The BBC today aired a story confirming what responsible scientists have been saying for some time - that there has been no notable variation in global temperatures for the past ten years. This is an inconvenient truth for the vast edifice being built atop the myth that human related carbon dioxide has exceeded some imagined tipping point, turning the world into a deadly hotbox.

The World Meteorological Organization literally blames the La Nina Pacific current for upsetting the carefully orchestrated media meme of runaway heating caused by all that nasty capitalist production. What they should be admitting is the relative ignorance of scientists about all the factors that drive climate variation. The fact that the WMO and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were incapable of reflecting La Nina’s impact on their temperature models simply underscores how politically driven and unscientific climate science has become. The “consensus” models must be considered worthless after years of failed predictions. To be fair, the IPCC models admit that they do not even take Pacific Decadal Oscillation into account.

The correspondence between El Nino and La Nina and recent climate events and trends is striking; no less striking than correlations with Sun spot activity and precipitation systems. Indeed, the WMO admits that La Nina, “has contributed to torrential rains in Australia and to some of the coldest temperatures in memory in snow-bound parts of China.” Yet there are countless media stories and journal articles blaming human related carbon dioxide emissions for these events. Despite the facts directly contradicting the predictions of ever-hotter years unless “greenhouse gas emissions” were severely curtailed, the WMO and others continue to spin the warming myth saying we can be sure 1998’s average temperature will be exceeded at some point in the near future. Laughably, Adam Scaife, lead scientist for Modelling Climate Variability at the Hadley Centre in Exeter, told the BBC that La Nina is just noise amidst a larger climate change signal. Isn’t it amazing that mere noise can disrupt every major climate change model.

It’s worth reviewing why no reasonable person subscribes to the idea that human related carbon dioxide is causing catastrophic global warming. Read those points here.

For a man who gets better press than virtually any person walking the planet, one has to wonder why Nobel Laureate Al Gore would ever want to bar media representatives from one of his speeches. After all, it’s not like anyone is going to ask him a tough question, or write something that might expose him as the charlatan most folks not drinking the Kool—er, I mean Global Warming-Aid understand him to be.

However, that’s exactly what happened Friday afternoon when the Global Warmingest-in-Chief spoke at the RSA Conference with specific instructions for no press members to be allowed through the doors of the Moscone Convention Center. When Al Gore agreed to talk at the end of the RSA 2008 conference, the 2007 Nobel Laureate stipulated in his contract with RSA that no members of the press would be allowed inside the keynote address.

Is it possible Gore doesn’t want press members present as he recommends people invest in companies that he already has a stake in? This is exactly what he did about a month ago in Monterey, California, as NewBusters reported Friday. Makes sense to me why he wouldn’t want media around to watch him behave like a stockbroker or hedge fund manager hawking his wares. Someone might actually get a clue that the former vice president is behaving signficantly more like Professor Harold Hill than Moses, not that any of these sycophantics would be likely to report it if such an obvious conclusion struck them on the head! Read more here.

Icecap Note: See Stuart Shepard’s Stoplight video Smokey the Gore. Only you can prevent Gorest Fires here

Kudos to Peter Friedman for his latest column on the politicization of science with the “global warming” issue. The latest letters from James Cronin and Sarah Ross Lemelin seek to insist that anthropomorphic (man-made) global warming is settled science. The sense they wish to impart is that there is near-unanimous consensus in the scientific establishment. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that the global warming alarmists point to as proof of the scientific consensus of anthropomorphic global warming was compiled by 50 individuals. They then attached the names of hundreds of other scientists, only some of whom are climatologists or who had done any independent study of the issue. On Dec. 12, 2007, the U.S. Senate released a report from over 400 scientists, many of whose names were attached to the IPCC report without their permission, expressing a range of views from skepticism to outright rejection of the theory of anthropomorphic global warming. In simple terms, the IPCC report lies. The U.S. Senate report runs 149 pages and is well worth reading for any person who wishes to treat this issue as one of science. It can easily be found on the Internet.

I am intellectually disinclined to ever regard “consensus” as settled science. The essence of science is the scientific method, requiring a repeatable test of a specific hypothesis. Only when those repeated tests lead to the same positive result can a theory be considered scientific; before that it is mere supposition.

Add to that the fact that it has now been established that not only has the earth not gotten any warmer in the past 10 years, it has actually cooled. In other words, not only is global warming not anthropomorphic, it is not currently occurring. Perhaps that is why the politico-scientific community has shifted the subject of their fear to “climate change” instead? That way, as soon as the temperature changes in any manner at all, they can express a claim on your wallet. Perhaps it is not yet time to allow our economy to be destroyed and our tax dollars frittered away for the fevered fear-mongering of a minority in the politico-scientific community. Read more here.

