By Wesley Pruden, Washington Times

Scams die hard, but eventually they die, and when they do, nobody wants to get close to the corpse. You can get all the hotel rooms you want this week in Cancun.

The global-warming caravan has moved on, bound for a destination in oblivion. The United Nations is hanging the usual lamb chop in the window this week in Mexico for the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, but the Washington guests are staying home. Nobody wants to get the smell of the corpse on their clothes.

Everybody who imagined himself anybody raced to Copenhagen last year for the global-warming summit, renamed “climate change” when the globe began to cool, as it does from time to time. Some 45,000 delegates, “activists,” business representatives and the usual retinue of journalists registered for the party in Copenhagen. This year, only 1,234 journalists registered for the Cancun beach party. The only story there is that there’s no story there. The U.N. organizers glumly concede that Cancun won’t amount to anything, even by U.N. standards.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman of California, who wrote and sponsored the cap-and-trade legislation last year, says he’ll be too busy with congressional business (buying stamps for the Christmas cards and getting a haircut and a shoeshine) even to think about going to Cancun. Last year, he joined Speaker Nancy Pelosi and dozens of other congressmen in taking staffers and spouses to the party in Copenhagen. The junket cost taxpayers $400,000, but Copenhagen is a friendly town and a good time was had by all. This year, they’re all staying home, learning to live like lame ducks.

The Senate’s California ladies, cheerleaders for the global-warming scam only yesterday, can’t get far enough away from Cancun this year. Dianne Feinstein says she’s not even thinking about the weather. “I haven’t really thought about [Cancun], to be honest with you,” she tells Politico, the Capitol Hill daily. She still loves the scam, but “no - no, no, no, it’s just that I’m not on a committee related to it.” She’s grateful for small blessings.

Barbara Boxer, who was proud to make global warming her “signature” issue only last year, obviously regards that signature now to be a forgery. She would like to be in Cancun, but she has to stay home to wash her hair. She’s not even sending anyone from her staff, willing as congressional staffers always are to party on the taxpayer dime. “I’m sending a statement to Cancun.” (Stop the press for that.)

This is another lesson that Washington’s swamp fevers inevitably subside. Who now remembers Smoot-Hawley, Quemoy and Matsu, and the Teapot Dome? But these were once issues on which the survival of the known world rested. The only global-warming news of this week was the announcement that the House Select Committee on Global Warming would die with the 111th Congress. Mrs. Pelosi established the committee three years ago to beat the eardrums of one and all, a platform for endless argle-bargle about the causes and effects of climate change. The result was the proposed job-killing national energy tax, but with the Republican sweep, there’s no longer an appetite for killing jobs.

Rep. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, the chairman of the doomed committee, organized one final event this week, a splashy daylong exercise in gasbaggery starring the usual suspects assigned to drone on for most of the day about the coming global-warming disasters, the melting of the North Pole and the rising of the seas that would make Denver, Omaha and Kansas City seaside resorts. Wesley Clark was the only former presidential candidate to accept an invitation, and he was a no-show. The star witness of the afternoon session was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an “environmental attorney” who talked about how “clean energy” is nicer than the other kind. Mr. Markey himself, as bored as everyone else, didn’t bother to return after lunch.

The members of the committee can now retire with their scrapbooks of clippings to recall the happy days of hearings about global warming (some of them before “global warming” became “climate change” and “liberals” became “progressives"), about how clean energy could replace smelly oil wells and provide Democrats with the means to enact sweeping climate-change legislation. Who could have foreseen that the only “sweeping” would be the sweeping out of so many Democrats?

When the thrill is gone, the thrill is gone, as star-crossed lovers have learned through the ages, and when a scam collapses, it stays collapsed. The thought is enough to warm hearts all across the globe.

Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

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”.