Not true, as you can see here.

This week Senator John Kerry, the lead author of the legislation, told the Senate Finance Committee that "the reason" we need to pass his cap-and-trade energy tax is that "over the last eight years, emissions in the United States of America in greenhouse gases went up four times faster than in the 1990s."  Also not true.  In fact, he's off by a factor of 32.

 [view video here]

As the video shows, greenhouse gas emissions increased far slower in the 2000s than the 1990s. According to data from the Energy Information Administration,^[1] U.S. carbon dioxide emissions increased by 15.14% between 1990 and 1999, but from 2001 to 2008 carbon dioxide emissions only increased by 1.88%. If Senator Kerry were correct, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions would have increased by 60.5% over the last 8 years, but they only increased by 1.88%.  Senator Kerry overestimated U.S. emissions by a factor of 32.

These are the authors of the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade energy tax legislation.  If our leaders can't stick to the basic facts to support their argument for a national energy tax, and the lead author of the bill is this far off the mark on "the reason" Congress needs to pass it, Americans might reasonably question the validity of their estimates on how much the bill will cost them and our nation's already-struggling economy.

Even more troubling, Senator Lindsey Graham is now working with Senator Kerry on a "compromise" in which Senators' would accept the cap-and-trade plan in exchange for "opening new areas for offshore drilling."  This would have been a bad compromise last year, but given the fact that the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) is now open-and has been since Congress allowed its ban on offshore drilling to expire on October 1, 2008-it appears to be an even worse compromise this year.

If the compromise is anything like the "Gang of 10" plan offered last year in the months before the Congressional ban on drilling in 85 percent of the OCS was set to expire, the only thing we'd be compromising is the progress we've already made. That's because the Gang of 10 plan would have created a permanent ban on drilling in 78 percent of our offshore areas-areas that are now open.

But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what the compromise may be.  The long-term costs cap-and-trade legislation would inflict on our economy and our way of life would be so devastating, that no compromise - offshore drilling or anything else - would justify its passage.

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^[1] The total includes the row titled "Total Energy" and "Electric Power Generation."

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The Institute for Energy Research (IER) is a not-for-profit organization that conducts intensive research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets. IER maintains that freely-functioning energy markets provide the most efficient and effective solutions to today's global energy and environmental challenges and, as such, are critical to the well-being of individuals and society.

Founded in 1989 from a predecessor organization, IER is a public foundation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and is funded entirely by tax deductible contributions from individuals, foundations and corporations. No financial support is sought for or accepted from government sources.

Last week, at the first Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on S. 1733, the Kerry-Boxer "Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act," Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu explained the economic rationale for adopting a Kyoto-style cap-and-trade program.

His argument, in a nutshell, goes like this:

1. Reducing emissions globally will require a massive investment in "clean technologies" - an estimated $2.1 trillion in wind turbines and $1.5 trillion in solar voltaic panels by 2030. These investments will create many green jobs.
2. "The only question is - which countries will invent, manufacture, and export these clean technologies and which will become dependent on foreign products."
3. The United States is falling behind. "The world's largest turbine manufacturing company is headquartered in Denmark. 99 percent of the batteries that power America's hybrid cars are made in Japan. We manufactured more than 40 percent of the world's solar cells as recently as the mid-1990s; today we produce just 7 percent."
4. To seize the opportunity of clean tech and keep from falling farther behind, "we must enact comprehensive climate legislation," the most important element of which is a "cap on carbon emissions that ratchets down over time. That critical step will drive investment decisions towards clean energy."

There is so much silliness packed into Chu's testimony that it's hard to know where to begin.Let's start with Step 1: The world will need $3.6 trillion worth of clean tech by 2030. Suppose the world does decide to reduce emissions. There's no good reason to suppose that wind turbines and solar panels will ever contribute more than a small fraction of the "solution," because these technologies are not economically "sustainable" - they consume more wealth than they produce.

Germany has been subsidizing renewable electricity for two decades. A recent report by the Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut (RWI) takes a critical look at the current centerpiece of this effort, the "feeder tariff" (subsidy) established by Germany's Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG). Literally scores of billions of dollars in subsidies have failed to make wind and solar power either commercially viable or cost-effective as an emission-reduction strategy. Herewith a few highlights.

First, renewable power is a net drain on Germany's economy:

• The German feeder tariff subsidizes solar photovoltaics (PVs) at a rate of 59¢ per kWh. That is "more than eight times higher than the wholesale electricity price at the power exchange and more than four times the feed-in tariff paid for electricity produced by on-shore wind turbines."
• "Even on-shore wind, widely regarded as a mature technology, requires feed-in tariffs that exceed the per-kWh cost of conventional electricity by up to 300% to remain competitive."
• Germany has the second-largest installed wind capacity in the world, "behind the United States," and the largest installed PV capacity in the world. However, installed capacity is not the same as production or contribution, and "by 2008 the estimated share of wind power in Germany's electricity production was 6.3% . . . The amount produced by solar photovoltaics was a negligible 0.6% despite being the most subsidized renewable energy, with a net cost of about 8.4 Bn € (US 12.4 Bn) for 2008."
• "The total net cost of subsidizing electricity production by PV modules is estimated to reach 53.3 Bn € (US $73.2 Bn) for those modules installed between 2000 and 2010. . . .wind power subsidies may total 20.5 Bn € (US $28.1 Bn) for wind converters installed between 2000 and 2020."

The key facts bear repeating. Germany is on course to subsidize solar power to the tune of $73.2 billion from 200o through 2010, yet solar provides a paltry 0.6% of the country's electricity.

Even as a carbon-reduction strategy, wind and solar power are uneconomic, RWI reports:

• "Given the net cost of 41.82 Cents/kWh for PV modules installed in 2008, and assuming that PV displaces conventional electricity generated from a mixture of gas and hard coal, abatement costs are as high as 716 € (US $1,050) per tonne [of carbon dioxide]."
• "Using the same assumptions and a net cost for wind of 3.10 Cents/kWh, the abatement cost is approximately 54 € (US $80) [per tonne CO2]. While cheaper than PV, this cost is still nearly double the ceiling of the cost of a per-ton permit under Europe's cap-and-trade scheme."
• Carbon permits are trading at 13.4 € per ton. "Hence, the cost from emission reductions as determined by the market is about 53 times cheaper than employing PV and 4 times cheaper than using wind power."
• Germany's "increased use of renewable energy technologies generally attains no additional emission reductions beyond those achieved by ETS [European Trading System] alone. In fact, since establishment of the ETS in 2005, the EEG's net climate effect has been equal to zero."

Again, the key facts merit repeating. The per-ton cost of reducing emissions via wind warms is four times the going rate of carbon credits. PVs reduce emissions at a cost as high as $1,050 per ton - 53 times more expensive than carbon permits traded at current prices. The net effect on emissions is zero.

Jon Boone made a similar observation in a recent post on MasterResource.Org:

With nearly 100,000 huge wind turbines now in operation throughout the world-35,000 in the USA-no coal plants have been closed anywhere because of wind technology. And there is no empirical evidence that there is less coal burned per unit of electricity produced as a specific consequence of wind.

Germany, for example, is still building coal power plants (see here, here, and here).

Although the EEG creates some "green jobs," the net impact on wealth and jobs is negative, RWI explains:

While employment projections in the renewable sector convey seemingly impressive prospects for gross job growth, they typically obscure the broader implications for economic welfare by omitting any accounting of off-setting impacts. These impacts include, but are not limited to, job losses from crowding out of cheaper forms of conventional energy generation, indirect impacts on upstream industries, additional job losses from the drain on economic activity precipitated by higher electricity prices, and consumers' overall loss of purchasing power due to higher electricity prices, and diverting funds from other, possibly more beneficial investment.

Proponents of renewable energies often regard the requirement for more workers to produce a given amount of energy as a benefit, failing to recognize that it lowers the output potential of the economy and is hence counterproductive to net job creation.

As my colleague Don Hertzmark observes: "If you must continually pour external resources into an energy source, then it cannot be a net source of jobs in the economy, since those resources could have gone somewhere else to create real work."

So, yes, via mandates and subsidies, governments around the world could pump $2.1 trillion into wind turbines and $1.5 trillion into PVs. But this is an unsustainable market that will make the world poorer, not wealthier, as Chu imagines.

Okay, on to Step 2: We must choose either to make clean tech or become dependent on foreign producers. This claim bespeaks multiple confusions.

• If we don't enact cap-and-trade, then we won't even have to consider buying or making trillions of dollars worth of "clean tech."
• Even if we choose to limit emissions, the German experience indicates that investing billions (let alone trillions) in clean tech is not cost-effective.
• Even if we do enact a cap-and-trade program, and even if clean tech becomes cost-effective, why would we want to make our own wind turbines and PVs if imported products are cheaper?
• Chu worries the United States could become "dependent on foreign products" - as if Denmark or Japan might refuse to sell us wind turbines or hybrid cars. Even oil is not the "energy weapon" it is sometimes cracked up to be, as Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren of the Cato Institute explain.
• Besides, Toyota makes lots of cars - including hybrids - in the United States. Similarly, although Vestas, the world's largest wind turbine manufacturer, is, as Chu says, "headquartered" in Denmark, it is investing $1 billion in four Colorado plants. Chu's fear of "dependence on foreign products" makes little sense in a globalized economy, in which companies headquartered in one country build products in factories located in other countries with parts and components imported from still other countries.

Step 3: The United States is falling behind in clean tech manufacture. If we're "falling behind," then why do Toyota and Vestas build factories here? Besides, "falling behind" is a problem only if the clean-tech industy is a net wealth-creator. As we have seen, this is not the case for wind turbines and PVs, which is why they require market-rigging subsidies, mandates, and penalties levied against carbon-based energy.

If "clean tech" ever does become sustainable, the only legitimate role for policymakers would be to eliminate political impediments to market-driven investment. As MIT's Thomas Lee, Ben Ball, Jr., and Richard Tabors wrote in the conclusion of Energy Aftermath, a retrospective on Carter-era energy policies:

The experience of the 1970s and 1980s taught us that if a technology is commercially viable, then government support is not needed and if a technology is not commercially viable, no amount of government support will make it so.

Step 4: To be leaders in clean tech manufacture, we must put a price on carbon - a cap that ratchets down every year.

Chu confounds ends and means. He began by arguing that we needed to invest in clean tech in order to reduce emissions. Now, he says we must reduce emissions to spur investment in clean tech! Apparently, if you can't sell cap-and-trade on the basis of climate alarm, claim that it's "about jobs."

Another confusion - Chu suggests U.S. firms can't or won't develop clean-tech products for sale in the global marketplace unless the federal government boosts domestic market share by putting a price on carbon.

Three problems here. First, a price on carbon does relatively little to increase the market share of wind and solar power, because even with a price penalty to handicap fossil energy, wind and solar are still not competitive with natural gas in most markets. That's why the Waxman-Markey bill includes a renewable portfolio standard in addition to a cap-and-trade program.

