Executive summary: Al Gore’s new book and movie, both titled An Inconvenient Truth, have been hailed by environmentalists–despite being filled with false or misleading claims about the science of global warming and related issues. This page details errors in the book (2006, Rodale Books), which in summary include:

• Misleading links between weather events and climate      change: Climate is the average of      weather conditions over long time periods; because the climate system is      inherently variable, individual weather events are not indicative of      trends. Nonetheless, Gore overwhelms the reader with many individual      events, claiming this is global warming in action: a European heatwave,      record daily highs in U.S. cities one summer, hurricane Katrina, floods in      Europe and China, and more. To address the issue of climate change, all      such events must be considered over time. As it turns out, in several      cases such analysis refutes any claims of recent trends (for example, with      regard to floods).
  In other cases, the scientific community is engaged in much research and      debate. Gore claims that there is “an emerging consensus” that      hurricane activity is on the upswing due to global warming. The reality is      that this is the subject of much debate in the scientific community:      different researchers have produced contradictory conclusions, but the      factors involved are far more complex than Gore admits, and research is      continuing.
• Misrepresentation of data: Of the various graphs and other data Gore presents,      some of it is misrepresented. Gore presents one graph, said to be      temperature data derived from ice cores, to support the controversial      claim of one research group–Mann et al.–that current temperatures are      higher than anytime in the last 1,000 years. The graph is not the ice core      data, however, but the Mann et al. data derived from tree rings and other      proxies. The broader claim is questioned by many scientists as well–much      research suggests that temperatures around 1100-1300 AD were about as warm      as today–as well as the methodology used to support such claims. Gore      uses another set of ice core data to claim that carbon dioxide      concentrations have driven global temperatures for the last 600,000 years.      He admits the actual relationship is “complicated”, which is as      close as he comes to admitting the fact that the temperature changes came      first, and probably helped drive the carbon dioxide changes.
  These aren’t the only cases of sloppiness with data: Gore claims the      hottest year on record was 2005, but in reality existing observations      don’t have the accuracy to discriminate between, say, 2005 and 1998, a hot      year due to an extreme El Nino event. He claims that the increasing      closures of the barrier’s on Britain’s Thames River show sea level is      rising, but doesn’t mention that the British government recently changed      the rules for such closures, including closing the barriers to deal with low      sea level; and he claims that a particular bird species is “in      trouble” in the Netherlands due to climate change, but researchers      report no change in this bird population. He cites a peak in tornadoes in      2004 as further evidence, but this peak came from new technology      permitting the counting of more weak tornadoes than ever before;      comparison of consistent data shows no trends in tornadoes.
• Exaggerations about sea level rise: Gore claims that potential melting of ice sheets in      Greenland and West Antarctic will force the “evacuation” of      millions of people to escape sea level rise of 6 meters (20 feet). This      flatly contradicts even the worst-case scenarios described by the scientific      community. Most research indicates that such melting, even if it could      occur, would take 1,000 to 5,000 years; the minimum timescale described by      any researcher for such melting is still centuries. Even the United      Nations’ IPCC, source of the “consensus” analysis which still      overestimates future warming, only predicts sea level rise of 0.1 to 0.8      meters (4 to 30 inches) in the next 100 years.
• Misleading claims about effects of climate change: Gore claims that the emergence of new diseases is related      to global warming, but most of the diseases he lists have little or no      relationship to climate. Even in the case of malaria, a disease with a      stronger link to climate, health experts cite the management of human      infrastructure and health systems as far more important factors. In other      cases Gore neglects the strong influence of human resource management, as      with linking occurrence of wildfires or pest outbreaks to global warming.      He also claims global warming is causing a “significant” number      of polar bear drownings, based on a report of four drowned polar bears;      however, other researchers report the polar bear population is generally      unchanged. Melting of glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro and in Glacier      National Park are cited as consequences of global warming, but in both      cases these glaciers have been melting since the 1800s, when the Earth      emerged from a period of global cooling.
• Reliance on worst-case scenarios: An underlying problem is that Gore seizes upon      worst-case scenarios and presents them as fact–sometimes omitting      important qualifiers. Much of the claims about the consequences of future      global warming rely on climate models that Gore calls “evermore      accurate”, but significant questions about the reliability of these      models remain, and the effects cited by Gore presume that the worse-case      predictions of these models are the correct ones. More generally, climate      change should be considered at the regional or local level, where impacts      would variously be positive or negative–especially depending on how we      choose to respond. Gore consistently discusses the most negative impacts,      and even minimizes the possibility of positive change.
• False claims about scientific views on global warming: Gore asserts that the scientific community is in      essentially unanimous agreement with his interpretation of global warming,      and dismisses skepticism of global warming as an energy industry      conspiracy. Not only are such claims false, they severely misrepresent the      very process of science. Gore cites a flawed editorial from a science      journal to claim that all published research agrees with the      “consensus” view on global warming; in reality, much published      research contradicts Gore’s position on global warming, and a recent      survey of climate scientists found the community fairly split on the claim      that there is an imminent threat from human-caused global warming. Despite      the abundance of scientific research contradicting his position, Gore      instead concentrates on refuting a handful of skeptical claims from      outside the scientific community–and can’t even get the facts right on      those. To add insult to injury, Gore repeatedly impugns the motives of      scientists and non-scientists who question his “consensus” on      global warming. Rather than confront the scientific facts, he stereotypes      the critics and dismisses them based on imagined motives.
• Misleading claims about the responsibility of the      United States: Gore says the United States is      particularly to blame for the claimed global warming crisis, but doesn’t      give a fair view of the issues. He makes misleading comparisons of fuel      economy standards in the U.S. and other countries; also, he criticizes the      U.S. failure to ratify the Kyoto Protocol without acknowledging the ways      in which the Protocol disproportionately targeted the U.S. economy. He      also understates the economic adjustments required to attain the goals he      sets.
• Conceptual errors:      Gore’s explanation of several topics, including the greenhouse effect, the      relationship of carbon dioxide and global temperature, decline in Arctic      Ocean pack ice, structure of the Greenland ice sheet, and ozone depletion,      contain conceptual errors. He may indeed have a correct understanding of      these issues, but what he communicates serves to perpetuate misconceptions      on these subjects. Combined with the low reading level of the text, this      tends to convey the lowest expectations of his readers.

