Source: WSJ

Editor’s Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:

[SPPI Note: All the scientists in bold at the end of this article have published papers at SPPI.]

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: “I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.’ In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?” Read the rest of this entry »

Source:  Sen. Inhofe

“Today, hundreds of Americans learned that they will be losing their good-paying jobs because of the Obama EPA’s destructive regulatory agenda,” Senator Inhofe said. “Due to EPA’s forthcoming Utility MACT rule, FirstEnergy will be closing six power plants, which will put 529 Americans out of work in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland – states that have already been hit hard by the recession. Read the rest of this entry »

Source: http://www.atinstitute.org/virginians-get-first-peak-at-secret-uva-emails/

Dr. Michael Mann

On Tuesday the American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center sent the University of Virginia and Michael Mann copies of 40 emails selected as examples of the 27 categories identified as benefitting from the Court’s review of UVA and Mann’s claims that emails in the taxpayer-funded school’s possession are properly subject to the specific exemptions under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act (VFOIA). These categories range from discussions of professional retaliation against other scientists who challenged Mann’s work, to those sent to or from Mann from or copying an email account covered by other FOI laws, such as the federal Freedom of Information Act.

This was part of a process agreed to by ATI, the University and Mann’s attorneys as ATI continues to seek Thomas Jefferson’s university to release a cache of 12,000 emails covered under VFOIA that tell an important part of the history of climate alarmism and the often unsettling ways taxpayer money was spent in promoting it. Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X2kKGDYpKU&feature=player_embedded

Source:  NIPCC

For those serious about science and species, book and reviews here: http://www.amazon.com/CO2-Global-Warming-Species-Extinctions/dp/0981969402/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1327547485&sr=8-4

[SPPI Note: Likely one of the most notoriously unscientific groups is the Center for Biodiversity, which files reams of listings for species endangerment based on deeply flawed models, statistical manipulations and bald ignorance of the broader sciences. A multititute of papers in the literature attest to this:

Biodiversity

Summary
Among Genotypes
C3 Plants vs. C4 Plants
Fungi
General
Grasslands
Marine Species
N-Fixers vs. Non-N-Fixers
Weeds vs. Non-Weeds

A complete review of the literature can be found here.

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Recent paper# 1

Reference
Sears, M.W., Raskin, E. and Angilletta Jr., M.J. 2011. The world is not flat: Defining relevant thermal landscapes in the context of climate change. Integrative and Comparative Biology 51: 666-675.

Climate alarmists have historically predicted catastrophic species extinctions based on the presumption that CO₂-induced global warming will be so fast and furious that many species of plants and animals will not be able to migrate either poleward in latitude or upward in altitude rapidly enough to remain within the “climate envelope” to which they are accustomed. Read the rest of this entry »

Source:  NIPCC

Reference
World Malaria Programme. 2011. World Malaria Report: 2011. World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, 246 pp.

One of the concerns related to global warming is that it may increase the prevalence of malaria. Much of this is based on models and model results. Accordingly, it is useful to check in with the real world to verify whether death and disease from malaria is expanding.

Here we check on recent real world trends on malaria as compiled by the World Malaria Programme in its latest annual report. This Programme operates out of the World Health Organization. Among other things, it tracks trends in death and disease from malaria, developments in financing, vector surveillance, control, and malaria prevention and treatment, and progress toward targets and goals that have been adopted by the international community. These targets include reducing by 2015, malaria deaths to near zero, and incidence by 75% from the 2000 level.

The latest report is based on information from 106 countries where malaria is endemic. Read the rest of this entry »

Source: NIPCC

Reference
Schram, J.B., McClintock, J.B., Angus, R.A and Lawrence, J.M. 2011. Regenerative capacity and biochemical composition of the sea star Luidia clathrata (Say) (Echinodermata: Asteroidea) under conditions of near-future ocean acidification. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 407: 266-274

According to Schram et al. (2011), “echinoderms produce their skeletal components from magnesium-rich calcite, a form of calcite that is even more vulnerable to ocean acidification than aragonite (Andersson et al., 2008; Gayathri et al., 2007),” and, therefore, they say that “an understanding of the prospective impacts of ocean acidification on internal skeletal structures of echinoderms is important, as the presence of an internal skeletal structure is unique in comparison to the majority of invertebrates studied to date in ocean acidification research.” The four researchers thus proceded to conduct their own experiment to add to that knowledge. Read the rest of this entry »

Source: NIPCC

Reference
Walker, R. 2011. The impact of Brazilian biofuel production on Amazonia. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 101 (4): 1-10.

In a thought-provoking article recently published in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Robert Walker of Michigan State University’s Department of Geography writes that “although biofuel represents a renewable and ‘green’ energy,” it has what he rightly calls “a downside,” the potential problem being, as he describes it, “the impact of growing international biofuel demand on Amazonia.” Therefore, focusing on Brazil, and “given the explosive growth of Brazilian agriculture, and notable effects on forests within its national borders,” he seeks to answer the question: “How will global demand for Brazil’s land-based commodities, including biofuel, impact its tropical forest in the Amazon basin?” Read the rest of this entry »

Source: NIPCC

[SPPI Note:  on sea level, see these paper:

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/the_great_sealevel_humbug.html?Itemid=0

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/south_pacific.html?Itemid=0

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/when_sea_level_change.html?Itemid=0 ]

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Reference
Willis, J.K., Lyman, J.M., Johnson, G.C. and Gilson, J. 2009. In situ data biases and recent ocean heat content variability. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 26: 846-852

Authors Willis et al. (2009) write that “as the Earth warms due to the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the vast majority of the excess heat is expected to go toward warming the oceans (Levitus et al., 2005; Hansen et al., 2005),” but they note that “a large and apparently significant cooling in OHCA [ocean heat content anomaly] between 2003 and 2005 was reported by Lyman et al. (2006),” casting doubt on the theory in some people’s minds and doubts on the measurements in other people’s minds.