Second, Chu fears that China is going to eat our lunch because it's investing heavily in clean-tech manufacture, yet China does not put a price on carbon to "drive investment towards clean energy." So Chu's thesis that cap-and-trade is the key to building a clean-tech export sector is refuted by the very country he spotlights as both model and threat.

Indeed, Beijing's steadfast rejection of cap-and-trade helps China's clean-tech producers compete in the global marketplace. Putting a price on carbon would jeopardize their access to abundant, affordable coal-based power (China's consumption of coal for electric generation is projected to more than double from 2006 to 2030). 

Third, a booming domestic market for a product is not a prerequisite to success in exporting that product. In the 1980s, the Asian Tigers produced enormous quantities of exports that were not widely purchased in domestic markets. China has become the world's largest producer of solar photovoltaics, producing about 820 megawatts of PVs in 2007. But, due to their relatively high cost, China in 2007 deployed only about 20 megawatts of PVs domestically for "remote off-grid applications." Once again, China's experience rebuts rather than supports the case Chu is trying to make. 

If clean-tech products yield high returns in the global marketplace, enterprising U.S. firms will get into the game even if the products do not have a big market in the United States.

The irony is that a cap-and-trade program could actually be counter-productive to the development of an export-oriented clean-tech sector. Low-cost energy is a source of competitive advantage, as China powerfully demonstrates. By increasing energy costs, cap-and-trade would make all U.S.-based manufacture less competitive, including companies specializing in clean-tech products.

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MasterResource is a scholarly advocacy blog dedicated to energy/climate issues. One question we all ask ourselves is: how will this post appear tomorrow, next month, next year, or in a decade? Are we truth-seekers or mere shouters for the moment?  We advocate private property rights, voluntary market relations (instead of government coercion), and sound science, but our preference cannot come at the expense of scholarship (the factual record; logical and relevant theory). This is our standard, and we invite comments to this end from our readers.

First, there's the Democratic global warming legislation rushing through Congress with a denouement expected soon. Second, the rush to pass the legislation is fueled by the upcoming United Nations meeting on global warming next month in Copenhagen. President Barack Obama and Democrats want to be able to go there with a goody basket of economy-busting measures that will show the world that America is with it.

Too bad, because the alleged "scientific" evidence of a coming man-made apocalypse is incomplete at best and, more likely, manipulated for political reasons.

That's obviously not the conventional wisdom. According to climate alarmists, only "skeptics" or "deniers" would ignore the "scientific consensus" that the planet is doomed without draconian acts of economic self-immolation. We know this because Al Gore, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and European smarties have told us so.

That's also the view of the United Nations-sponsored Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group-1 -- the climate alarmist's bible. It contains, they allege, all the evidence you need to justify their frenzy.

Is that so?

Inconveniently, that study itself has been studied by an independent group of scientists who concluded that the IPCC bible is wrong. They said the IPCC document "is marred by errors and misstatements, ignores scientific data that were available but were inconsistent with the authors' pre-conceived conclusions, and has already been contradicted in important parts by research published since May 2006, the IPCC's cutoff date."

To back up the conclusion, the independent group, called the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), published its own analysis in a tome called "Climate Change Reconsidered." The 856-page, nearly two-inch-thick volume did what all good science requires: check the work of fellow scientists to see if it stands up to a rigorous review of the available research, data and conclusions.

What they found is stunning. For example, the IPCC claimed that "most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely (at least 90 percent certain) due to the increase in anthropogenic (man-made) greenhouse gas concentrations" (Emphasis in the original.) Wrong; the opposite is true. Blame it on natural causes, the NIPCC said.

The IPCC claims that global warming will wreck humanity and the Earth. Wrong. The NIPCC concludes -- using the data and science available to the IPCC -- that a "warmer world would be a safer and healthier world for humans and wildlife alike."

The IPCC relies on complicated computer climate models to reach its dour conclusions; the NIPCC rips the methodology, challenging the reliability of models to make such cosmic predictions. The NIPCC reveals that the IPCC failed to consider naturally occurring "feedback" factors that reduce the impact of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Reviewing the empirical data, the NIPCC finds no evidence that climate change in the last century is unprecedented. Nor do the data demonstrate an anthropogenic effect on climate change. Nor is there evidence that anthropogenic factors are melting glaciers, raising sea levels or precipitating other catastrophic weather or climate changes. The IPCC ignored research probing solar activity as a cause of climate change. It ignored research showing that rising carbon dioxide levels actually increase plant growth to the benefit of all mankind and the planet. It ignored research that global warming will improve, not harm, human health and increase, not decrease, biodiversity.

Climate change alarmists will condemn these findings as unspeakable and unthinkable. They will point to who is doing the research or who is paying for it, while ignoring the substance of the research. They won't bother contacting Chicago-based Heartland Institute, the report's publisher, to get their own copy.

An honest examination of the science will reveal perhaps the only indisputable fact in this entire argument: The science is not settled and claims of a scientific consensus are an exaggeration, if not a deception. A scientific consensus -- if such a thing even exists -- would be surprising for any issue that is as complicated as this, involving so many different branches of science. As a layman struggling to comprehend this avalanche of science, I was struck by one truth: Beware of any "science" that claims to fully describe in single theory any phenomenon as complex as global climate change. Trying to tie it all up in such a neat package, as climate alarmists do, is a trap for the simple-minded.
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Dennis Byrne is a Chicago-area writer and consultant. He blogs at chicagonow.

This has not always been so. In the first IPCC Report (1990). on the first page of the "Executive Summary" there was nearly a whole page headed " Based on current model results, we predict" with no less than ten actual "predictions".They used the phrase "models predict" several times throughout, but they did, at least admit that there were "uncertainties".

Chapter 4 was entitled "Validation of Climate Models". Paragraph 4,12 "Methods and Problems of Model Validation" showed that such validation is quite a problem, and it seemed to show that, so far, no model has been truly validated. Chapter 8 "Detection of the Greenhouse Effect in the Observations" had the answer when it said (paragraph 8.4) "the fact that we have not yet detected the enhanced greenhouse effect leads to the question: when is this likely to occur"

The next Report (1995) had, in its first draft, another Chapter 4 "Validation of Climate Models". I commented (with, perhaps, others), that since no model had ever been validated, according to their own opinions, the title was inappropriate. So in the next draft they changed the word "validation" to "evaluation" no less that fifty times, and that report and all subsequent ones have not used the terms "predict", "forecast", or "validate". Also there has been no further discussion on how validation might be made. This is true of all of the four parts of the Fourth Report.

I frequently quote this example from their "Frequently Asked Question 1.2":

"A common confusion between weather and climate arises when scientists are asked how they can predict climate 50 years from now when they cannot predict the weather a few weeks from now. The chaotic nature of weather makes it unpredictable beyond a few days. Projecting changes in climate (i.e., long-term average weather) due to changes in atmospheric composition or other factors is a very different and much more manageable issue".

Note that they insist that all they do is "project". They are admitting that "scientists cannot "predict climate 50 years from now". No wonder there is "A common confusion", The claim that their "projections" are "very different" and "much more manageable" does not include a claim that they can provide successful predictions.

And yet, the politicians, activists and many ordinary people seem to be under the delusion that the IPCC "projections" actually can be regarded as "forecasts" to the extent of promoting all manner of economically damaging measures in the belief of countering them. The above statement seems also to agree that the only scientists capable of actually predicting are the weather forecasters and it might be worth while to examine how this has been achieved, however imperfect it may seem.

Despite all this, the public, the media and the politicians seem to think that the IPCC "projections" are "forecasts" even when the IPCC denies it. It is therefore useful to see whether these projections show any success as forecasts.

The following table shows a comparison between the "projections" of the IPCC and the observed figures, extrapolated to 2010 from the latest available information. It shows that the IPCC are within range of prediction for population, coal production, CO2 emissions and CO2 concentrations, but they are completely wrong on methane concentrations, global temperature change and sea level change. It might be mentioned that the "projections" for global GDP are also all wrong, but I have been unable to find figures that make adequate allowance for the changes in the US dollar.

Cheers
Vincent Gray Wellington, New Zealand

"To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact"

Charles Darwin

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People such as James Hansen and Al Gore have long been at the forefront of slandering those who oppose them. As my colleague and I wrote in "Scenes from the Climate Inquisition":

Anyone who does not sign up 100 percent behind the catastrophic scenario is deemed a "climate change denier." Distinguished climatologist Ellen Goodman spelled out the implication in her widely syndicated newspaper column last week: "Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers." One environmental writer suggested last fall that there should someday be Nuremberg Trials - or at the very least a South African-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission - for climate skeptics who have blocked the planet's salvation.

Former Vice President Al Gore has proposed that the media stop covering climate skeptics, and Britain's environment minister said that, just as the media should give no platform to terrorists, so they should exclude climate change skeptics from the airwaves and the news pages. Heidi Cullen, star of the Weather Channel, made headlines with a recent call for weather-broadcasters with impure climate opinions to be "decertified" by the American Meteorological Society.

At the time, we thought that this jihad against skepticism had peaked. But a column by Paul Krugman in the New York Times today shows that we were being overly optimistic. Not content with calling critics of the abominable Waxman-Markey energy and climate plan skeptics (or even just "deniers," the previously favored slander of the eco-topians), Krugman suggests that the very act of questioning whether or not climate change science may still have a few bugs in it, or questioning draconian greenhouse gas control schemes such as Waxman-Markey, is outright treason.

Regarding the "debate" over Waxman-Markey, Krugman says:

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn't help thinking that I was watching a form of treason - treason against the planet.

Yes, you read that correctly. Paul Krugman, a Nobel Laureate, writing in America's paper of record, just accused nearly half of the House of Representatives, including both Republicans and Democrats, as guilty of treason against the very planet- along, presumably with the many thousands of scientists, policy analysts, economists, and environmentalists who have raised objections to the Waxman-Markey energy bill.

Al Gore launched the drive to remake society into an eco-theocracy in his 1992 book Earth in the Balance. Gore stated the goal of these radical environmentalists quite plainly, saying that nothing less than a "wrenching transformation" of society would be necessary to prevent what he foresees as an eco-apocalypse brought on by our high-energy, technological lifestyle.

Eco-terrorists already engage in regular acts of arson, sabotage, and vandalism in the service of their radical eco-topian agenda. With his inflammatory rhetoric, Krugman gives such extremists still greater license to engage in the kind of personal violence that groups opposing animal research do in terrorizing university researchers, and that anti-abortion groups do in attacking physicians.

It is clear that those who hope to re-make America in the name of preventing climate change are growing frustrated with the public's aversion to economic suicide. As they see their radical agenda slipping away, the Gore-ian revolutionaries are reaching for the torches and pitchforks. Krugman's declaration that skepticism about climate science or policy constitutes treason is nothing less than an incitement to violence, and when the extremists of the environmental movement engage in ever greater acts of violence, responsibility for the damage will rest with people such as Paul Krugman.

