Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth's average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year. Ironically, climate change appears to have stalled in the run-up to the upcoming world summit in the Danish capital, where thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists plan to negotiate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Billions of euros are at stake in the negotiations. - Der Spiegel

Dominant Social Theme: It is JUST a time out!

Free-Market Analysis: Can you hear our crazed laughter from where you sit, dear reader? What are "they" going to do NOW. It wasn't farcical enough that we have been put through a decade's worth of arguments about an erroneous weather chart shaped like a hockey stick. No, for the past few years we have had to listen to intelligent and well educated people with lots of degrees tell us that carbon (one of the most plentiful of the gases that make life on this planet viable) was actually a poison and would have to be somehow be diminished, preferably by the voluntary surrender of (get ready for the non-sequitur) toilet paper and meat.

It has been for us (for you, too?) like living through a Jonathan Swift novel. You know the chapter where Gulliver visits the eggheads in the clouds who tell him all sorts of strange things but cannot remember how to properly steer their city in the sky. The same kind of is-this-a-bad-dream? ludicrousness. We keep wondering what it would be like to have Swift, or say, Mark Twain, back on earth for a year or two. But actually, if we had the opportunity, maybe we wouldn't want to chance it, as we think they might shoot themselves.

We sometimes too feel like shooting ourselves in our collective heads (well, two or three of them anyway - we need the rest) when we read this global warming stuff. Or maybe we're supposed to call it climate change now. We can't keep track. Anyway, we love the headline on this article. If WE were to write the headline, dear reader, we might have concluded that a ten-year downward trend in temperatures was more than a "time out," which implies a resumption of higher highs! Do you believe it? We don't. But when were higher temperatures ever definitively proven? Not in our puny lifetimes, we think.

Few other publications write about the elite-retreat. Why not? Aren't we supposed to quake in our very boots at the thought of their vastness and the magnificence? Aren't we supposed to feel hopeless and afraid? That life is out of yours and our control? We think these folks put their pants on one leg at a time, just as we all do.

Anyway, we have taken up the task ourselves. And in the other article in this modest issue of the Bell, we have written about it at some length. So we will just conclude this brief analysis by pointing out that in the pre-Internet era these glitches could easily have been overcome by simply ignoring the evidence. (Ah, for the days when the mainstream media cooperation was a given, and the only game in town.) But with electronic communications it is a great deal harder to ignore what it staring you in the face.

Conclusion: There is nowhere to hide with the Internet switched on. The dominant social themes - the promotions - that the monetary elite dredges up from their false think tanks to inflict upon us all with too-great frequency are literally shriveling under the hot glare of Internet scrutiny. When you control so much of the world's wealth it is not hard to think up ways to scare people into handing over more of their cash via taxes, insurance, inflation, etc. You just have to think of the right nightmare, publicize it, politicize it, turn it into curriculum, and sooner or later people will gladly hand you loads of moola with tears in their eyes. But now, perhaps, the monetary elite has discovered a nightmare all their own.

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Al Gore, you are a scoundrel! You refuse to debate Lord Monckton on your own findings and now you alter the cover of your own book by changing geographic and satellite imagery to promote your twisted agenda for the purpose of creating Gore Wealth and a Gore Legacy.  All the while your actions will "gore" the American Citizen. Shame on you and the truth always prevails, sir, always.

When the editor of Right Side News heard about this one on the Rush Limbaugh show today and then saw the visual evidence on WattsUpWithThat.com, and Prison Planet...this is totally amazing that the "TV media" with the likes of idiots like Chris Matthews has not picked up on this.

Apparently the "TV Media" are allies of "Gore the Deceiver", and it's time we turn off the "TV Media".........fire them! ...and get active in your local grassroots organizations and political processes.

We need to take the Pulitzer from the liar Gore and present this to the person who discovered his lie on the cover of his new book.

We have NO HOPE for the current administration, deceivers like Monster Gore and CHANGE back to conservative values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness without the constraints and mandates of Big Brother bullying, twisted values and deceptive practices like Gore's global warming FICTION.  Take his new book and catagorize it as SF!, because it IS!

Now, my fellow Americans, see for yourself the altered book cover of Al Core the Deceiver..

Al Gore's new book had a problem - no big hurricanes since Katrina to put in the book to look "threatening" to the USA. Any imagined link between hurricanes and global warming has evaporated.

Solution: the artists airbrush.

Ryan Maue, hurricane expert from the University of Florida writes:

Anthony,

The cover opens and closes half and half - so you only see one hurricane...as in the press release photo or the one on Amazon

The cover opens and closes half and half - so you only see one hurricane...as in the press release photo or the one on Amazon.

But this is the real picture sequence from the book which I looked at Borders today and took cell-phone pictures, original (before the retouching by some "artist") Note all of the Arctic ice and the size of the Florida Peninsula...and the final product:

 WUWT?

A midget Southern Hemisphere cyclone is off the coast of Florida, another hurricane is sitting on the equator off the coast of Peru - and the Arctic Ice is gone (perhaps it is summer) and the Florida Peninsula is half gone

There are other differences I am sure you can find - but the hurricanes are just nonsense...

Ryan

Here's the book cover:

The Department of the Interior is considering this and it would cover much of the Arctic, including the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean. The Sierra Club is worried because Shell Oil wants to drill for oil in the Beaufort Sea, a part of the "critical habitat for the bear."

So, for anyone who doesn't think that thwarting all attempts to drill for oil in the Arctic isn't the real reason to "save" the thriving polar bear population, the answer is that it has nothing to do with polar bears and everything to do with the primary goal of all environmental organization, denying energy sources to Americans and everyone else.

Indeed, the Sierra Club said declaring the polar bear endangered was "necessary to stop harmful activities such as oil drilling." So I guess it doesn't get any more plain than that.

