By Karl Bohnak, WLUC-TV6 Meteorologist

The U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), released a report late last week that received big coverage on all the network news outlets.  In it, predictions were made that the weather over the United States will get hotter, wetter, more extreme and deadly over the next 50 years because of human-induced global warming. This report was released at the same time that serious flooding continued over portions of the Corn Belt.  The timing appears to be no coincidence, since these NOAA scientists say that there will be more extreme rainfall events because of an increase in atmospheric water vapor caused by warming due to the burning of fossil fuels.

NOAA’s National Weather Service does and excellent job providing warnings and data to the public and private sector.  However, these NOAA’s scientists have gone off-mission by implicitly tying the Midwest floods to human-induced global warming. The reaction to CCSP’s report has been strong and negative from scientists outside of the government. Climate scientist Roger Pielke, Sr. was critical of the report and its authors’ motivations: “Since this assessment is so clearly biased, it should be rejected as providing adequate climate information to policymakers. There also should be questions raised concerning having the same individuals preparing these reports in which they are using them to promote their own perspective on the climate, and deliberately excluding peer reviewed papers that disagree with their viewpoint and research papers. This is a serious conflict of interest.”

Meteorologist Joe Bastardi, medium-range forecast expert at the private firm Accuweather, called the report “nonsense.” He went on to comment, “I am not going to let garbage like this get out without challenging it. These guys are forecasting “what has already happened to happen again.” What Bastardi is referring to when he says “already happened,” are some of the extreme weather events of the 1930s to the 1950s.  Meteorologists who believe natural cycles are more important climate drivers than the human contribution say we are in a pattern of long-term weather similar to the 1930s to 1950s.  These scientists point to long-term ocean temperature cycles as the key driver of weather patterns over North America.

At one time scientists developed theories and then used experiments and observation in an impartial way to prove or disprove these theories.  Now we have government-employed scientists who cherry-pick evidence and data to support their viewpoint. To me, the evidence is clear: the weather will continue to do what it wants to do and we humans need to adapt.  We cannot change the weather or climate-all well-intentioned but silly proposals aside.  It is also clear that science, more specifically climate science, has taken another credibility hit with this report. Read more of Karl’s post here.

Juliette Jowit, Guardian environment editor

The majority of the British public is still not convinced that climate change is caused by humans - and many others believe scientists are exaggerating the problem, according to an exclusive poll for The Observer. The results have shocked campaigners who hoped that doubts would have been silenced by a report last year by more than 2,500 scientists for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which found a 90 per cent chance that humans were the main cause of climate change and warned that drastic action was needed to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The findings come just before the release of the government’s long-awaited renewable energy strategy, which aims to cut the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent over the next 12 years. The poll, by Ipsos MORI, found widespread contradictions, with some people saying politicians were not doing enough to tackle the problem, even though they were cynical about government attempts to impose regulations or raise taxes. In a sign of the enormous task ahead for those pushing for drastic cuts to carbon emissions, many people said they did not want to restrict their lifestyles and only a small minority believe they need to make ‘significant and radical’ changes such as driving and flying less. There is growing concern that an economic depression and rising fuel and food prices are denting public interest in environmental issues. Some environmentalists blame the public’s doubts on last year’s Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, and on recent books, including one by Lord Lawson, the former Chancellor, that question the consensus on climate change.

However Professor Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, said politicians and campaigners were to blame for over-simplifying the problem by only publicising evidence to support the case. ‘Things that we do know - like humans do cause climate change - are being put in doubt,’ said Lomborg. ‘If you’re saying, “We’re not going to tell you the whole truth, but we’re going to ask you to pay up a lot of money,” people are going to be unsure.’ ‘It’s disappointing and the government will be really worried,’ said Jonathon Porritt, chairman of the government’s Sustainable Development Commission. ‘They [politicians] need the context in which they’re developing new policies to be a lot stronger and more positive. Otherwise the potential for backlash and unpopularity is considerable.’ Read more here.

By Dennis Avery

What a world!! Global warming alarmists bring us to the brink of world food shortage and economic collapse - using words and computer models, not higher temperatures. As a result, more wildlife species are threatened by palm oil plantations growing biodiesel than by climate change. Heavy sea ice just trapped a big Russian ice-breaker for seven days in the Arctic’s Northwest Passage, which the alarmists told us last year would soon be open sailing. The sunspots and a Pacific Ocean cooling phase are forecasting the earth will cool further over the next two decades. In the past, both have accurate in their in their predictions. 

The blue collar world sees no warming, but they surely see economic ruin staring them in the face.  Finally, the workers of the world are crying, “Enough of this man-made warming hype without warming!”

* Fishing fleets have gone on strike across Europe against ultra-high diesel prices, while the Greens demand that fuel become even more scarce and expensive
* Truckers are staging fuel-protest slowdowns in major European cities. 
* Protesting French farmers have blockaded fuel stations.
* More than 70 percent of Britons now say they will not pay any extra taxes to “save the planet.”

Guess whose advice we took on shifting much of our cropland from food to biofuels?  The advice of the same Greens who told us not to burn coal or oil. We shifted too much of our scarce cropland into corn ethanol and palm oil biodiesel. We forgot that the world’s food and feed demand was in the process of doubling due to 1) the last surge in human population growth; 2) rising Third World incomes and expectations; and 3) millions more beloved cats and dogs as households have fewer children and more affluence

Assuming society is not yet ready to starve the poor or euthanize their pets, we must feed them. That means at least twice as much global food and feed per year by 2040. Nor do we want to clear the forests or drain the wetlands to grow more crops. That means there is no “spare” cropland for corn ethanol.

Unless the planet starts warming again, quickly and significantly, the Green momentum for a low-carbon society will come to a screeching stop. There are many indications that we are in a long, moderate warming cycle, which began 150 years ago with the end of the Little Ice Age, and may continue for several more hundred years. There is no indication that this modest warming will be bad for humans, or for the wildlife. The thermometers show a net global temperature increase of just 0.2 degree C since 1940 - and even that tiny increase has been inflated by the urban heat island effect.

The big temperature increases are all in those unverified computer models so beloved by the Green movement. The mothers of the world’s kids and the workers who grow and catch its food now demand to see the thermometers climb more than 0.2 degrees before they renounce their food and jobs. Without energy, the workers can’t work, the farmers can’t farm, and the children can’t eat. Until and unless the Greens and the UN can offer some evidence beyond the guesses of computer models that consistently over-estimate the warming that is occurring, we’ll accept the unsung voice of the thermometers. Read more here.