Gore’s portrayal of the subject of global warming is scientifically unsupportable; even some scientists who accept the premise of global warming have been willing to call him on some errors. His portrayal of scientific skepticism regarding global warming is shameful; science requires healthy criticism to progress. The effect of attempts by Gore and others to silence dissent is harmful to scientific understanding as well as its application by society. The effort to use such twisted science to further a political agenda is such a harm.

From the UK Telegraph:

30 Aug 2011

Much of Britain suffered the coldest summer for almost two decades, Met Office statistics show.

As Britons return to work today after a soggy Bank Holiday weekend, official weather data reveals that average temperatures were significantly down on recent years.

The UK’s average temperature from June 1 to August 15 was only 57F (13.9C) – the lowest for 13 years.

For central England the average was 59F (15C), making it the coolest summer since 1993.

Helen Waite, a Met Office forecaster, said: “The average temperature for central England this summer has been just 15C – this sort of temperature is normally typical of September.

“Generally speaking, you would expect to see temperatures of at least 17C for this time of year.”

Personal comments:  Funny how THESE stories are never picked up by the Associated Press.  Science calls this type of error a ‘selection bias,’ where only one outcome receives attention, and outcomes that refute the desired hypothesis are discarded as irrelevant.  This is but one reason that journalists should be educated– and one glaring proof that they tend not to be, at least anymore.  I hate to say it, but people are doing the right thing by abandoning their subscriptions, as you are more likely to be misinformed than informed by media from this time in history.

The BBC recently admitted to tilting the climate change discussion by giving preferential reporting to stories supporting global climate change.  This situation is a perfect example of the larger debate over climate change– of how political correctness can lead to scientific theory becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Science runs on grant funding.  Every grad student, post-doc, assistant professor, and tenured faculty depends on grants to pay the bills– and to impress the establishment where they are working to offer academic advancement.  To get funding, one must know where the money is– and where it is not.  Asking for funding to show the ABSENCE of climate change is a sure path to poverty– and to being labelled a heretic.

On the other hand, asking for money to show evidence for the emperor’s new clothes will guarantee that the money will flow in.  This creates a systemic bias where only one outcome is expected and published– and negative findings are ignored.  Twenty years ago, everyone knew that breast implants caused autoimmune disorders;  nobody did research to prove the opposite, and if you study anything long enough, you’ll have a few positive findings.  For those who don’t know the rest of the story, after 2 billion dollars were paid out to ‘survivors’ and attorneys, the matter was put to rest– with a huge study that showed very clearly that there was NO actual connection between implants and autoimmune disease.  Science is filled with similar examples.  Climate change is only another.

UPROAR AS BBC MUZZLES CLIMATE CHANGE SCEPTICS

THE BBC was criticised by climate change sceptics yesterday after it emerged that their views will get less coverage because they differ from mainline scientific opinion.

In a report by its governing body, the BBC Trust, the corporation was urged to focus less on opponents of the “majority consensus” in its programmes.

It said coverage should not be tailored to represent a “false balance” of opinion if one side came from a minority group.

The report was partly based on an independent review of coverage by Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics at University College, London.

Although he found no evidence of bias in BBC output, he suggested where there is a “scientific consensus” it should not hunt out opponents purely to balance the story.

He highlighted climate change as an example along with the controversy over the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine potentially leading to autism.

On climate change, Professor Jones said there had been a “drizzle of criticism of BBC coverage” arising from “a handful of journalists who have taken it upon themselves to keep disbelief alive”.

