Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Greenie Watch

Greenie Time!  How long before modern science ...Greenie Time! How long before modern science gives parents the child equivalent? Candy flavored toothbrushes kids eat for dessert. (Photo credit: colorblindPICASO)
Mean temperature anomalies during the period 1...Mean temperature anomalies during the period 1965 to 1975 with respect to the average temperatures from 1937 to 1946. This dataset was not available at the time. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 hours ago
*Global cooling hits again* A blast of freezing rain will scatter snow and ice across the Deep South today, prompting officials from New Orleans to Virginia to ready road crews and close schools in what has been called a 'once in a generation' ice storm. And as the winter storm system brings freezing snow and high winds to the South, the brutal cold temperatures will continue to rattle the Midwest throughout Tuesday. Chicago, Minneapolis, Milwaukee and other parts of the Midwest will endure a second consecutive day of subzero highs, while much of the Northeast will see temperatur... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 day ago
*Fracking could be allowed under British homes without owners’ permission* Fracking will be allowed to take place under homes without the owners’ permission, under plans being considered by the Government. Ministers have admitted that they are looking at overhauling trespass laws to make it easier for energy companies to explore for shale gas, amid concern that efforts could otherwise be stymied by lengthy and costly court proceedings. The plans, expected to be published for consultation in coming months, are likely to be the most controversial yet in the Prime Minister’s attempts ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 days ago
*That "submerged" heat* Warmists are clinging to their "ocean heat" theory like rats clinging to the debris from a shipwreck. That the hiatus in land surface warming accompanied by a big CO2 buildup DISPROVES their theory they cannot contemplate. On the global warming theory as I see it, CO2 reflection is such a minor source of heating that the effects of variations in it SHOULD be so minuscule as to be undetectable -- and the facts tally with that. So both theory and observations point to CO2 levels as being of no concern. So the theory that there is "missing" heat that has ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 days ago
*America in lockdown* *“Dedicated public servants” lock up lands and resources, lock down job and economic recovery* Paul Driessen President Obama insists he is determined to create jobs in America. He recently announced the creation of “promise zones” for five communities around the nation and a “manufacturing institute” aimed at fostering more high-paying jobs in energy efficiency. He’s says he has “a pen and a phone” to “sign executive orders and take executive actions that move the ball,” where Congress has failed to implement policies he believes are needed. Unfortunately, t... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 days ago
*And the cooling continues* The Recent 12 Months for the year of 2013 U.S. Temperature trend/decade: - 0.8 F COOLER in 100 years So to sum it all up, here is the recent 12 months (year to date, January- December) US temperature from a “historic” perspective. To see how the decade trends have evolved during the last 113 years. Especially to see how the decade trends have evolved during the last 43 years. The period that according to the Global Warming Hysterics and computer models they worship should show a steady and accelerated increase in temperature. I don’t know about you, b... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 6 days ago
*Tim Ball's book now out* The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science by Tim Ball (Author) Kindle $9.71 Paperback $18.57 Dr. Tim Ball exposes the malicious misuse of climate science as it was distorted by dishonest brokers to advance the political aspirations of the progressive left. SOURCE *Tolerant Liberals Cancel Screening of Pro-Fracking Film at Festival in Minnesota* The tolerant, open-minded environmentalists of the Left have struck again. This time, the pro-fracking film FrackNation by Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer has been yanked from the Minnesota Frozen Rive... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 week ago
*Ya gotta laugh: Those significant hundredths of one degree* *I reproduce below a current news report derived from NOAA and GISS. You will see that continuing warming is proclaimed with no hint that the data might be troublesome to Warmism. It is classical warming propaganda much as we hear every year.I have been naughty, however. I spent about 2 minutes on a Google search to find out what the actual figures were. Here is a quote from NOAA: "The year 2013 ties with 2003 as the fourth warmest year globally since records began in 1880. The annual global combined land and... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 week ago
*Warmist proud of censoring dissent* In view of the great difficulty skeptics have at getting papers published in academic journals, one group of prominent skeptical scientists decided to set up their own journal. No problem, you would think. All sides of a debate should be aired. But Warmists did not see it that way at all. They went all out to pressure the publisher (Copernicus) to ditch the journal -- which it did. Prominent Warmist James Annan is even proud of his efforts in that direction. He crows: "Kudos to Copernicus for the rapid and decisive way in which they d... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 week ago
*Another year of global cooling* *Falling temperatures are giving climate alarmists chills* By David Deming Global warming is nowhere to be found. The mean global temperature has not risen in 17 years and has been slowly falling for approximately the past 10 years. In 2013, there were more record-low temperatures than record-high temperatures in the United States. At the end of the first week in January, a brutal spell of cold weather settled over most of the country. Multiple cold-temperature records were shattered across the country. Some sites experienced frigid conditions not ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 week ago
*Is a mini ice age on the way? Scientists warn the Sun has 'gone to sleep' and say it could cause temperatures to plunge* The Sun's activity is at its lowest for 100 years, scientists have warned. They say the conditions are eerily similar to those before the Maunder Minimum, a time in 1645 when a mini ice age hit, Freezing London's River Thames. Researcher believe the solar lull could cause major changes, and say there is a 20% chance it could lead to 'major changes' in temperatures. THE SOLAR CYCLE Conventional wisdom holds that solar activity swings back and forth like a sim... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 week ago
*EPA chief unable to say if the world has gotten warmer* Environmental Protection Agency administrator Gina McCarthy wasn’t able to definitively say whether the world has gotten warmer in Senate testimony. Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions asked McCarthy to confirm a statement made by President Obama last year that global temperatures were increasing faster in the last five or ten years than climate scientists had predicted. McCarthy couldn’t answer the question, saying that she only repeats what the climate scientists tell her. Sessions was not satisfied with her response. “D... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 week ago
*More false prophecy: Greenie Messiah is running late* *“Pauses as long as 15 years are rare in the simulations, and ‘we expect that [real-world] warming will resume in the next few years,’ the Hadley Centre group writes…. Researchers … agree that no sort of natural variability can hold off greenhouse warming much longer.”* - Richard Kerr, Science (2009) That’s Richard A. Kerr, the longtime, award-winning climate-change scribe for Science magazine, the flagship publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The article, “What Happened to Global Warming? ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 weeks ago
*That "100 months" prophecy* In early January 2006 the BBC held a sort of Old Fashioned Revival Hour in which top BBC people got together with top Greenie fanatics and helped prop up one-another's belief that Global Warming was the One True Faith. You can read about it here. One little excerpt from the report of what went on there fascinated me: "Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation, who argued there were only 100 months left to save the planet" 100 months is 8 years and 4 months and if we count forward from then we arrive at April 2014. We're nearly there! But the pla... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 weeks ago
*Big attack on Lindzen comes now he has retired* The Guardian has just put up a supposed dismantling of Lindzen's scientific expertise by two old hard-heads of Warmism. Nuccitelli in particular never accepts any fact that is detrimental to Warmism. He has always got some *ad hoc* reasoning that enables him to wriggle out from under it. The article has provoked widespread derision from climate skeptics -- who accuse it of fudging the facts "hell West and crooked". But I gather that no-one is publishing their views in anticipation of Lindzen himself doing a rejoinder (But see he... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 weeks ago
*Predicting precipitation extremes via CMIP5 climate models* *Discussing:* Toreti, A., Naveau, P., Zampieri, M., Schindler, A., Scoccimarro, E., Xoplaki, E., Dijkstra, H.A., Gualdi, S. and Luterbacher, J. 2013. "Projections of global changes in precipitation extremes from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 Models". *Geophysical Research Letters* 40: 4887-4892. Writing as background for their study, Toreti et al. (2013) state that "precipitation extremes are expected to increase in a warming climate," and, therefore, they felt it was "essential to characterize their pote... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 weeks ago
* Warmists becoming ever more authoritarian as the data goes against them* Their latest claim is that "Only 1 of 9,136 Recent Peer-Reviewed Authors Rejects Global Warming". It is based on a non-peer-reviewed survey of the recent literature by James Lawrence Powell, who is a geologist and a well known alarmist. He describes the methodology of his survey as: "Read some combination of titles, abstracts, and entire papers as necessary to judge whether a paper "rejects" human-caused global warming or professes to have a better explanation of observations."` So the first problem of t... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 weeks ago
*Another blatant Warmist lie* Warmists have at last launched a counter-attack on the claim that in the '70s there was a big fear of global COOLING among scientists. But their counter-attack is pathetic. You can find it here. The essence of the Warmist response is that critics are quoting just one short article by one journalist in the back pages of one magazine. That is an utter lie. Steve Goddard makes a specialty of collecting climate journalism from the past and he has now put up a huge selection of photocopies showing that the fear of cooling was widely shared and was e... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 weeks ago
*Time Mag's Climate Deception* Here's what Time magazine had to say about the now infamous “polar vortex” during the great ice age scare in June 1974: “Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds – the so-called circumpolar vortex – that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world.” Four decades later, they're using the same argument as evidence of global warming. On Monday Time claimed, “[I]t may well be that global warming could be making the o... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 weeks ago
