europe and Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, uncovering what TERI admits are accounting "anomalies" -- never a good thing to hear when financial accounting is concerned. I will have more to say on that, but in this post I'd like to focus on a very interesting statement in the article on the UN and IPCC policies for conflict of interest:

Today's NY Times has a timely column by its Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, on conflicts of interest among sources used in news stories and who publish on the NY Time op-ed pages. The column details recent instances where financial interests were not disclosed (either to the NYT or to its readers). Hoyt notes:

A search of the NYT archives over the past 12 months for -- Rajendra + Pachauri -- results in 677 mentions. I can't find one that discusses or discloses his considerable financial interests as related to his frequent policy advocacy. The atmospheric and environmental sciences are at the frontier with respect to conflicts of interest (as I wrote in 2003 for the NRC, PDF) so it is perhaps not too surprising that these issues are only now emerging.

However, now that Pachauri's conflicts and interests are documented, real and being discussed openly in the media, the US media (not just the NYT) ought to be on this. There is a big, though uncomfortable, story here. If the major media were on it, then it would help the climate science community to clean up its act. Asking uncomfortable questions of those in power is one of the jobs of the Fourth Estate, right? (Roger Pielke Jr)

Never afraid of speaking out for causes he believes in, the Prince of Wales is to visit the university that has been at the centre of the worldwide "climategate" scandal. (TDT)

Two weeks ago I wrote an article here about global warming and the advocates -- call them warmists -- who tamper with Wikipedia to reflect their own biases. One warmist named William Connolley, a green ideologue in Britain, had rewritten 5,428 climate articles. His goal was to bring the articles into line with Green Party dogma.

A number of people responded, some taking the position that Wikipedia is a waste of time so why bother with it? But that is not satisfactory. Here is a better response, from Howard Hayden, a friend of mine. He puts out The Energy Advocate, a newsletter that raises many doubts about global warming and related energy issues. "Wiki is a great source of non-controversial information," he told me. "It's a shame it has been hijacked by true believers."

I agree. I find Wikipedia useful and I do use it. But I avoid it where science and controversy interact -- global warming, biodiversity, intelligent design, and a few other issues. There, Wiki cannot be relied upon. Political activists have enough time on their hands to make changes that suit their tastes. (Tom Bethell, American Spectator)

Location: University of East Anglia, UK
Date: 1 - 14 December 2010
Organisation: International Development UEA

This course is designed for people who want to gain a greater understanding of the implications of climate change for developing countries and of the processes, issues and debates surrounding adaptation and mitigation. It is aimed particularly at building the knowledge base of professional staff from government agencies and NGOs who do not have existing specialism in the field but who may have new responsibility or interest in the integration of climate change management into development planning, projects and policy.

Registration fees
Dates: 1 - 14 September 2010
Fee: £3,200 [US$5,200] (includes accommodation but no meals) (SciDev.Net)

My father phoned from the Florida Keys this week. At 86, he likes warmer climates in winter, but there has been nothing warm in Florida lately -- it was zero degrees Celsius the morning he called.

Three decades ago, scientists coldly calculated that another ice age¹ was imminent. (See AccuWeather's analysis² of these predictions.) But, no longer. Today, they are prophesying that ice caps will melt within the next hundred years and swamp coastal lowlands. That is unless, and only unless, an international governing authority is established posthaste to control economic/industrial development that is blamed for global warming.

What is the truth? (Mark Alexander, Patriot Post)

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change. (Sunday Times)

The New Scientist magazine has asked the IPCC to explain how a speculative statement that most scientists disagree with became an IPCC "finding" that has been vigorously defended by the IPCC chairman. The statement has led to a large number of factually incorrect claims, such as found in the article pictured above from the Daily Mail. See the image below from the New Scientist, courtesy Bishop Hill.

I discussed this situation last month in a post in which I argued that the problem here is not that the IPCC made a mistake. That is just troubling. The greater problem is how the IPCC has responded to having a mistake pointed out:

As governments, businesses, and homeowners plan for the future, they should assume that the world’s oceans will rise by at least two meters — roughly seven feet — this century. But far too few agencies or individuals are preparing for the inevitable increase in sea level that will take place as polar ice sheets melt. (e360)

This year’s fierce winter in much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the beginning of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last decades, say some of the world’s most renowned climate scientists. However, other experts say the cold spell does not contradict an overall trend of global warming.

A report on Sunday by the British newspaper The Mail cited forecasts by eminent climate scientists that are a direct challenge to some of the most deeply held beliefs among those who say the world is experiencing global warming – including claims that the North Pole will be ice-free by the summer of 2013.

The climate scientists questioning such predictions of global warming based their predictions of a "mini ice-age" on analysis of natural water temperature cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Indeed, according to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado, summer Arctic sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, roughly 26 percent, since 2007 – a figure that even the most ardent global warming believers do not dispute.

The scientists’ predictions also challenge standard climate computer models, which contend that the Earth’s warming since the year 1900 is due solely to man-made greenhouse gas emissions, and will continue until CO2 levels taper off.

But the climate scientists say their research shows instead that much of the warming during the last century was caused by ‘warm mode’ oceanic cycles, as opposed to the present ‘cold mode’.

This challenge to the theory of man-made global warming carries weight, given they come from prominent climate scientists that cannot be defined simply as global warming deniers. (redOrbit)

A BBC weather forecaster has suggested that the Met Office's super-computer has a 'warm bias' which has stopped it predicting bitterly cold spells like the one we have just endured.

Paul Hudson said the error may have crept into the computer's climate model as a result of successive years of milder weather.

His claim was rejected by the Met Office but other experts said there could be flaws in the system, which was first developed 50 years ago.

In a blog, the BBC Look North presenter writes: 'Clearly there is the rest of January and February to go, but such has been the intensity of the cold spell...it would take something remarkable for the Met Office's forecast (of a mild winter) to be right.

'It is also worth remembering that this comes off the back of the now infamous barbecue summer forecast.

'Could the model, seemingly with an inability to predict colder seasons, have developed a warm bias, after such a long period of milder than average years?' (Mail On Sunday)

The Met Office has admitted that it failed to warn the public of the heavy snow that brought swaths of Britain to a standstill on Wednesday.

Forecasters conceded that they did not spot the widespread snow storms that caused transport disruption and a surge of weather-related accidents until it was too late. Up to six inches fell in parts of the South West, with drifts of 7ft in Wales.

Even when the full extent of the threat was realised, flaws in the Met Office's bad weather warning system meant that the public were not adequately informed, officials said. The system will now be reviewed. (TDT)

BUFFETED by complaints about its inaccurate weather forecasts, the Met Office now faces being dumped by the BBC after almost 90 years.

The Met Office contract with the BBC expires in April and the broadcaster has begun talks with Metra, the national forecaster for New Zealand, as a possible alternative.

The BBC put the contract out to tender to ensure “best value for money”, but its timing coincides with a storm over the Met Office’s accuracy.

Last July the state-owned forecaster’s predictions for a “barbecue summer” turned into a washout. And its forecast for a mild winter attracted derision when temperatures recently plunged as low as -22C.

Last week the Met Office failed to predict heavy snowfall in the southeast that brought traffic to a standstill. This weekend a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times reveals that 74% of people believe its forecasts are generally inaccurate.

By contrast, many commercial rivals got their predictions for winter right. They benefit from weather forecasts produced by a panel of six different data providers, including the Met Office. (Sunday Times)

The British Broadcasting Corporation has put its weather forecasting contract out to tender – the first time since its radio broadcasts began in 1923 – after taking heat from the public for a string of embarrassingly inaccurate long-range weather forecasts. The UK Met Office, the government-owned meteorological department that has had the BBC contract for almost 90 years, is a partner with the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University of Climategate fame. CRU and the UK Met Office jointly provide the climate change data that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change relies on. (Financial Post)

The image above is from a paper published yesterday by J. L. Barredo titled: "No upward trend in normalised windstorm losses in Europe: 1970–2008" in the open access journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences. You can glean from the title the message of the paper. Here is an excerpt from the introduction:

One well accepted definition of the “Three Pillars of Science” lists the three as theory, experimentation and computation. For climate science this translates into climate theory, gathering climate data, and climate modeling. The three pillars are due an update in this post Copenhagen, post Climategate world. After reviewing the past year's crop of discoveries and disclosures, it seems that all three pillars are still wobbly at best—even without questionable conduct on the part of warm-mongering researchers.

No doubt about it, it has been a hard year for the global warming true believers—a frigid cold winter, Climategate, and faltering political support, all capped off by the yawn-in at Copenhagen. Among the public, global warming fatigue continues to spread while global warming boosters become ever shriller. But what about the actual science behind the global warming theory? In The Resilient Earth we based our evaluation of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) on the three pillars of climate science given above. This article revisits the evaluation of each pillar starting with the state of climate theory.

If there’s anyone left you know who STILL believes in Anthropogenic Global Warming, you might want to show them this chart.

The Central England Temperature dataset is the oldest in the world – with 351 years of temperature records drawn from “multiple weather stations located both in urban and rural areas of England, which is considered a decent proxy for Northern Hemisphere temperatures – not perfect, but decent.” Climate Cycles Change provides the analysis. ( James Delingpole, TDT)

One of the great things about the internet is people can post anything they want, no matter how stupid, and lots of people who are incapable of critical thought will simply accept it.

I’m getting emails from people who have read blog postings accusing me of “hiding the increase” in global temperatures when I posted our most recent (Dec. 2009) global temperature update. In addition to the usual monthly temperature anomalies on the graph, for many months I have also been plotting a smoothed version, with a running 13 month average. The purpose of such smoothing is to better reveal longer-term variations, which is how “global warming” is manifested.

But on the latest update, I switched from 13 months to a running 25 month average instead. It is this last change which has led to accusations that I am hiding the increase in global temperatures. Well, here’s a plot with both running averages in addition to the monthly data. I’ll let you decide whether I have been hiding anything:

Note how the new 25-month smoother minimizes the warm 1998 temperature spike, which is the main reason why I switched to the longer averaging time. If anything, this ‘hides the decline’ since 1998…something I feared I would be accused of for sure after I posted the December update.

But just the opposite has happened, with accusations I have hidden the increase. Go figure. (Roy W. Spencer)

Many people think that the globe must be terribly cold these days. We've seen huge cold snaps and snowfalls in Britain, Eastern parts of the U.S., Western Europe, Central Europe, China, Korea, and India where hundreds of people have frozen.

So these are almost all the important places, right? (At this moment, the speaker forgets that there are places such as Latin America, Australia or the Balkans which have been warm.) So the globe must be cool - cooler than average, people could think.

However, the daily UAH global mean temperature shows a different story. The early January 2010 was warm. And on January 13th, which is the latest day whose temperature is known, we have seen the warmest January day on their record. The brightness global temperature near the surface was

I recently had an opinion-page editorial in the St. Paul/Minneapolis Pioneer Press in which I pointed out that the recent behavior of the earth’s weather/climate system was not much in accordance with some of the rather alarming predictions/projections coming from climate models or interpretations thereof. Perhaps we don’t understand the inner workings of the earth’s complex climate system as well as some people think we do.

A large collection of observations are indicating that our forecasts seem to be erring on the high side (notice I didn’t say that observations suggest that climate change wasn’t occurring, but that they suggest that the projections of climate change are too extreme). As such, I suggested that we ought not rush headlong into efforts aimed at attempting to restrict carbon dioxide emissions for the sake of trying to alter the course of future climate, considering that a) the future course of climate doesn’t seem to be all that bad, and b) that any impact that we may make would likely be minimal.

UPDATE PM JANUARY 16 2010 – Jim Hansen has released a statement on his current conclusions regarding the global average surface temperature trends [and thanks to Leonard Ornstein and Brian Toon for alerting us to this information]. The statement is If It’s That Warm, How Come It’s So Damned Cold? by James Hansen, Reto Ruedy, Makiko Sato, Ken Lo

This statement perpetuates the erroneous claim that the data sources are independent [I welcome information from GISS to justify their statement, and will post if they do]. This issue exists even without considering any other concerns regarding their analyses. (Climate Science)

SOUTH Australia is leading the nation in carbon emission reductions, and is the only state to record levels below those in 2000, a study reveals.

The Climate Group's Greenhouse Indicator Annual Report for 2009 shows carbon emissions in SA for the year fell by 730,000 tonnes or 4.2 per cent compared with 2008 levels, the largest percentage of any state.

SA is the only state to record levels lower than those in 2000 and is just 1 per cent above 1990 levels. In contrast, Queensland more than doubled 1990 levels, recording a 102.5 per cent increase.

The report credits SA's result to low reliance on coal and relatively high use of renewable energy. The main reason, however, for the drop was a 13 per cent reduction in electricity generation from gas.

In the eastern states, annual greenhouse gas emissions from energy use fell by 1.8 per cent to 5.3 million tonnes in 2009, following a rise of 1.3 per cent in 2008. (Adelaide Advertiser)

Shell chief executive Peter Voser will be forced to defend the company's controversial investment in Canada's tar sands at his first annual general meeting, after calls from shareholders that the project be put under further scrutiny.

A coalition of institutional investors has forced a resolution onto the agenda calling for the Anglo-Dutch group's audit committee to undertake a special review of the risks attached to the carbon-heavy oil production at Athabasca in Alberta.

Co-operative Asset Management and 141 other institutional and individual shareholders raise "concerns for the long-term success of the company arising from the risks associated with oil sands."

Shell, which will hold its AGM in May, has been one of the lead companies in moves to develop oil reserves that are either mined or sucked out of the ground using expensive and energy-intensive techniques. BP and Total of France are also engaged in the sector.

Shell has insisted that "unconventional" hydrocarbon sources such as tar sands are all justified to ensure that the world does not run out of oil too soon.

But environmentalists have condemned their exploitation as "the biggest environmental crime in history" and said it must be stopped before it tips the planet over into runaway climate change. (The Guardian)

Ottawa, January 12—Alberta’s oil sands should not be singled out as the source of Canada’s poor record on greenhouse gas emissions. This is one conclusion of The Conference Board of Canada’s new publication, Getting the Balance Right: The Oil Sands, Exporting and Sustainability. The report gathers all the pertinent facts related to the oil sands and its environmental impacts, assesses those facts and draws on dialogue with industry leaders, environmental analysts and other stakeholders.

The report recommends that a comprehensive climate change plan must strike a balance between energy producers and consumers. Oil sands producers must continue to develop new technologies and processes that reduce emissions during extraction. Meanwhile, efforts need to be made to reduce long-term global demand for oil products—and vehicles are an important part of that consumption.

Oil sands production is responsible for about five per cent of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions. This share will inevitably grow, even as emissions per barrel are reduced, since oil sands production is expected to double over the coming decade to meet North America demand.

Access the report here (GoO)

The country's largest single power generator, Macquarie Generation, has warned that its viability is threatened by the Federal Government's proposed emissions trading scheme.

Its concerns throw into doubt the State Government's plans to privatise the power industry by selling electricity retailers and output from power generators.

Under an electricity sales contract written with its main customer, the Tomago aluminium smelter in the Hunter Valley, Macquarie Generation carries the full liability for complying with the emissions scheme. Yet under that scheme, Tomago will receive free permits that ensure it is fully insulated.

As a result, it will benefit from ''double dipping'' under the scheme, since its direct liability is offset thanks to free permits it will receive, while its power supplier, Macquarie Generation, has to bear the financial burden of the emissions scheme.

In its most recent annual report, tabled in State Parliament late last year, Macquarie Generation said its ''profitability, value and remaining life could be negatively impacted'' by the emissions trading scheme. (SMH)

The End of Magical Climate Thinking - One year ago, America's president said he was going to start a green-energy revolution. Here's why the Obama administration failed -- and what needs to come next.

There was good reason to be hopeful in January 2009 that the election of Barack Obama would bring about America's long-awaited clean energy revolution. As president-elect, Obama had started to talk about energy policy in a way that no leader of either U.S. party had before. Promising to save the country from both severe recession and industrial decline, Obama described the transformation of the United States' energy economy as a defining challenge of his presidency -- an economic and national security imperative that Congress would fail to address at the country's peril.

But the reality fell far short of expectations. The Obama administration succumbed, like many others, to a sort of magical climate thinking that promised a painless and even prosperous transition to a low-carbon future with the tools already at hand. The only official within his administration to accurately grasp the technology challenges faced, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, was sidelined at crucial moments.

Here is the back story of how the Obama administration dramatically raised and then dashed America's -- and the world's -- hopes that 2009 would be a pivotal year for remaking our collective energy future. (Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, Foreign Policy)

In Part I earlier this week, I asked critics for corrections to the surprisingly weak figures on avoided investment that smart grid advocates use to push their program. Having gotten none, let’s see where the figures take us.

First stop is the home page of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE). Its most prominent link is to their own The Smart Grid: An Introduction. Intended by its own admission for impressionable readers, it is plagued with misstatements, deceptive graphics, and unsourced assertions. Its official author is Eric Lightner, Director of the Federal Smart Grid Task Force. Lightner has not bothered responding to my requests for the sources of his footnote-free document, which was actually put together by a PR firm. Perhaps this is to be expected from a federal department that has a policy to push and must point us underlings toward official documents favoring the policy. But do we taxpayers have to really put up with this?

Then on the homepage is a link to the Galvin Electricity Initiative, the project of a retired Motorola executive who wants “Perfect Power,” nowadays pushed by the former head of the utility industry’s Electric Power Research Institute.

Then there is a blurb on Gridweek, the annual convention for smart griddies. Its 2009 “Platinum Sponsors” include the usual mix of meter makers, utilities, and … Didja guess the Department of Energy? Right. $50,000. Yours. DOE was equally partisan before the election — It was a “Key Partner” in Gridweek 2008, whose financial and in-kind contributions I can’t reconstruct. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

An aerial view shows the Lieberose solar farm, which become the world’s second biggest solar power plant and Germany’s biggest, with an area of 162 hectares (equivalent to more than 210 football fields) in Turnow-Preilack.
Photo: juwi/Handout/Files

FRANKFURT/HONG KONG - A potential deep cut in feed-in tariffs in Germany will hit solar companies around the world and increases pressure on large players to reduce exposure to the world's largest photovoltaic market.

Analysts say that lower prices could result in a shakeout in the industry that drives higher cost players out of business and dissuades new entrants.

Shares in solar firms plummeted after a Reuters report that the German government plans to chop feed-in tariffs -- prices utilities pay generators of renewable energy -- as early as April, much more deeply and sooner than the market expected.

Analysts agree that the plans, which envisage a one-off cut of 16-17 percent on top of the 10 percent already set out in the German Renewable Act, will deal a major blow to the sector, which the German government thinks is overly subsidized now. (Reuters)

One in six of the UK's officially-designated beauty spots could soon be blighted by wind farms, an investigation has found. (TDT)

Big Oil hopes to use its experience with fossil fuels to develop profitable large-scale clean-energy ventures. For BP, one of the biggest international oil firms, this is a strategic plank in the company’s plan for maintaining its share of an evolving global energy market.

“We face the conundrum that if we want to stay at the size we are today, we need to shift into other forms of energy over time,” says Katrina Landis, the chief executive of BP Alternative Energy, the company’s low-carbon energy division, who will be taking part in a “challenges and solutions” plenary forum at the summit tomorrow afternoon.

Five years ago, BP took a careful look at the alternative energy sector to determine where it had the greatest chance of establishing successful large-scale businesses. It quickly found three with fairly obvious links to its existing oil and gas operations: biofuels, hydrogen power and carbon capture and storage (CCS). (The National)

Germany has been looking for a permanent storage site for its nuclear waste for over 30 years. The history of the Gorleben salt dome, a potential nuclear repository, is one full of deception and political maneuvering. And if opponents to the plans have their way, the search might even have to start again from scratch. (Spiegel)

The Czech government is currently deciding whether to introduce full body scanners at the country’s airports, a move backed by the interior minister. But not everybody is in favour of the security measure. The head of the Czech nuclear safety authority says the risks from the radiation used by the scanners could be too high, and is calling for an alternative approach. (Czech Radio)

BOSTON - The number of children aged 2 to 5 who have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and prescribed powerful antipsychotic drugs has doubled over the past decade, according to research released on Friday.

The research suggests that while it is still rare to prescribe powerful psychiatric drugs to 2-year-olds, the practice is becoming more frequent.

The data, compiled from 2000 to 2007, and published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, could inform testimony at the upcoming Boston-area murder trials of the parents of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley. The girl died of an overdose of mood-stabilizing medication in 2006.

A Boston child psychiatrist, Kayoko Kifuji, diagnosed Riley with bipolar disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder when she was 30 months old, and placed her on several powerful drugs: Depakote, an antiseizure medication also used for bipolar disorder, and clonidine, a blood pressure medication.

Kifuji's testimony may be crucial to the fate of Michael and Carolyn Riley, who face first-degree murder charges. A grand jury and a review by the state's medical licensing board cleared the doctor of wrongdoing.

Prosecutors claim the Rileys deliberately overmedicated their daughter to subdue her. The couple say they were following Kifuji's instructions and their daughter died of pneumonia.

The case has shone the spotlight again on a debate within the psychiatric profession about whether bipolar disorder can be diagnosed in very young children and whether it is wise to prescribe powerful medications. (Reuters)

As if there aren't enough problems connected with the Chinese drywall mess, we can add one more: Junk Science. Given the fertile ground of Florida—long home to scammers of all descriptions—could you expect any less?

My latest HND piece skewers some of the frequently encountered pseudo science, and gives credit to one agency that has done it right, the Consumer Product Safety Commission. We take a look at XRF, FTIR, and even the latest nonsense—Chinese drywall sniffing dogs.

As we explain, a better term would be "corrosive" or "tainted" drywall, since not all product from China is corrosive, and not all corrosive product is Chinese. Be wary of the politics here, too, since it is more about delay than taking care of affected homeowners.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration should immediately ban the use of the chemical bisphenol A in food and beverage containers, a U.S. environmental health advocacy group urged on Thursday.

The nonprofit Environmental Working Group renewed a call for regulators to curb the use of bisphenol A, or BPA, citing a new study suggesting the widely used chemical poses a health risk.

The FDA is considering whether any action needs to be taken. Asked about the group's letter, an FDA spokesperson said that an announcement on BPA is forthcoming. (Reuters)

In a shift of position, the Food and Drug Administration is expressing concerns about possible health risks from bisphenol-A, or BPA, a widely used component of plastic bottles and food packaging that it declared safe in 2008.

The agency said Friday that it had “some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children,” and would join other federal health agencies in studying the chemical in both animals and humans.

The action is another example of the drug agency under the Obama administration becoming far more aggressive in taking hard looks at what it sees as threats to public health. In recent months, the agency has stepped up its oversight of food safety and has promised to tighten approval standards for medical devices.

Concerns about BPA are based on studies that have found harmful effects in animals, and on the recognition that the chemical seeps into food and baby formula, and that nearly everyone is exposed to it, starting in the womb.

But health officials said there was no proof that BPA was dangerous to humans.

“If we thought it was unsafe, we would be taking strong regulatory action,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, the principal deputy commissioner of the drug agency, at a news briefing. (NYT)

In the 1950s scientists from a small chemical company discovered a class of herbicides-called triazines-that effectively controlled a list of broadleaf weeds that had plagued farmers for years. In 1958, that company, which would later be known as Syngenta, registered atrazine. Today, more than 45 pre-mix products contain atrazine, and it is used in more than 60 countries around the world as a critical component in conservation tillage systems.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates 76.4 million pounds of atrazine are applied each year. Of that, 86 percent is used on corn acres, 10 percent on sorghum, and 3 percent on sugarcane. Three-quarters of all field corn acreage in the United States, according to the EPA, is treated with atrazine. In fact, the EPA estimates without the use of atrazine, corn growers would incur a loss of about 9 bushels per acre, plus the cost of a replacement herbicide. This would amount to a loss of about $28 per acre, or $1.6 billion of lost revenue each year, nationwide.

In 50 years of evaluation and scientific peer review, atrazine has consistently been found to be a safe chemical for use in no-till and conservation tillage farming practices. (Jennifer M. Latzke, High Plains Journal)

The National Corn Growers Association and several other agricultural organizations sent a letter to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson today, outlining their concerns on the potential ban of atrazine, a commonly used herbicide that is also the most studied compound on the market today.

“Our growers have actively participated in the process and supported the safety and scientific approval of atrazine by the EPA over the last 15 years and three White House administrations,” the joint letter states. “We strongly believe the scientific weight of evidence, based on EPA’s own analysis for decades, shows atrazine to be both safe and effective and that is the best kind of tool farmers can have.”

An EPA Scientific Advisory Panel will meet the week of February 2 to review human health effects from atrazine. The panel was convened in the wake of the Agency’s announcement of a comprehensive review of health and ecological risks associated with the commonly used herbicide atrazine. (Cattle Network) | Click here for a copy of the letter.

Worthington, Minn. — The Minnesota Agriculture Department says state regulations controlling the use of a popular agricultural weedkiller are doing their job.

The department is reviewing the use of atrazine, which is commonly sprayed on cornfields. Nila Hines with the Agriculture Department says monitoring wells near farmland show that the amount of atrazine turning up in groundwater is declining.

"Our environmental and human health regulations are adequate," Hines said. "So there's no need to change a specific label or change the registration of atrazine in Minnesota at this time." (Minnesota Public Radio)

State opens 60-day public comment period on January 19

ST. PAUL, Minn. ‑ The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) today announced it has completed a multi-agency review of the herbicide atrazine in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Health and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. While the review finds that atrazine regulations protect human health and the environment in Minnesota, it also identifies several opportunities to further minimize atrazine impacts.

The review summary and conclusions will be formally posted in the state register on Tuesday, January 19. This marks the beginning of a 60-day public comment period. After the close of the 60-day comment period, the Commissioner of Agriculture will re-visit the review summary and its conclusions, and consider comments received. The Commissioner will then determine specific additional actions, if any, to be taken for the prevention, evaluation and mitigation of atrazine impacts in Minnesota.

As the lead state agency for pesticide regulatory activities in Minnesota, MDA worked closely with scientists at the Department of Health and the Pollution Control Agency to evaluate atrazine impacts. The Health Department assessed human health impacts based on applicable scientific data while the Pollution Control Agency assessed environmental impacts. A summary of this review has been prepared along with five agency-specific technical assessments that are the foundation of the review. Copies are available on MDA’s website at http://www.mda.state.mn.us/chemicals/pesticides/atrazine/atrazinereview.aspx. (Press Release)

(PRWEB) January 15, 2010 -- For 50 years, sound science has governed U.S. regulatory decisions on atrazine, a well-studied herbicide that farmers rely upon worldwide to produce safe, healthy and abundant crops. Syngenta, as a science-based company, looks forward to a continuing, open and transparent safety review of atrazine by the U.S. EPA in 2010 and expects a positive outcome.

Last week, two environmental activist groups escalated their attacks on Syngenta and atrazine, urging a departure from the EPA’s methodical, science-based approach to regulating crop protection products such as atrazine. Syngenta believes these claims are baseless and wrong.

These activist groups urge the removal of safe, regulated crop protection tools farmers rely on to produce safe and abundant food for the world. It is estimated forty percent of the world’s food supply would not exist without the use of such products. ( Press Release)

That is the finding of a study conducted by Marc Keirse of Flinders University and his co-authors, who examined data on almost 300,000 births in South Australia between 1991 and 2006.

Babies born at home were also 27 times more likely to suffer asphyxiation during labour, according to the study published today in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Australian Medical Association president Andrew Pesce said the research echoed his concerns about the controversial practice. "We believe that if something goes wrong, people are less likely to be able to respond to an emergency situation," he said yesterday.

The AMA is backing the federal government's proposed overhaul of home birthing laws, which will require all midwives to be insured and join a national register. (The Australian) | Families angry over home birth study (Daily Telegraph)

GENEVA - The H1N1 flu virus is spreading most actively in North Africa, South Asia and parts of Europe, the World Health Organisation said on Friday.

Raising its official global death toll from the pandemic to nearly 14,000, the WHO also said that while India's infections may have peaked in December, neighbouring Nepal and Sri Lanka were still experiencing widespread transmission.

Morocco, Algeria and Egypt are continuing to see the active spread of H1N1 and some countries in Europe, including Romania, Ukraine, Turkey and Switzerland, are also reporting moderately intense rates of respiratory disease, the U.N. agency said.

Its latest update on the influenza strain - known popularly as swine flu - also noted that seasonal influenza viruses have been largely overshadowed by the pandemic strain in the northern hemisphere winter this year.

"Pandemic H1N1 2009 virus continues to be the predominant circulating influenza virus in the European region with only sporadic detections of seasonal influenza viruses," it said, concluding the same for northern Africa and swathes of Asia, including China. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON - As many as 80 million Americans have been infected with H1N1 swine flu, up to 16,000 have been killed and more than 360,000 hospitalized, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday.

But 90 percent of the most vulnerable people remain unvaccinated, with only about 61 million Americans having received shots, the CDC said.

Swine flu vaccine is still widely available, with more than 130 million doses produced and 160 million people at high priority for getting the vaccine.

The pandemic, which began in March, is on the wane but health officials stress that influenza is unpredictable and could come back or mutate.

And this new virus, while it has not caused more deaths than seasonal influenza, has killed younger people than seasonal flu does.

About 90 percent of deaths in an average year are among people over 65, while 90 percent of those seriously ill or killed by the new virus are much younger and include as many as 1,730 children. (Reuters)

A few months ago, as the world braced for a deadly pandemic, governments and vaccine companies were criticised for acting too slowly in helping people prepare for the worst.

Now, with the swine flu virus on the wane after apparently causing fewer deaths than in a typical flu season, governments are attacked for spending too much and the pharmaceutical industry accused of over-selling the dangers. Next week, for example, the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly will hold a debate on “False pandemics – a threat to health”.

At first sight, the billions of dollars spent on antiviral drugs, vaccines and other pandemic preparations were both a poor investment and an indictment of the growing use of the “precautionary principle” to spend large sums in anticipation of unpredictable future events. But in fact more extensive use of such principles – when responsibly applied – would make greater sense. The risk of “unknown unknowns”, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, the former US defence secretary, should not be a pretext to ignore the “known unknowns”.

Superficially, the flu controversy recalls the Y2K “millennium bug” debate, which triggered vast payments to software specialists and huge media hype around ultimately unfounded fears that computer systems would collapse on January 1, 2000. Although some people in the IT industry argued after the event that wise spending on debugging IT systems had prevented disaster, the consensus was that the threat was exaggerated. There are other examples where large sums have been spent without rational analysis.

But there are just as many counter-examples, showing failure to prepare for predictable and catastrophic events through adequate and valuable investment, and conversely cases of wise investment to prevent disaster. (Andrew Jack and Clive Cookson, Financial Times)

High bodyweight affects the concentration of drugs in the body and how fast the medicines are processed affecting how well they work, experts have said in The Lancet medical journal.

With rising levels of obesity, this is no longer a problem limited to a small number of patients, they said and new calculations should be drawn up to help doctors tailor doses.

If the dose is too low the infection may not be cleared properly encouraging bugs to become resistant to antibiotics.

This is one of the greatest threats to modern medicine and limits the number of effective drugs for use in the future, they said. (TDT)

Doctors have called for a new approach to antibiotic dosing - one that is based on your weight. The rationale is that obesity, traditionally, has been regarded - pharmacologically speaking - as a rare phenomenon. The authors in the Lancet argue (in a classic science journal well, duh moment) that obesity is no longer rare. And, with rising rates of antibiotic resistance, the authors state that patients who are obese may NOT be getting a sufficient dose of antibiotics. Sub-standard dosing can definitely lead to drug resistance in germs. They argue that a "one-size-fits-all" approach to antibiotics is not only outdated, it's dangerous.

But here's the first kicker. Antibiotic pills for adults generally only come in one size (two max for some types). AND, given the state of runaway drug prices, creating a range of custom dose-sized pills is likely to be an opportunity for price-gouging by drug companies, even with generic medicines (ka-ching).

Which means that patients who don't "fit" the one-size-fits-all existing pill are likely, in my predictive model, to get stuck with a very pricey surcharge. Is this fair? Should people be penalized for their size? If you think so, then why stop there - why not penalize people for their kidney function, or their cardiac output, or their smoking history (which can rev up some liver enzymes that break down drugs...).

Because the second kicker is that the whole "pill-size matching body-size" theory may be a relatively minor factor in nasty-germ emergence (but a HUGE factor in price-gouging). More and more data are showing that the REAL factor behind germs' emerging drug resistance is not so much UNDER-dosing of antibiotics, as OVER-prescribing by doctors. Decades of handing out antibiotic pills like candy was a really, really bad idea, no matter what the dose. In fact, Norway is one of the few countries to eradicate almost all MRSA (the nasty superbug). How did they achieve that? Purely because, with their universal health coverage, they were able to simultaneously severely restrict antibiotic usage while also giving high-quality care to people with infections in order to make sure they get well without antibiotics. And, when it comes to emerging germ resistance, let's not even start with the data on the mind-blowing tonnage of antibiotics we've peed into our water supply, or dumped into our water tables, or spewed nationwide throughout our livestock food supply. All of which makes the supposedly weighty dose-size issue seem, well, frankly anorexic by comparison... (SF Chronicle)

Almost 500,000 Australians are ''super obese'', a five-fold increase over two decades, with weight-loss surgeons reporting they are treating more patients at serious risk of premature death.

Obesity experts estimate 2 to 3 per cent of the population are so large they have outgrown obese and morbidly obese classifications to become super obese - those with a body mass index of 50 or more. Some weigh more than 200 kilograms.

Obesity specialist John Dixon predicted super obesity would double in the next decade if there was no intervention.

''We can't ignore them, they're a group that have the most disturbed health, the most disturbed quality of life and often have a lot of physical and psychological issues,'' Professor Dixon said.

All the signs showed Australia was following the same trend as the United States where extreme obesity has been commonplace for a decade, Professor Dixon said. (SMH)

Canada's alleged obesity epidemic - Public health efforts should focus on trying to encourage Canadians to improve their cardiovascular health

Even though Canadians are heavier and thicker around the middle than they were three decades ago, their heart and lungs are still in good shape. True, the average 45-year-old's grip is not as strong as that of 45-year-olds in 1981, but is that so terrible? It seems a natural part of the shift to a post-industrial knowledge economy. Isn't a strong cardio-respiratory system what matters most?

At any weight, “aerobic fitness is protective against disease,” says a new study by Health Canada and two other federal agencies, featuring a comprehensive measure of Canadians' fitness. It found the average 45-year-old man or woman has a good level of aerobic fitness; on this measure, there are no comparison data from 1981 to make everyone feel badly about themselves.

Maybe, then, the effects of the alleged obesity epidemic are exaggerated. The younger generation will outlive their parents; no real evidence indicates they won't. The health system won't explode from the demands of heavy people with chronic illnesses. (Instead, it will explode from all the chronically ill people of any weight living into a very old age.) ( Globe and Mail)

SAN FRANCISCO — On the day of the collision last month, visibility was good. The sidewalk was not under repair. As she walked, Tiffany Briggs, 25, was talking to her grandmother on her cellphone, lost in conversation.

Very lost.

“I ran into a truck,” Ms. Briggs said.

It was parked in a driveway.

Distracted driving has gained much attention lately because of the inflated crash risk posed by drivers using cellphones to talk and text.

But there is another growing problem caused by lower-stakes multitasking — distracted walking — which combines a pedestrian, an electronic device and an unseen crack in the sidewalk, the pole of a stop sign, a toy left on the living room floor or a parked (or sometimes moving) car.

The era of the mobile gadget is making mobility that much more perilous, particularly on crowded streets and in downtown areas where multiple multitaskers veer and swerve and walk to the beat of their own devices. (NYT)

Government “scientific advisers” – who needs them? So the aptly-named Professor David Nutt, sacked as head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) for opposing the Government’s decision to reclassify cannabis as a Class B drug and not to downgrade ecstasy, has set up a rival organisation – the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD) – in a fit of pique.

Who cares? Thanks to climate change scams, swine flu and a whole host of own-goals, the status of the white-coated prima donnas and narcissists has never been lower in the public esteem. It was Rush Limbaugh, of all unlikely candidates, who at the height of the Climategate exposé made the thoughtful point that more than climate was at stake: the credibility of the entire scientific community was collapsing. He was right. After a period of priest-like authority, the pointy-heads in lab coats have reassumed the role of mad cranks they enjoyed from the days of Frankenstein to boys’ comics in the 1950s. ( Gerald Warner, TDT)

WASHINGTON - A U.S. judge on Thursday granted a preliminary injunction barring the Obama administration from trying to regulate electronic cigarettes and prevent them from being imported into the United States.

In a sharply worded decision, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon scolded the Food and Drug Administration for trying to assert jurisdiction over the cigarettes, which are battery-powered or rechargeable devices that vaporize a liquid nicotine solution.

"This case appears to be yet another example of FDA's aggressive efforts to regulate recreational tobacco products as drugs or devices," he said in granting an injunction barring the FDA from regulating the cigarettes as a drug-device combination.

E-cigarettes were first made in China and are sold mostly on the Internet. The battery-powered devices work by emitting a "puff" or fine mist of nicotine in the lungs.

A law passed last year gave the FDA power over regular cigarettes and other tobacco products. But while e-cigarettes contain nicotine, they do not contain tobacco and are not subject to the new oversight.

But FDA maintains it has control over the products because they aim to treat people suffering from nicotine withdrawal, making them a combination drug and device - two things the agency has regulated for years.

A company that imports the electronic cigarettes, Smoking Everywhere Inc., had two shipments detained by the agency in late 2008 because they were not FDA approved.

The FDA later barred the importation of electronic cigarettes and their components by three Chinese companies. The FDA also denied entry to more than 35 shipments from 20 other manufacturers, according to the court ruling.

Smoking Everywhere and another manufacturer asked the court to bar the FDA from refusing entry to their products and regulating them, which Leon agreed to do. (Reuters)

A chief constable was tonight accused of undermining the public's right to protest after documents revealed he urged the owner of a power station to do more to disrupt environmental demonstrators.

Mike Fuller, the chief constable of Kent police, told E.ON it was "grossly inappropriate" for taxpayers to be paying extra for policing of protests at Kingsnorth, and the energy firm should "intervene" beforehand to prevent them taking place. (The Guardian)

Should corporate ethics principles apply only to profit-making companies? Or should they also cover nonprofit corporations, especially those that badger for-profits to be more “socially responsible”?

Should corporations be judged partly on creating jobs, supporting communities, or improving and saving lives? And should nonprofit corporations be penalized for impeding the enhancement of human life?

The answers should be self-evident. But they’re not, as US nonprofits and politicians have repeatedly demonstrated.

Consider Greenpeace. This self-proclaimed paragon of virtue constantly harasses companies that it deems insufficiently virtuous in advertising their products, protecting the environment and promoting their public image. But the Rainbow Warriors’ own actions would frequently merit fines or even jail time if committed by profit-making businesses.

Greenpeace publicity stunts, anti-corporate campaigns and fund-raising appeals are often laden with false and misleading claims about companies and their operations. The Warriors justify their actions as necessary to advancing their legal, legislative and regulatory agenda – and getting people and foundations to write a check or click their website’s “donate now” button. Almost anything goes, because Greenpeace and its comrades in eco-warfare are apparently beyond the reach of the Lanham Act and mail fraud or tax laws that apply to ordinary corporations and citizens.

In the olden days, it made sense to carve out exceptions, to protect legitimate public interest organizations from persecutions and prosecutions based on inadvertent falsehoods or political motivations. But that was before the roster of tax-exempt nonprofits included so many unsavory elements, like unscrupulous eco campaigners and pressure groups for whom truth, ethics and real social responsibility mean little. (Paul Driessen, Townhall)

The only resister is Charles Johnson (now deep into the third phase of his Charlie Gordon cycle) who claims that Glover’s mention of a response – “when we did what we did at the climate summit, in Copenhagen, this is the response” – refers not to the earthquake in Haiti, but to “the international relief effort”.

Says Glover, in the replayed clip: “There’s all this hell because of global warming, there’s all this hell because of climate change …” Hill’s explanation:

While some people are trying to determine if Pat Robertson or Danny Glover made the more egregious comment on the cause of the earthquake in Haiti (was it a deal with the Devil or failures in Copenhagen), others are getting to the root of the problem: Haiti is very poor and does not have the resources or infrastructure to prevent damage, react properly to a natural disaster or rebuild after the damage has been done. And proposed environmental solutions, both here and internationally, will do much more to hurt the world’s poor than to help them.

New York Times columnist David Brooks writes, “This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services.” Phelim McAleer makes similar points here. And there’s evidence to support it says George Mason economist Don Boudreaux:

To hear the president and his acolytes tell it, redistributing the wealth is such an obvious moral superiority that it needs no justification, no explanation. OK, I’ll run with that for the moment. But why should we stop only with the taking of income from some to give to others? There are so many other things of value that could and should be redistributed as well. Let’s start with the president, obviously wealthier and more privileged than I, and the redistribution we can make of his advantages to me:

Redistribute special favors: I would like to buy an equivalent house as his in Chicago (after all, housing is a “right,” right?), but I need the same special deal he got from Mr. Rezko. I did not have the advantage of a special deal on my own so I had to pay full price for my more modest home.

Redistribute income opportunities: I would like to draw the same salary as Michelle Obama got, along with the increase she received when her husband was elected to the Senate, but I want the same workload, level of responsibility, and vulnerability to termination that she had. I am pretty sure I could do the work on this basis, so aren’t I entitled to the same benefit? (Jeff Pope, PJM)

TALLAHASSEE -- In a move cheered by environmental groups, the federal government on Friday proposed stringent limits on ``nutrient'' pollution allowed to foul Florida's waterways.

The ruling -- which will cost industries and governments more than a billion dollars to comply -- marks the first time the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has intervened to set a state's water-quality standards. (Miami Herald)

TALLAHASSEE — The electronic ink had yet to dry Friday on proposed new federal water quality standards for Florida before combatants chimed in.

On Friday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a set of proposed numeric standards for phosphorus and nitrogen levels in Florida’s lakes, rivers, streams, springs and canals. The proposal comes in response to a consent decree reached by the agency last year with environmentalists frustrated over a lack of progress in enacting tougher water quality standards.

Environmentalists hailed Friday’s proposed rules as a “first step” in reversing the degradation of Florida water bodies they say have been brought on by industry, agriculture and growth. ( Michael Peltier, The News Service of Florida)

WASHINGTON - A lack of oxygen and nutrients below the surface of beaches in Alaska's Prince William Sound is slowing the dissipation of oil remaining from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.

The team conducted field studies over the past three summers using geologic information and hydraulics to try to determine why patches of oil linger on the beaches 20 years after the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

The supertanker Exxon Valdez spilled more than 11 million gallons (50 million liters) of crude oil, blackening some 1,300 miles of Alaska's coastline. An estimated 20,000 gallons (90,920 liters) remain, the researchers said.

They found that the oil remaining was trapped between two layers of beach and sheltered from the elements, according to the study posted on the journal Nature Geoscience's website ( www.nature.com/ngeo/index.html ) (Reuters)

A Washington-based conservation foundation is hoping success of its first seagrass restoration project, now under way in the Keys, will lead to a seagrass mitigation fund for Florida. But some environmental groups criticize the effort. (Miami Herald)

TONY Abbott's pledge to take full control of the Murray-Darling Basin if elected has been met with widespread disapproval across the irrigation industry, with the Opposition Leader accused of a "simplistic" approach to the management of Australia's largest river system.

On Thursday, Mr Abbott said if he led the Coalition to victory at this year's federal election, and the states resisted the idea of a full federal takeover of the Murray-Darling, he would hold a referendum on the issue.

But his proposal attracted criticism yesterday from industry bodies, including the National Farmers Federation, the National Irrigation Council, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the NSW Irrigation Council. (The Australian)

JOHANNESBURG, 15 January 2010 (IRIN) - What if we could create a food plant that defied all those doomsday scenarios where extreme temperatures take us all to oblivion, and instead kept growing and fruiting regardless of whether it got very hot or very cold?

"We would never run out of food!" remarked Philip Wigge, a scientist at the Norwich-based John Innes Centre, a member institute of Britain's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

That day could come sooner than we think - perhaps in the next 10 to 15 years - because Wigge and co-scientist Vinod Kumar have had a crucial breakthrough. They have isolated a "thermometer" gene that helps plants sense temperature, and this could provide a shortcut to creating plants that fruit in any temperature.

Their findings have been published in the current edition of Cell a US-based scientific journal that is peer-reviewed.

Scientists across the world have been working to create food crops tolerant to extreme temperatures, some of which are already being grown in Asia. They evolved from a long of process subjecting grain plants to stresses such as drought conditions, and then isolating genes from those that survived to create new variants.

Often only conventional breeding processes are used, as many Asian and African countries do not accept genetically modified products, said Baboucarr Manneh, a molecular biologist and coordinator of the Africa Rice Centre's Abiotic Stresses Project in Benin, which is working on developing varieties of rice that will tolerate extreme heat and cold.

Wigge and Kumar's discovery could potentially push agricultural microbiology forward by leaps and bounds in much the same way that early medicine, which depended on empirical methods to treat diseases, was revolutionized by an increased understanding of bacteria.

Time is a critical factor. The impact of extreme temperatures and water stress on food production, brought on by climate change, could be felt in the next 10 years, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which projects that food production in Africa could be severely compromised by 2020. (IRIN)

AUSTRALIAN scientists are hoping to breed burp-less sheep in a bid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The agriculture sector is the nation's second biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions behind the energy sector, producing about 16 per cent of Australia's total emissions.

Two-thirds of that figure is produced by livestock, and 66 per cent of those emissions are released as methane from the guts of grazing livestock such as sheep and cattle.

The Sheep Co-operative Research Centre is conducting a world-first study into about 700 sheep with 20 different genetic lines – each is fed, then shepherded into a booth where scientists measure their burp outputs. (Sunday Mail)

They are becoming as big a pest in Britain as the grey squirrel or Japanese knotweed, and seemingly impossible to control. But the answer to dealing with Chinese mitten crabs, the invasive species infesting the Thames and other English rivers with damaging results, may be simple: eat them.

The large and aggressive Asian crabs with their hairy mitten-like claws are damaging native wildlife and river embankments as they spread across the country. Yet diners in China, Japan and Singapore consider them a tremendous delicacy, and will pay the equivalent of £24 for a single mitten crab in the right condition. It is a famous ingredient of Shanghai cuisine, and the roe is especially prized. (The Independent)

The Australian Government has been far too even-handed in its statements about the reckless actions of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in attempting to prevent Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean.

By not condemning the harassment of Japanese ships by the anti-whaling activists, Australia is in effect acquiescing in militant tactics that come very close to piracy on the high seas.

Harassment will not change Japan's position on whaling. And not condemning these actions directed against a vessel going about its lawful business is counterproductive for Australia trying to broker a diplomatic compromise with Japan through the International Whaling Commission.

Japan could legitimately demand that Australia condemn the actions of the Sea Shepherd group before it even considers discussing any shift in its whaling policy at the next meeting of the commission in Morocco in June.

Given the public interest in these matters, the Australian Government has sensibly asked the Australian Maritime Safety Authority to examine the recent events in the Southern Ocean. But it is hard to see how, on any reading of the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, the Sea Shepherd captain, Paul Watson, could argue his actions were in compliance with it.

Given the relatively small size of the Sea Shepherd's protest boat Ady Gil, and the Japanese ship's restricted ability to manoeuvre, the speedboat was clearly placed in harm's way of the whaling vessel. It neglected the most basic precautions required by the ordinary practice of seamen to avoid a close-quarters situation from developing. Watson can't use the basic rules of the maritime road as his shield. (Anthony Bergin, SMH)

EXCLUSIVE INFORMATION FROM KUSI ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING AND THE KUSI SPECIAL REPORT, GLOBAL WARMING: THE OTHER SIDE

KUSI meteorologist, Weather Channel founder, and iconic weatherman, John Coleman explains the science and controversy surrounding Global Warming

Is civilization doomed because of man-made global warming? You've been told your carbon footprint could lead to skyrocketing temperatures, melting ice caps, dying polar bears and "superstorms."

Click below to watch each segment of the KUSI Special Report, Global Warming: The Other Side

NASA has issued the following statement in response to the KUSI Special Report. This statement is from Dr. James Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City:

"NASA has not been involved in any manipulation of climate data used in the annual GISS global temperature analysis. The analysis utilizes three independent data sources provided by other agencies. Quality control checks are regularly performed on that data. The analysis methodology as well as updates to the analysis are publicly available on our website. The agency is confident of the quality of this data and stands by previous scientifically based conclusions regarding global temperatures." (GISS temperature analysis website: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/) (KUSI)

WASHINGTON - A top U.S. climate negotiator said he hopes the U.S. Senate will pass a global warming bill in the first half of the year, but the country will have to work on alternatives if the legislation fails.

"I'm quite optimistic there will be action," Jonathan Pershing, the U.S. Deputy special climate change envoy, told a panel on Wednesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"I don't think its a plausible scenario" that Congress would not pass a bill aiming to lower emissions of heat-trapping gases, but passage would be more likely over the next year than the next month, he said. (Reuters)

UNITED NATIONS - The top U.S. climate envoy on Thursday urged other countries to set carbon emission targets to fight global warming by the end of this month as a crucial step toward a global legally binding agreement.

Todd Stern said the Copenhagen accord hammered out last month provided the best path toward a concrete, binding climate agreement, but first countries needed to pledge targets and put them in the document.

"We have an accord that is lumbering down the runway and we need for it to have enough speed to take off," Stern told a conference on climate risks and opportunities at the United Nations. "The best way to make progress toward a legal agreement is to get the Copenhagen accord implemented." (Reuters)

They're going after the fertilizers that feed the world too (in the name of gorebull warming, of course): Earth's growing nitrogen threat - It helps feed a hungry world, but it's worse than CO2.

Dennis Lindsay still recalls the day four decades ago when his father, an Iowa farmer, began using nitrogen fertilizer on the family’s 160 acres.

With nitrogen, the family’s corn crop suddenly grew much higher and stronger, and produced full ears and big harvests. When fed to their cows and pigs, that high-quality corn produced far more milk and meat. As a result, the family bought more livestock – and the farm grew. “I remember Dad bringing the neighbors over to see how much greener and better the quality of the stalk was,” Mr. Lindsay says. “It was a really big deal then.”

It’s an even bigger deal today. Lindsay and his son farm 3,000 acres of corn and soybeans, using about 150 tons of nitrogen fertilizer annually. Farmers from China, Europe, and South America rely on nitrogen, too, to make ends meet and feed a growing world.

Yet it’s also becoming clear that too much of a good thing can have a downside for the environment. The world is awash in man-made “reactive” nitrogen (the chemically active form), researchers say.

While greening farms worldwide, much nitrogen washes into lakes, rivers, and the sea, causing rampant algae growth. More nitrogen billows from power-plant smokestacks, blowing in the wind until it settles as acid rain. Still other nitrogen gases remain in the atmosphere consuming the ozone layer. Nitrous oxide is nearly 300 times as potent as carbon dioxide – considered the leading cause of climate change – and the third most threatening greenhouse gas overall. (Christian Science Monitor)

Increased skepticism is evolving into full-fledged investigation. Mann is currently under investigation by Penn State University. Our friends at The Commonwealth Foundation in Pennsylvania have more on this.