The report says: “In its early days, two decades ago, there was a genuine scientific debate about the reality of climate change. Now, there is general agreement that warming is a fact even if there remain uncertainties about how fast, and how much, the temperature might rise.”

But critics accused Professor Jones of using the report as a cover to “push the BBC’s green agenda”.

Among them are former Tory Chancellor Lord Lawson, who was accused by the Government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir John Beddington, of making “incorrect” claims in An Appeal To Reason, the peer’s book on climate change.

Lord Lawson, chairman of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the fact that carbon dioxide levels were rising leading to global warming was not under dispute. However, he added, its extent and effect could not be explained by majority scientific opinion alone.

He said: “The BBC is already extremely one-sided on this issue. They have a settled view which is politically correct.

“The idea that because scientific opinion falls largely on one side you can’t have a debate is outrageous. Because there’s a strong majority in basic science doesn’t mean the issue is off the table, yet the BBC says it should be.”

The foundation’s director, Dr Benny Peiser, said the report would lead to biased coverage of climate change and stifle any real debate.

He said: “This is nothing the BBC has not been doing for the past 10 years, however. They are completely biased on the issue of climate change and this is nothing more than an effort to push their green agenda.”

Dr David Whitehouse, the foundation’s editor and a former BBC science correspondent, said the corporation had “lost the plot” when it came to science journalism.

He said the corporation was “grouping sceptics with deniers” which would result in a lack of valid scientific input to its reports.

He said: “A sceptic is not a denier, all good scientists should be sceptics. The BBC has got itself into a complete muddle.

“In seeking to get the science right it has missed the journalism which is about asking awkward questions and shaking the tree.”

But the BBC Trust defended the report. A spokesman said: “The report is not suggesting that climate change sceptics will not have a place on the BBC in future.

“The point Professor Jones makes is that the scientific consensus is that it is caused by human activity. Therefore the BBC’s coverage needs to give less weight to those who oppose this view, and reflect the fact that the debate has moved on to how to deal with climate change.”

In the article below, the climate research center—an oxymoron these days—was exposed for fudging their numbers, to make sea level elevation appear 20% higher than actual.  The researchers argue that the oceans are getting bigger because of shifting continents, and so they should add to the sea level—since if the continents weren’t moving, the level would be higher.

In other words, the sea levels aren’t increasing as much as they say, but if the continents were not shifting, the levels would be higher—so they will just pretend that they are higher.

Very strange logic.  But what would you expect from climate scientists, who used to argue that the planet was warming, until data showed that it isn’t—so they instead argue that the planet is cooling and warming at the same time, which is why we can’t measure it.

The actions of these ‘researchers’ show why political zealots and science don’t mix.  To lefties, the ends always justify the means—so the research doesn’t really matter, since they already know what the planet needs.  Not to mention that writing grants for ‘climate change’ has become the low-hanging fruit in the quest for funding.

I’ve always said that the lefties have a major problem—that copies of Gore’s movie will eventually be as serious as ‘reefer madness’, as people watch him talk about the countries that will be under water—while standing in the countries in the years that they are supposed to be gone.  I wonder—will there be calls for Al to give back the Nobel Prize?  Maybe he can take Obama’s Peace Prize with him, and drop them both off to save the taxpayers the cost for the trip…

The article:

Is climate change raising sea levels, as Al Gore has argued — or are climate scientists doctoring the data?

The University of Colorado’s Sea Level Research Group decided in May to add 0.3 millimeters — or about the thickness of a fingernail — every year to its actual measurements of sea levels, sparking criticism from experts who called it an attempt to exaggerate the effects of global warming.

“Gatekeepers of our sea level data are manufacturing a fictitious sea level rise that is not occurring,” said James M. Taylor, a lawyer who focuses on environmental issues for the Heartland Institute.

Steve Nerem, the director of the widely relied-upon research center, told FoxNews.com that his group added the 0.3 millimeters per year to the actual sea level measurements because land masses, still rebounding from the ice age, are rising and increasing the amount of water that oceans can hold.

“We have to account for the fact that the ocean basins are actually getting slightly bigger… water volume is expanding,” he said, a phenomenon they call glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA).

Taylor calls it tomfoolery.

“There really is no reason to do this other than to advance a political agenda,” he said.

Climate scientist John Christy, a professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said that the amount of water in the ocean and sea level were two different things.

“To me… sea level rise is what’s measured against the actual coast,” he told FoxNews.com. “That’s what tells us the impact of rising oceans.”

Taylor agreed.

“Many global warming alarmists say that vast stretches of coastline are going to be swallowed up by the sea. Well, that means we should be talking about sea level, not about global water volume.”

In e-mails with FoxNews.com, Nerem indicated that he considered “sea level rise” to be the same thing as the amount of water in the ocean.

“If we correct our data to remove [the effect of rising land], it actually does cause the rate of sea level (a.k.a. ocean water volume change) rise to be bigger,” Nerem wrote. The adjustment is trivial, and not worth public attention, he added.