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Steve Herring, technical director of the High Temperature Electrolysis Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative, holds in his hand a solid-oxide electrolysis cell no larger than a standard CD. However, the two electrodes and electrolyte that make up the cell are almost eight times thinner than a CD at a mere 150 microns.

"That's where we get into the physics and chemistry of what's going on here," said Herring. In that tiny arena, he and his team have been laboring for six years to create options for the U.S. and world to defend against looming problems in world energy supplies.

INL's Keith Condie (left), Lisa Moore-McAteer, Steve Herring, Carl Stoots, Greg Housley and Jim O'Brien and Joe Hartvigsen from Salt Lake City's Ceramatec Inc

During the 1973 oil crisis, cars lined up for miles waiting to fill up with gasoline on even or odd days while prices skyrocketed and the broader economy suffered.

Now, an increasing number of scientists are predicting that similar conditions could exist with the peaking of world oil production. That peak, they project, could come within a generation or so. A 2007 report by the Government Accountability Office compiled studies to produce a conservative estimate that oil production would peak by 2040.

A world after oil production peaks will be inherently different from what happened in the 1973 crisis, though. Instead of slowly rebounding, oil production would instead slowly taper off, according to the study, and require global restructuring on a phenomenal scale.

But the researchers at INL think they may have at least part of the solution. The first thing that comes to the minds of many when they hear "hydrogen" is fuel-cell-powered vehicles. However, INL's team is focused on a more strategic priority.

Currently, "gasoline and diesel fuel actually have a lot of hydrogen that has been added to them, and that's one thing that a lot of people don't recognize," said Herring. "Next to a refinery, there's often a plant making hydrogen that is used for upgrading the petroleum."

In the near future, those refineries will likely begin to require more and more hydrogen as oil producers are forced to turn to lower quality sources for petroleum. "Particularly," said Herring, "what are called heavy crude oils, that have a lot of sulfur or that are tar-like."

Hydrogen, when added to petroleum, breaks apart the long chains of hydrocarbon molecules, creating a more flammable substance. Experts say that upgrading these reserves of lower-grade petroleum could prove to be one of the best defenses against cataclysmic economic implications brought on by peaking oil production.

But producing hydrogen requires large amounts of electricity to power the electrolysis process that splits water into its hydrogen and oxygen components, which is precisely why the work of Herring and his team is so promising.

By improving the efficiency and increasing the life span of the electrolytic cells, Herring and team aim to make the use of oil sands, biomass and other sources a viable option for transportation fuel.

And with recent successes, they have reason to be hopeful. The latest batch of electrolytic cells tested included modified electrodes that were designed to resist internal separation caused by oxygen bubble formation that had degraded performance in previous tests.

It worked. The new cells more than doubled the lifetime of their predecessors by lasting 2,583 hours with an average degredation rate of 8.2 percent for 1,000 hours, more than twice the previous best performance of 21 percent degredation per 1,000 hours.

"It means that they're closer to commercial viability," said Herring. But even before the test had cooled down from its 800-degree Celsius operating temperature, the team was already planning on making the cells even better.

"I'm very much encouraged that it will be able to operate for longer periods of time," said Herring. "We'll have to take these cells apart and investigate what has happened inside them, and then change the way that they're fabricated so they can last longer."

That analysis will involve splitting up the work with partners like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers who will examine the edges of the cell using "Auger spectroscopy." They'll also use scanning tunneling and transmission electron microscopes that allow them to identify the electric fields surrounding individual atoms in the cell. In this way, they can identify what elements are building up in certain areas of the cell and begin to engineer electrolytic cell adjustments to further increase efficiency and longevity.

"It's been a lot of work by a number of people here, particularly Carl Stoots, Jim O'Brien, Keith Condie and Lisa Moore-McTeer," Herring said. "They've really worked hard in putting this all together over the last five or six years. And then keeping it running, that's always a real challenge."

Speaking of the progress that's been made since research began in 2003, Herring said, "It's the same sort of physics that occurs in electronics. That, too, was a process that took many years and a lot of trial and error to get devices that would last for a long time."

The lab is also taking other steps to advance hydrogen research, including building an experiment that will allow them to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide for the synthesis of hydrocarbons. The idea, with electrolytic cells creating hydrogen on one end of the lab and a fuel synthesizer on the other, is to model the embryo of a future fuel synthesizing plant.

In cooperation with several manufacturers of ceramic cells, including Ceramatec and Materials and Systems Research Inc. of Salt Lake City, the NASA Glenn Research Center and the French firm St. Gobain, INL is also investigating new, thinner cell designs. Some of the new designs have electrolytes only 10 microns thick, or a quarter the thickness of a common human hair.

All these efforts, Herring hopes, can help the U.S. avoid the precarious cliff of peaking world oil production. "That's why we're doing this research," he said.

Essentially, say researchers, "we got it wrong".

Al Gore gave a hint of the backdown on CO2 earlier this week, but now the full research has just been published, and Doug Hoffman summarises it:

Global Warming Predictions Invalidated

Submitted by Doug L. Hoffman on Thu, 11/05/2009

A new study in the journal Science has just shown that all of the climate modeling results of the past are erroneous. The IPCC's modeling cronies have just been told that the figures used for greenhouse gas forcings are incorrect, meaning none of the model results from prior IPCC reports can be considered valid. What has caused climate scientists' assumptions to go awry? Short lived aerosol particles in the atmosphere changing how greenhouse gases react in previously unsuspected ways. The result is another devastating blow to the climate catastrophists' computer generated apocalyptic fantasies.

In a stunning article entitled "Improved Attribution of Climate Forcing to Emissions," a group of researchers from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University in New York, led by Drew T. Shindell, have called into question the values used to calculate the "forcing" due to various greenhouse gases. "We calculated atmospheric composition changes, historical radiative forcing, and forcing per unit of emission due to aerosol and tropospheric ozone precursor emissions in a coupled composition-climate model," states the paper's abstract. "We found that gas-aerosol interactions substantially alter the relative importance of the various emissions. In particular, methane emissions have a larger impact than that used in current carbon-trading schemes or in the Kyoto Protocol."

The news throws into question the huge focus on CO2 emissions, and the point of even bothering to turn up to Copenhagen, given that much of what climatologists thought they knew about global warming turns out to be wrong.

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Promoters claim the Live Earth concerts drew 2 billion fans - a number equal to people worldwide who still don't have access to electricity. Others say the actual audience was a fraction of that - a few tens of millions, including via television and webcasts.

About 45,000 attended the actual concert in Australia, 100,000 in Brazil, a few hundred in Washington, DC. In Johannesburg, the first snow in 25 years was blamed for almost nobody showing up. (If this snow was due to climate change, what caused the snow 25 years ago?) Elsewhere the heat was blamed. And only 4.5 million watched the BBC television broadcast in Britain.

However, the concerts might be deemed successful if measured by cash the promoters raked in. By gasoline and aviation fuel burned to get to the events (the stars alone flew a combined 223,000 miles, says the New York Post). By wattage consumed and greenhouse gases emitted to power televisions and air-conditioners for stay-at-home fans. Or by the overheated and often hypocritical rhetoric of global warming catastrophe.
Al Gore demanded immediate action, but ignored his own profligate consumption: over a thousand flights (mostly first class or in private jets) to warn of a "climate crisis," a house that uses 20 times more electricity than the average US home, and more in a week than 26 million Ugandans together use in a year.

Prince Charles' three mansions produce 500 times the CO2 emissions of the average British home, and he and his entourages routinely burn thousands of gallons of fuel on globe-trotting flights.

Madonna wailed that people must "jump up and down" to prevent the alleged crisis and "save the planet" - then took a private jet back to one of her nine houses and fleets of gas-guzzling cars.

Actor Ed Begley, Jr. uses alternative energy to supplement enormous amounts of non-alternative electricity that powers the community and movie studios that make his lifestyle and career possible. He believes Africans, by contrast, should have electricity only where they need it: little solar panels "on their huts."

These alarmists attempt to justify their extravagant lifestyles by grandstanding at Live Earth concerts - and purchasing energy-efficient light bulbs or "carbon offset" indulgences (eg, having someone else plant trees somewhere). With their next breath, they say other people's energy consumption could cause catastrophic global warming that could bring record cold and heat waves, terrible floods and droughts, disease epidemics and species extinctions.

The only "evidence" they have for any of this are worst-case scenarios produced by computer models that do not accurately reflect complex atmospheric processes and cannot predict temperature or rainfall even one year in the future - much less 40 or 90 years. That's like saying the movie "Jurassic Park" proves scientists can bring dinosaurs back to life.

But if the concerts cause more people to demand that Africa and other poor countries not develop the energy they so desperately need, these false global warming "solutions" could be disastrous for the world's most impoverished citizens.

Some 95% of Sub-Saharan Africans still do not have electricity, lights or refrigeration - or have them only a few hours a week. As a result, millions die every year from lung infections caused by pollution from wood and dung fires, and acute intestinal diseases caused by tainted water and spoiled food. Millions more die from diseases that would be largely eradicated by the improved living standards, healthcare systems and agriculture that come with prosperity, modern technology and abundant energy. The situation is likewise dire in many other areas.

But Al Gore, Live Earth rock stars and radical pressure groups like Rainforest Action and Greenpeace constantly battle energy projects in poor countries. They oppose coal and gas-fired power plants because of speculative global warming, hydroelectric projects because they dam up rivers, nuclear power because it generates radioactive wastes. They expect African and other poor nations to base their future on insufficient, expensive, unreliable wind and solar energy. That is a virtual guarantor of perpetual poverty.

Environmentalists also oppose biotechnology to improve agricultural output, insecticides to reduce malaria and other diseases, and even jetliners that bring tourists to Africa and African produce to Europe.

At bottom, environmentalists don't want the world's poor to rise up out of poverty and become middle class, because then they would become consumers, use more resources and demand more electricity. Green activists are happy to demand more aid and debt relief, but they do everything possible to prevent energy, mineral and economic development, modern agriculture and living standards, or meaningful opportunities for the world's poor to take their rightful places among the Earth's healthy and prosperous people.

Poor countries should worry not about climate change - but about whether they will have electricity for refrigerators, lights, and modern homes, hospitals, schools, shops, offices and factories. They should be concerned not about the supposed (and often far-fetched) risks of development and technology - but about the real, immediate, life-threatening dangers that development and technology would prevent.

Our climate has always been turbulent, unstable and unpredictable. While the scientific debate continues to rage over the mechanisms and consequences of climate change, growing numbers of scientists say there is little evidence that humans and carbon dioxide are the primary cause, or that human influences will bring catastrophic change. (A number of these scientists are featured in the new British television documentary, "The Great Global Warming Swindle" and Chris Horner's book, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism.")

Ice core and other data indicate that, over the past 650,000 years, temperatures usually rose first and CO2 levels increased several centuries later. That's the inconvenient truth about Al Gore's alarmist theory.