Washington, DC - In the face of rising unemployment and record-breaking deficits, policy experts at the National Center for Public Policy Research are criticizing the Obama Administration for awarding a half million dollar grant from the economic stimulus package to Penn State Professor Michael Mann, a key figure in the Climategate controversy.

"It's outrageous that economic stimulus money is being used to support research conducted by Michael Mann at the very time he’s under investigation by Penn State and is one of the key figures in the international Climategate scandal. Penn State should immediately return these funds to the U.S. Treasury," said Tom Borelli, Ph.D., director of the National Center's Free Enterprise Project. ( National Center)

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained internal documents from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) related to a controversy that erupted in 2007 when Canadian blogger Stephen McIntyre exposed an error in NASA's handling of raw temperature data from 2000-2006 that exaggerated the reported rise in temperature readings in the United States. According to multiple press reports, when NASA corrected the error, the new data apparently caused a reshuffling of NASA's rankings for the hottest years on record in the United States, with 1934 replacing 1998 at the top of the list.

These new documents, obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), include internal GISS email correspondence as NASA scientists attempted to deal with the media firestorm resulting from the controversy. In one exchange GISS head James Hansen tells a reporter from Bloomberg that NASA had not previously published rankings with 1998 atop the list as the hottest year on record in the 20^th century.

Email Response from James Hansen to Damien McLean, August 14, 2007: "...We have not changed ranking of warmest year in the U.S. As you will see in our 2001 paper we found 1934 slightly warmer, by an insignificant hair over 1998. We still find that result. The flaw affected temperatures only after 2000, not 1998 and 1934."

(This issue also crops up in email communications with New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin a little over a week later.)

According to the NASA email, NASA's incorrect temperature readings resulted from a "flaw" in a computer program used to update annual temperature data.

Hansen, clearly frustrated by the attention paid to the NASA error, labeled McIntyre a "pest" and suggests those who disagree with his global warming theories "should be ready to crawl under a rock by now." Hansen also suggests that those calling attention to the climate data error did not have a "light on upstairs."

"This email traffic ought to be embarrassing for NASA. Given the recent Climategate scandal, NASA has an obligation to be completely transparent with its handling of temperature data. Instead of insulting those who point out their mistakes, NASA scientists should engage the public in an open, professional and honest manner," stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. (Judicial Watch)

Detroit - The auto industry's green efforts to meet strict new mpg rules are the dominant theme inside the 2010 North American International Auto Show. But outside Cobo Center, it's not just the frigid winter temperatures that have cast doubt on global warming science that is driving the biggest regulatory challenge to the industry in a generation. E-mails leaked from the world's top climatology center in England have exposed influential scientists doctoring data and suppressing scientific debate. Some in Congress have demanded an investigation.

On Tuesday before a Detroit Athletic Club audience in downtown Detroit, The Detroit News and WJR Radio brought together leaders from the fields of climatology, energy politics, and the auto industry to debate whether the so-called Climategate scandal has undermined auto regulations.

In a spirited, sometimes contentious debate moderated by radio talk show host and Detroit News op-ed columnist Frank Beckmann of WJR, the panel left no doubt that there is little consensus on global warming.

Renowned climatologists Patrick Michaels of George Mason University and Henry Pollack of the University of Michigan -- both members of the United Nations climate panel and both the subject of Climategate e-mails -- disagreed sharply on the science. Pollack stated that the United States has dangerously turned the atmosphere into an "open sewer," while Michaels warned that climate change has been overstated and that Washington's solutions are worse than the disease. (Henry Payne, The Detroit News)

Investors representing $13 trillion in assets Thursday said they are eager to invest in a low-carbon economy, but they need the certainty and transparency of a legally binding agreement "with ambitious greenhouse gas emission-reduction targets."

"We are poised to create a clean economy but to ramp up and to get the funding, we need to make clean energy a public policy," said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres and director of the Investor Network on Climate Risk. She made her comments Thursday at the Investor Summit on Climate Risk at the United Nations.

The international coalition of investors is asking for, among other things, countries to set short- and long-term emission-reduction targets, to put a price on carbon credits, and to require businesses to disclose climate-related risks and programs to manage them. (Dow Jones)

Jan. 14 -- Billionaire George Soros said the lack of a U.S. law to curb greenhouse gas emissions is holding back tens of billions of dollars in new investment for low- carbon energy projects in developing countries.

Soros, founder of $25 billion hedge-fund firm Soros Fund Management LLC, said at a conference today that without a cap on carbon dioxide emissions that puts a penalty on pollution, low- carbon investments won’t be profitable. Soros, 79, has said he will invest $1 billion in clean-energy technology and donate $100 million to an environmental policy group to aid new regulations.

“If you had the legislation in the United States you would have a market” for carbon emissions and for offsetting credits provided to clean-energy projects in developing nations, Soros said at the Investor Summit on Climate Risk at the United Nations in New York. “Right now you don’t even have that. The United States is the laggard.” (Bloomberg)

Carbon dioxide could soon be ready for a PR makeover. With a bit of clever chemistry, the gas could become a feedstock for alternative fuels or find a role in cooling freezers rather than warming the atmosphere.

Carbon capture and storage schemes propose to snatch CO2 from industrial chimneys and bury it in ocean basins or geological formations. But having gone to the trouble of capturing the gas, squirrelling it away underground is a wasted opportunity, says Dermot O'Hare at the University of Oxford. He thinks converting CO2 into methanol for use as fuel is a smarter move.

But that's easier said than done. "One of the difficulties chemists have is doing anything with CO2," O'Hare says. The trouble is that the molecule is so stable, it's hard to find chemicals reactive enough to target CO2 but specific enough to ignore other components of the atmosphere such as carbon monoxide and oxygen.

Now O'Hare and Andrew Ashley, also at Oxford, have demonstrated how to do it at the relatively low temperature of 160 °C and at standard pressure. All it takes is a bit of frustration. (New Scientist)

U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue urged Washington lawmakers today to rethink proposed climate regulations and other policies that he charged would raise costs for businesses and slow recovery from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

"Congress, the administration and the states must recognize that our weak economy simply could not sustain all the new taxes, regulations and mandates now under consideration," Donohue said during his annual "State of American Business" speech at the chamber's Washington headquarters. "It's a sure-fire recipe for a double-dip recession, or worse." (Michael Burnham, E&E)

Advocates for Senate climate legislation are pushing back against calls to abandon a mandatory cap on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in favor of a stand-alone energy bill that some say has a better chance of passing in an election year.

For starters, President Obama's top energy adviser insisted yesterday that the administration's goal remains a "comprehensive bill" that touches on all corners of the energy and climate debate, including the controversial cap-and-trade program that most Republicans have labeled as an energy tax.

"We think it can be hugely successful in giving us both the environmental gains that we want and we think are important, but also the flexibility and the cost savings to meet the challenge of greenhouse -- of reducing greenhouse gas emissions," said Carol Browner in a White House-sponsored Web chat. (Greenwire)

That's the title GE Vice President Steve Fludder gave to his presentation to GE CEO Jeff Immelt on the Copenhagen global warming summit and it sums up how the speakers at a Forbes conference this morning felt about the generally underwhelming U.N. effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The title of the U.N. summit says it all: COP 15, or the 15th United Nations conference on the same issue. The main result was a two-page agreement to do almost nothing, pushed into existence by President Obama's cameo appearance at the talks. China, the U.S., Brazil and a handful of other countries signed on, leaving delegates from smaller nations fuming. That was the take of University of Arizona Thunderbird School professor Gregory Unruh, a speaker at the Forbes conference who'd just returned from talks in Latin America with global-warming officials there. The global-warming club has narrowed to the U.S. and China, he said, making it tougher to bring in the other nations necessary to achieve any sort of political bargain with the industrial economies. (Daniel Fisher, Forbes)

The failure of the UN climate summit in Copenhagen is a historical watershed that marks the beginning of the end of climate hysteria. Not only does it epitomise the failure of the EU’s environmental policy, it also symbolises the loss of Western dominance. The failure of the climate summit was not only predictable – it was inevitable. There was no way out from the cul-de-sac into which the international community has manoeuvred itself. The global deadlock simply reflects the contrasting, and in the final analysis irreconcilable interests of the West and the rest of the world. The result is likely to be an indefinite moratorium on international climate legislation. After Copenhagen, the chances for a binding successor of the Kyoto Protocol are as good as zero. (GWPF)

America sees a diminished role for the United Nations in trying to stop global warming after the "chaotic" Copenhagen climate change summit, an Obama administration official said today.

Jonathan Pershing, who helped lead talks at Copenhagen, instead sketched out a future path for negotiations dominated by the world's largest polluters such as China, the US, India, Brazil and South Africa, who signed up to a deal in the final hours of the summit. That would represent a realignment of the way the international community has dealt with climate change over the last two decades. (The Guardian)

LONDON - Britain will not rely on the carbon dioxide emissions reductions made due to a weaker economy to meet its climate targets, Britain's Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said on Thursday.

Britain is set to over-achieve on its so-called "carbon budgets" with an estimated 36 percent cut in emissions from 1990 levels by 2020.

This was aided by the economic slowdown which reduced industrial output in 2008, causing emissions to fall by 2 percent.

Any over-achievement in the first carbon budget (2008-2012) due to the recession will not be carried forward to allow for higher emissions in the future, the government said.

On Monday, a UK Parliament committee recommended that Britain moves to a 42 percent emissions cut by 2020 from 1990 levels, from its current goal of 34 percent.

It warned the government not to bank any over-achievement from its first carbon budget into its second budget period (2013-2017).

The government said it has made "significant progress" in moving to a low-carbon economy.

It will soon publish steps made so far in delivering an 80 percent reduction in emissions by 2050. (Reuters)

Before the Copenhagen conference on climate change, many believed that carbon trading, already underway in the EU, would sweep the western world, with Australia being the next country carbon-trading country. After Copenhagen ended in chaos, it became clear that the U.S. wouldn’t adopt carbon markets and that Canada, which is determined to follow the U.S.’s lead, also would not.

Now, all bets are off in Australia, despite gung-ho Labour Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has staked his reputation on pushing through carbon trading.

''I think there should be a delay in whatever we do until we have a clear picture of the best course,'' Dick Warburton, head of the Labour government’s own Expert Advisory Committee on Emissions-Intensive Trade-Exposed Activities, said in a surprise statement earlier today.

Even before Copenhagen, Australia’s seemingly irrevocable decision to implement its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a cap and trade system that had the support of the Australia’s Liberal Leader of the Opposition, had begun to unravel. In a surprise move, the Liberal leader was ousted by seemingly fringe back benchers in favour of an outspoken climate change skeptic, Tony Abbott. The newly sceptical Opposition, in what was seen as a mere setback to the cap and trade scheme’s inevitable passage, then voted down the legislation in the Senate. Days later, the newly sceptical Liberals did surprisingly well in winning by-elections in Melbourne and Sydney.

And now, as the governing Labour party is pondering how to redraft its cap and trade legislation for reintroduction to parliament next month, Warburton is moving against it, saying that the country needs a proper understanding of the implications of climate change legislation before proceeding. ''Chairmen and CEOs and the public have very poor knowledge of what the ETS [Emissions Trading Scheme] involves.'' he stated, announcing he is organizing a round-table of corporate executives, government bureaucrats and experts to weigh the merits of carbon trading and to consider alternatives to it – in effect, a counter conference to the government’s expert advisory panel that he chaired last year.

IN the lead-up to the December climate change conference in Copenhagen the Rudd government was full of bravado as it threatened to reintroduce, next month, its legislation for an emissions trading scheme which the Liberals had just defeated in the Senate. This was clearly designed to unsettle the opposition, and its new leader, Tony Abbott, by holding out the prospect of a double dissolution election if the legislation was again rejected. The Prime Minister may have believed he was on solid ground because Malcolm Turnbull, who Abbott displaced, was clearly spooked at the consequences for the Liberal party if such an election was fought over this legislation.

But the political sands have shifted significantly since then, and far from being intimidated by the reintroduction of this legislation the opposition should be daring Rudd to bring it on. (Malcolm Colless, The Australian)

LONDON - Green technologies posed the investment opportunity of our lifetime said Deutsche Bank's global head of asset management, in a study published on Thursday.

A Deutsche Bank report found that companies specializing in energy efficiency and renewable energy such as wind and solar power outperformed peers across the wider global economy last year and expected more to come in 2010.

Clear proof of the threat posed by climate change meant that governments will only ramp up steps to curb carbon emissions and favor clean technologies, it said. (Reuters)

More from Dennis Ambler on the climate pantomime players: The scaremongers are now getting themselves jobs with those that they scare: Create a problem, get it accepted, then provide the solution.

Click here: Interview with Tuvalu Climate Negotiator Ian Fry | Worldwatch Institute
How did you, an Australian native, become Tuvalu's lead climate negotiator?

I've been on the job for 11 years. I was working for Earth Negotiations Bulletin and Greenpeace before that.

I met the prime minister of Tuvalu at a meeting and provided him with a briefing on climate change. He then invited me to come onto their delegation at [the 1997 climate negotiations in Kyoto, Japan]. It evolved from there. I now work full time for the Tuvalu government as an international environment advisor.

This has been Bill Hare's bag for a long time:

In London, UK (March 2002) at reception for the Climate Justice Project. From left, Pene Lefale, Pacific Islands Climate Research; Joel Gordes, EES; Bill Hare, Greenpeace; and Dr. Jeremy Leggett, Managing Director, Solar Century.

http://home.earthlink.net/~jgordes/page11.html

How did Tuvalu decide to push for a target of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and atmospheric greenhouse gas levels to below 350 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide equivalent?

Within the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), we had commissioned work by scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and we've done our own research on vulnerabilities based on work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It was clear that a global temperature rise above 2 degrees would be disastrous for Tuvalu. We were even saying well below 1.5 degrees. At 1.5 there are probabilities of sea-level rise that could be quite disastrous for Tuvalu. Well below 1.5 degrees relatively equates to 350 ppm.

This can only have been with Bill Hare, via his new German government funded Climate Analytics group, although he is still on the Potsdam staff list: http://www.pik-potsdam.de/research/research-domains/earth-system-analysis/members/index_html/?searchterm=Bill Hare: described thus:
Hare, Bill Explaining environmental issues to policy makers, IPCC negotiator (and also member of core writing team, Synthesis Report and Summary for Policymakers. The 1.5 degree figure is from Hare and he has written about it).

http://www.climateanalytics.org/

CLIMATE ANALYTICS GmbH is a non-profit organization established in Potsdam and hosted at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) A major project carried out by CLIMATE ANALYTICS is the PREVENT-Project "Assessing and preventing dangerous climate change". PREVENT's aim is to provide policy and analytical support for delegations of developing countries, in particular the Least Developed Country Group (LDCs) and Small Island States (SIDS), in the 'post-2012' negotiations. In addition, the project will assist in building in-house capacity within SIDS and LDSs. The team is backed by science-based models to assess and synthesize climate science, and to provide policy and analytical support to negotiators and NGOs at international climate negotiations.

Our Team:
Dr. h.c. Bill Hare is a Physicist and Environmental Scientist with more than twenty years experience in relation to the science, impacts and policy responses to climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion. Mr. Hare was a Lead Author for the IPCC’s Climate Change 2007: Mitigation of Climate Change component of its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) and a Topic Leader on long term issues and Article of the UNFCCC in the Synthesis Report of the IPCC AR4. He has been a Visiting Scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research since 2002 whilst continuing to advise Greenpeace International on all aspects of climate change.

In fact until at least August 2008, and for all his time at Potsdam since 2002, he was Director of Climate Policy for Greenpeace.As shown, he held this position at the time of AR4 of which he was a lead author and summary writer.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/releases/greenpeace-urges-climate-speedup

27 August 2008

"Too much time is being wasted arguing about procedural details and restating historical positions and not enough real substance is being put on the table,"said Bill Hare, Director of Climate Policy at Greenpeace International. "This is the third round of talks since the two-year process was launched in Bali last year, and by now the deal that will be agreed at the end of 2009 should be taking shape."

Another activist acquires a low lying island:

http://www.climatevulnerableforum.gov.mv/?page_id=52

Speech for the Climate Vulnerable Forum – Mark Lynas, Climate Adviser to the Maldives

"We are here today because we know what climate change means. For us, this is not a scientific abstraction.

Here in the Maldives, the very integrity of the nation is being eroded, by a triple-whammy: rising ocean levels which swamp the islands, higher sea surface temperatures which kill the coral, and ocean acidification which dissolves the carbonate rocks the reefs are built from.

http://www.iisd.ca/climate/sb28/9june.htm: Both Hare and Fry in photos at the 28th Sessions of the UNFCCC Subsidiary Bodies and Sessions of the AWGs 2-13 June 2008, Bonn, Germany. They have both been on the case a long time and were "witnesses" at the Aus. senate committee: March 2000:

http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/Committee/ecita_ctte/completed_inquiries/1999-02/gobalwarm/report/e02.htm
The Heat is On: Australia's Greenhouse Future

LONDON - The global market for carbon offsets from planting trees and preserving forests, worth nearly $150 million to date, could stall without a U.S. climate bill or a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol, a report said on Thursday.

"At the end of 2009, the market for forest carbon stands in an uncertain position on the verge of potentially enormous growth," the State of the Forest Carbon Markets 2009 report said.

Steven Wiley talks about Biology, but his words explain the one long-lasting damage Climategate has done to mainstream (AGW) climatology, whatever the outcome of the ongoing investigations: an increasing number of skeptics because emotional outbursts destroy confidence in the very data:

There’s going to be a need for a huge amount of “the science is settled” declarations before AGW climatology will start to look again as anything remotely objective, in the eyes of the general public. In the meanwhile, it will remain caged within politics and silly holier-than-thou discussions bordering on fundamentalism. And that’s no place for a scientific discipline. (Maurizio Morabito, Omniclimate)

There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action.—Goethe

Extreme cold weather across the Northern Hemisphere drew attention away from the leaked files from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) that showed how the entire work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was falsified. The cold simply isn’t supposed to happen. As Kevin Trenberth of the CRU gang said on 12 October 2009, “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” It’s true only because they can’t hide the reality.

The cold triggered questions, cartoons and jokes about global warming. It also forced more denial. Those who claim the cold weather alters nothing provided the real laugh. Most ridiculous of these came from the United Kingdom Meteorological Office (UKMO). They were involved in the skullduggery at the CRU through the Hadley Centre. UKMO is a major promoter of the IPCC and their former Director Sir John Houghton left to become a prime mover in the early formation of the IPCC. (Tim Ball, CFP)

How many scientists does it take to prove the debate is not over? More than 30,000 scientists have signed The Petition Project. More than 9,000 of them have PhDs (not that that proves anything about carbon, but it does prove something about the myth of “consensus”). The petition’s wording is unequivocal:

The Petition Project is funded by donations from individuals and run by volunteers. It receives no money from industry or companies. In late 2007, The Petition Project re-did the petition to verify names again.

AGW says: Everyone knows the petition is bogus and filled with duplicate and fake names.

Al Gore is mad at the world, the UK and much of Europe is digging itself out from under global warming and eating greens might kill primates unable to access antacids. (Daily Bayonet)

Says Glover: “When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m sayin’?” His obscene opinion would be bigger news if Glover had – in the manner of others – idiotically blamed a less-fashionable deity. (Tim Blair)

Hull could be transformed into a Venice-like waterworld and Portsmouth into a south coast version of Amalfi, engineers and architects have claimed in a study of options for developing Britain's coastal cities in the face of rising sea levels.

The Institution of Civil Engineers and the Royal Institute of British Architects yesterday warned the future of cities including London, Bristol and Liverpool was at risk from seas which the Environment Agency predict could rise by as much as 1.9m by 2095 in the event of a dramatic melting of the Greenland ice sheet. (The Guardian)

Decommissioned North Sea oil platforms should be towed to the waterfronts of coastal cities at risk of flooding and converted into homes, shops and universities protected from rising sea levels, a study recommends.

Britain should not retreat from the waves but embrace them, adapting to climate change and consequent flooding by building new communities, either on stilts or floating platforms.

A team of senior architects, engineers and civil servants, appointed by the Royal Institute of British Architects and Institution of Civil Engineers, considered the options for responding to a 6ft 6in (2m) rise in sea levels by the end of the century. (The Times)

Looks like it was "pick a number" in this government-sponsored lunacy: Global warming could turn Hull into the Venice of the North - Hull could become the Venice of the North, say country's top architects, as they outline plans to cope with rising sea levels.

Town planners should allow parts of the suburbs to flood while preserving the historic centre to deal with water levels rising by as much of four feet [1.2m] in the next century.

That way they can make a "positive out of a negative" by creating a walled old city with new waterways around the edge that would be attractive places to live and visit. (TDT)

Big, bad carbon dioxide gets most of the attention when it comes to greenhouse gases, but it's not the only one that's warming the Earth. Methane — a gas that is found in everything from landfills to cow stomachs — also plays a big role. Although global methane emissions levels are much lower than CO2 emissions, pound for pound methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas; a ton of it has 23 times the warming effect of a ton of CO2. And methane, like CO2, is on the rise thanks to us: about 60% of global methane emissions come from man-made sources, and the atmospheric concentration of methane has increased by around 150% since 1750, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Now there's new focus on a pair of methane sources that we usually don't think of as natural polluters: wetlands and rice paddies. ( Bryan Walsh)

Experts say methane emissions from the Arctic have risen by almost one-third in just five years, and that sharply rising temperatures are to blame (The Guardian)

A major Antarctic glacier has passed its tipping point, according to a new modelling study. After losing increasing amounts of ice over the past decades, it is poised to collapse in a catastrophe that could raise global sea levels by 24 centimetres.

Pine Island glacier (PIG) is one of many at the fringes of the West Antarctic ice sheet. In 2004, satellite observations showed that it had started to thin, and that ice was flowing into the Amundsen Sea 25 per cent faster than it had 30 years before.

Now, the first study to model changes in the ice sheet in three dimensions shows that PIG has probably passed a critical "tipping point" and is irreversibly on track to lose 50 per cent of its ice in as little as 100 years, significantly raising global sea levels.

The team that carried out the study admits their model can represent only a simplified version of the physics that govern changes in glaciers, but say that if anything, the model is optimistic and PIG will disappear faster than it projects. (New Scientist)

The recent cold weather can have lasting environmental effects as illustrated in this news release from the National Weather Service

“Our two week cold snap has had a significant impact on the Gulf water temperatures near our coast. There have been reports of dead or dying green sea turtles and manatees, as well as numerous fish kills up and down the Florida Gulf Coast. The Gulf water temperatures at Clearwater Beach are the lowest since 2001. The sensor became operational in July of 1995. At the time of this article, the water temperature at Clearwater Beach was 55.2 degrees Fahrenheit.”

What this event illustrates is the importance of extreme short-term weather events in terms of long term consequences (in this case animal life), and that this effect is not captured at all by a multi-decadal regional surface temperature trend. (Climate Science)

Dr. Chan has been busy recently publishing three articles of great interest to us at World Climate Report. In his first article on tropical cyclones (TCs) we will cover, Chan and Xu begin by noting “While some recent studies have claimed that the number of intense TCs is on the increase as a result of global warming, others pointed that such a claim is not valid as the trend was calculated based on data with large uncertainties in the pre-satellite era”. Many of the studies are based on hurricanes in the Atlantic, and in this article, Chan and Xu examine TCs in East Asia over the period 1945-2004. (WCR)

Car companies are raising false hopes of emission-free motoring in order to continue profiting from large, fuel-hungry vehicles, according to a study.

Cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells are not expected to be available widely until after 2050 because of the high cost of the platinum in their catalysts. Battery-powered vehicles will also remain a niche product because of their limited battery life.

The University of Oxford study, edited by Sir David King, the Government’s former chief scientific adviser, found that the most effective way of reducing overall emissions from motoring would be a “drastic downscaling of both size and weight” of conventional petrol and diesel cars.

It urges the Government to impose higher taxes on drivers of large, inefficient vehicles and to reinvest the proceeds in better public transport and measures to encourage walking and cycling. The authors accuse car manufacturers of exaggerating the potential for switching to hydrogen or battery-powered vehicles in the next decade. (The Times)

In Part I of this two-part post, we presented our observations of a power generation industry that will likely become more dependent on natural gas as a source of fuel for new power plants constructed in the coming years. Other fuel-based technologies (principally nuclear and coal) don’t seem to have the wherewithal to grab a larger piece of what should be a growing demand for electricity in the U.S. Both will be lucky to maintain their market share in the future. Renewables, with high levels of production tax credits, coupled with legislative mandates, will continue to grow in installed capacity but will contribute little to peak demand reduction. And should politically correct renewables (not hydropower) lose part or all of its government support, say as part of a deficit reduction program, then market share will actually be lost.

What follows is what we believe to be the future path of the remaining fuel-based power generation alternatives in 2010 and beyond.

Nuclear power, the last best hope for zero-carbon emissions from baseload generating plants, was many analysts’ early pick for a generating revival in the first decade of the 21st century. If one accepts the conventional view of climate change, the rational case for nukes appears unassailable. If you want low-carbon generation, you must go nuclear, period. (Gas-fired capacity to firm intermittent sources of power makes carbon-free wind and solar an illusion.)

The first decade of our new century has passed. After years waiting for the nuclear renaissance, it doesn’t look as if the second decade will bring the nuclear industry closer to revival. Indeed, the horizon may be receding. Literature Nobel laureate Samuel Becket could not have had U.S. nukes in mind when he wrote his iconic 1953 play, Waiting for Godot. But some of its dialog is eerily on target. The character Vladimir in the second act comments, “What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come.”

In the U.S., we are into the second decade of the 21st century, waiting for the nuclear renaissance, after the market collapsed in the 1970s. Waiting and waiting.

Nuclear power plants won’t pick up U.S. generating market share in 2010, by all accounts. That’s despite prior federal government policy aimed at jump-starting new nuclear generation, including allegedly streamlined federal regulations and a longed-for candy jar of additional subsidies, such as major loan guarantees, pledged in the Republicans’ Energy Policy Act of 2005. Those have yet to materialize.

Some in the Obama administration and Congress are contemplating additional loan guarantees and other nuclear subsidies, to be included in pending climate change legislation. Arguing for $50 billion in additional federal loan guarantees, Exelon CEO John Rowe told a Senate committee in late October, “Deployment of new nuclear plants simply will not happen, given the large up-front capital costs, without a much more robust federal loan guarantee program than currently exists.” There doesn’t seem to be much enthusiasm on either side of the partisan aisle for committing that kind of money to nuclear power.

The 2005 congressional vision (perhaps a hallucination) was of a modest new fleet of nukes—a dozen or so—that would come into the U.S. market and revitalize the stagnant industry. New reactor designs from U.S., Japanese, and French companies; interest from multiple utilities; applications for more than 30 units under the streamlined approach of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) licensing reforms of the 1990s; and the Energy Policy Act of 2005 all led to irrational exuberance among nuclear power developers. The 2005 loan guarantees would jump-start the market, the legislation assumed and the industry agreed.

ExxonMobil announced it will recover an additional 40 million barrels of oil at the Hawkins Field in northeast Texas , equal to the annual energy needs of more than one million Texas households.

The project will extend the life of the field, discovered by the oil giant in 1940, for an additional 25 years. Though a small part of ExxonMobil's reserves the extension of life for such a mature oil feed is at least some evidence that new technologies can help push back the reckoning of the world's "peak oil" moment. (Forbes)

The world's largest carbon capture and storage (CCS) project has received a significant funding boost – nearly half a billion dollars from the provincial government of Alberta and another $63.3 million from the federal government of Canada in Ottawa.

Executives at Enhance Energy Inc. and North West Upgrading Inc. signed a letter of intent with Alberta in June 2009 that led to the recent award of $495 million for the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line (ACTL) project. In addition, the Canadian government awarded the ACTL project a total of $63.3 million as part of the federal government's econENERGY Technology Initiative and the Clean Energy Fund. (Oil & Gas Journal)

OSLO - An industry-backed survey published on Thursday shows most Norwegians favor an impact study that could pave the way to open a pristine, fish-rich Arctic area to oil activities and prolong Norway's energy boom.

The oil industry says the waters near the Lofoten and Vesteraalen islands in the Arctic now have the most prospects off Norway and must be tapped to prolong the North Sea state's oil bonanza as output from mature oilfields declines. (Reuters)

Shares of oil companies McMoran Exploration, Energy XXI and Plains Exploration & Production are jumping this morning amid news that the trio has made a nice oil discovery at its Davy Jones prospect in the Gulf of Mexico. Drilling logs on the 28,000-foot-deep well (that's 5 miles down!) show a likely prize of as much as 165 million barrels of oil and natural gas. (Christopher Helman, Forbes)

BY ALAN BAILEY FOR GREENING OF OIL

The use of advanced technologies that reduce environmental impact and improve business efficiency distinguishes Shell in the oil and gas industry, Michael Macrander, Shell’s Alaska lead scientist, told Greening of Oil in December.

“The investment that Shell makes in technology and the willingness to embrace new technologies is quite apparent,” Macrander said, pointing to the company’s operations in the Gulf of Mexico and its efforts to address environmental issues in offshore Alaska. “… Shell was a leader in technologies that enabled deepwater exploration and development. … We view technology as a difference-maker.”

The use of technologies and techniques that minimize the environmental footprint of oil and gas operations is nowadays a requirement and expectation, forming an essential component of Shell’s “license to operate” in places like the Arctic offshore, he said. (Greening of Oil)

BY ALAN BAILEY FOR GREENING OF OIL

In perhaps its most visible form, radio frequency identification, or RFID, has become familiar to many as the magic badge that you wave in the air to unlock an office door, open a security gate or perhaps gain admission to a ski lift. But, behind the scenes in many industries, RFID has become something of an ubiquitous technology, widely used to track freight and perform many of the functions of a traditional bar-coding system.

Marathon Oil Corp., working with various industry partners, has been spearheading efforts to apply RFID technology in the drilling of oil and gas wells, to cut costs and save time by more efficiently controlling the drilling equipment deep underground in a well bore, Tim Deines, Marathon’s well performance manager for upstream technology, told Greening of Oil. And improved efficiency translates to a reduced environmental impact, thanks to less time spent running the engines that power the drilling rigs; less need to “trip,” or pull, the drill pipe from a well; and less need to vent gas when completing natural gas wells, Deines said.

Marathon’s industry partners in its RFID initiative include Weatherford International, a company with expertise in downhole electronics, and Petrowell, a U.K. company that specializes in downhole equipment design, including RFID tools, said Phil Snider, Marathon’s senior technical consultant for upstream technology. (GoO)

China has launched a multi-billion dollar effort to turn some of its massive coal resources into gas. China now has more than 10 coal-gasification plants under construction with total nameplate capacity of about 1.2 trillion cubic feet per year. [Read More] (Xina Xie, Energy Tribune)

This week's arctic chill will likely knock offline thousands of natural gas wells in Texas and Louisiana, home to one-third of U.S. gas production. Because it rarely freezes down here, gas wells aren't built to withstand the phenomenon called "well head freeze off." That's when the small amount of water produced alongside the natural gas crystallizes inside pipelines, completely blocking off the flow and shutting down the well. There's three ways to fix it: wait for the weather to get milder, pumping methanol through the pipes, or applying external heat. The latter has to be done carefully, notes David Pursell, analyst with Tudor, Pickering & Holt in Houston, "It's bad form to fire up an acetylene torch near a nat gas gathering system." All solutions are labor intensive. So what could well head freeze off mean to gas supplies? Pursell says the last time the weather got this cold was in Jan/Feb 2007; data shows that 1.5 billion cubic feet of gas a day (out of roughly 60 bcfd nationwide) was knocked off line then. But the cold there was focused further north where wells are often outfitted to endure the chill. It would be very bullish for gas prices if the deep freeze lasts for a month, and well head freeze offs shut in 125 bcf of cumulative production. (Christopher Helman, Forbes)

Help for coal and renewable power in climate legislation could hurt natural gas, an industry official said yesterday as the fuel continued its quest to gain political standing.

Natural gas will be caught in a "squeeze play" if there are subsidies for coal, solar, wind and other green sources and natural gas is ignored, Skip Horvath, president and CEO of the Natural Gas Supply Association, said at the U.S. Energy Association's annual State of the Energy Industry Forum.

"There's a false perception that natural gas will come out a winner in any climate change scenario because of its low emissions and reliable performance record," Horvath said. "The environmental benefits of natural gas will allow it to hold its own on a level playing field, but not if the field is dramatically tilted by subsidies for coal and overly rigid mandates for renewable sources.

"Our worry is the balance will become too heavily in favor of coal and renewables, which will squeeze us out of the mix." (Greenwire)

BY ERIC LIDJI FOR GREENING OF OIL

Extracting natural gas and oil from shale requires large amounts of fresh water for both drilling the deep wells and hydraulically fracturing the rock to release the gas and liquids, making shale development troublesome for some communities. A cheap and efficient way to reuse the water could ease those concerns.

To that end, a pilot test begins this month that will compare various methods for treating produced water in the field.

The test, headed up by the Global Petroleum Research Institute at Texas A&M University and involving several other partners, is being funded by the National Energy Technology Laboratory, or NETL.

The partners aim to develop a mobile technology for pre-treating used water. The pilot tests will focus on the Marcellus Shale in New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Pre-treatment commonly involves removing certain substances, like chemicals and metals, from industrial wastewater before treatment in a municipal water facility, where water is normally brought to drinking water standards.

But for shale development, the normal pre-treatment process is enough to allow much of the water to be reused.

“What we’re doing in the oil field is trying to do that (pre-treatment) on a smaller scale and do it with more precision,” said David Burnett, director of technology at the GPRI at Texas A&M.

Some recycling techniques already exist. In recent years, the Railroad Commission of Texas approved several pilot projects for entrepreneurs to test different technologies for reducing water use in the Barnett Shale that runs across North Texas. (GoO)

BY KAY CASHMAN FOR GREENING OF OIL

In a country craving domestic sources of clean energy one would think Americans would welcome abundant supplies of newly discovered natural gas from shale. For the most part they do.

But the process of extracting natural gas from shale has prompted concerns from the people living in areas where this unconventional gas production is planned, or already happening.

One of their concerns is the large amount of fresh water required by shale production; water that is largely lost from fresh water supplies.

Greening of Oil decided to follow this issue, primarily by keeping on top of what shale gas producers were doing to develop technology that would allow them to reuse water versus disposing of it deep beneath the water table. (See article posted in Tracking fossil fuels section on Jan. 9, titled “Pilot test aims to recycle water in shale production.”)

In the course of that investigation, we discovered that natural gas development from shale uses the least amount of water for the energy it produces, followed by nuclear and conventional oil. At the other end of the list, requiring thousands of gallons more water per unit of energy, is ethanol from corn and biodiesel from soy. (GoO)

BY GARY PARK FOR GREENING OF OIL

A spreading North American debate over the costs and benefits of ethanol and biofuel policies lends itself to easy misunderstanding.

Take the case of what has been described as a “poorly worded” Canadian government document that indicated Ottawa—already under fire for its wavering on climate change measures—might be backing away from possibly its strongest policy initiatives to reduce greenhouse gases. The document, released Jan. 6, said that based on global production levels over the past three years “there is now evidence of implications to the environment from biofuels-based ethanol production facilities.”

While ethanol and biodiesel were still viewed as “green” energy sources by some, “criticism of biofuels has also grown remarkably throughout recent years,” the government paper said. “Experiences in the U.S. and Brazil now suggest that existing biofuels production facilities are responsible for the generation of a range of new air and water-related problems as well as concerns over human health.”

Far from clear-cut evidence that Canada was about to abandon its goal of 5 percent renewable fuels in gasoline this year and 2 percent renewable fuels in diesel by 2011, but hardly the appearance of a ringing endorsement for the policy at a time when almost 400 reports in the United States over the last six years have suggested that biofuels plants are in breach of environmental and health rules. (GoO)

BY STEFAN MILKOWSKI FOR GREENING OF OIL

If you’re in the market for a new car in the next few years, you’re likely to have an impressive array of options, and not just in style and trim, but in the most fundamental aspect of the car—what makes it go.

Several car manufacturers already sell hybrid electric vehicles, which combine standard combustion engines with electric motors. California-based Tesla Motors sells a completely electric sports car, and G.M., Nissan and Ford have all promised to introduce electric vehicles in 2010. Toyota says it will offer a plug-in version of its popular hybrid, the Prius, in 2012.

By shifting the fuel source from gasoline to electricity, plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles promise to reduce tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants and lower the demand for imported petroleum.

But producing electricity causes pollution, too, and the prospect of using electricity for transportation on a large scale has caused some to question whether the new technology will really clean the air as much as proponents say.

So, do electric cars need a green grid? (Greening of Oil)

LOS ANGELES - When a property developer pulled out of a planned 65-home subdivision in Portland Oregon in 2008 because of the collapsing real estate market, a conservation group saw an opportunity.

The Trust for Public Land (TPL), a San Francisco-based non-profit which works to protect and conserve open spaces, bought the 27-acre parcel for $4.4 million, far less than the $6.2 million asking price when it was on the market in 2005. The land was then added to an adjacent park.

"The phone is ringing off the hook. People are looking to unload those properties and conservation is the beneficiary," said TPL's president Will Rogers.

"In this market, with demand where it is, a lot of these developments just don't pencil out. In many places we are seeing properties that were heading for development that are back on the market," he told Reuters in a phone interview.

The Portland acquisition is just one of many that TPL has made as it and other conservation groups find deals from the collapse in the real estate market that triggered the recession.

The environmental community has taken to calling it the recession's "green lining" and the immediate outlook for the building and construction industry remains bleak. (Reuters)

The “New Socialism” – as columnist Charles Krauthammer adroitly calls the global governmental power grab and wealth redistribution schemes lurking beneath the “green economy” – has kicked into high gear in Washington, D.C. already this year.

Struggling to respond to a surprisingly bad December jobs report – and struggling to explain the clear failure of President Barack Obama’s massive bureaucratic bailout to stimulate the economy – U.S. government officials are turning to a familiar refrain, “green jobs.”

Of course, this familiar song and dance ignores the fact that a huge chunk of the failed “stimulus” went to fund these jobs in the first place. (Howard Rich, Townhall)

Last Thursday, the United States Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to lower its standard for urban ozone, popularly known as smog, to a level between 60 and 70 parts per billion. This would be the fourth such reduction since the implementation of the Clean Air Act in the 1970s.

The original standard was 120 parts per billion, a goal that was reduced under the Clinton administration to 80 parts per billion in 1997 and further reduced under the Bush administration to 75 parts per billion in 2008. The Clinton-era reduction in the smog standard was widely-hailed among environmental groups, while the further reduction during the Bush administration was roundly criticized by those same groups.

“Using the best science to strengthen these standards is a long overdue action that will help millions of Americans breathe easier and live healthier,” USEPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a press release. The “best science” refers to the advice of the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) a purportedly independent board of scientists who participate in the process of setting increasingly more stringent definitions of clean air.

However, USEPA is not supposed to base its decisions solely on CASAC’s recommendations. According to the EPA, the “scientific community, industry, public interest groups, the general public and the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC)” all get to play a role whenever the Agency sets new standards. That formula, which every president from Nixon through Bush has employed, has been effectively tossed out the window by the Obama administration, which has chosen to defer to CASAC.

The fact that CASAC picked the lowest proposed standard as the best proposed standard should come as no surprise. Of the seven CASAC members four are engineers, modelers and one eco-systems analyst, all of whom are wholly unqualified to opine on issues regarding public health. The remaining three have a vested interest in seeing lower smog standards promulgated, since all are academics whose research funding depends on air pollution alarmism. CASAC chair Dr. Jonathan Samet, for example, has spent a great deal of his professional career decrying secondhand smoke and is also an advisor to the American Lung Association (ALA), an organization that spends a great deal of time and money lobbying for more restrictive smog standards. Another CASAC member, Dr. Helen Suh MacIntosh, was once the answer lady at treehugger.com. (Front Page)

The Doomsday Clock tells us we are now one minute further away from looming eco catastrophe. This comes as a surprise (Leo Hickman, The Guardian)

NEW YORK - Questioning the theory that prenatal exposure to the flu virus might be a risk factor for schizophrenia, a new study finds no link between the flu pandemic of 1957 and later schizophrenia rates.

In an analysis of studies from Europe, Australia, Japan and the U.S., researchers found no higher-than-normal risk of schizophrenia among people born in the nine months after the 1957 flu pandemic.

The findings, reported in the Schizophrenia Bulletin, conflict with those from some earlier studies linking the same pandemic to a heightened schizophrenia rate.

While the exact causes of schizophrenia are not clear, it is considered a disorder of disrupted brain development, and researchers have long believed that schizophrenia arises from a combination of genetic susceptibility and environmental factors.

Among the suspected environmental factors is fetal exposure to a mother's infection during pregnancy, with the influenza virus being one of the potential culprits.

The first evidence came from a 1988 Finnish study that found an increased rate of schizophrenia among people who were in the womb at the time of the 1957-58 Asian flu pandemic that killed about 2 million people worldwide. (Reuters Health)

The floor of a Weight Watchers clinic in Sweden collapsed beneath a group of 20 members of the weight loss programme who were gathered for a meeting.

As the dieters queued to see how many pounds they had shed, the floor beneath them in the clinic in Växjö, in south-central Sweden, began to rumble, according to a report in The Local, Sweden's English-language newspaper.

"We suddenly heard a huge thud; we almost thought it was an earthquake and everything flew up in the air.

"The floor collapsed in one corner of the room and along the walls," one Weight Watchers participant told the Smålandsposten newspaper.

Soon, the fault lines spread around the room, and other sections of the floor gave way.

Luckily, all of the dieters escaped uninjured and managed to move the scales to the corridor, which was not damaged in the accident, and were able to complete their weekly weigh in.

The cause of the floor's collapse remains under investigation. (TDT)

Patients may have to be prescribed higher doses of antibiotics because of rising rates of obesity, say doctors.

The standard "one-size fits all" dose may not clear infection in larger adults and increases the risk that resistance will develop, they argue.

More work is needed to guide GPs on how and when to alter doses, an editorial in The Lancet to accompany the study by doctors from Greece and the US says.

GPs said it was an interesting theory but may end up being expensive.

Around one in four adults in England is classified as obese - an increase from 15% in 1993. ( BBC News)

LONDON - Polar bear droppings are helping scientists shed light on the spread of deadly antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

Bacteria such as MRSA -- short for methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus -- are a growing problem in hospitals and researchers are anxious to understand how they evolve.

Norwegian researchers said they had found little sign of such microbes in the faeces of polar bears in the remote Arctic, suggesting the spread of resistance genes seen in the droppings of other animals may be due to human influence.

In contrast to the results from polar bears on the Svalbard archipelago, antibiotic resistance has been discovered in a range of animals including deer, foxes, pigs, dogs and cats that live close to humans.

Trine Glad of the University of Tromso said her team's research, published on Thursday in the journal BMC Microbiology, was important evidence in the debate as to whether resistance occurs naturally or is caused by exposure to human antibiotics.

The rise of superbugs is prompting some drug companies to look again at antibiotics, a field that has been neglected in recent years. Both AstraZeneca and Sanofi-Aventis have signed new antibiotic research collaborations this week. (Reuters Life!)

LONDON - The first genetic map of a medicinal herb used in the best malaria treatments is being published to help scientists develop the species into a high-yielding crop and battle the mosquito-borne disease.

British plant researchers said the Artemisia annua gene code will enable scientists to select the best-performing young plants by genetics and use them as parent plants for breeding experiments without needing to take the more time-consuming approach of genetic modification (GM).

"The map is already proving to be an essential tool for us. With our new understanding of Artemisia genetics, we can produce improved, non-GM varieties...much faster than would otherwise be possible," said Dianna Bowles of York University's centre for novel agricultural products (CNAP), whose work was published in the Science journal on Thursday.

Artemisinin, derived from the sweet wormwood, or Artemisia annua plant, is the best drug available against malaria, especially when used in artemisinin combination therapy (ACT) medicines made by firms such as Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG and France's Sanofi-Aventis . (Reuters)

BEIJING - China, the world's largest grain producer and top consumer of fertilizers, should reduce its reliance on chemical fertilizers by as much as 50 percent because excessive use has resulted in serious pollution, according to a research report.

"Not many people are aware that agriculture is the largest polluter in China, which should be a subject for serious concern," said Wen Tiejun, head of the School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Renmin University of China.

Chemical fertilizers had helped China, the world's most populous country, to feed its population despite limited farmland, but excessive application had led to low farmland efficiency and serious pollution, according to a research report issued by the school and Greenpeace on Thursday.

The report said farmers, particularly in northern China, used 40 percent more fertilizers than crops needed, resulting in about 10 million tons of fertilizer every year being discharged into water, polluting China's rivers and lakes.

China produced 24 percent of the world's total grain output, but its use of fertilizer accounted for about 35 percent of total global consumption. China's grain production had increased more than eight-fold from the 1960s, while use of nitrogen fertilizers had surged by about 55 times, the report said.

It also urged the government to reduce subsidies to fertilizer makers and called for more support for farmers who use animal waste. (Reuters)

They are so small that most people have never even seen them, yet "voodoo wasps" are about to be recruited big time in the war on agricultural pests as part of the wider effort to boost food production in the 21st century.

The wasps are only 1 or 2 millimetres long fully-grown but they have an ability to paralyse and destroy other insects, including many of the most destructive crop pests, by delivering a zombie-inducing venom in their sting.

Now scientists believe they have made the breakthrough that will enable them to recruit vast armies of voodoo wasps to search and destroy farm pests on a scale that could boost crop yields without polluting the wider environment with insecticides.

The researchers have decoded the full genomes of three species of parasitic wasp, which could lead to the development of powerful new ways of deploying these tiny insects against the vast range of pests that destroy billions of tonnes of valuable crops each year.

There are more than 600,000 species of parasitic voodoo wasps and they already play a critical role as a natural regulator of insect populations. However, scientists believe that the decoding of their genomes will open the door to new and better better ways of targeting them against specific pests. (The Independent)

Researchers found that, just as it does in birds, air flows in one direction as it loops through the lungs of alligators.

The breathing method is believed to have first appeared in ancient reptiles called archosaurs which dominated the Earth 251 million years ago.

In contrast, mammalian breath flows in and out of branching cul-de-sacs in the lungs called alveoli.

Archosaurs evolved along two different paths, one of which gave rise to the crocodilian ancestors of crocodiles and alligators.

The other produced the flying pterosaurs and eventually birds. (TDT)

Is civilization doomed because of man-made global warming? You've been told your carbon footprint could lead to skyrocketing temperatures, melting ice caps, dying polar bears and "superstorms."

But there is another side to the story, and you can see it on KUSI this Thursday night.

KUSI meteorologist, John Coleman, has an amazing story to tell of science gone bad, and new revelations as the "climategate" scandal comes to the United States.

Join us on Thursday, January 14th, at 9pm, Pacific Time, for the special report that will explode the global warming myth!

A major trade group for the insurance industry is warning that it is "exceedingly risky" for companies to blindly accept scientific conclusions around climate change, given the "serious questions" around the extent to which humans cause atmospheric warming.

The assertion was made in a letter (.pdf) to insurance regulators, who will administer the nation's first mandatory climate requirements on corporations in May. Large insurers will have to answer about a dozen questions related to the preparations they are taking to safeguard themselves from climatic hazards.

The National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies believes that the new regulation leaves little room for companies to cast doubt on widely accepted assumptions about global warming. Insurers are hamstrung to provide answers that dovetail with the perception of key regulators who believe climate change threatens the industry's financial strength, said Robert Detlefsen, the group's vice president of policy.

"It's fairly obvious that certain regulators have made up their minds about what the answers to those questions are, and are just proceeding on the assumption that their answers, or the ones that they subscribe to, are correct and unimpeachable," Detlefsen said in an interview. "There really is no room, as I see it, for any sort of legitimate, in their minds at least, for legitimate dissent." (Evan Lehmann, ClimateWire) | Download letter (.pdf)

The reason insurance exists is because risk does too. For instance, with car insurance, an insurance company calculates the risk of a driver getting into an accident by considering a number of variables including age, location, type of vehicle, etc. Consumers buy insurance to protect against unexpected events that could jeopardize their financial well-being such as a serious car accident where someone needs serious medical attention.

Global warming also poses a risk. Climate change was sold in a way that the scientific consensus on global warming is so well established, it might as well be considered a law like gravity. And the insurance companies bought it. They bought that global warming will cause more frequent and severe hurricanes, floods, fires and earthquakes and since the risk of global warming is higher, the premiums ratepayers pay will also be higher. But as more evidence comes out against the consensus and in light of Climategate, insurance companies are beginning to fight back:

In a lengthy academic paper, President Obama's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, argued the U.S. government should ban "conspiracy theorizing."

Among the beliefs Sunstein would ban is advocating that the theory of global warming is a deliberate fraud.

Sunstein also recommended the government send agents to infiltrate "extremists who supply conspiracy theories" to disrupt the efforts of the "extremists" to propagate their theories.

In a 2008 Harvard law paper, "Conspiracy Theories," Sunstein and co-author Adrian Vermeule, a Harvard law professor, ask, "What can government do about conspiracy theories?"

"We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories."

In the 30-page paper – obtained and reviewed by WND – Sunstein argues the best government response to "conspiracy theories" is "cognitive infiltration of extremist groups." (Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily)

It's astonishing, but aside from travel costs, climate sceptic Lord Monckton will get a $20,000 stipend as the organiser in Noosa, Queensland calls for donations (The Guardian)

Whaddaya know — ever since Climategate and brutal cold (snap!) sawed in half the global warming illusion that the formerly mainstream media had sold as reality, all of a sudden there’s massive upheaval: dogs and cats living together; news networks hosting climate debates; CBS exposing taxpayer-funded boondoggle junkets to Copenhagen; and politicians (other than Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe) boldly denouncing fraudulent research about the “benefits” of “solutions” to global warming. Just check out last Friday’s press release from Michigan State Rep. Tom McMillin:

US state department officials were so convinced that the Copenhagen climate change summit was heading for collapse that they crafted a "talks fail" speech for Barack Obama.

Jonathan Pershing, who helped lead talks at Copenhagen, instead sketched out a future path for negotiations dominated by the world's largest polluters such as China, the US, India, Brazil and South Africa, who signed up to a deal in the final hours of the summit. That would represent a realignment of the way the international community has dealt with climate change over the last two decades.

"It is impossible to imagine a global agreement in place that doesn't essentially have a global buy-in. There aren't other institutions beside the UN that have that," Pershing said. "But it is also impossible to imagine a negotiation of enormous complexity where you have a table of 192 countries involved in all the detail." (The Guardian)

Cutting through all the rhetoric and recriminations in the wake of the global climate summit in Copenhagen, a fragile foundation has been established, at long last, for effective global action.

As U.S. President Barack Obama said in announcing the Copenhagen Accord: "For the first time in history all major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront climate change."
Article Controls

No, there is still no binding agreement, nor any timetable for concluding one. And no, there is no collective agreement among countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050, nor, as yet, any binding obligation by any country to a specific emission target.