“For the layperson, this correction is a non-issue and certainly not newsworthy… [The] effect is tiny — only 1 inch over 100 years, whereas we expect sea level to rise 2-4 feet.”

But Taylor said that the correction seemed bigger when compared with actual sea level increases.

“We’ve seen only 7 inches of sea level rise in the past century and it hasn’t sped up this century. Compared to that, this would add nearly 20 percent to the sea level rise. That’s not insignificant,” he told FoxNews.com.

Everything changes– including, perhaps especially, our weather.  Over the last couple years, climate change alarmists have realized that the facts regarding ‘global warming’ do not support their economic and political aims (which include income redistribution and larger government).  So they have seized upon a quirk of human nature to trick people into supporting their cause– the tendency to assign reasons for random events.

When a significant weather event occurs that supports a person’s ideas, those ideas gain strength.  Events that are inconsistent with those ideas are discarded, rather than being applied to the ideas to introduce change and knowledge.  This is just how we are, and how we will always be;  we are more comfortable with reasons– even incorrect reasons– than with randomness.

This quirk of human nature is what spawned the change in strategy by the left, from talking about ‘global warming’ to instead talking about ‘climate change’.  They recognized that there is one thing about climate that will always be true– it changes.  And with their new strategy, they can post headlines for any weather event.  Too hot?  Must be ‘global climate change.’  Too cold?  climate change!  Too wet?  Too dry, too….. perfect?  Climate change!

Watch for this strategy going forward.  And be aware of your own tendency to see reason for things that are random.  The following editorial presents evidence for a climate that is changing–just as it always has.

The Weather is Not Getting Weirder

By ANNE JOLIS

Last week a severe storm froze Dallas under a sheet of ice, just in time to disrupt the plans of the tens of thousands of (American) football fans descending on the city for the Super Bowl. On the other side of the globe, Cyclone Yasi slammed northeastern Australia, destroying homes and crops and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

Some climate alarmists would have us believe that these storms are yet another baleful consequence of man-made CO2 emissions. In addition to the latest weather events, they also point to recent cyclones in Burma, last winter’s fatal chills in Nepal and Bangladesh, December’s blizzards in Britain, and every other drought, typhoon and unseasonable heat wave around the world.

As it happens, the project’s initial findings, published last month, show no evidence of an intensifying weather trend. “In the climate models, the extremes get more extreme as we move into a doubled CO2 world in 100 years,” atmospheric scientist Gilbert Compo, one of the researchers on the project, tells me from his office at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871.”

In other words, researchers have yet to find evidence of more-extreme weather patterns over the period, contrary to what the models predict. “There’s no data-driven answer yet to the question of how human activity has affected extreme weather,” adds Roger Pielke Jr., another University of Colorado climate researcher.

We do know that carbon dioxide and other gases trap and re-radiate heat. We also know that humans have emitted ever-more of these gases since the Industrial Revolution. What we don’t know is exactly how sensitive the climate is to increases in these gases versus other possible factors—solar variability, oceanic currents, Pacific heating and cooling cycles, planets’ gravitational and magnetic oscillations, and so on.

Given the unknowns, it’s possible that even if we spend trillions of dollars, and forgo trillions more in future economic growth, to cut carbon emissions to pre-industrial levels, the climate will continue to change—as it always has.

That’s not to say we’re helpless. There is at least one climate lesson that we can draw from the recent weather: Whatever happens, prosperity and preparedness help. North Texas’s ice storm wreaked havoc and left hundreds of football fans stranded, cold, and angry. But thanks to modern infrastructure, 21st century health care, and stockpiles of magnesium chloride and snow plows, the storm caused no reported deaths and Dallas managed to host the big game on Sunday.

Compare that outcome to the 55 people who reportedly died of pneumonia, respiratory problems and other cold-related illnesses in Bangladesh and Nepal when temperatures dropped to just above freezing last winter. Even rich countries can be caught off guard: Witness the thousands stranded when Heathrow skimped on de-icing supplies and let five inches of snow ground flights for two days before Christmas. Britain’s GDP shrank by 0.5% in the fourth quarter of 2010, for which the Office of National Statistics mostly blames “the bad weather.”

Arguably, global warming was a factor in that case. Or at least the idea of global warming was. The London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation charges that British authorities are so committed to the notion that Britain’s future will be warmer that they have failed to plan for winter storms that have hit the country three years running.

A sliver of the billions that British taxpayers spend on trying to control their climes could have bought them more of the supplies that helped Dallas recover more quickly. And, with a fraction of that sliver of prosperity, more Bangladeshis and Nepalis could have acquired the antibiotics and respirators to survive their cold spell.

A comparison of cyclones Yasi and Nargis tells a similar story: As devastating as Yasi has been, Australia’s infrastructure, medicine, and emergency protocols meant the Category 5 storm has killed only one person so far. Australians are now mulling all the ways they could have better protected their property and economy.