Other studies point to the sun as the dominant cause of climate change. As its energy output increases, the Earth warms, stronger solar winds reduce the cosmic rays that help generate clouds, fewer clouds cause our planet to warm still more, and warmer oceans release more CO2 into the atmosphere. Less solar energy results in reduced solar wind, more cosmic rays and thus more clouds - further cooling the planet.

If solar scientists are correct, in another decade or so, the sun will begin its weakest cycle in two centuries, possibly leading to another period of global cooling.

The lesson for poor nations is simple. Their people need - and deserve - abundant, reliable, affordable energy to power modern, industrialized, healthy, prosperous nations. Governments and communities must help facilitate this process, and challenge anti-energy pressure groups whenever necessary.

Poor countries don't have to depend on the World Bank or foreign aid - any more than Britain and the United States had to rely on them to develop and prosper. If their institutions and policies are sound, poor countries and communities can get the investment money and technology they need from private domestic and foreign sources.

African, Asian, Latin American and Eastern European countries have abundant oil, gas, coal, nuclear and hydroelectric resources. And they have the ultimate resource - the brain power, creativity and proud work ethic of their people.

If they can harness these resources, and unleash the power of free enterprise - under sound legal, regulatory, economic and property rights systems - they will generate previously unimaginable opportunity, health and prosperity for their people.

Many thanks for the invitation and for the courage to organize such an important gathering in the moment when political correctness tells you not to do it.

We are meeting one month before the Climate Change Copenhagen Summit and several weeks before the U.S. Senate hearing regarding the cap-and-trade scheme. For these reasons, today's meeting can't be an academic conference, even though the topic still needs academic discussion. There is no consensus - neither in science, nor in economic analysis or politics.

In 1995, there were huge demonstrations organized by all kinds of anti-establishment groupings - from socialists and greens to anarchists and anti-globalizationists. I have never seen such clashes between demonstrators and police and army forces before. The difference is that I don't expect any demonstrations in Copenhagen now. The anti-establishment people have in the meantime become insiders and will be sitting in the main hall. This is a shift with far-reaching consequences.

My views on the doctrine of global warming and especially on the role of man in it are relatively known. My book with the title Blue Planet in Green Shackles has been already published in 12 languages and, two and a half years after its original publication, I don't have any urgent need to rewrite it.

We should not forget how the doctrine of global warming came into being. In a normal case, everything starts with an empirical observation, with the discovery of evident trends or tendencies. Then follow scientific hypotheses and their testing. When they are not refuted, they begin to influence politicians. The whole process finally leads to some policy measures. None of this was the case with the global warming doctrine.

It started differently. The people who had never believed in human freedom, in impersonal forces of the market and other forms of human interaction and in the spontaneity of social development and who had always wanted to control, regulate and mastermind us have been searching for a persuasive argument that would justify these ambitions of theirs. After trying several alternative ideas - population bomb, rapid exhaustion of resources, global cooling, acid rains, ozone holes - that all very rapidly proved to be non-existent, they came up with the idea of global warming. Their doctrine was formulated before reliable data evidence, before the formulation of scientifically proven theories, before their comprehensive testing based on today's level of statistical methods. Politicians accepted that doctrine at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and - without waiting for its confirmation - started to prepare and introduce economically damaging and freedom endangering measures.

Why did they do that? They understood that playing the global warming game is an easy, politically correct and politically profitable card to play (especially when it is obvious that they themselves won't carry the costs of the measures they implement and will not be responsible for their consequences).

I don't see any problem with the climate now, or in the foreseeable future, and for that reason I am not sufficiently motivated to discuss the technicalities of the cap-and-trade scheme. I only protest against calling it a "market solution." It reminds me of the communist planners who similarly talked about "using market instruments" when they finally came to the conclusion that "planning instruments" did not work. Markets can't be used by anybody.

We should not deceive ourselves. A cap-and-trade scheme is a government intervention par excellence, not a "market solution." How much "to cap" is the decision of the government (and the European failure several years ago - when too many carbon permits were issued - is I hope well known here). The size of the cap defines the price of carbon and this price is nothing else than a tax imposed upon citizens of the country. I agree with Lord Monckton that the cap-and-trade bill "is the largest tax increase ever to be inflicted on a population in the history of the world." How is it possible that such arguments are not used? Why does nobody argue that to tax energy means that the costs of anti-global warming policy will disproportionally fall onto the poor people? What bothers me is that to "trade" the artificial "good" - the permits - means that a new group of rent-seekers will arise who will make profits at our expense. Why doesn't anybody say that the carbon permits have no intrinsic value other than by government decree? I could continue along these lines.

But we should return to the beginning. Despite huge scientific efforts and spending, it has not been proved that the human effect on the climate is statistically significant. Once again Lord Monckton: "the correct policy to address a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing."

This country, my country, as well as the rest of the world face many real issues. We do not need to solve non-existing problems. I don't think the real issue is temperature and/or CO2, but a new utopian vision of the world. We have only two ways out: salvation through carbon capping or prosperity through freedom, unhampered human activity, productivity and hard work. I vote for the second option.
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Václav Klaus is the President of the Czech Republic. On Nov. 4, the Washington Times hosted a briefing, "Advancing the Global Debate over Climate Change Policy" at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. These remarks were given at the last panel of that event.

Since all successful economies depend on abundant, affordable energy, why is the Congress preparing to pass a cap-and-trade bill, renamed to suggest "clean energy" and "national security" has anything to do with a huge tax on the use of energy by all Americans?  

There are some fundamental facts about energy in America you need to know. The Congressional Research Service recently released a report on U.S. energy reserves. To begin:

The U.S. has 1,321 billion barrels of oil (or barrels of oil equivalent for other sources of energy) when combining its recoverable natural gas, oil and coal reserves. This is oil known to exist and oil estimates in fields as yet untapped. Between Alaska and the continental offshore potential, we could literally be self-sufficient.

Keep in mind, however, oil represents less than 40% of our energy use, nor do we import most of that from the Middle East. Two-thirds of our oil consumption comes from North America with Canada and Mexico being major providers. By expanding domestic production, we could reduce dependency on the Middle East even further.

That said, since the days of Jimmy Carter, the White House and Congress has gone out of its way to make it difficult, if not impossible, to tap domestic reserves. When a windfall profits tax was imposed on November 9, 1978, it sent a message to U.S. oil companies they were not welcome here.

While ExxonMobil is the favorite target of environmental organizations such as Friends of the Earth or the Sierra Club, the fact is that it is no longer in the seven top oil producers in the United States. The "big" domestic oil companies are now Aera Energy, Anadarko, and Occidental. ExxonMobil looks for oil in overseas locations.

Astonishingly, other oil producing nations whose reserves are ranked behind the U.S. are Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, Iran, and Canada. The only oil "shortage" in the U.S. is one created by Congress and the energy policies of a succession of past presidents. An estimated 87% of our oil reserves remain untouched.

When it comes to coal, the United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal with 28% of all the world's coal reserves. Russian comes in second with 19%.  Coal represents more than 50% of all the electricity produced in America and the Obama administration has declared war on it.

The cap-and-trade bill before Congress puts all of its emphasis on the two worst, most expensive, and job-killing forms of energy, wind and solar. Combined they represent a pathetic 1% of electricity. They are unreliable sources, dependent on whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. Moreover, though never mentioned, they require backup sources of traditional energy production. You cannot have wind or solar energy without also having a coal-fired, hydroelectric, or nuclear plant to ensure a steady source.

As reported in Newsweek, "Each year as much as $100 billion is spent by governments and consumers around the world on green subsidies to encourage wind, solar, and other renewable energy markets."

The result, in the U.S. is a virtually army, "1,150 lobbying groups that spent more than $20 million to lobby the U.S. Congress as it was writing the Clean Energy bill (which would create a $60 billion annual market for emissions permits by 2012.)"

The Newsweek article said, "It's a genetic defect that not only guarantees great waste, but opens the door to manipulation and often demonstrably contravenes the objectives that climate policy is supposed to achieve."

We do not have a climate policy in the United States. We have a huge scheme to enrich a small group of people who will control the exchanges for utterly bogus "carbon credits", nothing more than the right to emit carbon dioxide as the natural result of burning fuel for energy. It is not, however, such industrial and other uses that represents the largest emitter of carbon dioxide. The Earth itself is responsible for 95% of the CO2 in the atmosphere and that CO2 represents 3.618%.

By comparison, nuclear energy does not produce CO2 emissions and yet there hasn't been a new nuclear reactor built in the United States for some thirty years.

The same is true for the building of a single new oil refinery in America. Since it takes about a decade from start to finish on these huge engineering projects and a billion dollar investment, it would be 2020 before one was in full production if begun next year. The real question is, if you were an oil company CEO, would you invest that kind of money when the U.S. won't let you explore or extract oil on or offshore?

What no one is telling you is that CO2 does not "cause" global warming and there is no global warming. The Earth is actually in a natural cycle of cooling that began in 1998 and is anticipated to last at least two to three decades.

Europe's experience with "renewable" energy has been a disaster. Great Britain is facing blackouts that will make economic growth impossible and wreak havoc on the daily lives of the English. As with other European nations, it has driven up the cost of electricity.

The American energy consumer is being lied to and stolen from in the form of the cap-and-trade bill under consideration and other obstacles.

The nation as a whole is being put at risk for lack of access to our own vast energy reserves, coal, oil, and natural gas, as well as nuclear power that will be needed to reverse the present recession, unemployment, and the ability to grow our way back to prosperity.

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

CCFON.org

Lord Monckton has warned the public in Europe and the United States that the upcoming Copenhagen Summit in December this year will use global warming hype as a pretext to lay the foundation for a one-world unelected 'communist-style' government with enormous powers.

Lord Christopher Monckton, a politician, business consultant, writer and former policy adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, told a Minnesota Free Market Institute audience at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota on 14 October 2009:

'At Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed - your president will sign it. Most of the third-world countries will sign it because they think they're going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regimes around the world, like the European Union, will rubber-stamp it. Virtually nobody won't sign it.

'I have read that treaty and what it says is this: That a world government is going to be created. The word 'government' actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity.

'The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third-world countries in satisfaction of what is called, coyly, a 'climate debt,' because we've been burning CO2 and they haven't and we've been [messing] up the climate. We haven't been [messing] up the climate, but that's the line.

'And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement', Lord Monckton added.

(Click here to watch the full speech and here to watch the concluding remarks)

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is a treaty that most world governments are expected to sign in Copenhagen in December 2009 - including Britain and the United States. Lord Monckton told Fox News last week that the 181-page working document of the treaty, which contains the word 'government' in its Annex I, paragraph 38, transfers enormous powers, greater than any other governments' powers, to the unelected bureaucratic entity, which will be in charge of managing the most important aspect of Western societies without elections and polls. It does not mention the words 'election', 'ballot', 'elected official' or 'vote' anywhere in it.

