Marshall files first bill related to U-Va. clash with Cuccinelli

By Rosalind S. Helderman

Del. Bob Marshall (R-Prince William) is sponsoring a bill that would allow public employees to be terminated or otherwise disciplined if they knowingly violate public information laws.

Behind the proposed legislation, which he has filed for consideration when the General Assembly convenes next month, is the now hotly contested events surrounding the tenure of climate researcher Michael Mann at the University of Virginia.

Mann left the university in 2005 and is now a professor at Penn State University.

It’s a good bet Marshall’s won’t be the only bill related to Mann’s work that legislators consider next year. Democrats have been incensed by an effort by Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to use the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act to compel the university to turn over documents related to Mann’s work.

Cuccinelli has said he wants to see whether a fraud investigation would be warranted into Mann’s work, which showed that the earth has experienced a rapid, recent warming. The university is fighting the subpoena in court and there’s a good chance Democrats could file legislation to curb the attorney general’s powers of subpoena under the act.

At issue for Marshall is a request he made to the University of Virginia prior to Cuccinell’s subpoena, in which he asked for some of the same documents using the Freedom of Information Act.

The university at first told Marshall it no longer had access to the documents he sought. But in response to Cuccinelli’s subpoena, it has acknowledged that it has a backup server that contains some of the records. The university has now told Marshall that the costs of preparing the documents he seeks would total $8,000.

“When a public institution says they don’t have any documents and they do, that’s wrong,” Marshall said.

As for the $8,000 price tag, Marshall said, “it’s ridiculous that they would tell the public, whom they’re supposed to work for, that they have to pay to get public information - and pay through the nose.”

He said he’ll be filing a second bill that requires that all documents created by any public official be labeled as subject to public information laws or shielded from them at the time of their creation. That way, he argued, it would be easier and cheaper to compile documents when citizens request them. See Washington Post story.

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No US overseas aid for climate change: Senators

Washington - The United States must freeze climate-change aid payments to developing countries to help them implement a global plan agreed in Denmark’s capital last year, four US lawmakers said Thursday.

Republican Senators John Barrasso, James Inhofe, David Vitter, and George Voinovich told US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Washington cannot to spend the money at a time of swelling deficits and a bloated national debt (see letter here).

“We remain opposed to the US commitment to full implementation of the Copenhagen Accord, which will transfer billions of US taxpayer dollars to developing nations in the name of climate change,” they said in a letter.

“We do not believe that billions of US taxpayer dollars should be transferred to developing countries through unaccountable multilateral or bilateral channels for adaptation, deforestation and other international climate finance programs,” they told the top US diplomat.

The lawmakers said total US climate-related government spending in 2010 reached 1.3 billion dollars, and President Barack Obama has requested 1.9 billion for 2011—out of 3.6 trillion dollars in annual government spending.

“We request that the administration freeze further spending requests to implement international climate change finance programs. This would include making no additional international commitments to fund such programs,” they said.

Republicans routed Obama’s Democratic allies in November 2 elections, retaking the House of Representatives and slicing deep into the Democratic majority in the Senate, giving them a firmer grip on the reins in Washington.

House Republicans announced late Wednesday that they were dismantling the committee, created by Democrats, focused on battling climate change, calling it a waste of money. See post here.

Global warming has slowed in the last decade, according to the Met Office, as the world pumps out so much pollution it is reflecting the sun’s rays and causing a cooling effect.

By Louise Gray, UK Telegraph Environment Correspondent

The latest figures from more than 20 scientific institutions around the world show that global temperatures are higher than ever.

However the gradual rise in temperatures over the last 30 years is slowing slightly. Global warming since the 1970s has been 0.16C (0.3F) but the rise in the last decade was just 0.05C (0.09F), according to the Met Office (calculated before the late 2010 cooling set in which has already before a cold November and December is folded in caused the trend to reverse (below, enlarged here).

Sceptics claim this as evidence man made global warming is a myth.

But in a new report the Met Office said the reduced rate of warming can be easily explained by a number of factors. And indeed the true rate of warming caused by man made greenhouse gases could be greater than ever.

One of the major factors is pollution over Asia, where the huge growth in coal-fired power stations mean aerosols like sulphur are being pumped into the air. This reflects sunlight, cooling the land surface temperature.

