The opening session of the Heartland-2 Conference opened with a bang here in Manhatten tonight [Sunday evening March 8, 2009]. With registrations of around 700 persons, the conference is almost twice the size of its predecessor last year. The audience for the two opening plenary talks, held over dinner, included an eclectic mixture of scientists, engineers, economists, policy specialists, government representatives and media reporters.

In welcoming delegates, and opening the conference, President of the Heartland Institute Joe Bast also launched two new publications. The first, by Anthony Watts, is a summary of his extensive studies of the weather stations at which U.S. surface temperatures are measured ("Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable"), which have revealed that many stations are scandalously poorly sited for their intended purpose. The second, “The Skeptic’s Handbook”, by Joanne Nova from West Australia, is a succinct and well illustrated briefing paper that summarizes accurately the evidence against dangerous human-caused warming in a humorous and easily understood format.

The first Plenary Address was given by President Vaclav Klaus, who is President of both the Czech Republic and (for a 6 month current term) the European Union. His talk was greeted, both before and after, with standing ovations.

In response to a question, he reported a just-released Czech poll, which shows that only 11% of persons questioned in a recent poll believe that man has a significant influence in warming the global climate.

The President commenced his talk by commenting that little change had occurred in the global warming debate since his talk, 12 months earlier, at the Heartland-1 conference. He likened the situation to his former experience under communist government, where arguing against the dominant viewpoint falls into emptiness. No matter how high the quality of the arguments and evidence that you advance against the dangerous warming idea, nobody listens, and by even advancing skeptical arguments you are dismissed as a naïve and uninformed person.

The environmentalists say that the planet must be saved, but from whom and from what? “In reality”, the President commented, “we have to save it, and us, from them”. Klaus reported his discouragement at participating in meetings with other senior politicians at Davos and within the EC. Here, he finds that not one other head of state who will make common cause in support of a rational assessment of the scientific evidence. Instead, all believe that the summaries provided by the IPCC represent the scientific “truth” on global warming.

But the climate data do not support the theory of human causation; the IPCC summaries therefore do not represent science, but instead environmental politics and activism. As a result, large and highly organized rent seeking bureaucracies and groups have emerged, and they further propagate the climate alarmism that is now in their self-interest.

President Klaus professed to be puzzled by the environmentalists’ approach to technical progress. It as if they “want to stop economic progress and take mankind centuries back”, he said. Applying their ethic of “saving the world”, western electorates are being asked for the first time in history to abandon successful current technologies before new technologies have been developed to replace them. Klaus stressed that there is no known, feasible way in which modern technological society can be run based on present sources of renewable, clean, green energy. Read more here.

After George F. Will wrote a column last month questioning the faulty premises and apocalyptic predictions of global-warming alarmists, he caught holy heck from America’s “eco-pessimists.” He and his editors at The Washington Post were blasted with thousands of angry e-mails, most of which challenged Will’s assertion that global sea ice levels have not been dramatically reduced by man-made global warming, as environmentalists claim, but are essentially the same as they were in 1979. Will, who had used data from the Arctic Climate Research Center as his source, also was accused of multiple inaccuracies by The New York Times’ Andrew Revkin. Will wrote a second column defending his data and returning fire at Revkin.

All is calm now and Will is getting ready for the start of his favorite season—baseball season. I talked to him by phone on Thursday from his office in Washington.

Q: You have felt the righteous wrath of those who believe in man-made global warming. Are you still all there?

A: Oh, heavens. Yeah. The odd thing about these people is, normally when I write something that people disagree with they write letters to the editor or they write a responding op-ed piece. These people simply set out to try and get my editors to not publish my columns. Now I don’t blame them, because I think if my arguments were as shaky as theirs are, I wouldn’t want to engage in argument either.

Q: The big issue was about how much global sea ice there is now compared to 1979.

A: And that of course was a tiny portion of the column. The critics completely ignored—as again, understandably—the evidence I gave of the global cooling hysteria of 30 years ago.

Q: They like to pretend that there really wasn’t any hysteria back then.

A: Since I quoted the hysteria, it’s a little hard for them to deny it.

Q: What disturbs you most about this global warming consensus that seems to be pretty widespread and doesn’t seem to be eroding?