The fondest hopes for the global gathering in Copenhagen were not realized.

But the vast majority of the 193 countries assembled there--including the biggest carbon emitters among the developed and developing countries alike--have agreed in the accord to limit their emissions. And, most significantly, the four biggest emitters among the developing countries--China, Brazil, India and South Africa--have agreed to list voluntary targets in an international registry and to allow other countries to assess whether they are meeting those targets.

But where do we go from here? How can the brief three pages of the Copenhagen Accord become the basis for the concerted global action that is so urgently needed on climate change? (James Bacchus, Forbes)

BRUSSELS - Stunned by being sidelined in the endgame of the Copenhagen world climate summit, the European Union is debating how to regain influence over the fight against global warming.

Should the world's largest trading bloc and economic area respond to the policy setback and the diplomatic humiliation of the bare-minimum Copenhagen accord by playing Mr Nice, Mr Nasty, Mr Persistent or Mr Pragmatic?

The first two options -- setting a more ambitious example to others, or threatening climate laggards with carbon tariffs -- are tempting gestures, and each has its supporters. (Reuters)

BRUSSELS/MADRID - European Union environment ministers will seek a strategy for reviving global climate talks at a meeting in Spain this week, after a U.N. meeting in Copenhagen last month ended in failure.

A U.N. deadline is looming for countries to commit to emissions cuts as part of the U.N. process, and EU diplomats expect the bloc to make the lowest bid in its range of options.

The talks in the Danish capital last month ended with a bare-minimum agreement that fell far short of its original goal of forging a replacement for the climate-protecting Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012.

"Let's face it, it was not what we wanted," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told a conference in Brussels on Tuesday. (Reuters)

NEW DELHI - Four of the world's largest and fastest-growing carbon emitters will meet in New Delhi this month ahead of a Jan 31 deadline for countries to submit their actions to fight climate change.

The meeting, to be held either on Jan 24 or 25, would be attended by the environment ministers of Brazil, South Africa, India and China -- the BASIC bloc of nations that helped broker a political accord at last month's Copenhagen climate summit.

The non-binding accord was described by many as a failure because it fell far short of the conference's original goal of a more ambitious commitment to fight global warming by all nations.

The document set a January 31 deadline for rich nations to submit economy-wide emissions targets for 2020 and for developing countries to present voluntary carbon-curbing actions. (Reuters)

NEW DELHI — China presents itself as a schizophrenic power: a developing country on select international issues, but in other matters a rising superpower with new muscular confidence that supposedly is in the same league as the United States.

At the recent Copenhagen climate-change summit, China was the former: It loudly emphasized its membership in the developing world and quietly used poor countries, especially from Africa, to raise procedural obstacles in the negotiations.

Make no mistake: China, the world’s largest polluter whose carbon emissions are growing at the fastest rate, was the principal target at Copenhagen. But China cleverly deflected pressure by hiding behind small, poor countries and forging a negotiating alliance with India and two other major developing countries, Brazil and South Africa, who together are known as the BASIC bloc.

China escaped without making a binding commitment on carbon-emissions cuts, at least for now. But carbon-light India, with per-capita emissions just 26 percent of the world average, undercut its interest by getting bracketed with the world’s largest polluter. (NYT)

Karel De Gucht, Europe’s trade commissioner-designate, warned on Tuesday that a carbon border tax could lead to a “trade war” as he rejected a policy that has gained traction in Europe following last month’s disappointing Copenhagen summit on climate change.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has for months championed the idea that the European Union should levy an import tax on goods from countries that do not show similar ambition in fighting global warming.

The debate in Europe over a so-called “border adjustment tax” was reinvigorated last month after the Copenhagen summit resulted in a voluntary accord that fell well short of the EU’s stated goals for emissions reductions.

But Mr De Gucht, appearing before the European parliament for his confirmation hearing, poured cold water on the idea. “I’m not in favour. I don’t think it’s the right approach,” he told MEPs.

The biggest risk, he warned, was that such a tax would “slip into a trade war”. (Financial Times) | EU trade chief-designate rejects carbon border tariffs (EurActiv)

ONE of the Government's key business advisers on the emissions trading scheme has called for a fresh look at whether the plan should go ahead.

Dick Warburton, chairman of the panel set up last year to advise on emissions-intensive trade-exposed activities, said that after Copenhagen's failure, the matter should be debated afresh.

He is organising a round-table of company executives, bureaucrats and experts - including supporters and critics - to consider the pros and cons and alternatives of a trading scheme.

His move comes as Opposition Leader Tony Abbott tonight gives his first speech as leader on the environment, arguing that while the environment is important, it is not just about climate. He will seek to redirect focus to areas where Australia can make a difference on its own, including water.

Mr Warburton told The Age that despite intense political debate about the emissions scheme, important aspects had not been dealt with adequately. ''Chairmen and CEOs and the public have very poor knowledge of what the ETS involves.''

The round-table should be held by the end of this month, he said. (The Age)

LONDON - The market for voluntary carbon offsets is pinning its hopes on growth this year after demand stalled in 2009 as companies cut back spending on reducing their carbon footprints due to the economic slowdown.

"Hopefully we can go back to some growth so people will look at carbon markets more seriously. It's hard for people to put (emissions cuts) at the top of their agenda when countries aren't doing it," Gilles Corre, head of carbon structuring at Tullett Prebon, told Reuters.

The failure of a U.N. summit in Copenhagen last December to clinch a legally binding climate pact disappointed many investors who hoped it would create more certainty about the future of carbon markets.

"Paradoxically, Copenhagen might be good for the voluntary market. While there is no certainty in terms of compliance, there is still the need to do something which means people get involved in the voluntary market," Corre said. (Reuters)

Scientists are reporting that "biochar" — a material that the Amazonian Indians used to enhance soil fertility centuries ago — has potential in the modern world to help slow global climate change. Mass production of biochar could capture and sock away carbon that otherwise would wind up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Their report appears in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology, a bi-weekly journal. (ACS)

13 January 2010 – Properly managed grasslands – even more than forests – could fight climate change by absorbing and storing carbon dioxide, according to a newly released report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The world’s nearly 3.4 billion hectares of grasslands store 30 per cent of global soil carbon in addition to the substantial amount of above-ground carbon held in trees, bushes, shrubs and grasses. They also account for 70 per cent of agricultural land.

In its report “Review of Evidence on Drylands Pastoral Systems and Climate Change,” FAO noted that grasslands could play a major role in supporting the adaptation and reducing the vulnerability to climate change for the more than one billion people who depend on livestock for a living. (UN News)

A recent press release from the UK Department for International Development (DFID) suggested that millions more people in Kenya are susceptible to malaria as a result of mosquitoes colonising higher ground as global temperatures rise. ('New evidence of a link between climate change and malaria', 30.12.09 – see below). The press release was extensively covered in UK newspapers and elsewhere.

Simple analysis shows that the claims of the press release are almost entirely without foundation. The battle against the severe threat from climate change is impeded, not helped, by government departments issuing alarmist and exaggerated alerts based on poor science. (The Guardian)

Manmade global warming, for many, is an Earth-worshipping religion. The essential feature of any religion is that its pronouncements are to be accepted on the basis of faith as opposed to hard evidence. Questioning those pronouncements makes one a sinner. No one denies that the Earth's temperature changes. Millions of years ago, much of our planet was covered by ice, at some places up to a mile thick, a period some scientists call "Snowball Earth." Today, the Earth is not covered by a mile of ice; a safe conclusion is that there must have been a bit of global warming. I don't know the cause of that warming, but I'd wager everything I own that it was not caused by coal-fired electric generation plants, incandescent light bulbs and SUVs tooling up and down the highways. ( Walter E. Williams, Townhall)

Q: If we’re so worried about global warming why has it been so cold here in the U.S., in Europe and other parts of the globe? What do weather statistics say has happened during the past 50 years? And how does weather differ from climate (is there a difference)?

Turnabout is fair play for activists who insist that a single event like the current cold snap doesn’t disprove global warming. They’re right that it doesn’t, but neither does a summer heat wave prove it — yet this has not stopped proponents of doom from hyping each one. What matters are longer term trends, and those are pointing away from the notion that climate change is a crisis.

While the chilly start to the year does not a trend make, we are in a decade-long period of no additional warming, despite continuously rising carbon dioxide concentrations. That is a significant trend, and it is also important because it undercuts the notion that there is some near-infallible scientific consensus about global warming and mankind’s contribution to it. Consider the United Nation’s 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, the supposed gold standard of consensus science. None of the climate models relied upon by the IPCC foresaw the current flattening out of temperatures, yet these are the models whose predictions of future warming form the basis of several US and UN proposals.

My daily newspaper informs me that “winter blast leaves Britain shivering.” The poor country, apparently, is in “the grip of the worst winter in 40 years.” I hear on the news that Germany is running out of road salt as car accidents multiply exponentially. Other European countries appear to be in similar straits. Major cities in China have ground to a halt. Much of Canada is shoveling itself out of surf-like snowdrifts and portions of the United States are not much better off. Could this be global cooling? Is the scientific consensus concerning global warming wrong? Has the respected United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change been hoaxed by a cabal of unscrupulous meteorologists?

Not to worry, folks. We all know that global warming is an irrefutable fact and that our feeling of alarm for the planet is fully justified. We know that temperatures are skyrocketing, that anthropogenic CO2 is clogging the atmosphere, that ocean levels are rising as they did in the time of Noah, that South Pacific islands will soon be submerged and within a generation or two New York City will be under water — has not NASA scientist James Hansen assured of this dire probability? We know that polar bears are heading toward extinction as the ice floes dissolve beneath them, that the Antarctic is withering as we speak under the gaping ozone hole, that asthma sufferers are gasping their last by the stretcher-load, that the pavement is sizzling beneath our feet, and that the end of the world is nigh.

Let us not be deceived by what we think we are observing and thus relax our guard. Let us instead take comfort in knowledge. For we also know that we cannot trust the mainstream media, whose accounts are contaminated by a prior agenda. All these articles, reports, and broadcasts about plunging temperatures and unprecedented snowfalls, about entire countries unable to cope with wintry disasters or dig themselves out of subnivean mountain ranges, about thousands of cars stuck on highways and motorists needing to be rescued by emergency teams of army reservists — all this, as we should be aware, is the result of a conspiracy to delude the public about the truth of GGW, or galloping global warming. (David Solway, PJM)

CLIMATE change has a speed: about 420 metres per year. That's the average rate at which temperature zones will shift across global landscapes during this century, according to research led by the Carnegie Institute in the United States.

It is also an estimate of how quickly plants and animals will need to move to stay within current climatic zones, and an indication of the pressure on agriculture to adapt as seasonal conditions shift.

Recently published in the scientific journal Nature, the research attempts to predict "temperature velocities" as a way of expressing how climate change will influence plants and animals adapted to certain climatic zones.

Such work is not entirely new, according to Professor Barry Brook, who occupies the Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change at Adelaide University, but it does provide a useful picture of how climate change may advance across landscapes - including farmland. (Stock & Land)

The website YouTube has made available an interview of John Hirst, who is Head of the UK Met Office (see). In this interview, John Hirst incorrectly indicates that multi-decadal climate forecasts are easier to make than seasonal forecasts. He must assume that if we could skillfully predict the magnitude of the global average surface temperature trend (which has not even been convincingly demonstrated; see), that necessarily provides skillful knowledge of the weather decades into the future to be experienced in the UK and elsewhere.

One of the messages from the recent extreme weather is that only if the major circulation features can be skillfully predicted (such as ENSO; the PDO; the NAO; the AO, ect) can we expect seasonal prediction skill.

What this means is that multi-decadal model forecasts must be able to skillfully predict these circulation features. However, they have no demonstrated skill with respect to this aspect of the climate system. Indeed, since there has been only limited success with respect to seasonal predictions; e.g. see), we expect that there are no accurate multidecadal predictions when the number of forcings and feedbacks that affect the climate system are even larger than on the seasonal scale; see

John Hirst should be more candid on the lack of scientific understanding that we have with respect to regional weather patterns and our ability to skillfully forecast extreme events even a month or two ahead of time. To claim that the UK Met Office can provide skillful forecasts of the likelihood of such extreme events decades from now based just on the knowledge of a subset of human climate forcings (i.e. primarily added atmospheric carbon dioxide) is a very significant misrepresentation of the science. (Climate Science)

In Central Park Temperature - Three Radically Different Us Government Versions on Icecap in 2008 here, we noted some significant differences between the various NOAA versions for the stations.

The raw observations are taken from the stations then adjusted to account for local factors like site changes, changes in instrumentation, time of observation and at least at one time for urbanization in USHCN Version 1 (Karl 1988). Data sets are created for the US (USHCN) and NOAA global data bases (GHCN).

Historical Central Park observations were taken from the periphery of the park from 1909 to 1919 at the Arsenal Building 5th Ave (between 63rd & 64th) and then since 1920 at the Belvedere Castle on Transverse Rd (near 79th & 81st).

We found a surprisingly large difference from the NCDC United States USHCN version 1 and the NCDC global GHCN for that station (below, enlarged here).

The USHCN version 1 had an urban adjustment (Karl 1988) when it was introduced in 1990. The cooling was as 7F for July and 6F for January. Notice however as some state climatologists noticed, the annual adjustments began to diminish in 1999 and in version 2 of USHCN disappeared altogether (below, enlarged here).

This led Steve McIntyre here to quip “If one reverse engineers this adjustment to calculate the New York City population used in the USHCN urban adjustment, the results are, in Per’s words, ‘gobsmacking’ (utterly astounding), even by climate science standards.” This was because, it could only be explained by a massive depopulation of New York City (below, enlarged here).

The story doesn’t end there. The same NCDC maintains a global data base of station data used for climate change assessment called GHCN Version 2 of GHCN contains some of the same adjustments except for the Karl urban adjustment. Central Park is one of the GHCN sites. Note in the top graph above, it mysteriously warms not cools New York’s Central Park by 4F.

GISS recently eliminated GHCN with USHCN adjustments as one of the data access options here. “We no longer include data adjusted by GHCN”. They claim they start with GHCN ‘unadjusted’ before they work their own homogenization and other magical wonders.

I downloaded the Central Park ‘unadjusted’ GHCN data from GISS and did a comparison of annual mean GHCN with the raw annual mean data downloaded from the NWS New York City Office web site here.

We found that the two data sets were not the same. For some unknown reason, Central Park was colder in the unadjusted data sets in the early record as much as 3F than the raw observation records. The difference gradually diminished so, currently the changes are small (2008 was the same). Some recent years the ‘unadjusted’ adjustments were inexplicably positive (below, enlarged here).

Thus in the so called unadjusted GHCN data, the warming (due to urbanization) is somehow increased from 2.5 to 4.5F by NOAA. See PDF here. (Icecap)

MENLO PARK, Calif.--A great deal of attention has been given in recent years to the effects of carbon emissions on climate change. One of the largest contributors to carbon emissions is the generation of electricity from coal. Today, SRI Consulting (SRIC) released its techno-economic report Advanced Carbon Capture that examines the technology and economics of three processes for capturing 90% of the carbon emissions from electric power generation using supercritical pulverized coal.

“For example, for a plant producing 550 MW net power output, each of the processes analyzed will require two absorbers roughly 40 feet in diameter by 100 feet tall.”

SRIC’s Process Economics Program (PEP) report Advanced Carbon Capture examines in detail three post combustion scrubbing technologies: conventional monoethanolamine (MEA), advanced amine, and chilled ammonia. Analysis is conducted based on new plant construction at 550 MW net power output. All three of these processes have technical and economic issues that must be overcome before they can be implemented at scale. On a levelized cost basis with 90% CO2 capture and compression, MEA scrubbing adds 4.5¢/KWh, while the advanced amine and chilled ammonia processes each add 4.1¢/KWh to the cost of power generation.

Assistant Director of SRIC’s Greenhouse Gases Initiative and author Michael Arné commented, “The scale of the process equipment needed for power plant applications is remarkable. All three processes covered in this report require Gulliver-like equipment that will have its own challenges such as proper liquid distribution, pressure drop, and structural issues in the construction of such large equipment items.” Mr. Arné continued, “For example, for a plant producing 550 MW net power output, each of the processes analyzed will require two absorbers roughly 40 feet in diameter by 100 feet tall.”

The Advanced Carbon Capture report is essential information for technical and business managers involved in the generation of electricity from coal. For additional information, contact RJ Chang, Process Economics Program (PEP) Director at rchang@sriconsulting.com +1 650 384 4307, or visit the website at www.sriconsulting.com/PEP. (EON: Enhanced Online News)

“It’s déjà vu all over again,” said Yogi Berra. The baseball Hall of Famer could easily have been predicting the coming resurgence of new natural gas–fired power plants. A couple of nuclear plants may actually break ground, but don’t hold your breath. Many more wind turbines will dot the landscape as renewable portfolio standards dictate resource planning, but their peak generation contribution will continue be small (and disappointing).

The most interesting story for 2010 is that the dash for gas in the U.S. has begun–again. In Part II or this two-part report, we will explore the challenges facing nuclear, coal, and renewable energy electricity sources in 2010 and beyond.

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century and a second year of avoiding an economic collapse, the U.S. business climate seems to have become more positive. A growing sense of cautious optimism is appearing. A mid-October survey by the National Association for Business Economics concluded that the largest recession since the 1930s Great Depression is over, and economic growth is likely for the U.S. economy in 2010. The government announced that third-quarter 2009 economic growth hit 3.5%, the first positive growth in five quarters, suggesting an end to the recession (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Electricity growth resumes in 2010. After a two-year contracting market, total electricity consumption in the U.S. in 2010 is expected to increase. Source: EIA, November 2009 Short-Term Energy Outlook

The implications for electric generation are mixed. What gets built depends on a complex stew of credit markets, regulatory responses, economic growth, technology, and national politics. Some of those are leading economic indicators, some lagging, some not clear at all.

Renewable generation has not made a convincing economic case in the market. But politically it has the upper hand. Coal and nuclear continue to take a political battering at the hands of the renewables advocates. The politics of energy is being upended by new implications for natural gas. The political and regulatory landscape is a dog’s dinner (a Britishism for an undigested mess).

The need for new generation to supply load appears less urgent than in previous years. According to the EIA, demand for electricity has fallen since the economy tanked in 2008. The demand down-tick is the first since the EIA has accumulated these statistics in 1977.

Facing a sluggish economy, consumers have reduced thermostats, cut off air conditioning, and dialed down appliances, leading to the decline in electricity demand. A cool 2009 summer in most of the U.S. helped to reduce air conditioning load. Net electric generation dropped 6.8% from June 2008 to June 2009. That was the 11th consecutive month that electric generation slid downward, compared to the same month in the prior year.

Analysts say they expect the declining demand trend to reverse when economic growth shows up at the beginning of 2010 or thereabouts. But they have been wrong before and may be wrong again. The EIA, the U.S. Department of Energy’s statistical agency, says it suspects the decline in demand will continue into early 2010, despite what appears to be a bottoming-out of the recession.

Many electric power company long-term capital spending plans have been built on the dire forecasts of the past decade, particularly from NERC. For years, the conventional wisdom in the generating industry was that the U.S. was running out of generating capacity. Year after year NERC had the same message: It’s time to build baseload, particularly nuclear and coal, and make major investments in high-voltage transmission.

Maybe not. Intermediate-load and peaking units, suggesting new gas plants, may be the ways to hedge big investment bets on future baseload units. A recent Washington Post article quoted anonymous sources as saying that new nuclear plants aren’t economical until natural gas prices are above $7/mmBtu. That’s more than double the current price. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

Turmoil in Power Sector - Falling Electricity Demand Trips Up Utilities' Plans for Infrastructure Projects

Falling U.S. electricity production in the past two years is frustrating the utility industry and shaking up timetables for some major infrastructure projects.

Electricity output decreased 3.7% last year, the steepest drop since 1938, according to federal statistics, following a nearly 1% decline in 2008.

The recent downward trend is making it trickier for utilities to forecast future power consumption, a critical component of planning investments in new power plants and transmission lines.

The falling electricity demand and production are attributed to a weak economy, conservation efforts and, in 2009, a relatively mild summer in many parts of the country.

The possible completion date for the $1.8 billion Potomac Appalachian Transmission Highline, or PATH project, that Allegheny Energy Inc. and American Electric Power Co. intend to build from West Virginia, through Virginia, to Maryland may be delayed by several years because of weaker electricity demand. (WSJ)

LONDON--Last year was the worst ever year in the history of the U.K. oil and gas industry for bringing new reserves into production, said a report from consultancy Wood Mackenzie Wednesday.

Just 140 million barrels equivalent of new oil and gas reserves were brought onstream, the smallest amount since offshore oil production began in the U.K., the report said. Only eight new fields started production in 2009--a nine-year low--and the number of fields receiving development approval halved from 2008, the report said.

The low oil price and weak economy meant "companies reassessed the economics of new projects," said one of the report's authors, Geoff Gillies. "Many companies shelved discretionary spending on new projects, choosing instead to honor existing contracts and focus on maintaining and increasing production from existing fields."

"Some companies weren't able to drill, even if they wanted to, due to the downturn and subsequent restricted access to capital funding and tightening of capital budgets," he added. (Dow Jones)

BERLIN - The government, photovoltaic companies and consumer lobby groups moved closer on Wednesday toward an agreement on trimming state-mandated incentives for solar power to reflect a steeper overall slide in costs.

Although no decision was reached at the meeting, officials at the two rounds of hearings at the Environment Ministry in Berlin said they expected a decision on moderate reductions in the feed-in tariffs to be made soon. (Reuters)

Despite the state's concealed carry law, Colorado State University wants to prevent students from exercising their gun rights on campus.

Guns are part of America’s culture. They always have been, and as long as we abide by the Constitution of the United States and its adjoining Bill of Rights, they always will be. The Second Amendment reads: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

It is worth noting that this amendment marks the only place in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights where our Founding Fathers explicitly described something as “necessary to the security of a free state.” And this is because the right to keep and bear arms makes the exercise of so many other rights possible. For example, without guns, how are we to defend our lives, our property, or our freedom to speak our minds against a tyrannical government?

No wonder George Washington, the first president of the United States, said: “A free people ought to be armed.” He knew that to deny a people the right to arms was to deny them many other rights, and even freedom itself.

Yet as clear as our Founding Fathers were on the importance of gun ownership and gun usage, and the role both play in “the security of a free state,” liberals in the United States have spent the last few decades doing their best to destroy the Second Amendment all at once if possible, but piece by piece if necessary. Part of that attempt is now visible at Colorado State University (CSU) in Ft. Collins, Colorado, where that school’s Board of Governors recently voted to ban students who possess a viable concealed carry permit from carrying their legally concealed weapons on campus. (AWR Hawkins, PJM)

What could possibly justify such a large fine? One simple reason: The guy was rich. And under a new scheme of “progressive pricing” that’s becoming more and more common across Europe, rich people must pay higher fees for things because they can afford it — and because, well, they’re rich, and therefore deserve extra punishment.

Blick even featured a mugshot-like photo of the offender with the shocking caption, “Traffic thug Roland S. has five luxury cars in his garage.” (PJM)

Bugs before people, pets and property? Something wrong here. For a start these residents should be able to protect their own property if they can. Secondly, there apparently were a lot more beetles than there are now, so what happened to the rest? Fell into the Chesapeake as their habitat eroded, perhaps? Finally, isn't the Chesapeake a "navigable waterway"? Anyone else who dumped or allowed landfill to end up in such a waterway would be in trouble, so why is the EPA preventing these people doing what it insists everyone else does?

I'll open a forum topic for everyone to post more information, commentary and / or other such incidents.

Americans are fat, but at least they're not getting fatter.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans are overweight or obese, but that number hasn't changed much in the last decade, according to a team of doctors Wednesday in two studies in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Doctors feared that the trend of ever-increasing rates of obesity that started in the 1980's had no end.

But the new findings reveal that from 1999 to 2008, the percent of obese women hovered between 33.2 and 35.5 percent, and the percent of obese men ranged between 27.5 percent to 32.2 percent — small changes for the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey which measures the Body Mass Index (BMI) for over five thousand men and women every two years.

Still, doctors are hesitant to give high-fives and pop champagne. (Mercury News)

Americans, at least as a group, may have reached their peak of obesity, according to data the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Wednesday.

The numbers indicate that obesity rates have remained constant for at least five years among men and for closer to 10 years among women and children — long enough for experts to say the percentage of very overweight people has leveled off. (NYT)

TORONTO — Canadians of all ages have become substantially fatter and less fit over the last few decades, with all age groups packing on pounds while at the same time losing strength, endurance and flexibility, an important new survey has revealed.

The trend, most striking in children and young adults, raises the spectre of higher rates of chronic diseases - potentially starting at earlier ages. And unless significant change is achieved, future generations of Canadian seniors could face additional challenges in trying to live independently because of their lack of fitness, experts said.

"The children and youth of Canada are becoming taller but heavier, fatter, rounder, weaker and less flexible than they were a generation ago," said Mark Tremblay, who led the effort to design and launch the Statistics Canada survey.

"If our younger cohorts are starting off much worse off than in the past, you know it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that there are going to be serious challenges and problems in our future." (CP)

LONDON - The British government backed a call on Wednesday for under-18s to be banned from using sunbeds in tanning salons because they increase skin cancer risk.

"The scientific evidence is clear -- sunbeds increase your risk of getting skin cancer," Health Minister Andy Burnham said in a statement. "It is far too easy for young people to use sunbeds and I am determined to take action to protect them."

A proposed law on the ban is to be debated in parliament at the end of this month.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) moved ultra-violet emitting tanning beds to its highest cancer risk category last July and labelled them as "carcinogenic to humans" after research found they could increase the risk of developing cancer by 75 percent.

The IARC said sunbeds were particularly dangerous if used by children and young adults.

Campaigners say melanoma is the most common cancer in young Britons aged 15-34 and kills more than 2,000 people a year. (Reuters)

A Quebec psychiatrist has sparked controversy with a new book that comes to the defence of smokers and even promotes some benefits of smoking.

In Écrasons la cigarette, pas le fumeur, which translates as "Crush the cigarette, not the smoker," Dr. Jean-Jacques Bourque said there is too much pressure put on smokers to quit.

In the book, to be released Wednesday, Bourque, a smoker himself, is critical of the warning labels that must be printed on tobacco packaging, saying they go too far.

The former president of the province’s Association of Psychiatrists said smoking can be helpful for those suffering from deep depression.

"Sometimes antidepressants aren’t enough — it is an individual approach for everyone," Bourque said in an interview with Radio-Canada.

"The idea that is promoted by the Quebec government, that second-hand smoke is more dangerous than the smoke inhaled by someone who is smoking, is completely off the rails," Bourque said.

The psychiatrist said he is not encouraging people to smoke, but believes further efforts by the anti-tobacco lobby to cut back on the number of smokers would be futile. (CBC News)

Years of anti-smoking laws and campaigns have amounted to a public shaming of smokers that could make it harder for them to quit, a group of UBC researchers argue in a new report.

There is an "urgent" need for governments to revisit their anti-smoking policies, the academics say, suggesting that the stigma around smoking could lead to patients hiding their tobacco use from doctors, and feeling desperate about ever kicking the habit. The policies run counter to how other addictions are treated by the public-health field, they argue.

"People are made to feel really, really bad about their smoking and are treated quite badly, but feel quite helpless in quitting," said Kirsten Bell, a medical anthropologist at the university and lead author of a paper just published on the issue.

"They feel really negatively about themselves, but quitting seems like an impossibility. ... They're not really given much support."

Her views raise questions about decades of conventional wisdom on how to combat the threat of tobacco use, blamed for 45,000 preventable deaths in Canada yearly. Anti-smoking advocates reacted vigorously to the article in the journal Social Science and Medicine, saying policy makers have strived not to victimize smokers themselves, while the falling rate of tobacco use is clear evidence the programs have succeeded. (Tom Blackwell, National Post)

Rise of the Part-Time Smoker - The New Smoker, Who Lights Up Only Intermittently, Needs New Strategies to Learn to Quit

Taxes have pushed the cost of smoking ever higher ($10 per pack in New York City) and the social costs—in disgusted looks and lectures from friends and family members—have escalated too.

Such inconveniences are forcing a sea change in smoking habits and upending traditional approaches to smoking cessation. For one thing, there's a growing group of intermittent and secret smokers who seem to smoke as much for psychological and emotional reasons as nicotine addiction. In addition to breaking the physical addiction, smokers who want to quit today need to understand why, when and where they smoke, and challenge some of the thinking that goes along with it, cessation experts say.

" 'Sneaking one in' has become a smoker's pastime and avocation," says Timothy Stephens, a 40-year-old Manhattan lawyer who started smoking cigarettes in high school when he played a Jet in "West Side Story." Nowadays, with a wife and baby, he doesn't smoke at home. He takes five-minute smoking breaks outside his office building ("four minutes if it's cold") and he drives to work from the suburbs instead of using public transit so he can get more smoking in. (WSJ)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - One of the biggest tobacco manufacturers in the world led a group of chemical, food, oil, pharmaceutical and other firms in a successful long-term lobbying strategy to shape European Union policy making in their favour, a new study says.

After trawling through some 700 internal documents from British American Tobacco (BAT), academics at the University of Bath and University of Edinburgh say they have found evidence that the cigarette giant in the mid-1990s teamed up with the European Policy Centre, the prominent Brussels think-tank, to create a front group to ensure that the EU framework for evaluating policy options emphasised business interests at the expense of public health.

According to the study, published in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal and funded by the Smoke-Free Partnership and Cancer Research UK, BAT constructed a policy network of a series of major corporations, including Shell, Zeneca, Tesco, SmithKline Beecham, Bayer and Unilever, to mount a multi-year lobby campaign aiming at shaping the EU's impact assessment system.

There are a number of impact assessment systems, which are tools for evaluating potential legislative changes, each emphasising different aspects of the ramifications of a government choosing a particular law over another. Some place great weight on environmental or health impacts, while others on the financial fall-out sustained by industry. (EUobserver)

NEW YORK - A new study suggests that a synthetic chemical that is ubiquitous in the environment and in people's blood may affect the liver -- though the significance for human health remains unclear.

The chemical in question is perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), which is used to make substances called fluoropolymers. Used in an array of manufacturing processes, fluoropolymers impart fire-resistance and water, stain and grease repellency to everything from carpets to cookware.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), non-stick cookware and other consumer products coated with Teflon or similar trademark products are not manufactured with PFOA. However, some of these products may contain trace amounts of PFOA as impurities.

Research shows that PFOA persists in the environment and at low levels in most people's blood; exactly how it gets into the bloodstream is not clear, but contaminated water, dust and food are possibilities that researchers are currently investigating.

Also unclear are the potential human health effects of such everyday PFOA exposure. In lab animals, the chemicals have been shown to cause developmental problems and other adverse effects, including liver damage. But a number of human studies have found no evidence that PFOA exposure affects the liver.

In the new study, researchers in Taiwan used data from a U.S. government health study to look at the relationship between blood PFOA concentrations and liver enzyme levels. They found that among 2,200 U.S. adults, liver enzymes generally inched up in tandem with PFOA levels, particularly in obese individuals. (Reuters Health)

LONDON - Exposure to a chemical found in plastic containers is linked to heart disease, scientists said on Wednesday, confirming earlier findings and adding to pressure to ban its use in bottles and food packaging.

British and U.S. researchers studied the effects of the chemical bisphenol A using data from a U.S. government national nutrition survey in 2006 and found that high levels of it in urine samples were associated with heart disease.

Bisphenol A, known as BPA, is widely used in plastics and has been a growing concern for scientists in countries such as Britain, Canada and the United States, where food and drug regulators are examining its safety. (Reuters)

NEW YORK - Many children who test positive for sensitivity to peanuts may not actually have full-blown allergies to the food, a new study suggests.

UK researchers found that among 79 8-year-olds who were deemed peanut- sensitive by standard allergy testing, only 7 turned out to have true allergies when they underwent more-extensive testing that is less commonly used in routine practice. [abs]

As it stands, peanut allergy is typically diagnosed through a skin test, blood test or both.

During skin testing, the skin is pricked and exposed to a small amount of peanut protein to see if there is a reaction; blood tests, meanwhile, help diagnose peanut allergies by measuring levels of IgE antibodies, immune system substances that play an important role in allergic reactions.

The limitation of these two tests is that they gauge peanut sensitivity -- which refers to the immune system response to peanut proteins. But not everyone who is sensitive to peanuts has a true allergy, which means that a person has specific symptoms, like wheezing, hives, swelling or digestive problems, after eating peanuts. (Reuters Health)

A co-founder of the company that created the “Baby Einstein” videos has asked a judge to order the University of Washington to release records relating to two studies that linked television viewing by young children to attention problems and delayed language development.

“All we’re asking for is the basis for what the university has represented to be groundbreaking research,” the co-founder, William Clark, said in a statement Monday. “Given that other research studies have not shown the same outcomes, we would like the raw data and analytical methods from the Washington studies so we can audit their methodology, and perhaps duplicate the studies, to see if the outcomes are the same."

Mr. Clark said that he had been seeking the information for years, but that the university had either denied his requests or failed to be fully responsive. (NYT)

There have been a number of strange theories regarding the conditions deep within Earth's interior circulating around the internet. Claims that solar flares will cause nuclear reactions deep below our feet are perhaps the most ludicrous, but fairly easy to dismiss. More timely, perhaps, is the sudden conversion of global warming guru Al Gore into a geothermal energy booster. Evidently Gore thinks it's bad to drill for oil, but good to drill for heat. TV documentaries threaten mega-volcano and talk about mantle plumes underneath Hawaii, but just what does science tell us about our planet's interior? (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)

The release of embarrassingly candid emails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia has intensified, if not vindicated, suspicions that scientific misconduct has played a significant role in fueling alarmism over supposed catastrophic manmade global warming.

Just days after news broke about what has been dubbed "Climategate," Penn State University (PSU) announced that it would investigate the conduct of Michael Mann, a professor in PSU's Department of Meteorology and a prominent figure in the Climategate emails.

While PSU is to be commended for recognizing that Climategate is a serious matter and that an investigation into Michael Mann's conduct is warranted, the investigation constitutes a conflict of interest for the university. Mann's climate work brings enough visibility, prestige, and revenue to PSU to legitimately call into question the university's ability to do a thorough and unbiased investigation.

To avoid this glaring conflict of interest and ensure that the investigation of Mann is credible, the Pennsylvania General Assembly should commission an external and independent investigation into Mann's potential scientific misconduct.

Harrisburg, Pa. - The debate over global warming has raged across the planet, but the epicenter the past few months has been Penn State, where a researcher is accused of fraud and perpetuating a hoax. He and the school are now feeling the heat.

Penn State professor Michael Mann is globally known for his research on global warming. His work concludes that temperatures rose in the 20th century largely because of man. But recently released private e-mails suggest Mann - the researcher - overstated the impact of man - the species - on climate change, and then tried to cover it up.

"The e-mails suggest that he has bullied critics, he has destroyed data, that he has engaged in behavior not becoming of a true academic in pursuit of accuracy and truth," said Matt Brouillette of the Conservative Commonwealth Foundation. He's called for lawmakers to independently investigate Mann before enacting policies partially based on his research.

"We need to make sure that Michael Mann has not been cooking the books and giving skewed data," he said.

Penn State is investigating. But Stephen Bloom, a Cumberland County attorney and Penn State graduate, says an internal inquiry isn't enough.

"Penn State has such a vested interest in keeping the big research dollars that are flowing in as a result of global climate change research they're doing now," said Bloom. "It's hard to imagine how Penn State can truly take an independent look at the situation." (Dennis Owens, ABC News (WHTM))

PART III – A global warming skeptic receives the leaked files from an anonymous “Deep-Climate” insider. Release of files exposes gatekeeping and leads to the maturing of a new science movement – that of peer-to-peer review. Last in a series. Please click for Part I and Part II.

Few outside the climate skeptic circle have ever heard of Steven Mosher. An open-source software developer, statistical data analyst, and thought of as the spokesperson of the lukewarmer set, Mosher hasn’t made any of the mainstream media outlets covering the story of Climategate. But make no mistake about it – when it comes to dissemination of the story, Steven Mosher is to Climategate what Woodward and Bernstein were to Watergate. He was just the right person, with just the right influence, and just the right expertise to be at the heart of the promulgation of the files. (Patrick Courrielche, Big Journalism)

When causes are popular it can be uncomfortable and inconvenient to realize that experts who render politically desired advice have potential conflicts of interest. Perhaps this helps to explain why investigative journalists (with only several exceptions), especially those who cover science, have turned a blind eye to the obvious and egregious conflicts of interest present in the case of Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC. The longer this issue is allowed to percolate in plain view, the worse the outcome will be for the scientific community and perhaps also those whose job it is to hold experts accountable to basic standards of conduct.

In India on Sunday, the paper India Today had a detailed and hard-hitting story on Dr. Pachauri's conflicts of interest, revealing some very interesting new details and responses. The paper received a response from Dr. Pachauri which includes the following statement about the organization that he leads, TERI:

Government projects costing respectively £1,436,162 and £30,417 miraculously shrink when MPs are formally told about them, to become a mere £543,816 and £5,800 – "losing" nearly a million pounds in the process.

Welcome to the second instalment of our look at the bizarre world of climate change politics, where nothing is what it seems and governments indulge in behaviour which, in other circumstances, would look very much like money laundering.

In our first piece, we introduced a new character to our growing cast of players – a certain Dr Andrew Reisinger. For his pivotal role in furthering the ambitions and interests of one R K Pachauri, he ought perhaps to be better known than he is.

We can see these two figures together – or at least at the same venue – on 8 November 2004, where they were both at the 32nd Session of the IPCC Bureau, held in Pachauri's adopted home town of New Delhi – a city which Reisinger was to get to known extremely well.

It was at that meeting, way back in 2004, that Pauchauri presented the Bureau with his "final proposal on scope and content of an AR4 Synthesis Report (SYR)." His outline was complete with "Options for a schedule for preparing an AR4 SYR and for managing the process, including resource implications."

Throughout the proceedings, Andy Reisinger was there on behalf of the New Zealand government, styling himself as belonging to the Climate Change Office, Ministry for the Environment. He was, however, doubtless fully attendant on the man who was a few years hence to become his boss and co-worker, Dr Pachauri.

The opportunity for Andy to jump ship was created the following year in Montreal when between the 26-28 September 2005 the full IPCC met in its 24th Session to discuss a report, submitted by Pachauri on the "Management plan for the AR4 Synthesis Report."

It says something of the persistence if Pachauri that the issue had already been raised at the 23rd Session of the IPCC held in Addis Ababa on 8 April 2005 (at which Reisinger was again present), when "progress" had been made. (EU Referendum)

The New Zealand climate scientist named in a British news article headlined "Pachauri: Money Laundering?", is today refusing to talk to the news media about the allegations. (The Briefing Room)

The average American consumes more than his or her weight in products each day, fuelling a global culture of excess that is emerging as the biggest threat to the planet, according to a report published today. In its annual report, Worldwatch Institute says the cult of consumption and greed could wipe out any gains from government action on climate change or a shift to a clean energy economy.

Erik Assadourian, the project director who led a team of 35 behind the report, said: "Until we recognise that our environmental problems, from climate change to deforestation to species loss, are driven by unsustainable habits, we will not be able to solve the ecological crises that threaten to wash over civilisation." (The Guardian)

Globally, our systems are flawed. Better internationally agreed rules are essential for our economies and environment (Ann Florini, The Guardian)

Climate change may have sparked its first border war. Two states are in early maneuvers for a potential legal battle over one's effort to curtail carbon and another's aspiration to become an energy "powerhouse."

Those divergent designs have driven coal-rich North Dakota to threaten Minnesota with a lawsuit that could rise to the Supreme Court, observers say, while challenging an untested pillar in climate policy: the ability of states to place carbon fees on electricity imported from their neighbors.

"It's one of the first cases of its kind," said Patrick Hogan, the regional policy coordinator for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "But it's also something people have expected. Whatever precedent that comes out of that might be quite important in determining future cases that are analogous."

North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem told local news outlets at the end of December that it's likely his office will sue Minnesota for discriminating against North Dakota power producers. He says a Minnesota law requiring utilities beginning in 2012 to consider future carbon prices would violate the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause. No suit has yet been filed.

The Midwestern dispute is sharpened by its timing. It comes as 13 other states and several Canadian provinces are designing sprawling financial programs intended to put a price on carbon dioxide released from sources like electricity plants, industrial processing sites and vehicles.

Those states, clustered in the West and Midwest, intend to include imported voltage in their climate programs. So utilities would be required to buy pollution permits, or allowances, for every ton of carbon released during the production of power they use, even if that occurred in a state without carbon laws.

If that didn't happen, climate programs would spring leaks, and power from states without carbon prices could come flooding in, experts believe. (ClimateWire)

California Arnold Schwarzenegger made the astonishing claim in Copenhagen in December 2009 that the Golden State is evidence we need not choose between a clean environment and economic growth because: “We’ve proved that over and over again in California.” (1) Dream words from a governor whose state is an economic mess. The Golden State has lost its luster. California ranks 48th out of 50 in business tax climate according to the Tax Foundation. Only New York and New Jersey scored lower than California. (2) (Jack Dini, Hawaii Reporter)

The Climate is Changing - The rise of Tony Abbott is part of a worldwide reconsideration of the costs of cap-and-trade.

When I say the climate is changing, I do not mean, as many people do, that man-made global warming is destroying Planet Earth. I mean that the politics of climate change is changing rapidly all over the globe. Al Gore's moment has come and gone.

In the United States, Democrats, nervously facing midterm elections, are calling on President Obama to jettison the cap-and-trade bills before the Senate. In Canada, the emissions-trading scheme—another term for cap-and-trade—is stalled in legislative limbo. In Britain, Tories are coming out against David Cameron's green stance. In the European Union, cap-and-trade has been the victim of fraudulent traders and the carbon price has more than halved to $18.50 per ton. In France, the Constitutional Council has blocked President Nicolas Sarkozy's tax on carbon emissions that was set to take effect in the New Year.

In Copenhagen, meanwhile, the United Nations' climate-change summit went up in smoke. And in Mexico City later this year hopes for any verifiable, enforceable and legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gases—and to bring in developing nations such as China and India that were, insanely, omitted from the Kyoto protocol in 1997—are a chimera.

Add to this that Washington was buried by record-breaking snowfalls last month, that hurricane activity is at a 30-year low in the U.S., that London is bracing itself for its coldest winter in decades, and that there has still been no recorded global warming this century, and it is no wonder public skepticism is rising across the world.

Nowhere is the changing climate more evident than in Australia. Last month, the Senate voted down the Labor Government's legislation to implement an emissions-trading scheme. Polls show most Aussies oppose the complicated cap-and-trade system if China and India continue to chug along the smoky path to prosperity. The center-right Liberal-led opposition, moreover, is now led by Tony Abbott, a culture warrior who has described man-made global warming in language unfit to print in a family newspaper and cap-and-trade as "a great big tax to create a great big slush fund to provide politicized handouts, run by a giant bureaucracy." (Tom Switzer, WSJ)

SEATTLE - The largest U.S. farm group called on Congress on Tuesday to prevent the government from regulating greenhouse gases if lawmakers kill climate change legislation.

The 6 million-member American Farm Bureau Federation also underlined its firm opposition to legislation to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for boosting global temperatures.

In their first item of policy work, delegates at the AFBF annual meeting voted to support "any legislative action" to suspend authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases under air pollution laws.

EPA cleared the way for regulation a month ago by ruling that greenhouse gases endanger human health. It offered a route to control greenhouse gases if Congress does not pass a climate law. AFBF staff say the Senate is unlikely to pass a "cap and trade" climate bill this year.

At least one bill was pending in the House to prohibit EPA regulation of greenhouse gases. Senators say they may offer amendments to do the same thing. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Lisa Murkowski on Tuesday left open the possibility that she would seek a vote next week on stopping the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from going forward with regulations to limit greenhouse-gas emissions.

"I do not believe and I don't believe that most of my colleagues in the Senate believe that the EPA is the entity that is the best suited to develop climate-change policy for this country," Ms. Murkowski (R., Alaska) told reporters. "I'm trying to get a time-out. I'm trying to allow the legislative process to proceed. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to have a vote that will allow for that discussion."

Democrats, businesses and environmentalists are closely watching the vote, which could come in the form of an amendment to a debt-ceiling measure up for a vote in the Senate next week. The failure of the Senate to act on climate legislation has put matters into the hands of the EPA, which last year declared that carbon dioxide -- a main greenhouse gas -- poses a danger to the public. The agency also announced plans to regulate emissions from cement plants, power plants and other stationary sources, a major new change that could give the federal government a bigger role in determining what types of projects receive operating permits.

Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee sought to rally support for the EPA, rushing out a letter opposing Ms. Murkowski. (WSJ)

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is not one to shy away from a fight, even if it means taking on all sides at once. [Read More] (Andres Cala, Energy Tribune)

"You are choosing the path focused on corporate greed," climate scientist James Hansen has told carbon traders in a open letter which he and climate activists attempted to deliver to a carbon trading conference in New York today.

In below-freezing temperatures, climate change campaigners gathered at midday at the Irish Hunger Memorial in Vesey Park, near the Embassy Suites Hotel where the conference is being held, to hear Hansen read parts of his open letter. Tomorrow there will be another demonstration at the same spot, at which an unconfirmed number of activists have pledged to commit acts of nonviolent civil disobedience.

Hansen's letter advocates using the fee-and-dividend approach to reducing carbon emissions, rather than cap-and-trade. Fee-and-dividend is a "transparent, honest approach that benefits the public", he says, in contrast to cap-and-trade, which "is a hidden tax … because cap-and-trade increases the cost of energy for the public, as utilities and other industries purchase the right to pollute with one hand, adding it to fuel prices, while with the other hand they take back most of the permit revenues from the government. Costs and profits of the trading infrastructure are also added to the public's energy bill." (The Guardian)

Attempts to create markets for tradeable CO2 are shaping up to be the next Oil-for-Food-sized fraud

Deloitte Forensic calls it “the white collar crime of the future.” Kroll, a business risk subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan, the global professional services firm, calls it “a fraudster’s dream come true.”

These two global financial services firms are referring to carbon trading markets, a business that is estimated to explode from $132-billion in 2009, mostly in the European Union, to $3-trillion by 2020 as jurisdictions around the world join in carbon trading, part of the “cap and trade” system that governments are embracing.

Under cap and trade, companies need permits for the right to emit CO2 as part of their operations. The permits, in effect, guarantee that excess carbon emissions will be “offset” by third parties that will, for example, sequester carbon by growing trees. These permits, which are being traded on carbon exchanges, akin to stock exchanges, have caught the attention of law enforcement officers, who have seen an upsurge in fraud.

New Delhi meeting to further cement Basic coalition ahead of next round of climate change talks. From BusinessGreen, part of the Guardian Environment Network

Does the average AGWer understand exactly how we go from step one (“CO2 emissions”) to step three (“the world is doomed because of AGW”)? Some notes from Max Beran, originally published in the Climate Sceptics mailing list:

I suspect [some AGWers] think man-made climate change is an actual force that is permeating the environment and quite capable of impacting on everything and anything. It doesn’t need to act first on some intermediate agency that is the proximate cause of whatever phenomenon they are interested in, man-made climate change is just out there in the world doing its evil business. This “paradigm” comes across time and time again in vox pops, and the mouths of lobbyists but it is not absent either in trained scientists, especially those in the softer (non-number- based) realms of science.

What I have in mind is the implication of the words that people use. For example: AGW carries the malaria bug, AGW empties reservoirs, AGW kills off whole species, AGW forces poor people from their homes etc etc, like it was some sort of toxic mist blown in on the wind. This came over strongly with Greenpeace activists and their ilk who were demonstrating in the streets at Copenhagen. It was quite plain from their responses to journalists’ questions that they were totally clueless about what AGW actually was supposed to be and how it would work, capable only of repeating mantra-like shibboleths about what dreadful things it did. It was pure “rentacrowd”, hired to make a noise but no knowledge of what their noise was all about other than it was against a bad thing.

When I managed a global change programme biologists would cite global warming as their agency of first choice when looking for a cause of some population or ecosystem change. There was no need to have a hypothesis about what weather elements actually controlled the phenomenon or even if it was weather sensitive – indeed I knew they wouldn’t have a clue where to go looking for such data for their locality or how they would measure it if they had to. All they knew was that global warming was out there and you could get the Central England Temperature data off the CRU website if you needed something to put on the X-axis of the graph. (Maurizio Morabito, Omniclimate)

Pollution permits were launched in the European Union in 2005 in an effort to cut carbon emissions. Photograph: Tim Wimborne/Reuters

Belgian prosecutors highlighted the massive losses faced by EU governments from VAT fraud today after they charged three Britons and a Dutchman with money-laundering following an investigation into a multimillion-pound scam involving carbon emissions permits.

The three Britons, who were arrested last month in Belgium, were accused of failing to pay VAT worth €3m (£2.7m) on a series of carbon credit transactions.

European authorities believe the EU has lost at least €5bn to carbon-trading VAT fraud in the last 18 months. Europol, the EU's law-enforcement operation, fears the fraud will be used in other areas, especially gas and electricity trading markets, after criminals found VAT fraud was one of the most lucrative financial frauds. (The Guardian)

JAKARTA - Billions of dollars set to flood into Indonesia under a U.N.-backed forest protection scheme are at risk because of graft unless the country puts strong oversight mechanisms in place, a report released on Tuesday warned.

Indonesia has the world's third largest area of tropical forest and stands to gain billions of dollars every year from a proposed greenhouse gas offset scheme called reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) that was formalized at recent global climate talks in Copenhagen. (Reuters)

Today, Reuters and NY Times published another article about the attempts of Micronesia to stop the upgrade of a Czech coal plant which is 13,000 km away (not 6,000 as Reuters writes). Previous article:

LONDON - Severe winter freezes, like the one gripping parts of Europe over the last few weeks, will become increasingly rare because of the warming effect of climate change, the UK's official forecaster said on Tuesday.

Europe's deep winter freeze, partly due to the El Nino weather phenomenon, has shocked parts of northwest Europe that usually escape the coldest winter temperatures, driving heating gas demand to records in Britain and disrupting supplies of the fuel when it was most needed.

The winter so far has been one of the coldest for nearly 30 years in Britain, but such icy weather was more common in centuries past and should become even rarer going forward.

"Winters like this are likely to become less of a feature as we head through the 21st century," John Hammond, a meteorologist at the UK Met Office said on Tuesday.

"Colder winters become less likely because overall the background warming will reduce the severity of them, certainly for our part of the world."

The Met Office expects Britain's already relatively mild and damp, on average, winters to become increasingly warm and wet as a result of climate change, with the effect particularly pronounced in the latter part of the century. (Reuters)

Joining the David Viner school of climate prediction, we now have John Hammond from the Met Office confidently telling us that, severe winter freezes, "like the one gripping parts of Europe over the last few weeks," will become increasingly rare.

This is, of course, because of our old friend "climate change", the news brought to us by Reuters, which seems have resisted the temptation to put its report in the entertainment section.