According to Lord Monckton, by signing this document, all the industrial countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States, will forever take responsibility for the ills of other countries.

Page 6 of the document states:

'PP.15 Further acknowledging that developed countries have a historical responsibility for their disproportionate contribution to the causes and consequences of climate change, reflecting their disproportionate historical use of a shared global carbon space since 1850 as well as their proposed continuing disproportional use of the remaining global carbon space ... Warming of the climate system, as a consequence of human activity, is unequivocal.'

Page 38, '28. The adverse effects of climate change and response measures, due to the historical cumulative GHG emissions of developed countries, constitute an additional burden on all developing country Parties (particularly low-lying and other small island countries, countries with low-lying coastal, arid and semi-arid areas or areas liable to floods, drought and desertification, and developing countries with fragile mountainous ecosystems) in reducing poverty, developing strategies to address social vulnerabilities and attaining sustainable development and a threat to achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.'

Page 122, '17. (a) Compensate for damage to the LDC's economy and also compensate for lost opportunities, resources, lives, land and dignity ...'

Page 27, '(b) Particularly vulnerable populations, groups and communities, [or] All vulnerable groups whose adaptive capacity is low, [or] Groups requiring special protection ...'

Page 43, '41. (a) Assessed contributions of at least 0.7% of annual GDP of developed country Parties.' These funds will go directly to governments and 'community organizations.'

Page 39, '33. [The financial burden] must be at least USD 67 billion (in the range of USD 70-140 billion) per year.'

The commitments of the developed countries are 'economy wide.' Page 58, '7. (a) Mitigation commitments by all developed countries are legally binding economy wide and absolute quantified emission reduction commitments.'

'(b) Mitigation actions by developing countries are voluntary ...' (Emphasis added.)

(Click here to read the draft treaty)

Lord Monckton, who disputed whether global warming is man-made, has repeatedly challenged Al Gore to debate him on the science of global warming and asked the High Court to acknowledge nine of the number of errors in Gore's work called An Inconvenient Truth. Addressing Mr Gore, Lord Monckton said, 'and if you don't dare, I want you to remain silent about that subject forever from now on'. Mr Gore did not accept the challenge. Other scientists have also asked Mr Gore to debate the science of global warming and he has consistently refused to do so.

James Delingpole, a broadcaster and journalist for The Daily Telegraph, wrote:

'You have to be careful when talking about 'One World Government'. Sooner than you can say 'Bilderberg', you'll find yourself bracketed with all the crazies, and conspiracy theorists and 9/11 Truthers. But I don't think you need to be mad to be concerned about the issues raised by Lord Monckton in this speech.

'I don't know how accurate he is on the specific details, but Monckton is certainly right in principle. The climate fear industry is, I believe, the single greatest threat to national sovereignty (as we've already seen under the EU, with its directives on carbon emissions, landfill etc) and individual liberty of our era.

'I don't believe in conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, the Climate Fear Industry isn't a theory,' he added.

On 19 October 2009, Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave a speech to the Major Economies Forum in London. He said:

'In every era there are one or two moments when nations come together and reach agreements that make history because they change the cause of history, and Copenhagen must be such a time'.

(See the 10 Downing Street report)

Earlier this week, the Swedish EU Presidency said at the Washington DC meeting with President Obama that 'the climate negotiations in Copenhagen must not fail'.

In the United Kingdom, environmentalists are celebrating a second tribunal decision confirming on 3 November 2009 that strongly held views on climate change deserve the same level of protection as religious faith.The Court of Appeal ruled employers should no more discriminate against workers for being green than for their religious or philosophical beliefs.

(Click here to see the CCFON report)

Media links

Lord Christopher Monckton speaking in St Paul

Telegraph blog

Dakota Voice

Right Side News Articles

• Lord Monckton, Ambassador Bolton, and the Copenhagen Treaty: Reflections on a Conversation
• Lord Monckton's Debut On B-Cast Puts Another Nail In Copenhagen's Coffin
• Glenn Beck Interviews Lord Monckton - Reveals Inconvenient Truth About Copenhagen Treaty  

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'Yes, we plead guilty to promoting 'inaction' -- 'Skeptics will proudly celebrate the collapse of Copenhagen Treaty'

Climate Depot Editorial

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd spewed out a rhetorical barrage on climate skeptics worldwide. See: Australian PM warns skeptics 'are too 'dangerous to ignore' and are 'holding the world to ransom' - November 6, 2009. Also see: here and here for more coverage of Rudd's speech.

Climate Depot has undertaken a point by point rebuttal to Rudd's claims. The full text of Rudd's speech is available here.

Rudd Claim: Skeptics are "powerful enough to threaten a deal on global climate change both in Copenhagen and beyond."

Climate Depot Response: Yes, skepticism, the foundation of science, is and always has been strong enough to derail lavishly funded and politically motivated science based on wildly speculative climate model "predictions" and distortions of past climate records. A "scientifically meaningless" domestic carbon trading or international treaties will not impact global climate in any detectable ways, but will have huge human impacts.

Rudd Claim: Skeptics "constitute a powerful global force for inaction."

Climate Depot Response: On the contrary, skeptics constitute a powerful force for scientific truth and morality based vibrant energy expansion to the developing world's poor. To the extent that we can prevent "scientifically meaningless" climate treaties and regulations from passing, then yes, we plead guilty to promoting "inaction." As former Thatcher science advisor Lord Christopher Monckton has said: "Climate change is a non-problem. The right answer to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing."

Rudd Claim: "Climate skeptics are quite literally holding the world to ransom."

Climate Depot Response: Reality check Mr. Rudd. Science, economics and reality are holding man-made global warming fear promoters like Rudd to ransom. It must be frustrating Mr. Rudd to have once believed you could hoodwink the people of your nation and the world to believe in climate fears and your purely symbolic "solutions." Polling data from the U.S., the UK, Canada and your Australia show the public growing more skeptical. (See: Polls: 'More Americans believe in haunted houses than man-made global warming' - 37% vs. 36% ) The only "ransom" involved in this debate is the financial demands placed on countries to redistribute money based on collapsing climate fears. See: Reparations: Africa seeks climate change cash...demands billions in compensation for 'damage caused by global warming' & Global Carbon Tax Urged at UN Climate Conference & 'Controlling climate? More like controlling humans': Beware of 'unprecedented transfer of wealth, power and control to domestic and global governance'

Rudd Claim: Our "children's fate - and our grandchildren's fate - will lie entirely with [skeptics' opposition].

Climate Depot Response: Nice maudlin touch, Mr. Rudd. The fact is children are probably the only ones left that you and your climate fear promoting friends can convince that a climate catastrophe is just around the corner and you and your colleagues are their saviors. You are in luck, Mr. Rudd. Climate Depot takes full responsibility for the fate of your children and grandchildren from any future man-made climate catastrophe. Climate Depot can and will gladly take public responsibility for the children and future grandchildren of our planet for "doing nothing" about climate. So there, problem solved.

Rudd Claim: "The legion of climate change skeptics are active across the world..."

Climate Depot Response: Yes, you are very correct on this point Mr. Rudd. Scientists dissenting from silly and baseless man-made global warming fears are literally standing up around the world - from New Zealand to Canada to Brazil to Mexico to Sweden to South Africa to Japan to Portugal and everywhere in between. See: 2009 U.S. Senate Report: 700 Plus Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Warming Claims and see: 'Series of inconvenient developments for promoters of man-made global warming fears continue unabated'

The shock to you Mr. Rudd is that even the mainstream media is not abandoning man-made climate fears. See: Losing Their Religion: 2009 officially declared year the media lost their faith in man-made global warming fears

Rudd Claim: "The clock is ticking for the planet, but the climate change skeptics simply do not care.

Climate Depot Response: What clock is "ticking?" The one the UN warned of a ten year tipping point in 1989? See: U.N. Warning of 10-Year 'Climate Tipping Point' Began in 1989

In addition, NASA's James Hansen and former Vice President Al Gore started their comical "tipping point" clocks a few years ago, while Prince Charles claimed a 96-month tipping point in July 2009! Even more absurd, the UN chief further shortened the "tipping point," warning of 'incalculable' suffering without climate deal in December 2009! The question looms: Would you buy a used car from a salesman using such low-brow tactics, let alone, buy into man-made climate fear claims? Mr. Rudd, you must believe the public to be nothing more than a bunch of rubes if you want them to believe your climate tripe. See: MIT Climate Scientist Richard Lindzen: 'Ordinary people see through man-made climate fears -- but educated people are very vulnerable' - July 6, 2009

Rudd Claim: "The vested interests at work are simply too great."

Climate Depot Response: What "vested interests?" You are not claiming that skeptics have some sort of funding that is in any way comparable to the tens of billions spent promoting climate fears, are you? See: Gore's path to become the first 'Carbon Billionaire' and see: The Global Warming Science Machine: $79 Billion and Counting

Rudd Claim: Skeptics "are a political attempt to subvert what is now a longstanding scientific consensus..."

Climate Depot Response: "Longstanding scientific consensus?" Surely you jest. Man-made global warming fears did not come in widespread vogue until the late 1980's. In case you missed it, many of today's warmers were promoting global cooling as late as 1970's. See: Climate Depot's Factsheet on 1970s Coming 'Ice Age' Claims: 'Fears of a coming ice age, showed up in peer-reviewed literature, at scientific conferences, by prominent scientists and throughout the media' The man-made global warming hypothesis is now failing in the scientific community. See: UK Astrophysicist: 'The notion that CO2 warms world has come to a dead end': They are trying to 'prop up a 'scientific theory' that has run out of so called facts' and see: UN IPCC Scientist Declares 'A Death Spiral for Climate Alarmism' and see: New Report: UN Scientists Speak Out On Global Warming -- As Skeptics!

South African UN Scientist Dr. Will Alexander wrote in March 2009, "'The whole climate change issue is about to fall apart...Heads will roll!" UK scientist Dr. David Bellamy once believed man-made climate fears, but has since reversed his views and become a skeptic. "The ­science has, quite simply, gone awry. In fact, it's not even science any more, it's anti-science, Bellamy said in November 2008.

The news is so grim for man-made climate fear activists that they are already looking for the next environmental scare to hype! See: AGW RIP? Is It Time for Next Eco-Scare Already? Gore's producer Laure David touts plastic crisis: 'Plastic waste is in some ways more alarming for us humans than global warming' - July 31, 2009 & UK Green Party: 'There exists a more serious crisis than the 'CO2 crisis': the oxygen levels are dropping and the human activity has decreased them by 1/3 or ½'

Rudd Claim: The consensus is supported by "4000 scientists appointed by governments from virtually every country in the world."

Climate Depot Response: Why not make up higher numbers? Why not just claim 50,000 UN scientists support the "consensus?" What silliness.