*Don't laugh* "Excessively high temperatures" are "already" harming public health nationwide, Pres. Obama declared on Nov. 1, 2013, two months before today's assault by record low temperatures. In his executive order on climate change, Obama warned that too much rain - and not enough rain - also dictated that executive action against climate fluctuations: "The impacts of climate change -- including an increase in prolonged periods of excessively high temperatures, more heavy downpours, an increase in wildfires, more severe droughts, permafrost thawing, ocean acidification, and s... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 weeks ago
*ZEG* In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG is amused at just how freezing American Warmists must be feeling right now *Life-threatening cold: Where do we find this in those marvellously predictive "models" of the Warmists?* More than half of the U.S. is enduring a dangerously cold start to the week as a whirlpool of frigid, dense air known as a ‘polar vortex’ descended on Monday morning, pummeling parts of the country with a dangerous cold and adding to the brutal weather that has grounded more than 4,400 flights. Record low temperatures have already... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 weeks ago
*December 31 Global Sea Ice Area Was The Largest Ever Recorded* Climate experts say that global warming is melting sea ice faster than expected, which is why the poles currently have the most sea ice ever measured for the date. SOURCE *Central England Temperature Stats For 2013 now in* JANUARY 2, 2014 The CET numbers for 2013 are now issued. As I suggested in September, last year was the second coldest since 1996, second only to 2010, one of the coldest years of the last century. Highlights * Three of the last four years have been the coldest since 1996. * The 5-Year ru... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 weeks ago
*"We don't know"* *Loud laughter worldwide about a Warmist expedition stuck in ice has of course been heard by Warmists. Below is a Warmist response. It is a windy way of saying that Warmists don't know why the Antarctic ice got bigger while the Arctic ice shrank. It doesn't fit Warmist theory so they are reduced to little more than gibbering and hand-waving. The fact that both processes are entirely natural is the one thing they will not allow. But that is the default assumption and the nul hypothesis so they have to produce evidence that CO2 is somehow involved. That they... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 weeks ago
*David Suzuki, The Smiling Face of Fraud* Things haven’t gone well for David Suzuki recently. Suzuki is the long-time host of CBC Television’s popular The Nature of Things, leader of the Canadian environmental movement, and founder of a deep-pocketed philanthropic organization called the David Suzuki Foundation (which raises money by, among other things, warning children at Christmas that unless their parents donate, Santa’s workshop will sink into a melting North Pole). In 2011, he was named by a Reader’s Digest poll the “most trusted” Canadian. Lately, however, Suzuki has found ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 weeks ago
*The expedition that DID prove something* *They proved that the Antarctic today is COOLER than in Mawson's time a century ago* No matter whether you are a true believer in ‘climate change’ or an ardent sceptic, you’ll surely appreciate the delicious irony of the story which has been playing out in Antarctica. A scientific research team who headed south to prove the threat to mankind from global warming by establishing that the region is melting have found themselves trapped on their ship in the unexpectedly thick pack ice. As the days went by, though, it slowly became clear that t... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 weeks ago
*'Stuck in our own experiment': Leader of trapped team insists polar ice is melting* *Like all failed prophets, the trappeds Warmists are good at "post hoc" explanations. Such explanations are always looked at askance in science. The test of a scientific theory is that it generates accurate predictions. What the leader is saying is a lie anyway. He says he is trapped by purely local conditions. In fact ice is up throughout the Antarctic. See the graph below* The leader of a scientific expedition whose ship remains stranded in Antarctic ice says the team, which set out t... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 weeks ago
*British wind farms handed £5 million to switch off turbines as thousands of homes left without power* Wind farm companies were paid almost £5 million to switch off their turbines while storms lashed the UK over the festive period and tens of thousands of homes were left without power, according to figures published today. The ‘constraint payments’, which ultimately come from household bills, were payable when the National Grid was unable to cope with the extra power produced during the recent bout of stormy weather or usage was low. More than £4.8 million has been paid out to wi... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 weeks ago
*Climate-Science Boatpeople, In Search Of Global Warming Signs, Trapped In Thousands Of Kilometers Of Sea Ice!* The metaphor just couldn’t be more fitting: desperate true believers of global warming/accelerating polar ice melt now find themselves trapped by thousands of square kilometers of summertime sea ice that wasn’t supposed to be there. No picture could better symbolize and communicate the intellectual bankruptcy and disillusionment of a faithful group who refuse to believe they have been led astray. This has to be deeply embarrassing, if not outright humiliating. It’s repo... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 weeks ago
*Hiatus* I am taking the day off from blogging today. My festive season is still going strong so I am feeling the need to conserve my energies. JR

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 weeks ago
*I just KNOW what causes what* *Or so Thomas Mucha (below) seems to think. Which proves he hasn't got mucha of an idea about anything -- science in particular. He lists a range of bad happenings and offers not a shred of evidence that they are in any way abnormal. We just have to take his word for it, apparently. Too bad if you don't feel mucha inclined to do that. Perhaps we could call this "Warmism for the brain-dead"* For multitudes around the world today, calamity has already arrived. Drastic climate changes have sparked economic dislocation, political discord, and even ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 weeks ago
*Arctic Polar Ice Cap Reverses Shrinking Trend* An unusually cool summer in the Arctic has led to almost 50 percent more sea ice covering the polar region this fall than the year before. Measurements from Europe’s CryoSat spacecraft reveal that about 2,160 cubic miles of sea ice covered the Arctic in late October. That’s up from the 1,440 cubic miles that CryoSat measured during the record low for the ice in 2012. Scientists say that about 90 percent of the increase is due to growth of multiyear ice, which is thick enough to last through more than one summer without melting. “... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 weeks ago
*Those Stubborn Facts: 35-Year Cooling of South Pole Confirmed By NASA - Antarctica Ice Sheets Safe* Antarctica south pole cooling 35 years satellite co2 those stubborn facts nov2013The IPCC's climate science has long claimed that human CO2 emissions are producing an accelerated global warming, with a "runaway" warming trend, which is then being amplified in the north and south polar extremes. This dangerous warming is, of course, causing the ice sheets to melt, unleashing catastrophic sea level rise, and thus swamping coastal regions and low-lying islands, as we speak! Hmmm...... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 weeks ago
*Warmists now in the super-activist phase of false prophecy* *From Wikipedia:"Festinger and his collaborators, Henry Riecken and Stanley Schachter, examined conditions under which disconfirmation of beliefs leads to increased conviction in such beliefs in the 1956 book When Prophecy Fails. The group studied a small apocalyptic cult led by Dorothy Martin (under the pseudonym Marian Keech in the book), a suburban housewife. Martin claimed to have received messages from "the Guardians," a group of superior beings from another planet. The messages puportedly said that a ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 weeks ago
*'Irreplacable scientific data must be saved' * *Note the value which real scientists below place on keeping their research data generally available and contrast that with the nervous secrecy with which Warmists routinely hide their raw data. Despite huge legal pressures, Michael Mann, for instance, is still refusing to open up his files* Researchers at the University of British Columbia chose a random set of of 516 studies published between 1991 and 2001 and found that all data from the two-year-old papers was still available but that the chance of it still existing fell off ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 weeks ago
*Corn ethanol on the chopping block?* Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., are about as opposite politically as two people can be. Nonetheless, last week they joined forces to introduce a bill to repeal the federal requirement to blend corn ethanol into gasoline. There's something in the ethanol mandate for almost everyone - but corn farmers - not to like. Supporters of the mandate meant well, but the law of unintended consequences has created an odd assortment of anti-ethanol bedfellows. Environmentalists have turned on corn ethanol. It doesn't reduce greenho... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 weeks ago
*Los Angeles Becomes First Major City To Require ‘Cool Roofs’* *Highly reflective roofs are the coolest but not mentioned below is that highly reflective roofs, silver-coloured ones in particular, are banned in some jurisdictions because they create glare problems. The definition of "cool" below however is very loose and leaves even red roofs OK so this would appear to be a regulation that is merely for show and which would catch very few people* On Tuesday the Los Angeles City Council unanimously passed a building code update that will require all new and refurbished homes to h... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
*What passes for "expertise" at the EPA* NBC News' Monday report on the misconduct of former EPA official John Beale is must be read to be believed. Honestly, if the following details didn't involve a lazy, greedy congenital liar swindling taxpayers out of nearly a million dollars over more than a decade of abuse, they'd be laugh-out-loud funny. Alas, it's all true, so indignation is the only proper response: "The EPA’s highest-paid employee and a leading expert on climate change deserves to go to prison for at least 30 months for lying to his bosses and saying he was a CIA sp... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
*More grief for Warmists* *Up until now the Arctic has been their only friend. And they still can't let go. They talk about a mythical "long term" melting trend. And even if it were a trend, how do we know it will continue? Successful straight line extrapolations are rare in nature. An ogive is more typical* The amount of sea ice in the Arctic has increased by close to 50 per cent compared to last year, according to satellite measurements. ESA’s CryoSat mission revealed that in October this year the Arctic had 9000 cu km of sea ice. This compares to just 6000 cu km in Octobe... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
*Snow in Cairo for the first time in 112 years* *Al Gore must be there. Gaia often thumbs its nose at him* WHEN you think Cairo you think heat and sand. But something unusual happened there overnight - it snowed! According to local reports it's the first time snow has fallen in the Egyptian capital in 112 years. Incredible pictures show the normally sweltering city coated in white. Egyptians took to Twitter to post their amazement in words and pictures. The Egyptian Meteorological Authority warned on Wednesday the unusual weather will drive down temperatures to between 5 and 15... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