Hammond represents the latest attempt of the warmists at damage limitation – evident in the change of tone since the freezing weather hit us. Gone is the daily diet of catastrophic predictions, to be replaced by diverse offerings on the "weather is not climate" theme, combined with increasingly frantic reiterations that "climate change" is continuing.

Thus do we get the man telling us that the winter so far has been one of the coldest for nearly 30 years in Britain – something that even the Met Office has not been able to hide (but no mention that but it has been just as cold throughout most of the northern hemisphere).

But, we are assured, such icy weather was more common in centuries past and should become even rarer going forward. "Winters like this are likely to become less of a feature as we head through the 21st century," says Hammond. "Colder winters become less likely because overall the background warming will reduce the severity of them, certainly for our part of the world."

The Met Office is already writing the scenario for the next winter and winters to come – as it did this winter - expecting Britain's "already relatively mild and damp, on average, winters" to become "increasingly warm and wet as a result of climate change, with the effect particularly pronounced in the latter part of the century."

The latter is a safe enough prediction, given that there will be very few of us around to call the bluff – and even fewer if this type of harsh weather persists. It allows the likes of Hammond to discount this – and perhaps the next – winter, focusing on the far distance rather than the near future.

My guess is that they will hold the line for the moment – just. Another freezing winter though, and public patience will run out, especially if we have any serious power failures and people really begin to suffer. Interestingly, that may be with David Cameron in office, and his religious devotion will be seriously challenged if he insists on pursuing his warmist beliefs.

Everything is in the balance. A mild, wet winter next year will give the warmists breathing space. A freezing winter will finish them, and their creed. (Richard North, EU Referendum)

MOSCOW, Jan. 12 -- The Russian energy sector needs to take "global cooling" effects into consideration when addressing national challenges, the Russian prime minister said.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said his country faces a variety of challenges as the world moves toward a greener energy policy in the midst of a brutal European cold snap, Russia's ITAR-Tass reports.

"In addition to the global-warming challenges, we need to address 'global cooling' effects and to do so promptly," the prime minister said.

Putin lauded the work of national energy suppliers during the harsh winter gripping Europe, noting they "have been working practically without failures."

He cautioned, however, that there were many problems left unresolved, including breakdowns in national distribution pipelines.

"We need to oversee the process, to promptly react in case of any failure and provide support for municipalities and regions," he said.

Europe is watching developments in the Russian energy sector as it struggles with soaring winter demand. Russia is among the primary suppliers of natural resources to Europe. Moscow, however, is in a deadlock with Minsk over oil export duties, sending jitters through a European community already anxious from 2009 gas disruptions. (UPI)

Meeting in California in March will discuss possible field trials of schemes that would tackle climate change by reflecting sunlight or fertilising the ocean with iron (The Guardian)

AUSTRALIAN government climate experts have failed to detect an increase in the intensity of tropical cyclones after analysing 26 years of data since the early 1980s.

Climate scientists have warned that Australia should expect to see more intense cyclones in the future fuelled by rising global temperatures caused by greenhouse gases.

But this latest research from seven Bureau of Meteorology scientists shows that so far there is no conclusive evidence to suggest this is already happening. ( Courier-Mail)

In the set of news on the recent very cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere, there are news articles that continue to ignore the regional character of climate change and variability. One example is given below, where instead of recognizing the complexity of the climate system (including the human role in altering it), the article blames “increasingly cold conditions in their own microclimate” on “the rapid melting of the glaciers” which presumably is due to the “world growing ever hotter”.

In a world growing ever hotter, Huancavelica is an anomaly. These communities, living at the edge of what is possible, face extinction because of increasingly cold conditions in their own microclimate, which may have been altered by the rapid melting of the glaciers.

A consequence is that Quechua-speaking farmers and their families, who have managed to subsist for centuries at high altitude, believe they may not make it through the next southern winter.

There have been warnings from meteorologists in Peru that this month will see the Huancavelica region hit by the worst weather conditions in years with plunging temperatures, floods and high winds. The weather is already claiming lives; last month seven people died and scores were treated in hospital after torrential rain caused flash flooding in Ayacucho, the capital of the neighbouring region.”

There is another article that perpetuates this focus on global average conditions rather than regional weather and climate. It is in the Sydney Morning Herald by John Garnault titled

”Freak snowstorms and record low temperatures sweeping northern China are linked to global warming, say Chinese officials.”

“But, unlike the unseasonal snow falls that hit Beijing at the start of winter, the dump this week appears to have no link to the Government’s relentless efforts to change the micro climate.”

I have posted on the need to focus on regional circulations in a number of posts; e.g. with respect to human influences see

The media and policymakers need to recognize that climate is not adequately described by any global average metric. (Climate Science)

This video of the head of the UK Met Office being grilled on the BBC raises a number of interesting questions:

A study by the University of Exeter provides the first evidence that coral reefs can recover from the devastating effects of climate change.

Published Monday 11 January in the journal PLOS One, the research shows for the first time that coral reefs located in marine reserves can recover from the impacts of global warming.

Scientists and environmentalists have warned that coral reefs may not be able to recover from the damage caused by climate change and that these unique environments could soon be lost forever. Now, this research adds weight to the argument that reducing levels of fishing is a viable way of protecting the world’s most delicate aquatic ecosystems. (University of Exeter)

For years now, we have been told that science is dedicatedly attempting to find out how the Earth’s Climate works. With all possible seriousness, the most publically vocal of these scientists, those working for the UN’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), have for the last several years blamed the warming they “found” on Carbon Dioxide. With the release of the CRU (Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia) email database, it is very clearly apparent that the scientists involved with the IPCC were doctoring data to give a specific result. That result was designed to look as if CO2was causing climate change, warming the earth due to Human activities. It can be reported now that this theory has been solidly disproven by Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi and Dr. Miskolczi’s work will make history.

IF you look at a map of southeast NSW where grazier John Alcock and his children run three properties on the edge of the Snowy Mountains, you'll see that national parks and state forests cover at least the same area as private grazing country.

Out of the national parks come mobs of kangaroos that know their way into Alcock's drought-hit land when he plants improved pasture and fodder crops for cattle and fine-wool Merinos.

"Good heavens, if we sow something, they just invade us," Alcock tells The Australian.

"Kangaroos will travel for miles to get a crop."

Some culling of kangaroos is permitted on some private grazing land. But shooters are not allowed into the parks and park authorities do not allow any kangaroo harvesting.

The kangaroo situation does not make Alcock and many other graziers particularly well-inclined towards those in the climate change debate who brand their sheep and cattle as villains in global warming. ( The Australian)

WASHINGTON - While much of the Northern Hemisphere has shivered in a cold snap in recent weeks, temperatures in the Arctic soared to unusually high levels, U.S. scientists reported

This strange atmospheric pattern is caused by natural variability and not by rising levels of greenhouse gases. However, it could affect Arctic ice which in turn may impact global warming, said Mark Serreze, director of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado.

"It's very warm over the Arctic, with air temperatures locally at 10 to 15 degrees F (5.6 to 8.4 degrees C) warmer than they should be in certain areas," Serreze said in a telephone interview on Monday.

This contrasts with record or near-record cold over much of the eastern United States and Canada, Europe and Asia for the last two weeks of December and the first days of January, the data center reported.

It's due to a large area of high pressure over the Arctic, and a big area of low pressure at the mid-latitudes, where much of the Northern Hemisphere's population is concentrated.

Usually these areas of differing air pressure would shift and mix in a phenomenon known as the Arctic oscillation. Instead, they've remained stationary in what scientists term a negative phase of the oscillation. A positive phase would have low pressure over the Arctic and high pressure over the mid-latitudes.

Serreze said that as of December, the oscillation was in the most extreme negative phase seen since modern record-keeping began in 1950. (Reuters)

New study argues climate change was not responsible for the Agricultural Revolution

Sustainable farming and the introduction of new crops relies on a relatively stable climate, not dramatic conditions attributable to climate change. Basing their argument on evolutionary, ecological, genetic and agronomic considerations, Dr. Shahal Abbo, from the Levi Eshkol School of Agriculture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and colleagues, demonstrate why climate change is not the likely cause of plant domestication in the Near East. Rather, the variety of crops in the Near East was chosen to function within the normal east Mediterranean rainfall pattern, in which good rainy years create enough surplus to sustain farming communities during drought years. In the authors’ view, climate change is unlikely to induce major cultural changes. Their thesis is published online in Springer’s journal Vegetation History and Archaeobotany.

Climate-based explanations for the beginning of new agricultural practices give environmental factors a central role, as prime movers for the cultural-economic change known as the Near Eastern Neolithic or Agricultural Revolution (about 8500 B.C., 10500 cal. B.P.*). Dr. Abbo and team studied the traditional farming systems which existed until the early twentieth century in the Near East, looking for insights into the agronomic basis of the early days of Near Eastern farming, and to shed light on the possible role of climatic factors as stimuli for the Agricultural Revolution.

Their detailed analysis demonstrates that climate change could not have been the reason for the emergence of grain farming in the Near East. They find that farming requires a relatively stable climate to function as a sustainable economy and therefore is not a sustainable option in times of climatic deterioration.

The authors conclude, “We argue against climate change being at the origin of Near Eastern agriculture and believe that a slow but real climatic change is unlikely to induce revolutionary cultural changes.”

*calibrated years before the present

Reference
1. Abbo S et al (2010). Yield stability: an agronomic perspective on the origin of Near Eastern Agriculture. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany; DOI 10.1007/s00334-009-0233-7 (Springer)

I’m always searching for better and simpler ways to explain the reason why I believe climate researchers have overestimated the sensitivity of our climate system to increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.

What follows is a somewhat different take than I’ve used in the past. In the following cartoon, I’ve illustrated 2 different ways to interpret a hypothetical (but realistic) set of satellite observations that indicate (1) warming of 1 degree C in global average temperature, accompanied by (2) an increase of 1 Watt per sq. meter of extra radiant energy lost by the Earth to space.

The ‘consensus’ IPCC view, on the left, would be that the 1 deg. C increase in temperature was the cause of the 1 Watt increase in the Earth’s cooling rate. If true, that would mean that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide by late in this century (a 4 Watt decrease in the Earth’s ability to cool) would eventually lead to 4 deg. C of global warming. Not good news.

But those who interpret satellite data in this way are being sloppy. For instance, they never bother to investigate exactly WHY the warming occurred in the first place. As shown on the right, natural cloud variations can do the job quite nicely. To get a net 1 Watt of extra loss you can (for instance) have a gain of 2 Watts of forcing from the cloud change causing the 1 deg. C of warming, and then a resulting feedback response to that warming of an extra 3 Watts.

The net result still ends up being a loss of 1 extra Watt, but in this scenario, a doubling of CO2 would cause little more than 1 deg. C of warming since the Earth is so much more efficient at cooling itself in response to a temperature increase.

Of course, you can choose other combinations of forcing and feedback, and end up deducing just about any amount of future warming you want. Note that the major uncertainty here is what caused the warming in the first place. Without knowing that, there is no way to know how sensitive the climate system is.

And that lack of knowledge has a very interesting consequence. If there is some forcing you are not aware of, you WILL end up overestimating climate sensitivity. In this business, the less you know about how the climate system works, the more fragile the climate system looks to you. This is why I spend so much time trying to separately identify cause (forcing) and effect (feedback) in our satellite measurements of natural climate variability.

As a result of this inherent uncertainty regarding causation, climate modelers are free to tune their models to produce just about any amount of global warming they want to. It will be difficult to prove them wrong, since there is as yet no unambiguous interpretation of the satellite data in this regard. They can simply assert that there are no natural causes of climate change, and as a result they will conclude that our climate system is precariously balanced on a knife edge. The two go hand-in-hand.

Their science thus enters the realm of faith. Of course, there is always an element of faith in scientific inquiry. Unfortunately, in the arena of climate research the level of faith is unusually high, and I get the impression most researchers are not even aware of its existence. (Roy W. Spencer)

A few months ago, Richard Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi, his postdoc, published an interesting paper claiming to have identified a serious discrepancy between the reality and models when it comes to the response of the energy flows in the tropics to a changed temperature. The main result was that in reality, the feedback coefficient seems to be negative and the resulting climate sensitivity seems to be below 1 degree Celsius:

I have had a specific problem with the paper. But let me enumerate a couple of links, starting with some old ones and continuing with the newest ones:

Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week:
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 790 individual scientists from 471 separate research institutions in 42 different countries ... and counting! This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from Sugan Lake, Northwest China. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here.

Subject Index Summary:
Little Ice Age (Regional - Antarctica): The period of extreme cold that followed the Medieval Warm Period and preceded the Current Warm Period was a global phenomenon, felt all the way down at the "bottom of the world."

Plant Growth Data:
This week we add new results of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature for: Cotton (Yoon et al., 2009), Peanut (Tu et al., 2009), Thale Cress (Lau and Tiffin, 2009), and Wheat (Gutierrez et al., 2009).

BRITAIN sits on the cusp of a new chapter for the North Sea as it develops technology to clean up power station emissions, according to the boss of ScottishPower.

The company intends to pump liquefied carbon emissions from Longannet coal-fired station into disused oil and gas wells in the North Sea. It is down to the last two in the UK government's competition to develop and operate the technology. (The Scotsman)

Of all the ludicrous, wrong headed and down right stupid things to come out of the Copenhagen Climate Conference perhaps the most annoying was the formation of an ad hoc anti-nuclear umbrella organization. Over a dozen NGOs participating in the international “Don’t Nuke the Climate” campaign presented government delegates with a giant postcard and 50,000 signatures calling for a nuclear free climate agreement. There are ~6.5 billion people on Earth so the collected signatures amount to 0.000769 percent of the global population. Where do the rest of us sign up for a dingbat free planet? (The Resilient Earth)

Thanks to Congressional mandates and subsidies for corn ethanol, the real cost of the ethanol scam has been hidden from taxpayers for years. But a new report by the Baker Institute for Public Policy has underscored some of the more outrageous aspects of the corn ethanol scam. [Read More] (Robert Bryce, Energy Tribune)

Possibly the most fascinating aspect of the Smart Grid is the absense of an economic rationale. But industry incentives being what they are (concentrated benefits, diffused costs), many have bet on much of it being built. Boondoggles must pass political tests, not economic ones.

But guess what? People are finally starting to wonder if this smart grid is worth the trouble. Intervenors, at last, are turning up at state proceedings. For a good sample of the issues and alternatives, look at Synapse Energy Economics’ July 8 filing at the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities on behalf of the state Department of Public Advocate. Synapse is possibly the best firm in the business to represent efficiency or environmental interests, but they stand with the skeptics on smart grids.

The utilities have yet to find consultants who can make an easy case for the grids. Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) by itself recovers only 50 to 80 percent of its costs if all it gets used for is automated reading, data transmission, and service initiations and terminations. (See Brattle Group’s The Power of Five Percent, at p. 6.) Getting a positive cost-benefit figure requires time-varying rates for small customers and ways they can react to them, or giving their utility power to do that for them.

California is in the midst of distributing smart meters to everyone over the next few years, but it has already made certain that the necessary rate reforms and controls rate and controls won’t be there. First, the state just got a law that prohibits any mandatory form of time-varying pricing, with or without bill protection, prior to 2013. Mandatory real-time pricing without bill protection has to wait until 2020. Utility-controllable thermostats (originally deemed necessary for a positive cost-benefit figure) were removed from the state’s regulatory options a year ago by public protests. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

One of the most striking observations in “Project Discovery”, Ofgem’s analysis of the outlook for energy security, is that Britain is now competing with China for gas supplies.

Customers in Birmingham and Beijing, more than 5,000 miles apart, could be dependent on the same fields in gas-rich Turkmenistan in central Asia.

Britain’s gas market has been transformed since the days when supplies were simply pumped out of the North Sea or the Irish Sea and delivered to consumers. Ofgem believes the rules governing the market may have to change too.

The past week of exceptionally cold weather caused spikes in short-term prices and some minor disruption to supplies as gas demand hit a record high. There has been heavy investment in gas import infrastructure in recent years, and these facilities have largely worked well.

Terminals for receiving liquefied natural gas from tankers, and pipelines from Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium, along with maximum output from Rough, the country’s biggest gas storage site, kept most customers well supplied.

However, in a letter to the Financial Times on Wednesday, organisations representing manufacturers and large energy users say they are “concerned at the complacent nature of some of the comments about the UK’s energy supply” following last week’s disruption.

“As a nation we need to take security of our energy supply more seriously,” they add. ( Ed Crooks, Financial Times)

Wind farms produced "practically no electricity" during the cold snap which manufacturers' groups say could lead to severe winter energy shortages. (TDT)

Globally, our systems are flawed. Better internationally agreed rules are essential for our economies and environment (Ann Florini, The Guardian)

This is a breath of fresh air for me, because as we’ve seen time and again, often we get the press release on a paper, but not the paper itself, as it is often hidden behind journal membership rules or a paywall.

Expert panel calls on US research agencies to develop policies for providing free public access to federally sponsored research results

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 12, 2010 — An expert panel of librarians, library scientists, publishers, and university academic leaders today called on federal agencies that fund research to develop and implement policies that ensure free public access to the results of the research they fund “as soon as possible after those results have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.”

The Scholarly Publishing Roundtable was convened last summer by the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology, in collaboration with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Policymakers asked the group to examine the current state of scholarly publishing and seek consensus recommendations for expanding public access to scholarly journal articles. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

A LEADING health expert says the swine flu scare was a "false pandemic" led by drugs companies that stood to make billions from vaccines.

Wolfgang Wodarg, head of health at the Council of Europe, claims major firms organised a "campaign of panic" to put pressure on the World Health Organisation to declare a pandemic.

He believes it is "one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century" — and has called for an inquiry.

An emergency debate on the issue will be held by the Council later this month.

Dr Wodarg said: "It's just a normal kind of flu. It does not cause a tenth of deaths caused by the classic seasonal flu.

"The great campaign of panic we have seen provided a golden opportunity for representatives from labs who knew they would hit the jackpot in the case of a pandemic being declared. (Chris Pollard, The Sun)

WASHINGTON - The United States said on Monday it had cut in half its order for H1N1 flu vaccine from Australia's CSL Ltd, but said it is not certain how far orders from other suppliers will be trimmed.

While U.S. officials are still calculating how much swine flu vaccine they will need, it is becoming increasingly clear that the United States will not need all 251 million doses it ordered from five companies.

CSL said the U.S. government was halving its order for H1N1 vaccines, partly because the company had diverted some of its early output to the Australian government and would not be able to deliver its full $180 million U.S. contract.

Several other governments have started to cut orders for H1N1 vaccines because the pandemic has not turned out to be as deadly as originally feared and most people need only one dose, not two, to be fully protected.

Original orders for flu vaccine were placed in May, June and July, when it was not known what dose would be needed and it was not clear how severe the pandemic would be. (Reuters)

NEW YORK - Children who are breastfed for longer than six months could be at lower risk of mental health problems later in life, new research from Australia suggests.

"Breastfeeding for a longer duration appears to have significant benefits for the onward mental health of the child into adolescence," Dr. Wendy H. Oddy of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in West Perth and her colleagues report in The Journal of Pediatrics.

Breastfeeding could help babies cope better with stress, the researchers note, and may also signal a stronger mother-child attachment and these benefits may last. (Reuters Health)

WOMEN SHOULD forget what they have been told about the health benefits of breastfeeding, researchers have said.

A controversial new study has concluded that, contrary to the view of many experts, breast is not necessarily best for children in the first months of life.

Prof Sven Carlsen, who led the Norwegian team of researchers, took the findings further by saying: “Baby formula is as good as breast milk.”

Prof Carlsen said what really affects the health of a growing infant was the hormone balance in the womb before birth, according to the research.

This in turn influences a woman’s ability to breastfeed, resulting in a misleading association between breastfeeding and child health, the researchers say. (Irish Times)

BREAST is best, better than the rest.

That's what the nation's health ministers believe, endorsing the Australian National Breastfeeding Strategy 2010-2015 last year.

Studies show breastfeeding reduces the risk of obesity, chronic diseases and some respiratory illnesses, and breastfeeding mothers have reduced risks of breast and ovarian cancers.

But now Norwegian scientist Prof Sven Carlsen has found baby formula is as good as breast milk. He says the only benefit from breastfeeding is a small IQ advantage.

Sometimes I wish scientists would stop doing experiments that confuse us.

One week chocolate and red wine are good for us, the next week they aren't. I'm sure the scientific studies that proved the latter were a waste of money. (Blanche Clarke, Herald Sun)

NEW YORK, N.Y. (January 12, 2010) - Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo today announced groundbreaking settlements with five health care facilities located in the New York City Watershed to immediately end the practice of disposing of pharmaceutical waste into the watershed. The agreements announced today are the first-ever settlements requiring sources of pharmaceutical releases to end this risky disposal practice.

The five facilities are located in Delaware and Putnam Counties and within the New York City Watershed, an almost 2000 square mile area that drains into reservoirs and lakes providing drinking water to eight million residents of New York City and one million people living in Westchester, Putnam, Ulster, and Orange Counties. The practice of flushing unused pharmaceuticals allows for the release of painkillers, antibiotics, anti-depressants, hormones and other waste drugs into the watershed - the drinking water supply for almost half the state’s residents. To date, only trace amounts of pharmaceuticals have been found in the New York City drinking water supply.

“The 9 million people who get their water from the New York City Watershed enjoy some of the cleanest, safest and best water in the world,” said Attorney General Cuomo. “We need to make sure it stays that way. These ground breaking settlements provide a new model to implement immediate and sensible precautions to keep waste drugs out of the drinking water supply.” (Press Release)

Bioethics: Five years after a budget-busting $3 billion was allocated to embryonic stem cell research, there have been no cures, no therapies and little progress. So supporters are embracing research they once opposed.

California's Proposition 71 was intended to create a $3 billion West Coast counterpart to the National Institutes of Health, empowered to go where the NIH could not — either because of federal policy or funding restraints on biomedical research centered on human embryonic stem cells.

Supporters of the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, passed in 2004, held out hopes of imminent medical miracles that were being held up only by President Bush's policy of not allowing federal funding of embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) beyond existing stem cell lines and which involved the destruction of embryos created for that purpose.

Five years later, ESCR has failed to deliver and backers of Prop 71 are admitting failure. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state agency created to, as some have put it, restore science to its rightful place, is diverting funds from ESCR to research that has produced actual therapies and treatments: adult stem cell research. It not only has treated real people with real results; it also does not come with the moral baggage ESCR does.

To us, this is a classic bait-and-switch, an attempt to snatch success from the jaws of failure and take credit for discoveries and advances achieved by research Prop. 71 supporters once cavalierly dismissed. We have noted how over the years that when funding was needed, the phrase "embryonic stem cells" was used. When actual progress was discussed, the word "embryonic" was dropped because ESCR never got out of the lab. (IBD)

GENEVA - Binge drinking and other growing forms of harmful use of alcohol should be tackled through higher taxes on alcoholic drinks and tighter marketing regulations, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended.

The U.N. agency unveiled its draft global strategy to curb risks linked to alcohol which it estimates causes 2.5 million deaths a year from heart and liver disease, road accidents, suicides and various cancers - 3.8 percent of all mortality.

"Consumers, including heavy drinkers and young people, are sensitive to changes in the price of drinks... Increasing the price of alcoholic beverages is one of the most effective interventions to reduce harmful use of alcohol," the WHO said.

But a key factor for success in controlling beer, wine and spirits consumption is an effective taxation system, said a report by the WHO, whose campaigning led to a global health treaty controlling tobacco in 2003. (Reuters)

Dr. Nicolas Christou remembers in 1977 giving a surgical grand rounds — a medical ritual where doctors discuss unusual cases — about a "morbidly obese" patient with a body mass index of 57.

"Nowadays, a BMI of 57 doesn't even attract our attention," Christou says.

A BMI of 30 or more indicates obesity. The average BMI in his Montreal surgical practice has increased from the mid 40s in 1995, to 53 today.

"Certainly, a BMI of 105 is not unheard of," says Christou, a professor of surgery at McGill University and director of the bariatric surgery program at the McGill University Health Centre.

A five-foot, four-inch woman with a BMI of 105 would weigh "somewhere in the 680, 690-pound range."

When Statistics Canada Wednesday releases results from a unique national survey that took direct physical measurements of about 5,600 Canadians, and compared them to findings from the 1981 Canada Fitness Survey, Christou and others are expecting the results to reflect what they're seeing in their offices.

They are predicting an overall increase in the prevalence of obesity, "no matter how you define it," says the University of Alberta's Dr. Arya Sharma, and an even more dramatic increase in severe or "morbid" obesity.

"If they find things differently, there's either something wrong with the way we collect statistics, or there's something wrong with the theories and hypotheses that we've all been making about obesity, and the effect on the cardiovascular system and the overall health of the population," Christou says. ( Sharon Kirkey, Canwest News Service)

Can governments really legislate a svelte population? A number of governments in Europe, concerned about the growing waistlines of their citizens, seem to think so.

The Spanish government wants to ban excessive trans fats, Denmark will soon be taxing sweets and in Romania, Health Minister Attila Cseke has said he would like to see a tax on unhealthy food.

In Germany, too, there are some in Berlin who would like to see a government offensive against girth. In a Monday interview with the Rheinische Post, Green Party floor leader Renate Künast wants to ban advertising for sweets aimed at children.

"Aggressive advertising campaigns aimed at children 12 years and younger should be forbidden," Künast told the paper. "Food commercials, which are mostly ads for sweets, should not be broadcast during children shows. We need a ban." (ABC News)

Nintendo has revealed a new fitness gimmick to accompany the European release of Pokémon HeartGold Version and Pokémon SoulSilver Version in March. The latest games in the massively successful series will come packaged with the Pokéwalker - a pedometer that interacts with the Nintendo DS via infrared. Players can transfer any of their Pokémon into the Pokéwalker and then train them by taking them for an actual walk. From the press release:

The Pokéwalker counts the number of steps you take in the real world as you walk with it, using these to earn vital experience points while strengthening the bond between you and your Pokémon. The more steps you take in the real world, the more Watts are gained. Watts are used within the Pokéwalker to encounter and catch wild Pokémon using the Poké Radar or to search for hidden items using the Dowsing Machine, which can then be transferred into Pokémon HeartGold Version and Pokémon SoulSilver Version.

Apparently, you can match your wander to the shops with an in-game route - perhaps a jaunt through the plains or along the coast. Each route has different wild Pokémon to find and grab, and some special Pokémon can only be found within certain routes. And to ensure you recruit friends to your Pokémon-based fitness drive, users can create an infrared connection between two Pokéwalkers, receiving a game item as a gift. (The Guardian)

Citing the decline in frogs and rise of "frankenfish," a Bay Area environmental group filed a legal petition Monday for tighter federal standards on pollutants that disrupt the hormones of humans and wildlife.

The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the U.S. Environmental Agency to beef up criteria under the Clean Water Act for pesticides, pharmaceuticals and other endocrine disruptors that leak through the water-treatment process and contaminate groundwater and drinking-water supplies.

"We've found that a very small concentration of these chemicals can have profound reproductive effects," said Jeff Miller, a conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco.

Over the past two decades or so, scientists have found increasing amounts of endocrine disruptors in the groundwater, and they have seen corresponding effects in wildlife, particularly frogs, fish and other aquatic animals. Almost every native frog species in California is threatened, and scientists are finding fish with both male and female characteristics, Miller said. (Carolyn Jones, SF Chronicle)

FEDERAL Opposition leader Tony Abbott has backed mining in Cape York wilderness as he attempts to override Queensland's Wild Rivers laws.

Mr Abbott will introduce a private member's Bill at the first sitting of Federal Parliament next month in an attempt to strike out the state laws which restrict development close to nine rivers in the state's far north.

Mr Abbott told The Courier-Mail yesterday he backed mining in the area despite the fact it would jeopardise any push for World Heritage listing and called the Rudd Government "cowardly" for not stepping in earlier.

The move by Mr Abbott, a powerful advocate of federal intervention, is seen as his first attempt to steamroll over state rights, as flagged in his book Battlelines.

"Aboriginal people in Cape York have been protesting long and loud," he said in Cairns, flanked by Cape York traditional owners.

"They've been ignored. (The laws) effectively suffocate at birth all proposals for economic development on Cape York." (Courier-Mail)

NATIONAL parks could be opened up to development by Aboriginal groups across Australia if the federal opposition overturned Queensland's Wild Rivers legislation protecting Cape York, a constitutional expert warned yesterday.

University of NSW law professor George Williams said Tony Abbott's pledge to use Section 51 of the Constitution to override state environmental laws could set a precedent.

"Once you set that precedent, it may be hard to argue against giving Aboriginal people the same rights across the country, including any national parks," he said.

The Opposition Leader yesterday called on Kevin Rudd to support a private member's bill he plans to introduce in parliament next month, to overturn the Wild Rivers legislation.

"It's cowardly of (Mr Rudd) not to get involved in this issue," he said after meeting Cape York indigenous leaders in Cairns yesterday.

"If he's Kevin from Queensland, if he's fair dinkum about Queensland, he'd be fair dinkum about the rights of Aboriginal people to have an economic future." (The Australian)

THE Queensland Government has criticised Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's push to overturn its law protecting rivers in Cape York as a hypocritical stunt designed to win votes at the federal election.

The Federal Government said it would not support the private member's bill Mr Abbott plans to introduce into Parliament next month to quash Queensland's controversial wild rivers legislation.

Mr Abbott said the state law, which protects pristine waterways from development, denied Aboriginal people on the Cape economic opportunities.

''It's about locking up the land in ways which deny Aboriginal people their legitimate right to use it for their own benefit,'' Mr Abbott, who met indigenous leaders in Cairns yesterday, told the ABC.

But Queensland's Natural Resources Minister, Stephen Robertson, said: ''I can only think this is more about the next federal election and [the Liberals'] desire to win back the seat of Leichhardt than it is about any real concern about communities in Cape York. (The Age)

The Prime Minister should take a look at Wild Rivers

IT was about this time a couple of years ago that Kevin Rudd gracefully included then opposition leader Brendan Nelson directly in the Parliament House ceremony to mark the national apology to indigenous Australians. It was one of the great symbolic moments of recent years, and carried hope of a bipartisan approach on Aboriginal issues.

It is an approach that the Prime Minister ought to reprise with Dr Nelson's successor, Tony Abbott, as the Opposition Leader attempts to use federal powers to overturn the impact on Cape York communities of the Wild Rivers legislation. The Queensland government has already dubbed Mr Abbott's move a political stunt, but we expect better than that from Mr Rudd.

He should seize the opportunity to engage with Mr Abbott in a productive way that goes beyond knee-jerk politics. At the least, the federal government should pressure its state Labor colleagues to give up on this absurd intervention and repeal its legislation as soon as possible.

Premier Anna Bligh's ill-conceived decision to lock up the Archer, Lockhart and Stewart river systems on the Cape may have delighted urban-based greenies, but it has harmed indigenous hopes of economic independence and development.

The beautiful rivers of Cape York are worthy of protection, but it is strange that the Queensland government seems more interested in the views of the Wilderness Society and urban-based greenies than in listening to the indigenous Australians whose traditional stewardship of the region has helped maintain the pristine condition of these waterways.

Yesterday, the Queensland ALP was denying that the Wild Rivers ban was connected to the Greens' allocation of preferences to Labor in 14 marginal seats in last year's state election, but the government cannot deny the disaffection and cynicism engendered by its actions. As indigenous leader Noel Pearson indicated last year, there is a double standard operating here, with Aboriginal development, such as small-scale horticulture, inhibited alongside the rivers while a new bauxite mine is exempt from the legislation. (The Australian)

HELSINKI - In a warehouse outside of Helsinki hundreds of buyers gathered to bid in a three-day auction of mink, fox and other furs just before Christmas.

Any worries about the ailing global economy, the threat of global warming, or the fading popularity of fur as fashion were firmly left outside to chill in the snow.

Bidding was brisk, and by the end of the auction all pelts were sold, compared to sales of only 30 percent of stock last year. Organizers said sales roughly tripled to 39.5 million euros ($57.3 million) against last year, with prices up -- by a third on average -- since an auction in September.

"Demand and supply are in a good balance, and there is maybe slight overdemand, which supports price levels," said Chief Executive Pertti Fallenius of Turkistuottajat, which says it is the world's only publicly listed fur auctioneer.

While the fur market looks to be challenging in the coming years, weighed by a variety of factors including increasing social pressure against its use, the auction clearly showed that any talk of fur's death is greatly exaggerated.

And the industry has certainly got a boost from the recent cold snap that has dumped snow on many countries across the Northern hemisphere. (Reuters)

The organic movement should overcome its hostility to genetically modified crops and embrace the contribution that they can make to sustainable farming, one of the world’s leading agricultural scientists has told The Times.

Although organic farmers are among the most implacable opponents of genetic engineering, it should be accepted as legitimate, according to Gordon Conway, Professor of International Development at Imperial College London and a former government adviser.

In an interview with The Times, he said that the ban on organic farmers using GM crops was based on an excessively rigid rejection of synthetic approaches to farming and a misconception that natural ways were safer and more environment- friendly than man-made ones.

Farmers, he said, should use the best aspects of organic methods and GM technology to maximise yields while limiting damage to ecosystems. He accepted that organic lobbyists would regard the idea as heresy, but said that genetic engineering could create better organic crops than those grown today with further environmental benefits. (The Times)

President Obama knows little and cares less about global warming or climate change. It’s a means to a political end. He’s an arsonist setting fires to save the country, but as it burns he uses extinguishers that we know don’t work. He’s pursuing a deeply entrenched ideology with help from those who advanced his career as a figurehead for socialism in America. He’s assisted by the people he appointed to office and the policies already put in place. His actions are those Saul Alinsky outlined for community organizing but applied to the entire nation.

They require you prove the existing government and policies don’t work by slowly destroying the economy and from the ashes, the Phoenix of socialism takes flight. “An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent… He must create a mechanism that can drain off the underlying guilt for having accepted the previous situation for so long a time. Out of this mechanism, a new community organization arises….”

In the short term, the Bush Administration was allowed to go on for too long. In the long term it was abuse of the environment, especially climate by industry, the damnable engine of capitalism. This provides the moral argument Alinsky required to cloak the goal. His rule two says the end justifies the means. “The end is what you want, the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises.” He adds another rule, which says, “… you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.” He cynically identifies caring about the means as the weakness of people who oppose socialism. Actually, they are people with ethics, morality and a genuine concern for others. (Tim Ball, CFP)

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is likely to postpone offering an amendment (pdf) next week that would bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The delay would give Democrats a little bit of breathing space on the politically sensitive issue of whether the Obama administration can take the lead on curbing greenhouse gases if Congress fails to act this year. Murkowski first attempted to offer the measure back in September, but as part of a leadership deal between the two parties, she had postponed the move until Jan. 20. (Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post)

This fellow from New Zealand appears to think that Climategate proves that the big money is in climate skepticism. How does that work?

Here’s my attempt to follow his argument: The US Government has spent $79 billion in the past two decades on climate science. But Big Oil and Big Coal want a piece of this. They spend heavily on lobbyists to get it. They would be well served by certain provisions in bills and international treaties. [I agree with this so far...] But “the aims of the climate change lobby groups and the large industries they represent dovetail quite nicely with the arguments put forward by the sceptics.” So [he implies] therefore the skeptics have all the money.

If the public has to choose between creating jobs and spending billions to scrub invisible heat-trapping gases from the sky, jobs will win. That's why the campaign to combat climate change is morphing, at least politically, into an economic-development drive with an environmental twist.

Many billions of dollars are being spent on clean energy, even amid the recession. One key to combating climate change will be increasing that investment so the economy keeps growing but coughs out less carbon. Most talk focuses on a "cap and trade" system, in which companies would buy and sell permits to emit dwindling amounts of greenhouse gases.

But nations gathered at last month's Copenhagen climate summit declined to create a global cap-and-trade scheme. They couldn't agree on which countries should reduce their emissions the most. In Washington, proposals to launch a U.S. cap-and-trade program are crashing into similar fights among regions and industries.

So what's the alternative? A grab bag of more granular steps, each sold as creating "green jobs." One example: $2.3 billion in federal clean-energy manufacturing tax credits, whose recipients President Barack Obama announced Friday. (Jeffrey Ball, WSJ)

Given the dogmatic fervor of global warming proponents, and their intolerance of skeptics who dare to question the latest commandment (see: cap-and-trade) in the green scripture, it is perhaps no coincidence that the environmentalist movement sometimes seems to have more in common with theology than with science. If that is true, then the logical word to describe those scientists who have challenged environmental hysteria and extremism is “heretics.” In a series of profiles, Front Page’s Rich Trzupek will spotlight prominent scientists whose “heretical” research, publications, and opinions have helped add a much-needed dose of balance and fact to environmental debates that for too long have been driven by fear mongering and alarmism. In a field that demands political conformity, they defiantly remain the heretics. Previous profiles in the series include Steve Milloy and Dr. Craig Idso. – The Editors

Former NASA climatologist Roy Spencer, currently a professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), was drawn into the global warming debate by accident, while he was working at the space agency over two decades ago. “John Christy and I started looking at data that is used for weather forecasting and we wondered if it could be used for climate forecasting,” Spencer said.

As Spencer and Christy (also a professor at UAH) studied that data, they became convinced that, contrary to climate-alarmists’ claims, the climate is not all that sensitive to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Some scientists, like NASA physicist James Hansen maintain that increasing concentrations of relatively weak man-made greenhouse gases will result in a disastrous increase in the atmosphere’s most powerful greenhouse gas: water vapor. Spencer and Christy, on the other hand, don’t completely discount the effect of carbon dioxide. They just don’t find it very significant. The climate, they say, has ways of correcting itself. (Front Page)

California, the land of sunshine, surfing, soaring unemployment and ballooning deficits, may be making moves to strip itself of one of its most costly and draconian environmental regulations: the cap-and-trade carbon tax. Meanwhile, the City of Los Angeles is turning to private industry for help in digging out of a financial hole.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is planning to do what Congress couldn’t: regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases because allegedly “greenhouse gases threaten both the public health and the public welfare, and that greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles contribute to that threat.” To prevent this backdoor policy that would grant the EPA unprecedented authority over American economy, Congressman Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) introduced legislation on Friday that would prohibit the agency from implementing national greenhouse gas emissions standards. In his press release, Congressman Pomeroy said,

Jan. 11 -- The U.K. is only on track to meet its self-imposed greenhouse gas reduction targets because of the recession, a panel of lawmakers from the nation’s three main political parties said.

The Environmental Audit Committee said Britain should step up efforts to reach an international agreement on capping emissions of heat-trapping gases and ensure they peak “as soon as possible.” The findings were published in a 51-page report in London today.

The U.K. economy has suffered its longest recession on record, contracting a total of 6 percent over 1 1/2 years through September. U.K. emissions fell 2 percent in 2008, the most recent year for which data are available.

“At the moment, we are only on track to meet the targets in our first carbon budget period because of the impact of the recession,” Tim Yeo, chair of the Environmental Audit Committee and a member of the opposition Conservative Party, said in a statement. “The slower our progress, the less credibility we will have internationally.” (Bloomberg)

UPDATE: Mickey points me to the comment thread related to his article which he characterizes as "tongue in cheek" -- I've copied a few of Mickey's additional comments below.

Mickey Glantz is a longtime friend and mentor. A few days ago he had this letter in the Boulder Daily Camera, based on a posting at his new blog:

A police unit set up to support forces dealing with extremism in the UK is helping investigate the leaking of climate change data in Norfolk.

In November it was revealed that the computer server at the Climate Change Unit at the University of East Anglia had been hacked and e-mails leaked.

An inquiry was started by Norfolk Police.

Now it has been revealed the force is getting help from the National Domestic Extremism Unit, based in Huntingdon.

A spokesman for the unit said: "At present we have two police officers assisting Norfolk with their investigation, and we have also provided computer forensic expertise.

"While this is not strictly a domestic extremism matter, as a national police unit we had the expertise and resource to assist with this investigation, as well as good background knowledge of climate change issues in relation to criminal investigations." (BBC)

A British government department, DEFRA, has paid taxpayers' money to a British University which in turn paid it to the British subsidiary of an Indian research organisation, which in turn seems to have paid it to a New Zealand university scientist so that he could work for an international organisation based in Geneva – the IPCC.

Welcome to the bizarre world of climate change politics, where nothing is what it seems and governments indulge in behaviour which, in other circumstances, would look very much like money laundering. But, bizarre though it might appear, this is only half the story. The reality is even more convoluted - the word "bizarre" doesn't even begin to describe it.

The tale emerges from our trail of the millions salted away by climate change "hero" Rajendra Pachauri, and the role of TERI Europe, his outpost of Empire in London. (Richard North, EUReferendum)

But only in a Crecy (1346) way rather than an Agincourt (1415) way – which is to say we’ve got an awful long way to go before this war’s over.

Still, I do think we evil Climate Change Deniers can take heart from this characteristically incisive piece by Brian Micklethwait at the libertarian/classical liberal website Samizdata. (Hat tip: Richard North). (James Delingpole, TDT)

Climate-gate could further complicate the re-election prospects of congressional representatives from industrialized states who are already playing defense over the economic costs of climate change legislation.

Thousands of emails leaked to the Internet from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom appear to substantiate a growing body of research that questions the idea of man-made global warming. Climate-gate has the potential to emerge as an unexpected gift to Republican candidates in this year’s midterm elections. But there’s the rub.

With the exception of Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), and a handful of other elected officials, Republicans have been reticent to engage and debate the dubious claims of human induced global warming, laments Steve Milloy, editor and founder of JunkScience.com.

“Too many of them don’t understand the issue and the extremism that stands behind green activism,” he observes. “They are afraid of being labeled as anti-environment and are just not well-equipped or well informed enough to confront policies that could result in an unprecedented expansion of government power.”

At the very least, 2010 Republican challengers could invoke the email scandal to demonstrate how research has been falsified and distorted to advance a political agenda at odds with the economic well-being of many Americans. This in turn could open the way to a larger discussion of global warming science and the role of the United Nations. (Kevin Mooney, Big Government)

American Farm Bureau President Bob Stallman got a standing ovation Sunday at the group's annual meeting in Seattle after promising a stronger fight against activists critical of modern commercial agriculture and cap and trade bills in Congress. The group argues that climate legislation would push millions of acres in the U.S. into forests and leave the remaining farms facing high fuel and fertilizer costs.

Farm Bureau members reflect a defensive mood among farmers who are tired of an onslaught of books, movies and news reports critical of agricultural production methods and its affect on the environment and livestock.

Stallman said some of those groups want to abandon an efficient food production system, "taking us back to 40 acres and a mule." (Agriculture Online)

The largest U.S. farm group will "aggressively" fight back against any attempts to change the landscape of American agriculture -- including the farm bill or animal rights campaigns, American Farm Bureau Federation Bob Stallman said yesterday.

In a fiery speech that kicked off the powerful farm lobby's four-day convention in Seattle, Stallman said farmers and ranchers must unite to respond to "misguided, activist-driven regulation."

"A line must be drawn between our polite and respectful engagement with consumers and how we must aggressively respond to extremists who want to drag agriculture back to the day of 40 acres and a mule," Stallman said. "The time has come to face our opponents with a new attitude. The days of their elitist power grabs are over." (ClimateWire)

SEATTLE, January 10, 2010 – Much of current global warming theory is based on distortions of scientific evidence, blind devotion to simple notion and outright greed, according to a speaker at the American Farm Bureau's 91st annual meeting.

Christopher Horner, a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, contended that the theory suffers from problems with the measurement of the earth temperature and its interpretation. Comprehensive data collected since the Middle Ages reveal a natural process of fluctuation in average temperature. These data have been derived from studies of tree rings, ice cores and thermometer readings.

“The climate has always changed,” Horner said. “The question is, how does society respond to it – hysterically or rationally?” (Farm Bureau)

OTTAWA -- Canadians believe climate change poses a significantly bigger threat to the "vital interests" of this country over the next decade than international terrorism, a new poll suggests.

While nearly half of those surveyed said climate change is a "critical threat," only about one in four people said the same about international terrorism. A similar poll conducted in 2004 showed Canadians believed the two threats were about equal. (Laura Stone, Canwest News Service)

BERLIN - Germany will stick to a more ambitious goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020 even though the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen fell short of expectations, a government adviser said on Monday.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said it was unclear if the European Union as a whole would pursue a 30 percent target when it submits its plan to the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat by January 31.

Germany had hoped that its offer to raise its 2020 target from 30 to 40 percent, combined with an EU offer to raise its goal from 20 to 30 percent if other nations pledged substantial cuts, would spur a deal on worldwide reductions in Copenhagen. (Reuters)

Some specialists are calling for an overhaul of the UN global warming process, which yielded only modest progress in Copenhagen. (CSM)

Copenhagen Summit Turned Junket? Exclusive: At Least 20 Members of Congress Made the Trip to Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen Last Month

Few would argue with the U.S. having a presence at the Copenhagen Climate Summit. But wait until you hear what we found about how many in Congress got all-expense paid trips to Denmark on your dime.

CBS investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports that cameras spotted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the summit. She called the shots on who got to go. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and embattled Chairman of the Tax Committee Charles Rangel were also there.

They were joined by 17 colleagues: Democrats: Waxman, Miller, Markey, Gordon, Levin, Blumenauer, DeGette, Inslee, Ryan, Butterfield, Cleaver, Giffords, and Republicans: Barton, Upton, Moore Capito, Sullivan, Blackburn and Sensenbrenner.

That's not the half of it. But finding out more was a bit like trying to get the keys to Ft. Knox. Many referred us to Speaker Pelosi who wouldn't agree to an interview. Her office said it "will comply with disclosure requirements" but wouldn't give us cost estimates or even tell us where they all stayed.

Senator Inhofe (R-OK) is one of the few who provided us any detail. He attended the summit on his own for just a few hours, to give an "opposing view."

"They're going because it's the biggest party of the year," Sen. Inhofe said. "The worst thing that happened there is they ran out of caviar."

Our investigation found that the congressional delegation was so large, it needed three military jets: two 737's and a Gulfstream Five -- up to 64 passengers -- traveling in luxurious comfort.

Add senators and staff, most of whom flew commercial, and we counted at least 101 Congress-related attendees. All for a summit that failed to deliver a global climate deal. (CBS)

Action in the UK to cut greenhouse gas emissions could be rendered "meaningless" if a global deal on tackling climate change is not secured, a committee of MPs warned today.

But the Environmental audit committee urged the government to cut emissions more quickly at home – to prove to other countries Britain was serious about backing up its attempts to get an international agreement with action. (The Guardian)

Better: Meg Whitman's climate change strategy - In what may be a risky political move, the GOP candidate for governor has come out strongly against the state's law on regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

Although a 12.3% unemployment rate and $20-billion budget deficit ensure the economy will dominate California's race for governor, Republican front-runner Meg Whitman has guaranteed that the environment will also be a high-profile issue in the campaign.

Whitman, the former CEO of EBay, declared in September that her first act as governor would be to suspend the state's pioneering climate change law, AB 32. It was a high-risk political move for Whitman, putting her campaign at odds with the views of a large majority of California voters while, more broadly, reigniting a statewide debate about the impact of strong environmental regulation on economic growth. ( Phil Trounstine and Jerry Roberts, LA Times)

BEIJING: China has no regrets over its abrasive negotiating tactics at the chaotic Copenhagen climate conference, and says that "the key lesson" for rich countries was that China would not be pushed around.

In the first detailed interview since Copenhagen with Western media by a Chinese official, China's ambassador for climate change, Yu Qingtai, told the Herald that the climate change summit was "a step in the right direction", but repeatedly blamed a breakdown of trust at the conference on rich countries ganging up on China.

"During and before Copenhagen there was a concerted effort by a small group of developed countries who believed that by joining hands [they could] force us to go beyond what we are responsible for or capable of," Mr Yu said.

"But Copenhagen proved that those attempts will not be successful. In fact they should have known better. So what the developed countries need to learn from this whole process is to make up their minds whether they want to pursue confrontation or co-operation with China." (SMH)

LACQ, France, Jan. 11 -- French supermajor Total inaugurated a carbon capture facility in the south of France that could remove more than 120,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

Total hailed its $85.6 million end-to-end carbon capture, transportation and storage demonstration facility in Lacq as Europe's first such project. (UPI)

Cement is a major component of concrete, the world's most widely used man-made material, an integral part of roads, bridges and buildings. But making cement requires heating limestone and other materials to very high temperatures, a process that releases into the atmosphere large amount of carbon dioxide, or CO2, a leading cause of global warming.

Brent Constantz is working to fix that problem with an environmentally-friendly cement that actually captures CO2 and locks it away.

At his California company, Calera, scientists mix air and water to create the cement powder and aggregate pebbles that are the basic ingredients of concrete. But while traditional cement, called Portland cement, adds CO2 to the atmosphere, Calera's green cement takes the greenhouse gas out of the air - a lot of it. For every unit of carbon that Portland cement adds to the air, Brent Constantz says his green cement removes three units. "The more concrete you pour, the more CO2 you take out of the environment. So the way to mitigate the carbon problem is to pour more concrete!" But only, Constantz adds, if it's his concrete. (VOA News)

While governments around the world continue to explore strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a new study suggests policymakers should focus on what needs to be achieved in the next 40 years in order to keep long-term options viable for avoiding dangerous levels of warming. (NCAR)

It's cold out there - blame global warming.

Weather experts say global warming not only warms the world, it also brings colder extreme weather.

"It means a higher risk of more extreme weather like freezing winter, snowstorms and scorching hot in the coming five decades," Kuang Yaoqiu, professor with Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told China Daily yesterday. (China Daily)

THIS winter’s prolonged cold spell could be a taste of things to come for Wales – with glaciers a possibility within 40 years.

That’s the chilly message from a leading Welsh climate expert who has warned that global warming could paradoxically trigger a collapse in temperatures in western Europe.

According to the expert, future Welsh winters could be similar to those in Iceland and southern Greenland now.

Environmentalists pounced on the warning as a sign of how vital it is that we reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

The weather’s icy grip on Wales since before Christmas is unrelated to global warming or other climate trends – but it shows what life will be like in Wales every winter if the Gulf Stream weakens or moves south.

The Gulf Stream transports warm water from the tropics to the north Atlantic, where the water cools and flows back to the tropics. As global warming melts more of the polar ice cap, more freshwater is entering the north Atlantic. This could impair the Gulf Stream because of the different densities of brine and freshwater.

If the northern end of the Gulf Stream moves further south, it will no longer bring the mild temperatures which residents of western Europe take for granted. ( Rhodri Clark, Western Mail)

A leading scientist has hit out at misleading newspaper reports that linked his research to claims that the current cold weather undermines the scientific case for manmade global warming.

Mojib Latif, a climate expert at the Leibniz Institute at Kiel University in Germany, said he "cannot understand" reports that used his research to question the scientific consensus on climate change.

He told the Guardian: "It comes as a surprise to me that people would try to use my statements to try to dispute the nature of global warming. I believe in manmade global warming. I have said that if my name was not Mojib Latif it would be global warming."