Reality Check: 2009 U.S. Senate Minority Report of dissenting scientists has pushed the total to over 700 skeptical international scientists - a dramatic increase from the original 650 scientists featured in the initial December 11, 2008 release. The 59 additional scientists added to the 255-page Senate Minority report since the initial release 13 ½ weeks ago represents an average of over four skeptical scientists a week. The over 700 dissenting scientists are now more than 13 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers. Update: Numbers Racket: Rudd blunders in claiming '4000' UN scientists: Reality Check: Only 60 UN experts 'explicitly supported the claim made by the IPCC that global warming represents a threat to the planet' - Nov. 6, 2009

See: Team of Scientists' Open Letter To U.S. Senators: 'Claim of consensus is fake'

Plus UN scientists speak out - against the climate fear claims! New Report: UN Scientists Speak Out On Global Warming -- As Skeptics!

Here is a very small sampling of what current and former UN scientists have to say about the UN and its scientific methods.

Warming fears are the "worst scientific scandal in the history...When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists." - UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.

"The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn't listen to others. It doesn't have open minds... I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists." - Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.

"Temperature measurements show that the [climate model-predicted mid-troposphere] hot zone is non-existent. This is more than sufficient to invalidate global climate models and projections made with them!"- UN IPCC Scientist Dr. Steven M. Japar, a PhD atmospheric chemist who was part of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Second (1995) and Third (2001) Assessment Reports, and has authored 83 peer-reviewed publications and in the areas of climate change, atmospheric chemistry, air pollutions and vehicle emissions.

"I was at the table with three Europeans, and we were having lunch. And they were talking about their role as lead authors. And they were talking about how they were trying to make the report so dramatic that the United States would just have to sign that Kyoto Protocol," Christy told CNN on May 2, 2007. - Alabama State Climatologist Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, served as a UN IPCC lead author in 2001 for the 3rd assessment report and detailed how he personally witnessed UN scientists attempting to distort the science for political purposes.

"Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp...Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact." - Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.

"The quantity of CO2 we produce is insignificant in terms of the natural circulation between air, water and soil... I am doing a detailed assessment of the UN IPCC reports and the Summaries for Policy Makers, identifying the way in which the Summaries have distorted the science." - South African Nuclear Physicist and Chemical Engineer Dr. Philip Lloyd, a UN IPCC co-coordinating lead author who has authored over 150 refereed publications.

"After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri's asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it's hard to remain quiet." - Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.

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Rudd Claim: Skeptic "attempt to twist the agreed science in the direction of a predetermined political agenda to kill climate change action."

Climate Depot Response: Very interesting choice of words - "agreed science" The "science" of man-made global warming fears is literally the best science politics can manufacture. See New Report: UN Scientists Speak Out On Global Warming -- As Skeptics! The problem, Mr. Rudd, is that your view of "agreed science" is collapsing in real world data, peer-reviewed studies and a growing number of dissenting scientists. See: 'Series of inconvenient developments for promoters of man-made global warming fears continue unabated'

Rudd Claim: "It reminds me of the efforts of the smoking lobby decades ago as they tried for years to politically subvert by so-called scientific means that there was any link between smoking and lung cancer."

Climate Depot Response: Great analogy Mr. Rudd! Climate Depot agrees, the smoking analogy is very apt. But alas, it is the promoters of man-made climate fears that are mimicking the tobacco lobbyists actions. See: Climate Fear Promoters mimic tobacco industry tactics Excerpt: This [current climate fear promoting] strategy provides a positive "pro-science" public stance that masks the ignominious activity of institutional and professional persecution of numerous scientists whose honest work casts legitimate doubt upon the more alarmist projections of the supposed "consensus." Like the tobacco industry, this campaign has: "Manufactured uncertainty and fear by stridently proclaiming certainty and consensus based on dubious and uncertain modeled results predicting disastrous consequences of a warmer climate."

Rudd Claim: "What absolute political cowardice" [on the part of skeptics].

Climate Depot Response: Cowardice? Scientists have literally risked their careers to go against today's politically motivated "consensus." On the contrary, skeptics are courageous to wage a battle against the "agree science" you take as a matter of faith. See: EPA further muzzles global warming skeptic Dr. Alan Carlin - August 25, 2009 & Other climate fear promoters are using threats and intimidation to silence the climate debate. See: 'Execute' Skeptics! Shock Call To Action: 'At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers' -- 'Shouldn't we start punishing them now?' - June 3, 2009

Rudd Claim: "What an absolute failure of logic [by skeptics]."

Climate Depot Response: Logic? Let's review Mr. Rudd. You are lamenting the fact that skeptics are opposed to a "scientifically meaningless" climate "solution" process that could condemn the estimated 1.6 billion energy impoverished people in the developing world to a continued nasty brutish and short existence based on collapsing scientific claims. See: India: 'It is morally wrong for us to reduce emissions when 40% of Indians do not have access to electricity' Skeptics promote a vibrant energy policy that promotes development and expands energy around the globe. The sooner we can eliminate the UN from climate and energy policy, the better off energy distribution and the developing world's poor will become. The world needs energy initiatives, not anti-energy initiatives, and as we go forward, the less the United Nations has to do with climate and energy, the better. The only people "pitching a do-nothing approach to climate change" are the UN and the U.S. Congress. Why else would the Kyoto Protocol not even have a measurable impact on global temps (assuming they were correct on the science ) and it was fully enacted?

It is the U.S. Congress and the "scientifically meaningless" Waxman-Markey bill that even Obama's EPA admits will not have a measurable impact on global Co2 levels, let alone any measurable or detectable impact on global temperatures. The man-made climate fear promoters have been "pitching a do-nothing approach to climate change..." since the movement's launch in 1988 by consistently promoting purely symbolic "solutions" to global warming. Mr. Rudd, you claim that carbon trading and UN treaties are some sort of an "insurance" policy against global warming. But a simple question to ask is: Would you purchase fire insurance on your home that had a huge up front premium for virtually no payout if you home burned down? If you answered YES to such an "insurance" policy, then Congress and the UN has a deal for you with their cap-and-trade and climate legislation.

If we did actually face a man-made climate catastrophe and the "solutions" of the UN and Congress were our only hope, we would all be DOOMED!

Rudd Claim: Skeptics "are too dangerous to be ignored"

Climate Depot Response: Fully agree with you Mr. Rudd. Scientific truth, reality based economics are always "dangerous" to climate charlatans peddling their wares of a coming climate catastrophe. It used to be those who stood on street corners warning of the end times were thought of as nutcases, now those same views are held by world leaders. It is sad to see "climate astrology" replace actual science. See: Obama's 'Climate Astrologer': Energy Sec. Chu claims he knows 'what the future will be 100 years from now': 'Shouldn't Chu be touting these scary predictions of the year 2100 on a boardwalk with a full deck of Tarot Cards? Sadly Mr. Rudd, it is you and your fellow climate alarm promoters that are touting faith based science.

Rudd Claim: "The danger skeptics pose is this - by collapsing political momentum towards national and global action on climate change, they collapse global political will to act at all. They are the stick that gets stuck in the wheel, that despite its size may yet bring the train to a complete stop."

Climate Depot Response: We plead guilty Mr. Rudd! Our goal is simple: To bring the train to a complete stop. You did figure us out correctly on that point.

Rudd Claim: "Skeptics are well resourced and well represented by political conservatives in many, many countries."

Climate Depot Response: Wrong again, Mr. Rudd. Politically left scientists and environmental activists are now dissenting from climate fears in growing numbers. See: Politically Left Scientists Now Rejecting Climate Fears - Jan. 2009

Rudd Claim: "This brigade of do-nothing climate change skeptics are dangerous because if they succeed, then it is all of us who will suffer."

Climate Depot Response: Yes, scientific truth, economic reality and political realism are always "dangerous" to politically and ideologically motivated climate fear promoters. As for "suffering" from failure to "act", please explain how UN treaties and carbon trading "save the planet?" Even the Washington Post understands climate reality. See: Wash. Post's Moment of Clarity: 'Carbon emissions will not be reduced by international bureaucrats sitting in a room and signing a piece of paper' - July 14, 2009

Rudd Claim: "Their aim is not to convince every person on earth of the follies of acting on climate change. Their aim is to erode just enough of the political will that action becomes impossible."

Climate Depot Response: Actually Mr. Rudd, the more messrs Gore, Kerry, Brown, Obama, and yourself speak, the more the public grows skeptical. So you and your colleagues have been a huge help in helping to spread skepticism and expand opposition to silly and economically destructive global climate treaties.

Rudd Claim: "If Copenhagen does not deliver the outcome we so urgently need, no individual climate change skeptic will be responsible, but each of them will have played their part."

Climate Depot Response: Goody! Let us hope Copenhagen does not deliver! For the sake of the planet and its inhabitants. Skeptics will proudly celebrate the collapse of Copenhagen and do so knowing our children and grandchildren will be better off. Yes, our children and grandchildren will be much better off without a UN body that uses used-car salesman tactics dictating meaningless climate "action."

Rudd Claim: "In this debate the climate change skeptics have erected an intellectual house of cards based on one simple premise: that the cost of not acting is nothing."

Climate Depot Response: Actually, you have your logic reversed Mr. Rudd. The cost of doing "something" as defined by the U.S. Congress and the UN achieves "nothing" in results. It is all economic pain for no climate gain. At best under UN climate treaties, the world accomplishes "nothing" as far as climate goes, but we risk a neo-colonialism of Western nations imposing regulations on impoverished developing nations that can only be called immoral.

See: Flashback 2002: U.S. Environmentalist Laments Introduction of Electricity in Africa; Flashback 2002: Jerry Brown says 'it's not viable' for poverty stricken developing world to emulate prosperity of U.S.' Ugandan Activist: 'African life span is lower than it was in U.S. and Europe 100 years ago. But Africans told we shouldn't develop' because wealthy Western nations are 'worried about global warming': Excerpt: 'Telling Africans they can't have electricity and economic development - is immoral'; Flashback 2003: S. African Activist: Poor countries should just say: 'Go to hell' to Wealthy Western Nations: 'If you don't want us to fill in our wetlands, then you bomb your big cities like Washington, a third of Holland and Rotterdam and so on, and restore them to being swamps'; Flashback 2002: UN Earth Summit's Failure Called 'Good Thing' For Poor Nations: Excerpt: The first world became rich without the IMFs and World Banks, and the less of them that are around, the more likely the Third World is to do the same."; It is a moral issue! - 'People cannot cook'...Chad's Global Warming Inspired Ban on Charcoal leads to 'Desperate' Families! - January 16, 2009

Poor Kenyans rebel as UK grocery store's "carbon friendly" policies may stop food exports; India: 'It is morally wrong for us to reduce emissions when 40% of Indians do not have access to electricity'

Report: 'Green, UN, rich nation and African elites impose deadly anti-development colonialism' - June 8, 2009; Greenpeace Leader: There is urgent need for the suppression of economic growth in U.S...'Lifestyle of the rich in the world is not a sustainable model' - August 20, 2009; Flashback 2002: Average American Lifestyle Called "Total Bull---t" by Environmentalist - Excerpt: 'If anyone in a developing country looks to the U.S. and wants a lifestyle like the average American--it's total bull---t!'; Flashback 2000: Actor Chevy Chase Says 'Socialism Works' -- 'Cuba might prove that'; Black clergymen protest Robert Redford 'link his environmentalism to racism'; Obama Advisor Warren Buffett 'repeats criticism of cap and trade, saying it would be a huge, regressive tax'

Rudd Claim: "Skeptics claim that the cost of not acting is nothing."