Dr. Roy W. Spencer--a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aqua satellite, recently wrote: “For those scientists who value their scientific reputations, I would advise that they distance themselves from politically-motivated claims of a ‘scientific consensus’ on the causes of global warming—before it is too late. Don’t let five Norwegians on the Nobel Prize committee be the arbiters of what is good science.”

Spencer made this commentary as he was writing up three questions that he--and a good many other scientists and science writers--would like to see answered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, the UN’s ministry of global warming truth-telling and Al Gore’s governmental right arm. His questions are:

1) Why are all of the more than 20 IPCC climate models more sensitive in their total cloud feedback than published estimates of cloud feedbacks in the real climate system?

2) Regarding those observational estimates of (somewhat) positive cloud feedbacks: How do you know that the cloud changes that have been observed during temperature changes really are “feedbacks”? In other words, how do you know that the temperature changes caused the cloud changes, rather than the other way around?

3) How do you know that the average global warming trend that has, indeed, been observed since 1970 wasn’t the result of a small, natural change in cloud cover? Doesn’t it seem like (another) coincidence that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) just happened to shift to a different mode in 1977, about the time that the warming started?

This is a very noble and sensible set of questions that Dr. Spencer has laid out, nice and neat, for the IPCC to answer, but I predict that the IPCC will not be able to answer these questions or, if it ever does, it won’t get around to doing so for at least another ten years, when everyone will have hopefully forgotten about them in the midst of their out-of-control carbon emissions allowance and taxes, out-of-control corn and wheat prices, out-of-control beer prices, and totally out-of-control fuel and meat prices. And all the while, they will be told what kind of light bulbs they must buy, must use, must find adequate storage for, and must keep totally out of the reach of children. Read more here.

Michigan, like the Midwest in general, has endured a brutal winter with record cold temperatures, snow two feet above normal as of March, six inches of snow in Detroit on Easter, 26 inches in Marquette on April 5, and more snow predicted for Detroit Metro this weekend as temperatures maintain their sub-normal trend. But like their news-media brethren, bookstore shelves are strangely at odds with the world outside. While Michigan freezes, local sellers are showcasing Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp’s acclaimed new book about the warming apocalypse called Earth: The Sequel - The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming.

Krupp gets right to it in Chapter One, warning of warming calamity even as current temperature data suggests recent temperature trends have moderated: The scientific consensus is that inaction will change the earth within a few decades into a place unlike any ever inhabited by humans. Business as usual will open the door to catastrophe: flooding and dislocation of millions of people; chronic drought and mass malnourishment in Africa; wildfires, deadly heat waves, and coastal destruction; the extinction of half the world’s living species.

The words are eerily similar to another acclaimed book on my shelf published 32 years ago. In 1976 Lowell Ponte - like Krupp, an influential think-tank figure with the International Research Technology Corp. - published a book called The Cooling: Has the Next Ice Age Already Begun? Can we Survive It? It too was written at the apex of a frightening (in his case, cold) climate trend. Here’s Ponte in Chapter One: In 1975, the U.S. National Academy of Science issued . . . a warning by some of the world’s most prestigious, cautious scientists that an Ice Age (was) beginning in the near future. The tone of the report was one of repressed alarm. A study completed in 1971 by Drs. S. I. Rasool and S. H. Schneider of NASA’s Goddard Institute estimates that man’s potential to pollute . . . could increase the atmosphere’s opacity by 400 percent. That would reduce sunlight enough, say the scientists, to drop the Earth’s surface temperature by 3.4 degrees C, which would almost certainly bring on an Ice Age. (The consequences) will hamper world food production as weather gets progressively worse.

Warming, cooling . . . choose your fad. The prevailing weather is simply an excuse to scare us silly. Read more here

Not a day goes by where we are not all bombarded with angst over global warming and climate change caused, apparently, by our over use of fossil fuels. We are told how oceans will rise, crops will fail, the Arctic will melt, polar bears will die, droughts will happen, and a whole slew of other awful things. I don’t buy it, and would venture that the whole movement is another manifestation of man’s inherent need to get power and control over others by any means necessary. The claim is out that the science is unequivocal and beyond doubt, but a cursory examination of the evidence with a skeptical mind suggests that nothing is a simple as we are told.

