Cooling 3.5 degrees Celsius by 2020.

A new Norwegian study predicts that the annual mean temperature in Svalbard will drop 3.5°C over the period of 2009 to 2020 and mean winter temperature will drop 6°C.  The study is based on solar activity and the duration of solar cycles.  While the study is specific to Norway, if this actually occurs, temperatures will also drop significantly in other areas.

Cooling ‘til 2068?

A recent Chinese study of Tibetan tree rings indicates that there is nothing abnormal about the current climate conditions. The research team determined that several different natural cycles – 2-3 years, 100 years, 199 years, 800 years, and 1,324 years – combined to produce the climate history seen in the varying tree ring properties from the Tibetan Plateau.

The study indicate that temperatures have peaked and predicts that they will drop until 2068 AD, rising again after that.

The studies are two of a number of studies that run counter to the anthropogenic global warming theory so prominent in today’s media.

Global warming or global cooling?

If I had a choice, I’d prefer warming.

(I’d also prefer that governments not waste money in futile efforts that aren’t going to make a significant difference.  If we’re going to spend money like that, let’s do something worthwhile – like eradicating malaria or making sure more people in the world have clean water, something that would make a real difference instead of lining the pockets of bureaucrats or eco-snobs.)

William J. Clinton Presidential Center, May 12, 2007

The Clinton service is remarkable not only for its revolutionary design but also for its significance to the history of the American presidency.

The Clinton administration coincided with the bicentennial of the White House as home to America’s first families, a role it had played since John Adams, the second president, took up residence there on November 1, 1800. To commemorate this event, and also replenish the stock of official state china for the first time in nearly two decades, President William Clinton and his wife, Hillary, commissioned Lenox to create 300 12-piece place settings in 2000.

In a dramatic departure from previous White House services, the Clinton china features a border of pale creamy yellow, instead of a bright primary color, and images of the White House facades, in place of the customary presidential seal. Each piece in the placesetting is decorated with a different pattern, the motifs derived from outstanding architectural elements found in the State Dining Room, East Room, and Diplomatic Reception Room.

Fittingly, the china was used for the first time at a dinner attended by former Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George Bush, their wives, and Lady Bird Johnson, former first lady.

Lenox White House China

Clinton Presidential Library and Center

• William J. Clinton Presidential Library (.gov)
• William J. Clinton Presidential Center (.org)
• Wikipedia

Little Rock Area

• City of Little Rock website
• Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau
• City of North Little Rock website
• North Little Rock Visitors Bureau
• Wikipedia
• Wikitravel

Other Exit78 posts related to the Clinton Presidency:

• Fascinating Landscape
• Digital photography is just so cool!

Other posts related to the Little Rock area

• Big Dam Bridge
• Tug and barges leaving lock, upstream of the Big Dam Bridge
• Tight squeeze and short on time
• Parking Privileges – YES!
• Karen’s Quilting
• A Big Dam Bridge for biking and hiking

In Australia, climate change initiatives have been delayed until at least 2013.  Despite that, the Federal Climate Change Department is not considering any cutbacks or layoffs.

TAXPAYERS will fork out $90 million a year to keep more than 400 public servants employed within the Federal Climate Change Department – despite most of them now having nothing to do until 2013.

More than 60 of them are classified as senior executive staff on salaries between $168,000 and $298,000 a year. Their salary bill alone will cost an estimated $12 million every year.

A further $8 million will also be paid in rent for plush offices at Canberra’s Constitution Place until 2012, where it is believed 500 new computers will be delivered this week.

It can be revealed that despite Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s decision on Tuesday to suspend the failed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme until at least 2013, the department has ruled out plans to cut back staff.

Read the full Herald Sun article – Kevin Rudd’s Department of Hot Air costing taxpayers $90m

From Fox News:

Al Gore won a Nobel Prize and an Oscar for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. But in the last three months, as global warming has gone from a scientific near-certitude to the subject of satire, Gore — the public face of global warming — has been mum on the topic.

The former vice president apparently finds it inconvenient even to answer calls to testify before the U.S. Senate. You can call him Al . . . but he won’t call back.