He added: "There is no doubt within the scientific community that we are affecting the climate, that the climate is changing and responding to our emissions of greenhouse gases." (The Guardian)

I received this email a few weeks ago and quite frankly i did not think too much of it.

dear AMS/NWA or RTDNA member,

I invite you to participate in a National Science Foundation-funded survey of TV meteorologists and news directors being conducted by George Mason University in cooperation with the American Meteorological Society, the National Weather Association, and the Radio and Television Digital News Association. We are conducting this research to better understand TV meteorologists' and news directors' opinions about climate change, and how they cover the issue in their work.
............Ed Maibach, MPH, PhD
Professor and Director
George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication
climate@gmu.edu

So i jumped on google and found that Ed Maibach is who we says he is with George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communications. But what struck me was his bio.

Here is the opening paragraph:

In 2006, while on a walk in the mountains – with Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber – Ed had an epiphany that forever changed his life. He realized that climate change is the ultimate threat to the public’s health and wellbeing, worldwide, and Ed responded by refocusing his work entirely on climate change prevention and adaptation. Ed moved to Mason in 2007 to join the communication faculty and create the Center for Climate Change Communication.
Ed’s research interest is focused on the question: How can we use communication and marketing to influence the behavior of populations for the benefit of society?

After digesting all of this i cannot tell you how disturbing this is to me both professionally and as someone who has been a meteorologist for nearly 30 years, that i am being asked to participate in a survey whose ultimate aim is to influence the behavior of populations for the benefit of society.

I have been at best a skeptic on the man made global warming theory that has taken on a religious fervor among the believers. What is even more disturbing is that the American Meteorological Society ( to which i am no longer a member) apparently saw fit to release my name and email without asking. I assume the AMS is okay with the upfront bias but i wonder has anyone there even bothered to check all this out? (Joseph Cioffi, Limited Partnerships)

Climate scientists need to take more responsibility about how their work is presented to the public, suggests the Met Office's Richard Betts. In this week's Green Room, he says it is vital to prevent climate science being misunderstood or misused. (Richard Betts, BBC)

OSLO - Sea water under an East Antarctic ice shelf showed no sign of higher temperatures despite fears of a thaw linked to global warming that could bring higher world ocean levels, first tests showed on Monday.

Sensors lowered through three holes drilled in the Fimbul Ice Shelf showed the sea water is still around freezing and not at higher temperatures widely blamed for the break-up of 10 shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula, the most northerly part of the frozen continent.

"The water under the ice shelf is very close to the freezing point," Ole Anders Noest of the Norwegian Polar Institute wrote in a statement after drilling through the Fimbul, which is between 250 meters and 400 meters (820-1,310 ft) thick.

"This situation seems to be stable, suggesting that the melting under the ice shelf does not increase," he wrote of the first drilling cores. (Reuters)

There is an interesting set of photographs that are available from the MSNBC website on the widespread current cold period in Europe, Asia and North America. The 62 slides can be viewed here.

A study on how Alaskan polar bears are adapting to melting sea ice suggests that Canada may need to change the way it manages the Arctic predators.

The study found the bears are now spending more time on land or in the open ocean instead of on the sea ice they normally hunt from.

Polar bear expert Andrew Derocher says the evidence that bears are changing their ways means scientists should reconsider the way they count them.

Derocher says bears are wandering between populations more than previously thought.

Inuit groups say they've maintained all along that the overall population of bears in Canada has remained stable. (CP)

The treeless ecosystem of mosses, lichens, and berry plants is giving way to shrub land and boreal forest. As scientists study the transformation, they are discovering that major warming-related events, including fires and the collapse of slopes due to melting permafrost, are leading to the loss of tundra in the Arctic. (Bill Sherwonit, e360)

Britain's big freeze is the start of a worldwide trend towards colder weather that seriously challenges global warming theories, eminent scientists claimed yesterday.

The world has entered a 'cold mode' which is likely to bring a global dip in temperatures which will last for 20 to 30 years, they say.

Summers and winters will all be cooler than in recent years, and the changes will mean that global warming will be 'paused' or even reversed, it was claimed.

The predictions are based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

They are the work of respected climate scientists and not those routinely dismissed by environmentalists as 'global warming deniers'.

Some experts believe these cycles - and not human pollution - can explain all the major changes in world temperatures in the 20th century.

If true, the research challenges the science behind climate change theories, and calls into question the political measures to halt global warming.

According to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, the warming of the Earth since 1900 is due to natural oceanic cycles, and not man-made greenhouse gases.

It occurred because the world was in a 'warm mode', and would have happened regardless of mankind's rising carbon dioxide production. (Daily Mail)

There is an important new paper that documents a global impact of land use change on climate [thanks to Dev Niyogi of Purdue for alerting us to it!]. It is

Abu Dhabi’s decision to turn to nuclear power will in 10 years cut the country’s carbon emissions by 32 million tonnes a year, equivalent to the total carbon footprint of Bahrain, new Government figures show.

If all four nuclear reactors are operating by 2020 as planned the UAE’s carbon emissions will be lowered significantly as the country reduces its dependence ever larger quantities of fossil fuels, according to an internal study by the Abu Dhabi Government. In 2008, the latest year for which data are available, the UAE emitted 199 million tonnes of carbon, according to estimates by the US Government’s Energy Information Agency. (The National)

Modern technical innovations operate unlike the traditional, pre-industrial advances: they too have their phases of gradual improvements based on tinkering and everyday experiences with running a machine or a process. But the initial accomplishments result almost invariably from deliberate and systematic pursuits of theoretical understanding. Only once that knowledge is sufficiently mastered the process moves to its next stage of experimental design followed by eventual commercialization.

That is precisely how Charles Parsons, Rudolf Diesel, and their collaborators/successors invented and commercialized the two machines that work–unseen and unsung–as the two most important prime movers of modern economies:

The process of process is also how we got gas turbines (jet engines) and nuclear reactors, and many other taken-for-granted converters and processes. Ditto for solid state electronics that has evolved from crude transistors in the Bell Laboratories in the late 1940s to the now ubiquitous microprocessors.

Unfortunately, this conquest of the modern world by microchips has helped to create a warped image of a universally accelerating technical progress, one that has been unthinkingly promoted both by computing gurus (Ray Kurzweil makes perhaps the most egregious claims, as he believes that the 21^st century will be equivalent to 20,000 years of progress at today’s rate of advances) and politicians (nobody can compete with Al Gore in this category with his call for completely repowering America in just one decade). [Read more →] (Vaclav Smil, MasterResource)

Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post reports on how a Federal subsidy program for biomass energy threatens an existing industry that relies on that same material for producing wood products:

Expect plenty more such stories as incentives for energy production and consumption are changed. You can't make a clean energy omelet without breaking a few eggs. (Roger Pielke Jr)

British wind farmed by British workers... or not

The ROC scheme, however, does nothing to ensure that turbines will be made in Blighty or even erected/maintained by British workers. The UK's only wind-turbine factory was shut down by its owners last year in favour of investments in China and the US, and current offshore wind projects - as is normal in much of maritime industry - are already making use of cheap foreign labour.

The British wind-biz industry body says that more government help over and above the ROC scheme would be necessary if the hoped-for green jobs bonanza is to appear. ( Lewis Page, The Register)

German companies have won contracts worth more than €100 billion to build Britain’s planned network of offshore wind farms in the North Sea. (The Local)

A federal biofuels program enacted in the name of fighting global warming and reducing dependence on foreign oil is instead killing jobs while perhaps doing more harm than good and costing taxpayers half a billion dollars, reports the Washington Post.

“It sounded like a good idea: Provide…government money to convert wood shavings and plant waste into renewable energy.” But it is now killing jobs by “driving up the price of raw timber, undermining an industry that…used sawdust and wood shavings to make affordable cabinetry.” Meanwhile, “the Biomass Crop Assistance Program…has mushroomed into a half-a-billion dollar subsidy.”

At least this program isn’t resulting in malnutrition and death, unlike ethanol mandates and subsidies, which cause starvation and unrest in the Third World. Ron Bailey writes about…

Sceptics and environmentalists may be locked into endless arguments around global warming, but there's little debate that an energy crisis looms large.

A Florida based research team, however, may have found a solution to the world's energy woes that could provide a clean and near limitless supply of energy in as little as a decade. ( The Independent)

If you still require proof the Environmental Protection Agency operates without any sort of tethering to reality, you need look no further than its crackdown on smog.

The agency recently proposed to ratchet down the ground-level ozone standard to 0.060 to 0.070 parts per million from the 0.075 ppm level set by the Bush administration and the 0.084 ppm level set by the Clinton administration in 1997.

It alleges that the more stringent stand prevents as many as 12,000 premature deaths per year and thousands of cases of bronchitis, asthma and nonfatal heart attacks — all for the price of $19 billion to $90 billion per year. To make the rule seem like a no-brainer, the EPA values the proposal's health benefits at $13 billion to $100 billion per year.

What's not to like — cleaner air, healthier people and a potentially greater GDP to boot!

The EPA points to a slew of studies to back up its proposal, but the scientific and economic reality of the proposal is far different. There is no body of systematically collected and scientifically analyzed data showing ambient levels of smog in the U.S. are the primary cause of a substantial or even detectable number of significant health effects.

To the extent the EPA points to published studies it claims support its proposal, these studies invariably involve cherry-picked data that have been statistically tortured to produce dubious, if not suspicious results — these studies tend to emanate from EPA-funded researchers. Imagine a police department that was also judge and jury. (Steve Milloy, IBD)

First New York City required restaurants to cut out trans fat. Then it made restaurant chains post calorie counts on their menus. Now it wants to protect people from another health scourge: salt.

On Monday, the Bloomberg administration plans to unveil a broad new health initiative aimed at encouraging food manufacturers and restaurant chains across the country to curtail the amount of salt in their products.

The plan, for which the city claims support from health agencies in other cities and states, sets a goal of reducing the amount of salt in packaged and restaurant food by 25 percent over the next five years.

Public health experts say that would reduce the incidence of high blood pressure and should help prevent some of the strokes and heart attacks associated with that condition. The plan is voluntary for food companies and involves no legislation. It allows companies to cut salt gradually over five years so the change is not so noticeable to consumers. (NYT)

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related mortality in both men and women in the United States and throughout the world. Sadly, most cases of lung cancer are diagnosed at an advanced stage, conferring a poor prognosis.

As it is, only about 16% of NSCLC patients are diagnosed early enough to be eligible for surgery. Most of the rest undergo some form of chemotherapy. Overall, fewer than 5% of advanced non-small cell lung cancer patients survive five years.

My latest HND piece looks at a possible breakthrough drug, that seems to make chemotherapy agents work better, and be tolerated better by the patient, as well. The drug is NOV-002, from Novelos Therapeutics, Inc., a New England-based biopharmaceutical company.

I also cover the types of Clinical trials, noting that NOV-002 is now approaching the end of a Phase III trail, and mention two other promising ways that chemo efficacy can be improved.

Read the complete article. (Shaw's Eco-Logic)

NEW YORK - A new study shows that candy, soda and other junk foods are commonly sold at stores not traditionally associated with food -- in a trend that researchers say may be contributing to the U.S. obesity problem. (Reuters Health)

WASHINGTON -- Calorie counts for every pizza, blueberry muffin, chef's salad or anything else that comes from many chain restaurants and vending machines would be instantly available to consumers, thanks to a few paragraphs in Congress' health care legislation.

Under the health care bills passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives, restaurants that are part of a chain with 20 or more locations doing business under the same name would have to post on the menu or menu board the calories contained in most items.

Such information would also be available for food "sold at a salad bar, buffet line, cafeteria line, or similar self-service facility, and for self-service beverages or food that is on display and that is visible."

The requirement doesn't apply to condiments, "daily specials," custom orders or items that appear on menus for less than 60 days a year.

The restaurant also would have to make available right away, upon request, other information such as calories from fat in a product, as well as amounts of fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, total carbohydrates, complex carbohydrates, sugars, dietary fiber and protein.

Vending machines owned by large operators also would have to have calorie labels so that consumers could see them before they bought an item. That presumably would mean that on machines where the product is not visible, label cards would be posted on the machine. (AP)

WASHINGTON - Sitting in front of a television set for hour after hour day after day may raise the risk of death from heart disease and other causes - even in people who do not weigh too much, Australian researchers say.

Compared with adults who watched less than two hours of TV a day, those who watched more than four hours had a 46 percent higher risk of death from all causes and an 80 percent higher risk of cardiovascular death during the six-year study period. (Reuters)

Carrying extra weight on your hips, bum and thighs is good for your health, protecting against heart and metabolic problems, UK experts have said.

Hip fat mops up harmful fatty acids and contains an anti-inflammatory agent that stops arteries clogging, they say.

Big behinds are preferable to extra fat around the waistline, which gives no such protection, the Oxford team said.

Science could look to deliberately increase hip fat, they told the International Journal of Obesity.

And in the future, doctors might prescribe ways to redistribute body fat to the hips to protect against cardiovascular and metabolic diseases such as diabetes.

They said having too little fat around the hips can lead to serious metabolic problems, as occurs in Cushing's syndrome. (BBC News)

(Jan. 11, 2010) — Parents are acutely aware of the influence of friends on their children's behavior -- how they dress, how they wear their hair, whether they drink or smoke.

A new laboratory-based study has shown that friends also may influence how much adolescents eat.

"Consider a person who usually comes home alone after school and eats out of boredom," says Sarah-Jeanne Salvy, PhD, assistant professor of pediatrics in the University at Buffalo's Division of Behavioral Medicine and first author on the study.

"But on this day, she has a play date with a friend and socializes instead of eating. In this case, socializing is acting as a substitute for eating. Identifying substitutes provides a potential way to reduce behavior. (ScienceDaily)

SAN FRANCISCO— The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today to establish water-quality criteria for numerous endocrine-disrupting chemicals under the Clean Water Act, the first step in regulating and eliminating persistent and widespread chemicals that damage reproductive functions in wildlife and humans.

“Our drinking water and aquatic habitat for wildlife is being increasingly and unnecessarily contaminated by endocrine disruptors such as pesticides and pharmaceuticals,” said Jeff Miller, a conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity. “We should be very concerned when we see chemically castrated frogs and frankenfish resulting from these chemicals – it’s time to get these poisons out of our waterways and ecosystems.”

Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that alter the structure or function of the body’s endocrine system, which uses hormones to regulate growth, metabolism, and tissue function. Endocrine disruptors can mimic naturally occurring hormones like estrogens and androgens, causing overstimulation, and can interfere with natural hormone functions, thereby compromising normal reproduction, development, and growth. They have been shown to damage reproductive functions and offspring, and cause developmental, neurological, and immune problems in wildlife and humans. (Press Release)

Householders and businesses have been warned not to clear snowy pavements - as they could be sued if someone slips.

Icy paths mean hospitals have been inundated with patients who have broken bones in falls.

But the professional body that represents health-and-safety experts has warned businesses not to grit public paths.

In its guidance to members, the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health warns that if people assume an area is clear and then slip and injure themselves, they could take legal action claiming damages.

And members of the public say they have been warned by councils about the legal risks. (Daily Mail)

Jose Chirino, a 10th grader in Brooklyn with shoulder-length hair and a thin mustache, says flatly that his high school was his last choice.

“They’re experimenting on us,” he said, recalling his first impression of the Green School in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which laces an environmental theme into most of its coursework.

Jennifer Auceda, 17, was similarly wary, given that she wanted to be a singer and never saw herself as a “science person.”

“I thought it was going to be about the inside of trees,” she said.

But the two reluctant recruits, who had both failed to get into the high schools they favored, said they were won over after realizing that the school casts a wide net.

Rather than simply covering predictable topics like recycling and tree planting, they say, it has alerted them to problems like sooty air and negative media representations of their neighborhoods.

“Green is not just the environment,” Jennifer said. “It’s politics, government, social justice.” (NYT)

BERLIN - German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged industrialized and emerging countries to invest more in protecting wildlife and said the U.N. should create a body to refine scientific arguments for saving animal and plant species.

Researchers say preserving nature is crucial to the fight against climate change and warn that human activity is speeding up extinctions. They also argue that peoples' livelihoods depend on natural assets worth trillions of dollars.

Extinction rates run at 1,000 times their natural pace due to human activity, research shows. Three species vanish per hour, according to U.N. figures. (Reuters)

Anyone who’s seen the documentary Food Inc. knows that Monsanto comes across as a thug. Its bioengineered soybeans, designed to be unaffected by Monsanto weedkiller Roundup, command 93% of the U.S. crop, yet there’s Monsanto in the 2008 movie, heartlessly hauling farmers into court to jack up its market share even further. Monsanto execs declined to comment then. In retrospect, CEO Hugh Grant now says he should have. He might have blunted the film’s impact if he had.

Grant has a different take on Monsanto’s role in agriculture, of course. From his point of view, the company is working on the side of angels, helping to create commodity crops to feed today’s population and the 2 billion more people who might occupy the planet by 2030. He is proud that Monsanto scientists were the first to have a patented genetically modified plant on the market—Roundup Ready soybeans were introduced in 1996—and he is excited about new efforts to bioengineer wheat and vegetables, too, as well as the next generation of super beans and corn. (Business Week)

A new wave of genetically modified (GM) crops are to be planted in the British countryside this year as the Government increases its support for the technology. (TDT)

Ditch the dog; throw away (sorry, recycle) those takeaway menus; bin bottled water; get rid of that gas-guzzling car and forget flying to far-flung places. These are just some of the sacrifices we in the West will need to make if we are to survive climate change.

The stark warning comes from the renowned Worldwatch Institute, a Washington-based organisation regarded as the world's pre-eminent environmental think tank. (Jonathan Owen, The Independent)

picture GREG GRIECO

Michael Mann has been assailed by critics and subjected to three probes. A bounty has been offered to anyone who can link him to fraud.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Michael Mann switched from physics to climate science back in graduate school because he thought climate offered a better chance to work "on a frontier."

He got his wish, and now, as the director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center, he has experienced an aspect of frontier life more like the Wild West - a bounty on his head.

After dozens of Mann's personal e-mails were hacked in November, the tenured professor has been called a fraud, a clown, and worse by columnists and bloggers.

Irate citizens complained to a Pennsylvania state senator, who demanded that the university conduct a probe into Mann's scientific integrity. That inquiry is ongoing.

This is hardly Mann's first review. His work has been the subject of at least two major investigations by outside experts.

And last week, a message went around his department at the university, notifying everyone that a whistle-blower could make up to $12 million by uncovering fraudulent use of federal grants. One blogger gloated that the offer would lead to Mann's having "a very unhappy new year."

Though he has been accused of dodging the press, Mann, 44, agreed readily to an interview on a bitterly cold day last week. The campus was deserted, as almost everyone was away for winter break. Mann was affable and calm as he answered the assertions of his critics.

The hardest part for him, he said, is having his integrity questioned. Scientists, he said, are "not trained to deal with these kinds of attacks."

"My suspicion is, this has been orchestrated at a high level," he said of the hacking. (Faye Flam, Philly Inquirer)

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/michael_mann_hurricane_matrix.jpg?w=225&h=273

It’s always a difficult place for me to deal with interviews with Michael Mann, because on previous occasions Mann gets to say ridiculous things and get praised for them by fawning interviewers. One of the great mysteries of climate science is why Mann never gets interviewed by an informed and intelligent interviewer in command of the facts – or maybe it isn’t such a mystery after all.

What? Where? This is Michael Mann, famous for questioning the integrity of others (especially if their surname begins with “Mc”) in the most lurid terms yet when he’s caught out orchestrating boycotts of scientific journals, journalists and scientists who dare peek at his data and methodology, undermining and subverting the whole scientific process, it’s all a big conspiracy.

How a tiny blog and a collective of climate enthusiasts broke the biggest story in the history of global warming science – but not without a gatekeeper of the climate establishment trying to halt its proliferation.

It was triggered at the most unlikely of places. Not in the pages of a prominent science publication, or by an experienced muckraker. It was triggered at a tiny blog – a bit down the list of popular skeptic sites. With a small group of followers, a blog of this size could only start a media firestorm if seeded with just the right morsel of information, and found by just the right people. Yet it was at this location that the most lethal weapon against the global warming establishment was unleashed. (Patrick Courrielche, Big Journalism)

My recent post at MasterResource, Climategate: Here Comes Courage!, has been picked up in the blogosphere (such as at WattsUpWithThat) and has received several thousand views at MasterResource.

In my post, I profiled three individuals in the Houston area who in the post-Climategate environment have spoken up more forcefully against climate alarmism:

Neil Frank’s op-ed generated hundreds of online comments, and hundreds more views, with support being overwhelmingly positive (see for yourself). A number of comments are very appreciative of the Houston Chronicle for having published Frank’s piece given the editorial position at the paper as New-York-Times alarmist. (A number of readers also take the opportunity to fuss that their hometown paper is so one-sided.) And I must add my frustration: the editorial board’s jump from ‘market failure’ to government activism (support of cap-and-trade, etc.) as if there were not ‘government failure’ in the ‘correction.’ Political economy, anyone? [Read more →] (Robert Bradley Jr., MasterResource)

Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of UN's Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), had advocated emission reductions at the recently concluded Copenhagen Climate Summit.

But back home in India, he seems to be failing to uphold standards of propriety in his professional dealings.

During his tenure, first as director from 1982, and then as director-general of The Energy Research Institute (TERI) since 2001, Pachauri was a member of the boards of the Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC), Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), three of India's biggest public sector energy companies, all of whom by the very nature of their business contribute heavily to greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions, according to the IPCC, are adding to the country's growing carbon footprint and hastening climate change.

TERI, in fact, entered into business dealings with these companies and allegedly benefitted from Pachauri's association with them. Pachauri's dealings have also been noticed by the international media. Recently, the Sunday Telegraph of London had accused him of amassing a fortune using his links with carbon trading companies. Pachauri dismisses the report as "a pack of lies". (India Today)

Richard North's revelations about Rajendra Pachauri, now apparently going under the monicker of "Patchygate", have been delayed due to bad weather - really!

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it is offering grants of up to $5 million to groups working on projects intended to combat global warming.

The federal department said in a release Friday that U.S. and international organizations alike can get money through the Methane to Markets Partnership if they are working on projects aimed at limiting environmental pollution such as greenhouse gas emissions.

The public-private partnership is already supplying other projects with grants and other means. Such assistance helps those projects reduce emissions by more than 27.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year.

The U.S. agency said proposals for the new grants are due by April 15 and all associated projects are required to take place in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Georgia, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Mongolia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Thailand, Ukraine or Vietnam.

The grant offer comes ahead of the second Methane to Markets Partnership Expo March 2-5 in Delhi, India. (UPI)

Political correspondent Marie McNicholas looks back on the chaos of the Copenhagen climate talks and warns against interpreting the messy outcome as a reprieve from climate change action. (Newsroom)

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech to Congress could indicate how badly he wants a global warming bill, which opponents say will cost U.S. jobs and raise prices -- a scary prospect for politicians trying to ride out a horrible economy in an election year. (Reuters)

The Tony Abbott-led federal coalition is almost certain to dig its heels in over the government’s ETS when it appears in parliament for a third time next month, a position based at least in part on the premise that we don’t know for sure how, and if, an American ETS will operate.

But while Republican Senators vow to prevent any cap-and-trade carbon scheme, it seems that some of their powerful conservative colleagues are anticipating a different outcome, and are setting themselves up, at least commercially, to benefit from it.

Several key Bush Administration executives, including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a one-time director of oil giant Chevron, and former Republican Senator and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, have joined the board of a start-up company called C3, which is developing software tools to manage carbon cap-and-trade systems for corporations.

C3 is the brainchild of Thomas Siebel, who sold his eponymous software company to Oracle for $US5.7 billion in 2005. C3 executives include Siebel co-founder Patricia House, ex-Oracle CTO Ed Abbo and several other former Oracle and Siebel senior executives. (Giles Parkinson, Business Spectator)

SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- There's no point in debating the science of climate change, because it's already a political and legal reality, energy industry experts said Friday.

Representatives from the United Mine Workers of America and American Electric Power, the nation's largest single buyer of coal, told The Associated Press' annual Legislative Lookahead forum that West Virginia policymakers need to recognize that new reality.

Requirements ordering companies to reduce their carbon emissions are on their way, said Tim Mallen, an environmental manager for AEP. "Whether it comes this year or next year is not really that big a deal. It's coming."

Last year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation setting requirements for the reduction of carbon emissions and establishing incentives to meet those goals. ( Associated Press)

In a column for USA Today, Julianne Malveaux writes that climate change is a civil right issue. The comments posted on the USA Today site regarding her column make it clear that readers were amused by her column more than persuaded.

This is actually problematic because some of her column covers a very important point regarding global warming policies: They do have a disproportionate effect on the poor. As I have written, almost every single policy pushed to address global warming by environmental groups hurts the poor.

Roy Innis and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) have done excellent work on the key point that climate change policies are a civil rights issue.

Unfortunately, Ms. Malveaux combines very different issues. The problematic part of the…

SOME people oppose measures to limit greenhouse gases because they believe that global warming is a myth. These denialists may have a little extra spring in their step during the current cold snap, but their influence has been steadily waning.

The biggest remaining obstacle is disagreement over the legitimacy of proposed solutions. At the heart of attempts to curb carbon dioxide emissions are two related proposals: taxation of those emissions and a system of tradable emission permits, also known as cap and trade. Both have been attacked as unacceptable restrictions on individual liberty. The attacks have come from both sides of the political aisle, but have been pressed with particular insistence by conservatives and libertarians. (Robert H. Frank, NYT)

Climate change has gained enormous visibility during the past year, reflected in a range of American policy initiatives leading up to the international deliberations in Copenhagen.

The Environmental Protection Agency has designated carbon dioxide as an air pollutant and issued an endangerment finding that could generate federal regulation of emissions. Far-reaching climate legislation passed the House of Representatives in June 2009 and has since moved to the Senate for consideration.

President Barack Obama has negotiated an intergovernmental agreement designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.

The president also pledged specific emission reduction targets as part of the American bargaining position at Copenhagen, though the recent summit produced very modest agreements. At the same time, a wide range of state and local government climate policies continue to be adopted and many are now being implemented.

But what does the American public think about the issue of climate change and possible policy responses? Have these views changed over time? We have tracked American public opinion on this issue for several years and are particularly attentive to any shifts between 2008 and 2009 in this year’s National Survey of American Public Opinion on Climate Change.

Known as the Muhlenberg-Michigan study, this opinion research reflects ongoing collaboration between the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion and the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.

This report will provide brief introduction to some of the key findings from our latest study, with a much longer analysis to be included in the forthcoming Brookings Institution Press book, Greenhouse Governance: Addressing Climate Change in America, edited by Barry Rabe. ( Brookings Institute)

On the campaign trail Barack Obama promised if he were elected president, he would create 5 million “green collar” jobs. Today President Obama announced $2.3 billion in tax credits for a clean energy economy will ostensibly create 17,000 jobs. “Building a robust clean energy sector is how we will create the jobs of the future,” he said in a speech this afternoon.

Make no mistake; this government-run plan will kill more jobs than it aims to create.

There are a number of serious problems with the goal to create green jobs, and Europe’s unfavorable results with renewable energy should raise red flags in the United States. And cap and trade, which is sold by President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, among others as the ultimate jobs bill, is in reality the ultimate jobs destroyer.

THE climate change debacle at Copenhagen last month underlined the reality that any new global agreement will be on the terms set by developing countries. Leading commentators have written that China's leading role in this was a demonstration of its new influence as an economic power.

In one important sense they are wrong. This was not just China, but India, Brazil and the Arab oil states as well. Furthermore, the position of these countries and the rest of the developing world has not changed in the 20 years since climate change has been on the global agenda.

For developing countries, climate change and other environmental strategies which retard economic development are unacceptable. They scored this into UN orthodoxy at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. They executed the principle when they emasculated the Kyoto Protocol by insisting only rich countries cut emissions.

The failure at Copenhagen was not the result of the greater influence of developing countries, it was a failure, yet again, of Green activists and environmental officials in rich countries to understand the position of developing countries and the political implications of that.

China used its enhanced authority to deliver the developing country message in the form of a humiliating public snub to Western leaders at Copenhagen.

China sent an official, not a political leader, to negotiate with Barack Obama.

The European Community, the champion of the Kyoto Protocol, was shut out of the negotiations between the US and the leading developing economies. When the Danish Prime Minister nominated an Indian minister to pair with Penny Wong to sort out differences on one issue, the Indian minister simply did not show up. (Alan Oxley, The Australian)

BEIJING - Chinese negotiators achieved their goal at Copenhagen climate talks in ensuring financial aid for developing nations was not linked to external reviews of China's environmental plans, its top climate envoy said on Saturday. (Reuters)

India has heralded the four-nation developing world bloc that negotiated an outcome at the Copenhagen climate change talks with the US as a new power in multilateral decision-making.

Jairam Ramesh, India’s environment minister, said on Friday the grouping of China, India, Brazil and South Africa – called Basic – could take the victory it had achieved at the Copenhagen talks to negotiate reform of the world’s economic architecture and trading system. All four countries are part of the Group of 20 leading nations, which has helped to coordinate a response to the global financial crisis. (Financial Times)

At Bigjournalism.com, Woody Hochswender puts global warming alarmism in the context of a long tradition of doomsaying — which wasn’t invented by Al Gore and need not necessarily be about climate — by looking at the dismal career of author Jonathan Schell.

Imagine building your whole career upon the boogieman of "global warming" and then finding out that it's been based on falsified and suppressed information on climate change?

Poor Al Gore must be sweating it out over the Climategate emails and documents posted on the internet in November 2009 - just weeks before the Copenhagen climate change conference.

Gore canceled a speech he was to give in Copenhagen on his Chicken Little beliefs about climate change. The cancellation came after the Climategate emails went viral around the globe. ( Andrea Lafferty, RSN)

Over the past two decades, old media exploited the human drama of AGW to boost sagging ratings. They bear a huge amount of blame for the hoax. (Art Horn, PJM)

From the Met Office's mistakes to Gordon Brown's wind farms, the cost of 'green' policies is growing, warns Christopher Booker (TDT)

AS Britain’s winter of discontent threatened a fresh wave of blizzards and freezing temperatures last night, Gordon Brown stood accused of failing to protect the nation.

With up to 60,000 deaths predicted because of the relentless cold and the country’s major roads facing a gritting crisis, Downing Street was heavily criticised for the widespread chaos. (Express)

Here’s how it is down our way. The oil tank that powers our central heating is running worryingly low, but for days fuel lorries have been unable to navigate the frozen track that links us to the nearest main road. We would have gained much welcome heat from incandescent light bulbs, but as those have been banned by the government as part of the “fight against climate change”, no such luck. (Dominic Lawson, Sunday Times)

Many people are commenting on the irony that, not two weeks after the Copenhagen summit to discuss the warming of the Earth, Britain and other parts of Europe are experiencing an extreme cold snap (see "Cold Is Weather; Heat Is Climate," below). Parts of the U.K. have come to a standstill as temperatures have plummeted to -17 degrees Celsius (about 1 degree Fahrenheit). Schools have been closed, there is gridlock on the roads, flights have been cancelled. During Copenhagen, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown made grand statements about protecting future generations from the effects of global warming; now he is calling on British people “to support each other” in this “difficult” time of freezing weather.

Yet if you comment on this irony, far less ask awkward questions about what it might reveal about the global-warming thesis, you are apparently an “idiot.” Green commentators have attacked those who ask “if the planet is warming, why is it so bloody cold?” “Britain’s cold snap does not prove climate science wrong,” declares the Guardian, bemoaning the “national outpouring of idiocy every time some snow falls.” The Guardian says climate and weather are not the same thing, and “the ability to distinguish trends from complex random events is one of the traits that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom.” (In short, if you idiotically think cold weather disproves global warming, you’re not fully human.)

Now, I’m no climate scientist (thank God), and I don’t know if Britain’s extraordinarily cold weather is indicative or not of any broader trend. (I do know, however, that it is a pain to be subjected to non-stop, very expensive TV and radio warnings about the future warming of the planet by a government that can’t even make the trains and buses run during cold weather in the here and now.) However, there is a hilarious irony in being lectured by greens against using random weather events to make a point about broader trends, for that is what they do all the time. Indeed, greens have personified and moralized random weather events, interpreting them as Nature’s vengeful fury against wanton and wasteful mankind. How idiotic can you get? (Brendan O’Neill, Planet Gore)

All that snow and ice everywhere is due to global warmi … er, climate change, according to White House spokesman Robert Gibbs:

Interesting. Given that reduced cardon dioxide output is supposed to cure warming, what’s the cure for colding? (Tim Blair)

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in
summer by 2013.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this. (David Rose, Daily Mail)

Imagine conditions in the once Great Britain. Ice laden wind turbines sit idle in the still air; solar panels covered in snow; gas reserves down to 8 days; pensioners burning books to keep warm, and a bankrupt government.

This is happening because politicians have been conned by anti-industrial greens to neglect the UK’s reliable and economical coal and nuclear generators, while wasting time and money on pointless climate crusades.

Australia is treading this treacherous path. The Wong energy plan will consume our savings, uglify our headlands with wind turbines, cover our deserts with solar panels and entangle our countryside with a spider-web of costly and poorly used transmission lines. And still we will need coal and gas to deliver power when “the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine”.

When this global warming madness passes, future generations will remove this derelict solar/wind infrastructure and return to the only reliable and economical electricity options for Australia – coal, gas, hydro and nuclear.

Reality exists, even if there are few who recognise it. (Viv Forbes, Rosevale, Qld))

New University of Waterloo study finds CFCs, not CO2, to be the cause of recent global warming

Climate change is real and man-made, explains University of Waterloo professor Qin-Bin Lu, author of a new study published this week in the peer-reviewed journal, Physics Reports.

Professor Lu also explains that the climate change crisis is over. Thanks to an international environmental treaty, the planet is no longer in peril. We have, in fact, begun a long cooling period that will bring Earth’s temperatures back to normal.

The man-made cause of global warming is not CO2 and the international treaty that saved the planet is not the Kyoto Protocol. Rather, says Dr. Lu, the true cause of global warming has been CFCs, or chlorofluorocarbons, a class of chemicals that was once widely used in aerosol cans and refrigeration. As CFC use soared in the decades following World War II, he explains, the globe started warming dramatically. The world stopped warming dramatically when government regulations began to phase out CFCs, an event that culminated in the western world in 2000. Almost immediately afterward, in 2002, the world began to cool as CFCs started to diminish in our atmosphere.

Glaciologists are this week arguing over how a highly contentious claim about the speed at which glaciers are melting came to be included in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In 1999 New Scientist reported a comment by the leading Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain, who said in an email interview with this author that all the glaciers in the central and eastern Himalayas could disappear by 2035.

Hasnain, of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, who was then chairman of the International Commission on Snow and Ice's working group on Himalayan glaciology, has never repeated the prediction in a peer-reviewed journal. He now says the comment was "speculative".

Despite the 10-year-old New Scientist report being the only source, the claim found its way into the IPCC fourth assessment report published in 2007. Moreover the claim was extrapolated to include all glaciers in the Himalayas. (Fred Pearce, New Scientist)

Climate science faces a new controversy after the Met Office denounced research from the Copenhagen summit which suggested that global warming could raise sea levels by 6ft by 2100.

The research, published by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, created headline news during the United Nations summit on climate change in Denmark last month.

It predicted an apocalyptic century in which rising seas could threaten coastal communities from England to Bangladesh and was the latest in a series of studies from Potsdam that has gained wide acceptance among governments and environmental campaigners.

Besides underpinning the Copenhagen talks, the research is also likely to be included in the next report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This would elevate it to the level of global policy-making.

However, the studies, led by Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of ocean physics at Potsdam, have caused growing concern among other experts. They say his methods are flawed and that the real increase in sea levels by 2100 is likely to be far lower than he predicts.

Jason Lowe, a leading Met Office climate researcher, said: "These predictions of a rise in sea level potentially exceeding 6ft have got a huge amount of attention, but we think such a big rise by 2100 is actually incredibly unlikely. The mathematical approach used to calculate the rise is simplistic and unsatisfactory." (Sunday Times)

New research provides a new incentive to protect reefs, overturning ideas that coral sealife originated elsewhere (The Guardian)

For the last five years the carbon market has been doubling year after year. But in 2009, the exponential growth trajectory paused. Point Carbon issued a report this week estimating that the world wide market in carbon trading in 2009 totalled around $136 billion dollars, which is not much higher than the 2008 figure. After years of living in a rapacious bubble, prices are about 60% below the peaks of 2008, carbon traders are starting to peel out into other commodities, and the sails are looking decidedly flat on the Maxi Yacht known as Carbon-Credits Inc.

The size of the market in gigatons of carbon grew nearly 70% over 2008, but the falling prices meant the same amount of money churned through the system and the total dollars were very similar year on year.

How times have changed. Back in May 2009, emissions traders were feeling confident that a US market for emissions would be approved. Not surprisingly, the low carbon prices and the non-event of Copenhagen mean that carbon traders are becoming frustrated. Some are even expanding into… markets that are based on real commodities like oil, gas, gold and steel. [Reuters] More » (Jo Nova)

McDonald's has long been the butt of jokes about what goes into its burgers, but now it is to spend thousands of pounds investigating what comes out of its beef cows.

The fast food chain, which uses beef from 350,000 cattle a year for its burger meat, is to conduct a three-year study into methane emissions from cattle on 350 farms across Britain. Gas produced by flatulent livestock accounts for 4% of the UK's total carbon emissions. It is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse agent.

The company's announcement comes after the environment secretary, Hilary Benn, called for the food industry to look at ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as part of the government's 2030 food strategy, which was unveiled last week.

A study carried out in America in 2006 calculated that producing a single cheeseburger involves the emission of around 3.1kg of carbon dioxide. ( Elizabeth Day, The Observer)

In a breakthrough that has the potential to help feed billions of people, scientists from the John Innes Centre in Norwich have found the "thermometer gene" which plants use to sense temperature.

Laboratory tests on a mustard seed plant showed that the gene that plants use in order to know when to grow in the warmer months can be manipulated by taking away a histone protein.

The protein normally binds to DNA and wraps it around them which then controls which genes are turned on.

When the histone protein was taken away from plants, all the genes in the plants reacted as if they were experiencing high temperatures even when the temperature in the lab was turned down very low.

The findings could pave the way for climate change resistant crops within 10 years.

The new super crops would be able to cope with the increased heat expected as the earth's temperature rises and the research could also help grow plants in much colder climates.

Dr Philip Wigge, one of the researchers, said the discovery, published in the journal Cell, was groundbreaking.

"Climate change will have a huge effect on crop productivity and that's something we feel gives added impetus to our research," he said. (TDT)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has issued new report that attempts to forecast the impact of climate change on American farming in the next 50 years. USDA seems to expect serious climate-related farming problems ahead, but the recent changes in global climate have been tiny—and in the “wrong” direction! The earth’s temperatures are now slightly cooler than when NASA’s James Hansen first warned the U.S. Senate about “runaway global warming” in 1988.

Senior climate researcher Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research recently admitted to colleagues “we have no idea why the earth isn’t warming, and it’s a travesty that we don’t know.” That’s a quote from one of those e-mails leaked at Britain’s University of East Anglia.

That pretty much tells us how much faith we dare to put in the new USDA climate-change forecasts.

The USDA report’s timing couldn’t have been worse. Since 2007, the earth seems to have passed a “tipping point” into global cooling—at least temporarily. NASA told us in 2008 that the Pacific Ocean had shifted into a cool cycle, after strong warming both globally and in the Pacific from 1976-1998 and cooling from 1940-1975. ( Dennis Avery, CFP)

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan. 10 -- Canadian researchers say the pine beetle has killed so many trees, the forests of British Columbia now put more greenhouse gases into the air than they store.

The experts say that has been true since 2003, The Toronto Globe and Mail reported Saturday. By last year, dead lodgepole pines had a bigger carbon footprint than the province's human population.

By February 2008, when the province's premier Gordon Campbell praised the forests as a sink for greenhouse gases, that was no longer true.

"We have few natural allies in our fight against climate change that are more important than our forests," the Campbell government said in a policy speech.

The problem is that the carbon plants take in during their lives returns to the atmosphere when they decompose. The pine beetle has killed an estimated 1 billion trees, most of them expected to decay over the next half-century or so. (UPI)

Last year I posted an analysis of satellite observations of the 2007-08 global cooling event, showing evidence that it was due to a natural increase in low cloud cover. Here I will look at the bigger picture of what how the satellite-observed variations in Earth’s radiative budget compare to that expected from increasing carbon dioxide. Is there something that we can say about the relative roles of nature versus humanity based upon the evidence?

What we will find is evidence consistent with natural cloud variations being the dominant source of climate variability since 2000. (Roy W. Spencer)

Nicola Scafetta is an atmospheric scientist with Duke University’s highly regarded Department of Physics, and in a recent article in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, he provides an excellent introduction for us stating “Estimating the solar contribution to global mean air surface temperature change is fundamental for evaluating the anthropogenic contribution to climate change. This is regarded as one of the most important issues of our time. While some theoretical climate model studies indicate that the solar variability has little effect on climate (these studies estimate that less than 10% of the global warming observed since 1900 is due to the sun), several empirical studies suggest that large climatic variations are well synchronized with solar variations and, therefore, climate is quite sensitive to solar changes.”

No doubt about it – a considerable debate rages in the climate community about the role of the sun in controlling the temperature of the earth. There are many leading climate scientists who believe that the sun’s impact is negligible while others believe the sun’s control on earth’s temperature is substantial. Both groups publish regularly, and there is no end of empirical and theoretical evidence to support both camps. If you think the debate is over in the world of climate change, look at the literature on solar control of climate, and you will immediately conclude the debate is as lively as ever. (WCR)

We then had a string of sunspots in December that marked what many saw as a rejuvenation of solar cycle 24 after a long period of inactivity. See December sunspots on the rise

But what Joe doesn’t understand is that sunspots are just one proxy, the simplest and most easily observed, for magnetic activity of the sun. It is the magnetic activity of the sun which is central to Svensmark’s theory of galactic cosmic ray modulation, which may affect cloud cover formation on earth, thus affecting global temperatures. As the theory goes, lower magnetic activity of the sun lets more GCR’s into our solar system, which produce microscopic cloud seed trails (like in a Wilson cloud chamber) in our atmosphere, resulting in more cloud cover, resulting in a cooler planet. Ric Werme has a nice pictorial here.

When I saw the SWPC Ap geomagnetic index for Dec 2009 posted yesterday, my heart sank. With the sunspot activity in December, I thought surely the Ap index would go up. Instead, it crashed.

When you look at the Ap index on a larger scale, all the way back to 1844 when measurements first started, the significance of this value of “1″ becomes evident. This graph from Dr. Leif Svalgaard shows where we are today in relation to the past 165 years.

click for full sized image

With apologies to Dr. Svalgaard, I’ve added the “1″ line and the most current SWPC value of “1″ for Dec 2009.

As you can see, we’ve never had such a low value before, and the only place lower to go is “zero”.

But this is only part of the story. With the Ap index dwindling to a wisp of magnetism, it bolsters the argument made by Livingston and Penn that sunspots may disappear altogether by 2015. See Livingston and Penn – Sunspots may vanish by 2015 (WUWT)

The December 2009 and year 2009 University of Alabama at Huntsville lower tropospheric MSU temperature data is available. Thanks to Phillip Gentry and John Christy for alerting us to these figures]. I have several comments following the figures.

This data shows why the focus needs to be on the regional scale and that a global average is not of much use in describing weather that all of us experience.

“Rather than seeking vindication or catastrophe in this cold snap, now is a good time to remind ourselves that weather, like death and taxes, will always be with us. Spectacular regional swings in temperature and precipitation, sometimes lasting for months, often emerge from the natural jostlings of atmosphere and ocean. By themselves, none of these prove or disprove a human role in climate change.”

“What’s different now is that climate change is shifting the odds towards record-hot summers and away from record-cold winters. The latter aren’t impossible; they’re just harder to get, like scoring a straight flush on one trip to Vegas and a royal flush the next.”

“If you’re craving a scapegoat for this winter, consider the Arctic oscillation. The AO is a measure of north-south differences in air pressure between the northern midlatitudes and polar regions. When the AO is positive, pressures are unusually high to the south and low to the north. This helps shuttle weather systems quickly across the Atlantic, often bringing warm, wet conditions to Europe. In the past month, however, the AO has dipped to astoundingly low levels – among the lowest observed in the past 60 years. This has gummed up the hemisphere’s usual west-to-east flow with huge “blocking highs” that route frigid air southward.”

“Handy as it is, the AO describes more than it explains. Forecasters still don’t know exactly what sends the AO into one mode or the other, just as the birth of an El Niño is easier to spot than to predict.”

The obvious response to these claims is that if we cannot predict weather features such as the Arctic oscillation or an El Niño under current climate, how can anyone credibly claim we have predictive skill decades into the future from both natural and human caused climate forcings? The short answer is that they cannot.

“If this winter tells us anything, it’s that we’ll have to remain on guard for familiar weather risks as well as the evolving ones brought by climate change.”

This admission implicitly recognizes the focus on the reduction of vulnerability that we wrote about in our paper

Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union.

The media, policymakers and others should recognize this evidence of our incomplete understanding of the climate system. We will continue to have surprises such as we have seen this winter. (Climate Science)

Back at the end of October, we gave you all a preview of what how the U.S. average annual temperature was shaping up for 2009. At the time we postulated that we were headed for another pretty normal temperature year (on the heels of 2008’s pretty normal temperatures). Now, after the 3rd warmest November on record was followed by the 14th coldest December, the final numbers for 2009 are in and we were pretty much right on the button.

The annual average temperature for the U.S. in 2009 was 53.13°F, just a smidgen above the long-term (1901-2000) average. This now marks two years in a row in which the U.S. annual average temperature has returned back to normal after its recent 10-yr stint in the much above normal category.

It shouldn’t take too much longer before we can come to the determination that the 1998-2007 warm period was more a part of natural variability than a sign of anthropogenic climate change.

Despite the big freeze Britain's climate is getting distinctly warmer – and we may feel it this summer ( Robin McKie, The Observer)

Antarctica is warming, but not melting anything like as much as expected. In fact, during the continent's summer this time last year, there was less melting than at any time in the 30 years that we have had reliable satellite measurements of the region.

The apparent contradiction is explained by the seasonal pattern of warming, say two glaciologists writing in Eos, the weekly newspaper of the American Geophysical Union.

The continent's winters and springs have warmed most, but it is still too cold in these seasons for anything to melt. Melting in Antarctica happens almost entirely in the summers, which have warmed very little, say Andrew Monaghan of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and Marco Tedesco of the City College of New York. (Fred Pearce, New Scientist)

Climate sceptics are failing to understand the most basic meteorology - that weather is not the same as climate, and single events are not the same as trends. (Leo Hickman and George Monbiot, The Guardian)

Cutting emissions on the scale required to meet carbon targets means big changes in either how, or how much, we fly. Roger East sees an industry in need of radical innovation and asks, can it go fast – and far – enough? From Green Futures, part of the Guardian Environment Network

Although the electric industry has endorsed the concept of cap-and-trade as the least onerous approach to carbon regulation, at least one major company endorses it with unalloyed enthusiasm. Exelon not only supports the idea, it stated in a second-quarter conference call to analysts, which it posted to its Web site, that it expects to see a “$1.1 billion and growing annual upside to Exelon revenues from implementation of Waxman-Markey.” Is that number real or simply wishful thinking? Does Exelon know something that’s escaped the rest of us?

Actually, if one makes a couple of assumptions, the potential earnings boost is very real. Here’s how it works. Exelon’s 17 nuclear plants, the largest nuclear fleet in the country, generated just over a record 132 million megawatts-hours of power in 2007. That’s fact. Assumption number one: The Senate follows the House and passes an unchanged version of the Waxman-Markey bill.

At the start of the program, about 85 percent of the permits would be given away. Over time, the percentage of free permits would decline. About 15 percent of the permits would be auctioned off to begin with, and that percentage would increase over time. What concerns us is the value of these permits, because that value translates into increased costs for generation. Which brings us to assumption number two: The EPA estimates that during the early years of the program, a permit to emit one ton of CO2 would cost approximately $15. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

Developers of a coal-to-liquid fuel factory proposed for western North Dakota say a decision on whether to build the $4 billion plant depends on a change in political climate. And backers are asking for a second extension of state aid to study the project.

"We still see the project as viable with great payback," said David Straley, a North American Coal Corp. spokesman. "But until we get a read on the next Congress, we're still in a holding pattern."

Straley said the current Democrat-controlled Congress likely won't pass energy legislation that would support the project. Using low-grade but plentiful lignite coal, the North Dakota factory would produce 460 million gallons of gasoline a year and generate electricity to power the plant and sell to markets in Minnesota and Wisconsin, backers say. (Associated Press)

Touring politicians have a habit of making wild promises in international forums, leaving the difficult engineering consequences to overloaded power engineers and the unpalatable cost consequences to the suffering consumers.

Peter Lang is a professional with more than 40 years experience in the energy industry. His experience includes coal, oil, gas, hydro, geothermal, nuclear power plants, nuclear waste disposal and energy end use management.

Peter has previously written on:

Now he looks at some inconvenient realities concerning the consequences for electricity generation if the government tries to achieve their unrealistic and pointless cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.

Peter compares five “energy mix” options with a “business as usual” case for electricity generation in Australia from 2010 to 2050. His options involve mixes of coal, gas, nuclear, wind and solar thermal technologies. He concludes that continuing with the current mix of electricity sources (mainly coal) will provide the cheapest electricity. Gas, the other carbon fuel, has the next higher cost. All of the non-coal options (nuclear, solar and wind) will at least double electricity costs, with solar costs exceeding four times the coal costs.

Nuclear power is the only feasible option that could achieve the promised cuts in emissions. Wind and solar are very high cost options with little hope of achieving the emissions cuts promised, either alone or in combination.

The full paper, Emission Cuts Realities – Electricity Generation, can be seen at: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/emissions-generation-lang.pdf [PDF, 206 KB] (Carbon Sense Coalition)

The Obama administration is engaged in an unusual internal spat as the White House and Environmental Protection Agency tussle over how to handle millions of tons of waste from coal-fired power plants.

Utility and environmental groups are watching the coal-ash dispute as an indicator of the administration's pliability on the regulatory front.

The White House has already backed several new environmental initiatives that have drawn sharp reactions from industry, particularly EPA findings last month that designated carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant.

But environmental groups are pointing to a flurry of industry meetings on the coal-ash issue as evidence that utilities and other companies are using a foothold within the White House to fight back against potentially far-reaching new rules.

The office of President Barack Obama's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, has held nearly 20 meetings with industry groups since October to discuss the potential impact of proposed EPA rules to treat coal ash and other coal byproducts as hazardous waste, according to White House records. Mr. Sunstein directs the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs within the White House Office of Management and Budget.

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela is at risk of a devastating power collapse as drought pushes water levels precariously low behind the country's biggest hydroelectric dam, posing a serious political threat for President Hugo Chávez.

Chávez on Friday said his government is determined to keep Guri Dam's reservoir from falling to a critical level where the turbines start to fail in the next several months. He has also imposed rationing measures that include penalty fees for energy overuse, shorter workdays for many public employees and reduced hours for shopping malls. (Associated Press)

President Obama announced on Friday the award of $2.3 billion in tax credits for clean energy manufacturing — part of a broader push by his administration to stimulate job growth during the highest period of sustained unemployment in decades.