But if they feel like counting their blessings, they need only look to the similar cyclone that hit the Irrawaddy Delta in 2008. Burma’s military regime hadn’t allowed for much of an economy before the cyclone, but Nargis destroyed nearly all the Delta had. Afterwards, the junta blocked foreign aid workers from delivering needed water purification and medical supplies. In the end, the government let Nargis kill more than 130,000 people.

Global-warming alarmists insist that economic activity is the problem, when the available evidence show it to be part of the solution. We may not be able to do anything about the weather, extreme or otherwise. But we can make sure we have the resources to deal with it when it comes.

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

From Prison Planet.com Saturday, February 5, 2011 – Lies about Texas not being affected by draconian EPA rules on greenhouse gases. – Deception about clean burning coal-fired plants producing “carbon pollution”. – Spin in denying EPA and Obama administration have publicly stated and openly embarked on mission to destroy coal industry by blocking construction of new power plants. The White House has publicly responded to the controversy surrounding the Obama administration’s agenda to bankrupt the coal industry and its connection to this week’s blackouts across the country, by attempting to deny the link in a rebuttal that amounts to nothing more than a tissue of lies, deception and spin. In a blog that appears on the front page of WhiteHouse.gov, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer begins by claiming that the story came from a “questionable” source and is “unquestionably false,” without even naming the source. Frightened that Americans might actually read the source and make their own minds up based on the facts, Pfeiffer fails to provide a link to our original article that was subsequently picked up by the Drudge Report, Fox News and numerous other media outlets. Pfeiffer then oversimplifies the debate by building a straw man argument based around the premise that “the Obama Administration is somehow responsible for the rolling blackouts in Texas,” before blaming the outages on cold weather. By framing the argument to make out as if we claimed Obama flipped a switch and the lights went out is completely deceptive. Of course the cold weather has shown that the country is vulnerable to blackouts, but that vulnerability is a direct result of the Obama administration’s stated goal to bankrupt the coal industry and its proven track record, through the enforcement of EPA regulations, of blocking power plants from being built that would be able to handle the extra demand. Pfeiffer then claims that the blackouts were a result of power plants experiencing “mechanical failures,” completely ignoring the fact that the blackouts were planned and were made necessary because of a lack of supply to meet increased demand. That’s why Texas had to rely on Mexico to meet its power shortfall, an offer that was subsequently suspended. Pfeiffer then attempts to counter the manifestly provable fact that desperately needed new coal-fired plants are being mothballed under the weight of draconian EPA regulations on CO2 emissions by claiming that Texas isn’t subject to such restrictions. Firstly, Texas supplies power to surrounding states that have been impacted by the new EPA regulations, leaving less energy to meet the demand of those living in the lone star state. Secondly, despite Texas’ best efforts to fight the new Clean Air Act standards, the EPA has aggressively enforced existing regulations, a process that has both delayed and prevented new plants in Texas from being built, such as the Las Brisas Energy Center, which has been the subject of a near three year battle between the EPA and state authorities. Indeed, a federal court ruling last month gave the EPA permission to proceed with greenhouse gas regulation in Texas, temporarily superseding Texas’ non-compliance with the new regulations which came into force on January 2. The White House’s claim that EPA regulations are not currently affecting Texas is a complete fabrication. The wider argument that the EPA is simply trying to implement reasonable measures to prevent “carbon pollution” is also a complete misnomer. Modern day clean burning coal-fired plants go to great lengths to remove all hazardous chemicals before any emissions leave the plant, through the use of sophisticated scrubbers and other techniques, to the point where the only emissions are water vapor and carbon dioxide. Watch the video below for a demonstration of these techniques. There can be no doubt whatsoever that the Obama administration has deliberately pursued a policy of bankrupting the coal industry by means of crippling EPA regulations. Candidate Obama himself explicitly stated this objective during a January 2008 interview. “So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted,” he stated. This policy has led not only to new coal plants not being built, but also to existing coal plants being threatened with termination. EPA regulations are forcing power plants out of business across America – leaving the country vulnerable to more enforced blackouts and higher energy prices. – Back in July 2008, a Superior Court judge in Fulton County blocked the construction of a coal plant in Georgia, citing global warming concerns and the need to limit CO2 emissions. – In January 2009, the Obama EPA blocked approval for a coal-fired power plant in South Dakota, claiming the state, “didn’t meet requirements under the Clean Air Act in part of its proposed permit for the plant.” – As Governor of Kansas, Obama’s current Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius slapped a de facto ban on the construction of all new coal-fired plants across the state. – Last month, Senators in Obama’s home state of Illinois blocked the construction of a clean-burning coal gasification and power generating plant. – As a result of the EPA’s recent remand of air permits, Shell Oil announced this week that it has “dropped plans to drill in the Arctic waters of the Beaufort Sea this year and will concentrate,” ensuring more shortages and higher prices for Americans Last month Dayton Daily News reported that, “The power industry nationwide might have to spend more than $80 billion and retire 45,000 megawatts of coal-fired power plants over several years in adjusting operations to meet current and possible new EPA regulations.” The shortage of power plants to meet the demands of Texans and other Americans as cold weather grips the country is down to the EPA holding local utility companies hostage and blocking them from building desperately needed new power plants. Obama’s January greenhouse gas rules restricted the amount of emissions allowable for new power plants, while giving an exemption to General Electric, an intimate financial supporter of his administration. The Obama administration has crippled US infrastructure and its ability to meet the needs of Americans by declaring war on the coal industry. While smaller independent power plant companies are being squeezed out of existence by EPA rules, transnational giants are busy creating artificial scarcity to jack up prices and eliminate their competition. Indeed, we only have to recall how Enron shut down power plants on false pretenses during the 2001 blackouts in California as a ploy to raise prices to understand how the restriction of energy is used as a political and financial tool of oppression. Energy prices continue to skyrocket nationwide while the EPA prepares to shut down more plants, ensuring only higher prices in the years to come. The federal government’s siege against independent power companies’ efforts to build coal-fired plants is part of the unfolding globalist agenda to cripple American infrastructure even as China and Mexico build new power plants at ever accelerating speeds. The fact that the White House is so concerned that this agenda is being exposed that they feel the need to address it with a tissue of lies and deception on the front page of WhiteHouse.gov is a telling indication that the Obama administration is panicking about Americans becoming aware of the move to completely de-industrialize the United States.

