From James Delingpole in the Telegraph:

Breaking news: two years after the Climategate, a further batch of emails has been leaked onto the internet by a person – or persons – unknown. And as before, they show the “scientists” at the heart of the Man-Made Global Warming industry in a most unflattering light. Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Ben Santer, Tom Wigley, Kevin Trenberth, Keith Briffa – all your favourite Climategate characters are here, once again caught red-handed in a series of emails exaggerating the extent of Anthropogenic Global Warming, while privately admitting to one another that the evidence is nowhere near as a strong as they’d like it to be.

In other words, what these emails confirm is that the great man-made global warming scare is not about science but about political activism. This, it seems, is what motivated the whistleblower ‘FOIA 2011′ (or “thief”, as the usual suspects at RealClimate will no doubt prefer to tar him or her) to go public.

As FOIA 2011 puts it when introducing the selected highlights, culled from a file of 220,000 emails:

“Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day.”

“Every day nearly 16.000 children die from hunger and related causes.”

“One dollar can save a life” — the opposite must also be true.

“Poverty is a death sentence.”

“Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize
greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels.”

Today’s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on
hiding the decline.

(more…)

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has learned of a UN plan recently put in place to hide official correspondence on non-governmental communication accounts, which a federal inspector general has already confirmed are subject to FOIA requests. This “cloud” serves as a dead-drop of sorts for discussions by U.S. government employees over the next report being produced by the scandal-plagued IPCC, which is funded with millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.

Although this is seedy and unlawful at any time, it also goes in the “bad timing” file, especially for the Obama Administration and the UN.

Just as a brand new book further exposes the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (whose scams I dissected here, and in more disturbing detail here), and on the heels of the weekend surprise of a 2005 memo showing President Obama’s cooling/warming/population zealot of a “science czar” John Holdren is the kind of guy Mitt Romney turns to for developing his “environmental”’ policies, we’ve exposed the Obama administration and IPCC have cooperated to subvert U.S. transparency laws, operating domestically out of Holdren’s White House office.

With this morning’s Freedom of Information Act request, the explaining they have to do must begin by providing the taxpayer certain records regarding — including but not limited to — user names and passwords for a backchannel ‘cloud’ established to hide IPCC deliberations from FOIA, thereby also seeking to undermine the Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978. (more…)

James Delingpole is a bestselling British author and blogger who helped expose the Climategate scandal back in 2009. Reason.tv caught up with Delingpole in Los Angeles recently to learn more about his entertaining and provocative new book Watermelons: The Green Movement’s True Colors. At its very roots, argues Delingpole, climate change is an ideological battle, not a scientific one. In other words, it’s green on the outside and red on the inside. At the end of the day, according to Delingpole, the “watermelons” of the modern environmental movement do not want to save the world. They want to rule it.

(more…)

“Science!”: Beyond the Pose, Mr. Huntsman, What Would You DO?

When that silver-haired Republican candidate weighs in on the ‘climate’ debate I want to stick around until the end of the video. I love that line, “Good heavens, Miss Nakamoto, you’re beautiful!”

Wait, that’s not Magnus Pyke?

Seriously. Mr. Huntsman, beyond the pose: what would you do? “Science!” is a talking point. More of a pose, really, of being the thoughtful man while its success depends on no more than Pavlovian nodding and clucking in response. Anything else ultimately arrives at the question Hunstman’s pose begs:

What. Would. You. Do.?

What’s your point? You’re down with the kidz on campus and your media base can rest easy because you’re not, you know, ‘crazy’ as you say? Or you’re going somewhere with this? Is it cap-and-trade? Kyoto? Kyoto II? Carbon (dioxide…meaning ‘energy’) taxes?

What? And after you answer that, well, without using the word “science(!)”, please then state why?

(more…)

Updated – Editor’s Note: Earlier today, Mother Jones, then Media Matters for America, then the New York Times accused Andrew Breitbart of a “global warming blunder” because the piece below cited Jykri Kauppinen as an author of a Nature study on cosmic rays. The author of the piece, Chriss W. Street, has indicated that Kauppinen is the author of a separate submission to Nature in 2010 that also contests the UN Climate Panel’s “consensus” view on the degree to which human activity contributes to global climate change. Street stands by his argument, regardless of the minor citation error that Breitbart’s habitual critics on the left have attempted to magnify. – Joel Pollak

***

Nature Journal of Science, ranked as the world’s most cited scientific periodical, has just published the definitive study on Global Warming that proves the dominant controller of temperatures in the Earth’s atmosphere is due to galactic cosmic rays and the sun, rather than by man. One of the report’s authors, Professor Jyrki Kauppinen, summed up his conclusions regarding the potential for man-made Global Warming: “I think it is such a blatant falsification.” [See above - ed.]