On Tuesday, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe — a prominent skeptic of global warming theory and the Republican leader of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee — issued a request for Gore to come testify on global warming. In an interview with FoxNews.com, Inhofe said he wants Gore to appear because "it will be interesting to ask him on what science he based his movie," a film the senator considers "science fiction."

Gore has yet to respond, but that didn’t prevent him from causing a stir at Apple’s shareholder meeting Thursday. According to CNET, Gore was seated in the first row while several stockholders bashed his high-profile views on climate change. One reportedly said Gore "has become a laughingstock. The glaciers have not melted."

Read the Fox News article:  You Can Call Him Al … But Al Won’t Call You Back

Meeting in closed sessions in Bali, Environment and Climate ministers from several countries are insisting on a review of the performance of the IPCC and it’s head, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri.  According to a UK Telegraph article,  the minister’s main concern is over Dr. Pachauri’s response to errors discovered in the 2007 IPCC assessment report on climate.

Environment and Climate ministers meeting in closed session in Bali last night insisted that an independent review should be carried out following the publicising of mistakes in its last report, and a row surrounding Dr Pachauri’s robust response to his critics. If his management is found to be at fault his position could become untenable.

Participants in the unprecedented meeting – held at the annual assembly of the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Governing Council in Bali – were sworn to secrecy over the decision and it is only expected to be announced after its detailed scope and composition have been worked out by UNEP and the World Meteorological Organisation, the two UN agencies that oversee the IPCC’s work.

The ministers – led by Hillary Benn, the Environment Secretary,and his counterparts from Germany,. Norway, Algeria and Antigua and Barbuda – refused to allow Dr Pachauri to decide who would carry out the review, insisting it must be completely and demonstrably independent of the IPCC.

Read the full Telegraph article: IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri to face independent inquiry.

In today’s hard economic times, closing state parks seems to be a remedy that many states have used or are considering.  A Las Vegas Sun article says Nevada legislators are considering closing all of the state parks in Nevada.

The Nevada Legislature is thinking of closing state parks as it considers how to patch an estimated $900 million budget gap, a move that would save a few million dollars while killing the economies of rural towns and stunting tourism efforts across the state, opponents of the idea say.

Gov. Jim Gibbons has suggested a 10 percent budget reduction for a number of agencies, including the State Parks Division. But the Interim Finance Committee could take that a step further. At its meeting in Las Vegas on Thursday, the committee is expected to consider following the lead of cash-strapped states such as California and Arizona, that have closed some or all of their state parks.

In Nevada, the proposal is the brainchild of Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, who says he is considering shutting down all state parks to save money.

Read the entire article: Would closing state parks to save money do more harm than good?

From KUSI News, San Diego, a special report:

Part one:

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

A report in Newsweek, Iceberg Ahead, looks at the current state of climate science and politics… and how things got to this point.

What went wrong? Part of the blame lies, of course, with those who obstructed the efforts of the IPCC and the individual scientists, including bloggers who tried to sandbag scientists with spurious FOIA requests, and the perpetrators (as yet unknown) of the hack at the Climatic Research Unit. Part of the blame also falls on the climate scientists themselves. Many of them—including perhaps Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC head—may have stepped too far over the line from science to advocacy, undermining their own credibility. Some scientists, as a result, are now calling for a change in tone from antagonism to reconciliation. Climate science, they say, needs to open its books and be more tolerant of scrutiny from the outside. Its institutions—notably the IPCC—need to go about their business with greater transparency. "The circle-the-wagons mentality has backfired," says Judith Curry, head of Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

Read more: Iceberg Ahead – Climate scientists who play fast and loose with the facts are imperiling not just their profession but the planet.

From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli turned up the heat on global warming yesterday.

On behalf of the state, Cuccinelli filed a petition asking the federal Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its December finding that global warming poses a threat to people.

Cuccinelli also filed a petition with the federal appeals court in Washington seeking a court review of the EPA finding.

read more:  Va. challenges EPA’s stance on global warming

The last several months have been a very interesting time for those who monitor climate change issues.  Finally, problems with  the “settled science” of climate change are hitting main stream media outlets.  A concise Wall Street Journal editorial chronicles the majority of the most significant issues identified so far.