The Sierra Club went on to blatantly lie about the status of polar bears, claiming that "survival rates for polar bear cubs are plunging." It is common knowledge that male polar bears are known to kill cubs, but the survival rates have much more to do with the mother bear's ability to catch ringed seals.

Ironically, polar bears' favorite delicacy is the pups of ringed seals. Mother Nature doesn't much care who wins the survival marathon and the Sierra Club is not calling for an endangered species declaration for ringed seals.

The Sierra Club is lying. The Natural Resources Defense Council is lying. The World Wildlife Fund is lying. They could not care less about polar bears. Their objective is shutting off access to anywhere that has oil or natural gas reserves.

In a July 2006 a report, "Polar Bear Politics: Underestimating the survival capacity of one popular bear" by Jennifer Marohasy, the Director of the Food and Environmental Unit at the Australian based Institute of Public Affairs was published. The estimate of the population is "about 25,000 polar bears existing in 19 relatively discrete populations across Norway, Denmark, Russia, Alaska, Greenland, and Canada."

"Forty years ago, there were only about 5,000 bears, the worldwide population depressed by hunting." In the 1970s, nations agreed to restrict hunting, resulting in the growth of the population.

The BIG LIE is that the Arctic is melting because of "global warming." The Arctic has, in fact, "warmed" over the past two decades and there has been a reduction in sea ice, but there has been no "global warming", only a natural cycle of warming that followed a Little Ice Age that ended around 1850 after three hundred years.

In fact, in October 2007, NASA announced the results of an in-depth study of Arctic sea ice and concluded what melting had occurred was due "a change in wind patterns" that had "compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream, and then sped its flow out of the Arctic." Wind patterns, not "global warming."

The Earth is now into a new cooling cycle that began in 1998 and which meteorologists predict will last for several decades. What they won't tell you is that they have their fingers crossed that it does not, in fact, signal a new Ice Age. The period between ice ages is about 11,500 years and the Earth is at the end of the interglacial period that has allowed for the rise of human civilization in the past five thousand years or so.

So, the fate of the polar bear is such that they are more likely to survive a new Ice Age than billions of humans in the northern hemisphere.

As should be obvious to everyone, the reduction of Arctic sea ice or the population of ringed seals has had no correlation whatever with the growth of the polar bear population. Indeed, if there hadn't been a period of glaciation about 250,000 years ago and a bunch of formerly brown bears had not become isolated and had not adapted successfully, there would be no polar bears.

Further putting the lie to the Sierra Club and other environmental organization's predictions is the fact that polar bears live in remote and inhospitable parts of the Arctic. In addition, they are not stationary, roaming over an area as large as two hundred square kilometers in search of tasty seals. Most of the time, humans can't even visit or fly over the vast bulk of the Arctic to make any kind of count.

The Sierra Club has no idea how many polar bears actually exist in the Arctic and any claim that they are "endangered" is pure balderdash. I could use another word to describe such claims, but my Mother told me not to.

So, to sum up, the Sierra Club is LYING about polar bears and you would be well advised to take anything else they have to say with a grain of Arctic Sea salt.

--------------------------------------------------

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.

Barack Obama conceded over the weekend that no successor to the Kyoto Protocol would be signed in Copenhagen next month. With that out of the way, it may be too much to hope that the climate change movement take a moment to reflect on the state of the science that is supposedly driving us toward a carbon-neutral future.

But should a moment for self-reflection arise, campaigners against climate change could do worse than take a look at the work of Stephen McIntyre, who has emerged as one of the climate change gang's Most Dangerous Apostates. The reason for this distinction? He checked the facts.

The retired Canadian businessman, whose self-described "auditing" a few years ago prompted a Congressional review of climate science, has once again thrown EnviroLand into a tailspin. In September, he revealed that a famous graph using tree rings to show unprecedented 20th century warming relies on thin data. Since its publication in 2000, University of East Anglia professor Keith Briffa's much-celebrated image has made star appearances everywhere from U.N. policy papers to activists' posters. Like other so-called "hockey stick" temperature graphs, it's an easy sell-one look and it seems Gadzooks! We're burning ourselves up!

"It was the belle of the ball," Mr. McIntyre told me on a recent phone call from Ontario. "Its dance card was full."

At least until Mr. McIntyre reported that the modern portion of that graph, which shows temperatures appearing to skyrocket in the last 100 years, relies on just 12 tree cores in Russia's Yamal region. When Mr. McIntyre presented a second graph, adding data from 34 tree cores from a nearby site, the temperature spike disappears.

Mr. Briffa denounces Mr. McIntyre's work as "demonstrably biased" because it uses "a narrower area and range of sample sites." He says he and his colleagues have now built a new chronology using still more data. Here, as in similar graphs by other researchers, the spike soars once again. Mr. McIntyre's "work has little implication for our published work or any other work that uses it," Mr. Briffa concludes.

He and his colleagues may well ignore Mr. McIntyre, but the rest of us shouldn't. While Mr. McIntyre's image may use data from fewer sites, it still has nearly three times as many tree cores representing the modern era as Mr. Briffa's original.

Yet Mr. McIntyre is first to admit his work is no bullet aimed at the heart of the theory of man-made climate change. Rather, his work-chronicled in papers co-written with environmental economist Ross McKitrick and more than 7,000 posts on his Climateaudit.org Weblog-does something much more important: It illustrates the uncertainty of a science presented as so infallible as to justify huge new taxes on rich countries along with bribes to poor ones in order to halt their fossil-fueled climbs to prosperity. Mr. McIntyre offers what many in the field do not: rigor.

It all started in 2002 when-as many might given the time and Mr. McIntyre's mathematics background-he decided to verify for himself the case for action on climate change.

"It was like a big crossword puzzle," he told me. "Business was a bit slow at the time, so I started reading up."

