Society to review climate message
by Roger Harrabin
The UK’s Royal Society is reviewing its public statements on climate change after 43 Fellows complained that it had oversimplified its messages.
They said the communications did not properly distinguish between what was widely agreed on climate science and what is not fully understood.
The society’s ruling council has responded by setting up a panel to produce a consensus document.
The panel should report in July and the report is to be published in September. (more…)
Climate Consensus or Con — The Oxford Union Debate
Source: Front Page
by Rich Trzupek
About three years ago, Christopher Monckton, Third Viscount of Brenchley, issued an open challenge to Al Gore to debate the issue of global-warming [1]. Not surprisingly, Gore has never responded to that challenge. Gore’s personal grasp of the scientific issues involved in so-called climate change varies from “non-existent” to “vague”. Monckton, who has emerged as one of the leading voices, if not the leading voice, advocating sanity in an increasingly skeptical world would mop the floor with the former vice president were that contest to happen. Yet, if we are never to enjoy that particular debate, we do have this one: Monckton joined three skeptical colleagues in a debate against four alarmists held before England’s Oxford Union Society [2]. The motion put forth was: “That this House would put economic growth before combating climate change.” (more…)
Oxford Union Debate on Climate Catastrophe
Science 135, global warming scare 110
For what is believed to be the first time ever in England, an audience of university undergraduates has decisively rejected the notion that “global warming” is or could become a global crisis. The only previous defeat for climate extremism among an undergraduate audience was at St. Andrew’s University, Scotland, in the spring of 2009, when the climate extremists were defeated by three votes.
Last week, members of the historic Oxford Union Society, the world’s premier debating society, carried the motion “That this House would put economic growth before combating climate change” by 135 votes to 110. The debate was sponsored by the Science and Public Policy Institute, Washington DC. (more…)
European maneuvering on climate change
Source: The Scientific Alliance
What a difference a day makes: on Wednesday this week, Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard launched a paper arguing for an increase of the EU’s emissions reduction target from 20% to 30% (on 1990 levels) by 2020. But the next day she had stepped back from supporting a unilateral move, faced with opposition from the French and German governments.
The bloc had previously agreed to make the 20% cuts unilaterally, but had promised to opt for the higher figure if similar commitments were made by other countries. None had been forthcoming and, after the Copenhagen debacle, nothing is likely to change in the short term (Hedegaard, a Danish politician, oversaw last December’s climate change talks). Nevertheless, the new Commission paper released on 26th May – proposing a feasibility study on introducing the higher target – suggested that the EU should now go it alone. (more…)
Global cooling
Source: Orange County Register
May 25th, 2010, 3:12 pm · 49 Comments · posted by Mark Landsbaum
The Heartland Institute’s James M. Taylor, an environmental policy expert, said global cooling is already happening. Figures from the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab show snow records from the last 10 years exceeded the records set in the 1960s and 1970s.
The past “decade set a record for largest average global snow extent,” Taylor said.
There is this too: “Eight straight years’ global temperature downtrend: The authoritative SPPI composite index of global mean surface temperature anomalies, taking the mean of two surface and two satellite datasets and updated through November 2008, shows a pronounced downtrend for eight full years. Not one of the climate models relied upon by the IPCC had predicted this downturn.” – Lord Christopher Monckton. (more…)
Rear Mirror: Climategate goes SERIAL
Source: UK Telegraph
Original date: Dec. 16, 2009
by James Delingpole
Climategate goes SERIAL: now the Russians confirm that UK climate scientists manipulated data to exaggerate global warming
Climategate just got much, much bigger. And all thanks to the Russians who, with perfect timing, dropped this bombshell just as the world?s leaders are gathering in Copenhagen to discuss ways of carbon-taxing us all back to the dark ages.