*Sea levels expected to rise two feet within the next 70 years and eight feet by 2200* *The latest bit of dumb extrapolation. Note that the journal it is published in is a "pay to publish" organ, very low on the food chain of academic journals and unlikely to present the best science. An interesting statement from the Abstract: "modern change is rapid by past interglacial standards but within the range of ‘normal’ processes"* Sea levels will rise two feet within just 70 years and eight feet by the year 2200, according to a new study which suggests hundreds of coastal cities ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
*Ozone Hole Hoax unravelling* *I have been pointing out for years that there is no sign of any systematic change in it -- JR* The banning of ozone-depleting chemicals hasn't yet caused detectable improvements in the Antarctic ozone hole, new research suggests. Instead, changes in the South Pole's ozone hole from year-to-year are likely the result of natural variations in wind patterns, researchers said here Wednesday (Dec. 11) in a press conference at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. "Ozone is produced in the tropics, but it's transported by the winds from t... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
*Environmentalism's Endless Lies* By Alan Caruba I am on the Friends of the Earth (FOE) email list and receive a steady stream of theirs and the Sierra Club’s lies about the environment. A recent FOE mailing stating that “Devastation from climate change has become all too frequent.” This is simply an outright lie. Inherent in natural events such as hurricanes and typhoons, blizzards, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and forest fires is the damage they cause, but FOE asserted that “People in vulnerable communities are already struggling with dirty air, unsafe housing and increased ca... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
*Environmentalism's Endless Lies* By Alan Caruba I am on the Friends of the Earth (FOE) email list and receive a steady stream of theirs and the Sierra Club’s lies about the environment. A recent FOE mailing stating that “Devastation from climate change has become all too frequent.” This is simply an outright lie. Inherent in natural events such as hurricanes and typhoons, blizzards, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and forest fires is the damage they cause, but FOE asserted that “People in vulnerable communities are already struggling with dirty air, unsafe housing and increased ca... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
*Greenpeace descends to upsetting children: ‘Santa’ Threatens to ‘Cancel Christmas’ Due to Global Warming* Greenpeace UK is soliciting donations to combat global warming with a video entitled “An Urgent Message From Santa.” The video features a deeply depressed, creepy-looking Santa who claims that “melting ice” at the North Pole will force him to “cancel Christmas” unless world leaders act to stop global warming. The Greenpeace “Santa” is played by British actor Jim Carter, a member of the environmental group who also plays the butler in the popular PBS “Downton Abbey” TV serie... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
*Greenpeace descends to upsetting children: ‘Santa’ Threatens to ‘Cancel Christmas’ Due to Global Warming* Greenpeace UK is soliciting donations to combat global warming with a video entitled “An Urgent Message From Santa.” The video features a deeply depressed, creepy-looking Santa who claims that “melting ice” at the North Pole will force him to “cancel Christmas” unless world leaders act to stop global warming. The Greenpeace “Santa” is played by British actor Jim Carter, a member of the environmental group who also plays the butler in the popular PBS “Downton Abbey” TV serie... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
*GREENIE ROUNDUP* *Four current articles below* *Hoagy is at it again* *After his own research showed that corals recover rapidly from damage, Hoagy went quiet for a couple of years -- but it looks like he is back at his old stand now. And even his fellow Warmists are predicting a temp rise of less than 4 degrees. And guess where corals thrive best -- in the warmest waters! Hoagy is a crook!* RISING sea temperatures might sound nice for us wanting to go for a warmer dip, but it could kill off the Great Barrier Reef by the end of the century, a scientist claims in a new book... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
*Stimulating Green electric dreams * Summary Over the past decade, federal and state governments have significantly increased their support for nonconventional energy technologies, ranging from wind-powered electricity generators to battery-powered cars. One of the largest such programs was the Department of Energy’s Section 1705 Loan Guarantee Program—the subject of this study. The $16 billion dollar program “invested” in various failed enterprises, including Solyndra and Abound Solar. But those are just the tip of the iceberg of the DOE's poorly diversified portfolio of mostly “... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
*That "buried" heat again* *A couple of Warmist old campaigners have just published an article in a semi-academic journal saying that surface winds have been burying lots of heat in the ocean depths -- How? It's an extraordinary claim by any standards.The abstract is below and note the weak claim that the ocean deeps have "apparently" been absorbing lots of heat lately. That is a clear admission that they cannot prove it. Since temperatures at the depths of the ocean normally vary by only hundredths of a degree they would be hard put to prove their assertion. The whole ar... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
*Agnotology* *Agnotology is the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data -- and the Warmists are very shrill in saying that skeptics do that -- e.g. here -- so I thought it is time I mentioned it.There is an excellent and thorough rebuttal of the Warmist claims here, focusing on the Warmist claims just mentioned. The paper is behind a paywall but is a great read if you do have access to the whole thing. I reproduce below the abstract and a paragraph I particularly like. The old 97% consensus c... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
*Global-warming ‘proof’ is evaporating* By Michael Fumento The 2013 hurricane season just ended as one of the five quietest years since 1960. But don’t expect anyone who pointed to last year’s hurricanes as “proof” of the need to act against global warming to apologize; the warmists don’t work that way. Warmist claims of a severe increase in hurricane activity go back to 2005 and Hurricane Katrina. The cover of Al Gore’s 2009 book, “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis,” even features a satellite image of the globe with four major hurricanes superimposed. Yet the eviden... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
*Law professor doesn't care about reality* *Since there has been no climate change for 17 years, none of the events she describes can be attributable to it* Climate change has negatively affected people around the world, but it has hit native and indigenous populations especially hard, driving them from their homes, altering their ways of life and threatening their survival. A University of Kansas law professor has submitted an amicus brief to one of the nation’s top courts on behalf of several native organizations. In the underlying litigation, children are, in essence, suing th... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
* Fossil fuels now beat wind and solar on environmental as well as economic grounds* *When governments try to impose large-scale renewable technologies, they lay waste to nature* Non-renewable energy is sustainable; renewable energy is not, not even close, not by any meaningful yardstick, not in our lifetime or in that of our children. Renewables cannot passably meet any of the important needs claimed by their champions, whether economic or environmental. Despite the hundreds of billions of dollars governments have spent over the decades in aid of kick-starting a large-scale renew... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
*The secret society of Warmists* The climate scientists who advise our politicians are so sure they are right that it is impossible to have any serious dialogue with them In this week's Spectator Diary, Lord (Nigel) Lawson, chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, partly lifts the veil on a curious "secret meeting" held at the House of Lords between a team from his GWPF and six scientists from the Royal Society. This arose from a bizarre personal attack made on Lord Lawson as a "climate denier" at an Australian university, by the Royal Society's president, Sir Paul Nurse -... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
*U.N. climate change talks: it’s really all about the money* “Rich countries are still not pledging enough money to begin financing a shift to a cleaner global economy,” reports the Financial Times (FT) in its coverage of the United Nations climate talks in Warsaw that ended with little more than a “vague road map on how to prepare for a global climate pact they’re supposed to adopt in two years.” Leading into what has now been called an “unsatisfactory summit,” predictions suggested the “talks could collapse because of a lack of financial support from rich nations.” Delegates fro... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
*Lies My President Told Me* Paul Driessen “Under my plan, if you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your healthcare plan, you’ll be able to keep your healthcare plan. Period. Nothing changes, except your health insurance costs will go down.” It was just a couple of renegade IRS agents in Cincinnati. Benghazi was a spontaneous protest that got out of control in direct response to an inflammatory video posted on the internet. During September 2012, our rebounding economy created an astonishing 873,000 jobs. And on and on. If we have learned... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 1 month ago
*My showdown with the Royal Society over global warming* Nigel Lawson The long-discussed meeting between a group of climate scientists and Fellows of the Royal Society on the one side, and me and some colleagues from my think-tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation on the other, has now at last taken place. It was held behind closed doors in a committee room at the House of Lords, the secrecy — no press present — at the insistence of the Royal Society Fellows, an insistence I find puzzling given the clear public interest in the issue of climate change in general and climate cha... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*Back in hospital with complications from my recent surgery* Not sure that I will be posting tomorrow

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*Meteorologist's poll finds no consensus on climate change & those with liberal political views far more likely to believe in man-made global warming* Meteorologists’ views about global warming: A survey of American Meteorological Society professional members Meteorologists and other atmospheric science experts are playing important roles in helping society respond to climate change. Members of this professional community are not unanimous in their views of climate change, and there has been tension among members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) who hold different vi... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*Hiatus* I am going in later today for more day-surgery so I am taking the day off from blogging Will be back tomorrow, I hope JR