Dr Vicky Pope, Head of Climate Change Advice, said pollution may be causing a cooling effect.

“A possible increase in aerosol emissions from Asia in the last decade may have contributed to substantially to the recent slowdown,” she said. “Aerosols cool the climate by reflecting the sunlight.”

Another factor that has reduced the rate of warming is a prolonged minimum in the solar cycle, meaning the Earth is receiving slightly less heat from the sun.

Also short term weather patterns such as the tropical storms El Nino and La Nina.

Dr Pope pointed out that the global temperature is still rising and 2010 is set to be the second warmest year on record, according to the Met Office. Other groups, including Nasa, think it will be the hottest year on record at about 0.5C above the 1961-1990 average of 14C.

Dr Pope warned that the world should not be lulled into a false sense of security because the warming trend has recently slowed down. In Britain especially, people have been persuaded that global warming is slowing down because of a run of cold winters, including blizzards this weekend. But this is just a short term trend. ICECAP NOTE: Yes, unlikely to last more tham a few decades. Yes ignore the knee deep snow the UKMO told you in 2000 you would never see again in your lifetime. UKMO forecasts would be right on if it wasn’t for the damn Chinese.

In the long term the whole world, including Britain, is warming, according to Dr Pope.

“In the grip of a cold spell people find it difficult to understand global warming. But if you look at the long term trends we are in fact experiencing fewer freezing winters and more heatwaves,” she said.

Dr Pope also said that new technologies, that improve the accuracy of measurements, show that the rate of increasing temperatures over the last ten years could be slightly more than previously estimated.

She said that warming in Arctic is likely to be greater than the rest of the world, but statistics are not included because of the lack of weather stations in the Poles.

Also more accurate readings of sea surface temperature, using buoys rather than ships, suggest that temperatures for the last decade are around 0.03C (0.05F) higher than previously estimated. This means that instead of the temperature rise over the last decade being 0.05C (0.09F) it is 0.08C (0.14F), although that is still less than the long term average. If temperature sets from different institutions are used it would bring the warming trend for the decade up to the long term average and make 2010 the hottest year ever.

Dr Pope said the latest figures are the strongest evidence yet that the rise in global temperatures is being caused by the massive increase in man made greenhouse gases over recent decades.

She urged politicians to stop the trend before the rate of warming causes the ice caps to melt and more extreme weather events around the world.

“On the eve of the latest United Nations talks on climate change in Mexico, the Met Office analysis reveals that the evidence for man-made warming has grown stronger in the last year,” she said.

More than 190 countries are meeting in Cancun, Mexico for climate change talks later this month to discuss the best way to bring down emissions so that global temperature rise remains below 2C (3.6F).

At the moment global temperature rise is 0.8C (1.4F)above pre-industrial levels.

The latest figures from the UN weather body show that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are at their highest levels since pre-industrial times.

The World Meteorological Organisation found that concentrations of gases continued to build in 2009, although at a slower rate because of the recession.

This means that concentrations of carbon dioxide is now 386.8 parts per million in 2009, up 38 per cent from pre-industrial times.

Methane, the second most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, meanwhile reached 1,803 parts per billion, up 158 per cent from pre-industrial times.

The WMO warned that methane levels are set to increase because the gas is released when permafrost melts in a global warming ‘feedback’.

The respected organisation said that the concentrations of greenhouse gases is causing the atmosphere to warm.

Len Barrie, who is co-director at WMO’s research department, warned that if concentrations of greenhouse gas continue to increase it will cause catastrophic global warming.

“If we continue business as usual, we will not achieve the level of atmospheric concentration that would allow a 2C target,” he said.

See the UKMO backpedaling, error filled story here.

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And from the BBC The president of the UK Royal Society, Lord Rees, has said that it is “essential” for governments to prepare for the worst effects of climate change.

“The concentration of carbon dioxide is rising inexorably,” said Lord Rees, “the science is firming up and that tells us that there is a risk of serious climate change in the next 50 years.

“Even though there is uncertainty, I think that it is essential to prepare for the worst case”.

By Margaret Wente

Maybe it was just a bad dream.