Climate Depot Response: Wrong again. Skeptics claim that RESULT of "acting" is nothing in terms of climate results.

Rudd Claim: "Their skepticism is in fact radical in its riskiness and recklessness. By deliberately undermining and eroding the capacity to achieve both domestic and international action on climate change the skeptics are attempting to force the world to take the single most reckless bet in our long history."

Climate Depot Response: Mr. Rudd, you repeat yourself ad nauseum. There is no "reckless" bet. The way forward is already happening. Improving technologies, expanding energy and growing economies in the developing world will improve the global environment more than any UN treaty or domestic carbon trading ever conceivably could.

Rudd Claim: "Skeptics are doing so in the total absence of any genuine body of evidence."

Climate Depot Response: Oh please Mr. Rudd. Here is but a sampling of the latest scientific studies and real world data that are challenging your politically motivated science views. See: 'Series of inconvenient developments for promoters of man-made global warming fears continue unabated'

Rudd Claim: "The logic of these skeptics belongs in a casino, not a science lab, and not in the ranks of any responsible government...their prescription for inaction has all the legitimacy of a roulette wheel."

Climate Depot Response: The casino analogy is apt. People are being told that we must enact a new UN climate treaty or face certain doom. The problem is the casino is run by the UN and it is loaded with corruption. (See: Internal Report Says U.N. Climate Agency Rife With Bad Practices - Fox News - December 4, 2008 )The UN casino pit bosses are offering a sucker bet. Put all your money on a "climate treaty" or "carbon trading" and you will be allowed to live. Don't do it and you will face bodily harm and loss of property. It's an offer you can't refuse. See: La Cosa Climate: Commerce Sec. Warns: Americans Need 'To Pay' Or Face Mother Nature's Wrath -- Pay up or face 'floods, droughts and rising sea levels': An offer you can't refuse -- Pay up or world faces a 'catastrophe'

Congressional Weather-Makers: 'Climate Astrologer' Boxer warns of 'droughts, floods, fires, loss of species' -- if Senate fails to pass climate bill

What UN casino is not telling patrons is that the "climate treaty" bet is nothing more than pure symbolism that could harm the poorest of residents. People are wising up, gambling with the UN is not a winning bet.

Rudd Claim: "You are betting our jobs, our houses, our farms, our reefs, our economy and our future on an intuition - on a gut feeling; on a political prejudice you have about science...You've got to know when to fold 'em - and for the skeptics, that time has come.

Climate Depot Response: Aha, yes, the time to fold has arrived. Here is a very small sampling of the current reality you want to deny Mr. Rudd: See: 'Series of inconvenient developments for promoters of man-made global warming fears continue unabated' and 'Dramatic acceleration of developments against the claims of a so-called 'consensus.'

UN Fears (More) Global Cooling Commeth! IPCC Scientist Warns UN: We may be about to enter 'one or even 2 decades during which temps cool'

'Sun Sleeps': Danish Scientist declares 'global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning...enjoy global warming while it lasts'

Prominent Russian Scientist: 'We should fear a deep temperature drop -- not catastrophic global warming' : 'Warming had a natural origin...CO2 is 'not guilty'

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At long last Mr. Rudd, have you no shame?

NCDC has compiled the October temperatures and it ended up the 3rd coldest in 115 years. As we have shown it was cold over almost all the lower 48. Indeed only Florida came in above normal. There is no press release out yet but it should be interesting

Click on maps and graphs to enlarge

October with a mean of 50.8F was behind only 1976 with 50.7F and 1925 with 49.4F.

Also the University of Alabama global temperature is out and it is down this month. Hadley came in late for September but it was down. The trends since 2002 continue down for both even as CO2 rise.

The cold came just a few months after a cold July where 6 states were coldest in 115 years, four 2nd coldest and two 3rd coldest.

US was not alone. In the Southern Hemisphere, New Zealand had the coldest October in 64 years. Hat tip: Rod Van Koughnet, geophysicist and skeptic.

Temperatures may pop globally with the second surge in El Nino the next two months. A warm pool (depression of the thermocline) induced by a westerly wind burst last month with a negative Southern Oscillation Index has been pressing east. A prior surge had produced a first peak in El Nino in July. It weakened after with a cooling of the water in the eastern Pacific as the first warm surge was mixed out and cold water upwelling increased off South America. The same thing will happen after the El Nino comes to a second larger peak in early December. Typically in cold PDO phases, El Ninos, are truncated - that is they end early and tend to be weaker (up to moderate strength). See the similarity to other years in this post here. 

When you look at other years in cold PDO with a quiet sun and transition to an easterly QBO (Quasi-Biennial Oscillation) you get a cold winter especially in the east.

  A stratospheric warming is more likely in these conditions, favoring high latitude blocking and cold air intrusions. We have seen much more blocking this year in part due to El Nino, in part to low solar and in part to high latitude volcanoes (Redoubt and Sarychev). See how a negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and Arctic Oscillation (AO) correlate with winter temperatures.

 Big east coast storms for DC, New York or Boston are very likely in westerly QBO winters but not easterly. Since we will be transitioning from west to east, one might think we may still manage a few decent coastal storms and maybe a blockbuster, if the cold comes early and the QBO is slow to flip. Often in easterly winters, the snow is actually heavier south (like Norfolk).

A negative NAO though is favorable for east coast storms and snow. This graph is for Boston, New York and DC are similar.  

See more here.

ICECAP, International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, is the portal to all things climate for elected officials and staffers, journalists, scientists, educators and the public. It provides access to a new and growing global society of respected scientists and journalists that are not deniers that our climate is dynamic (the only constant in nature is change) and that man plays a role in climate change through urbanization, land use changes and the introduction of greenhouse gases and aerosols, but who also believe that natural cycles such as those in the sun and oceans are also important contributors to the global changes in our climate and weather. We worry the sole focus on greenhouse gases and the unwise reliance on imperfect climate models while ignoring real data may leave civilization unprepared for a sudden climate shift that history tells us will occur again, very possibly soon.

A court ruling, giving an executive the right to sue his employer on the basis that he was unfairly dismissed for his 'green views' has been criticised by the Christian Legal Centre.

In a controversial decision, the judge ruled that 'environmentalism' had the same weight in law as religious and philosophical beliefs.

Andrea Minichiello Williams, Barrister and Director of CLC said: "When a society loses her cultural Christian heritage she loses her anchors in the law and we end up with social, moral and legal chaos with any and every view competing in the public and legal square for a place.

"This decision has a real irony about it: whilst the Court seems to be simply extending the definition of what is regarded as 'religion', implying that what is basically a scientific experiment should be respected as much as the historic, community-enhancing and establishment-linked main stream religion, the very same judiciary are failing spectacularly, month by month, in safeguarding the fundamental religious rights of Christians."

Tim Nicholson, 42 and from Oxford, had told a previous court hearing that his views were so strong that he refused to travel by air and had renovated his house to be environmentally-friendly.

In a landmark ruling, Mr Justice Michael Burton said that "a belief in man-made climate change... is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations".  The ruling could open the door for employees to sue their companies for failing to account for their green lifestyles, such as providing recycling facilities or offering low-carbon travel.

John Bowers QC, representing Mr Nicholson's employers, had argued that adherence to climate change theory was "a scientific view rather than a philosophical one", because "philosophy deals with matters that are not capable of scientific proof."

That argument has now been dismissed by Mr Justice Burton, who last year ruled that the environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore was political and partisan.

The decision allows the Employment Tribunal to go ahead, but more importantly, sets a precedent for how environmental beliefs are regarded in English law.

Mr Nicholson hailed the Employment Appeals Tribunal ruling as "a victory for common sense" but stressed climate change was "not a new religion".

He said: "I believe man-made climate change is the most important issue of our time and nothing should stand in the way of diverting this catastrophe.

"This philosophical belief that is based on scientific evidence has now been given the same protection in law as faith-based religious belief.

"Belief in man-made climate change is not a new religion, it is a philosophical belief that reflects my moral and ethical values and is underlined by the overwhelming scientific evidence."

The grounds for Mr Nicholson's case stem from changes to employment law made by Baroness Scotland, the Attorney General, in the Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) Regulations 2003. The regulations effectively broaden the protection to cover not just religious beliefs or those "similar" to religious beliefs, but philosophical beliefs as well.

On 4 November 2009, Lord Warner spoke in a House of Lords debate referrring to the case.  He said:

'This is a major change of ruling by the courts and the BBC might like to ponder that ruling when considering its [religious] programming arrangements.  I look forward to hearing the Minister's response.'

Andrea Minichiello Williams added: "At a time when the Government is playing politics with religion, society should be able to look to the Courts for balanced, carefully thought-out judgments, not more political correctness".

Media links

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Guardian

Independent

Spectator (Commentary)

Christian Concern for our Nation (CCFON) is an organisation that exists to serve the Church by providing information to enable Christians to stand up publicly against a tide of unchristian legal and political changes in the United Kingdom. It brings together focused legal, policy and media expertise and strategic intervention in order to secure favourable legal and political outcomes in areas of concern. In addition, the organisation acts as a rallying point for those concerned with these issues and a place where individual members of the public and organisations will be able to seek assistance and advice.

On October 30^th, Lord Christopher Monckton and former U.N. ambassador John Bolton appeared across the table from one another on Glenn Beck's Fox News television program. If you haven't yet seen the program, the segments can be viewed here. The conversation between Monckton and Bolton remained quite friendly, but an interesting dichotomy emerged that should have Americans thinking.

Monckton has not beaten about the bush in speaking out against the Copenhagen treaty the U.N. is pushing toward in December.  He was no less clear in speaking to Beck and Bolton. The treaty draft as it stands now provides for the establishment of an unelected body-a government, in the language of the treaty-that would have unprecedented powers. Furthermore, if ratified by a two-thirds majority in Congress, the treaty-or, more properly, the Framework Convention on Climate Change-would supercede the United States Constitution.

When asked to comment on Monckton's assessment, John Bolton quickly pointed out that a draft is only a draft, and this one contains much bracketed language still in negotiation. We must wait, he cautioned, to see what is in the final document before determining how great a danger the treaty represents.

For his command of world affairs and his clear-sighted approach to U.N. nonsense, John Bolton has earned my utter respect. Moreover, he is right that we cannot know to what this treaty would truly bind us until we see a final draft. That said, on the issue of the Copenhagen treaty, I'm not certain that Bolton is taking all possibilities into account.