A: Well, I think it is eroding, in the sense that people sign on to be alarmed because it’s socially responsible ... (and because it makes them feel good). But once they get to the price tag, once they are asked to do something about it, like pay trillions of dollars, they begin to re-think.

I’ve never seen anything quite like this in my now 40 years in Washington. I’ve never seen anything like the enlistment of the mainstream media in a political crusade—and this is a political crusade, because it’s about how we should be governed and how we should live; those are the great questions of politics. It is clearly for some people a surrogate religion. It’s a spiritual quest. It offers redemption. But what it also always offers, whether it is global cooling or global warming, is a rationale for the government to radically increase its supervision of our life and our choices. Whether the globe is cooling, whether it’s warming, the government’s going to be the winner and the governing class will be the winner.

Now, it seems to me there is a 100 percent certainty that at any moment the planet is warming or it is cooling. That’s what it does. There are cycles well-recorded through history. The climate was once warm enough for Greenland to be called “Greenland” for a reason—the Vikings farmed there. There was a time when the planet was so cold that Eskimos landed in Scotland in their kayaks. There was “The Little Ice Age.” There were warm periods—we’ve been through this before. What’s different now is that we have a media addicted to hysteria and we have enormous political and financial stakes in convincing people that vast shifts of power and resources should be given to the government to combat climate change. The prudent people in this refer to “climate change” so whatever happens they can say, “See, we told you.”

Q: Will you dare to do any more on global warming?

A: Well of course! It doesn’t take daring. Seriously, I don’t understand what there is to worry about. In fact, the global warming “caucus,” if you will, seems to me singularly toothless. They can’t even get the globe to cooperate. It stubbornly refuses to warm at the moment. Read more here

Duke Energy says Carolinas electricity rates would rise by at least 13 percent under President Obama’s plan to address climate change by auctioning off carbon credits. Obama would set the nation’s first limits on emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas linked to global warming. Under an approach outlined in his proposed budget last week, industries and utilities such as Duke would be able to trade allowances to release the gas.

But Duke CEO Jim Rogers, who supports the carbon cap, says Obama is wrong to insist that those allowances be initially auctioned to carbon emitters. Rogers calls an auction a “carbon tax” that would be passed on to consumers, with most of the burden placed on coal-dependent states such as the Carolinas.

“He’s going to create a market that’s going to dramatically drive up the costs for allowances,” Rogers said Monday. “It’s going to be a feeding frenzy.” Allowances auctioned for $15 each would raise Carolinas rates 13 percent in 2012, when the system could go into effect, Duke estimates. A $30 auction price would raise Carolinas rates 27 percent, it says.

Obama’s proposed budget assumes allowances would go for $20 each. Most of the proceeds would be returned to taxpayers as payroll tax credits, with the rest supporting solar, wind and other renewable-energy technology. Duke ranks third-largest among U.S. utilities in releases of carbon dioxide, at about 100 million tons a year.

Rogers, who will appear today at a climate-change conference in Washington, said auction costs would be added to the billions of dollars utilities will spend to replace or retrofit their power plants. He advocates a mix of free allowances and auctions, an approach endorsed in January by some of the nation’s largest corporations and environmental groups. Critics dispute that argument, saying those costs will push energy prices higher regardless of whether carbon allowances are auctioned. They insist that polluters should have to bear the costs of controlling carbon.

“He’s doing what the utilities are going to try to do - scare people,” said Stephen Smith of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. “There’s really nothing to show that if Rogers is given this windfall that’s actually going to protect consumers.” The alliance and several allies say 600 economists have signed a petition calling for all allowances to be auctioned. That’s the fairest way to share costs, they say. Read more here.

Smith is doing what most environmental groups and politicans are trying to do - armed with bad science, scare the people into believing carbon dioxide is bad and must be controlled whatever the cost to the consumer, already reeling from a tanking economy, unemployment and shrunken home equity, 401K, pension and IRA values with looming inflation and higher energy prices on the horizon. Their actions are nothing short of criminal.