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*63 Percent Chance Weather Predictors Are Skeptics on Global Warming* A new survey from the American Meteorological Society contains more bad news for global warming alarmist: people who actually get paid for accurately predicting weather are increasingly skeptical about whether global warming is man-made or natural or whether global warming is occurring at all. The survey is the result of increasing tension amongst meteorologists regarding global warming. “There has been tension in recent years among AMS members who hold different views on climate change,” explains the AMS in th... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*Britain to be hit by entirely typical weather* TEMPERATURES in the UK are going to fall sharply over the coming weeks because that is what happens at this time of year, it has been claimed. During winter snow can often reach the ground Meteorologists believe that winter, a spell of short, cold days commonly defined as a season, will be more or less exactly what you would expect. Professor Henry Brubaker of the Institute for Studies said: “Household fuel costs will rise considerably as families try to increase the temperature of their homes. “People on the verge of death may die... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*House Votes on Energy Bills* The House passed three bills this week, largely along party lines, to ease restrictions on oil and gas drilling. The first bill aimed to streamline the permitting process by setting a 60-day deadline for drilling applications on federal lands. It passed 228-192 with 10 Democrats supporting the measure. The second, which passed 235-187 with a similar number of Democrats, would block the Interior Department from enforcing rules on hydraulic fracturing in states that already have their own regulations in place. The third bill, which passed with the help ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*British PM reportedly tells aides to 'get rid of the green c**p'* David Cameron has reportedly told ministers to scrap the “green c**p” driving up household energy bills. The Prime Minister, who once promised to lead the “greenest government ever” is said to have privately ordered to find a way to ditch green commitments that are putting added financial pressure on consumers. Mr Cameron has promised to “roll back” green levies which he says add around £112 a year to the average energy bill. A senior source is reported to have said: “He’s telling everyone, ‘We’ve got to get rid ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*LOL: 132 poor Countries Walk Out Of UN Climate Talks * Representatives of most of the world's poor countries have walked out of increasingly fractious climate negotiations after the EU, Australia, the US and other developed countries insisted that the question of who should pay compensation for extreme climate events be discussed only after 2015. The orchestrated move by the G77 and China bloc of 132 countries came during talks about "loss and damage" – how countries should respond to climate impacts that are difficult or impossible to adapt to, such as typhoon Haiyan. Saleemul ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*A 2015 climate treaty? Don't bother, Congress says* As activists gathering this week for U.N. climate talks in Warsaw, Poland, fuel hopes for a 2015 legally binding treaty, U.S. lawmakers already are throwing cold water on the prospects. In interviews this week with members of Congress on the right and left, even the most ardent supporters of international efforts to curb global greenhouse gas emissions said chances of Senate approval for a treaty have not improved much since the Kyoto Protocol crashed and burned in Washington, D.C., in 1997. "It will be difficult to get a treaty... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*A curious claim from the Warsaw climate conference* "There is no doubt that now another climate change takes place - during the last hundred years the average global temperature rose by 0.74°C[1], the sea level increased for the first time since the last ice age (over 20cm since 1870, and the pace of the increase is getting faster), glaciers melt and the snow cap of the Northern hemisphere decreases." SOURCE *There has been a HUGE sea level rise since the last ice-age, most of it in prehistory* *Antarctica, a land of ice and FIRE: Active volcano is discovered under continent... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*IPCC ‘s Bogus Evidence for Global Warming* by S. Fred Singer The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up by the United Nations in 1988 and has been trying very hard to demonstrate the threat of a dangerous human influence on climate due to the emission of greenhouse gases. This is in line with their Charter, which directs the IPCC to assemble reports in support of the Global Climate Treaty – the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) of Rio de Janeiro. It is interesting that IPCC “evidence” was based on peer-reviewed public... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*Japan axes targets to cut greenhouse gases* Japan last night became the first major economy to abandon the greenhouse-gas promises made in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. In a setback for the UN talks on climate change this week in Warsaw, Tokyo announced it will let emissions rise 3 per cent above 1990 levels by 2020. Energy Secretary Ed Davey said Japan’s decision was ‘deeply disappointing’ and a ‘major step backwards’. However some Tory MPs called for the UK to follow Tokyo’s lead. Japan, which hosted the Kyoto Protocol, had promised to cut emissions by 25 per cent. But the fifth b... more »

Back to normal (I hope) Malware zapped

JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*Pollster Krosnick: Another climate crook* Stanford University’s Jon Krosnick (Krosnick@Stanford.edu) has been receiving a huge splash of publicity with his allegedly surprising state-by-state poling showing ‘the vast majority of Americans in each of 40-plus states surveyed say global warming is real, serious and man-made’ (USA Today) Jon Krosnick is the director of Stanford’s Political Psychology Research Group. Krosnick’s polling results, complete with handy maps showing rising “belief” in man-made global warming, are a climate activists dream. According to Krosnick’s new poll:... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*That pesky temperature stasis (referred to by Warmists as a "slowdown" now that they have eventually admitted it)* *Since even Warmist figures show temperatures on a plateau for the last 17 years that is mighty embarrassing to Warmists. Something must be done! And, regrettably, the only thing that CAN really be done is to throw all the existing figures out the window! And a new paper by Cowtan and Wray (no relation) does just that. And their new method of juggling the figures shows warming!Skeptics have of course been having a ball poking holes in it but I will simply repr... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*Everything the Australian Green Party claims about this typhoon is wrong* Andrew Bolt The Greens are despicable. They are enemies of reason, and the question is whether their sin is ignorance or deceit. Here is deputy Greens leader Adam Bandt today: "Well, I think if the Prime Minister is out there referring to the Leader of the Opposition as ‘Electricity’ Bill, then he can be expected to be referred to as Typhoon Tony himself. The head in the sand approach to global warming in the face of the leaders of the Philippines themselves saying this is what we are in store for unless w... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*Energy bills could fall by 7pc if Brit. Government cuts green tax* Leading members of the “Big Six” energy companies promise to cut prices if Government scraps or delays green tax scheme Britain's energy giants are to offer to cut bills by up to 7pc if the Government agrees to remove the cost of multi-billion-pound green schemes. In a move which could seize the initiative from critics of the rising cost of bills, leading members of the “Big Six” energy companies have laid out two options to the Government. One would see the costs of the Energy Companies Obligation (known as the E... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*Lewandowski proves himself a liar and a cheat* *He knew that his work was unethical so deceived his university to get past its ethical restrictions. Such dishonesty nullifies the work of any scientist. Are his research findings lies too? Lewandowski's findings about what skeptics think were always dodgy on sampling grounds alone. Now we have to ask if his oddly chosen interviewees even said what he claims they said. * The now-withdrawn Lewandowsky Fury paper (link) is possibly one of the egregious examples of ethically compromised research encountered. Delve into the paper, ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*Couple win landmark battle to have 10 wind turbines taken down because they spoil the view from their dream home in France* A couple have won a landmark legal battle to have 10 wind turbines taken down because they spoil the view from their dream home in France. In a judgement which could have widespread implication across Europe, including Britain, the husband and wife successfully argued that the 360ft high structures ruined their quality of life. As well as agreeing that the turbines ‘spoiled the view’, judges noted the ‘groaning and whistling’ and ‘unsightliness of white and r... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*Global warming 'pause' may last for 20 more years and Arctic sea ice has already started to recover* The 17-year pause in global warming is likely to last into the 2030s and the Arctic sea ice has already started to recover, according to new research. A paper in the peer-reviewed journal Climate Dynamics – by Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Dr Marcia Wyatt – amounts to a stunning challenge to climate science orthodoxy. Not only does it explain the unexpected pause, it suggests that the scientific majority – whose views are represented by the UN ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*Solar Industry Takes on Crony Capitalism in Arizona* *As Henry Kissinger once said: "It's a pity they can't both lose"* A heated battle is taking place in Arizona between the fledgling solar industry and APS, the state’s largest energy company, which enjoys a state-granted near-monopoly over energy. In sunny Arizona, it is peculiar that solar energy is being portrayed as the bad guy. Since Arizona is a Republican-dominated state, APS is sneakily buying up influential Republicans, both directly and indirectly, to perpetuate its crony capitalism. The Washington Post refers to thes... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*An extra sabbath* I am taking an extra Sabbath today. I had an operation yesterday which has left me pretty groggy

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*Stock up on vacuum cleaners?* Bureaucrats in Brussels are trying to make it harder to clean your home by banning the sale of powerful vacuum cleaners, it emerged today. New European Commission rules will outlaw any new machine with a motor that exceeds 1,600 watts from next September to make them more energy efficient. Currently the average vacuum cleaner on the market has a wattage of 1,800, but by 2017 that figure will have to fall to 900W. The 'ecodesign' regulations have been drafted after years of research by officials and external consultants. Vacuum cleaners will also be g... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*Baffin Is. again* *Don J. Easterbrook is the latest (below) to dynamite the stupid Baffin Is. study* Miller et al. radiocarbon dated 145 rooted tundra plants revealed by receding ice in the eastern Canadian Arctic and say that it constitutes the first direct evidence that recent temperatures now exceed those of any century in the Holocene, including the Holocene Thermal Maximum. They further contend that (1) average summer temperatures of the last ~100 years were higher than any century in the past 44,000 years and suggest that present temperatures have not been exceeded in the ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*Five Of The Six Snowiest Winters Have Occurred Since David Viner Declared The End Of Snow* *Rutgers University Climate Lab :: Global Snow LabAccording to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past – Environment – The Independent* SOURCE *Wolf-protection cages for Kids at School Bus Stops Spark Outrage* *Greenies are the... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*ZEG* In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG thinks Greenies were deliberately invented to plague us *In classic Leftist style, failed Presidential candidate blocks out what he doesn't want to know* Secretary of State John Kerry expressed his frustration Tuesday with the fact that even in the United States, “a very educated country,” there are those who do not recognize the urgency of combating global warming. Addressing the D.C. Greening Embassies Forum, which encourages the “greening” of foreign mission in Washington, Kerry took aim at those who ch... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 2 months ago