Prior to the Briffa graph revelation, he had also caught a statistical error that undercut another exalted "hockey stick" graph prominently featured by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC, this one by Michael Mann, head of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center. Alerts about review boards' seemingly lax standards litter his blog, highlighting in particular the IPCC, which has used both the Mann and Briffa graphs in its reports. In 2007, Mr. McIntyre found a technical gaffe that forced NASA to correct itself and admit that 1934, not 1998, was the warmest year recorded in the continental U.S.

"At the beginning I innocently assumed there would be due diligence for all this stuff. ... So often my mouth would drop, when I realized no one had really looked into it."

Even more innocently, he assumed the billion-dollar climate change industry would welcome his untrained but painstaking work. Instead, Mr. McIntyre is subjected to every kind of venom-that he must be funded by Big Oil, by Big Business, by Some Texan Somewhere. For the record, the 62-year-old declares himself "past my best-by date, operating on my own nickel."

James Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute, has dismissed him as a "court jester." Mr. Mann replied to an emailed query about Mr. McIntyre by decrying "every specious contrarian claim and innuendo against me, my colleagues, and the science of climate change itself."

Others are more thick-skinned: "You mention his name in my community, people just smile. It's a one-liner to get a laugh out of a group of climate scientists," affirms Stanford University's Stephen Schneider.

One wonders what is so funny, when it is not only the Canadian hobbyist fueling skepticism, but also figures from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center that now show thickening Arctic ice; from the U.K. Met (Meteorological) Office showing falling temperatures that contradict modeling predictions; and other studies that suggest natural factors in climate change are being dramatically underestimated.

Climatologists say they will only take Mr. McIntyre seriously if he creates his own temperature reconstructions and submits them for peer review. But the best science should stand up even to outside scrutiny. And if Mr. McIntyre has a credibility problem with climatologists, climatologists' predictions are increasingly viewed skeptically by the public.

A Pew report last month revealed that the number of Americans who believe humans are causing climate change has dropped 11 percentage points in the last 18 months to 36%; that the number who feel there is solid evidence that the earth is warming has fallen by 14 points to 57%; and that those who think the issue is "very serious" has sunk nine points to 35%.

Mr. McIntyre declares no interest in debunking The Theory in toto, nor in discouraging efficient energy use. His blog will disappoint those seeking anything more political than technical analyses.

In fairness, researchers are far from the loudest voices telling "skeptics" like Mr. McIntyre to sit down, shut up and surrender their lightbulbs without further question-that megaphone belongs to the politicians and activists pushing centrally-planned economies in the name of saving the Earth. Here, we see that contempt for laymen is not universal: Al Gore's ignorance is happily overlooked given his power to push billions in research funding. The same goes for Barack Obama, Leonardo DiCaprio, and everyone else declaring "the debate is over."

I asked 10 climatologists what they thought was the most reliable method of predicting climate, and got nearly as many answers. People in the field compare climate studies to health studies-another complex mechanism with uncontrollable factors, where best practices will always be debated.

Climate researchers know their prescriptions don't carry the certainty laymen assume from that which is labeled "science," yet most shy from a straightforward account of this uncertainty.

"Methods certainly need to be continually refined and improved. I doubt that anyone in the paleoclimate community would disagree with that," says Rob Wilson of the University of St. Andrews's School of Geography and Geosciences. "However, can the nuances of methodological developments be communicated to the laymen-and would they want to know? I do not think this would help."

Maybe not, but letting people feel duped by hyperbole is proving even more harmful to the warmers' cause.

"I never said I was proving or disproving anything.... I just don't think we should be thanking the people who make it harder to find out what's true," Mr. McIntyre says.

The climate establishment will probably never thank Mr. McIntyre, much less follow his example. The rest of us should do both.

Miss Jolis is an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe.

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SAN FRANCISCO

 "There is a plethora of unexplored options for securing energy in America through domestic sources, but misled confidence in renewable technologies and increased efficiency are hampering common-sense energy policy."

The list of top ten myths in the report are:

1. Myth: Most of our energy comes from oil.
   Reality: Oil represents less than 40 percent of our energy use.
2. Myth: Most of our oil comes from the Middle East.
   Reality: Two-thirds of our oil comes from North America.
3. Myth: We have no choice but to import vast quantities of oil and natural gas.
   Reality: The U.S. could significantly reduce imports by expanding domestic production.
4. Myth: Offshore oil production poses environmental risks.
   Reality: New technology has greatly reduced the risk of oil spills. Reducing oil reservoir pressure through extraction of petroleum will decrease the amount of oil pollution from natural seepage.
5. Myth: Reducing our petroleum use through alternative energies will increase U.S. energy security.
   Reality: Reducing petroleum use will first reduce domestic production, not production in unstable regions. Renewable technologies are subject to import and price security concerns as well.
6. Myth: Energy companies will not invest in clean reliable energy so we need government programs to do so.
   Reality: Energy companies are investing huge sums of money to develop cleaner and more reliable sources of energy.
7. Myth: Renewable energies will soon replace most conventional energy sources.
   Reality: While growing fast in percentage terms, renewable energies are a very small fraction of our energy mix and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
8. Myth: The U.S. consumes large amounts of energy and thus emits a disproportionate amount of the world's greenhouse gases.
   Reality: The U.S. uses energy and emits a large portion of the world's emissions because it produces a large portion of the world's goods and services.
9. Myth: Federal mandates for higher-mileage cars means less energy consumption.
   Reality: Increased energy efficiency leads to increased energy use.
10. Myth: Forcing drivers to use alternative fuels will help solve global warming.
    Reality: Alternative fuels do not necessarily result in lower greenhouse gas emissions.