“Building a robust clean energy sector is how we will create the jobs of the future,” said Mr. Obama, according to prepared remarks. (NYT)

Instead of becoming progressively less dependent on help from the government, many green energy companies are even more reliant on aid as a result of the financial crisis, which disrupted their access to credit and capital from the market. [Read More] (Geoffrey Styles, Energy Tribune)

Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, has decided that nine years of wrangling over a proposed wind farm off the Massachusetts coast must come to an end — even if it requires his personal intervention. This is the best news this controversial, yet important, project has received in a long time.

Having endured endless state and federal reviews and ferocious opposition from local homeowners who don’t like the idea of 130 wind turbines interrupting their views of Nantucket Sound, Cape Wind had moved closer to final approval. Then came complaints from two American Indian tribes in Massachusetts that the turbines would interfere with their spiritual greeting of the sunrise and disturb ancestral burial grounds, now underwater.

The tribes asked that all of Nantucket Sound be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the National Park Service agreed that they had a case. (NYT)

Uncertainty over long-term government support and a shortage of finance risk hampering the huge expansion of offshore wind power planned by the government, the industry has warned.

Gordon Brown, prime minister, yesterday hailed the announcement of licence awards for companies to build wind farms in nine areas around the coast of Britain as "a great day for energy policy, sustainable energy and the environment, [and] the United Kingdom."

The licence areas, shared between 14 companies including many of Europe's leading energy groups, could generate more than 32,000 megawatts of electricity, expected to be about a quarter of the UK's entire generation capacity in the next decade.

Offshore wind capacity today is less than 700MW in Britain, and only about 2,000MW worldwide. The companies that won licences said the awards would start the largest investment scheme seen in Britain's energy industry.

Eddie O'Connor, the chief executive of Mainstream Renewable Power, which has a half share in a consortium to develop up to 4,000MW of capacity off the coast of Yorkshire, said it was a "historic day" that showed Britain was "way ahead of Germany" and other countries.

However, several companies also warned that the rate at which the new wind farms were built would depend on the government ensuring financial support to secure private sector investment. (Financial Times)

Britain will have to be connected to a 'supergrid' with northern Europe to realise Gordon Brown's plans to provide more than a quarter of electricity needs from offshore wind. (TDT)

Plans to power every home in Britain with electricity generated by 6,000 new wind turbines around the coast have been called into question due to a shortage of engineers. (TDT)

In Great Britain and other European countries, companies are preparing to use the energy of ocean waves and tides to produce electricity. The UK is hoping to produce as much as 5 percent of its electricity needs with tidal power plants. (Spiegel)

Japanese researchers said Wednesday they hoped to enlist bacteria in the fight against global warming to transform carbon dioxide buried under the seabed into natural gas.

The researchers at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology aim to activate bacteria found naturally in earth to turn CO2 into methane, a major component of natural gas.

A team led by chief researcher Fumio Inagaki have already confirmed that the bacteria exists in the crust deep under the seabed off the northern tip of Japan's main island, a spokesman for the institute told AFP.

But the project faces a big challenge to develop a method of activating the bacteria and accelerating the speed of methane gas generation, a spokesman for the agency acknowledged.

In the natural environment, the bacteria turn CO2 into methane gas very slowly, over billions of years, he said.

The researchers hope to develop technology within about five years to activate the bacteria and shorten the transformation time to about 100 years, he said. (The Independent)

WASHINGTON — The plan for broad use of X-ray body scanners to detect bombs or weapons under airline passengers’ clothes has rekindled a debate about the safety of delivering small doses of radiation to millions of people — a process some experts say is certain to result in a few additional cancer deaths.

The scanning machines, called “backscatter scanners,” deliver a dose of ionizing radiation equivalent to 1 percent or less of the radiation in a dental X-ray. The amount is so small that the risk to an individual is negligible, according to radiation experts. But collectively, the radiation doses from the scanners incrementally increase the risk of fatal cancers among the thousands or millions of travelers who will be exposed, some radiation experts believe. (NYT)

Some books are written to be read, others to be put in a cannon and blasted at the seat of power. Two such blasts have just crossed my desk, from academics on either side of the Atlantic. Both are on the same subject, the consequence of the irrational fear of radiation.

The first book, Radiation and Reason, is by an Oxford professor of physics, Wade Allison. It narrates the history and nature of nuclear radiation, culminating in an attack on the obsessive safety levels governing nuclear energy. These overstate the true risk, in Allison's view, by up to 500 times, thus rendering nuclear prohibitively expensive and endangering the combat of global warming.

The second is Atomic Obsession by John Mueller, professor of political science at Ohio State University. Mueller describes the toxic fear associated with radiation from nuclear weapons. It distorts the balance of international relations and senselessly makes enemies of friends. The books jointly undermine conventional wisdom on the two greatest political challenges of the day, in the fields of energy and defence. As such, they are sensational.

Radiation, says Allison, is nothing like as dangerous as the anti-nuclear lobby and its paranoid regulators claim. The permitted radiation level in the waste storage hall at Sellafield is so low (1 mSv per hour) as to be negligible, a figure achieved at vast cost in construction and inspection. This compares with the 100 mSv threshold for even remote cancer risk and 5,500 for radiation sickness. According to Allison, someone would have to live for a million hours in Sellafield to absorb the same radiation as is administered in a hospital radiotherapy suite. Higher doses are permitted in food processing and even in medicinal resorts, with supposed beneficial or at least harmless effects. Only yesterday research suggested that mobile phone radiation may relieve Alzheimer's.

Allison analyses successive studies into the only serious nuclear accident since Hiroshima, the Chernobyl fire, which killed no more than 60 people, all in close contact with the fire. Other than some thyroid cancers caused chiefly by a failure to distribute iodine tablets, long-term cancers in survivors were below the regional average. The truth is that low-dose radiation effects wear off quickly. In some parts of India and Brazil people live happily with ambient radiation of 200-300 mSv. (Simon Jenkins, The Guardian)

Two ongoing trends I chronicled during 2009 highlight an ironic situation: Liberals remain tough on their domestic political opponents, while lax when it comes to our real common enemies.

As we recently saw with the Christmas airplane-bombing attempt, liberals seem bent on treating terrorists with kid gloves, insisting they receive rights normally reserved for U.S. citizens (even when this means failing to extract timely information that might save lives).

Conversely, liberals play “hardball” when their opponents are not terrorists or criminals, but instead, American businesses and industries. One such example is the left’s battle against Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used for more than a half century to make plastics more durable.

Though clearly less consequential than the war on terror, the Left’s war on BPA serves as a microcosm of the larger attempt to use “junk science” and litigation to redistribute wealth from job-producing American industries into the hands of trial lawyers and liberal special interest groups.

In this regard, the Left’s attempts are reminiscent of their past battle against the insecticide DDT. In the 1960s, many developing nation’s had nearly wiped out malaria, but it came back after DDT was banned. It did not matter that DDT was harmless to humans – and actually saved lives -- the Left attacked it, ultimately causing 50 million preventable deaths. (Ken Blackwell, Townhall)

Unemployment rates go up, crime rates go down, and leftist theories go kaboom.

The sound you should be hearing right now is that of a myth exploding. And given the long duration and wide acceptance of this myth, the noise should indeed be deafening. But, no, as when many cherished notions of the left are revealed as fallacious, the current reaction is a hushed, embarrassed silence.

Writing in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald puts the lie to that hoariest of theories regarding crime, one that was once nearly universally believed, to wit, that crime is caused by poverty and that deteriorating economic conditions will inevitably lead to higher crime. (Full disclosure: Ms. Mac Donald and I are friends.) Mac Donald writes:

The recession of 2008-09 has undercut one of the most destructive social theories that came out of the 1960s: the idea that the root cause of crime lies in income inequality and social injustice. As the economy started shedding jobs in 2008, criminologists and pundits predicted that crime would shoot up, since poverty, as the “root causes” theory holds, begets criminals. Instead, the opposite happened. Over seven million lost jobs later, crime has plummeted to its lowest level since the early 1960s. The consequences of this drop for how we think about social order are significant.

Even the FBI bought into this myth, Mac Donald reports. “Through the late 1980s,” she writes, “the FBI’s annual national crime report included the disclaimer that ‘criminal homicide is largely a societal problem which is beyond the control of the police.’ Policing, it was understood, can only respond to crime after the fact; preventing it is the domain of government welfare programs.” (Jack Dunphy, PJM)

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday proposed a stricter standard for smog-causing pollutants that would bring substantial health benefits to millions of Americans while imposing large costs on industry and local governments.

The standard would replace one set by the Bush administration in March 2008, which has been challenged in court by state officials and environmental advocates as too weak to adequately protect human health and the environment.

The Obama administration’s proposal sets a primary standard for ground-level ozone of no more than 0.060 to 0.070 parts per million, to be phased in over two decades. Regions with the worst smog pollution, including much of the Northeast, Southern and Central California and the Chicago and Houston areas, would have more time than other areas to come into compliance. (NYT)

GENEVA - Southern hemisphere countries struck by H1N1 flu last year are now broadly protected against new infections, the World Health Organisation said on Friday.

In its latest assessment of the virus, the WHO signalled the worst of this year's northern hemisphere flu season may be over for most countries, with sickness levels declining in much of Europe and in North America, where the pandemic first emerged.

The H1N1 virus - declared a global pandemic by the United Nations health agency last June - has killed at least 12,799 people, according to the WHO's toll of lab-confirmed cases.

More than half of the official deaths, at least 6,880, have been in the Americas where the virus has become less active across the board, the WHO said.

Disease activity peaked in October in Mexico, the United States and Canada, with flu infections now below the historical seasonal baseline after a big surge in autumn and early winter.

And in southern hemisphere nations, where H1N1 was prolific last year, the WHO said the flu virus was now spreading less easily among people who were already exposed to it.

"In temperate regions of the southern hemisphere, sporadic cases of pandemic influenza continued to be reported without evidence of sustained community transmission," it said. (Reuters)

LONDON - Britain became the latest country to tackle a surplus of swine flu vaccines on Friday, as health authorities across Europe grapple with oversupply due to low demand, leaving drug company sales uncertain.

The Department of Health said it was in talks with major provider GlaxoSmithKline about reducing further supplies of its H1N1 vaccine and might exercise a break clause in its contract with Baxter International.

It might also sell or donate stocks to other countries.

Governments across Europe are scaling back orders because of limited vaccine uptake and the fact one dose is enough to protect against the virus, rather than two as originally anticipated.

France has said it aims to cancel 50 million of the 94 million doses ordered from Sanofi-Aventis, Glaxo, Novartis, and Baxter, while Germany wants to cancel half the 50 million doses ordered from Glaxo.

Last month, Spain said it was looking to return unused vaccine, and the Netherlands and Switzerland plan to ship surplus supplies to countries still facing a shortage. (Reuters)

LONDON - The declining wave of pandemic H1N1 flu is likely to be followed by new, unknown strains of seasonal flu which health authorities must watch carefully to devise protection measures, European flu experts said on Friday.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) warned that flu viruses "never stand still" and said governments should not relax H1N1 flu vaccination programmes, but remain on guard for possible changes in the virus and new strains.

"The historical pattern of human influenzas is that after pandemics, the world experiences a new mix of viruses," the ECDC's flu expert Angus Nicoll wrote in the Eurosurveillance scientific journal.

In a telephone interview, Nicoll said although signs from many parts of Europe and the United States suggest circulation of H1N1 is declining, it is still too early to say the pandemic is over. (Reuters)

FEDERAL health authorities are to come under increasing pressure to ban the sale of baby bottles made with Bisphenol A (BPA) after new evidence it can harm health.

Widely used in plastics, particularly food and drink containers, BPA leaches when heated, leading it to being withdrawn elsewhere in the world.

It had been thought the chemical posed no real health threat in tiny doses, but scientists in the UK now say they have found compelling evidence the chemical is linked to breast cancer and sex hormone imbalances, and is particularly linked to adverse health risks to babies.

A team of European scientists will this month begin a campaign to lobby their governments to remove baby bottles containing BPA from shelves.

Last year, baby bottle manufacturers in the US removed BPA from their products, reacting to widespread consumer concern.

Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon said yesterday it was the responsibility of the Therapeutic Goods Administration to declare BPA unsafe or otherwise. (Charles Miranda, Courier-Mail)

ELDERLY Victorians would get free airconditioners under a plan to save lives in heatwaves.

Doctors are demanding free airconditioners be installed in all public housing for tenants over 75 and $1000 means-tested rebates for other elderly people, to help defray the cost of heat-protection measures such as block-out blinds.

The Australian Medical Association has proposed the plan to avoid a repetition of the deaths of up to 374 people in last January's heatwave.

The State Government will consider the $37 million plan as part of its May Budget. The cost should be partly offset by fewer hospital admissions and ambulance call-outs.

"For older Victorians with chronic health conditions, the use of an airconditioner during a heatwave just might save their life," AMA state president Dr Harry Hemley said. ( Herald Sun)

Medical experts call for all mothers-to-be to be weighed regularly throughout their pregnancies due to health fears (Denis Campbell, The Observer)

SATURDAY, Jan. 9 -- A psychotherapy program may work better than traditional health classes in preventing teenage girls at risk of obesity from becoming excessively fatter, researchers report.

The program "focuses on improving interpersonal relationships by targeting the underlying social and interpersonal difficulties that influence individuals to engage in maladaptive behaviors," said Marian Tanofsky-Kraff, assistant professor in the Uniformed Services University's Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology, in a statement.

She is co-author of a new study that looked at using the program to help teens control eating. It is "based on an assumption that binge eating occurs in response to poor social functioning and the consequent negative moods," she said. (HealthDay News)

Taiwan aims to be the first national government to introduce a junk food tax. A bill drafted by its Bureau of Health Promotion is due to be submitted to parliament this year; if approved it would come into effect next year.

The idea has spread to Romania, whose health minister last week announced plans to impose the tax. She wants to use the revenue to fight obesity and provide the desperate healthcare system with the cash needed to fix its croaking infrastructure and to buy medicine.

Now it is Australia's turn. Figures from the Bureau of Statistics show that one in four children are overweight or obese. Data from the Heart Foundation shows cardiovascular disease is responsible for 34 per cent of Australian deaths. And, according to a report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, a quarter of adults have untreated tooth decay.

The Henry tax review has been delivered to the Federal Government, and it will be interesting to see if the recommendations include a proposal to introduce a junk food tax so that it is not just burdensome legislation that is reduced, but also our waistlines.

Professor Kerryn Phelps, the president of the Australasian Integrative Medicine Association, told me it supports such a tax. ''The main advantage of a tax is that a price hike will deter some people from buying junk food, making fresh produce and wholefoods a less expensive option. We know that price signals work for other health-related habits, such as tobacco smoking and types of alcohol." (James Adonis, SMH)

While nearly all Americans consider obesity to be a very or somewhat serious public health problem, a big majority opposes a tax on junk food and doesn't believe such a tax would encourage people to lose weight, according to a CBS News poll conducted Dec. 17-22.

Fifty-seven percent of those polled said obesity was a very serious problem for Americans and 38 percent regarded it as somewhat serious.

But 60 percent oppose a tax on junk food as a solution and 72 percent don't believe such a tax would encourage people to lose weight. (Politics Daily)

Early Americana is remembered in part for its legacy of homesteading and family farming where families grew their own fruits and vegetables, raised their own animals for food, and traded their goods locally with neighbors. Today's American landscape has changed dramatically; a mere one to two percent of all consumed food is locally grown and over 90 percent of it has been processed. Experts believe that the modern food system has led to the obesity epidemic, noting that a shift back to locally-grown food would remedy the problem. (NaturalNews)

Upon thinking of someone using “smokeless tobacco,” you may immediately think: a vile, disgusting habit with no redeeming social value. That, it turns out, is only half-true. It may be vile and disgusting with a good deal of social value.

Not in an absolute sense. Dipping snuff or chewing tobacco can lead to nicotine addiction, gum disease and even oral cancer, while scaring off potential employers and romantic partners in droves. But in relative terms -- relative to smoking -- it could be a boon to individual and public health. Any smoker who gives up cigarettes for snuff is clearly doing his or her body a favor.

That’s because most of the danger from tobacco actually comes from setting it afire and inhaling the smoke. Omitting that step makes a huge difference. A 2002 report by Britain’s Royal College of Physicians found that “the consumption of non-combustible tobacco is of the order of 10-1,000 times less hazardous than smoking, depending on the product.” The American Council on Science and Health puts the overall health risk at about 2 percent of that from sucking on a cancer stick.

The implications are obvious: The best thing a nicotine fiend can do is quit tobacco entirely. For the 46 million Americans who have not been able to follow that advice -- a number that has stubbornly refused to shrink -- the next best thing is to use the kind of tobacco that doesn’t require incineration. The change would also be a blessing to nonsmokers, who would no longer have to put up with noxious fumes and discarded butts.

The Royal College of Physicians can tell you that. I can tell you that. Alvin and the Chipmunks can tell you that. But some people are not allowed to tell you that, namely the people who would be most inclined to take the trouble to spread the message: the people who run tobacco companies. (Steve Chapman, Townhall)

LONDON - A global scarcity of scientific research on using nanotechnology in foods means food safety authorities are unable to properly regulate products that may be beneficial or harmful, a British science panel said on Friday.

The science and technology committee of Britain's upper house of parliament said in a report that use of nanoparticles in food and food packaging is likely to grow dramatically in the next decade, but too little is known about their safety.

"The technologies have the potential to deliver some significant benefits to consumers, but it is important that detailed and thorough research into potential health and safety implications ... is undertaken now to ensure that any possible risks are identified," said Lord Krebs, chair of the Science and Technology Committee which produced the report.

Nanotechnology is the design and manipulation of materials thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair, called nanoparticles.

The technology has been hailed as a new way to make stronger and more lightweight materials, better cosmetics and tastier or healthier foods, but Friday's report said a paucity of scientific research across the world meant its potential benefits and risks in food were largely unknown. (Reuters)

While many had hoped December's Copenhagen Conference would be the necessary first step in the global fight against climate change, in the wake of the signed partial accord, we are left with many more questions than answers. Now, 2010 is the new deadline for whether the world can agree a practical response to the dangers of global warming.

The near-universal chorus of dismay and anger in the western media that followed the conclusions of the climate change summit at least partly reflected the wildly unrealistic expectations of the world's richer countries. The pre-summit hype had been enormous. You would have thought Copenhagen was to have been the scene of the Second Coming.

Instead we got a modest text drawn up and agreed to by some 25 heads of state with the important gap filling left to future meetings. Essentially the deal "recognises" the need to limit global temperatures to a rise of no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, but offers no language committing the signatories to specific action. Under the accord, developed countries, including the United States will outline targets for up to 2020 by January 31. (Alan Osborn and Mitch Vandenborn, International News Services)

The global recession, US mid-term elections and a weak deal at Copenhagen all play a part in the future of cap and trade (The Guardian)

No CEO Steve Jobs doesn’t have a lot in common with the bipartisan climate and clean energy jobs bill — except perhaps that his company shuffled off the nano-Chamber of Commerce over its ‘frustrating’ global warming denialism. But the bill is still alive and kicking, as I’ve been saying (see here and here). Bradford Plumer, Assistant Editor at The New Republic has a must-read analysis, “Hold Off On Those Climate Bill Obituaries….“ that makes the same point, which I reprint below. (Joseph Romm, Energy Collective)

The surprise twin retirements announced this week by Democratic Senators Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota cap a dismal month for Democrats. Early in December, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi moved to stem the tide of lower-chamber retirements after four veteran moderate, so-called Blue Dogs announced that they would not run for re-election. Then, instead of a retirement, another Blue Dog — this time Alabama freshman Parker Griffith — jumped ship to the Republican Party. Only a year after celebrating an expected six GOP Senate retirements in 2010 and nearly a dozen in the House (that number is now up to 14), Democrats suddenly find themselves increasingly on the defensive.

And the stakes couldn't be much higher. If you thought health care reform and climate change legislation were tough to get through with a 60-40 advantage in the Senate, the emerging electoral landscape pretty much guarantees that the Dems will lose their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and see their 41-seat majority in the House significantly narrowed. Of course, with 10 months to go before Election Day, Democrats can at least hope that by then the bitter fight over health care will be a distant memory and the economy will have rebounded. Republicans are betting that both issues, along with the growth in the size of the Federal Government and deficit, will still very much be liabilities for Dems, and so far polling shows that independents are more inclined to believe the Republicans. (Time)

Though moderate Democrats are expected to be extra cautious in supporting their party's agenda this year because of the political peril they face at home, the likelihood that 2010 will be the party's last best shot at passing the reforms President Obama campaigned on could make this year a veritable derby of "change" legislation. (FOXNews.com)

WASHINGTON — The decisions of two powerful Democrats to retire from the Senate is a reminder of how dramatically the political climate has changed over the time since President Barack Obama came to power — a wind shift that has thrown the Democratic Party off balance and turned the politics of raising hope into the politics of managing anger. (McClatchy-Tribune Information Services)

Unfortunately this likely means an even harder push to impose socialism by energy rationing and punitive taxation.

Please consider helping JunkScience.com help you.

WASHINGTON — The sudden decision by two senior Democratic senators to retire shook the party’s leaders on Wednesday and signaled that President Obama is facing a perilous political environment that could hold major implications for this year’s midterm elections and his own agenda.

The rapidly shifting climate, less than a year after Mr. Obama took office on the strength of a historic Democratic sweep, was brought into focus by the announcements that Senators Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota would retire rather than wage uphill fights for re-election.

With the chances growing that the election in November would end the 60-vote majority Democrats enjoy in the Senate — the practical threshold for being able to overcome united Republican opposition — the president and his party face additional urgency to make progress on his agenda this year. (NYT)

Departures Shake Democrats - Midterm Challenges Spur Exit of Dodd and Dorgan; GOP Plans a Recruitment Drive

WASHINGTON -- A string of unexpected retirements by several senior Democrats this week demonstrated the daunting obstacles facing President Barack Obama's party in this year's midterm elections.

Sen. Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.) announced from his home in Connecticut Wednesday that he was in "the toughest political shape of my career" and wouldn't seek a sixth term. A day earlier, Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota bowed out of his re-election, sending party officials scrambling for a viable candidate to take on the state's popular Republican governor, who is expected to run. Colorado's Democratic governor, Bill Ritter, also said Wednesday he won't seek reelection.

"It is a challenging time," said Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association. "When you've got as many people unemployed in the country as you do, it's understandable that folks will be looking to their leaders to do everything possible to create jobs. As Democrats, there's a burden of proof here."

Messrs. Dodd and Dorgan both said their decisions were personal. And the exit of Mr. Dodd, embroiled in several controversies, now paves the way for a stronger Democratic candidate to keep the seat in the party's hands. But many strategists conceded Wednesday that the departure of the veteran leaders is emblematic of how quickly Democrats' fortunes have changed since its sweeping victories in the 2008 election. (WSJ)

An early look at how the Senate races are shaping up for the November election.

In the space of a few hours, two incumbent Democratic senators facing reelection battles in 2010 announced their retirement — Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Chris Dodd of Connecticut.

The news is a mixed blessing for both parties. The GOP is almost certain to pick up Dorgan’s seat, especially with all indications that Governor John Hoeven (with an 87% approval rating) will run for the seat. Democratic Representative Earl Pomeroy, the strongest potential Democratic candidate to replace Dorgan, has indicated he will not run.

On the other hand, Dodd’s retirement is very good news for the Democrats. Despite a huge campaign war chest, and a name known in state politics for decades, Dodd trailed potential GOP opponents by a few points and was considered highly vulnerable. He may have been nudged out of the race by the White House. In his place, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who is popular in the state, will now run for the Democrats.

A poll by a Democratic polling group conducted before the announcement by Dodd, but released on Wednesday, shows Blumenthal 30 points ahead of potential GOP opponents. This likely overstates his lead, but it is an indication that he is in very good shape for the race.

It is not clear if other Democrats will retire. Age and health could be a factor for West Virginia’s 92-year-old Robert Byrd (term expiring in 2012). Both of Hawaii’s senators are 85: Daniel Inouye, up in 2010, and Daniel Akaka, up in 2012. If any of the three retire, that would make their seats very competitive in an open seat contest.

Several other Democratic-held seats are also in danger. These include open seats in Illinois and Delaware. These seats belonged to Barack Obama and Joe Biden prior to the 2008 presidential race and were filled by placeholders Roland Burris and Ted Kaufman. Now the Democrats must defend the seats with likely nominees Alexi Giannoulias in Illinois (the state treasurer) and Beau Biden, the son of the vice president, in Delaware. (Rich Baehr, PJM)

Meet the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming (Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone)

The Carbon Sense Coalition today accused the Australian and US governments of ignoring real pollution problems while conducting a vendetta against an innocent bystander, carbon dioxide.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense” Mr Viv Forbes, said it was a sick joke that the Australian EPA calls carbon dioxide, the gas of life, a pollutant, while the US EPA has declared the same harmless gas a health hazard.

“The earth’s atmosphere contains 386 ppm of CO2, whereas human exhalation contains 40,000 ppm, over 100 times as much. These asinine laws have thus effectively decreed that a mother’s warm breath on her baby’s face is a toxin.

“And still these imbeciles are not laughed out of court.

“Meanwhile, Asia gasps in a brown cloud of real pollution like the smogs that smothered London and Pittsburgh in the 1950’s.

“The Asian smog is not caused by carbon dioxide.

“It comes from dirty combustion – uncontrolled peat and forest fires in Indonesia, open air cremations and cow dung cooking in India, smoky mosquito repelling fires in SE Asia, rubbish dump fires, dust and ash from dirty old boilers and plants, and poor people everywhere scrounging dung, sticks, cardboard, coal, rags, waste oil and anything that burns for cooking and heating.

“The London smog was cleared away with “coal by wire” – clean silent electric heating and lighting from distant steam generators.

“Anyone concerned about Asian air pollution would be encouraging the construction of clean reliable modern power stations to replace a myriad of dirty open fires and old boilers.

“Instead, fools try to ration and tax a life-supporting, non-polluting, invisible, will-o-the-wisp like carbon dioxide – fiddling while Asia burns.

“Maybe the people promoting the war on carbon dioxide should set a good example and cease exhaling”.

Viv Forbes
www.carbon-sense.com

Proponents of the Waxman-Markey (W-M) cap-and-trade bill assure us it will cost the average household less than a postage stamp a day. The Heritage Foundation’s energy team — David Kreutzer, Ben Lieberman, Karen Campbell, William Beach, and Nicolas Loris — have rebutted this claim ~~six~~ four ways from Sunday (see here, here, here, and here).

Some postage stamps, of course, cost more than most people’s homes. For example, this rather plain looking item, a two-pence stamp issued by the Mauritius post office in 1847, sells for $600,000 or more.

Now, nobody is saying that Waxman-Markey will cost the average household what it costs to buy a mansion, but the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) estimates that W-M could increase the purchase price of a…

Climatewire: America’s contribution to $100 billion in annual global climate change funding by 2020 may not be over and above existing foreign aid, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton indicated yesterday.

The promised money — which Clinton announced at the U.N. climate summit in Denmark last month and pledged the United States would take a lead role in mobilizing — was a key element in the final global warming accord that world leaders approved.

Yet while the Copenhagen Accord, as it is known, calls for “scaled up, new and additional” money to help poor nations cope with climate change-provoked disasters, Clinton sidestepped the commitment when asked directly if the U.S. portion would be additional.

“We don’t know yet, because we don’t know what the Congress is going to do,” Clinton told a crowd at the Center for Global Development. (GWPF)

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wants to talk climate change with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd when she arrives in Australia later this month. (AAP)

A prominent agricultural economist says a carbon market envisioned in climate legislation passed by the House and being considered in the Senate will apply pressure to remove land from food production.

Bruce McCarl, an agricultural economics professor at Texas A&M University, helped develop a model commissioned by the USDA and used by its economists to analyze climate legislation pending in Congress and backed by the Obama administration.

The model predicted the loss of 59 million acres of crop and grazing land as producers plant trees to capture profits from a future carbon-credits market. (Capital Press)

LONDON - Some carbon emissions trading desks are expanding or diversifying into other commodities as continued low carbon prices and a weak U.N. climate deal have dulled the market.

Several large banks in the European Union's emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) already operate in other energy or commodities markets. Some smaller participants are seeking to diversify as well.

Paris-based COER2 Commodities will start trading crude oil futures, natural gas, gold and base metals from mid-January, adding to its existing carbon emissions trade. "This was part of our strategy since last September. We want to be more involved in the futures commodities markets which is our real core business," a company spokesman said. (Reuters)

Most money managers overseeing trillions of dollars in investments are ignoring many risks that climate change poses to the assets they operate for corporations, governments and other institutions, according to a new analysis. (ClimateWire)

This December, environmentalists around the world pinned their hopes on the greatly anticipated U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen; an attempt to reach a binding international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But even before the talks started, enthusiasm waned as countries quibbled over a series of underwhelming promises. Sure enough, disappointment reigned when the outcome yielded scant progress: a vague, 12-paragraph accord that reiterated a set of goals with no real plans to achieve them.

Domestically, the prospects of combating climate change look no better. The Senate seems poised to tie President Obama’s hands by forming a brick wall of resistance against the cap-and-trade bill up for vote this year, even though it offers only a paltry three percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions from 1990 levels by 2020 (the European Union was willing to go as high as 30 percent). Even Democratic senators have lined up in opposition to the President, with their sentiments summed up by Sen. Kent Conrad: “Climate change in an election year has very poor prospects.”

Indeed, with an economy only barely reemerging from disaster, opponents of the legislation are sure to lambaste any form of carbon taxation for costing jobs and stifling growth. But in reality, the economic crisis is nothing but a smokescreen for the actual political reason causing Congress to keep whiffing on this issue: only 36 percent of Americans attribute global warming to humans. (Stanford Daily Editorial Board)

With deep divisions within the green camp and little popular support without, Copenhagen could not succeed. (Ben Pile, sp!ked)

PARIS - The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) is to study the impact of meat output on climate change in the light of debate about meat's contribution to greenhouse emissions, the Paris-based body said on Thursday.

The initiative, which will be the OIE's first on an environmental issue, follows requests from its member countries to look at a question that has prompted calls to eat less meat.

Meat production is estimated to account for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, and some scientists have cited lower meat consumption as a way of tackling climate change.

A campaign led by former Beatle Paul McCartney to get people not to eat meat one day a week has also drawn attention to the issue.

But OIE Director-General Bernard Vallat warned against oversimplifying the issue, stressing factors such as the carbon-stocking role of pasture land would have to be evaluated.

"It's a question that needs to be studied with a lot of distance," he told a news conference. "We want to make a modest and independent contribution." (Reuters)

Welcome to the first Round-Up of the decade. We start the year with the UK covered in global warming, Al Gore in denial about Climategate (oh the ironing!) and discover that climate change is just like slavery. (Daily Bayonet)

Internews is an organization devoted to helping out people in areas not served by an independent media:

Internews is an international media development organization whose mission is to empower local media worldwide to give people the news and information they need, the ability to connect, and the means to make their voices heard.

This sounds like a laudable goal, but like many roads paved with good intentions...well, you know where that goes. In particular, this group has a curious idea of what "balanced" reporting means when it comes to global warming alarmism:

Climate change could be the biggest story of the twenty first century, affecting societies, economies and individuals on a grand scale. Equally enormous are the adjustments that will have to be made to our energy and transportation systems, economies and societies, if we are to mitigate climate change.

All journalists should understand the science of climate change - its causes, its controversies and its current and projected impacts. Start by doing your own research from established sources, such as reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or from local scientific experts you trust.

Read and report on the latest research from peer-reviewed scientific journals, or at the very least from reputable popular science publications.

OK, so it seems to be a given to these people that global warming is a proven fact. I suppose that doesn't make them all that different from much of the rest of the media, but then there is this bit of advice for aspiring journalists:

Avoid false balance. Some journalists, trying to be fair and balanced, report the views of climate change sceptics as a counterweight to climate change stories. But this can be a false balance if minority views are given equal prominence to well-accepted science. For example, an overwhelming majority of climatologists believe that average global temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800s levels and that human activity is a significant factor in this.

Of course it's good to air all sorts of views if they are placed into context. So if you report climate change sceptics' views, also describe their credentials and whether theirs is a minority opinion.

Oh, so balance is not balance when it is "false" balance, that being when skeptics are given anything approaching equal time without caveats and qualifications designed to make their statements suspect.

I suppose if those skeptics come forward with, oh, I don't know, let's say emails that show that the alarmists have been torquing the data and silencing critics, that too counts as "false balance" to report on it. (National Post)

CHICAGO (January 7, 2010) – More than 40 scientists with expertise in climate, agriculture, soil, and entomological science today sent a letter to American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman requesting a meeting to discuss his group's "inaccurate and marginalized" position on global warming.

The Farm Bureau maintains that "there is no generally agreed upon scientific assessment on...carbon emissions from human activities, their impact on past decades of warming, or how they will affect future climate changes." According to the scientists' letter, that assertion ignores the overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change, a problem that puts Farm Bureau members at risk. (Press Release)

Winters in the northern Rocky Mountains will shorten and the region's forests will become more susceptible to insect infestation and severe forest fires as a result of climate change over the next century, according to a recently released study.

In fact, supporting data have already become evident, said University of Montana forestry professor Steve Running, an international expert on climate change.

Running conducted the two-year study, funded by the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan nonprofit organization that evaluates key policy issues related to energy.

It's not often Running, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his study of global climate change, holds a news conference to summarize the findings of his research. But the impacts of drought in the northern Rocky Mountains - primarily Montana, Wyoming and Idaho - will be significant to the region's economy, wildlife and environment, he said. ( Missoulian)

Accuweather’s meteorologist Joe Bastardi has a new video titled “Worldwide Cold not Seen Since 70s Ice Age Scare.” Bastardi points out that the frigid conditions affecting significant parts of the world today - North America, Europe, and Asia - are very similar to the patterns in the 1970s, when fears of a new Ice Age were hyped by the media. He repeatedly compares maps of the cold spots from January 1-10, 1977 and current ones and notes the strong similarities:

Is this a way to confirm Timpanogos/Ed Darrell’s suggestion that “you guys cheer at train wrecks and hit-and-run auto-pedestrian accidents, too“? I think not (even if I should thank Ed for comparing the lesser Milliband and Gordon Brown to train wrecks and hit-and-run accidents). There is something enormously serious about climate-related deaths. Compared to that, the misadventures of True (AGW) Believers getting themselves and others in trouble for almost no reason at all, well, those become laughable indeed.

Remember the infamous 2003 Summer Heatwave in Europe? Wikipedia claims it killed “more than 37,451” people (the Earth Policy Institute sums up a toll of ”more than 52,000“) across the Continent. Now take “excess winter mortality” in England and Wales alone, and despair: according to the Office for National Statistics, in 2008/2009 the number of additional deaths “compared with the average for the non-winter period” was 36,700.

One can only imagine a grand total of excess winter deaths for the whole of Europe in the hundreds of thousands. And that happens every single year, whilst the 2003 Heatwave is just an exceptional event that caused for example a total of 2,139 excess deaths in England and Wales.

Notably, in England and Wales even the 2003/2004 winter saw more than 20,000 excess deaths compared to a non-winter period that included…the August 2003 heatwave.

Excess winter mortality, England and Wales, 1999/2000 to 2008/2009 (original from the UK "Office for National Statistics")

Given the way things are shaping up at the moment, the 2009/2010 numbers will likely be in the 30,000-40,000 range too…I am perfectly sure if we had tens of thousands of excess deaths during a hot summer in the UK, even the rocks would be yelling out about the perils of Global Warming. But since those people are dying because of the cold, one might have to guess it must be alright.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A persistent arctic chill tightened its grip on the nation Wednesday and reached deep into the South, where it was blamed for at least six deaths and threatened to freeze crops and bring snow to places more accustomed to winter sunshine.

Authorities said four people in Tennessee, one in Mississippi and one in South Carolina have died from the cold since the weekend. They included a man with Alzheimer's who wandered out into his yard in Nashville and froze to death, and a homeless man found dead in a tent in South Carolina.

The total doesn't include people who died in car accidents on icy roads and in fires started by stoves and space heaters. ( Associated Press)

IQALUIT, Nunavut - Inuit leaders say a telephone hotline for hunters to report polar bear encounters has received plenty of calls that suggest concerns about the health of the animals is overblown.

"Inuit are the ones who are in danger - not the polar bears," Paul Irngaut of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., Nunavut's land-claim group, said Thursday.

Last October, the U.S. announced a plan to use an international treaty to eliminate all trade in polar bears anywhere in the world. American officials have proposed to the 175 countries that have signed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species that polar bears should be reclassified so that all commercial trade in the northern bruins is outlawed.

Inuit officials objected to the plan and said bear populations are healthy. (Canadian Press)

Not so many years ago, schoolchildren were taught that carbon dioxide is the naturally occurring lifeblood of plants, just as oxygen is ours. Today, children are more likely to think of carbon dioxide as a poison. That’s because the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased substantially over the past 100 years, from about 280 parts per million to 380.

But what people don’t know, say the scientists at Intellectual Ventures labs in Bellevue, Wash., is that the carbon dioxide level some 80 million years ago — back when our mammalian ancestors were evolving — was at least 1,000 parts per million. In fact, that is the concentration of carbon dioxide you regularly breathe if you work in a new energy-efficient office building, for that is the level established by the engineering group that sets standards for heating and ventilation systems.

So not only is carbon dioxide plainly not poisonous, but changes in carbon dioxide levels don’t necessarily mirror human activity. Nor does atmospheric carbon dioxide necessarily warm the earth: Ice-cap evidence shows that over the past several hundred thousand years, carbon dioxide levels have risen after a rise in temperature, not the other way around. (National Post)

First, they called it “global warming”. Then they noticed there had been no warming for 15 years, and cooling for 9, so they hastily renamed it “climate change”. Then they noticed the climate was changing no more than it ever had, so they tried “energy security”, and even named a Congressional Bill after it. Then they noticed that most Western nations already had bountiful energy security, in the form of vast, untapped domestic supplies of oil, gas, coal, or all three, so they switched to “ocean acidification”.

This is the new phantasmagoric for the tired, old scare whipped up by the NRDC and the environmental extremist movement for their own profit at our expense. The world’s corals, they tell us, will be eaten away by the acidified ocean within not more than ten years hence. Shellfish will be no more, their calcified carapaces and exoskeletons dissolved by the carbonic acid caused by our burning of fossil fuels. The oceans will die. Sound familiar?

Yet, as the indefatigable Craig Idso here demonstrates, the scientific consensus – if science were done by consensus at all, which it is not – is that the rising “ocean acidification” scare is just more piffle. ( SPPI & Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change)

Yesterday, Andrew Dessler graciously presented his viewpoint on the water vapor feedback (see). Today, I want to respond. (Climate Science)

A poll of climate scientists reveals they still believe in AGW, though they do not believe their models are any good. Now that's delusion.

During the past year, the theory of man-made global warming took some serious hits. More than a few people are now saying the whole thing was a lie or an elaborate hoax, and that someday we’ll be laughing at how foolish we were to “fall for it.”

Certainly there is a solid basis for this view. Global temperatures during the past ten years stopped rising and started to fall, something computer models that claim to show a human influence on the climate did not predict. (Joseph Bast, PJM)

A number of recent papers analyzing the nature of climate models have yielded a stunning result little known outside of mathematical circles—climate models like the ones relied on by the IPCC contain “irreducible imprecision.” According to one researcher, all interesting solutions for atmospheric and oceanic simulation (AOS) models are chaotic, hence almost certainly structurally unstable. Further more, this instability is an intrinsic mathematical property of the models which can not be eliminated. Analysis suggests that models should only be used to study processes and phenomena, not for precise comparisons with nature. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)

Lately I have had people pulling my chain telling me that the lower troposphere satellite temperature trends are very close to those at the surface. I just want to point out that this is far from so everywhere.

Wayback in 2006 I drew attention to, “Satellites vs surface, amazing agreement over the USA.” I know that over Australia and Europe trends are fairly close.

Almost a decade ago I drew attention to how hard it was to discover IPCC GW in USSR station data in high warming grid cells – “USSR High Magnitude Climate Warming Anomalies 1901-1996″. Following all that work I formed a view that IPCC GW is to a large extent USSR warming.

Comparing the Spencer & Christy lower troposphere satellite data with HadCRUT3 both downloadable at the KNMI Climate Explorer – for three noteworthy regions -all cases use the 30 year period 1979-2008.

For Asia;
HadCRUT3 warms at 0.46
UAH MSU warms at 0.33
Possible Surface data error of 0.13 per decade

For East China;
HadCRUT3 warms at 0.44
UAH MSU warms at 0.21
Possible Surface data error of 0.23 per decade

For Africa;
HadCRUT3 warms at 0.315
UAH MSU warms at 0.013
Possible Surface data error of 0.302 per decade

Much of the carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere goes south, literally. Researchers using new supercomputer models have described for the first time how the Southern Ocean sucks the greenhouse gas out of the air and then shuttles it into the deep sea far from the Antarctic. The findings should give climate scientists a better understanding of this critical component of Earth's carbon cycle.

The carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted into the atmosphere ends up several places. Some is absorbed by green plants, which turn it into food. Some CO2 remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years, where it absorbs solar radiation. And some eventually works its way into the oceans and exits the carbon cycle. Oceans capture CO2 because wind-driven waves churn the surface, mixing the gas into the water. Then ocean currents carry the carbon into the deep sea and away from the atmosphere. ( Phil Berardelli, ScienceNOW Daily News)

Researchers have long known that some marine animals, such as plankton, play big roles in the carbon cycle, but a new study shows that a long-ignored family of marine animals, the bottom-dwelling echinoderms, also do their part in the carbon cycle. (Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com)

When talking about energy, facts should matter. Alas, when it comes to promoting the myth of “energy independence” politicians and political operatives on both the Left and the Right are not interested in facts or reality. Their only interest is in playing to the crowd and in trying to stir emotional responses.

That’s a somewhat painful conclusion. For the past two years, and particularly since the publication of my book, Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of “Energy Independence,” which came out in April 2008, I have been hoping that my book would lead to a more reasoned discussion of energy policy, particularly when it comes to energy imports. Boy, was I naïve to hope for that.

My naivete was made clear a couple days ago when I read a blog posting by Joe Romm, the vituperative Democratic political operative who writes about climate change. On January 4, Romm posted an item that included part of a transcript from Meet the Press in which historian Doris Kearns Goodwin lamented the fact that in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, George W. Bush had not “call for an independent – a Manhattan Project for independence from Middle Eastern oil.” (Robert Bryce, Energy Tribune)

As energy prices surge to uncomfortably high levels, a top administration official wants to make it harder for U.S. companies to get more oil and gas. Once again, we're shooting ourselves in the foot on energy.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar couldn't have picked a worse time to announce that he's placing new barriers on the development of oil and gas resources. Last year's rise in oil was the largest in a decade, and crude prices today have topped $82 a barrel.

Yet Salazar on Wednesday announced plans, as the energy news service Greenwire put it, that "will require more detailed environmental reviews, more public input and less use of a provision to streamline leasing."

In short, private energy development efforts are going backward.

Worse, Salazar has politicized energy to an unseemly degree. In unveiling his new plans and trying to lay blame somewhere else for recent energy price jumps, he said: "The previous administration's 'anywhere, anyhow' policy on oil and gas development ran afoul of communities, carved up the landscape and fueled costly conflicts that created uncertainty for investors and industry."

This isn't the first time Salazar's turned our energy future into a political debate. In November, he lashed out at the oil and gas industry, accusing it of "behaving like an arm" of the Republican Party and decrying the industry's "untruths."

"Trade groups need to understand that they do not own the nation's public lands," he said.

He's right. They don't own it. We do. And because of Salazar's unwise and even hostile energy stewardship, we will likely suffer through years and years of higher prices for crude oil, natural gas and other badly needed resources.

As the chart shows, oil jumped from $44 a barrel at the start of 2009 to $83 a barrel at Wednesday's close. It's no accident.

Salazar's latest move partly reverses the clear intent of a 2005 law, passed by a Republican Congress, that would speed up and streamline permits for energy projects on public lands. In effect he's pawning our energy future to political expediency. (IBD)

OTTAWA — Newly released federal documents have revealed some potentially inconvenient truths about the environmental impact of Alberta's oilsands industry, along with the risks and economic costs of the Harper government's climate change strategy.

The documents take aim at a government assessment of the oilsands sector prepared by the Natural Resources Department.

Officials from Environment Canada who reviewed the original package, warned that it reflected the views of oil companies instead of the facts.

"The package should deliver neutral, balanced and factual information," said the analysis. "Currently, much of the language is too pro-industry, and would make the government to be perceived as bias and thus not credible or serving the public good." ( Mike De Souza , Canwest News Service)

Here is an animated video produced by FirstEnergy available from Mining Connection ( http://www.miningconnection.com/ ). It shows how we make electricity from coal. It also shows that the cooling towers so loved by TV to illustrate power plant pollution in fact emit only warm air and moisture - not even the demonised but harmless carbon dioxide. The invisible carbon dioxide exits via the less photogenic chimneys. So what TV usually shows to illustrate “carbon pollution” is no more polluting than what comes out of the spout of your kettle. So much for truth on TV. (Carbon Sense Coalition)

WASHINGTON - A group of scientists on Thursday called on the U.S. government to stop issuing new permits for mountaintop coal mining, citing research that finds the practice is damaging to the environment and human health.

An analysis of recent scientific studies showed mountaintop coal mining, which accounts for about 10 percent of U.S. coal production, does irreparable environmental harm, the researchers said in article published in the journal Science.

They said research also shows that mountaintop mining exposes local residents to a higher risk of serious illnesses.

"Its impacts are pervasive and long lasting and there is no evidence that any mitigation practices successfully reverse the damage it causes," said lead author Margaret Palmer of University of Maryland at College Park in a statement.

The scientists said no mountaintop mining permits should be granted "unless new methods can be subjected to rigorous peer-review and shown to remedy these problems."

A mining industry spokeswoman dismissed the report as "an advocacy piece" and said the end of mountaintop coal mining would mean job losses and higher electricity rates.

More than half U.S. electricity is generated from coal. (Reuters)

One of the nitwits trying to make your energy more expensive and deny the biosphere a more-plentiful resource: Q&A: Google’s Green Energy Czar

As Google’s resident “green energy czar,” Bill Weihl is charged with pursuing the company’s stated goal of making renewable energy, through a mix of internal research and external investments, cheaper than coal. Since 2007, Google has invested more than $45 million toward that end.

Green Inc. recently visited Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., and caught up with Mr. Weihl — one of Time Magazine’s 2009 Heroes of the Environment — to talk about Google’s place in the development of the renewable energy industry. (NYT)

Exclusive: Severe weather and creaking power infrastructure lead to first tangible sign that fears over energy shortages are translating into supply disruption ( Terry Macalister, The Guardian)

“I think in a job like mine you wake up every day and there’s always a new problem” said Gordon Brown in an interview for BBC Radio Solent today - his first appearance since the latest plot against his leadership surfaced.

Well, here’s the very latest “new problem”. The Guardian’s energy editor reveals the National Grid is cutting off gas supplies to some factories in the North West of England and the East Midlands. The move is designed to protect supplies to domestic customers at a time of unprecedented demand caused by the continuing cold weather.

Naturally, my thoughts turn to the many shiny new wind farms that have been built in Britain in recent years. Surely we’ll have all the power we need to get us through this extremely cold snap if we just turn up the dials to the max on the giant turbines scattered across the landscape? I admit there isn’t any wind right now, but I’m presuming someone has thought of that. Right? (Iain Martin, WSJE)

DALLAS - Efforts to protect an iconic bird could disrupt oil, natural gas and wind energy development in the U.S. West and add to the Democratic Party's green woes ahead of the 2010 congressional elections.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has until February 26 to decide whether or not to list the greater sage-grouse under the Endangered Species Act. This may prove politically charged as it comes in the face of opposition from energy interests and state governments who fear it will hurt economic development.

It could lead to a battle between the Obama administration and groups linked to the Republican Party -- such as oil and gas interests. The issue could hurt Democratic candidates in the region -- including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. The bird's range includes much of the state. (Reuters)

The title of this post is, according to the FT, the answer to the question: How many offshore wind turbines will have to be installed per day by the end of the decade to meet the UK's renewables target? Through 2016 the UK should be averaging one installation per day (see figure above). The FT finds this prospect doubtful:

WASHINGTON - A coalition of oil companies, car and engine manufacturers and fuel sellers told the Obama administration on Thursday not to increase the amount of ethanol blended into gasoline based on inadequate test data.

The Environmental Protection Agency said last month it needs more time to decide on a industry request to boost the level of ethanol in gasoline to 15 percent from 10 percent, but indicated it would likely approve the higher fuel blend for new American cars.

Gasoline approved to have a higher volume of ethanol would help absorb the annual increase in ethanol supplies required by Congress in its attempt to reduce U.S. petroleum imports. The higher blend would help the U.S. ethanol industry, which was hard hit in 2008 by the economic downturn and a drop in crude oil prices to nearly $30 a barrel. Many companies were forced into bankruptcy and some production capacity was also idled.

Crude oil prices have since rebounded to above $80.

The EPA plans to make a final decision on so-called E15 gasoline by mid-June. (Reuters)

WINNIPEG - The Canadian government has ordered a study of the environmental impact of making ethanol and biodiesel just as a government regulation mandating fuel blending is set to take effect.

The study, ordered on Wednesday, comes after evidence of harmful environmental effects from ethanol plants and amid growing criticism of biofuel technology, according to a government document from the environment ministry, Environment Canada.

"Experiences in the U.S. and Brazil now suggest that existing biofuels production facilities are responsible for the generation of a range of new air- and water-related problems as well as recent concerns over human health," the document states.

The study will help government scientists understand the environmental implications of making biofuel, it states. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON - U.S. environmental regulators on Thursday proposed tougher limits on smog than the Bush administration required, which would cost polluters up to $90 billion but save Americans a similar amount on health bills.

Industry groups blasted the proposal, which will undergo 60 days of public comment before a final decision is reached in August. But the move won praise from environmental groups who had criticized the Bush administration for setting smog standards in 2008 that were looser than government scientists had recommended. (Reuters)

NEW YORK - While some studies have implicated gas appliances in children's risk of respiratory ills, a new report suggests that gas cooking stoves may have only a small effect on most children's lung function.

Studies over the years have come to conflicting conclusions as to whether gas stoves affect children's lung function. But some research has suggested that the appliances can worsen existing asthma, or possibly raise children's risks of developing asthma, allergies or other respiratory ills.

Gas appliances, particularly when not properly ventilated, can release nitrogen dioxide into the home. Nitrogen dioxide is a pollutant produced by fuel-burning appliances that is known to irritate the airways and eyes.

In the new study, published in the European Respiratory Journal, researchers analyzed data on 24,000 children ages 6 to 12 from Canada, the U.S. and seven European countries. All had undergone standard lung function tests, and their parents had answered questions on various exposures, including their use of gas stoves.

Overall, the study found only small average differences in lung function between the 41 percent of children from homes with gas stoves and the 58 percent from homes with electric stoves. (Reuters Health)

Mobile phones may improve memory and protect against Alzheimer's disease, scientists have discovered.