Certainly, Bolton understands that signing the treaty would be a mistake on the part of the United States. He stated as much. Yet he seems to suspect that the treaty will be negotiated down to much weaker terms and that our Senate might not ratify it regardless. He did not want to underestimate the danger to American sovereignty posed by our "post-national" president and his love of multi-national agreements. However, he asserted that it was important to evaluate matters on an incident-by-incident basis. As Bolton perceives things, death to sovereignty would more likely come via a thousand small cuts.

Let us presume for the moment that Bolton is right. Even so, making a small compromise in a nation's sovereignty is like a single carpenter ant getting loose in the walls of a house. Soon, that one little ant will notify the rest of his colony about the palatial buffet he's found and lead others there to join him. Substantial damage will already have occurred by the time one can finally see evidence of it.

Consider the European Union. Its 27 members have, over time, entered one treaty here, another agreement there-all presented as beneficial, of course. But in fact, as Monckton pointed out, these agreements have progressively chipped away at the rights of formerly sovereign governments and their citizenry. The E.U. now formulates, regulates, and enforces nearly every kind of policy imaginable-over and above any laws that exist within the individual member states.

Sovereignty matters. It guarantees that a nation can continue to self-determine-to decide in all respects what lies in the best interests of its own citizens and to act accordingly. It permits a nation to guard its own traditions, to respond most nimbly to its circumstances, and to tailor solutions that work for its own people. Such choices, by their very essence, engender freedom.

Even in draft form, the Copenhagen treaty provides solid evidence that the U.N. has a very different idea about what lies in the best interests of the United States than most Americans would. In fact, I submit that the treaty doesn't have the best interests of the United States in mind at all. Even if the treaty's language is much watered down by December, one can be sure of two things. First, some language will remain that would have negative implications or consequences for the United States. Second, the treaty will be the foot in the door the U.N. needs in order to keep coming back for more. So, even if, as Bolton posits, the treaty largely "kicks the can down the road," real danger lies in the possibility that small concessions made at Copenhagen would provide enough leverage to do greater damage in the future. The insignificant compromises that don't seem to matter together add up to a serious loss of rights and freedoms that cannot easily be regained.

Beck fully grasps this concept and, along with it, the danger of brokering agreements just for the sake of it. At one point in the discussion, he cited Mitt Romney's deal-making to create CommonwealthCare, a socialized medicine scheme in Massachusetts that has since become a millstone in every sense. Returning to the subject of the Copenhagen treaty, he turned to Monckton and ventured, "We're opening up a door here that we don't want to open." Monckton immediately agreed with him.

The question Monckton ultimately posed to John Bolton and indeed to the rest of us: "Do you really want to take the risk with your Constitution?" The answer must be no, particularly given the expansion of powers this administration is implementing within the executive branch.

In regard to this expansion of executive powers and how it could affect our entry into foreign agreements, two issues broached by his Lordship should keep Americans extremely vigilant.

First, Monckton referred to the Law of the Sea treaty, which governs mineral extraction from areas of seabed beyond territorial waters. Ronald Reagan had refused to sign this well-known document when first floated in 1982. He balked at its provision for an international tribunal that would have infringed on U.S. sovereignty in several ways, including the levying of an international tax. Bill Clinton finally did sign the agreement in 1994, but the Senate refused to ratify it. Monckton relayed, however, that certain parties within the State Department continue to insist that the simple act of signing the treaty bound us to its provisions. "Your own bureaucrats," he argued, "are going to say, even if [Obama] just signs it, that it is binding. So you've got to be very careful not to sign anything."

Bolton affirmed that some within the State Department do indeed take exactly the view elucidated by Monckton. However, he clarified that the treaty remained unenforceable as policy. Referring back to Copenhagen, Bolton observed that the signing "is entirely out of our hands" and that our protection lies in the Senate.

But does it really...?  The Senate currently leans decidedly to the left; Blue Dog Democrats remain notoriously undependable; and a very progressive leadership has repeatedly shown a willingness to use all sorts of tricks to pass unsavory legislation. Beck, likewise, seems skittish about putting much faith in the current Senate. He pointed out to the former ambassador that many in Congress don't even look at the Constitution anymore or find it relevant. I would add that, not having any great familiarity with the document's content or rationale, legislators likewise demonstrate no loyalty to the oath they've sworn to uphold it. Still Bolton stuck doggedly to the idea that the two-thirds super-majority in the Senate would make it very difficult to pass a treaty harmful to the interests of the United States. Under any other circumstances one might be more inclined to agree with him. But here, too, Monckton's words, "Don't take the risk," ring loudly. This Senate's majority leadership has demonstrated a keen willingness to use both bullying and underhanded tactics in an effort to get its way. Meanwhile, as discussed in greater detail below, it's minority has manifested relative ignorance at some crucial moments.

Monckton additionally hypothesized that the careful manner in which the Copenhagen treaty has been wordsmithed might well allow President Obama to sign it as an "executive agreement." Given the president's penchant for subsuming legislative powers under his own branch of government, such a move is not entirely outside the realm of possibility. In any event, while signing might have little meaning today, it well could in the future. If the president continues to enhance executive powers and weaken the legislative branch, those factions in the State Department who see signed but unratified agreements as binding could assume much greater clout-however illegitimately that might occur.

While Bolton has a strong understanding of President Obama's radical leanings, he fails fully to figure into his assessments the inroads the administration has already made to changes in governmental structure. Bolton presumes that our present system of checks and balances will continue to exist. No such assurances exist. Indeed, both houses of Congress seem all too willing to vote themselves into irrelevance.

The confirmation of Cass Sunstein as "Regulatory Czar" points quite prominently to this precise trend. Had anyone bothered to read Sunstein's book Nudge before his confirmation hearing, they might have realized that he intended to elbow Congress out of a job. In it, he suggests that small, incremental changes in regulation can push a population toward policies they would otherwise strenuously resist. Passing broad, loosely-worded legislation permits the achievement of exactly such ends-with Sunstein and those under him positioned to do the regulatory tweaking that will achieve desired ends. Again, such a strategy gradually circumvents not only the will of the people but also the authority of Congress.

However, the international community is unquestionably stepping up the pressure to get a deal done at Copenhagen, and from the sounds of it, no one is talking about watering anything down. President Obama's Energy Secretary, Steven Chu started the ball rolling on October 27^th, testifying before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and banging the climate change "danger drum" for the billionth time. Not surprisingly, he cited all sorts of statistics pulled from faulty research and now-discredited computer models (see below).

A few days later, on November 3^rd, a contingent of 55 African nations boycotted a full day of U.N. negotiations in Barcelona, insisting that wealthy countries commit to much more substantial carbon emission reductions. The boycott received backing from a great number of other nations in its insistence that wealthy nations commit to a reduction of carbon emissions to 40% below 1990 levels. These demands outstrip even those substantial amounts for which the treaty already calls. The boycott ended the following day with the message that the African coterie would reinstate it if suitable progress toward their demands was not forthcoming.

On the same day, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stood before Congress to put in her own fervent plug for a substantial agreement at Copenhagen. She hauled out all of the usual global warming scare tactics: "Icebergs are melting in the Arctic. In Africa, people become refugees because their environment has been destroyed. We need an agreement on one objective: Global warming must not exceed two degrees Celsius."

Nope. Doesn't really seem much like any of the parties pushing for this treaty are backing down.

Certainly, different people have different aims where this treaty is concerned. Let us, at least cursorily, consider those aims. Steven Chu, as part of the Obama administration, wants the United States committed to more global agreements. The Africans want the money that they believe "climate debt" reparations and additional penalties would yield them. Merkl, like so many European heads of state, most likely looks to weaken the position of the United States in the world. While much of Europe loves to depend on us to do the heavy-lifting when it comes to military and humanitarian action, it's an open secret that they resent what has been-up until now-our global primacy.

Regardless of what the various parties seek, they aim to achieve their ends via a treaty predicated upon deception. Responding to Secretary Chu's October 27^th address in a communication last week, Lord Monckton again made this point plain by offering up recent, careful studies that call the U.N.'s "science" into question-work of which the general public may not be aware.

A series of papers, among them Douglass et al. (2008), have exposed the poor methodology behind the development of computer models that supposedly measure and predict global warming. The recently published, painstaking work of Lindzen and Choi (2009) demonstrates that, contrary to the indications of these faulty models, gasses are escaping from our atmosphere out into space at much the rate they always have. The work of Paltridge et al. (2009) provides the reason: It turns out that water vapor concentration-a key component in the temperature feedbacks presumed to reinforce initial warming-does not pose a problem afterall. Another paper currently on its way to publication, Spencer and Braswell (2009) counters the notion of the albedo feedback. The pair have now demonstrated that clouds don't amplify initial warming supposedly resulting from increased CO₂ levels. Rather they reflect more sunlight back into space, substantially offsetting any initial warming.

Another major crack in the global warming wall formed yesterday with John Broder's front-page November 2^nd article in the New York Times. Broder picked up a line of investigation that NewsBusters has been covering for some time concerning Al Gore's "green" investments. The most egregious aspect of these investments is not so much that Gore is making money from green technology while claiming to be the world's leading champion of environmentalism but rather how he is making it - by influencing policy. The phrase "conflict of interest" doesn't quite seem to cover all that's wrong with this unseemly scenario.

Even ABC is beginning to question the true nature and degree of Gore's commitment to the environmental cause. Recently Glenn Beck challenged Gore, noting that if he were indeed serious about saving the planet, he should stop with the beef and switch to tofu burgers. Any die-hard environmentalist knows that eating meat is far worse for the environment than driving an SUV. When Diane Sawyer confronted Gore with this video clip and asked him whether he planned to stop eating meat, he looked distinctly uncomfortable and gave a rather inconsistent response. Asking Gore a follow-up about his recent purchase of coastal property in California would have been a slam-dunk, but I'll take what I can get. Thank you, Diane.

The debunking of bad science-along with the actual, non-environmental motives of the U.N., its various member states, and Mr. Gore-should create a clear body of evidence that Copenhagen has nothing whatsoever to do with actually saving the planet. Anyone looking at its stated purpose should therefore back decisively away from the document...unless of course they have dishonest motives of their own. To be clear, President Obama does have dishonest motives. He wants this international agreement not because it will save the earth but instead, and precisely, because it will help in one manner or another, either quickly or slowly, to destroy the sovereignty of the United States.

Ambassador Bolton has aptly labeled Obama as the first "post-nationalist" president. While other leaders have perhaps made unwise decisions in our international relations, Obama seems to be the first president so plainly resistant to the idea of our continued ability to self-determine. Whether our current leader signs a strong or a weak version of this treaty-and whether the Senate ratifies it or not - if President Obama should continue in his purposeful pattern of strengthening the executive branch at the expense of the legislative, Copenhagen will represent a problem of one kind or another in the not-so-distant future. The loss of our precious system of checks and balances will virtually guarantee it - though Ambassador Bolton may not yet fully have considered that possibility.

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