By Harold Ambler, Huffington Post

You are probably wondering whether President-elect Obama owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming. The answer is, not yet. There is one person, however, who does. You have probably guessed his name: Al Gore.  Mr. Gore has stated, regarding climate change, that “the science is in.” Well, he is absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind.

What is wrong with the statement? A brief list:

1. First, the expression “climate change” itself is a redundancy, and contains a lie. Climate has always changed, and always will. There has been no stable period of climate during the Holocene, our own climatic era, which began with the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago. Mr. Gore has used a famously inaccurate graph, known as the “Mann Hockey Stick,” created by the scientist Michael Mann, showing that the modern rise in temperatures is unprecedented, and that the dramatic changes in climate just described did not take place. They did. One last thought on the expression “climate change”: It is a retreat from the earlier expression used by alarmists, “manmade global warming,” which was more easily debunked. There are people in Mr. Gore’s camp who now use instances of cold temperatures to prove the existence of “climate change,” which is absurd, obscene, even.

2. Mr. Gore has gone so far to discourage debate on climate as to refer to those who question his simplistic view of the atmosphere as “flat-Earthers.” This, too, is right on target, except for one tiny detail. It is exactly the opposite of the truth. Indeed, it is Mr. Gore and his brethren who are flat-Earthers. Mr. Gore states, ad nauseum, that carbon dioxide rules climate in frightening and unpredictable, and new, ways. When he shows the hockey stick graph of temperature and plots it against reconstructed C02 levels in An Inconvenient Truth, he says that the two clearly have an obvious correlation. “Their relationship is actually very complicated,” he says, “but there is one relationship that is far more powerful than all the others, and it is this: When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer.” The word “complicated” here is among the most significant Mr. Gore has uttered on the subject of climate and is, at best, a deliberate act of obfuscation. Why? Because it turns out that there is an 800-year lag between temperature and carbon dioxide, unlike the sense conveyed by Mr. Gore’s graph. You are probably wondering by now—and if you are not, you should be—which rises first, carbon dioxide or temperature. The answer? Temperature.

If not carbon dioxide, what does “drive” climate? I am glad you are wondering about that. In the short term, it is ocean cycles, principally the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the “super cycle” of which cooling La Ninas and warming El Ninos are parts. Having been in its warm phase, in which El Ninos predominate, for the 30 years ending in late 2006, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched to its cool phase, in which La Ninas predominate.

Concurrent with the switchover of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to its cool phase the Sun has entered a period of deep slumber. The number of sunspots for 2008 was the second lowest of any year since 1901. That matters less because of fluctuations in the amount of heat generated by the massive star in our near proximity (although there are some fluctuations that may have some measurable effect on global temperatures) and more because of a process best described by the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark in his complex, but elegant, work The Chilling Stars.

To re-tool our economies in an effort to suppress carbon dioxide and its imaginary effect on climate, when other, graver problems exist is, simply put, wrong. Particulate pollution, such as that causing the Asian brown cloud, is a real problem. Two billion people on Earth living without electricity, in darkened huts and hovels polluted by charcoal smoke, is a real problem. So, let us indeed start a Manhattan Project-like mission to create alternative sources of energy. And, in the meantime, let us neither cripple our own economy by mislabeling carbon dioxide a pollutant nor discourage development in the Third World, where suffering continues unabated, day after day.

Again, Mr. Gore, I accept your apology. Read full post here.

By Noel Sheppard

Climate realists around the world have contended for years that the real goal of alarmists such as Nobel Laureate Al Gore and his followers is to use the fear of man-made global warming as a means of redistributing wealth.On Monday, one of Gore’s leading accomplices, Goddard Institute for Space Studies chief James Hansen, sent a letter to Barack and Michelle Obama specifically urging the president-elect to enact a tax on carbon emissions in a fashion that would take money from higher-income Americans and distribute the proceeds to the less fortunate.

The cat was let out of the bag on page five of a PDF Hansen published at Columbia University’s website on December 29 (Britain’s Guardian, Rising price on carbon emissions via a “carbon tax and 100% dividend”. A rising price on carbon emissions is the essential underlying support needed to make all other climate policies work. For example, improved building codes are essential, but full enforcement at all construction and operations is impractical. A rising carbon price is the one practical way to obtain compliance with codes designed to increase energy efficiency. A rising carbon price is essential to “decarbonize the economy, i.e., to move the nation toward the era beyond fossil fuels. The most effective way to achieve this is a carbon tax (on oil, “gas, and coal) at the well-head or port of entry. The tax will then appropriately affect all products and activities that use fossil fuels.