     

"Energy policy must be based on facts, not myths," said Mr. Tanton. "If based on myths, energy policy could easily curtail our energy supply, drive up prices, and even increase pollution, all without an increase in energy security."

"If our goal is to lower prices, trim emissions and sustain access to energy, then policy makers, the media, and the public should reject energy myths and stick to the path of facts and reality," concluded Mr. Tanton.

READ or Download PDF Report

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Tom Tanton is a Senior Fellow with the Pacific Research Institute as well as the Principal of T2 & Associates, a firm providing consulting services to the energy and technology industries. Mr. Tanton has over 35 years experience in the energy, economy, and environmental fields. MORE....

Finger pointing rarely includes facts, especially in the climate debate. The first finger said we were global warming skeptics, but was turned back when it was explained all scientists are skeptics.

The second finger claimed we were climate change deniers. It was turned back because the opposite is true; we're telling the public about the extent and speed of natural climate change.

As Copenhagen nears, it's evident no agreement is possible so rhetoric, and alarmism abound. Finger pointing has a new form, being a denier is now a disease. They never consider the failure is due to facts proving the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis wrong. With the left it is always someone else's fault.

Just the Facts

Extreme left journalist George Monbiot ignored all the facts I provided when he was pointing a finger at me. He's ignoring them again, which forces him to assume the deniers are at fault. He wrote, "There is no point in denying it: we're losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease. It exists in a sphere that cannot be reached by evidence or reasoned argument; any attempt to draw attention to scientific findings is greeted with furious invective. This sphere is expanding with astonishing speed."

The sphere is expanding for several reasons.

- All evidence rejects the hypothesis that human CO2 is causing warming or climate change.

- Facts are gradually getting to the public despite obstructionism by journalists like Monbiot.

- Temperature projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are consistently wrong.

- Record cold temperatures are occurring everywhere.

- Motives of those pushing the need for reduction in CO2 are being exposed.

- Economic costs of a completely unnecessary action are emerging.

- If you shoot the messenger it changes the question to, "Who is the denier now?"

Denialism is defined as "the practice of creating the illusion of debate when there is none." It's a variation on "the science is settled" theme, but personalized to say you deny the facts that prove it's settled. I experienced it this week and learned there's no rational response. A person presented herself as a journalist writing an article on climate change. I don't refuse interviews and assume the person is seeking balance. The article was about "denialism", which the journalist claimed was a serious threat and I was a prime example. It evolved there was no balance, the journalist believed the science is settled and I was refusing to concede.

I explained how I am the antithesis of a denier. I explained how the scientific method was thwarted and the AGW hypothesis became fact before the research began. I was told this was clear evidence of my denial. As the chosen representative of denialism I wanted the facts and science I was supposedly denying. I asked what percentage CO2 was of greenhouse gases. The answer; "I ask the questions." I ended the interview, an action that will probably appear as clear evidence of denial.

Leftist politicians are pointing the same fingers. Australian Prime Minister Rudd said in a recent speech, "climate-change skeptics, the climate-change deniers, the opponents of climate-change action are active in every country."

He wrapped the charges in the standard environmentalist argument of the precautionary principle. Of the Australian opposition he said, "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."

It is the finger of guilt. What he denies is those impacts will occur if you implement his proposed climate-change action.

But who has the political prejudice?

Logic says it's those who want to stifle debate, to silence individuals and groups. All I've ever sought is a full and open debate. It was what 59 fellow skeptics and I sought in a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister.

A new book with another twist accuses those trying to uncover the facts of a cover-up. I hesitate to give the book attention but as an example of the illogic, lies and nastiness in the climate change debate it must be exposed. James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore's form of the denialism charge is in their book titled, "Climate Cover-Up" subtitled, "The Crusade to Deny Global Warming." They've likely achieved a new low with two major errors in the title. Nobody denies warming; the issue is the cause. The word "crusade" implies a religious quest, but the real crusade is to force acceptance of the hypothesis by personal attacks. Scientists as skeptics were subjected to an inquisition as befalls non-believers.

Disclosure; I'm a victim of their attacks and accusations. The false information about me leaves little doubt the rest is equally questionable. I was a threat from the beginning because I identified the hoax early in a peer-reviewed article, "An Iconoclast's View of Climatic Change" in the 1992 Canadian Water Resources Journal. The editor published but with the bizarre condition he provide the title. When I saw his choice I agreed because, unknown to him I already realized I was challenging a religion. Hoggan and Littlemore falsely linked me to the oil and energy industry. They said my failure to follow through on a lawsuit to stop their false information was proof of guilt. Truth is I could not afford to continue the action. Besides, Hoggan was supporting the person who made the false accusations. The book smears by suggestion, implies guilt by association, and uses various forms of ad hominem attacks. They don't discuss the scientific facts.

Hoggan and Littlemore are major players in the attacks and real cover-up. It is their expertise. Hoggan is a master of spin who owns a large Public Relations company. Littlemore is a political journalist. Hoggan set up a web page called Desmogblog and hired Littlemore and Kevin Grandia, to produce material replete with personal attacks, while ignoring the science.

Hoggan is Chair of the Board of the David Suzuki Foundation, a political environmental group that receives funding from oil and energy companies. With the twisted logic of true believers somehow this is not tainting and neither is money from government or any other agency. Hoggan's clients include alternative energy companies, like Ballard Engineering, who benefit from showing CO2 is causing global warming or climate change, but somehow that is not a conflict. But none of that is important; the issue is the science and the facts, which they consistently ignore.

Knocked Out by the Facts

The final finger of denialism pointed so directly by Monbiot is, ironically, an eloquent description of his own position. The reason he writes, "There is no point in denying it: we're losing" is because the fingers have curled into a fist and it is aimed right back at him and the other real deniers. As James Howell (1594 - 1666) said, "Burn not thy fingers to snuff another man's candle."