It has been a bad—make that dreadful—few weeks for what used to be called the "settled science" of global warming, and especially for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that is supposed to be its gold standard.

Read the rest at the Wall Street Journal: The Continuing Climate Meltdown.

The Great Climate Change Retreat

UN must investigate warming ‘bias’, says former climate chie1f

Nature editor quits ‘Climategate’ review panel

IPCC ex-chairman Robert Watson calls for review of climate change mistakes

Series of missteps by climate scientists threatens climate-change agenda.

Another claim of the UN Intergovernmental  Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is crumbling.  According a UK Telegraph report, an alarming claim on future African crop failures is disintegrating.

 

Ever more question marks have been raised in recent weeks over the reputations of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and of its chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri. But the latest example to emerge is arguably the most bizarre and scandalous of all. It centres on a very specific scare story which was included in the IPCC’s 2007 report, although it was completely at odds with the scientific evidence – including that produced by the British expert in charge of the relevant section of the report. Even more tellingly, however, this particular claim has repeatedly been championed by Dr Pachauri himself.

Only last week Dr Pachauri was specifically denying that the appearance of this claim in two IPCC reports, including one of which he was the editor, was an error. Yet it has now come to light that the IPCC, ignoring the evidence of its own experts, deliberately published the claim for propaganda purposes.

One of the most widely quoted and most alarmist passages in the main 2007 report was a warning that, by 2020, global warming could reduce crop yields in some countries in Africa by 50 per cent. Dr Pachauri not only allowed this claim to be included in the short Synthesis Report, of which he was co-editor, but has publicly repeated it many times since.

Read the Telegraph article: African crops yield another catastrophe for the IPCC.

The internet is having an impact on the public perception – and confidence – of the “settled” science of anthropogenic global warming, according to a report in The Australian.

 

What we are witnessing, in defiance of officialdom, government propaganda and the bulk of funded researchers in the field, is the collapse of a scientific paradigm. This is something that has never happened before. Politically speaking, it’s a game-changer with the potential to overturn the normative assumptions commentators rely on. Not least of these is the idea that Australian voters will always give newly elected federal governments a second term.

In the latest edition of The Spectator, Matt Ridley, a veteran science journalist, offers an explanation for how the consensus came unstuck. "Despite 20 years of being told they were not just factually but morally wrong, of being compared to Holocaust deniers, of being told they deserved to be tried for crimes against humanity, of being avoided at parties, climate sceptics seem to be growing in number and confidence by the day. What is the difference?

"In a word, the internet. The `climate consensus’ may hold the establishment — the universities, the media, big business, government — but it is losing the jungles of the web. After all, getting research grants, doing pieces to camera and advising boards takes time. The very ostracism the sceptics suffered has left them free to do their digging untroubled by grant applications and invitations to Stockholm."

Part of Ridley’s argument is that it’s distinguished scientists in retirement, who have no fear of faculty censure or funding bodies and have nothing to lose, who have led the internet revolt. In Australia, that body includes Garth Paltridge, the author of The Climate Caper, and William Kininmonth, author of Climate Change: A Natural Hazard. As well as publishing books and journal articles, both have an internet presence.

For more, go to The Australian article, World Wide Web of Doubt.

.

Many scientists and others who are skeptical of anthropogenic global warming would like the answer to one question that, so far, has not been answered:

While there is laboratory evidence that carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide and global temperature have both been rising, real world proof that CO2 has caused the rise in global temperature does NOT exist.

While, at times,  there appears to be a rough correlation between CO2 and global temperature, correlation does not prove causation.

Even though anthropogenic global warming is an unproven hypothesis, it is likely that some historical warming resulted from carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by humans. However, because of the physical properties of CO2, it’s done all the warming it can do.

Predictions of rising temperatures and the dire consequences of anthropogenic global warming are based on computer climate models.  The climate models include the assumption that global temperatures will rise as CO2 continues to rise.

Over the last decade, global temperatures have leveled off while CO2 continued to rise.  Temperature is trending below all of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predictions.