Temperatures have plummeted to record or near-record lows in 32 states this winter. On March 2, a global warming protest in Washington, D.C. was buried by nearly a foot of snow. And a new study warns that the Earth could be in for a 30-year cooling trend. Reality is not cooperating with the network news’ global warming theme, yet reporters are unwilling to even discuss the possibility that the Earth is cooling.

Global warming alarmists repeatedly link weather phenomena like tornadoes, hurricanes, ice melt, droughts and wildfires with global warming and the media embrace the stories. Yet, when cities or regions are buried in snow like the city of Chenzhou, China was in February 2008 there wasn’t a word about climate change in the cooling direction. “It is being called China’s Hurricane Katrina,” NBC anchor Brian Williams said on Feb. 4, 2008. “...the month of blizzards that have brought it [China] to a virtual standstill. Millions have been stranded. Hundreds of thousands of people are homeless.” Williams didn’t chalk up the devastation to global cooling, of course. That doesn’t fit the media’s warming narrative.

James Hansen, a leading global warming alarmist, promoted a “civil disobedience” protest at a Washington, D.C. coal power plant March 2. The protestors- claim that coal - and its carbon emissions are a cause of global warming. Hansen and his friends were greeted with 8 inches of snow, “strong” winds and below freezing temperatures. The same day, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the House Select Energy Independence and Global Warming Chairman Edward Markey, D-Mass., both had to cancel appearances at another global warming event on Capitol Hill because of the snowy weather.

Those protests did not make the evening news programs on March 2. They may have been crowded out by coverage of the “epic” winter storm on all three networks - still there wasn’t a single mention of a cooling cycle. ABC, CBS and NBC haven’t used the phrase “global cooling” at all since Jan. 1, 2008, despite many instances of “record cold,” “record snow” and reports from scientists that the world has been cooling off slightly since 2000 or 2001, according to a Nexis search.

The term, “cooling trend,” when used on the networks only referred to global climate twice. In both cases the phrase was used by Gov. Sarah Palin. A search for “cooling” and “climate” turned up 10 mentions, but only one example of the media reporting cooler temperatures. Compare those figures to a Nexis search for “global warming” that yielded 336 hits between Jan. 1, 2008 and March 2, 2009. A search for “global warming” or “climate change” nabbed 571 hits during the same time. Even in the midst of a major cold spell, ABC returned to the global warming stories. On March 3, 2009, the network continued to hype the idea that the North Pole will soon be ice-free, but ignored the fact that as of fall 2008 arctic ice caps had grown by 150,000 square miles.

The fact is a number of studies and scientists have warned that the Earth might be in a cooling phase - despite the networks silence on the matter. Meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo, the executive director of International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project (ICECAP), recently “quibbled” with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) data since 1880 which shows a spike in mean temperature. D’Aleo told CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, “[I]f you look at the satellite data, which is the most reliable data, the best coverage of the globe - 2008 was the 14th coldest in 30 years. That doesn’t jibe with the tenth warmest in 159 years in the Hadley data set or 8th warmest in 113 or 114 years in the NOAA set.”

Discovery News announced on March 2 that a new study from Geophysical Research Letters suggests “global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades.” Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee thinks the cooling trend could last up to 30 years, but cautioned that it would be a “hiccup” in the warming of the Earth according to Discovery News. “When the climate kicks back out of this state, we’ll have explosive warming.”

Atmospheric scientist William Gray has also said temperatures are dropping. Gray cited a “weak cooling trend since 2001,” according to the Feb. 16 Barron’s, and he predicted a “modest naturally driven global cooling over the next 15-20 years,” similar to the 1940s to ‘70s. Read more here.

Thank you for inviting me to submit a written response to your Committee. Let me start with a brief summary about the basic properties of carbon dioxide, followed by a synoptic summary based on the terms set out in your invitation. In addition, there are nine attachments, four by UN IPCC Expert Reviewers, and each of which by itself should make your Committee think twice about climate change mitigation measures, a bandwagon process by which countries around the world are pressured to make widespread and costly commitments without an absolute or even a vague assurance that the phenomenon exists.

The UN’s IPCC bases its dire forecasts on nothing more than computer models that regard the earth as a flat disk bathed in a constant 24 hour haze of sunlight, without north and south poles, without clouds and without any relationship to the real planet we live on.