The research was conducted by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which invented the World Wide Web, built the multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider, and now has constructed a pristinely clean stainless steel chamber that precisely recreates the Earth’s atmosphere. The climate study involved scientists representing 17 of Europe’s and America’s premiere research institutes. The results demonstrate that cosmic rays promote the formation of molecules that can grow and seed clouds in the Earth’s atmosphere; the temperatures then fall as the density of the clouds increase. Because the sun’s magnetic field controls how many cosmic rays reach Earth’s atmosphere; the sun determines the temperature on Earth.

Nature Journal has been the holy-grail of scientific research publication since it was established in England in 1869. Its original editors gave the title to their new scientific journal in celebration of a line by British poet William Wordsworth: “To the solid ground of nature trusts the Mind that builds for aye”. Because research scientists are the primary audience this most prestigious of journals, the magazine strives to retain its stamp of approval as the pinnacle of scientific credibility for original research. Nature first introduced its readers to X-rays, DNA double helix, wave nature of particles, pulsars, and more recently mapping of the human genome.

But Nature’s reputation suffered a huge black eye on November 21, 2009 when a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) and released 1079 emails and 72 documents exposing willful fraud in several scientific papers published in Nature that supported Al Gore’s theory Anthropogenic Global Warming. CRU houses the most world’s most extensive data base on atmospheric temperatures and the e-mails exposed blatant exaggerations of the warming data, possible illegal destruction of evidence, and conspiracy to manipulate or suppress data not supporting of the man-made Global Warming theory.

(more…)

Al Gore’s timing is perfect. We here at The Heartland Institute are just now finishing off the last preparations for our Sixth International Conference on Climate Change in Washington, DC, June 30 and July 1. (It’s still not too late to register, and you can also check out the live-stream).

And, wouldn’t you know it! Al Gore emerges from his palatial, energy-sucking estate for a media blitz (here, here, and here) in which he peddles his usual hokum: ”If you don’t do what I say … we’re all doomed. DOOMED, I say!!! Why won’t you LISTEN TO ME!!! YOU FOOOOOOLS!!!!” (Blah, blah, blah … and paraphrasing)

We couldn’t ask for a more timely example of why we put on these conferences. Thanks, Al. By the way, the invitation for you to speak and/or debate at our climate conference still stands — if you’re up for it. And the offer is real.

(more…)

What else can one say about this?

Governor Christie to Talk Global Climate Change with Scientists

Governor tells NJ Environmental Federation his original doubts were due to not having a “fully formed opinion.”

The Republican governor, who caused a stir when he told a town hall meeting he was unsure about the science of global warming, plans to sit down this week with a couple of climate change scientists recommended by the New Jersey Environmental Federation.

As I have noted, translated, the latter means a Castro toady and some of his pals.

Wait, lemme guess: his doubts arising from an unfully formed opinion have evaporated under further scrutiny, making this the first time further scrutiny led to siding with the global warming movement?

Er, maybe. There’s another option, and that’s that he’s seen the New Hampshire Senate fold like a cardboard suitcase on withdrawing from the RGGI regional cap-n-trade energy tax and has decided to throw in with the go-along-to-get along crowd. In his defense, and not much of one, one could say as Andrew Dice Clay once did about a famous painting I won’t mention here as it would make the gag’s crudeness too obvious: he needed the money.

(more…)

Boy, them Googlers Act Fast.

Climate ’skeptic’ website ICECAP posted this item noting Google’s latest gambit in global warming activism, which includes bringing on board as an advisor an academic whose name and address pop up with some frequency in the ClimateGate emails.

Apparently in response, Google has flagged ICECAP’s website with this warning, discouraging traffic:

“This site may be compromised.“

ICECAP host Joe D’Aleo, the first meteorologist at the Weather Channel before that operation sold out to the alarmist industry, brought this to my attention and assures me this warning was not the case until now. He also attests that the site is not compromised. We just have a co-incidence of challenge followed by inaccuracy, is all.

(more…)

I think it was Thomas Jefferson who first said ‘Laws are great, in theory, but…’

As his other project, the University of Virginia, gets further backed into a corner on the ‘Hockey Stick’ records it is spending upwards of a half a million dollars to keep from the public (even though the public paid for and has every right to them), we now see what Charlottesville radio host Joe Thomas of WCHV likes to note in this context as “UVA getting its Nixon on”. This time with a little help from its friends outraged that laws would be applied to the academic class:

Delegate David Toscano
211 East High Street
Charlottesville, VA 22902
434.220.1660 PHONE
434.220-1677 FAX
www.davidtoscano.com

******MEDIA ADVISORY******

Press Conference

Richmond –Senator A. Donald McEachin (D-Henrico), Senator J. Chapman Petersen (D-Fairfax) and Delegate David Toscano (D-Charlottesville) will hold a press conference on Tuesday, January 18, 2011, in Senate Room 1 at the Capitol at 10:45 am to discuss their proposed legislation that repeals and limits the authority of the Attorney General to issue civil investigative demands.