Joanne Nova, an Australian freelance science presenter & writer: Professional speaker, author, and former TV host, has prepared and published two excellent — and free — booklets on global warming.  The first, The Skeptics Handbook, has been translated by volunteers into many other languages, including German, French, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Turkish, Portuguese, Japanese, and Danish.

Carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas by absorbing infrared radiation in three narrow bands of frequencies, (2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM)), meaning that most of the heat producing infrared radiation frequencies escapes absorption by CO2.  The main peak, 15 µM, is absorbed completely within about 10 meters of the ground meaning that there is no more to absorb.  Doubling the human contribution of CO2 would reduce this distance. Reducing the distance for absorption would not result in an increase in temperature.

The sun appears to have entered a less active period and is providing less warmth to the Earth.  The sun is in an extended solar minimum that was predicted to end in March 2008, nearly 20 months ago.  Since 2004 there have been 770 days without sunspots.  A typical solar minimum averages about 485 days.  Solar magnetic activity continues to drop.

A number of scientists are projecting that global warming is over, for now, and that global average temperatures will be dropping for the next 20 to 30 years.

“Tricks” apparently have been performed on more climate data than just the tree ring proxy information.  The figure below shows the adjustments made to the historical temperature record of Darwin, Australia.  The blue lines show the values for the original, “raw” temperature data. The red lines are the official NOAA/GHCN  ( National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — Global Historical Climate Network) data  after the values have been “homogenized” and averaged.  The black line are the values for the adjustment that was made (uses the scale on the right of the figure).

“Before getting homogenized, temperatures in Darwin were falling at 0.7 Celcius per century … but after the homogenization, they were warming at 1.2 Celcius per century. And the adjustment that they made was over two degrees per century …” – Willis Eschenbach, The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero

American climate sceptics are now demanding a thorough investigation of NASA’s earth science programme, including the possibility that instruments on its satellites have been “tweaked” to give a “correct” result, and pointing out that the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data, going back to the 1930s. The common factor between CRU East Anglia and NASA is the destruction or withholding of research models and data which, if they are reliable, should be their pride and joy – documentation that would secure these institutions’ place in history, like Einstein’s equations. Telegraph.co.uk

“They’ve lost the raw data on which all the models, all the computer generated forecasts, the graphs and projections, are based.”

“Poor Al Gore”

Climate politics continue to be interesting.  Australia’s opposition Liberal Party has ousted its leader, Malcolm Turnbull, after the resignation last week of several senators from their “front-seat” positions.  The Aussie government’s climate change bill is now in jeopardy, raising the potential of an early general election in 2010.

The Climategate emails and documents are being investigated by a number of organizations, including an inquiry by Penn State University, where Michael Mann, creator of the discredited hockey stick graph – used by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth – is a professor. Inquiries are also under way at the University of East Anglia, the source of the leaked material.  Government investigations are either ongoing or pending and there has been at least one civil lawsuit filed.

At a minimum, the emails document the violation of UK Freedom of Information laws.

Many believe that the leaker was not a hacker, but, rather, was an insider acting as a anonymous whistleblower by leaking the emails and documents, including information that had been unsuccessfully been sought under the UK FOI statutes.

The emails are not the only incriminating material.  Computer codes and their documentation show fudged numbers and “blatant data-cooking” that tell a story of twisting reality to a desired view.

Many of the fantastic claims in the media about climate change are likely predicated on the same sort of skewed science.

An article in the Wall Street Journal titled The Climate Science Isn’t Settled, by Richard S. Lindzen, professor of meteorology at MIT gives a more balanced view of the state of climate science.

Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction. Several of the emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have caused such a public ruckus dealt with how to do this so as to maximize apparent changes.

While I have been skeptical of global warming claims for quite some time, this Climategate fiasco appears to show  a conspiracy to doctor the evidence.

In my interest in climate change, I wasn’t looking for a conspiracy, just the truth.

While I have spent a bit of time reading some of the emails that were leaked earlier the week, I simply do not have the time – or desire – to delve deeply into the files.  There are many others around the world digging into this.