*Green taxes cut 'would lower British energy bills within weeks’* Energy bills will fall within weeks if ministers make good on the Prime Minister’s promise to “roll back” green taxes, Britain’s biggest suppliers have pledged. Giving evidence to MPs, executives from the “Big Six” firms on Tuesday all vowed to pass on cost reductions to consumers if ministers cut the levies. William Morris, SSE’s managing director, said the price cut could happen “in a matter of weeks” from taxes being taken off bills and suggested regulator Ofgem should oversee the process. Most of the Big Six com... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*Gimmicks are no answer to green dogma* *Comment from Britain* Hard facts puncture soft opinions. As long as the ‘green’ dogma was just a theory, most people sympathised with it. Now it is costing them money, they are not so sure. Nobody wants to destroy his own planet and the man-made global warming movement is skilful at getting its views heard. Green propagandists have even reviled this newspaper for its repeated exposures of their dubious statistics and economy with the truth. But who was right? In recent months, the public have learned that – as we warned – green ideology... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*Kick That Donkey: Expand Jobs Footprint with Coal* Coal means cheap energy; coal means more jobs; coal means America's energy independence. Every year I celebrate Earth Day with tips and ideas on how readers can expand their carbon footprint. Now, below, you’ll find the newest, top ten ways I recommend to expand your carbon footprint on October 29th, 2013 Anno Domini, to celebrate Count on Coal Day. 10) Take unnecessary trips in your electric car. Run that battery down to nothing. Electric cars need fuel and that fuel comes from power plants that run mostly on coal. There’s no qu... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*Arctic temperatures are at a 44,000-year high - and greenhouse gases are to blame, claim scientists* *Anthony Watts has made some reasonable criticisms of the report below but seems to have missed a feat of illogic that stands out like dog's balls to me. As the article itself mentions, temperatures on Baffin Island have a life of their own. They do not even match temperature changes in adjoining Greenland. But if Baffin Island is so out of line with the rest of the world, how can we made deductions about the rest of the world from it? Only a Warmist would think you could.... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*Bushfires and climate change* *Australia is having some nasty forest fires (aka bushfires) at the moment -- as it does most years. In their usual form, Warmists want to claim that the fires are due to "climate change". Since most Australians are aware that we have ALWAYS had such fires, however, they struggle to make their case and the Prime Minister has been completely dismissive of their nonsense.The article below is therefore both very cautious and very vague. There seems to be some claim that bushfire incidence has increased in recent years but there are no numbered ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*Extreme Heat Is Proving Deadly In Sweden* *A small detail overlooked below: CRUTEM4 shows no warming in southern Sweden over the last 30 years. And if there HAS been any warming, it's not global anyway, as there has been no global warming for 17 years. Note also that global warming is an average. Some places will be hotter and some places will be colder than the average. Sweden could be one of the hotter on average places without it implying anything at all* Climate change has resulted in about 1,500 premature deaths in Sweden over the last 30 years, according to a new study. ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*Antarctic Ice Sets New All Time Record High In October* NSIDC are now back up and running again, after the Federal shutdown. Quite astonishingly, Antarctic sea ice has set another record for maximum extent, beating the previous record of 19.513 million sq km, set on 21st September this year. *Note that current levels are more than 2SDs above average, which is huge --JR* What makes the new record so astonishing is that it was set in October, on the 1st. Climatologically, the maximum extent is reached on 22nd September, so it is most unusual for the ice still to be growing 10 da... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*The “Backfire Effect” and why Global Warmists ignore facts which contradict their opinions* This is about a study on how facts – especially corrective facts – are ignored when some opinion or perception is deeply held. The study is about political perceptions and it strikes me that it is very relevant to the IPCC and the alarmists for whom the Global Warming hypothesis (that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are the primary cause of Global warming) is a deeply held political belief. Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, When Corrections Fail: The persistence of political mispercepti... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*Increasing Clouds and Thunderstorms For Climate Alarmists* What a month it’s been. Rejecting claims of looming cataclysm, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change issued Climate Change Reconsidered-II on September 17. This report by 50 experts documents actual planetary temperature, climate and weather in recent decades – and the ways alarmist scientists have manipulated data, graphs, computer models and weather events to make it appear that human influences are much greater than they actually are. On September 20, the US Environmental Protection Agency proposed ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*Climatology Sees One Of The Greatest Scientific Reversals Of All Time – The Rise And Fall Of The Hockey Stick Charts* An examination of the five IPCC reports published thus far reveals a remarkable scientific reversal. What follows is the evolution of the 1000-year temperature curve: from double hump (1990) - to hockey stick 2001) – and back again to double hump (2013). 1st Assessment Report, 1990, Fig. 1 *In Figure 1 we see that the period of the 11th to 13th century, the Medieval Warm Period, was considerably warmer than today. The above graphic appears to be based on the pub... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*Britain set to build more nukes* George Osborne, the Chancellor, has announced that the UK will allow Chinese companies to take a stake in British nuclear power plants. The decision could lead to China taking a future majority stake - and even be allowed to own up to 100 pc - in the development of the next generation of British nuclear power. Mr Osborne made the announcement on Thursday the last day of a week-long trade visit to China after a visit to Taishan nuclear power station on the coast near Hong Kong. Taishan is a collaboration between French energy company EDF and the ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*The Wannabe Oppressed * What do America’s college students want? They want to be oppressed. More precisely, a surprising number of students at America’s finest colleges and universities wish to appear as victims — to themselves, as well as to others — without the discomfort of actually experiencing victimization. Here is where global warming comes in. The secret appeal of campus climate activism lies in its ability to turn otherwise happy, healthy, and prosperous young people into an oppressed class, at least in their own imaginings. Climate activists say to the world, “I’ll sav... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*‘Insolent’ Czechs look to coal for energy* What has happened in the real Czech Republic and Poland is strange and goes against the grain. It is a rare case of small countries confronting a big bully — the biggest of them all, the European Union (EU). The EU’s proposals on climate change involve a series of targets: under Connie Hedegaard, the commissioner for climate action, it committed to reducing carbon-dioxide levels to 20% below 1990 levels. At the same time, legislation has been adopted to raise the involvement of hydroelectric, solar, wind and biomass energy to 20% of mark... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*Coal will surpass oil as the key fuel for the global economy by 2020 despite government efforts to reduce carbon emissions* Coal will become more in demand than oil by 2020 driven by growth in China and India, despite campaigns to reduce carbon emissions across the globe, a new report reveals. Marking a return to an era reminiscent of Britain's industrial revolution, the rapidly expanding economies in the East are turning to coal since it is cheaper and more reliable than oil or renewable energy sources, energy consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie said on Monday. Rising demand in Chin... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*The science fiction of IPCC climate models* *Climate policies need scientific forecasts, not alarmist scenarios* By Kesten C. Green, J. Scott Armstrong and Willie Soon The human race has prospered by relying on forecasts that the seasons will follow their usual course, while knowing they will sometimes be better or worse. Are things different now? For the fifth time now, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claims they are. The difference, the IPCC asserts, is increased human emissions of carbon dioxide: a colorless, odorless, non-toxic gas that is a byproduct of growing... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*Science not so "settled" after all?* *New study "could fundamentally change our understanding of climate change"* British research has discovered that our agricultural practices help form clouds: the news could change the way we calculate global warming... A team of scientists led by a British academic has solved a long-standing enigma to explain how up to half the clouds in the sky are formed. And in finally cracking the problem of how planet-cooling clouds are conjured from what might seem to be thin air, the researchers found that humans play a significant role. It is... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*Serial Demolition of Some Eco-Nuttery - an 18 minute video by Ivo Vegter‏* Watch the 18-minute video below for a serial demolition of one piece of eco-nuttery after another by Ivo Vegter in South Africa: The 'environmental exaggerations' of which he speaks are so mainstream now, and such a distortion of reality, that it would be wonderful if every high school teacher in the world decided to show this, or a subbed /dubbed version, to their senior pupils. Maybe as an antidote to all the eco-guff they will have been exposed to in their schooldays. Maybe as a last chance to steer the... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*WHAT IS THE USE OF JOHN KERRY?* * Lord Monckton challenges secretary Kerry to debate on climate change (And has a lot of fun doing it)* Like profiteers of doom worldwide, John Kerry, described as a secretary of state, believes in the “global warming” bugaboo with every fiber of his bank account. One of the strangest phenomena in politics is the uncritical alacrity and Damascene fervor with which the hive mind of the international left, believing the unbelievable, will find any pretext to argue passionately for the greatest transfer of wealth and power in human history from the p... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*Richard Lindzen: Understanding The IPCC Climate Assessment* Each IPCC report seems to be required to conclude that the case for an international agreement to curb carbon dioxide has grown stronger. That is to say the IPCC report (and especially the press release accompanying the summary) is a political document, and as George Orwell noted, political language “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” With respect to climate, we have had 17 years without warming; all models show greater tropical warming tha... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*The climate alarmists have lost the debate: it's time we stopped indulging their poisonous fantasy* By James Delingpole The story so far: with the release of its Fifth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has proved beyond reasonable doubt that it cannot be taken seriously. Here are a few reasons why: IPCC lead author Dr Richard Lindzen has accused it of having "sunk to a level of hilarious incoherence." Nigel Lawson has called it "not science but mumbo jumbo". The Global Warming Policy Foundation's Dr David Whitehouse has described the IPCC's panel as... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*Only 6.6% of EPA Employees Considered 'Essential'* As if we didn’t already know how useless and unnecessary the EPA is, following the government shutdown we saw just how little we really need them. When various government agencies were releasing many of their workers on furlough with lack of funding, the EPA went through its employees and decided which were “essential” and which were “non-essential”. According to an EPA guidance, which Reuters obtained, the agency said it only had 1,069 of its 16,205 employees listed as “essential”. That is only 6.6 percent of their workforce! Th... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*Are skeptics "amateurish"?* *A "New Yorker" writer below says so but it would be hard to get mnore amateurish than her. She quotes not one single solitary scientific fact to support her faith. Her complete faith in authority would be amusing if it were not so childish. She'll probably make someone an obedient wife, though* BY ELIZABETH KOLBERT Last week, in Stockholm, a group of scientists from around the world issued what should be, but of course will not be, the last word on climate change. Officially known as Working Group I’s contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report o... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*Is Australia unusually warm this year?* *There have been reports to that effect -- excerpt below -- but in the absence of global warming they are of only passing interest. Some parts of the globe will always be warmer than others while yet other parts are cooler. It is the average that is of interest, not cherry-picked components of the whole dataset.And note that all Australian reports derive from BoM, Australia's official meteorologists. And how they work is a marvel indeed. After their "adjustments", a falling temperature in the raw data can become a rising one! T... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*Warmist Prof. in NYTimes: Failure of climate models vs. reality not important since we use them to predict the future* *Reality does not seem to matter much to Leftists either.If your models have no demonstrated predictive skill, relying on them is faith, not science. Predictive skill is the first test of a model and a demonstration of no skill means back to the drawing board. But Warmism is not science but a religion -- one in a centuries-old succession of apocalyptic religions (calamity predictions). Check just William Miller and Charles Taze Russell for the 19th centur... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*Junk science: More food is bad for caribou?* *An earlier melt in Arctic regions means that plants emerge earlier and are bigger than they would otherwise be at any one point in time. So grazing animals have more food. But the galoots below argue that caribou have LESS food after an early melt. To reach that amazing conclusion, the galoots below have to assert that only "young, tender" greenery can be eaten by caribou -- which is utter hogwash. Caribou are ruminants, with powerful four-chambered digestive systems designed to break down almost any vegetable matter. And... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*Why gamble with America's Economy?* *Below is an article dated September 26, 2013 by congressman David McKinley, representing the 1st district of W. Virginia for the GOP. He has an engineering background and recognizes that the coal industry is the backbone of West Virginia's economy and that the attacks on coal from Washington must be stopped. * Gambling has consequences - whether it is a card game or making energy policy. Engineers, scientists, and physicists around the world continue their efforts to define the role of CO2 in climate change and wrestle with whether the condi... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 3 months ago
*The IPCC's mountainous molehill* *The article excerpted below was headed "Climatic Change: How Long Will Earth Remain?". Except to Warmists, the obvious answer would be: Another few billion years. The notable thing to a sceptic, however, is how the factual statements -- such as the one italicized below -- are perfectly true. But science is tightly tied to quantification and if we look at the quantities involved, the statements become laughably true. The quantities involved are so small that the only reasonable comment is "who cares?". In some cases Warmists are talking abou... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen Rips UN IPCC Report* *‘The latest IPCC report has truly sunk to level of hilarious incoherence’ — ‘It is quite amazing to see the contortions the IPCC has to go through in order to keep the international climate agenda going’* I think that the latest IPCC report has truly sunk to level of hilarious incoherence. They are proclaiming increased confidence in their models as the discrepancies between their models and observations increase. Their excuse for the absence of warming over the past 17 years is that the heat is hiding in the deep o... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*Climate change will 'make Britain cooler'* For the first time, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is due to give a clear prediction of how global warming will affect currents in the Atlantic Ocean. It will say that the circulation of warm and cold water in the Atlantic, which includes the Gulf Stream, will weaken by 20 to 44 per cent by the end of the century. Scientists claim that such a slow-down in the Gulf Stream will have a big impact on Britain, causing cooling of about 1.8F (1C) and disrupting weather patterns. The Gulf Stream carries warm water from... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*Climate models wildly overestimated global warming, study finds* Can you rely on the weather forecast? Maybe not, at least when it comes to global warming predictions over short time periods. That’s the upshot of a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change that compared 117 climate predictions made in the 1990's to the actual amount of warming. Out of 117 predictions, the study’s author told FoxNews.com, three were roughly accurate and 114 overestimated the amount of warming. On average, the predictions forecasted two times more global warming than actually occurred. Some s... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*That 95% again* *Much-published AP journalist Seth Borenstein knows on which side his bread is buttered. He is a major propagandist for global warming. He must however feel some insecurity about his views as he sometimes replies directly to critics of his articles. Marc Morano is his most persistent critic and that may be why he replies to Morano.* Morano pointed out that the 95% certainty just now claimed for global warming by the IPCC was decided on a show of hands, not by any scientific or mathematical process. And it was Borenstein's uncritical report of the 95% that Mo... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*That 95% again* *Much-published AP journalist Seth Borenstein knows on which side his bread is buttered. He is a major propagandist for global warming. He must however feel some insecurity about his views as he sometimes replies directly to critics of his articles. Marc Morano is his most persistent critic and that may be why he replies to Morano.* Morano pointed out that the 95% certainty just now claimed for global warming by the IPCC was decided on a show of hands, not by any scientific or mathematical process. And it was Borenstein's uncritical report of the 95% that Mo... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*Met Office global warming figures 'are fatally flawed and could result in millions being squandered'* The Met Office’s global warming predictions are flawed and could result in millions of pounds being squandered, it is claimed. A report for a think tank led by former Tory chancellor Lord Lawson says a computer programme behind figures that shape climate change policy is biased in favour of higher temperatures. Large sums of public and private sector money could be ‘malinvested’ in everything from wind farms to heat-proof road surfaces as a result, it claims. Lord Lawson, chair... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*Forthcoming IPCC report: preemptive indoctrination* *Alarmist journalists already know how everyone will react and should react to an unknown report* The almost final draft of the IPCC AR5 WG1 [physical basis] report will be handed to politicians tomorrow in Stockholm. It's my understanding that minor details may still change in the text, under the political pressure. Their summary for policymakers will be out on Friday and the whole report will be out on the immediately following Monday. These documents have leaked – I don't have the final copies! – so many journalists already ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*The climate consensus is political, not scientific* *By cautious Warmist, Judith Curry, professor and chair of the school of earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology* IN February 2007, publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) was received with international acclaim. The vaunted IPCC process -- multitudes of experts from more than 100 countries examining thousands of refereed journal publications, with hundreds of expert reviewers, across a period of four years -- elevated the authority of the IPC... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*World's top climate scientists told to 'cover up' the fact that the Earth's temperature hasn't risen for the last 15 years* Scientists working on the most authoritative study on climate change were urged to cover up the fact that the world’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years, it is claimed. A leaked copy of a United Nations report, compiled by hundreds of scientists, shows politicians in Belgium, Germany, Hungary and the United States raised concerns about the final draft. Published next week, it is expected to address the fact that 1998 was the hottest year on re... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*No, Sir David Attenborough, Adolf was wrong* *It is amusing to see how consistent Leftists are in their follies. Greenies following Fascists is a regular phenomenon. Does anybody remember why Hitler sought "Lebensraum" for Germany in the East? It was because he was just as ignorant as David Attenborough. Hitler looked at the population increase in Germany and the prospects for increases in German farm production and concluded that Germany would soon be unable to feed itself. So it needed to grab land off its neighbours in the East if it was not to starve. Hitler knew as l... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*Is this a hoax?* *I think this article below is a joke designed to make skeptics look foolish by believing it. To my knowledge, NOBODY has been talking about carbon monoxide in relation to climate, though I suppose it's possible* A first-ever study of air trapped in the deep snowpack of Greenland shows that atmospheric levels of carbon monoxide (CO) in the 1950s were actually slightly higher than what we have today. This sets back global warming theories because their "computer models" predict much higher CO concentrations over Greenland in 2013 than in 1950. The opposite is in ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*That pesky Arctic again* *Image source* In recent years, Warmists have had a love-affair with the Arctic. Overall terrestrial temperatures have been depressingly stable for them but there are lots of changes in the Arctic from year to year. So just a few years of Arctic ice shrinkage are enough to put lead back in their pencils and enable them to say that there is warming going on SOMEWHERE. So the massive rebound in ice cover this year has sparked much hilarity among skeptics and a notable lack of press-releases from Warmists. The best that Warmists can do to preserve their a... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*Another national newspaper pisses on global warming* *The report from Australia's national newspaper below follows on from yesterday's "Daily Mail" report and is partly based on it* THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest assessment reportedly admits its computer drastically overestimated rising temperatures, and over the past 60 years the world has in fact been warming at half the rate claimed in the previous IPCC report in 2007. More importantly, according to reports in British and US media, the draft report appears to suggest global temperatures were less sensit... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*Global warming is just HALF what we said: World's top climate scientists admit computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong * *Article below from the Mass-market: "Daily Mail"* The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has changed its story after issuing stern warnings about climate change for years A leaked copy of the world’s most authoritative climate study reveals scientific forecasts of imminent doom were drastically wrong. The Mail on Sunday has obtained the final draft of a report to be published later this month by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Chan... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*British hospital managers worry hospitals will fail under pressure this winter* *Hey! What's this? Warmists always tell us that warming will bring more illness. So how come it is winter when illness ramps up? Reality shoots down theory, I think* More than half of senior NHS managers believe hospitals will be unable to cope with pressures this winter, with many “at breaking point” amid a deepening crisis. The report by the NHS Confederation forecasts a likely increase in cancelled operations, longer waiting times for patients, and serious safety issues, including increased d... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*Romantic Germany risks economic decline as green dream spoils* Germany is committing slow economic suicide. It has staked its future on heavy industry and manufacturing, yet has no energy policy to back this up. Instead, the country has a ruinously expensive green dream, priced at €700bn (£590bn) from now until the late 2030s by environment minister Peter Altmaier if costs are slashed - and €1 trillion if they are not. The Germans are surely the most romantic nation on earth. The full implications of this may become clear over the next decade, just as Germany’s ageing crisis hits ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*Warmists now taking skeptics seriously* *The prominent British Warmist organization, The Grantham Institute, has deigned to notice the skeptical blogosphere. They treat us as if we were bacilli under a microscope but their conclusions are surprisingly fair:* Mapping the climate sceptical blogosphere By Amelia Sharman et al. Abstract While mainstream scientific knowledge production has been extensively examined in the academic literature, comparatively little is known about alternative networks of scientific knowledge production. Online sources such as blogs are an especially u... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*The Triumph of Tony Abbott* According to the conventional wisdom of just a few years ago, Tony Abbott should never have become prime minister of Australia. The doyens of the press gallery had marked him as a right-wing throwback to a bygone era. After all, Mr. Abbott is skeptical about alarmist claims of man-made global warming. He is a former Catholic seminarian who opposes abortion and same-sex marriage. His gaffes—he recently said a female parliamentary candidate had "sex appeal"—have provided fodder for left-leaning satirists. He is an Anglophile, a former Oxford boxing blue,... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*Record return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60% in a year with top scientists warning of global COOLING* *The Warmists have repeatedly hung their hats on changes in Arctic ice -- but that selfsame ice is now biting them on the butt* A chilly Arctic summer has left nearly a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than at the same time last year – an increase of 60 per cent. The rebound from 2012’s record low comes six years after the BBC reported that global warming would leave the Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013. Instead, days before the annual autumn re-freeze i... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*A paler shade of Green in Australia now* Conservatives won a huge victory in the Australian Federal election yesterday. The new government is pledged to abolish the carbon tax and pays only lip service to Warmism -- JR. *The new gold rush that proves the anti-fracking fanatics have got it all wrong* As he takes me on a tour of his buzzing little town, mayor Brent Sanford points out the acres of development that have already happened — the giant grocery store, the smart restaurant, the school extension and the endless housing developments. And he tells me what’s still to com... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*Britain to scrap taxpayer-funded £5,000 grants to electric car buyers after experts find incentive did little to help the environment* Taxpayer-funded subsidies of £5,000 aimed at boosting sales of electric vehicles are to be phased out, ministers said last night. The grant was introduced to fuel a consumer boom in emission-free cars but it ‘cannot be maintained indefinitely’, they warn. It comes after experts found the incentive was doing little to help the environment and instead allowing rich families to buy a second car on the cheap. The £5,000-per-car subsidies, which have ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*New Zealand answers Al Gore* *NIWA, the New Zealand weather service, is notoriously corrupt and dishonest in the global warming cause and not at all averse to a good ol' NZ "orchestrated litany of lies". But Al Gore recently hung his hat on their claim that NZ has just had a record warm winter. Attaching much weight to what was happening on the tiny percentage of the earth's surface that is NZ is amusing enough but more amusing is some much less ambiguous data -- "freak" late winter snowfalls in NZ. We read:* "HUNDREDS of skiers are stuck on New Zealand's Mt Hutt after freak ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*Peer-Reviewed Study Indicates Recent Warming Is Natural* Nature is responsible for most of the planet’s warming in recent decades, a newly published peer-reviewed study indicates. Writing in the journal Nature, scientists studied sea surface temperature variations in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, which is the region generating El Nino and La Nina events. The scientists found a close correlation between natural variations in the region’s surface water temperatures and ensuing global cooling and warming events. Importantly, a global climate model developed to reflect the regio... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
* Consensus? What Consensus?* *Global Warming Survey Virtually Meaningless. Even very skeptical writers were alleged to be part of the "consensus"* In recent weeks US President Obama and the UK’s Energy and Climate Secretary Ed Davey have both cited a survey of climate science abstracts that alleges an overwhelming consensus on the subject of global warming. In a new briefing note published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation today, Andrew Montford reviews the methodology used in the survey and concludes that the consensus revealed by the paper by Cook et al. is so broad tha... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*Human beings are a disease * *The Greenie dream* *Two Decades Of "Unprecedented Global Warming" Has Left Arctic Ice extent Almost The Same As It Was 20 Years Ago* One might be inclined to believe that Arctic experts have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. SOURCE *New paper finds climate models have greatly exaggerated warming & finds no statistically-significant warming for past 20 years* A paper published today in Nature Climate Change finds climate models have greatly exaggerated global warming over the past 20 years, noting the observed warming is "le... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*Hey, Ho! It's Hayhoe!* *"Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University"* Katharine Says We Can Control The Climate. According to Katharine Hayhoe:- But, there again, Katharine thought that she saw climate change in an increase in Texas winter temperatures. Interviewed by Yale 360, she was asked:- “have you seen sizeable increases in average temperatures that could be defined as climate change?” Her reply, from Lubbock, Texas:- “What we’ve ac... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 4 months ago
*Climate Science Exploited for Political Agenda: Lindzen* Climatism or global warming alarmism is the most prominent recent example of science being coopted to serve a political agenda, writes Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the in the fall 2013 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. He compares it to past examples: Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union, and the eugenics movement. Lindzen describes the Iron Triangle and the Iron Rice Bowl, in which ambiguous statements by scientists are translated into alarmist statements by media and ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*Another Paper Blames ENSO for the Warming Hiatus* *Finding "natural" explanations for a cooling influence forces the question: Maybe there are natural explanations for all observed temperature variations. If oceans these days are absorbing heat as part of a cycle, that surely means that the warming of the 80s and 90s (so relied on by Warmists) was in large part due to ocean giving off heat. What the oceans giveth, the oceans taketh.* The recently published climate model-based paper Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling [Paywalled] by Yu Kosak... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*As real temperatures subside, the IPCC heats up the fight* By Larry Bell The New York Times feverishly reported on August 10 that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is about to issue another scary climate report. Dismissing the recent 17 years or so of flat global temperatures, the IPCC will assert that: “It is extremely likely that human influence on climate caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010.” The draft report also says, “There is high confidence that this has warmed the ocean, melted sno... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*A Tale of Two Climate Hockey Sticks* By S. Fred Singer The false “hockey stick” graph with which (in 2001) the UN climate panel claimed that current surface temperatures are “unprecedented” in a millennium is at odds with hundreds of scientific papers and with their own previous position. There is nothing unusual about today’s temperatures; the world was warmer in the Middle Ages. However, the "hockey stick” graph showing a rapid increase in 20th century CO2 concentration is genuine. The Third Assessment Report (2001) of the UN-sponsored IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*Monckton is getting to them* *"Hockey stick" Mann has felt the need to shoot back at Viscount Monckton after Monckton's derisive comments on his work. But he manages to do so only by committing large sins of omission and commission. See below. Following is Lord Monckton's reply.* Most recently the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley of Edinburgh, Scotland, used offensive personal attacks and completely false statements in another attempt to defend Cuccinelli’s use of state funds to engage in a politically motivated attack on both me and Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia. M... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*Huge and unexpected carbon sink found in the Atlantic* *Another big hole in the models -- it should reduce CO2 buildup. Any guesses about whether this new info will be incorporated into the Warmist predictions?* Previously, oceanographers thought the Atlantic Ocean seafloor didn’t spit out as much iron as other regions. However, a recently discovered plume of iron billowing from the depth of the Atlantic Ocean suggests the seafloor may be pumping iron like a young Arnold Schwarzenegger. The oceanic iron cloud spreads for more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) across the Atlanti... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*Amusing. Empiricism without evidence?* *The article below by Australian socialist Andrew Hunter appeared in a major newspaper under the heading: "Empiricism must be defended". Fair enough. I am an unrelenting empiricist and have 200+ published academic journal articles to prove it. But Hunter shows no evidence of being an empiricist at all. Empiricism means "going by the facts" or "respecting the data" or "going by what our senses tell us". Yet in his diatribe in defence of "climate change" below, Hunter mentions not one climate fact or data point. He prefers airy waff... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*Biomass Fuel and the new Environmentalism* *Tree huggers? Pshaw! Greenies are hot to cut trees down!* *Time to praise CO2 — the miracle gas!* By Paul Driessen It’s amazing that minuscule bacteria can cause life-threatening diseases and infections — and miraculous that tiny doses of vaccines and antibiotics can safeguard us against these deadly scourges. It is equally incredible that, at the planetary level, carbon dioxide is a miracle molecule for plants — and the “gas of life” for most living creatures on Earth. In units of volume, CO2’s concentration is typically presen... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*Global sea level rise dampened by Australian floods?* *"Australia is in a major drought". Then what's that stuff that's been falling from the sky outside my window in Brisbane this August -- a normally "dry" month?Someone else will have to do the numbers on this but the whole thing smells to high heaven. Only a small percentage of the rain fell in the Australian outback. As it always does, most of the rain fell onto the narrow East coastal plain, where it was promptly returned to the sea via the many big coastal rivers -- JR* New research led by the National Center for Atmo... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*Presenter of British TV science programs for children deplores Warmist school propaganda* *This is from two years back but is as topical as ever* *Earth orbit changes key to climate change* For more than a century scientists have known that Earth's ice ages are caused by the wobbling of the planet's orbit, which changes its orientation to the sun and affects the amount of sunlight reaching higher latitudes, particularly the polar regions. The Northern Hemisphere's last ice age ended about 20,000 years ago, and most evidence has indicated that the ice age in the Southern He... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*It’s Time to Restore EPA’s Original Purpose* Jay Lehr, Ph.D. In 1968, when I was serving as the head of a groundwater professional society, it became obvious to some of my colleagues and me that the United States did not have any serious focus on potential problems with its air quality, drinking water quality, surface water quality, waste disposal problems, and contamination that could occur from mining and agriculture. I held the nation’s first Ph.D. in groundwater hydrology, which gave me unparalleled insight into many of these potential problems. We spoke before dozens of con... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*Another "Orifice" statistic* *Probabilities are a pervasive feature of scientific reporting. It is very rare to be able to study all the instances of some phenomenon so sampling the available instances and reporting the probability that the sample will generalize to the whole is routine.But to report a probability in a scientific paper, one normally has to do several other things. One has to report on how the data was gathered, summarize the data (often in the form of means and standard deviations) and nominate the statistical procedure used to convert the data into prob... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*Rapid Cooling Triggered Bronze-Age Collapse And Greek Dark Age* *Of course the politically correct verbiage is “climate change.”* Between the 13th and 11th centuries BCE, most Greek Bronze Age Palatial centers were destroyed and/or abandoned throughout the Near East and Aegean, says this paper by Brandon L. Drake. A sharp increase in Northern Hemisphere temperatures preceded the wide-spread systems collapse, while a sharp decrease in temperatures occurred during their abandonment. (Neither of which, I am sure – the increase or the decrease – were caused by humans.) Mediterranean... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*How did Maine get left out of global warming?* *I wanted to look up something about Maine in Wikipedia but wandered off reading all sorts of other stuff in the entry -- as I often do. And I came upon this:* The state's record high temperature is 105 °F (41 °C), set in July 1911, at North Bridgton. In January 2009, a new record low temperature for the state was set at Big Black River of −50 °F (−46 °C), tying the New England record. *That's totally the wrong way around for the Warmists* *Guy with thick German accent wants to gas people he believes are harming his country.*... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*An elderly Austrian can still surprise us* *I had no idea that there were so many "issues" with the measurement of sea level. But Fred Singer sets it out below. We basically don't know what sea level has been doing in recent decades* Driving the seemingly endless climate-treaty negotiations, the most widely feared consequence of Global Warming appears to be a catastrophic rise in sea level (SLR). Environmental advocacy groups are filling the airwaves with lurid images of flooding of Bangladesh and Pacific islands, and raising the specter of hundreds of millions of environmental ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*Gas prices should be a lot lower* By Alan Caruba In the past whenever gas prices began to climb, then whoever was president usually got the blame for it, but there never was anything he could do about it. The price at the pump was and is dependent on global factors. What can, however, be said about Barack Obama is that he has led the most anti-energy administration in the history of the nation. A nation’s economic stability and growth depends on affordable, abundant energy, especially hydrocarbon energy in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas. In the U.S. so-called “renewable” ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*Dotty Warmist aiming for the minds of children* *Who are less likely to be critical thinkers. Hitler had the same idea. Dr Gideon Polya recommends the steps below. Dr Polya is a "Anti-racist, humanitarian, agnostic, humanist, scientist, artist, writer, pro-peace advocate" and chemist. What a wonderful person! In Polya logic, Zionists are guilty of ignoring the Holocaust! I kid you not. See the third and fourth paragraph here. He prefaces his recommendations below with: "The acute seriousness of the present situation is revealed by the following dire estimations". No fa... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*400 PPM CO2 Update!* *Atmospheric CO2 levels have now reached a level that was supposed to bring on disastrous warming. How does reality match that prophecy? The facts:* Coldest summer on record at the North Pole Highest August Arctic ice extent since 2006 Record high August Antarctic ice extent No major hurricane strikes for eight years Slowest tornado season on record No global warming for 17 years Second slowest fire season on record Four of the five snowiest northern hemisphere winters have occurred since 2008 The CO2 scam is a thing of the past! SOURCE *The killing of ‘... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*Chevy Volt Owners Have More Money than Brains* *It looks like a real car ... * Another $5,000 dollars lopped off the sale’s price of the Chevy Volt. And there are still far more fiducially responsible ways to invest hard earned dollars. As GM struggles to prove that Obama’s “saving of Detroit” was not a thinly veiled handout to union workers, and that the “green movement” is backed by economical alternatives to cheap fossil fuels, it has decided to cut its Volt prices yet again. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The sticker price on the lowest-cost 2014 Volt will fall to ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*Survey: Public Overwhelmingly Opposes Carbon Tax* American voters overwhelmingly oppose a carbon tax, according to a survey released by the Institute for Energy Research. Only 35 Percent Support According to the survey of 800 registered voters, 35 percent favor and 59 percent oppose a carbon tax. Democrats generally support a carbon tax (54 percent to 39 percent), while Republicans and independents strongly oppose the idea (80 percent to 16 percent and 62 percent to 29 percent, respectively). Just 33 percent of respondents said they would be more likely to vote for a member of ... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*How to lie with statistics* *Below is the latest Warmist propaganda from government scientists. It cites various statistics that together give the impression of changing climate. That imnpression does not survive even the most cursory look, however. They admit to both drought and flood so there is no net GLOBAL change there. They admit that the Arctic is out of line with both global tendencies and the Antarctic so there is again no GLOBAL effect there. They admit that the temperature was well short of the global maximum so there is no GLOBAL change in recent figures. And al... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*Greenies fail to put their money where their mouth is* After two years with low enrollment, New Hampshire's largest electric utility is phasing out a program that allows customers to pay more to support renewable energy. Utilities are required by law to offer customers the opportunity to support renewable energy by paying a higher rate — usually about 30 percent. But if not enough customers sign up, a utility can get permission from the state Public Utilities Commission to pull the plug. That's what happened with Public Service Company of New Hampshire's EarthSmart Green program,... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*Does hot weather cause more conflict?* *There is a new paper out of Berkeley which says that it does. It is an old theory and one I have looked at myself in the past. The evidence for it is however equivocal. Singapore, for instance, is right on the equator yet is very law abiding. Central Africa is very violent (The Democratic Republic of the Congo, for instance) but the murder capital of the world is Johannesburg, which is cool both by reason of its Southern latitude in Africa and its elevation above sea-level. So, clearly, any influence of climate tends to be swamp... more »

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JR at GREENIE WATCH - 5 months ago
*Ozone madness from EPA* *The EPA is about to do more harm than ozone could ever do* Paul Driessen The Environmental Protection Agency’s war on economic growth, jobs, poor families, modern living standards, and people’s health and welfare is about to get a lot more damaging.. The Clean Air Act says EPA must set standards for ozone and other pollutants – and periodically review existing standards, to determine whether they are adequately protecting public health, or need to be tightened further. In 1997, the agency reduced the permissible ambient ozone level to 84 parts per bill... more »
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