To help resolve this important issue, Willis et al. analyzed potential biases in expendable bathythermograph (XBT) data, as well as data obtained from the Argo array of profiling floats, which were used in making the OHCA calculations. Read the rest of this entry »

Source: NIPCC

See also this SPPI Paper

Reference
Lane, P., Donnelly, J.P., Woodruff, J.D. and Hawkes, A.D. 2011. A decadally-resolved paleohurricane record archived in the late Holocene sediments of a Florida sinkhole. Marine Geology 287: 14-30.

Noting that “the brief observational record is inadequate for characterizing natural variability in hurricane activity occurring on longer than multi-decadal timescales,” Lane et al. (2011) sought a means of characterizing hurricane activity prior to the period of modern measurement and historical record keeping, due to the fact that “the manner in which tropical cyclone activity and climate interact has critical implications for society and is not well understood.”

[SPPI Note:  see new SPPI paper here:

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/eye_of_the_storm.html ]

Specifically, Lane et al. developed a 4500-year record of intense hurricane-induced storm surges based on data obtained from “a nearly circular, 200-m-diameter cover-collapse sinkhole (Mullet Pond: 29°55.520′N, 84°20.275′W) that is located on Bald Point near Apalachee Bay, Florida, USA, where (1) “recent deposition of sand layers in the upper sediments of the pond was found to be contemporaneous with significant, historic storm surges at the site modeled using SLOSH and the Best Track, post-1851 AD dataset,” where (2) “paleohurricane deposits were identified by sand content and dated using radiocarbon-based age models,” and where (3) “marine-indicative foraminifera, some originating at least 5 km offshore, were present in several modern and ancient storm deposits.” Read the rest of this entry »

Source:  UK Telegraph

After Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, the price of insurance soared

by Christopher Booker

Original publish date: 26 Feb 2011

The warmists have sound financial grounds for hyping the dangers of flooding posed by climate change.

Source:  Wealth Wire

Warnings: George Soros said he'd rather survive than stay rich as the world faces an 'evil' period and Europe fights a 'descent into chaos and conflict'

and

UK Mail Online

‘There will be riots on streets of America’: George Soros predicts class war in U.S. as euro triggers collapse of global economy

• Billionaire New York investor warns of impending economic meltdown
• Backs euro and buys Italian bonds from Jon Corzine’s failed MF Global
  
• Warns it’s ‘difficult to know right decisions to make’ after boom years
  
• Supports Occupy Wall Street, Democrats and Obama re-election efforts

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From time to time we get a peek inside the mind of a true insider. George Soros knows a thing or two about destabilization and far from equilibrium situations. He’s been on the giving and receiving ends of both. From surviving the Nazi occupation of Hungary during World War II, to single handily crashing the currencies of entire nations, the experience he brings to the table should not be ignored.

With his deep connections in economic and political circles, if there’s anyone who knows what’s coming next, it’s Soros.

In his book The Crash of 2008 and What It Means Soros warned that no matter what governments did, there was no way out of the trap in which the world – namely The United States – finds itself:

“So what does the end of an era really mean? I contend that it means the end of a long period of relative stability based on the United States as the dominant power and the dollar as the main international reserve currency. I foresee a period of political and financial instability, hopefully to be followed by the emergence of a new world order.” Read the rest of this entry »

Source:  The Guardianof UK

James Hansen

Source:  Australian Climate Madness

Phew. The Cause is back on track. A new study has “found” Kevin Trenberth’s missing ocean heat:

“When we looked at the results of previous work suggesting inconsistencies, we found that it hadn’t factored in the considerable uncertainties between systems used to record the measurements.”

Loeb’s team conducted a new analysis of data captured between 2001 and 2010 of global satellite data collected daily by CERES satellite-based instruments, as well as upper ocean temperature measurements taken by expendable bathythermographs and more recently Argo floats.

They found that once these uncertainties had been factored in, along with considerable short-term variations known to result from temperature, cloud cover and humidity changes associated with El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the measurements were found to be in broad agreement.

What’s the saying, if you torture the data enough it will confess? And ACM old favourite David Karoly is crowing: Read the rest of this entry »

Source:  Wash times

Checking his sundial and solar-powered calendar, Barack Obama has decided that he did not have enough time to study the impact of the $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, so he killed it.

Seriously. That was the excuse for halting a project that could have created 20,000 jobs, brought 830,000 barrels of oil a day to Texas refineries and helped free America from unstable dictators’ stranglehold on our energy supply.

This from the man who had to hurry, hurry, hurry and jam the 2,700-page Obamacare bill down America’s throat so, as then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “you can, uh, find out what is in it.” He’s also the same guy who, in March, went to Brazil, cup in hand, asking the Brazilians to hurry up and develop their offshore oil so we could buy some. Read the rest of this entry »