Despite much rhetoric and research over the past two decades, there is still not a single piece of actual evidence that the now-maligned carbon dioxide molecule causes global warming (or “climate change").

...From this short summary, coupled with my further comments below and the attachments hereto, I sincerely urge your Committee to demand positive proof from alarmist scientists to indicate that it is carbon dioxide and nothing else that has ever - now or in the past - caused any warming of the earth.

Actual observed evidence needs to be put on the table, not computer model outputs or presumptively-inferred evidence. Glaciers are not melting in alarming fashion, the Greenland icecap is not collapsing and the Arctic is not about to become ice-free. Neither is the Antarctic melting away and sea levels are not rising any faster than they have done for the past 11,000 years, etcetera etcetera etcetera - there is simply no irrefutable evidence.

Any and all alarmist predictions and observations have been decisively disproved over the past decade, whilst global temperatures have been going down rapidly instead of ever up as had been so widely predicted by the constant tweaking of climate models. Based on the behaviour of the one and only true climate driver, our sun, your Committee as well as the UK Government would be better advised to prepare for longer, colder winters and shorter growing seasons for many decades to come. Read full letter here.

Until now, most discussion of climate change has been about what scientific evidence shows is likely to happen between now and 2100. However, scientific research shows that the carbon dioxide gas released from burning fossil fuels lasts in the atmosphere much longer than mere decades.

David Archer, a leading climate researcher who teaches at the University of Chicago, has written a new book that looks at carbon dioxide’s “long tail” and what it means for changes on Earth in the future.

If the world continues its heavy use of coal over the next couple of hundred years until it’s essentially used up, it would take several centuries more for the oceans to absorb about three-quarters of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. In those centuries, there would be a “climate storm” that Archer says would be significantly worse than the forecast from now to 2100.

The remaining carbon dioxide - the long tail - would stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years, leaving a warmer climate. About 10 percent of it would still be in the atmosphere in 100,000 years, Archer wrote in “The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate.”

“Ultimately, the amount of fossil fuel available could be enough to raise the atmospheric CO2 concentration higher than it has been in millions of years,” Archer wrote.

Because of the long life of CO2 from fossil fuels, the climate impacts would last for many thousands of years. Ice sheets would melt, raising seas high enough to swamp 10 percent or more of the world’s agricultural land. Other climate impacts could include uncomfortable heat and drier continental interiors, Archer tells his readers. “In the long run, it could be a steep price to pay for a century or so of fossil fuel energy.”

Archer studies the carbon cycle of Earth as it interacts with global climate. His slim book is a clear explanation of carbon dioxide and climate change for nonscientists. It also explains how the climate has changed in the distant past and looks ahead to the deep future.

His work has been a part of what John Holdren, whom President Barack Obama named as his science adviser, has called the “tremendous effort” among scientists to reach a “center of gravity” in the understanding of climate change. The results of that work are available in the reports of the National Academy of Sciences and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The conclusion, as Holdren summed it up at his confirmation hearing recently: “Climate change is real, it’s accelerating, it is caused in substantial part by human activity, it is dangerous and it is getting more so.” Read more nonsense here.

As Dr. Tom Segalstad showed and numerous studies found, the lifetime for CO2 is the order of 5 to 10 years not centuries the IPCC assumes and the millenia Archer claims. See his analysis here.

See larger image here.

As unusual as it has been for global warming alarmists to debate skeptics, I have found it even more rare to find a mainstream news outlet - anywhere - to cover the issue surrounding states’ global warming commissions and the Center for Climate Strategies. Well, after traveling all the way to Anchorage a few weeks ago, I finally found a local TV station who was interested in hearing about it: ABC’s affiliate, which broadcasts throughout Alaska.

It turned out that I was there (when the station did a report about my concerns) on the day before the Alaska Climate Change Sub-Cabinet, as it’s called up there, was to meet. So after hearing what I had to say, reporter Bob Mallory checked out the meeting to see what CCS and panel members had to say. From his report, where he said a carbon tax was under consideration:

Mallory: As far as scientific debate as to whether global warming is occurring, that’s something that won’t be happening in these meetings.