Feast your eyes on this news release from Rionovosta, via the Ria Novosti agency, posted on Icecap. (Hat Tip: Richard North)
A discussion of the November 2009 Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident, referred to by some sources as ?Climategate,? continues against the backdrop of the abortive UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen (COP15) discussing alternative agreements to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that aimed to combat global warming. (more…)
Cashing in on Climate Alarmism
by Sri Carmichael
Tony Blair to earn millions as climate change adviser
Tony Blair is set to earn millions of pounds advising an American businessman on how to make money from tackling climate change.
The former prime minister will be paid at least £700,000 a year to act as a ?strategic adviser? to Khosla Ventures, a venture capitalist firm founded by Indian billionaire Vinod Khosla.
The Californian company bankrolls businesses hoping to profit from technology that helps reduce global warming and carbon emissions.
Mr Blair secured the job thanks to his ?influence? and high level international contacts, whom he will be expected to lean on to open doors. (more…)
Source: Amercian Thinker
by Nancy Thorner
Most likely American Thinker readers are aware that the Heartland Institute held its Fourth International Conference on Climate Change earlier in the week – May 16 – 18. I’m still feeling electrified from the impact the event had on me.
The Heartland Institute of Chicago, Joseph L. Bast, President, held its Fourth International Conference on Climate Change in Chicago at the Marriott Magnificent Mile Hotel on Michigan Avenue from May 16 – l8. The Heartland Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan Chicago-based research organization founded in 1984. Its purpose is to discover, develop and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information about the Heartland Institute, visit  or call 312/377-4000.
It is appropriate that the theme of this year’s conference was Reconsidering the Science and Economics, as much has happened since Heartland’s Third International Conference on Climate Change held in Washington, D.C. in June of last year. Among the happenings: It was in November of last year that emails and other documents from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia revealed a pattern of mismanagement of temperature data, interference with peer review, and an effort to suppress academic debate on global warming (Climategate). In December of 2009, negotiations in Copenhagen, meant as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, collapsed, leaving the world without a binding international agreement after Kyoto expires in 2012. (more…)
Report from Heartland-4
Source: Quadrant on line
by Bob Carter
The Chicago Heartland-4 International Conference on Climate Change
The 4th Heartland International Conference on Climate Change was held between May 16-18 last week in the Heartland Institute’s home city of Chicago. Previous meetings have been held in New York and Washington, and all have been highly successful. But as conference participant and Euro-MP Roger Helmer pointed out, the Heartland-4 conference marks a turning point, because of the emergence at the meeting of a rapidly maturing counter-consensus on the still topical (if increasingly tiresome to voters) issue of alarmist global warming.
More than 700 scientists, social scientists, policy advisers and others attended the conference. Following the path blazed by independent Australian senator Steve Fielding in 2009, which resulted in his exercising a decisive vote against the ETS in the Senate, this year two serving politicians attended from the antipodes; they were Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi from South Australia and ACT climate change spokesman from New Zealand, John Boscawen, who were joined by a number of US politicians and ex-politicians. Also in attendance was former New Zealand Minister for Science, Barry Brill, the author of a devastating recent expose of the unreliability of the claimed NZ historical temperature record. (more…)
Geologist Warns of ‘Looming Threat of Global Cooling’
Source: Climate Depot
‘Expect global cooling for the next 2-3 decades that will be far more damaging than global warming would have been’
By Marc Morano
CHICAGO — A prominent U.S. geologist is urging the world to forget about global warming because global cooling has already begun.
Geologist Dr. Don Easterbrook’s warning came in the form of a new scientific paper he presented to the 4th International Conference on Climate Change in Chicago on May 16, 2010. Dr. Easterbrook is an Emeritus Professor at Western Washington University who has authored eight books and 150 journal publications. Easterbrook’s full resume is here.
Dr. Easterbrook joins many other scientists, peer-reviewed research and scientific societies warning of a coming global cooling. Easterbrook is presenting his findings alongside other man-made global warming skeptics at the three day conference in Chicago.