The prophets of doom such as Al Gore and David Suzuki are masters at controlling the agenda sold to the masses while they accumulate wealth and power while generally disregarding the changes in their own behaviour that they advocate against for all the regular less important folk out there.

Perhaps the whole debate should be reframed in terms of conserving energy, using it more efficiently, and wasting it less, because in the form of fossil fuels, energy is a somewhat finite resource. Energy breakthroughs are good for the economy and can make us more prosperous. In the bigger picture the world is awash in energy thanks to the limitless supply from the sun. So instead of wasting our resources chasing our tails with carbon taxes and empowering the prophets of doom, unleash the creativity and power of humanity moving the production and use of energy up the chain closer to where it all comes from which is the sun. The market will help take care of this as traditional fossil fuels get pricier due to a higher level of scarcity.

Choose to be an optimist and relax a bit while tuning out the nihilistic Gore and Suzuki who really are more concerned with the vestiges of power and wealth than about what common sense dictates is best for us all. These people have just enough knowledge and conviction to be dangerous and have no place setting the agendas of large-scale policy that can affect us all so much. Read more here.

Thick snow in April has reinvigorated the debate about climate change and what it might mean to us. Global warming is caused by greenhouse gases and we have to cut our carbon emissions to save the planet - right? Not so, says Peter Taylor, a former Government policy adviser who is bringing his alternative environmental manifesto to Sussex this month. You may be forgiven for thinking there was consensus on climate change - but that is not so. The past year marks a turning point in the scientific controversy.

Behind the scenes there is major disagreement over the power of the sun’s electric field to create the changes we have seen. Parallel to carbon dioxide rising, this field has increased by over 200 per cent since 1900 and this is not factored in to computer models. According to the carbon dioxide model, the climate will warm steadily and by the end of the century the planet could be several degrees warmer - from 2C to 7C. But global temperature is not rising as predicted. In fact it fell by a whopping 0.6 degrees over the last 12 months, as much as it had gained in the previous 50 years.

But such an alternative theory, coming after 20 years of commitment to the carbon theory, is being fiercely resisted - understandably, considering the massive investment in carbon-based policy, not to mention scientific reputations. Does it matter who is right? Isn’t it a good thing to curtail carbon emissions anyway?

Unfortunately, it is not that easy. If it is the sun driving the change, then money spent on carbon emissions will have no discernible effect. If the globe cools, we face severe and immediate problems with food supplies, made much worse by consuming crops for biofuel. Ultimately we have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels but first we need to invest in systems that are resilient to immediate climate change, especially food. We need to consume less and share more with vulnerable people and then begin the weaning process in such a way that supports community, decentralisation and ecological as well as economic stability. Given the current world food situation and the high cost and environmental impact of carbon interventions, we should pause, take an independent look at the science and get the policy right. See full story here.

Peter Taylor is a former adviser on pollution and energy policy issues to various national governments, the EU and the UN as well as a lead advocate for Greenpeace.

According to Michael Shaw “As often happens-especially these days with Web-based media-contentious issues such as global warming become politicized to the point that the discourse trivializes to an alarming extent. Indeed, all one seems to hear about climate change are essentially useless debates between believers and skeptics, along with unrealistic and grotesquely draconian proposals that would force us back into the Stone Age in an effort to mitigate carbon dioxide production,” says Michael Shaw. He adds, “Assertions by zealots and politicians, who should really know better, that climate change is the ‘most important environmental problem facing the world,’ ought to be subjected to the cold light of reason. Before untold resources are spent, shouldn’t we at least compare climate change to other problems facing mankind?”

Let’s look at some of these other problems facing mankind. Ten of the most serious challenges facing the world today include: access to education, climate change, communicable diseases, conflicts, corruption and governance, financial instability, hunger and malnutrition, migration, sanitation and access to clean water, and subsidies and trade barriers. The Copenhagen Consensus explored opportunities for addressing these issues. This group, organized by Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, is an attempt by leading economists (including three Nobelists) to set priorities for spending using traditional cost-benefit analysis. They were asked to address the challenge areas and to answer the question: ‘What would be the best ways of advancing global welfare, and particularly the welfare of developing countries, supposing that an additional $50 billion of resources were at governments’ disposal?’

Challenge papers, commissioned from acknowledged authorities in each area of policy, set out more than thirty proposals in descending order of desirability. In ordering the proposals the panel was guided predominantly by consideration of economic costs and benefits. The results? Compared to other issues such as communicable diseases, malnutrition and hunger, sanitation and water, and the rest, climate change ranked last on the list. Read more here.