Don’t let them fool you– this is not ‘crazy climate’ or ‘global climate change.’  This is normal Earth temperature variability, which has been on the high side for the past decade and not is swinging back down, known by stats lovers as ‘reversion to the mean.’  The short version is that the ‘global warming zealots’ were wrong;  Gore and others predicted a hot Earth by now, and instead we are getting the cool-down predicted by ‘cooler heads.”

By the way, today we learned that the link between autism and vaccines was all part of a scam, including a leading scientist paid hundreds of millions of dollars to falsify data.  Who is getting rich off the craziness about ‘global warming?’  (Besides big Al, that is!)

From AccuWeather.com, January 6th, 2011:

January Could Be Coldest for US since 1985

Jan 6, 2011; 12:00 PM ET

Winter has only just begun, and many people across the country are already sick of the cold. On the heels of a record-cold December, frigid weather will continue seizing areas from coast to coast through mid- to late January.

Based on this forecast, AccuWeather.com Chief Long Range Forecaster Joe Bastardi says this month could turn out to be the coldest January for the nation as a whole since 1985.

While there has been outstanding regionalized cold in January in recent years, Bastardi points out that the U.S. has not experienced this type of coast-to-coast cold since the 1980s.

Record-smashing cold already gripped a large portion of the West the first few days of the month with snow even falling in Las Vegas Monday. Bitter arctic air has also made a return to the northern Plains, while the East and South experienced a dramatic cooldown since the weekend.

More waves of arctic air will invade the country, starting late this week and continuing through next week and beyond. The period from Jan. 10-20 is when Bastardi expects the core of the cold to be in place, with the northern Plains in the heart of it.

He says places from Chicago to Denver could have one or two days with high temperatures below zero during this time. People in New York City may be looking at one day with highs in the teens, while temperatures potentially fail to rise out of the 20s in Dallas, Texas, and Jackson, Miss., for a day or two.

Bastardi also highlights the potential for rare snow in Seattle and Portland with the upcoming weather pattern.

The cold air coming to Texas starting early next week could affect the state’s citrus industry, according to Bastardi. He thinks Florida citrus, however, should be safe.

This past weekend, AccuWeather.com Expert Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski started warning about the severe cold that is coming and provided more details on just how bad it will be.

By MATT PATTERSON

If this keeps up, no one’s going to trust any scientists.

The global-warming establishment took a body blow this week, as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change received a stunning rebuke from a top-notch independent investigation.

For two decades, the IPCC has spearheaded efforts to convince the world’s governments that man-made carbon emissions pose a threat to the global temperature equilibrium — and to civilization itself. IPCC reports, collated from the work of hundreds of climate scientists and bureaucrats, are widely cited as evidence for the urgent need for drastic action to “save the planet.”

But the prestigious InterAcademy Council, an independent association of “the best scientists and engineers worldwide” (as the group’s own Web site puts it) formed in 2000 to give “high-quality advice to international bodies,” has finished a thorough review of IPCC practices — and found them badly wanting.

For example, the IPCC’s much-vaunted Fourth Assessment Report claimed in 2007 that Himalayan glaciers were rapidly melting, and would possibly be gone by the year 2035. The claim was actually false — yet the IPCC cited it as proof of man-made global warming.

Then there’s the IPCC’s earlier prediction in 2007 — which it claimed to have “high confidence” in — that global warming could lead to a 50 percent reduction in the rain-fed agricultural capacity of Africa.

Such a dramatic decrease in food production in an already poor continent would be a terrifying prospect, and undoubtedly lead to the starvation of millions. But the InterAcademy Council investigation found that this IPCC claim was also based on weak evidence.