Just a year ago, 15,000 of the world’s leaders, diplomats, and UN officials were gearing up to descend on Copenhagen to forge a global treaty that would save the planet. The world’s media delivered massive coverage. Important newspapers printed urgent front-page calls for action, and a popular new U.S. President waded in to put his reputation on the line. The climate talks opened with a video showing a little girl’s nightmare encounter with drought, storms, eruptions, floods and other man-made climate disasters. “Please help the world,” she pleads.

After two weeks of chaos, the talks collapsed in a smouldering heap of wreckage. The only surprise was that this outcome should have come as a surprise to so many intelligent people. These people actually seemed to believe that experts and politicians have supernatural powers to predict the future and control the climate. They believed that experts know how fast temperatures will rise by when, and what the consequences will be, and that we know what to do about it. They believed that despite the recent abject failure of Kyoto (to say nothing of other well-intentioned international treaties), the nations of the world would willingly join hands and sacrifice their sovereignty in order to sign on to a vast scheme of unimaginable scope, untold cost and certain damage to their own interests.

Copenhagen was not a political breakdown. It was an intellectual breakdown so astonishing that future generations will marvel at our blind credulity. Copenhagen was a classic case of the emperor with no clothes.

Mercifully, nobody will pay attention to the climate conference at Cancun next week, where a much-reduced group of delegates will go through the motions. The delusional dream of global action to combat climate change is dead. Barack Obama’s cap-and-trade scheme is dead. Chicago’s carbon-trading market is dead. The European Union’s supposed reduction in carbon emissions has been exposed as a giant fraud. (The EU is actually responsible for 40 per cent more CO2 today than it was in 1990, if you count the goods and services it consumed as opposed to the ones that it produced.) Public interest in climate change has plunged, and the media have radically reduced their climate coverage.

The biggest loser is the environmental movement. For years, its activists neglected almost everything but climate change. They behaved as if they’d cornered the market on wisdom, truth and certainty, and they demonized anyone who dared to disagree. They got a fabulous free ride from politicians and the media, who parroted their claims like Sunday-school children reciting Scripture. No interest group in modern times has been so free from skepticism, scrutiny or simple accountability as the environmental establishment.

Perhaps some good will emerge from the wreckage. (Humility, for example.) Now that global warming has stopped sucking all the oxygen out of the room, some of those who care about the planet will turn to other - and more pressing - problems. There are plenty. Humans are encroaching everywhere on habitats and species. Don’t worry about the polar bears, which have survived hundreds of thousands of years of melting and freezing ice. Worry instead about the lions and tigers, which face extinction within our lifetime. Their problem isn’t climate change. It’s us.

A century ago, there were more than 100,000 wild tigers in Asia. Today there are just 3,200. Civilization is squeezing them, and poachers hunt them for their skin and body parts. This week, the unlikely team of Vladimir Putin and Leonardo DiCaprio headlined a 13-country tiger summit in St. Petersburg that is tackling the challenge of making live tigers worth as much as dead ones.

Then there are the lions. They’re not as scarce as tigers - yet - but their habitats are ideal for ranching, and they face increasing pressure from population growth. Or how about the bluefin tuna? This one is close to home - we catch them and sell them to Japan - and Canada is on the wrong side of the issue. If the World Wildlife Fund could whip up as much alarm over the bluefin tuna as it tried to whip up over fictitious drowning polar bears, I might even be persuaded to send them money again.

Before they were sucked into the giant vortex of global warming, environmentalists did useful things. They protested against massive Third World dams that would ruin both natural and human habitats. They warned about invasive species and diseases that could tear through our forests and wreck our water systems. They fought for national parks and greenbelts and protected areas. They talked about the big things too - such as how the world could feed another three billion people without destroying all the rain forests and running out of water. They believed in conservation – conserving this beautiful planet of ours from the worst of human despoliation - rather than false claims to scientific certainty about the future, unenforceable treaties and radical utopian social reform.

“How high a price must the world pay for green folly?” asked the thinker Walter Russell Mead. “How many years will be lost, how much credibility forfeited, how much money wasted before we have an environmental movement that has the intellectual rigour, political wisdom and mature, sober judgment needed to address the great issues we face?”

The answer is too high, too many and too much. Please grow up, people. You have important work to do.

See post here.

ICECAP NOTE: We agree with Margaret and have been discussing how we can develop a more traditional environmental effort to address the real needs of the people and the planet not the faux global warming - population control driven advocacy that in the end creates much greater harm than good.