By Professor Bob Carter, James Cook University in Couriermail.com.au

The salient facts are these. First, the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this eight-year-long temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2. Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, show little if any global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent). Third, there are strong indications from solar studies that Earth’s current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades.

In fact, there is every doubt whether any global warming at all is occurring at the moment, let alone human-caused warming. Not only do humans not dominate Earth’s current temperature trend but the likelihood is that further large sums of public money are shortly going to be committed to, theoretically, combat warming when cooling is the more likely short-term climatic eventuality. In one of the more expensive ironies of history, the expenditure of more than $US50 billion ($60 billion) on research into global warming since 1990 has failed to demonstrate any human-caused climate trend, let alone a dangerous one. Yet that expenditure will pale into insignificance compared with the squandering of money that is going to accompany the introduction of a carbon trading or taxation system. The costs of thus expiating comfortable middle class angst are, of course, going to be imposed preferentially upon the poor and underprivileged.

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By Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic in the Financial Times

As a witness to today’s worldwide debate on climate change, I suggest the following:
?Small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures
?Any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoided
?Instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as he wants
?Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term “scientific consensus”, which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority
?Instead of speaking about “the environment”, let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour
?Let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction
?Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.

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Anyone who thinks that climate change is purely a partisan issue isn’t paying attention. Increasingly, the national debate on global warming is breaking down between carbon states - those that produce coal, oil and automobiles - and those that see a future beyond fossil fuels. Republicans and Democrats are all over the map.

This carbon-state split flared up in Washington last week when Rep. Rick Boucher, a Democrat from the coal state of Virginia, unveiled draft energy legislation that would prevent California and other states from enacting their own greenhouse gas laws. The legislation would also restrict the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions - a reaction to a Supreme Court ruling in April that said the EPA must treat these gases as a pollutant, regulate them or explain why it won’t.

U.S. Rep. John Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan, is also mulling energy legislation that could block California from implementing its “clean-car” law - enacted in 2002 and opposed by auto manufacturers in his state.  See full story here