I think that there have been serious consequences that have resulted from the actions of some of the scientists whose correspondence has been leaked.  In their zeal to “prove” — at all costs — CO2 as the cause of anthropogenic global warming, other potential causes have been marginalized.  Evidence is mounting that changes in land use may have a significantly greater impact on climate change than rising CO2.  If true, mitigation and adaptation to successfully address human impacts on climate could be done at a fraction of the cost of  the drastic actions and expenses that are being called for today.  It may be that efforts could have been started a decade ago, but for an obsession on CO2 as the global warming culprit.

On Examiner.com, Thomas Fuller is writing a series of articles regarding the actions and communications of a group of climate scientists and paleoclimatologists known as The Team. Click here to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 , Part 6, and Part 7.

My first post on this was Climategate.

I discovered just a little while ago that access to individual posts on this blog was unavailable and commenting was not available. This was because of something I did with some files on the server earlier today — not a web host issue. I knew that I should have checked after I was done, but didn’t.

It’s all back to normal now. It was only a 30 second fix, because it’s something that happened before and I knew where to look.

——

A couple of days ago, a park visitor from Spain was injured by a Yellowstone National Park bison (aka American buffalo).

“At approximately 11:25 a.m., the woman and her husband were using a pay phone in the Canyon lodging area with their backs to the road. According to witnesses, two bull bison walked down the road, passing within 20 feet of the couple. One of the bison left the road, walked up behind the woman and butted her into the air. The couple, who were facing away from the road, did not see the bison.”

The woman was taken to the Lake Clinic where she was treated for minor injuries and released.

This quite an unusual event. Bison are not usually aggressive unless someone has encroached upon their space. We have seen numerous instances where people have gotten way too close to these critters and nothing happened. Park regulations require that a minimum distance of 25 yard must be maintained from bison.

Bison are very, very common in the Canyon area.

We still hope to make it to Yellowstone this year. However, we may not have as much time available as we had originally thought.

——

Climate change legislation — The Waxman/Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act pass by a very slim margin today in the US House of Representatives. I actually watched some of the debate on CSPAN. I’ve got just a few comments.

• They didn’t even have a properly collated official copy of the bill in the room during the debate. Three hundred pages were revised overnight and one of the House staff was in the process of inserting pages into the correct place in the “official copy” during the closing minutes of the floor debate.
• The debate on the floor was limited to 3 hours for a bill that may be one of the largest tax bills in the history of the country.
• While virtually every American would end up with higher energy costs as a result of the bill, as I understand it, it’s requirements would have negligible impact on global warming, if anthropogenic (human caused) global warming (AGW) were a proven fact rather than an unproven hypothesis.
• The premise of the bill is predicated on the assumption that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a proven scientific fact. The earth has been warming up until the last ten years. Global carbon dioxide levels have been rising, at least in part due to human activities, even during the last ten years as global temperature anomalies have been stable or dropping. While it would seem obvious to blame rising temperatures on carbon dioxide produced by man, there is no proof that continued rising CO2 will result in a continued rise in global temperatures. The predictions of rising temperatures are the product of computer climate models that assume that anthropogenic global warming is a proven scientific fact rather than an unproven hypothesis.
• Our Representative, voted against it. I think I voted against him in 2008. He’s got my vote in 2010.

——

Climate change — I read material on climate change almost every day.

I am absolutely appalled at the gloom and doom, the-sky-is-falling alarmism that is in the media on a daily basis.

I’m not sure at what point I stopped simply accepting anthropogenic (human caused) global warming. I can say that for well over a year I’ve been reading a lot of climate change related material and have a much better understanding of the topic than I once had. My first blog post on climate was It’s not a hypothesis… It’s not a theory… it’s a CONSENSUS! last year.

Below is some of what I’ve come to believe and understand related to the Earth’s climate.

• Anthropogenic global warming is an unproven hypothesis.
• Even though anthropogenic global warming is an unproven hypothesis, it is likely that some warming has resulted from carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by humans.
• There is no proof that continued rise in CO2 will result in continued rise in global temperatures.