"Dr. Tim Ball is a renowned environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. Dr. Ball employs his extensive background in climatology and other fields as an advisor to the International Climate Science Coalition, Friends of Science and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy."

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Climate Change: Who Are The Deniers Now? by Dr. Tim Ball, Canada Free Press

Congress will not tolerate "forgery and identity theft" in attempting to influence the passage of legislation, members solemnly intoned. The letters misled Congress and imperiled its integrity and deliberative process.

Few Americans would disagree. But after their usual pontificating, the Democrats once again proved that, if they didn't have double standards, they would have no standards.

Mr. Markey and his big-D colleagues excoriated the guilty parties they had summoned to their Star Chamber. They then refused to allow testimony by the Republicans' proposed witness.

Competitive Enterprise Institute lawyer Chris Horner had intended to discuss a recent hoax by environmentalists, who had impersonated U.S. Chamber of Commerce officials, forged Chamber documents and staged a phony news conference to announce that the Chamber had reversed its position on global warming legislation.

That and Horner's other examples of green fraud would only "confuse people" and diffuse the anti-industry venom of Democrats, who didn't even mention the bogus Chamber event.

Worst, all this fakery pales next to what the full Energy and Commerce Committee had blessed as proof of imminent Climate Armageddon in April 2009. The Democrats' superstar witness was renowned climatologist Al Gore, who had earned a C and a D in the only science courses he took in college.

Once again, Democrats refused to permit the Republicans' intended witness to testify. They knew Lord Christopher Monckton, former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, would rubbish Gore's Doomsday scenarios. So Gore was allowed to mislead Congress and promote his unfounded assertion that humanity faces "an irreparably damaged planet," if we don't immediately slash fossil fuel use. He didn't face a single tough question over any of his false or misleading claims.

Gore: The Arctic is warming at an unprecedented rate. Truth: The Arctic region warms and cools dramatically every few decades, due to shifting currents and winds. Arctic ice also melted significantly during the 1930s; it is now back to seasonally normal levels.

Gore: If the Greenland and Western Antarctic Peninsula ice sheets were to melt and collapse into the ocean, seal levels would rise 40 feet. Truth: Snow and ice are increasing in interior Greenland and Antarctica. The peninsula ice is mostly unstable sea ice, and interior Antarctica temperatures would have to rise 85 degrees (from an average annual minus-50) to cause Gore's fanciful cataclysm.

Gore: The US West and the Southeast are experiencing prolonged severe droughts. Truth: America also endured the Dust Bowl and a 25-year drought that forced Anasazi Indians to abandon their villages.

Gore: Carbon dioxide "pollution" is acidifying our oceans. Truth: Higher CO2 levels fertilize ocean algae and improve seashell growth. In some areas upwelling can acidify surface waters with carbon-rich water from deep ocean zones.

Gore: Global warming is increasing the number of wildfires in US forests. Truth: Fires continue to threaten habitats, wildlife and homes because insects are killing trees and environmentalist legal actions prevent foresters from managing dense stands of brush and thin, diseased and dead trees.

Gore: Climate change is increasing the intensity of hurricanes. Truth: Hurricane numbers and intensity are on par with historic records and trends. Katrina was a large Category 3 hurricane when it hit a poorly prepared New Orleans.

It's a good thing the committee didn't put Gore under oath. He'd be sanctioned for wanton and reckless disregard for the truth - if not perjury - in both his testimony and the movie he produced to terrify young children, so that they pressure their parents into demanding passage of cap-tax-and-trade legislation.

A British High Court judge ruled that "An Inconvenient Truth" promotes "partisan political views," was riddled with errors and falsehoods, and could not be shown any more in schools, unless accompanied by a teacher's guide correcting information that Gore had misrepresented. Two of the most egregious distortions are especially likely to scare kids.

* Polar bears are drowning because a warming planet is melting the Arctic. Fact: Four bears drowned during a particularly violent storm, and polar bear populations are actually increasing in Alaska and Canada.

* Warming temperatures have brought malaria to Nairobi, Kenya, killing little children. Fact: Nairobi has always had malaria, and anti-insecticide policies promoted by Gore have helped perpetuate the problem.

Indeed, contrary to Gore's false assertions, there has been no global warming for a decade - and Earth has actually cooled slightly since 2002 - even as atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise. Climate alarmists habitually magnify the alleged risks of warmer temperatures, ignore the potential economic and health benefits of a warmer world, and obfuscate the clear dangers to agriculture and life from planetary cooling.

But Al Gore passionately wants Congress to enact punitive cap-and-trade legislation, because he detests the hydrocarbon fuels that provide 85% of the energy that powers America - and because he stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars via carbon trading deals and subsidized renewable energy technologies.

Gore refuses to give up his private jets, limousines and carbon-intensive lifestyle. He refuses to correct any of the errors in his movie, lectures or testimony. He just wants us to give up our living standards.

The former VP's media, Hollywood and congressional friends always protect him and his junk science. He will not debate anyone. When he gives six-figure talks on college campuses, the only questions allowed are those he has preapproved. On the extremely rare occasions when someone does ask an inconvenient question, as during a recent convention of friendly journalists, Gore dodges the question until the uppity interrogator's microphone can be switched off.

It's time for America to have its long overdue debate over global warming science and the painful economic impacts of anti-hydrocarbon cap-and-trade policies. A little honesty, transparency and robust debate would do wonders for the integrity of the legislative process and Americans' trust in Congress.

No more excuses, Mr. Gore. Have the guts to defend your views. Show some cojones.
____________
 Paul Driessen is senior policy adviser for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), which is sponsoring the All Pain No Gain petition against global-warming hype. He also is a senior policy adviser to the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death. This article first appeared on World Net Daily: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=115253

 Al Gore: Junk science huckster by Paul Driessen

Climate Depot Factsheet on Inconvenient History of Global Warming 'Tipping Points' -- Earth 'Serially Doomed'

Once again, the world is being warned of a climate "tipping point." The latest bout of stern warnings comes from the UK Met Office.