In one of the most unexpected scientific findings for some time, researchers have found that the electromagnetic waves emitted by the devices may improve cognitive function.

After years of health warnings about mobile phones, scientists in Florida admit they were as surprised as anyone when their research showed they might be good for the brain. But they have enough confidence in their results to recommend that the electromagnetic waves the phones emit should be "vigorously investigated" as a memory enhancer and treatment for Alzheimer's.

Mobile phones have been suspected of causing problems ranging from ear ache to brain cancer by raising the temperature of the head and exposing cells to "oxidative stress". Inquiries into their safety have been held, but no conclusive evidence of damage has been found. (The Independent)

As was the (now corrected) case with omega-3 fats, the "consensus" on sunlight exposure has badly misled us towards massive vitamin D deficiencies.

The traditional “Top Ten Breakthroughs of the Decade” lists have been appearing in science-related publications. One breakthrough, however, is conspicuously missing from every list I’ve seen so far. I’m talking about the new understanding of the role and proper dosage of the sunshine vitamin D.

The “scientific consensus” that has held sway for four decades regarding both exposure to the sun and vitamin D has collapsed. What has emerged in place of the old “settled science” is the knowledge that most people in America are seriously vitamin D deficient or insufficient. The same is true for Canada and Europe, and the implications are staggering.

Simply put, unless you are one of the few people with optimal serum D levels, such as lifeguards and roofers in South Florida, you can cut your risks from most major diseases by 50 to 80 percent. All you have to do is get enough D. It also means we can significantly reduce both health care costs and the staggering national deficit by taking a few simple steps.

As a financial writer, I bemoan the fact that no one can patent sunshine. Biotechs with therapies supported by far less evidence have exploded in value. Sirtris, for example, was bought by GlaxoSmithKline for $720 million to acquire IP for certain resveratrol-like substances. If you compare the evidence supporting the benefits of resveratrol vs. sunshine, sunshine leaves resveratrol in the dust.

I do, however, advise all my readers to get and keep their vitamin D levels up. This is simply because the economic benefits of doing so are so profound. Major illnesses have long been the biggest cause of financial crisis, a fact that proponents of nationalized health care have exploited well.

In truth, however, sensible sun exposure and vitamin D3 supplementation would do far more for our national health than the current health care bill. Even better, the benefits to society could be achieved without spending hundreds of billions of dollars. If an “Army of Davids” took it upon itself to spread the word, they could achieve what government is apparently incapable of achieving.

I realize, incidentally, that such bold claims probably inspire skepticism. They should, in fact, and I’m going to make even more bold claims. So allow me to make the necessary disclaimers and move on. (Patrick Cox, PJM)

A NORWEGIAN professor says feeding babies breast milk does not make them healthier than those fed formula.

Professor Sven Carlsen found while breastfed infants are slightly healthier than bottle fed babies it is not the milk that is responsible.

He claims a baby's overall health is determined prior to birth and dependent on hormone levels in the mother's womb.

"The answer is simple. If a mother is able to breastfeed, and does so, this ability is essentially proof that the baby has already had an optimal life inside the womb," the professor said.

When a woman had high levels of male hormones in the womb the flow of nutrients to the baby was affected, he said. The hormones also affected her ability to breastfeed, making her offspring more likely to be bottle fed.

“Pregnant women who have higher levels of androgens breastfeed less ... probably, this is a direct effect of hormones that simply limit nursing ability, by reducing milk production in the breast,” Prof Carlsen added.

The study conducted by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim reviewed data from more than 50 international studies looking at the relationship between breastfeeding and health.

Prof Carlsen said the study found no evidence that breastfeeding reduced the risk of asthma and allergies in children. He added the only benefit supported by genuine evidence was a "small IQ advantage."

However the UK Government dismissed his findings, a health department spokesman said. (NewsCore)

VIENNA, Jan. 7 -- Austrian scientists found that gene therapy is able to inhibit the formation of body's useless fat, according to the latest issue of the scientific magazine Cell.

After a large number of studies and researches in animal genes, scientists from Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) and Institute of Molecular Pathology at University of Salzburg in Austria (IMP) found that the intervention effect of gene on the formation of body fat could not be ignored. (Xinhua)

CHICAGO - U.S. researchers have identified 10 locations in California that have double the rates of autism found in surrounding areas, and these clusters were located in neighborhoods with high concentrations of white, highly educated parents.

Researchers at the University of California Davis had hoped to uncover pockets of autism that might reveal clues about triggers in the environment that could explain rising rates of autism, which affects as many as one in 110 U.S. children.

But the findings likely say more about the U.S. healthcare system than the causes of autism, said researcher Irva Hertz-Picciotto of UC Davis' MIND Institute, whose study will be released online on Wednesday in the journal Autism Research. (Reuters)

LONDON - Young people in Britain are increasingly missing out on the stress-relieving benefits of spending time in nature, Europe's largest wildlife conservation charity said on Thursday.

Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said it uncovered a worrying trend of "nature starvation" among young Britons when it conducted a study to find out just how important it is for people to connect with the natural world. (Reuters)

In the past dozen years, three new diseases have decimated populations of amphibians, honeybees, and — most recently — bats. Increasingly, scientists suspect that low-level exposure to pesticides could be contributing to this rash of epidemics. (environment 360)

The upcoming battle in the Senate over cap-and-trade energy legislation is shaping up to be critical for anyone who cares about the economy and the jobs so many Americans are seeking. Senate Republicans have so far placed themselves clearly on the side of economic growth and jobs - except, that is, for South Carolina's Lindsey Graham.

Through heavy-handed regulation of carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and other industrial sources, cap-and-trade would kill the coal industry that provides about one half of our nation's electricity. This would send energy prices skyrocketing which, in turn, would send millions of American jobs overseas, cripple our economy and make us less energy-independent. But that's not all.

Little discussed is how cap-and-trade is an insidious form of anti-American social engineering. Under the guise of "saving the planet," cap-and-trade sets up the government to regulate virtually every aspect of our personal lives: where we work, where we live, how many children we have, how much energy and water we use, what kind of food we eat, what kind of cars we drive and much more. All spew carbon in the atmosphere indistinguishable from the stuff that comes out of a coal fired power plant.

Cap-and-trade threatens our military preparedness and our national sovereignty. Remember that President Obama, the Europeans and United Nations kleptocrats are eager to ensnare the United States in an international cap-and-trade treaty that is a major stepping stone to global governance. You don't have to believe me - that's from the lips of Al Gore. (Steve Milloy, Washington Times)

In green circles, Steve Milloy is a pariah. But for many scientists who worry that political agendas are corrupting independent research and undermining the scientific method, Milloy is a hero. Using his website, junkscience.com [3], to deliver his message, Milloy has been a key soldier in the front lines of the battle to maintain the kind of healthy skepticism that is a critical component of scientific endeavor.

It’s not overstating the case to say that Milloy, along with Climate Audit’s [4] Steve McIntyre and Joe Bast’s Heartland Institute [5], laid the groundwork for an increasingly skeptical public to ask the tough, uncomfortable questions that are making global warming zealots squirm.

There was a time, Milloy recalls, when he was almost a voice in the wilderness, after he first started to speak out on the issue in 1996. “We’ve been slogging away at this all through the decade,” he said. “The first part of the decade was really tough. Today, there are lots of people questioning the science behind global warming, but back in 2000 it was very lonely out there.” (Rich Trzupek, FrontPage)

Like many scientists, Dr. Craig Idso has a problem with the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but his perspective is a bit different. He believes the planet can use more. “As carbon dioxide concentrations rise, we expect plants to be more biodiverse,” Idso said. “We expect a great greening of planet earth.”

Idso is the founder and chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. The Center’s website serves a repository of a wide variety of data and information involving greenhouse gases and climate change. Like most skeptics, Idso rejects the notion that mankind’s contribution to the amount greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will significantly affect the earth’s mean temperature, but climate change is not the primary focus of his work. Idso is one of the leading voices in the scientific community to declare that, far from being a problem, today’s concentrations of carbon dioxide are a necessity for a healthy planet. (Rich Trzupek, FrontPage)

Some of the bastards responsible for subverting public understanding of climate change (Michael Roddy & Ian Murphy, Beast)

According to the CIA’s analysis, “detrimental global climatic change” threatens “the stability of most nations.” And, alas, for a global phenomenon, Canada will be hardest hit. The entire Dominion from the Arctic to the 49th parallel will be under 150 feet of ice. (Mark Steyn, Maclean's)

As the United Nations’ Copenhagen global warming catastrophe fades from memory, its emaciated remains quietly bulldozed into the freezing blue Danske harbour, public opinion had few places to go. And so it went nowhere. In fact, according to new tri-national polls released yesterday by Angus Read, the people of Canada, the Unites States and Britain are rapidly losing confidence in the whole enterprise.

When John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, told the New Yorker that “no scientific consensus exists” about the causes of climate change, he thrust himself – and his chain – negatively into the spotlight among many ec0-minded shoppers. (Environmental Leader)

The BBC's governing body has launched a major review of its science coverage after complaints of bias notably in its treatment of climate change.

The BBC Trust today announced it would carry out the probe into the 'accuracy and impartiality' of its output in this increasingly controversial area.

The review comes after repeated criticism of the broadcaster's handling of green issues. It has been accused of acting like a cheerleader for the theory that climate change is a man-made phenomenon.

Critics have claimed that it has not fairly represented the views of sceptics of the widely-held belief that humans are responsible for environmental changes such as global warming.

A scene from the 2006 BBC programme, Five Disasters Waiting To Happen:
The Corporation has been accused of ignoring climate change sceptics

The investigation will also focus on coverage of issues like genetically modified foods, the MMR vaccine and the way it reports on new technologies.

It will scrutinise the way the BBC has handled scientific findings on areas which affect 'public policy' and are 'matters of political controversy'.

A scientific expert will be hired to lead the review and it will concentrate on coverage of the issues featured in its news and factual output.

The corporation's Royal Charter and Agreement requires that the BBC covers controversial subjects with due impartiality. (Daily Mail)

AGW: The Greens’ Tet Offensive - Environmentalists threw everything they had into the anthropogenic global warming scare, hoping for victory through politics and PR.

On January 31, 1968, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army began a series of over 100 surprise attacks across South Vietnam. Although the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were taken by surprise, most attacks were quickly contained and tremendous casualties were inflicted upon the communist forces. Tet failed militarily and the communist forces suffered losses that should have eventually cost them the war.

However, Tet succeeded in the realm of public opinion and created the impression in the U.S. that the war was unwinnable. President Johnson shuffled military leadership, and the strategy shifted to one resulting in withdrawal and the fall of South Vietnam. This is analogous to the public relations war being waged by the environmental movement.

The ongoing success of the environmental movement is based on the effectiveness of its public relations. As voters and consumers, we must be sufficiently convinced by the urgency of the green message to make changes in our economic choices. But the environmental movement is failing. Worldwide, people want bigger houses, more cars, richer diets, and other trappings of the wealthy Western lifestyle. And the world’s population is increasing, creating greater numbers of aggressive consumers. ( Andy Pollack, PJM)

To fully appreciate what a step backwards the final Copenhagen accord is, one has to recall the buildup to it. For the last two years, global warming activists and UN officials had circled December 2009 on their calendars as the watershed moment for creating a new carbon-constrained global economy for decades to come. And in the nick of time, they would argue, as the existing targets in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol are scheduled to expire in 2012. Furthermore, with the Bush administration gone in 2009, many in the international community felt that the path was clear for the Obama administration to finally include America in binding, verifiable, and enforceable restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions. Continue reading… (The Foundry)

Nico Stehr and Hans von Storch

Activist climate scientists and many other observers agree that the Copenhagen climate summit was a failure. In its aftermath, one issue which will be discussed intensively is the role of climate science in political deliberations about climate policy. Can science tell us what to do?

We can glean some insight to this question via the work of the renowned American economist and political scientist Charles E. Lindblom who studied interrelations between knowledge, markets and democracy. These interrelations are just as relevant today, but not just because of the serious effects of the recent financial and economic crisis.

As is well-known, the supposed virtues of a free market can easily be questioned. Many thoughtful and informed observers are skeptical toward unrestrained markets or are self-consciously opposed to the concept of a liberal market. The solution to financial crises is in their eyes, a fencing in of the market by the state and society.

Much less common, however, as Lindblom also stresses, if not taboo, is an open and explicit expression of doubt about the virtues of democracy, with the obvious exception of certain leaders of decidedly undemocratic nations. In particular, it has traditionally been the case that scientists rarely have raised serious misgivings in public about democracy as a political system.

But the times are changing. Within the broad field of climatology and climate policy one is able to discern growing concerns about the virtues of democracy. It is not just the deep divide between knowledge and action that is at issue, but it is an inconvenient democracy, which is identified as the culprit holding back action on climate change. As Mike Hulme has noted , it can be frustrating to learn that citizens have minds of their own. (Roger Pielke Jr)

Certain influential forces in the environmental movement - most notably James Hansen of NASA - have expressed disquiet with the inability of democracies to deal with their imagined “climate crisis,” leading to sentiments like this one from Australian authors David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith:

Climatologists Nico Stehr and Hans von Storch discuss this argument at Roger Pielke Jr’s blog. Thankfully, the demands for an “Ecologocracy,” for want of a better term, are not yet universal in the environmental movement. They conclude:

A report by German insurance company Munich Re says 2009 was a year of relatively few natural disasters. But it warns that climate change remains a threat in 2010 and beyond, impacting on insurance costs. (Deutsche Welle)

As projections of catastrophic climate changes are being beaten down by the far less than catastrophic actual climate response, other calamities that may result from our untoward use of fossil fuels are being offered up for our consideration. Besides the well-worn pitfalls of our failure to achieve energy independence, or to be the first to grasp green technologies, a new problem is being worked into the mix—ocean acidification.

Ocean acidification. Sounds bad doesn’t it. Much worse than say, “the oceans are becoming less basic” which is a more accurate, but less worrisome-sounding description. In either case, it is used to describe the situation in which the oceans absorb an increasing amount of carbon dioxide as the atmospheric partial pressure of CO2 increases. The dissolution of CO2 in the oceans has the net effect of increasing the hydrogen ion concentration which drives the ocean’s pH lower. The pH of the global oceans averages about 8.1 so it is considered a base rather than an acid (acids have pH values less than 7.0) and has perhaps dropped by 0.1pH units (a logarithmic scale) since the Industrial Revolution.

The reason we are being told that this is bad, is that it potentially disrupts some ocean ecosystems, primarily coral reefs and other calcifying organisms. The idea is that a lower pH interferes with the production of shells and/or causes the shells of some organisms to dissolve—leading to thinner, weaker defenses and other detrimental effects increasing the vulnerability of these organisms and jeopardizing the livelihood of other organisms that depend on them leading to a downward spiral of ever-increasing breadth.

Eager to bring this to the attention of the general public and shore up the public’s waning concerns about global warming (and rally them behind anti-greenhouse gas legislation), the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) produced a 21-minute movie titled “Acid Test: The Global Challenge of Ocean Acidification” narrated by Sigourney Weaver. Here is taste of what is inside:

Scary scenario. But as with most good horror movies, the real world proves to be a much more benign locale. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

A recent NYT article discussed a proposal by economist Ross McKitrick to tie CO2 taxes to global temperature increases. McKitrick’s overall aim is to offer a compromise that, he argues, should satisfy those who think the government needs to take drastic action and those who think carbon emissions pose no serious long-term threat. Although McKitrick’s idea is clever, it has theoretical difficulties and (in my opinion) would certainly not work in practice.

Today, I submitted a comment on EPA’s proposed Prevention of Significant Deterioration and Title V Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule. The gist of my argument is as follows:

Not content with waiting for federal legislation on the matter, it seems that Minnesota has introduced a “carbon fee” of $4-$34 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions on energy produced –mainly using coal — in North Dakota. The fee is scheduled to go into effect in 2012. (see here)

North Dakota plans to challenge the new tax, which it rightly says will discourage the purchase of North Dakota power (that is, indeed, the whole point of the tariff). I’m no constitutional scholar, but Article 1, section 10 of the Constitution says that “No State shall, without the consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection laws…” so the Minnesota tariff appears to be unconstitutional (for whatever that’s worth these days…), at least unless and until Congress gives its consent for it.

On the one hand, the current political make-up of Congress would suggest that such consent might, disappointingly, be given. On the other, the cap-and-trade bill has stalled in Congress despite the wishes of the majority leadership and the administration, suggesting that the desire to regulate energy and greenhouse gas emissions is lacking crucial support.

In related news, another body supportive of carbon tariffs, the French government, has seen its plans thwarted recently after the Constitutional Court there struck down the proposed carbon tax as unconstitutional. President Sarkozy had intented to extend the carbon tax EU-wide so as to prevent adverse competitiveness effects on French industry, thus giving the EU the incentive to apply a trade bloc-wide tariff on imports from less regulated countries. So the setback in France is good news for those of us concerned about the damage that carbon tariffs would do.

In a plan that was intended to be quick and temporary, Congress passed a $787 billion stimulus plan, which included large sums of money to fund infrastructure projects. Never mind the fact that the stimulus bill was a bad idea, the amount of environmental regulatory tape standing in the way will prevent it from ever getting off the ground. Normally it takes a federal construction project an average of 4.4 years to complete a National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) review. Throw in the Clean Water Act’s section 404 requirements (where relevant), and before a single shovel can hit the earth it takes 5.6 years for the average federal project to jump through all the normal environmental hoops. It could get worse in the very near future. E&E (password protected) reports:

The chairman of the committee that deals with environmental issues in the Kentucky House of Representatives has introduced a resolution that questions the science of climate change.

The resolution proposed by Rep. Jim Gooch, D-Providence, says state and local government agencies should be banned from limiting carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas that comes from burning coal and motor vehicle tailpipe emissions. (James Bruggers, Courier-Journal)

WASHINGTON - Nearly half of global money managers are making investment decisions without factoring in risks or opportunities associated with climate change, according to a survey released on Wednesday by a coalition of environmentalists and investors.

A related report recommended that money managers and institutional investors do climate risk assessments on all investments and encourage the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to encourage full disclosure of climate risks.

"This is about significant business issues that affect our portfolios," Jack Ehnes, chief executive of the California State Teachers' Retirement System told reporters in a teleconference about the survey. "Certainly leaving the most recent economic crisis with a deeper understanding of risk, I would think it would be incumbent on everyone to embrace (climate) issues." (Reuters)

The times are changing in the wake of Climategate. And more is to come as the polluted science embedded in the email exchanges gets reviewed by talented amateurs and pros alike on the blogosphere (see Climate Audit, Roger Pielke Jr., and WattsUpWithThat, in particular).

Given time, the rethink will go mainstream. Scientists are truth seekers at heart, but an entrenched mainstream of climate scientists–so many of them friends and political allies–will need to be nudged out of their denialism.

Old voices are challenging their ‘mainstream’ colleagues, and new voices are coming forth. I have seen this clearly here in Houston (examples below), and I expect it is happening elsewhere.

Consider what Andy Revkin, the recently retired climate-change science writer at the New York Times, told the public editor at the Times regarding Climategate: “Our coverage, looked at in toto, has never bought the catastrophe conclusion and always aimed to examine the potential for both overstatement and understatement.”

Sounds like the Times will report both sides of the issue now, rather than just trumpet alarmism as it was prone to do in the past (remember William K. Stevens?). Joe Romm at Climate Progress (Center for American Progress) is furious at this development, but just maybe over-the-top Joe has himself to blame for getting Revkin and the like to want to report on both sides more than ever before. And Romm himself is now considered damaged goods by the Left, thanks to the four-part expose by the Breakthrough Institute.

Climategate, in short, is making quite a difference. But much more courage is needed.

Consider Michelle Michot Foss, an internationally respected energy economist with the University of Texas at Austin who is past president of both the United States Energy Association and the International Associations for Energy Economics. Her December 8th letter to the New York Times read: [Read more →] (MasterResource)

Now that Copenhagen is past history, what is the next step in the man-made global warming controversy? Without question, there should be an immediate and thorough investigation of the scientific debauchery revealed by “Climategate.”

If you have not heard, hackers penetrated the computers of the Climate Research Unit, or CRU, of the United Kingdom's University of East Anglia, exposing thousands of e-mails and other documents. CRU is one of the top climate research centers in the world. Many of the exchanges were between top mainstream climate scientists in Britain and the U.S. who are closely associated with the authoritative (albeit controversial) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Among the more troubling revelations were data adjustments enhancing the perception that man is causing global warming through the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other atmospheric greenhouse gases.

Particularly disturbing was the way the core IPCC scientists (the believers) marginalized the skeptics of the theory that man-made global warming is large and potentially catastrophic. The e-mails document that the attack on the skeptics was twofold. First, the believers gained control of the main climate-profession journals. This allowed them to block publication of papers written by the skeptics and prohibit unfriendly peer review of their own papers. Second, the skeptics were demonized through false labeling and false accusations.

Climate alarmists would like you to believe the science has been settled and all respectable atmospheric scientists support their position. The believers also would like you to believe the skeptics are involved only because of the support of Big Oil and that they are few in number with minimal qualifications. (Neil Frank, Houston Chronicle)

Responses to “Climategate”–the leaked e-mails from Britain’s University of East Anglia and its Climatic Research Unit — remind me of the line “Are your feet wet? Can you see the pyramids? That’s because you’re in denial.”

Climate catastrophists like Al Gore and the UN’s Rajendra Pachauri are downplaying Climategate: it’s only a few intemperate scientists; there’s no real evidence of wrongdoing; now let’s persecute the whistleblower. In Calgary, the latest fellow trying to use the Monty Python “nothing to see here, move along” routine is David Mayne Reid, who penned a column last week denying the importance of Climategate.

Unfortunately for Professor Reid, old saws won’t work in the Internet age: Climategate has blazed across the Internet, blogosphere, and social networking sites. Even environmentalist and writer George Monbiot has recognized that the public’s perception of climate science will be damaged extensively, calling for one of the Climategate ringleaders to resign.

What’s catastrophic about Climategate is that it reveals a science as broken as Michael Mann’s hockey stick, which despite Reid’s protestations, has been shown to be a misleading chart that erases a 400-year stretch of warm temperatures (called the Medieval Warm Period), and a more recent little ice-age that ended in the mid-1800s. No amount of hand-waving will restore the credibility of climate science while holding onto rubbish like that.

Climategate reveals skulduggery the general public can understand: that a tightly-linked clique of scientists were behaving as crusaders. Their letters reveal they were working in what they repeatedly labeled a “cause” to promote a political agenda.

In an essay adapted from his 2009 AAAS Annual Meeting keynote address, James J. McCarthy has produced a fairly concise statement of the anthropogenic global warming believer's world view. After a self-serving review of climate science history, McCarthy trots out the usual litany of climate change troubles: increased cyclones, rain and floods, rising sea levels and, of course, those pesky tipping points. The tone of the article is set early on, when research is cited stating that mankind's impact on Earth is “sufficiently profound to declare that we have transitioned from the Holocene era of Earth history to the Anthropocene.”

McCarthy, professor of Biological Oceanography at Harvard and outgoing president of the AAAS, has done an admirable job in summarizing the main stream, “concensus view” version of climate science. His article, titled “Reflections On: Our Planet and Its Life, Origins, and Futures,” appeared in the December 18, 2009, issue of the AAAS journal Science. He begins with a quick rundown of how the CO₂ centric AGW theory developed—a history that could have been cribbed from The Resilient Earth. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)

The climate of the Earth is profoundly affected by two competing processes: the greenhouse effect, which acts to warm the lower atmosphere and cool the upper atmosphere, and atmospheric convection (thermals, clouds, precipitation) which does just the opposite: cools the lower atmosphere and warms the upper atmosphere.

To better understand why this happens, it is an instructive thought experiment to ask the question: What if there was no greenhouse effect? In other words, what if there were no infrared absorbers such as water vapor and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

While we usually only discuss the greenhouse effect in the context of global warming (that is, the theory that adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will lead to higher temperatures in the lower atmosphere), it turns out that the greenhouse effect has a more fundamental role: there would be no weather on Earth without the greenhouse effect. (Roy W. Spencer)

If we happen to see an unusually large number of winter storms this year, we suspect some reporter or some scientist will insist we are witnessing the effects of global warming, or at least declare we are witnessing climate change before our very eyes. Oppositely, if this year’s winter storms are infrequent, we will expect to learn from someone that we have seen the effects of climate change. In fact, in a recent paper in the International Journal of Climatology, the authors begin their piece noting “One area of growing concern in climate science is the impact that global warming could have through modulations of the nature and characteristics of naturally occurring extreme events, such as severe mid-latitude storms.” In the very next sentence, the research team from the United Kingdom and Australia state “However, both observational and modelling studies of historical and future storminess patterns and scenarios are divided on the role that global warming has played, or could play, in changing patterns of mid-latitude storms”. Once again, we find any straightforward link between global warming and winter storms is a bit more dicey than originally thought … there is always more to the story. (WCR)

Phil Klotzbach has alerted us to the current Northern Hemisphere snow cover as monitored by Rutgers University. The December value was in the top three Decembers during this period of record.

1966-2009 December Northern Northern Hemisphere Snow Cover Anomaly

YR MON GLOBE NH SH TROPICS
2009 1 +0.304 +0.443 +0.165 -0.036
2009 2 +0.347 +0.678 +0.016 +0.051
2009 3 +0.206 +0.310 +0.103 -0.149
2009 4 +0.090 +0.124 +0.056 -0.014
2009 5 +0.045 +0.046 +0.044 -0.166
2009 6 +0.003 +0.031 -0.025 -0.003
2009 7 +0.411 +0.212 +0.610 +0.427
2009 8 +0.229 +0.282 +0.177 +0.456
2009 9 +0.422 +0.549 +0.294 +0.511
2009 10 +0.286 +0.274 +0.297 +0.326
2009 11 +0.497 +0.422 +0.572 +0.495
2009 12 +0.280 +0.318 +0.242 +0.503

The global-average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly fell back to the October level of +0.28 deg. C in December. The tropics continue warm from El Nino conditions there, while the NH and SH extratropics anomalies cooled from last month. While the large amount of year-to-year variability in global temperatures seen in the above plot makes it difficult to provide meaningful statements about long-term temperature trends in the context of global warming, the running 25-month average suggests there has been no net warming in the last 11 years or so.

[NOTE: These satellite measurements are not calibrated to surface thermometer data in any way, but instead use on-board redundant precision platinum resistance thermometers carried on the satellite radiometers.] (Roy W. Spencer)

I am still receiving questions about the method by which the satellite microwave measurements are calibrated to get atmospheric temperatures. The confusion seems to have arisen because Christopher Monckton has claimed that our satellite data must be tied to the surface thermometer data, and after Climategate (as well all know) those traditional measurements have become suspect. So, time for a little tutorial. (Roy W. Spencer)

Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week:
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 787 individual scientists from 468 separate research institutions in 42 different countries ... and counting! This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from Jacaf Fjord, Northern Patagonia, Chile. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here.

Subject Index Summary:
Extinction (Land and Water Resource Availability): Unless the air's CO2 content continues to rise, mankind will drive most of the planet's wildlife to extinction in mere decades, simply by taking the land and water our biospheric companions depend upon for their sustenance to provide for our sustenance.

Plant Growth Data:
This week we add new results of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature for: Common Teak (Raizada et al., 2009), Indian Rosewood (Raizada et al., 2009), Lantana (Raizada et al., 2009), and Wild Spikenard (Raizada et al., 2009).

Coral Responses to Recurring Disturbances on Saint-Leu Reef: After being battered to the point of oblivion by massive cyclones - twice - and after suffering multiple major bleaching events, Saint-Leu's corals have made some amazing comebacks over the last sixty years.

Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week:
This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from Feni Drift, Rockall Trough, Northeast Atlantic Ocean.

Subject Index Summary:
Sea Ice (Antarctic): How has it varied over the past three decades?

Soil Solarization: What is it? ... and how is it affected by atmospheric CO2 enrichment?

A study done on Juneau's glaciers shows that the hulking blocks of ice produce high-quality food for the organisms that live in downstream rivers and the ocean.

The information will help scientists better understand marine food chains as glaciers continue to shrink, said researcher Eran Hood, a University of Alaska Southeast associate professor who led the study.

The report is published in today's issue of Nature, a weekly international journal of science.

The basic purpose of the research was to determine how water chemistry is different in rivers fed by glaciers compared to those that aren't.

The scientists found that glacial waters supply more carbon to marine micro-organisms. In some cases, the carbon being metabolized was thousands of years old. Larger organisms feed on the microbes, and on up the food chain.

While the finding means that runoff from glaciers could contribute to healthy marine life, it does not say glacial retreat spells doom for the ecosystems, Hood said. (Juneau Empire)

We have all heard over and over that the icecaps are melting, glaciers are retreating, and sea level is rising as ice around the world turns to liquid water. We have covered this topic many times in our essay series, but we revisit the ice issue given two recent and important publications in the science literature. (WCR)

Leonard Ornstein has agreed to write a guest weblog on ocean heat content as a diagnostic to assess global warming. The focus of our discussions by e-mail has been on the meaning of the term “heat in the pipeline”. Len has provided a guest weblog previously; see “How To Quickly Lower Climate Risks, At ‘Tolerable’ Costs?”. [my reply will ~~appear tomorrow~~ is below]. (Climate Science)

Len Ornstein presented a thoughtful guest post yesterday on ocean heat content (see), in which he and I disagree on the meaning of the phrase “heating in the pipeline. Len provided an effective succinct summary of this issue in his post.

The basic issue is whether the term “heating in the pipeline” refers to heat that is sequestered for a period of time deeper in the ocean only to reappear later in the atmosphere, or if it refers to a continuing assumed radiative imbalance until the atmosphere warms.

I do not conclude that the first perspective is an error in the physics, but it is not, in my view, what is meant by the terminology “heat in the pipeline”. (Climate Science)

We have a new paper that documents the need to include water vapor trends, in addition to temperature trends, in the assessment of climate system heat changes (which, of course, includes global warming). (Climate Science)

Yesterday, I discussed the issue that water vapor feedbacks are more poorly understood than indicated in the papers by Andrew Dessler (see). Today, I have provided a new paper that discusses one aspect of the current inability of the multi-decadal global climate models to skillfully predict cloud-precipitation feedbacks (and thus their difficulty in accurately representing radiative feedbacks in this models). (Climate Science)

Real Climate has a post titled Updates to model-data comparisons which includes a plot of the variations in upper ocean content anomalies from the period 1955 through 2009.

I asked Josh Willis the following with respect to the plot in the Real Climate post (Climate Science)

The issue of the relative roles of the human addition of CO2 and the resulting water vapor feedback remains an incompletely understood issue [and thanks to Tom Fuller for encouraging me to address this question]. (Climate Science)

Professor Andrew Dessler of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences of Texas A&M University requested the opportunity to respond to my post

I welcome his openness to discuss this issue, and am glad to post his guest weblog. We need more such collegial debate on these topics within the climate community. I will respond in an upcoming post. (Climate Science)

I am providing further information as to why the upper ocean heat content has been adequately sampled particularly since 2005 [and thanks to Leonard Ornstein for encouraging me to do this!]. (Climate Science)

Papers which document human climate forcings other than CO2 continue to be published. (Climate Science)

We have reported on the role of black carbon (soot) as a major non-greenhouse gas human climate forcing in the Arctic; e.g. see

where an article in Scientific American by David Biello based on a study by Charlie Zender, a climate physicist at the University of California, Irvine stated

““…. on snow—even at concentrations below five parts per billion—such dark carbon triggers melting, and may be responsible for as much as 94 percent of Arctic warming”.

Now we have yet another human climate forcing that was reported by Rex Dalton of Nature News in the article

Do you ever wonder why God decided that carbon dioxide must exist forever only as a trace gas in the atmosphere; and why, even today, this lonely little molecule must, throughout its life time, roam around with only one chance in 2,596.4 of ever encountering one of his fellows? Yet, left free to disperse and roam at will, as God intended, carbon dioxide sustains all life on earth.

Although now damned by the Supreme Court as having no rights mankind is obliged to respect, this classy little carbon dioxide molecule continues to answer the bell, enticing green plants worldwide to blossom and grow abundantly, feeding mankind, while generating life-giving oxygen for us all, even for those who now blackguard and condemn him.

And, although dwarfed to insignificance by water vapor in its capacity to warm the earth, this little molecule still hangs in there, providing its pittance to the greenhouse effect; doing its part to help fend off the next irrepressible ice age (it’s getting colder, not warmer!).

It’s not right that we should now capture this faithful little carbon dioxide molecule and dungeon him away deep in the earth and at taxpayer expense.

Dick Hollars
Glade Spring, Va. (TriCities)

An upcoming Journal of the American Medical Association article finds there are “important and unanswered” questions about risks from carbon capture and storage despite deep political support for the technology aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

House and Senate climate change bills would funnel billions of dollars into helping commercialize technology to capture carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants and permanently store it underground.

But in a commentary slated for publication Wednesday, two doctors say health and safety dangers associated with carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS, have not been considered amid promotion of the technology.

The doctors – John Fogarty of the University of New Mexico and Michael McCally of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine – cite asphyxiation risks from accidental large-scale releases. (Ben Geman, The Hill)

A U of A engineering professor researching carbon storage has been awarded funding to set up a one-of-a-kind lab that will simulate the harsh conditions that exist two kilometres beneath the Earth's surface.

Rick Chalaturnyk has been awarded $1.6 million in funding from both the Alberta Science and Research Investments Program and the federal Canada Foundation for Innovation for a $4-million research lab that will be the only one of its kind in Canada. The remainder of funding will come from the university and industry supporters. (University of Alberta)

Researchers say buried volcanic rocks, or basalt along the coasts of New York, New Jersey and New England, and as far south as Georgia and South Carolina, might be ideal reservoirs to store carbon dioxide emitted by power plants and other industrial sources, reports Physorg.

A study released in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” outlines basalt formations on land and offshore, where scientists from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory believe are the best potential sites for carbon storage, according to Physorg.

Underground burial, or sequestration, of carbon dioxide is being studied across the country, and energy producers are taking a closer look at carbon capture and storage techniques as a way to deal with global warming. (Environmental Leader)

BARENDRECHT, Netherlands: A plan by oil giant Shell to store 300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year in a depleted gas reservoir beneath a Dutch city has drawn the ire of residents and local officials who have vowed to thwart it.

"We are going to do everything to oppose this project," declared Barendrecht deputy mayor Simon Zuurbier, who voiced fears for the safety of the city's 50,000 inhabitants.

"We are taking legal action to get it cancelled and we'll approve none of the required permits."

Anglo-Dutch Shell in November was authorised by the Dutch government to undertake a project to capture and store a portion of the 5.0 megatonnes of carbon dioxide emitted each year by the company's refinery in Pernis.

Under the scheme, set to get underway in 2012, the CO2 will be carried by a pipeline and, after being compressed, will be injected into a depleted gas reservoir 1,800 meters (5,900 feet) under ground. The reservoir has a capacity of 800,000 tonnes.

Shell has said that over time the CO2 will dissolve or form minerals. (AFP)

Abstract: The capture and subsequent geologic sequestration of CO₂ has been central to plans for managing CO₂ produced by the combustion of fossil fuels. The magnitude of the task is overwhelming in both physical needs and cost, and it entails several components including capture, gathering and injection. The rate of injection per well and the cumulative volume of injection in a particular geologic formation are critical elements of the process.

Published reports on the potential for sequestration fail to address the necessity of storing CO₂ in a closed system. Our calculations suggest that the volume of liquid or supercritical CO₂ to be disposed cannot exceed more than about 1% of pore space. This will require from 5 to 20 times more underground reservoir volume than has been envisioned by many, and it renders geologic sequestration of CO₂ a profoundly non-feasible option for the management of CO₂ emissions.

Material balance modeling shows that CO₂ injection in the liquid stage (larger mass) obeys an analog of the single phase, liquid material balance, long-established in the petroleum industry for forecasting undersaturated oil recovery. The total volume that can be stored is a function of the initial reservoir pressure, the fracturing pressure of the formation or an adjoining layer, and CO₂ and water compressibility and mobility values.

Further, published injection rates, based on displacement mechanisms assuming open aquifer conditions are totally erroneous because they fail to reconcile the fundamental difference between steady state, where the injection rate is constant, and pseudo-steady state where the injection rate will undergo exponential decline if the injection pressure exceeds an allowable value. A limited aquifer indicates a far larger number of required injection wells for a given mass of CO₂ to be sequestered and/or a far larger reservoir volume than the former. (Christine Ehlig-Economides and Michael J. Economides, Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering)

LONDON - Icy conditions have driven a surge in energy demand in heavily populated parts of the northern hemisphere but some countries are enjoying a relatively mild winter, data shows.

Severe weather, partly due to the El Nino weather phenomenon, has frozen parts of northwest Europe that usually escape the coldest winter temperatures, driving gas demand to records in Britain and straining French power systems. In China there are energy rations. (Reuters)

In what is being labeled as “Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reforms” Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced tougher new leasing rules that will inevitably make it more difficult and more expensive to drill for oil in the United States. Despite the recession, gas prices have crept up steadily in the past year – about a $1 increase per gallon from a year ago today. The national average is currently $2.68. Instead of increasing access to supply and creating jobs the administration is doing more to limit opportunities – or at least have it take longer to make use of those opportunities and make them more expensive. The Institute of Energy Research president Thomas J. Pyle weighs in:

The nearly insatiable hunger for oil has led the world’s most-populous countries to Africa. And while China’s efforts to tap Africa’s oil resources are well known, India is trying to catch up. (Priyanka Bhardwaj and Michael J. Economides, Energy Tribune)

There is another contender in the alternate energy, renewable fuels sweepstakes that combines aspects of solar energy and biofuels. Most solar technologies are aimed at producing electricity, but a new class of solar chemical reactors aims to make liquid fuels from air, water, and sunshine. This could, in theory, provide a carbon neutral replacement for liquid fossil fuels. The catch? The process is costly and unlikely ever to compete with gasoline produced from fossil fuels without a punishing tax on carbon emissions. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)

China’s biomass-to-electricity industry is booming. Thanks to favorable government tax policies, subsidized energy prices and fat giveaways from the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the Chinese government has approved more than 70 biomass-to-electricity plants. More than 30 of the plants are now operating, with a total capacity of about 3,000 megawatts, or 0.37% of China’s total power capacity. (Xina Xie and Robert Bryce, Energy Tribune)

The U.S. leads the world in innovative medical sciences, therapies and business models

As America’s health care sector is being revamped, few have addressed how these plans might affect medical innovation. The United States leads the world in such innovation, generating most of the medical discoveries, drugs, devices and procedures that improve health throughout the world. That’s one feature of American health care that should not be thrown out with the bath water.

My latest HND piece describes the new CareBot™ from Gecko Systems, and how products like it could save money and lives.

As the baby boomers get older and sicker, more people will be homebound, and require care. Even the most dedicated human caregiver can't be there all the time, so who would be watching the patient when that happens?

Moreover, as the Feds start taking over health care, and even now with Medicare paying for much that involves seniors, there will be continuing pressure to reduce costs. Machines like the CareBot™ can remind the patient to take their meds, interact with them in all sorts of ways, and even notify emergency services, should human interaction be required.

While providing care services for the homebound is not usually considered part of the high-tech world, with robots entering this space, it is now.

The Left tends to dismiss property rights as being for the rich and powerful. But the rich and powerful usually can take care of themselves whether their rights are formally recognized or not. It is the poor and middle class who most need legally enforceable property rights.

No where is that more clear than in cases of eminent domain. The government rarely moves against the rich and powerful, seizing their lands to redistribute to the poor. Most often the government takes the property of the poor and middle class to redistribute to the rich and influential.

If the courts took the Constitution seriously the outcome of this case would not be in doubt. But today the Constitution only occasionally affects the operations of modern American government. Let’s hope that principle trumps politics when the case reaches New York’s top court. (Doug Bandow, Cato at liberty)

CHICAGO - The radiation risk from full-body scanners used to improve airport security is low and unlikely to raise an individual's risk of cancer, U.S. experts said on Wednesday.

Airports in Britain, the Netherlands and Canada have said they plan to use full-body scanners to foil future terror attempts like the Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound flight.

The United States has tested 40 whole-body scanners as part of a pilot program started after the Sept. 11 attacks, and this past October ordered 150 more.

There are two types of machines -- millimeter wavelength imaging and backscatter X-ray scanners. Both are used to see under clothes and identify unusual objects.

Only one -- backscatter X-ray machines -- expose individuals to ionizing radiation such as that used in common medical X-rays.

But the radiation levels are well below the threshold that could be considered a risk to an individual's health, said Dr. James Thrall of the American College of Radiology and chief of radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

"All of the concerns that we have about the medical use of X-rays really don't apply to these devices," Thrall said in a telephone interview.

"The exposure is extremely low and the energy of the X-rays is also very, very low," he said.

"When X-rays are used for medical imaging purposes, they have to be energetic enough to get through the human body. The X-rays used in the backscatter machines in airports have such low energy that they literally bounce off the skin. That is what backscatter implies," Thrall said. (Reuters)

NEW YORK - Young children whose mothers took folic acid supplements in late pregnancy may have an increased risk of developing asthma, a new study hints.

The findings, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, appear to be the first to link mothers' use of folic acid in pregnancy to their children's later asthma risk.

Researchers emphasize that it is too early to give pregnant women any specific advice based on the results.

Moreover, the study does not implicate folic acid use in early pregnancy.

This is an important finding, note the researchers, because adequate folic acid around the time of conception helps lower the risk of certain birth defects of the brain and spine. Known as neural tube defects, these anomalies include spina bifida, a paralyzing defect of the spine, and anencephaly, a fatal defect where most or all of the brain fails to develop.

Experts advise women to take 400 micrograms of folic acid per day shortly before conceiving and in the first trimester of pregnancy, a critical window of time when neural tube defects take shape.

The current findings "don't contradict" that advice, lead researcher Dr. Michael Davies, of the University of Adelaide in Australia, told Reuters Health in an email.

However, he added, since folic acid is necessary only in the first trimester to prevent neural tube defects, further studies should look at whether more-specific guidelines on folic acid use during the remainder of pregnancy can and should be developed. (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK - Getting enough selenium in your diet could help protect you from cancer of the esophagus, a large new study suggests.

People with the highest levels of this antioxidant mineral were at the lowest risk of developing squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus, Dr. Jessie Steevens of Maastricht University Medical Center in The Netherlands and her colleagues found.

The amount of selenium in the soil where food is grown determines its selenium content. There's some evidence for a link between selenium levels and stomach and esophageal cancer, and Steevens and colleagues say it's important to look at subtypes of these cancers separately because they are likely to have different causes. (Reuters Health)

When I heard the news, released in timely fashion on New Year's Eve, that a think-tank with strong links to David Cameron had come up with the idea of charging people who end up in A&E due to alcohol abuse a flat fee of £532, I thought it a brilliant idea, not least because the Royal College of Physicians had also weighed in. ( Liz Jones, Daily Mail)

Britain is facing an “obesity time-bomb” with the number of middle-aged people dying as a result of being overweight more than doubling in less than a decade, official figures have disclosed. (TDT)

Medicalizing the slightly chubby now, too? Weight-loss surgery may soon be widely used - Advancements in procedures that are usually a last resort for the obese are making them potentially suitable for moderately overweight and diabetic people.

After spending the majority of her 48 years trying, and failing, to slim down, Veronica Mahaffey was still 50 pounds overweight -- not morbidly obese by a long shot, but still far from the size she wanted. Worried about her health, she called a San Diego weight-loss surgery clinic last spring and asked for help.

She was told no.

At 185 pounds and with a body mass index of 28, the Ramona mother of four was not heavy enough to meet medical guidelines or insurance company qualifications for weight-loss surgery. Those standards require a BMI of 40 or higher, or 35 or higher for people with a related medical problem such as diabetes or sleep apnea.

"People would say, 'You look fine.' But I couldn't get into normal-size clothing. That's not fine," Mahaffey said. "And then I was told I was going to have to gain weight to qualify for surgery. That doesn't make sense."

Ultimately, she got the surgery through a clinical trial of one of several new weight-loss procedures. Now 10 pounds from her goal weight of 135, she says she looks better, feels better and is confident she'll no longer have to fight her weight.

Her experience may soon be shared by thousands of Americans. (LA Times)

NEW YORK - A New York City law requiring restaurants to post the calories of their menu items led Starbucks customers to consume 6 percent fewer calories per transaction, a Stanford University study found. (Reuters)

Obesity is now a bigger overall threat to people's health than smoking, according to results of the longest ongoing health study of adults in the United States.

Obesity causes as much or more disease than tobacco, says the study, conducted by researchers from Columbia University and the City College of New York. It adds that while smoking rates are starting to decline, obesity now shortens as many or even more healthy lifespans than tobacco use.

"Health impacts of obesity are, in many ways, much larger, than the health impacts of smoking," said Dr. Arya Sharma, chairman for obesity research and management at the University of Alberta. "(Smoking) in the end, is limited to heart disease and cancer." (Allison Cross, Canwest News Service)

LOS ANGELES — GlaxoSmithKline is getting into the movie business, pursuing an unusual and most likely controversial strategy to increase interest in a weight-loss drug.

Glaxo, the pharmaceutical giant behind Alli, an over-the-counter weight-loss product, has decided that a good way to educate Americans about obesity — and increase sales of Alli — is to finance a “hard-hitting” documentary about eating.

Although a budget has not been set, an Academy Award-winning director will be named on Jan. 25 at the Sundance Film Festival, a spokesman for Glaxo said.

To lend credibility to the project, Glaxo sought out a partner: the Creative Coalition, a nonprofit social and political advocacy organization backed by prominent entertainers like Alec Baldwin, Tim Daly and Susan Sarandon. The organization has decided to produce the film with Glaxo, aiming to deliver a finished picture this year. Although theatrical distribution is a goal, distribution plans are incomplete.

“This won’t be a marketing tool at all,” said Robin Bronk, the Creative Coalition’s executive director, adding that working with Glaxo on the project is “a natural progression of our mission to develop educational projects.” (NYT)

(Jan. 6, 2010) — A new computerised device that tracks portion size and how fast people eat is more successful in helping obese children and adolescents lose weight than standard treatments, according to research published online in the British Medical Journal.

The Mandometer device, a portable computerised weighing scale, was developed at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. It helps to retrain individuals to eat less and more slowly by providing real-time feedback during meal times. The device plots a graph showing the rate at which food actually disappears from the plate, compared to the ideal graph programmed in by a food therapist. (ScienceDaily)

Montreal, Canada - Researchers in Canada said one of the keys to fighting child obesity is by taking convenience stores out of close proximity of school zones, according to reports.

The team is conducting a study on cardiovascular and type 2 diabetes within more than 600 children from numerous income levels.

According to reports, the access to convenience stores seemed to be more of a catalyst for obesity than fast food restaurants.

The team of researchers, according to reports, suggests eliminating convenience stores within school zones, and working harder to contend with fast food restaurants. (AHN)

While many consider sugar-sweetened beverages as the main cause of today's obesity epidemic, a new study voices doubt about this belief.

Previous studies had reached controversial results regarding the link between the use of sugar-sweetened beverages and weight gain among youngsters.

"The purported link between soft drinks and other beverages and obesity risk is unclear and complicated, especially in youth," stressed lead researchers Mark A. Pereira.

According to the study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, there is no link between weight gain and the beverage drinking habits among teenagers.

The study found that the weak link between sugar-sweetened beverages and the obesity risk in youth is influenced by various factors particularly overall dieting practices rather than drinking diet soda per se.

Drinking little or no white milk, however, was associated with increased body mass index (BMI) values in these individuals. Those who drank a glass of milk nearly every day were reported to have lesser BMI gains over time. (PKH/HGH)

(Jan. 5, 2010) — Many people have traded in their gas-guzzling old "clunkers" for newer and more efficient models or cut back on energy use at home by opting for Energy Star appliances and compact fluorescent light bulbs. But, when it comes to our muscles, a little less efficiency might be just what the doctor ordered, suggests a report in the January Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication. (ScienceDaily)

Writing in the Carolina Journal, John Hood of the John Locke Foundation takes up the story of the overdue report on the national Head Start evaluation:

NEW YORK - Offering young kids a vegetable choice at dinner may not prompt them to eat more of these healthy foods, hint findings from a Dutch study.

Since vegetable eating is generally not popular among youngsters, Dr. Cees de Graaf, at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, and colleagues compared whether offering 4 to 6 year old children their choice of a vegetable before or at dinner, or no choice, might alter the amount of vegetable the kids actually ate.

The investigators first determined which of 8 commonly served vegetables - carrots, peas, cauliflower, broccoli, red cabbage, beets, French beans, and spinach - were favored by each of 156 boys and 147 girls attending Dutch primary school.

Then, during a restaurant meal with their parent, 110 of the kids had a pre-meal choice between equal amounts of one of two vegetables they previously said was "okay" to eat. Another 97 had a similar choice as the meal was served, while 96 had no choice and simply found a vegetable of their liking on the plate.

According to a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the researchers failed to see any noteworthy differences between the groups in veggie intake. (Reuters Health)

Is environmentalism a religion? At NPR it is — yet again. I thought the latest story started off oddly — talking about “the uneasy relationship between religion and science” and saying that lefty novelist Margaret Atwood thinks that ”in the future we could see a religion that combines religion and science.” But it’s not the case that all religions have problems with all science, is it? So I was dubious about the premise of the story.

And then — what new kind of religion does Margaret Atwood envision? Well, you could write it yourself:

Novelist Michael Crichton said that environmentalism had all the trappings of a religion: “Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday.” Atwood is filling it out with saints and hymns. (David Boaz, Cato at liberty)

On Christmas Day, a Nigerian-born terrorist named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound passenger airplane. Only the bravery of a fellow passenger prevented the catastrophe. President Obama called the terror attempt a "systemic failure" on the part of American national security agencies. In particular, he blamed the CIA for the foul-up.

There is no doubt that the CIA should have done something more to prevent this attack. But, then again, President Obama has been keeping them busy.

With global warming.

Seriously. (Ben Shapiro, Townhall)

As I said yesterday, one of our jobs this year is to wipe the complacent smiles off the smug faces of the lobbyists, “experts”, “scientists”, politicians and activists pushing AGW.

This is why I am so glad to report that Michael Mann – creator of the incredible Hockey Stick curve and one of the scientists most heavily implicated in the Climategate scandal – is about to get a very nasty shock. When he turns up to work on Monday, he’ll find that all 27 of his colleagues at the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University have received a rather tempting email inviting them to blow the whistle on anyone they know who may have been fraudulently misusing federal grant funds for climate research.

Under US law, regardless of whether or not a prosecution results, the whistleblower stands to make very large sums of money: it is based on a percentage of the total government funds which have been misused, in this case perhaps as much as $50 million. (Hat tip: John O’Sullivan of the wonderful new campaigning site www.climategate.com) (James Delingpole, TDT)

THE Climategate scandal continues to unfold. The thousands of emails leaked to the internet from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia reveal a tight-knit, influential group of scientists whose attitude to their profession is, to say the least, distorted.