Dr. Easterbrook’s key excerpts: (more…)
You might be interested in the graph below. The data are temperatures reconstructed from Greenland ice cores and published in the peer reviewed literature. The data confirm pre-IPCC understanding of the climate history of the Earth: Earth warmed from the last glacial maximum about 15,000 years ago when great ice sheets covered North America and northern Europe and sea level about 130 m lower than today. By 9,000 years ago Earth had warmed to the Holocene maximum when temperatures were warmer than today; the Holocene maximum lasted until about 4,000 years ago and there has been irregular cooling since.
The IPCC alarmist claim that Earth?s temperature has been steady for the last 10,000 years but this view is at odds with historical and archaeological evidence (more…)
Climate: The Counter-Consensus by Bob Carter is due for publication in the UK in May, and release in Australia in June.
The counter-consensus to quasi-scientific hype and induced panic on climate change is at last assembling. The argument is not in the first place as to whether or not climate change has been taking place, but whether any recent warming of the planet is appreciably due to human activity and how harmful it will prove.
Tom Stacey, in his eloquent and provocative introduction, investigates our tendency to ascribe this and other perceived planetary crises to some inherent fault in ourselves, be it original sin or a basic moral failing.
Climate Change goes on to examine, with thoroughness and impartial expertise, the so-called facts of global warming that are churned out and unquestioningly accepted, while the scientific and media establishments stifle or deride any legitimate expression of an opposing view. In doing so, the book typifies the mission of Independent Minds to replace political correctness and received wisdom with common sense and rational analysis.
See Bob Carter talking about his new book here…
Crisis in New Zealand climatology
by Barry Brill
The warming that wasn’t
The official archivist of New Zealand?s climate records, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), offers top billing to its 147-year-old national mean temperature series (the ?NIWA Seven-station Series? or NSS). This series shows that New Zealand experienced a twentieth-century warming trend of 0.92°C.
The official temperature record is wrong. The instrumental raw data correctly show that New Zealand average temperatures have remained remarkably steady at 12.6°C +/- 0.5°C for a century and a half. NIWA?s doctoring of that data is indefensible. (more…)
A cooling trend
Source: Boston.com
They were friends as global warming skeptics, but then their minds and lives diverged. That these MIT experts now see the facts, and each other, so differently shows how hard climate consensus will be.
By Beth Daley
It is no surprise they grew to be friends.
Richard Lindzen and Kerry Emanuel are both brilliant and convivial. Both study the atmosphere and climate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where their offices overlooking the Charles River are one floor apart. In an academic world often dominated by liberals, both have strong conservative streaks and once agreed that the evidence for catastrophic man-made global warming just wasn?t there.
But then the climate changed between them. Friends became intellectual foes, dueling icons in one of the world?s most acrimonious political debates.
Friends had a hard time staying friends. (more…)
Disgraceful Display of the Day
Source: American Specator
By Chris Horner on 5.12.10 @ 8:50AM
Today at 1:30 pm Eastern time Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) will host a press conference announcing the fifth Senate reinvention of “cap-and-trade” global warming legislation since 2003, the “American Power Act”. Call it the American Power Grab Act, instead, for reasons that will become obvious momentarily.
The orchestrated spectacle, with a cast expected to be in the dozens which massive alignment of special interest groups is apparently supposed to persuade you of the justness of their cause, is in fact a manifestation of all that is wrong with Washington and what Americans have become increasingly enraged by.
At this press conference, Sens. Kerry and Lieberman have both already indicated, they will insist that their scheme isn’t “cap-and-trade” because… they aren’t going to use that term this time around. Kerry has even said that “this is not an environment bill.” It seems that the public aren’t buying that argument, either, so it’s really about whatever appeals to you. Just not what it was about the previous four times they’ve tried to slip this Power Grab past you. Except that a summary of the bill makes plain it is, too, cap-and-trade. And worse. It includes billions of dollars each year in gas tax revenue to underwrite the wealth transfers these companies are so in favor of. (more…)