Overall, the IAC slammed the IPCC for reporting “high confidence in some statements for which there is little evidence. Furthermore, by making vague statements that were difficult to refute, authors were able to attach ‘high confidence’ to the statements.” The critics note “many such statements that are not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put into perspective or not expressed clearly.

Some IPCC practices can only be called shoddy. As The Wall Street Journal reported, “Some scientists invited by the IPCC to review the 2007 report before it was published questioned the Himalayan claim. But those challenges ‘were not adequately considered,’ the InterAcademy Council’s investigation said, and the projection was included in the final report.”

Yet the Himalayan claim wasn’t based on peer-reviewed scientific data, or on any data — but on spec ulation in a phone interview by a single scientist.

Was science even a real concern for the IPCC? In January, the Sunday Times of London reported that, based in large part on the fraudulent glacier story, “[IPCC Chairman] Rajendra Pachauri’s Energy and Resources Institute, based in New Delhi, was awarded up to 310,000 pounds by the Carnegie Corp. . . . and the lion’s share of a 2.5 million pound EU grant funded by European taxpayers.”

Thus, the Times concluded, “EU taxpayers are funding research into a scientific claim about glaciers that any ice researcher should immediately recognize as bogus.”
All this comes on top of last year’s revelation of the “Climategate” e-mails, which revealed equally shoddy practices (and efforts to suppress criticism) by scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia — perhaps the single most important source of data that supposedly proved the most alarming claims of global warming.

Al Gore and many other warming alarmists have insisted that “the debate is over” — that the science was “settled.” That claim is now in shreds — though the grants are still flowing, and advocates still hope Congress will pass some version of the economically ruinous “cap and trade” anti-warming bill.

What does the best evidence now tell us? That man-made global warming is a mere hypothesis that has been inflated by both exaggeration and downright malfeasance, fueled by the awarding of fat grants and salaries to any scientist who’ll produce the “right” results.

The warming “scientific” community, the Climategate emails reveal, is a tight clique of like-minded scientists and bureaucrats who give each other jobs, publish each other’s papers — and conspire to shut out any point of view that threatens to derail their gravy train.

Such behavior is perhaps to be expected from politicians and government functionaries. From scientists, it’s a travesty.

In the end, grievous harm will have been done not just to individual scientists’ reputations, but to the once-sterling reputation of science itself. For that, we will all suffer.

Matt Patterson is editor of Green Watch, a publication of the Capital Research Center .

Is there any doubt about the real motivation behind Soros and Obama when they talk ‘climate’?  There shouldn’t be.  From Bloomberg:

By Alex Morales and Jim Efstathiou Jr. – Nov 5, 2010

At least $65 billion might be raised by taxing foreign-exchange transactions and auctioning pollution permits, a United Nations panel said today in a report recommending ways to finance aid for fighting global warming.

The panel, which includes billionaire investor George Soros and Larry Summers, director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, said selling carbon-emissions permits would generate $38 billion and a financial transactions tax an additional $27 billion, according to the report released today.

The findings are intended to guide envoys at UN climate talks that start this month in Mexico as they seek ways to pay for $100 billion in climate aid that was pledged by 2020 to poor nations at last year’s summit in Copenhagen. The report found that the goal is “challenging but feasible” to achieve.

“Without agreement on finance, we will not be able to reach agreement on other issues for climate change,” Jens Stoltenberg, Norway’s prime minister and co-chairman of the advisory group, said at a press conference in New York. “Now we need the political will to take the decisions.”

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appointed the panel, called the High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing, in February. It’s led by Stoltenberg and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. The 21-member group also includes Soros, Summers and Deutsche Bank AG Vice Chairman Caio Koch- Weser.

The report didn’t specify what financial transactions would be covered by the tax beyond saying the focus would be on international currency sales.

‘Court Of Government’

“The ball is really now in the court of governments to move forward on generating these resources,” David Waskow, senior adviser on climate finance for the development charity Oxfam International, said in a telephone interview from Washington. “One can raise substantial public finance from public sources and do it in a way that’s not going to place additional pressure on national budgets and taxpayers.”

The findings would add to the weight behind calls for a tax on financial speculation, sometimes termed a Tobin tax after James Tobin, the Nobel Prize-winning U.S. economist who first suggested the idea in 1971.

Former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and labor groups including the U.K. Trades Union Congress have supported the idea. President Barack Obama’s administration opposes it. A tax of 0.05 percent on financial transactions may raise as much as $700 billion a year, according to WWF, a Washington-based global environmental activist group.

A financial transactions tax would be “difficult to implement universally” and therefore “only feasible to implement among interested countries,” the panel said in its report.

‘Most Exposed’

Developing nations are “the most exposed” to the impacts of warming, Nicholas Stern, former chief adviser on climate change to the U.K. government and a member of the advisory panel, said in a statement. The UN in 2007 found that while developing countries have contributed the least to the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, they’re the most at risk from the effects of climate change, especially small, island states and nations in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“As Africans, we’ve contributed virtually nothing to the environmental mess our planet is in,” Meles said at the press conference by telephone from Ethiopia. “We will, however, suffer the most.”