It seems that a religious belief in disastrous climate change has destroyed their common sense and their appreciation of what is the appropriate way to carry out research. (Garth Paltridge, The Australian)

The questions Dr Pachauri still has to answer - At the least, Dr Rajendra Pachauri's IPCC position as the world's "top climate official" has been earning a substantial income for Teri, the institute he runs.

It was not just in Britain last week that we all shivered through pre-Christmas snow, ice and cold. Blizzards sweeping across Europe, from the Channel Tunnel to Moscow, killed more than 100 people. Even the beaches of Nice and the gondolas of Venice lay under a blanket of white.

Across the Atlantic, as the northern hemisphere was plunged into its third freezing winter in succession, violent snowstorms left more than two thirds of the US and almost the whole of Canada under December snow for the first time in decades. In the wake of that acrimonious shambles in Copenhagen, ever more questions are now being asked not only over the validity of the science behind the belief that man-made CO2 is causing runaway global warming but about the methods being used to meet that supposed threat. (Christopher Booker, TDT)

The man above, appropriately attired in the Chairman Mao outfit, is Rajendra Pachauri. Whether you realize it or not, he is of immense importance to you. He is rich. He is immensely powerful. He has financial interests hidden under a hundred different rocks. And if he gets his way, he will be stealing money out of your pocket and significantly lessening your quality of life. Remember that as you read this post. (Wolf Howling)

Climate change scepticism is likely to surge in 2010 and could exacerbate "hardship" for the planet's poorest people, one of the world's leading authorities on climate change has told the Guardian.

It is often said by perceptive observers that a disconnect is in evidence in many countries between a public that want stringent action to tackle climate change and what governments are actually doing. (Rajendra Pachauri, The Guardian)

Some of the bastards responsible for subverting public understanding of climate change (Michael Roddy & Ian Murphy, Beast)

Cupping their hands near holes drilled for cable routing, workers at the Boeing Company’s four-acre data processing site near Seattle noticed this year that air used to keep the computers cool was seeping through floor openings.

Mindful of the company’s drive to slash electricity consumption by 25 percent, they tucked insulation into holes there and at five similar sites. The resulting savings are projected at $55,000, or some 685,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a year.

Yet Boeing’s goal is not just to save money. The hope is to keep pace with other companies that have joined in a vast global experiment in tracking the carbon dioxide emissions generated by industry.

Boeing and other enterprises are voluntarily doing what some might fiercely resist being forced to do: submitting detailed reports on how much they emit, largely through fossil fuel consumption, to a central clearinghouse. (NYT)

Fresh from the fiasco in Copenhagen and with a failure in the U.S. Senate looming this coming year, the climate-change lobby is already shifting to Plan B, or is it already Plan D? Meet the carbon tort.

Across the country, trial lawyers and green pressure groups—if that's not redundant—are teaming up to sue electric utilities for carbon emissions under "nuisance" laws.

A group of 12 Gulf Coast residents whose homes were damaged by Katrina are suing 33 energy companies for greenhouse gas emissions that allegedly contributed to the global warming that allegedly made the hurricane worse. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and seven state AG allies plus New York City are suing American Electric Power and other utilities for a host of supposed eco-maladies. A native village in Alaska is suing Exxon and 23 oil and energy companies for coastal erosion.

What unites these cases is the creativity of their legal chain of causation and their naked attempts at political intimidation. "My hope is that the court case will provide a powerful incentive for polluters to be reasonable and come to the table and seek affordable and reasonable reductions," Mr. Blumenthal told the trade publication Carbon Control News. "We're trying to compel measures that will stem global warming regardless of what happens in the legislature."

Mull over that one for a moment. Mr. Blumenthal isn't suing to right a wrong. He admits that he's suing to coerce a change in policy no matter what the public's elected representatives choose. (WSJ)

SLF began work on global warming issues in 2006 with investigations into mass tort/class action lawsuits filed after Hurricane Katrina alleging public nuisance claims against American industry for “causing” alleged global warming that caused the destructive hurricane. During the investigation, SLF uncovered scientific evidence by leading credible scientists that “global warming”/climate change is not the “consensus” established by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its reports. Further investigation – as well as review of recent disclosures by a whistleblower at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Copenhagen conference failures, and “Climategate” disclosures of alleged data fraud – reveal that the matter of human-caused (anthropogenic) climate change is anything but “settled science.”

Partners in this effort, including the Science & Public Policy Institute, Foundation for Fair Civil Justice, as well as like-minded organizations that have been studying and publicizing the various facets of the “global warming” controversy, including Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation, CATO Institute, and the Independent Women’s Forum, among others, reflect the growing concern that EPA and congressional action is premature, based on unsettled science, and potentially illegal and unconstitutional. (SLF)

WASHINGTON - A beef industry group has challenged a ruling by U.S. environmental regulators that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health, saying the move would hurt agriculture.

The ruling earlier this month by the Environmental Protection Agency earlier opens the way for regulation of six heat-trapping gases without new laws passed by Congress.

Livestock farms emit carbon dioxide from the tailpipes of machinery and trucks, while waste from cattle also emits methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association filed a petition in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals this week, saying EPA climate regulations would hurt large farms.

"This unilateral move by the EPA jeopardizes our ability to remain competitive in the global marketplace," said Tamara Theis, chief environmental counsel for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. (Reuters)

PARIS - French ministers scrambled on Wednesday to rescue a carbon tax aimed at cutting energy consumption, which was annulled by the Constitutional Court just 48 hours before it was due to come into force. (Reuters)

The French Constitutional Council annulled the tax, hailed by President Nicolas Sarkozy as a ground-breaking tool to fight climate change, on Tuesday on the grounds that it offered too many exemptions.

After the Constitutional Council complained that some 93 percent of industrial emissions were exempt from the tax, Lagarde told French radio this would change in a reworked version to be presented next year. (Reuters)

French ministers have been scrambling to come up with a workable system for compensating companies that are already part of a European Union emissions trading scheme, while closing the many loopholes that led to the failure of the first proposal. (Reuters)

PARIS - Large French companies that pollute heavily will be penalized under new carbon tax legislation but are likely to pay variable rates, French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said in remarks published on Tuesday. (Reuters)

Even as many members of Congress resist as too hard or too costly the steps necessary to address global warming, American cities and states — the largest of which have carbon footprints bigger than those of most nations — have quietly been making serious commitments to curb emissions. Instead of finding reasons to do nothing, Congress should build on these actions to fashion a national response to climate change.

According to a recent study by Environment America, an advocacy group, about half of the states have broad plans and specific regulations aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions. When fully realized, these actions would cut emissions by over 7 percent between now and 2020 — a sizable distance toward the 17 percent reductions President Obama promised at Copenhagen. (NYT)

These days, screwing with the environment could cost you: The failed summit in Copenhagen has spawned the idea for a carbon surcharge in global trade. Just how serious are the threats from Western politicians against China & Co.? International lawyers and environmental economists are skeptical. (Spiegel)

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that disappointment over the outcome of the Copenhagen climate change summit was justified, hardening a widespread verdict that the conference had been a failure. (Reuters)

LONDON: Britain's former deputy prime minister, John Prescott, has defended China's role in the Copenhagen climate change summit, saying the blame for its flawed outcome must lie with the US and its President, Barack Obama. (SMH)

Dave Stockton looks at the outcome of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change

After two years of preparation and two weeks of face-to-face negotiation, the conference that was supposed to establish legally binding limits on emissions and to agree sources of funding to help protect poorer countries has failed, and failed utterly. The 15th United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP15) drew world leaders, environment ministers, NGOs, and journalists to Copenhagen. In all, some 50,000 came to this first ever global conference to try to avert catastrophic climate change. By any standard, this was a conference of historic significance. All the more significant, then, that it failed, and failed utterly. (League for the Fifth International)

German Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen talks to SPIEGEL about the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit, why neither China nor the US can take the lead in the fight against global warming and Germany's role in the new world order. (Spiegel)

"I've got an idea about how we can actually move this forward over the next few months and I'll be working on this," Brown told the BBC, when asked what came next after the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen.

"I think it's not impossible that the groundwork that was done at Copenhagen could lead to what you might call a global agreement that everybody is happy to stand by," Brown said. (Reuters)

NEW DELHI - The grouping of China, India, Brazil and South Africa has emerged as a significant force in Copenhagen and they could lead the way in future negotiations, the head of the U.N. climate panel said on Wednesday.

A climate change meeting ended last week in Copenhagen with a non-legally binding political agreement at the last moment between the United States and the big developing countries -- China, India, Brazil and South Africa that forms the BASIC group.

The next climate change meet is in Mexico next year, where countries hope to reach a legally binding agreement. (Reuters)

BRASILIA - Brazil will make its ambitious 2020 greenhouse gas emissions targets legally binding even though global climate talks failed this month, the country's environment minister said on Monday.

"We will fully comply with the targets. It doesn't matter that Copenhagen didn't go as well as we had hoped," Environment Minister Carlos Minc told reporters after meeting with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Lula will veto three items from a climate bill approved by Congress last month but would maintain the emissions targets, Minc said.

"The targets were maintained, which is the most important. Brazil will have a strong climate change policy," he said. (Reuters)

The Met Office gives us the warmist weather - The UK's official weather forecasters are determined that winters should be mild, in the face of the frozen facts, says Christopher Booker

Shortly after midnight on Friday morning, as 200,000 merrymakers were departing from the Thames after enjoying a spectacular fireworks show in sub-zero temperatures, flakes of snow began to fall on Whitehall. In light of the Met Office's prediction that this would be a "mild" winter, with temperatures above average, it seemed an apt way to start the New Year. But hasn't the time come for us to stop treating the serial inaccuracy of Met Office forecasts as just a joke and see it for what it is – a national scandal?

The reason the Met Office so persistently gets its seasonal forecasts wrong is that it has been hi-jacked from the role for which we pay it nearly £200 million a year, to become one of the world's major propaganda engines for the belief in man-made global warming. Over the past three years, it has become a laughing stock for forecasts which are invariably wrong in the same direction. (Christopher Booker, TDT)

Arctic air and record snow falls gripped the northern hemisphere yesterday, inflicting hardship and havoc from China, across Russia to Western Europe and over the US plains.

There were few precedents for the global sweep of extreme cold and ice that killed dozens in India, paralysed life in Beijing and threatened the Florida orange crop. Chicagoans sheltered from a potentially killer freeze, Paris endured sunny Siberian cold, Italy dug itself out of snowdrifts and Poland counted at least 13 deaths in record low temperatures of about minus 25C (-13F).

The heaviest snow yesterday hit northeastern Asia, which is suffering its worst winter weather for 60 years. More than 25 centimetres (10in) of snow covered Seoul, the South Korean capital — the heaviest fall since records began in 1937. (The Times)

BEIJING: Freak snowstorms and record low temperatures sweeping northern China are linked to global warming, say Chinese officials.

But, unlike the unseasonal snow falls that hit Beijing at the start of winter, the dump this week appears to have no link to the Government's relentless efforts to change the micro climate. (SMH)

SYDNEY - Pacific Ocean temperatures remained at levels typical of a drought-bringing El Nino weather pattern, Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said on Wednesday.

The bureau said in its latest fortnightly report that central Pacific Ocean surface temperatures are now at their warmest level since the El Nino of 1997-98, exceeding temperatures observed in both the 2002-03 and 2006-07 events.

"Similarly, cloudiness and rainfall near the equator remains enhanced, while eastern Australian rainfall remains low; all typical of a mature El Nino event," the bureau said. (Reuters)

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) and their political echos have been all over the media today with the claim that the years 2000 to 2009 have been the hottest decade in Australia.

Lacking the resources to quickly check the entirety of the BoM claim, I checked Alice Springs data – being at the core of our hot land. The tenuous BoM claim comes crashing to earth so quickly – in the 1990-1999 decade. The average mean annual temperature in the Alice for the decade 2000 to 2009 is 21.441 degrees C. Then the average for the next decade – 1990 to 1999 is 21.645. And yes their claim also fails in the 1880’s. ( Warwick Hughes)

FOR the many disappointments of the recent climate talks in Copenhagen, there was at least one clear positive outcome, and that was the progress made on a program called Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Forest Degradation. Under this program, key elements of which were agreed on at Copenhagen, developing countries would be compensated for preserving forests, peat soils, swamps and fields that are efficient absorbers of carbon dioxide, the primary heat-trapping gas linked to global warming.

This approach, which takes advantage of the power of nature itself, is an economical way to store large amounts of carbon. But the program is limited in that it includes only those carbon sinks found on land. We now need to look for similar opportunities to curb climate change in the oceans. (NYT)

The Times has withdrawn an advert that aimed to boost its environmental credentials after complaints to the UK Advertising Standards Agency.

The advert claimed "climate change has allowed the Northeast Passage to be used as a commercial shipping route for the first time," according to The Register.

The Northeast Passage - a trade route linking North European and Siberian ports to Asia in summer months - has been open since 1934, according to The Register, and was made available as a route for international traffic after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The Advertising Standards Agency received 29 complaints in response to The Times' claim.

"We contacted News International Ltd and they agreed proactively to withdraw the advert," said an ASA spokesperson.

Last year, The Times retracted another advert, which claimed that the world's oceans would be free of fish by 2048. (New Scientist)

For those who believe the manmade climate change theory, the new year cannot get here fast enough. As 2009 comes to a close, many are faced with the realizations that not only are they losing in the court of public opinion, the ‘consensus’ about anthropogenic global warming is far from solid. The year saw preeminent scientists join the chorus of those saying that other drivers besides man influence the climate, a scandal erupted that shook the very foundation of climate science and a much touted climate summit fell into disarray. (Tony Hake, Examiner)

Just how endangered is the polar bear? It depends on whom you ask.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -- as well as many polar-bear biologists -- say that global warming is destroying so much of the bears' icy habitat that the species could be nearly wiped out in the next 100 years. The U.S. is pushing to ban global trade in polar bears at an international meeting in March.

Canada says it has "considerable concern" over polar bears' future, but that it is unclear how much Arctic ice will be lost and what effect the melts will have on the wildlife that lives there.

Then there is Solomon Awa, a resident of Iqaluit in Canada's Arctic northeast, who like many Inuit is seeing more polar bears than ever when he goes hunting. "I've seen polar bears are not declining," says Mr. Awa. "Actually, there are increasing numbers." (WSJ)

LOS ANGELES - Earth's various ecosystems, with all their plants and animals, will need to shift about a quarter-mile per year on average to keep pace with global climate change, scientists said in a study released on Wednesday.

How well particular species can survive rising worldwide temperatures attributed to excess levels of heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases emitted by human activity hinges on those species' ability to migrate or adapt in place.

The farther individual species -- from shrubs and trees to insects, birds and mammals -- need to move to stay within their preferred climate, the greater their chance of extinction. (Reuters)

NEW data showing last year was the second-hottest on record has reignited political division over climate change policy, with the government seizing on the figures to declare Tony Abbott unfit for office.

Environment Minister Peter Garrett yesterday shattered the political truce of the holiday period, launching a blistering attack on the Opposition Leader and demanding he accept the reality of climate change.

But as Mr Garrett warned that climate change would kill people in the next decade, Mr Abbott counter-punched, accusing the government of politicising natural tragedies such as floods and bushfires for political gain. He said he accepted that climate change was real, but disagreed with the government's plan to tackle the problem by creating a new tax - the carbon emissions trading scheme.

"Let's take direct action," Mr Abbott said. "Let's not raise the price of daily life." (The Australian)

THE Federal Government has said climate data showing last year was Australia's second-hottest on record means the Senate should pass the emissions trading scheme next month.

The Bureau of Meteorology annual statement said temperatures were quickly rising above the long-term average at a level ''consistent with global warming''.

In line with most other world regions, Australia had its hottest decade since modern record-keeping began.

The Opposition said it was cynical to link the data to the emissions trading legislation, and said if emissions needed to be cut then ''direct action'', such as changing soil composition to absorb more carbon, would suffice.

But the Government claimed science was on its side. (Sydney Morning Herald)

YOU say I am one of "those who argue that climate change does not represent a global market failure". Yet it is only recently that opinion sufficient to constitute a market signal became apparent in the documents of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is, however, a political rather than a scientific entity. There has scarcely been time for a "market failure".

Besides, corporations are falling over themselves to cash in on the giant financial fraud against the little guy that carbon taxation and trading have already become in the goody-two-shoes EU, and will become in Australia if you get your way. (Christopher Monckton, The Australian) | FULL TEXT: Monckton letter (PDF)

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called for an end to the practice of governments trying to buy support for their failing Ration-N-Tax Scheme using tax money raised in an underhand fashion from the same people.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense” Mr Viv Forbes, said that since the “Climate Scare-a-Day” campaign of 2009 has failed to spook the people, the New Year will see acceleration of the next ploy - “carbon bribery and corruption”.

“This dodge aims to buy supporters with promises of handouts, exemptions, subsidies, “research” grants and market privileges.

“Handouts and privileges cost money. This is why politicians will promote carbon taxes, both direct ones like that proposed recently by France, and underhand ones like the Australian Ration-N-Tax Scheme which relies on the sale of carbon emission permits.

“The political challenge for warmist politicians is to publicise the bribes and subsidies, but conceal the taxes needed to fund them.

“The Australian Government Treasury mandarins have already concocted figures to show how the government can use their carbon tax slush fund to bribe 2.9 million voters with handouts. But their paltry bribe, estimated at $190 per voter per year, will not compensate for the loss of their jobs to China and India.

“And the other 11 million Australian voters will be much worse off.

“The rejection of the corrupt French carbon tax scheme by their Constitutional Court is a warning to all politicians –

“Don’t bury carbon, bury carbon bribery and corruption”.

Viv Forbes
Carbon Sense Coalition

New energy efficient traffic lights have been installed in several states across the country, helping cities save thousands of dollars this year, but the lights have a major drawback when it comes to wintry weather.

The bulbs do not burn hot enough to melt snow and or ice and can become crusted over during a winter storm. When this happens, drivers can no longer tell if a light is green, red or yellow. (Johnny Kelly, Examiner)

Aon Benfield, the world’s premier reinsurance intermediary and capital advisor, today releases its Annual Global Climate and Catastrophe report, which analyses global natural perils in 2009 and the resultant economic and insured losses.

The 68-page report, published by the company’s Impact Forecasting team, who provide catastrophe modeling solutions to Aon Benfield clients, reveals that insured losses from worldwide natural catastrophic events were USD20bn with a total economic loss of USD58bn. Catastrophe activity levels were similar to the past two years, comprising at least 222 separate events compared to 213 events in 2008 and 217 events in 2007. Overall, it was a very light catastrophe year, for the third year in a row. (Press Release)

William M. Gray
(written in 1996)

Department of Atmospheric Science
Colorado State University
Ft. Collins, CO 80523

1. BACKGROUND

Over the last quarter century the global circulation has behaved in a number of distinctive ways from its general characteristics in the prior quarter century (mid-1940s to late 1960s). In comparison with the earlier period or with long-term climatology, the period since 1970 has seen:

1. positive southern minus northern hemisphere SST anomaly conditions,
2. stronger middle latitude westerlies over the Pacific and Atlantic and less North Atlantic blocking action,
3. more frequent and stronger El Nino conditions,
4. Sahel drought conditions,
5. less frequent Atlantic major hurricane activity,
6. small increase of surface global temperatures, and
7. many other changes.

These recent quarter century changes appear to be of natural origin. The author hypothesizes that they are a consequence of the abrupt slowdown in the Atlantic thermohaline (or conveyor) circulation which occurred in the late 1960s. This oceanic circulation slowdown was a consequence of the sharp decrease in North Atlantic salinity at this time (The Great Salinity Anomaly). But more recent observations show that Atlantic salinity has been increasing in recent years. It is likely that we are presently seeing a change to a stronger thermohaline circulation. This will likely cause a reversal of the above listed conditions. Back and forth shifts in the strength of the thermohaline circulation on multi-decadal time scales have been documented or inferred from a variety of observational sources going back centuries and thousands of years to the last ice age.

If a return to global circulation conditions more typical of the period 25-50 years ago does occur in the next few years then we should see a general reversal of the above listed global circulation characteristics including a small decrease in average global surface temperature. (William M. Gray)

The nation’s climate change science desk gets a lot smaller come December 21 with the resignation from The New York Times of science writer Andy Revkin.

With its paring of some 100 newsroom and editorial employees, it’s not at all clear how the Times itself can fill the substantial void. Even more problematic, given the dire financial conditions facing most metropolitan daily newspapers, are prospects for others to move in.

The Associated Press’s Washington, D.C.-based science reporter, Seth Borenstein, is probably best suited to lay claim to the crown as the nation’s best climate science journalist regularly reaching a broad general audience, an assessment unlikely to please dyed-in-the-wool Revkin bashers and climate skeptics.

But AP probably trails the Times in terms of respect and influence in policy circles, and Borenstein has a broad science beat, far broader even than the climate/population/sustainability focus where Revkin excelled. It’s unlikely Borenstein will be able to focus as exclusively on climate change as Revkin has.

Like the “hacked e-mails” that could shift the political ground under the politics of climate change, Revkin’s confirmation of his resignation could hardly have come at a more challenging time: in the midst of his covering the long-awaited Copenhagen negotiations; in the steamy heat of the hacked e-mails fiasco; and in the months leading up to possible Senate action on “cap and trade” legislation. (Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media)

Today is my last day as a staff reporter for The New York Times. After spending more than a quarter of a century writing about science and the environment, more than half of that time here, I am switching gears for the second half of my professional life. I’ll be continuing to blog, write and work with video. And I’ll certainly keep contributing to this remarkable newspaper as it works to sustain a reliable view of the fast-changing planet while straddling the uncertain interface between the front page and home page. (Andy Revkin)

The nation’s top scientists and spies are collaborating on an effort to use the federal government’s intelligence assets — including spy satellites and other classified sensors — to assess the hidden complexities of environmental change. They seek insights from natural phenomena like clouds and glaciers, deserts and tropical forests. (NYT)

Washington, DC - As terrorists continue to infiltrate America, the Obama Administration is tasking some of our nation's most elite intelligence-gathering agencies to divert their resources to environmental scientists researching global warming.

Experts with The National Center for Public Policy Research are decrying this practice as a distraction from important counterterrorism duties. They further question if it is a possible avenue to renew climate change subterfuge already plaguing some of these scientists.

"This is another example of President Obama not taking terrorism seriously," said Deneen Borelli, a fellow with the National Center's Project 21 black leadership network. "Our enemies must be laughing at the Obama Administration's incompetence."

A January 5 article in the New York Times reported that the White House restarted a program in which scientists are obtaining classified intelligence data from the Central Intelligence Agency and National Reconnaissance Office. Information from these secret government surveillance programs is being used to track climate change.

A similar program was discontinued by the Bush Administration in 2001. Former vice president and current climate change entrepreneur Al Gore began lobbying for its renewal in 2008. It now reportedly has the strong support of CIA Director Leon Panetta.

"Given the very real threat posed by terrorists, it is ridiculous and downright dangerous to divert any intelligence resources to monitoring polar ice," added Project 21's Deneen Borelli. "Its said this won't hinder regular intelligence-gathering, but it's also clear that agencies can't yet share data and track a terrorism suspect who was identified by his own father. It's unwise to further distract our intelligence network by forcing it to consult with scientists about icebergs, polar bears and sea lions. The Obama Administration appears to be putting a left-wing political agenda before the safety and security of our nation." (National Center)

(Jan. 1, 2010) — The most recent studies by researchers at ETH Zurich show that in the 1940s Swiss glaciers were melting at an even-faster pace than at present. This is despite the fact that the temperatures in the 20th century were lower than in this century. Researchers see the main reason for this as the lower level of aerosol pollution in the atmosphere. (ScienceDaily)

(Dec. 31, 2009) — Most of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activity does not remain in the atmosphere, but is instead absorbed by the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems. In fact, only about 45 percent of emitted carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere. (ScienceDaily)

Climate science is a productive pursuit with Nobel Prizes, an Oscar, billions in research funding, massive tax grabs and wealth for exploiters. Continuation of these activities partly validated the claim the disclosed files from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) are of small consequence. ( Tim Ball, CFP)

A peer-reviewed study by a respected Canadian physicist blames the interplay of cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons for 20th-century warming. The CFCs are now gone, and so is warming — perhaps for the next 50 years. (IBD)

THE Copenhagen climate change summit closed two weeks ago in confusion, disagreement and, for some, disillusionment. When the political process shows such a lack of unanimity, it is pertinent to ask whether the science behind the politics is as settled as some participants maintain.

Earlier this month (The Australian, December 9) I commented on recently published results showing huge swings in atmospheric carbon dioxide, both up and down, at a time of global cooling 33.6 million years ago.

Paul Pearson and co-authors in a letter (The Weekend Australian, December 11) took exception to my use of their data and claimed I misrepresented their research, a claim I reject since I quoted their data (the veracity of which they do not contest) but offered an alternative hypothesis, namely that the present global warming theory (which was not the subject of their study) is inconsistent with the CO2-temperature variations of a past age.

Some senior scientists, who are adherents of orthodox global warming theory, do not like authors publishing data that can be used to argue against orthodoxy, a point made by unrelated authors with startling clarity in the Climategate leaked emails from the University of East Anglia.

In the scientific method, however, re-examination of data and formulation of alternative hypotheses is the essence of scientific debate. In any case, the debate on the link between atmospheric CO2 and global temperature will continue since it is not dependent on a single result. (Michael Asten, The Australian)

THE weather bureau's latest climate statement has nothing to suggest that warmer temperatures are the result of increased carbon dioxide emissions, climate change sceptics say.

And despite the new figures indicating that the past decade was the warmest since record-keeping began, the sceptics point to the fact that there has been relatively little upward shift in temperatures since the 1980s.

Meteorologist William Kininmonth, a former head of the Bureau of Meteorology's National Climate Centre, said yesterday the globe was still coming out of the Little Ice Age.

"The globe has been warming for the past 300 years and so it is not surprising that the recent decade is probably warmer than anything else we have experienced in the last century," he said.

"We don't understand the climate system that well, and there are a lot of unknowns about what is causing these variations from year to year. In the last decade temperatures haven't really risen very much. ( The Australian)

A new JRI briefing paper by Sir John Houghton links the biblical story of Joseph in Egypt and modern issues surrounding climate change. You can download Joseph, Pharaoh, and a Climate Crisis. (The John Ray Initiative)

Last night I began compiling a list of Peer-Reviewed articles that do not support the AGW theory and I came across this gem. Of course, if anyone actually plans to read all of these, this will keep you busy for quite some time. "Peter" provides us with an extensive list of links to Peer-Reviewed articles. (Nobody Reads My Blog)

SAN FRANCISCO— The Center for Biological Diversity and Turtle Island Restoration Network filed a formal notice today that they intend to sue the Obama administration for illegally delaying protection of penguins under the Endangered Species Act. The Department of the Interior failed to meet the December 19, 2009 legal deadline to finalize the listings of seven penguin species that are threatened by climate change and industrial fisheries. Until the listings are finalized, these penguins will not receive the Endangered Species Act protections they need to recover.

“While sea ice melts away and the oceans warm, the Obama administration is frozen in inaction. Instead of protecting penguins and taking meaningful steps to address global warming,” said Shaye Wolf, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, “our government is dragging its feet while penguins are marching toward extinction. (Center for Biological Diversity)

HOUSTON — A combination of frigid weather, expectations of an improving economy and new tensions between Russia and Belarus catapulted crude oil prices above $81 a barrel on Monday to the highest close in nearly 15 months. (NYT)

Household gas and electricity bills are expected to rocket fourfold to nearly £5,000 a year by the end of the decade to meet Government-imposed green targets.

And the price heavy industry will have to pay by 2020 is so high that energy-dependent firms could be wiped out, causing thousands of job losses, said an industry spokesman.

A massive rethink on the cost of 'green energy' is taking place in Whitehall among senior regulators and industry, leading some to question whether the public will be prepared to pay increasingly high bills for the UK to become greener than most countries. (Daily Mail)

In yet another measure of the economy’s troubles, a record number of households — 8.3 million — received federal aid to help pay their energy bills in 2009, up from a record 6.1 million in 2008. Based on early applications for 2010, more than 10 million families are likely to need help to keep the heat on this winter. Many of them have never needed help before. (NYT)

Pensioners burn books for warmth - Hard-up pensioners have resorted to buying books from charity shops and burning them to keep warm.

Volunteers have reported that ‘a large number’ of elderly customers are snapping up hardbacks as cheap fuel for their fires and stoves.

Temperatures this week are forecast to plummet as low as -13ºC in the Scottish Highlands, with the mercury falling to -6ºC in London, -5ºC in Birmingham and -7ºC in Manchester as one of the coldest winters in years continues to bite.

Workers at one charity shop in Swansea, in south Wales, described how the most vulnerable shoppers were seeking out thick books such as encyclopaedias for a few pence because they were cheaper than coal.

One assistant said: ‘Book burning seems terribly wrong but we have to get rid of unsold stock for pennies and some of the pensioners say the books make ideal slow-burning fuel for fires and stoves.

A lot of them buy up large hardback volumes so they can stick them in the fire to last all night.’

A 500g book can sell for as little as 5p, while a 20kg bag of coal costs £5.

Since January 2008, gas bills have risen 40 per cent and electricity prices 20 per cent, although people over 60 are entitled to a winter fuel allowance of between £125 and £400. (Metro)

Oil, coal and gas will continue to dominate global energy production and use in the 21st century, whether global warming activists like it or not, predicts Peter Odell. The only way realistically to reduce CO2 emissions would be through carbon capture and storage. (European Energy Review)

Oil sands are still a developing technology which needs high crude prices to be profitable Oil sands are still a developing technology which needs high crude prices to be profitable

The deal gives the Chinese company 60% control of Athabasca Oil Sands Corporation's MacKay and Dover oil sands deposits in Alberta province. The two are projected to yield five million barrels of oil, according to the company.

The sands contain the second-biggest store of oil in the world. (MercoPress)

Terry Cardwell has run coal fired power stations. He knows about the costs, efficiency and emissions from modern power stations. And he is frustrated at the lies, distortions and myths being spread about power generation. Being retired, he has no axe to grind, no master to serve and no agenda to push except concern for our future.

“We are all greenies in one form or another and care very much about our planet. The difference is most of us are realistic. Not in some idyllic utopia where everything can be made perfect by standing around holding a banner, chanting a slogan and being a general pain in the backside.”

For some plain truths from Terry on power and pollution see: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/coal-power-realities.pdf [PDF. 29 KB]

Waking up to a stocking full of coal is probably not the most exciting start to a Christmas morning. But at least it's got a better chance of increasing in value by next year than a Wii Fit or a Zhu Zhu Pet. (TDT)

PHILADELPHIA - As U.S. energy companies scramble to mine natural gas from shale deposits, state regulators are struggling to keep pace amid criticism that they lack the resources to enforce environmental laws.

Shale gas trapped deep underground is considered one of the most promising sources of U.S. energy and one that is generating jobs, royalties for landowners and tax revenue for cash-strapped state governments.

But environmentalists and small-town neighbors of drilling operations say officials have been slow to respond to their complaints of air and water pollution resulting from drilling, production or gas processing. (Reuters)

Total said it would take a 25 percent stake in Chesapeake's Barnett Shale gas fields in north Texas, paying $800 million in cash and providing $1.45 billion toward the fields' development over up to six years.

Analysts said the deal made strategic sense for France's largest company by market value and that the price was in line with recent transactions. (Reuters)

An EPA report on the divisive issue is the latest potential roadblock for energy companies seeking to exploit the Marcellus Shale formation, which state officials say may contain enough natural gas to satisfy U.S. demand for more than a decade. (Reuters)

New York City has now officially registered its ringing opposition to a proposal by state regulators to allow natural gas drilling in the watershed that supplies drinking water to more than eight million city residents. Albany should amend its proposal and put the area permanently off limits to drilling. (NYT)

In an effort to meet their obligations under the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target scheme, power firms discovered the cheapest way to game the system and make their targets was to send every household 2 compact fluorescent lamps, whether they were needed or not.

Early indications are that most of the unwanted 200 million CFL’s are headed straight to the landfill. Even if they are used, the mercury in those CFL’s will eventually end up in the trash.

200 million CFL’s were distributed by UK power firms, which equals 800kg of mercury. That’s 1,764lbs, which is a lot if you believe hysterical greens that worry about trace mercury in fish.

When the cause is perceived as ‘green’ Greenpeace has nothing to say about mercury dumping, but when industry does it they go nuts about the fallout:

More on the mercury toxic bombs that greens pushed into our homes here, here, here, here and here. (Daily Bayonet)

GUYUN VILLAGE, China — Some of the greenest technologies of the age, from electric cars to efficient light bulbs to very large wind turbines, are made possible by an unusual group of elements called rare earths. The world’s dependence on these substances is rising fast.

Just one problem: These elements come almost entirely from China, from some of the most environmentally damaging mines in the country, in an industry dominated by criminal gangs.

Western capitals have suddenly grown worried over China’s near monopoly, which gives it a potential stranglehold on technologies of the future. (NYT)

MAHANOY TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Suspended by ropes from the top of a giant wind turbine, two men slowly descended down a long, silvery blade. Then they got to work, and from 150 feet above the ground, the hum of a sander filled the air.
For Matt Touchette and Sequoia Haughey, it was another day at the office.

“Pretty gusty wind,” Mr. Touchette reported over a crackling radio from his bird’s-eye perch.

Rope specialists like Mr. Touchette and Mr. Haughey have long filled a range of niche jobs, like inspecting big dams, cleaning Mount Rushmore and repairing offshore oil platforms. But as wind farms have sprouted across the nation, rope companies have quickly expanded into a new line of work — fixing turbines so they last longer in the elements.

It’s a dream job for rock-climbing types. (NYT)

LONDON - New technology and careful choice of sites could slash projected costs for Britain's next round of offshore wind farm project by as much as 40 percent, the Carbon Trust, which advises the government, said on Tuesday.

Capital investment required for Round 3 offshore wind projects could fall to 45 billion pounds ($72.5 billion) from current projections of 75 billion, said officials from the independent body, set up by the government to help Britain meet carbon reduction targets.

While the Round 3 project to build 29 gigawatts (GW) by 2020 is a challenge equivalent to building eight Channel Tunnels in 10 years and requires a step-change in technology, it is achievable, Benj Sykes, Senior Technology Acceleration Manager, told reporters. (Reuters)

LONDON - Spain had to shut down some of its wind turbines on Wednesday as wet and windy weather caused a surge in green electricity generation at a time of low demand, grid operator Red Electrica said.

The country's thousands of wind turbines supplied a new record of 54.1 percent of demand early on Wednesday, forcing gas- and coal-fired power plants to run at minimum output to avoid system overload as hydropower companies drained brimming reservoirs.

"High wind output in the early hours of this morning, together with the high level of hydropower generation, due to reservoirs opening up after recent rains, forced the control center to cut thermal power to a technical minimum," Red Electrica said in a statement.

"Due to low demand at the moment this was not enough ... So the control center had to order wind power production to be cut between 4 am and 7 am this morning by 600 megawatts."

Spain has invested heavily in wind power generation over the last decade to cut carbon emissions and reduce its reliance on imported fuel. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON - Americans scrapped more automobiles than they bought last year as the ragged economy reduced demand and some major cities expanded mass transit service, according to a new report.

The United States scrapped 14 million autos while buying only 10 million last year, shrinking the country's car and light duty truck fleet to 246 million from a record high of 250 million, according to the report to be released on Wednesday by nonprofit group the Earth Policy Institute (EPI). (Reuters)

TORONTO - Quebec will become the first province in Canada to adopt California's strict auto emissions standards, the province's environment ministry said on Tuesday.

The new rules will come into effect on January 14 and will impose increasingly stringent limits on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cars and light trucks made between 2010 and 2016 that are sold in the province.

Emissions from vehicles will be cut by about 35 percent over the four years, from 187 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer for passenger vehicles to 127 grams per kilometer by 2016, Charles Larochelle, assistant deputy environment minister in Quebec, said in an interview. (Reuters)

OKLAHOMA CITY -- An alternative fuel for diesel engines is off to a shaky start this year though it emits fewer pollutants and cuts down on petroleum use because it's made from environmentally friendly waste and vegetable oil.

A federal tax credit that provided makers of biodiesel $1 for every gallon expired Friday. As a result, some U.S. producers say they will shut down without the government subsidy. ( Associated Press)

IT seems so distant, 1999. Bill Clinton had survived impeachment, his popularity hardly dented, Sept. 11 was just another date and music fans were enjoying a young singer named Britney Spears.

But there was a particular unease in the air. The so-called Y2K problem, the inability of computers to read dates beyond 1999 threatened to turn Jan. 1, 2000 into a nightmare. The issue had first been noticed by programmers in the 1950s, but had been ignored. As the turn of the century loomed, though, it seemed that humankind faced a litany of horrors. (Dennis Dutton, NYT)

Although it is too early to write the obituary for swine flu, medical experts, already assessing how the first pandemic in 40 years has been handled, have found that while luck played a part, a series of rapid but conservative decisions by federal officials worked out better than many had dared hope.

The outbreak highlighted many national weaknesses: old, slow vaccine technology; too much reliance on foreign vaccine factories; some major hospitals pushed to their limits by a relatively mild epidemic.

But even given those drawbacks, “we did a lot of things right,” concluded Dr. Andrew T. Pavia, chairman of the pandemic flu task force of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. (NYT)

The Food and Drug Administration is developing guidelines that will set tougher scientific standards for data from tests on humans that makers of medical devices submit when seeking approval of their products, a top agency official said. (NYT)

Great science will always trump junk science—eventually. My latest HND piece looks at novel biological warfare techniques against the mosquito, mankind's greatest enemy in the animal kingdom.

Those new methods, of course, represent the great science. The junk science was all the Rachel Carson inspired nonsense about DDT, that set the fight back a few decades.

It seems that a bacterium called Wolbachia, which infests 60 percent of all insects, can wreak havoc on mosquitoes, and also prevent them from being infected with dengue and malarial pathogens. Another tactic is to interfere with the mating process, that only occurs once in a lifetime for most mosquitoes.

To be sure, these are wonderful natural approaches, but they must be used in conjunction with—and not instead of—the tried and true techniques of insecticides and knocking out the breeding sites.

So what’s the most scrumptious, wholesome, exquisite, healthful, gratifying food in the world?

It’s not ambrosia, and it’s not even pepperoni pizza. Hint: It’s far cheaper. A year’s supply costs less than the cheapest hamburger.

Give up? Here’s another hint: It’s lifesaving for children and for women who may become pregnant. If you know of a woman who may become pregnant, make sure she gets this miracle substance.

A final hint: It was a lack of this substance that led to a tragedy that I encountered the other day at a hospital here in the Honduran capital. Three babies lay in cots next to one another with birth defects of the brain and spinal cord. (Nicholas D. Kristof, NYT)

My latest HND piece catalogs some of the verified health effects of coffee, and even traces its history back to an Arabian goatherd.

Owing—no doubt—to the caffeine buzz, coffee ranks second only to water in popularity worldwide. Also included is information on a unique low-acid coffee product, and details on one of the dumbest coffee scares of all time.

Yep, blaming pancreatic cancer on coffee is about as bad as junk science can get, and this was from Harvard, of all places.

NEW YORK - Air pollution may double the risk that an elderly person will be hospitalized for pneumonia, according to a new study.

"We have shown that air pollution exerts a strong effect on hospital admissions for pneumonia," Michael Jerrett, of the University of California, Berkeley, who was involved in the study, noted in an interview with Reuters Health.

About 600,000 people are hospitalized for pneumonia in the United States each year. Pneumonia is the leading cause of death in the elderly. (Reuters)

KEENE, N.H. — The wood stove was blazing in Rosemary Urato’s living room on Christmas Eve, giving off a hypnotic glow and only a hint of smoky smell. It is brand new and cleaner than its predecessor, which was dispatched to a scrapyard last month.

There it joined dozens of others — sooty Tempwoods and All Nighters, squat Vermont Castings and Fishers etched with pines — recently discarded by Keene residents. In return, the state gave the residents $1,000 toward the cost of a new stove that meets current emissions requirements. (NYT)

CHICAGO, IL, December 28, 2009 --//-- Early this month, top Republican Senator Charles E. Grassley sent letters to the American Cancer Society (ACS), besides the American Medical Association (AMA) and 31 other medical advocacy groups, asking them to provide detailed information on tax-deductible funds that they have received from drug and device makers. Such funds have encouraged these organizations to lobby on behalf of a wide range of industries and strongly influence public policy, says Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition. (WORLD-WIRE)

WASHINGTON, DC, December 31, 2009 - For the first time, the U.S. EPA intends to establish a Chemicals of Concern list and is beginning a process that could lead to regulations requiring risk reduction measures to protect human health and the environment.

The agency is taking action to control four groups of chemicals that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson says raise "serious health or environmental concerns."

"The American people are understandably concerned about the chemicals making their way into our products, our environment and our bodies," said Jackson, announcing the action Wednesday. "We will continue to use our authority under existing law to protect Americans from exposure to harmful chemicals and to highlight chemicals we believe warrant concern.

This is the first time the EPA has used the authority of the existing Toxic Substances Control Act, TSCA, to list chemicals that "may present an unreasonable risk of injury to health and the environment." (ENS)

A report conducted by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) has found that in 13 different California school districts, maintenance crews are using cleaning supplies that emit more than 450 different toxins into the air, many of which trigger asthma and lead to cancer.

The districts were chosen carefully and included ones from different regions of all different sizes. While some have begun implementing new cleaning protocols and pilot programs for testing safer cleaning supplies, data reveals that many toxic substances are still being used. (NaturalNews)

When its legislature convenes this year, Kansas will consider banning motorists from sending text messages. South Carolina will, too, and debate whether to prohibit drivers from using phones altogether, or requiring them to use hands-free devices when they call. New Jersey lawmakers have proposed banning drivers from manipulating a navigation system in a moving car.

In all, lawmakers have already proposed 200 bills to curb distracted driving, and policy analysts expect to see dozens more in the coming months. (NYT)

YOUNG children smacked by their parents may grow up to be happier and more successful than those who have never been hit, a study has found.

According to the research, children smacked up to the age of six were likely as teenagers to perform better at school and were more likely to carry out volunteer work and to want to go to university than their peers who had never been physically disciplined.

Only those children who continued to be smacked into adolescence showed clear behavioral problems.

Children’s groups and lawmakers in the UK have tried several times to have physical chastisement by parents outlawed. They claim it is a form of abuse that causes long-term harm to children and say banning it would send a clear signal that violence is unacceptable.

However, Marjorie Gunnoe, professor of psychology at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, said her study showed there was insufficient evidence to deny parents the freedom to choose how they discipline their children.

“The claims made for not spanking children fail to hold up. They are not consistent with the data,” said Gunnoe. ( NewsCore)

In a SPIEGEL interview, London banker and lay preacher Stephen Green, group chairman of HSBC, discusses the divide between his Christian faith and the pursuit of profit, the morality of being involved in the subprime mortgage business and whether he and his fellow bankers have learned anything from the financial crisis. (Spiegel)

The Sunday San Francisco Chronicle Business section has this story on unemployment soaring among Spain's youth by Nelson D. Schwartz, New York Times. As you will recall, Spain was on the forefront of going green. While Spain has traditionally suffered from relatively high unemployment, double the 9.8 percent average for the European Union, but the sharpest increase has been among young people. It has jumped from 17.5 percent three years ago to the current 42.9 percent. (Russ Steele, NC Media Watch)

WASHINGTON - Tidal forces parallel to a segment of the San Andreas Fault in central California may be causing non-volcanic tremors that could help predict earthquakes, researchers said on Wednesday.

Low-level tremors have long been associated with volcanoes, because they often warn of impending eruptions.

A study published in the journal Nature says these tremors beneath the San Andreas Fault could provide similar clues about earthquakes. (Reuters)

CHICAGO - As much as 100 million bushels of U.S. corn could be lost after heavy snowstorms in recent days likely delayed until spring the final stages of an already historically slow harvest, analysts and meteorologists said on Monday.

The harvest delays helped to push up corn futures more than 1 percent to a six-month high on Monday at the Chicago Board of Trade.

"There are 620 million bushels left in the field and we could lose 10 percent of that," said Joe Victor, analyst for Illinois-based research and consulting firm Allendale Inc.

The U.S. Agriculture Department last week in its final harvest update of the year said 5 percent of the corn crop was still in the fields.

And after much of the U.S. Midwest and Plains regions were pounded by heavy winter storms in past several days, it's likely to stay there until next year. (Reuters)

CAIRO - Egypt, the world's top wheat importer, is introducing new wheat varieties resistant to a mutant form of stem rust, an airborne fungus with the ability to annihilate entire crops.

"We have already started using these seeds and 40 tonnes are now being planted in the Nile Delta," Ayman Abouhadid, president of the country's Agricultural Research Center, told Reuters in an interview.

The fungus, which has plagued wheat since biblical times, was largely controlled in the 1950s when scientists passed out seeds with a gene to block the disease.

But a destructive new strain reappeared in Uganda in the late 1990s, once more posing a potentially serious threat to 80 percent of the world's wheat supplies.

Experts have said the only way to overcome the new fungus would be to replace the bulk of the world's commercial wheat with new seeds bred to fight it.

Egypt, which cultivates around 3 million feddans (1.26 million hectares) of wheat per year, has reacted fast in developing the new strains.

"We have two wheat varieties, Misr 1 and Misr 2, which we developed and are resistant to this new form of stem rust," Abouhadid said.

The new stem rust, termed Ug99, has travelled from Uganda to Kenya, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Yemen and subsequently went on to affect crops as far away as Iran and Afghanistan in less than a decade. (Reuters)

Ever since radiation from Chernobyl rained down on the UK 23 years ago, sales of sheep in affected areas have been restricted. But frustrated farmers now claim the meat is safe – and that testing should stop (The Guardian)

Born on September 29, 1898 he died on November 20, 1976. He was a Ukrainian agronomist and director of biology under Joseph Stalin. Rejecting traditional thought regarding Mendelian genetics and embryology he “reinterpreted Darwin’s thoughts to “fit the framework of what he called the ‘new creation biology’.” The only views that could be “scientific” under Lysenko had to be “consistent with social theory”, i.e. Stalin’s thoughts.

He supported the hybridization theories of Ivan Michurin that gained support from Stalin, which of course made his views “truth” and altered the entire structure of Russian biological thinking. This dominated the Russian field of biology for about 30 years and along with collectivization of the Russian farms they managed to starve millions to death. As a Darwinian evolutionist (versus Neo-Darwinism) he believed that evolution could be “forced” through something he called acquired inheritance. Furthermore anyone who disagreed with him was a scientific outcast and purged from their position, their jobs and in some cases died in concentrations camps.

As Director of the Institute of Genetics within the Soviet Union’s Academy of Sciences he stridently pushed the idea that plants could be forced to acquire characteristics that they had not demonstrated before through what is known as environmentally acquired inheritance, or theory of adaptation, originally promoted by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

It wasn’t just plants though. Lysenkoists believed that just as exercise could turn a normal man into a muscle man, training could “force” cows to “happily and naturally deliver 50 liters of milk per day” which would change their normal inheritable limits of production; genetics, which they rejected, notwithstanding; believing that they could imprint acquired characteristics and skills from one generation that could be passed on to the next generation. (it gets even more complicated and irrational as it goes along)

However, all his thinking was tied to the ‘social theories’ of Stalin and his communist cohorts. Bukharin, who was a “founding member of the Soviet Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a keen botanist”, stated in 1935 that “pure science pursued for its own sake would disappear, for the interests of scientists would spontaneously turn to problems of the current Five Year Plan”. (Rich Kozlovich, Paradigms and Demographics)

When species such as bees, birds, or frogs start disappearing, environmental activist groups are quick to blame global warming, pesticides, and other human activities. Yet it appears that natural factors are the cause.

Since 2004 honeybee populations have been succumbing to Colony Collapse Disorder, characterized by worker bees leaving their hives and dying off without returning. Loss rates have varied from 30 percent to 90 percent of regional colonies. Spanish researchers have reported that this sudden collapse is most likely caused by the parasite Nosema ceranae, not the human causes alleged by environmental activist groups. Once this was found, the team introduced fumagillin- an antibiotic- into the affected bee colonies. It cleared the parasite and halted colony collapse. Many colonies began to rebuild their numbers shortly thereafter.

“This is the same thing that happened with frogs when amphibians were declining,” said Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis. “The environmental activists were quick to point their fingers at global warming, pesticides and other human activities, when it turned out entirely natural factors were the cause. Of course, after the activists’ media allies sounded the alarm that pesticides and global warming were killing frogs and bees, they became strangely silent about reporting the exculpatory evidence that natural factors are to blame.” Burnett added, “The general public has no idea that humans in fact were not to blame unless they subscribe to and read academic journals.” (Jack Dini, Hawaii Reporter)

CHICAGO — Asian carp, the voracious, nonnative fish whose arrival near Lake Michigan is threatening to cause havoc in the Great Lakes, are now setting off strife on land as well. (NYT)

Unwelcome species don’t get much more unwelcome than Asian bighead and silver carp, which were imported to Southern fish farms in the 1970’s, escaped into the Mississippi system and have spent a decade or more moving slowly upriver toward the Great Lakes.

The fish are fertile and voracious, crowding out native species by vacuuming up algae and plankton. They are also bizarrely dangerous to boaters, erupting from the water like self-hurling bricks.

Ever since the fish started heading north, ecologists have warned about the devastation that awaits if they get loose in the Great Lakes, unchecked by natural predators and muscling out every competing species. It is not just the lakes’ $7 billion fishing industry that could be blighted by carp, it’s the entire ecosystem, already badly compromised by other invasive species and pollution. (NYT)

BEIJING - China will use stimulus spending to speed up shifting 330,000 people slated to be displaced for a vast water transfer project, accelerating work on the troubled scheme, an official newspaper said on Tuesday.

The displaced residents, mostly poor farmers in central China's Henan and Hubei provinces, are being moved for the South-North Water Transfer Project, which will draw water from southern rivers for the country's dry north.

The construction of two long canals in central and eastern China has been troubled by chronic pollution, troubles relocating displaced residents and engineering hitches.

But now Zhang Jiyao, the official in charge of the project, has "urged local authorities to complete all migrant displacement by the end of 2011," the China Daily reported, citing an official meeting on Monday. The earlier deadline was 2014. (Reuters)

JAKARTA - Indonesia will allow some infrastructure projects deemed in the public interest such as toll roads and geothermal energy plants to operate in protected forests, the chief economics minister said on Wednesday.

Under Indonesian law it is currently forbidden to undertake any kind of activity that could impact on a forest conservation area.

But chief economics minister Hatta Rajasa told reporters that the government would issue a new rule to allow some development in forests after discussions between relevant ministers.

"For the public interest such infrastructure projects and geothermal projects can use protected forests," Rajasa said. (Reuters)

Dentures could be rendered obsolete by scientists who are confident that people will soon be able to replace lost teeth by growing new ones.

Instead of false teeth, a small ball of cells capable of growing into a new tooth would be implanted where the missing one used to be.

The procedure would need only a local anaesthetic and the new tooth should be fully formed within a few months of the cells being implanted. (The Guardian)