'World has only ten years to control global warming, warns Met Office - UK Telegraph - November 15, 2009

Excerpt: Pollution needs to be brought under control within ten years to stop runaway climate change, according to the latest Met Office predictions. [...] "To limit global mean temperature [increases] to below 2C, implied emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere at the end of the century fall close to zero in most cases."

Inconvenient History of Climate 'Tipping Point' Warnings

As early as 1989, the UN was already trying to sell their "tipping point" rhetoric on the public. See: U.N. Warning of 10-Year 'Climate Tipping Point' Began in 1989 - Excerpt: According to July 5, 1989, article in the Miami Herald, the then-director of the New York office of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Noel Brown, warned of a "10-year window of opportunity to solve" global warming. According to the 1989 article, "A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of 'eco-refugees,' threatening political chaos." (LINK) & (LINK)

NASA scientist James Hansen has been warning of a "tipping point" for years now. See: Earth's Climate Approaches Dangerous Tipping Point - June 1, 2007 - Excerpt: A stern warning that global warming is nearing an irreversible tipping point was issued today" by James Hansen.

Former Vice President Al Gore invented his own "tipping point" clock a few years ago. Excerpt: Former Vice-President Al Gore came to Washington on July 17, 2008, to deliver yet another speech warning of the "climate crisis." "The leading experts predict that we have less than 10 years to make dramatic changes in our global warming pollution lest we lose our ability to ever recover from this environmental crisis," Gore stated.

Prince Charles claimed a 96-month tipping point in July 2009. Excerpt: The heir to the throne told an audience of industrialists and environmentalists at St James's Palace last night that he had calculated that we have just 96 months left to save the world. And in a searing indictment on capitalist society, Charles said we can no longer afford consumerism and that the "age of convenience" was over.

The UN chief Ban Ki-moon further shortened the "tipping point" in August 2009, when he warned of 'incalculable' suffering without climate deal in December 2009!

Newsweek magazine waded into the tipping point claims as well. Newsweek wrote: "The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality." But, Newsweek's "tipping point" quote appeared in a April 28, 1975 article about global cooling! Same rhetoric, different eco-scare.

[Climate Depot Editor's Note: The public understands that "we must act now" claims are being manufactured for political purposes. See: Gore: U.S. Climate Bill Will Help Bring About 'Global Governance' - July 10, 2009 - It is no wonder that more and more Americans are rejecting climate fears. See: Polling: 'More Americans believe in haunted houses than man-made global warming' - 37% vs. 36% - October 30, 2009 - For another explanation of why climate fear promoters are failing to convince the public, see: MIT Climate Scientist: 'Ordinary people see through man-made climate fears -- but educated people are very vulnerable' - July 6, 2009]

UK Scientist Philip Stott ridiculed "tipping point" claims in 2007. Excerpt: In essence, the Earth has been given a 10-year survival warning regularly for the last fifty or so years. We have been serially doomed. [...] Our post-modern period of climate change angst can probably be traced back to the late-1960s, if not earlier. By 1973, and the 'global cooling' scare, it was in full swing, with predictions of the imminent collapse of the world within ten to twenty years, exacerbated by the impacts of a nuclear winter. Environmentalists were warning that, by the year 2000, the population of the US would have fallen to only 22 million [the 2007 population estimate is 302,824,000]. [...] In 1987, the scare abruptly changed to 'global warming', and the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was established (1988), issuing its first assessment report in 1990, which served as the basis of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC).

Related Links:

Another Atmospheric Scientist Dissents: Calls fears of CO2 tipping point 'alarmist, ludicrous, and totally without foundation' - July 13, 2009 - 'Over geologic time there has been 15 to 25 times more CO2 than current concentrations'

Media Tipping Point! Houston Chronicle Reporter Reconsiders Science is 'Settled' Claims! 'I am confused. 4 years ago this all seemed like a fait accompli' - September 6, 2009

Antarctic Tipping Point? 'If we don't act soon, the planet will become a barren ball of ice and snow' - October 2, 2009 - '5 of the 6 years with the greatest Southern Hemisphere sea ice extent have occurred in just the last decade'

2007 - GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISM REACHES A TIPPING POINT - October 26, 2007

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Marc Morano

Marc Morano is the executive editor and chief correspondent for ClimateDepot.com, a global warming and eco-news center founded in 2009.  Marc Morano served for three years as a senior advisor, speechwriter, and climate researcher for U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), and managed the award-winning communication operations of the GOP side of the EPW Committee. Morano joined the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee as the majority Communications Director in June 2006 after a decade and a half as a working journalist, documentary maker, radio talk show host, and national television correspondent.

Morano's Senate website won the coveted 2007 Gold Mouse Award for being the "Best of the Best." The award was made possible by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the National Science Foundation. Morano's website got so many readers in January of 2007 that the volume shut down the entire Senate website, including every Senator's personal websites. Morano spearheaded the 2007 groundbreaking report of 400-plus dissenting scientists and the follow-up 2008 report of 650-plus scientists dissenting from man-made global warming fears. Gallup polling organization essentially recognized the impact of the U.S. Senate EPW website in a May 29, 2008 analysis. "Republican spokespersons and conservative commentators have long challenged IPCC reports as reflecting the 'scientific consensus' on global warming by highlighting the views of a modest number of 'skeptic' or 'contrarian' scientists who question the IPCC conclusions."  Gallup concluded: "Growing skepticism about news coverage of global warming clearly goes hand in hand with Republicans' declining belief that it is already occurring." (LINK)

Morano, who has spent years researching climate change, environmental, and energy issues, traveled to Greenland in 2007 to investigate global warming claims. As Senate staff, Morano also attended the United Nation's climate eco-conferences held in Kenya, Indonesia, and Poland in 2006, 2007, and 2008.