The panel assumed a carbon price of as much as $25 a ton on emissions in the levy it suggested. An additional $5 billion might be gained from a tax on carbon offsets in the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism, which polluters buy to make up for emissions elsewhere, according to the study. Private offsets may generate as much as $14 billion.

‘Necessary Transformation’

“Concerted global action and a carbon price of at least $25 is required to achieve the necessary transformation in the global economy,” U.K. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne said in a statement. Huhne is a member of the advisory group.

An additional $12 billion would come from a levy on shipping and aviation, the report showed. Waskow said the levies on transportation need to be structured so as not to harm developing nations.

Sources of finance identified in the report included direct contributions from government budgets, a measure it said may generate the full $100 billion while being politically “challenging.”

The panel also looked at a “wires charge” on electricity generation, which it said might provide $5 billion; the removal of fossil fuel-subsidies, which may raise $8 billion; and a carbon tax, which would garner $10 billion. Private finance could provide a net $24 billion, it said.

Soros Proposal Shelved

A proposal Soros made at last year’s climate summit in Copenhagen, that the richest nations use $100 billion of foreign-exchange reserves to help developing nations fight climate change, was deemed not “politically acceptable” by the panel. The money is denominated in what are called special drawing rights, the IMF unit of accounting based on the dollar, yen, pound and euro.

Special drawing rights, created in 1969 to replace gold for large cross-border exchanges, are used by the IMF and other international organizations to account for financial transactions in different countries.

“We are simply asking those who created the problem to stop before it becomes too late,” Meles said. “The prospects for sanity and justice do not appear good, but I refuse to give up.”

Alarmist warnings about the planet are falling flat, according to Washington Times’ editors.

The editorial below from the Washington Times nicely summarizes the state of the current debate over global climate change.  Thank goodness for history!  How fun it will be to look back on Gore’s ‘inconvenient truth’ and marvel at the folly of humanity– that half of a country’s population can be taken in by a politician posing as a scientist… a politician whose hypocrisy is on full display.  “How did he do it?” people will say…. 

The shame is that Gore and and his friends on the Left will likely find a way to convince the media that they NEVER predicted all of those things…  that is what the left usually does, changing stance with the wind and lying about former positions.  I’m keeping ‘inconvenient truth’ around– for laughs.  The article:

Switching terminology from “global warming” to “climate change” to newly favored “global climatic disruption” was supposed to help revive the environmental left’s plunging poll numbers. It hasn’t worked. Nature has, inconveniently, failed to cooperate, with dire predictions of upcoming catastrophes falling flat. Desperation pervades a propaganda effort that has finally gone too far.

The radical green movement is all about scaring the public into adopting unpopular policy initiatives, such as hefty taxes on important sources of energy and increased government direction of our lives through regulation. The Chicken Little strategy can work if the possibility of major disruptions such as a devastating Katrina-style hurricane push people into embracing protection from Washington. Unfortunately for the scaremongers, the disruptions just aren’t happening.

On Thursday, Florida State University researcher Ryan N. Maue updated his index of tropical cyclone activity to reflect the fact that worldwide hurricane activity has reached a 33-year low. The Western North Pacific has seen tropical cyclone activity at a level 78 percent below normal, proving those seas haven’t been calmer since detailed records were first kept in 1945. Accurately describing this period of global climatic tranquility isn’t going to compel action.

That’s why British screenwriter Richard Curtis released a video on Sept. 30 for the “10:10″ campaign, which is intended to encourage people to cut their personal carbon-dioxide emissions by 10 percent per year starting in 2010. The short “No Pressure” film used techniques right out of a horror flick to depict a schoolteacher blowing up two children who failed to show any interest in pestering their parents to install insulation or squiggly light bulbs to “keep the planet safe for everyone.”

The 10:10 campaign issued an apology for the shocking video, which critics now dub “Splattergate” in reference to the film’s excessive gore. The incident highlights the degree to which supposedly mainstream environmentalists think mankind is a blight on the planet. This is the same radical ideology that motivated last month’s hostage-taking incident at the Discovery Channel.

No less than President Obama’s own top science adviser, John P. Holdren, is a long-term adherent to this strange doctrine. In 1969, Mr. Holdren co-authored an article for the journal BioScience entitled, “Population and Panaceas: A Technological Perspective,” which essentially predicted we’d run out of food by the year 2000. He warned that “man’s present technology is inadequate to the task of maintaining the world’s burgeoning billions, even under the most optimistic assumptions.” Just to stay even, Mr. Holdren calculated global food production would have to double or triple – an impossibility, he claimed, requiring a mass-sterilization plan.

Mr. Holdren’s dire prediction never came true, as none of the left’s self-indulgent fantasies do. The clock is indeed ticking; time is running out for the alarmists in academia, Hollywood and the White House.