CCS facilitator Gloria Flora: I think when you look at Gov. Palin’s executive order, and (Alaska Dept. of Environmental Conservation) Commissioner (Larry) Hartig has made it very clear, that we’re not here to debate who did what when, where are these emissions coming from, we know that there is far more carbon and CO2 in the atmosphere.

In a further on-air discussion with anchor Ty Hardt, Mallory explains how the state’s contract with CCS (as is the case in every state) forbids any discussion or debate about the science of global warming. And in the written version of the report for the station’s Web site, Flora makes this amazing statement:

ABC Alaska News asked Flora, what if the science behind climate change is wrong? Her response: “So what? We’ve saved money. We’ve saved resources. We’ve improved our health. We’ve improved the environment. So, if we’re wrong, hallelujah! You know, we just did a lot of really good things.”

To give you a flavor of the Grape Nuts that CCS is hiring to run their state climate commission meetings, YouTube has a short clip of Flora in full-alarmism.

Read Paul’s full post here.

Gov. Chris Gregoire’s proposal to regulate the emission of greenhouse gases linked to global warming is facing serious challenges in the Legislature. The Senate Committee on Environment, Water and Energy today passed a version that gutted the heart of the plan by making it voluntary for businesses to participate.

The governor’s proposal would require major industries, from Boeing to Kimberly-Clark, to limit the greenhouse gases they emit, starting in 2012. The plan would create a regional market to let polluters buy and trade pollution credits. The goal is to reduce overall carbon dioxide and other emissions in the state to 1990 levels by 2020, and to half that level by 2050. The state adopted those targets in 2008.

The Senate bill is significantly different from the governor’s plan. It asks the state Department of Ecology to design voluntary emission targets and a voluntary emissions reduction registry and report back to the Legislature. “It’s a work in progress,” Ecology Director Jay Manning said Tuesday, adding he was pleased the legislation was still alive. He said the state would work with the Legislature to find a proposal both could support.

A House bill passed last week sets a cap on greenhouse-gas emissions but leaves the details of the “trade” to be hammered out by a work group. Both bills are waiting further action. Sen. Phil Rockefeller, D-Bainbridge Island, prime sponsor of the Senate bill, said he hoped to “encourage our local industries to move forward toward the statewide emissions targets.”

“I know there are a lot of people who would think the bill is, you might say, watered-down and voluntary,” said Sen. Karen Fraser, D-Kent, who voted for it today. “You don’t turn a supertanker at a right-angle turn, you move into things gradually.” Businesses have fiercely opposed Gregoire’s plan, saying it would put them at a disadvantage in an already slumping economy. Some urged lawmakers to wait for a national program. “I’m not being a naysayer, but are you creating an environment that I can survive in?” asked Steve Sakuma, an owner of Sakuma Brothers, a family-run business that operates a farm and food-processing facility in Burlington. “I’m a little uneasy because I could potentially be in a position where I’m less competitive.” See the Washington state story here.

Meanwhile in Utah, state lawmakers on Tuesday advanced a resolution that calls on Gov. Jon Huntsman to get Utah out of the Western Climate Initiative, a coalition formed to roll back greenhouse-gas emissions. House Resolution 3, sponsored by Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, passed the Utah House 51-9. The resolution is nonbinding, but sends Huntsman a message. WCI seeks to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 15 percent by 2020. Six western states and three Canadian provinces are members of WCI. Noel says he doesn’t believe global warming is human-caused. He says that capping emissions will hurt Utah’s coal-fired power plants and the overall state economy. The bill now goes to the Utah Senate. Read more here.

Lawmakers are learning from the experience abroad and in California, where the climate initiatives are causing significant job losses. As this story linked here based on analysis reported by the New York Times: When the extremists tries to cram the world’s biggest carbon tax down the throats of the American public, they are going to have tons of “scientific” studies claiming to show that carbon capping will be a net gain for the economy. As California’s experience shows, these studies are worthless."All of the “green job” claims are nothing but phantom job creation. Carbon capping is a jobs killer, not a jobs creator.”

We can only hope Obama and his advisors take a look at reality and not fold to the pressure of the environmental lobby or our already teetering economy will suffer far more pain.