Morano has held both White House and Capitol Hill Press credentials and was a member of the Society of Professional Journalists. He has attended and reported on numerous international eco-conferences and the 2002 UN-sponsored Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa.

In addition, I have warned that the international environmental movement is not really concerned about protecting the environment at all - rather it is using mother earth as an excuse for an age-old drive for power and wealth.

For those same fifteen years my warnings have fallen on deaf ears in Congress, in state houses and in city councils across the nation. Instead, I and others like me, have been labeled radical fringe and conspiracy nuts. As a consequence, I have been ignored by much of the media, dropped from major nation radio and television news shows that once invited me as a guest on a regular basis. Letters, petitions and meeting requests on Capitol Hill are ignored.

Vindication comes in surprising ways sometimes. Case in point, on October 27, 2009, The Washington Times, DC's "conservative" newspaper ran an editorial entitled: "Green World Government, the UN uses environmentalism to seize control." Readers of The DeWeese Report, would not have found the Times revelation to be news.

What is important is that after my warnings have been one of the lone voices in the wilderness, some in the media are beginning to see the threat - just as it is about to be jammed down their throats. The fact is, the warnings I've been sounding are now transformed into urgent alarm bells.

The Times editorial was about the coming UN Copenhagen Climate Treaty and it contains just about every threat to our nation's economy and sovereignty to vindicate my fifteen years of forced isolation. All the players and issues are here to enforce global control over our nation and our personal lives. The UN; World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace; global warming; Sustainable Development; and attempts by the UN to enforce global taxes. I have issued articles on every one of those.

And there is the new player in the game - Barack Obama. He of course, is the reason why this new Treaty is causing such a stir and why even some main-stream media is beginning to pick up on the danger. Obama is just nuts enough to actually sign a document that would make our nation subservient to UN schemes of global control. In fact, that is exactly what he intends to do.

And here are some of the details of what Obama would be signing - essentially committing the United States to comply.

First, The Copenhagen Climate Change Treaty will enforce dire restrictions on all humankind. One provision called the "Facility" will be used to "reorder society" to change the structure of civilization, making the environment the ruling principle. The Facility is designed to bring together a massive number of "fragmented" environmental organizations and existing regulating structures, so they can all work together. In other words, any action taken by mankind will be regulated - because anything we do has some impact on the environment.

Energy, of course, will be the prime target. The policy won't be to find more - it will be to cut back on its use. Homes will not be warmed or cooled. Cars will not be driven. And manufacturing will be sharply curtailed - at least in the "developed" countries. The price of everything manufactured by using energy (EVERYTHING) from toothpaste to food will skyrocket. Shortages will abound.

Most of all, however, the Copenhagen Climate Change Treaty is a vicious global indictment of developed industrial nations. Its pretense is that Third World nations are suffering economically because of their carbon emissions, which have changed the environment, thereby causing them economic and social loss.

To compensate these poor victims of unbridled capitalism, the Treaty calls for compensation from the big, bad developed nations (the United States), in the form of at least 0.7% of annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from each nation. That adds up to about $800 billion over five years, with additional funding requirements assessed on an "as needed" basis. However, the Treaty language is not yet complete and there is talk of making that figure as much as 2% of the GDP, which is roughly half of our nation's total defense budget.

To collect these taxes, the treaty will establish a new governing body called the Conference of the Parties (COP), which will be given ultimate authority over the administration and enforcement of the treaty provisions. For additional resources, COP will have the ability to tax aviation and shipping. But, in the small print, things get worse. It says COP's taxing authority "is not limited to" the above. That means they can tax anything that moves.

Again, what's this money supposed to be used for? Oh yes, compensating those poor Third World nations. The UN calls it a "carbon debt" that the developed nations owe to the rest of the world. This is to be a punishment on the developed nations because they refused to abide by previous UN efforts, such as the Kyoto Climate Change Accord which called for reducing energy use by as much as 30%, and thus would destroy the economies of entire nations. Shame on us for not playing along.

The actual language of the treaty says: "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 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 Goals."

There it is. We are to be punished for refusing to destroy ourselves. And why were we supposed to do that? Because of global warming. It doesn't matter that scientists from around the world, including leading UN climate scientists now report that there is absolutely no evidence of man-made global warming. In fact, more and more scientists are reporting an actual cooling taking place. There is no nation drowning under rising oceans. There are no floods or hurricanes consuming nations.

Droughts and desertification in most cases is natural. The only man-made desertification taking place in the world is being caused by bad government policy. The worse example of desertification is taking place in the middle of California in one of the previously most productive agriculture areas in the world. Today, because of environmental protection policy, farmers have had their water cut off to save a one inch long fish. Will treaty money be sent to those farmers to pay them back for such policies? Of course not.

It doesn't matter that science shows that CO2 is not a pollutant but a valuable natural substance necessary for the existence of life on earth.

Above all it doesn't matter that the largest emitters of CO2 are China, India, and Brazil, and they are all exempt from the treaty's massive restrictions on emissions and energy use. How, then, does such a treaty pretend to have anything to do with helping the environment? In truth it doesn't, and every party involved, from the environmental groups to Barack Obama, knows that this treaty is designed to do one thing- redistribute wealth away from the developed nations to nations that want to suck the life blood out of the United States.

Nations like those in Africa are poor, not because of pollution, or lack of resources or even lack of education. They are poor for one reason-bad government. Those that refuse to allow their people to own property and build their own wealth and dreams. Oppressive governments that confiscate the results of the labor of their people. Governments like Robert Mugabe's in Zimbabwe, who took the breadbasket of Africa and turned it into a desert. And those same governments intend to be first in line to gather their share of the booty from the treaty. Will their people be better off? No. Will the environment be better off? No. Will the United States be better off after Obama signs this monster? No.