The public’s near-term, mid-term, and long-term lifestyle choices will be affected by knowledge that the carbon tax rate will be rising. The public will support the tax if it is returned to them, equal shares on a per capita basis (half shares for children up to a maximum of two child-shares per family), deposited monthly in bank accounts. No large bureaucracy is needed. A person reducing his carbon footprint more than average makes money. A person with large cars and a big house will pay a tax much higher than the dividend. Not one cent goes to Washington. No lobbyists will be supported.

Unlike cap-and-trade, no millionaires would be made at the expense of the public. The tax will spur innovation as entrepreneurs compete to develop and market low-carbon and no-carbon energies and products. The dividend puts money in the pockets of consumers, stimulating the economy, and providing the public a means to purchase the products. A carbon tax is honest, clear and effective. It will increase energy prices, but low and middle income people, especially, will find ways to reduce carbon emissions so as to come out ahead. The rate of infrastructure replacement, thus economic activity, can be modulated by how fast the carbon tax rate increases.

Effects will permeate society. Food requiring lots of carbon emissions to produce and transport will become more expensive and vice versa, encouraging support of nearby farms as opposed to imports from half way around the world.The carbon tax has social benefits. It is progressive. It is useful to those most in need in hard times, providing them an opportunity for larger dividend than tax. It will encourage illegal immigrants to become legal, thus to obtain the dividend, and it will discourage illegal immigration because everybody pays the tax, but only legal citizens collect the dividend. “Cap and trade” generates special interests, lobbyists, and trading schemes, yielding non productive millionaires, all at public expense.

The public is fed up with such business. Tax with 100% dividend, in contrast, would spur our economy, while aiding the disadvantaged, the climate, and our national security. We should all be pleased with Hansen’s honesty, and sincerely pray American media outlets will publish his letter so the citizenry can finally understand what the anthropogenic global warming myth is all about. Keep your fingers crossed. See more here.

Also note the following: Obama’s energy czar, Carol Browner, is a member of Socialist International’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society. See the Socialist’s International principles here.

By Steven Goddard on WattsUpWithThat

Consider the conflicted UK, where the government is dominated by people who claim to be concerned above all else about CO2 emissions, and where the power industry warns that the country’s electricity and natural gas capacity may soon be inadequate to meet basic needs.  Russia is currently threatening to cut off natural gas supplies to Europe.  Climate vandals are welcomed to 10 Downing Street where they embarrass the Prime Minister, and formerly great newspapers like The Guardian demonize environmental activists for trying to protect the country’s scenic heritage from unsightly windmills.  Dr. Hansen was recently welcomed as an expert witness for the defence of power plant damagers, and children block airport runways to stop vacationers from using airplanes - in the name of protecting of the climate.

Climate Activist Glues Himself to the Smiling Prime Minister at #10

The UK is currently in the grip of what the papers describe as a “Siberian Cold Front.” Solar insolation is close to zero this time of year at that latitude, so solar power is out of the question as a significant winter energy source.  The light winds and freezing conditions make wind generated power minimally useful and unreliable.  Coal, nuclear and natural gas are the only practical options to stay warm, yet the government appears too paralyzed by climate fears to move forward with the needed additions to the energy grid.

Britain is experiencing a seemingly irresolvable conflict in it’s collective belief system.  Brits want to save the planet from global warming, and yet are faced with power shortages which may affect their livelihoods and ability to stay warm in a cold climate.  The Church of England is wagering huge sums of cash on Al Gore’s understanding of the world.  And as the New Year rings in with bitter cold, the Met Office warns of yet another hot year.  The last “hot” day in London was July 27, 2006 when temperatures reached 30C (86F.) That was 889 days ago.

Can the great country which survived the Nazi Blitz overcome it’s own internal conflicts in 2009?  I predict that England will pull herself together like she always has, but who will be the next Churchill to lead England out of it’s most clueless hour?  Britain’s leadership hasn’t been this confused since Neville Chamberlain handed Czechoslovakia over to Hitler seventy years ago.  Ironically, it may be current Czech President Vaclav Klaus who rescues Europe from themselves. Klaus wrote that “it was futile to fight against phenomena like higher solar activity or the change of ocean currents”. Klaus assumed the EU Presidency today. 

Happy New Year to all.  See post here.