Carbon Dioxide Absorption Peaks

• Carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas by absorbing infrared radiation in three narrow bands of frequencies, (2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM)), meaning that most of the heat producing infrared radiation frequencies escapes absorption by CO2.  The main peak, 15 µM, is absorbed completely within about 10 meters of the ground meaning that there is no more to absorb.  Doubling the human contribution of CO2 would reduce this distance. Reducing the distance for absorption would not result in an increase in temperature.
• The science of climate change is not settled.  Science is never settled. There is always more to learn, more to add.
• Consensus on climate change is not science.  It’s politics.  Science isn’t done by consensus, as I understand it.
• For a scientist to be a skeptic on climate change is not a bad thing.  Scepticism and questioning are important aspects of science.
• The Earth appears to have been cooling overall for most of this young century — 2000 to 2009.
• The reports of the danger to polar bears are premature.  They are also recycled over and over again.
• The prediction of an Arctic free of  ice is  premature.  AMSRE-A Sea Ice Extent has 6 1/2 years of history. The sea arctic sea ice extent currently is higher than any of the other years at this point in the annual cycle. AMSRE-A (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer – Earth Observing System).
• Antarctic sea ice extent is getting larger.
• A recent survey found Arctic ice to be thicker than expected.  (radiobremen)
• The heat content of the world’s ocean is dropping – Q = mc∆T. (The Global Warming Hypothesis and Ocean Heat)

day 22

You’ve heard the claims:

“The entire global scientific community has a consensus on the question that human beings are responsible for global warming.” — Al Gore

“In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth’s climate is being affected by human activities…” — The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, by Naomi Oreskes, Science 3 December 2004: Vol. 306. no. 5702, p. 1686

I’ve looked for the consensus.  I haven’t found it.  I’ll let you know if I do.

Even if there is a consensus, it’s of little value if the underlying basis of the consensus is faulty:

It is amazing that some political leaders proclaim the debate over global warming is “over” when some of the meteorological community’s best minds continue to clash over the nature and magnitude of a phenomenon that could entirely offset the effects of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. (Climate Change Reconsidered , the 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), page 17)

The hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming and the predictions of future temperature rise are heavily dependent upon computer models that do not incorporate many of the significant complexities of Earth’s climate.  See The problem is in the modeling.

Is consensus science or is consensus politics?

1

At present, the primary tools used by scientists and policy makers for predicting climate change are computer models, generally the global warming projections used by the  United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  According to some sources,  global average temperatures have not risen since 1998 and warming may not resume until some time in the next decade.  NONE of the IPCC models has a 20 year period of little or no warming.

As with anything based on computer models, projection results are subject to the accuracy of the input data provided to model and the validity of the assumptions used in the modeling.

On February 12, 2009 Dr. Patrick J. Michaels testified at a U.S. House subcommittee hearing, “The Climate Crisis: National Security, Public Health, and Economic Threats.”

Dr. Michaels explained, “The answers to the important questions about the implications of climate change are driven by a series of computer models and mathematical simulations.”  He subsequently stated, “I must report that our models are in the process of failing.”

Prepared text for Congressional Hearing:

• Testimony of Patrick J. Michaels to the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the Committee of Energy and Commerce, U.S. House of Representatives – “… the rates of warming, on multiple time scales, have now invalidated the midrange suite of IPCC climate models.” February 12, 2008

Papers:

• Bringing Balance, Disclosure and Due Diligence into Science-based Policymaking, Ross McKitrick, Department of Economics, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada – “Academic research, even when used used to drive multibillion dollar public investments, is done to standards that would never be acceptable in the business sector.” October 16, 2004 (pdf., 19 pages)

News:

• Get real, Wong tells greens, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 23 – “There is no point in putting a cost on carbon pollution in Australia if it simply results in jobs and emissions being exported to countries that do not yet face a carbon price.
• Brazil climate change threatens top coffee crop – Soybean production also could be affected, The Telegraph Herald, Dubuque, Iowa, February 22 – “The future for Brazil’s mighty farm sector could be grim, with hotter temperatures pushing crops past its borders, uphill into the Andes and toward the tip of South America.”
• Consensus is a dangerous thing – the debate over global warming, opinion, DailyRecord.com, Fenruary 22