So who benefits? The United Nations finally gets its global government. The environmental groups finally get their power inside the elite. The totalitarian dictators of the poor, undeveloped nations get their Swiss bank accounts enlarged and all the trappings of wealth that go with it.

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Four centuries ago, "heretics" who disagreed with religious orthodoxy risked being burned at the stake. Many were the dissenting views that could send offenders to a fiery end.

In 1633, the astronomer Galileo Galilei may have come within a singed whisker of the same fate, for insisting that the sun (and not the Earth) was at the center of the solar system. In the end, he agreed to recant his "heresy" (at least publicly) and submit to living under house arrest until the end of his days.

We wish that were the case today. Unfortunately, lessons learned 400 years ago have yet to be adopted where the Church of Anthro-Climatism is involved. Burning dissenters at the stake may no longer be an option - perhaps because it would send prodigious quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. However, many other ingenious punishments are often meted out, to ensure that dissent is kept within "acceptable" limits, or dissenters no longer dissent.

Just recently, as scientists who specialize in environmental science, climatology, and solar variability, we welcomed the acceptance of our scientific session, Diverse Views from Galileo's Window: Researching Factors and Processes of Climate Change in the Age of Anthropogenic CO_2. The session was to be hosted at the upcoming Fall 2009 Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco.

Our session was to focus on "knowledge that spans an extremely diverse range of expertise" and provides "an integrated assessment of the vast array of disciplines that affect and, in turn, are affected by the Earth's climate." Our ultimate goal was to stimulate discussion at this professional meeting, prior to the upcoming UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fifth assessment report.

We developed this session to honor the great tradition of science and scientific inquiry, as exemplified by Galileo when, 400 years ago this year, he first pointed his telescope at the Earth's moon and at the moons of Jupiter, analyzed his findings, and subsequently challenged the orthodoxy of a geocentric universe. Our proposed session was accepted by the AGU.

In response to its acceptance, we were joined by a highly distinguished group of scientists - including members of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, France and China, as well as recipients of the AGU's own William Bowie, Charles Whitten and James MacElwane medals. Our participants faithfully submitted abstracts for the session.

But by late September, several puzzling events left us wondering whether the AGU truly serves science and environmental scientists - or simply reflects, protects and advances the political agendas of those who espouse belief in manmade CO₂-induced catastrophic global warming.

On September 14, Dr. Nicola Scafetta of Duke University contacted us, to say the AGU had cancelled his previously-approved 12-paper session on Solar Variability and Its Effect on Climate Change, since it did not have enough papers. He asked if the papers from his session could be merged into our session; since they fit our theme well, we accepted his papers.

The merger was approved by the AGU Planning Committee. Thus our Galileo session now had grown to a total of 27 papers and was approved as a poster session at the Fall Meeting.

However, a few days later, after first approving our session and after we had assigned time slots for these new papers at AGU's request, the Planning Committee revoked its approval and summarily dissolved our session. Now the committee claimed our session was "thematically divergent," and divided the papers in our original session among six different sessions.

To cover its tracks, the committee created a new session called Diverse Views from Galileo's Window: Solar Forcing of Climate Change with 15 papers - including the 12 from Dr. Scafetta's original session that it had cancelled. That reduced the focus of this session to just solar forcing of climate, and eliminated discussions of the impact of anthropogenic CO₂ that we had planned for our original session. The remaining papers from our cancelled session were moved to five other sessions, thereby undermining our original intent: comparing solar variability and manmade carbon dioxide as factors in planetary climate change.

In responding to us, the Planning Committee defended its actions by asserting: "none of [the papers in our session] have to do with the Galilean moons of Saturn [sic], which have to do with climate change or solar activity." That claim reflects either a poor grasp of our purpose or a failure to read our proposal - and leads the question, Why wasn't this issue raised when they originally decided to accept our session?

Our session proposal had clearly intended to honor Galileo's observations of Jupiter's (not Saturn's) moons, which had led him to challenge the orthodoxy of the geocentric universe. We wanted to highlight how current research into the climatic effects of anthropogenic CO₂ is challenging the supposed "scientific consensus" that humans are causing catastrophic climate change.

This arbitrary dissolution of our original session has serious implications for proper scientific enquiry. Our request that the session be reinstated has gone unheeded, despite the fact that the AGU has reinstated at least one cancelled session in the past. We have repeatedly been told that the decisions of the Planning Committee are final, though it has made clearly contradictory decisions regarding our session.

Reduced sunspot activity and solar energy output, stable or even cooling planetary temperatures, concerns over the high cost of proposed cap-and-trade legislation, political developments in Washington and Copenhagen, and other factors have caused more people to question manmade global warming disaster claims. This has led to consternation among scientists and organizations that have supported those claims.

However, as scientists, we are profoundly concerned by this behavior from a professional society that is supposed to serve science and its members. The AGU certainly had the right to reject our proposed session at the outset or before the solar variability session was merged with it. But given the topic of our session and the good faith approach we have taken in accepting papers from the cancelled solar variability session, it seems odd (at the very least) that our session was summarily dissolved, and that the AGU refuses to discuss the matter.

The AGU action is hardly reasonable. Indeed, it is counter-productive to the scientific method and to promoting open scientific discussions. It smacks of censorship. Something is rotten in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Scientific inquiry has once again been silenced ... just as it was 400 years ago.

The AGU should be ashamed. Its members should be outraged.  

_____________

Dr. Willie Soon is a scientist who studies solar and climate co-variability.

Dr. David Legates is a scientist who studies climatology and hydrology. 

Both are members of the American Geophysical Union.

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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