Who: Senators McEachin, Petersen and Delegate Toscano

What: Press Conference on CID authority

Where: Senate Room 1

When: 10:45 am

Why: Limit the Attorney General’s authority to issue CIDs

At this press conference someone in the press might ask (hey, stop laughing) why the legislators in unanimously passing this law in both chambers forgot to exempt the academic class when passing the law. Or, did they just think it would be applied to people doing things they didn’t approve of?

(more…)

For those unfamiliar with “jumping the shark”, I’d strongly suggest looking up this Hollywood idiom. It appears we are witnessing this in epic fashion as the far-left shamelessly exploits violence for the second time in four months: first, the fake explosive executions of climate change doubters in last October’s 1010global.org video; now they agonize over the very real Giffords shooting. Both showcase the far-left’s attempts to marginalize and silence their critics, while spewing the same kind of vitriol they ironically claim should end.

The 1010global.org video was the latest in a long line of vitriolic far-left rants, depicting the explicit execution of people blown up at the push of a button for not complying with an imperative to reduce their carbon footprint. It was titled “No Pressure”, a subtle message for those doubting human activity as a cause of global warming. No pressure to change, after seeing what might happen to those who don’t comply.

But what do such presentations instill in the minds of those believing man-caused global warming must be stopped at all costs? How do they react to Paul Krugman’s 6/28/09 NY Times op-ed “Betraying the Planet“, when he equates global warming skeptics with committing acts of treason? How do they feel when seeing NASA scientist James Hansen’s 2/15/09 UK Guardian op-ed “Coal-fired power stations are death factories. Close them“, in which he says, “The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains”? Regarding Ross Gelbspan, the anti-skeptic book author I described in my two prior articles here at Breitbart, what must they think of multiple references in his 2004 book to skeptic scientists committing “crimes against humanity“? Would they find some kind of perverse inspiration when seeing IPCC scientist Ben Santer’s infamous ClimateGate email, where he mentions he would like to assault skeptic scientist Pat Michaels?

(more…)

I was taken aback by this paragraph in a Politico story by someone a colleague of mine styles as the best reporter in DC on these issues. It reveals the media are not only telling us what to watch for this year, but getting an early jump:

Despite mounting evidence that the greenhouse gas buildup in the Earth’s atmosphere is causing runaway changes to the climate – NASA this month declared 2010 the hottest year on record – several pollsters say the American public isn’t listening. (emphases added)

Now, the reason no evidence — mounting, or otherwise — of runaway climate change was cited there is because there is no evidence of runaway climate change. Let alone man-made. There is as there always has been a continuing stream of evidence of changes in climate, because change is the sole constant in climate. But it takes an environmentalist or axe-grinding politician to say that whatever happens is evidence supporting his faith and/or agenda. The ‘runaway’ business is just absurdly hyperbolic. Which, again, is why no such evidence was actually cited.

Get this straight because you are going to get used to this: their new talking point, 2010 being the hottest year ‘on record’, wouldn’t be such evidence even though it is knowingly intoned as a self-evident example of cause-effect. This is true even if the claim by cited source, NASA — meaning James Hansen’s runaway office, known as GISS — did not reflect GISS having done two things: adjusting the historical record to make older years cooler (rewriting history) and ‘extrapolating’ data over vast stretches in the Arctic where they have none…but which happens to be where they find the warming (making history up).

None of which is secret, all of which then makes the above-cited paragraph an embarrassment.

(more…)

On Wednesday night the Competitive Enterprise Institute, through its outside counsel Gibson Dunn, filed its brief arguing against NASA’s rather scattershot and contradictory effort to dismiss our lawsuit requesting certain documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Our suit, CEI vs. NASA (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia), followed on the heels of ClimateGate, and a December 2009 Notice of Intent to Sue if NASA did not turn over certain records withheld since CEI sought them in August 2007 and January 2008 requests. That Notice was eleven months ago and, despite NASA offering some documents and admitting — temporarily — that certain others relating to the advocacy site used by NASA scientists, RealClimate.org were “agency records”, NASA then ceased its brief steps to comply with the transparency statute FOIA.

Despite NASA stonewalling CEI has already learned, for example, that NASA does not, contrary to widespread media and pressure group claims, have an independent temperature data set. Instead, as NASA told USA Today in an email, despite its serial, breathless press releases trumpeting some new temperature high, it actually is just a modeling office, which also (for unknown reasons, possibly extra attention and importance, or mere advocacy)  cobbles together some US data from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) with that of the Climatic Research Unit’s temperature history. You may recall how CRU withdrew its claim to a temperature history data set after ClimateGate led to an admission it actually lost its data.

(more…)

The news about China overtaking Japan as the world’s second-largest economy is actually quite relevant to the US climate and energy policy debate, which promises to continue despite the scientific scandal and evaporation of political will to associate with a “global warming” or cap-and-trade legislation.

Thanks to a poll by Stanley Greenberg, the measure has been re-branded as “green economy” and “clean energy”.  But whatever you call it, and lame duck or otherwise, this latest excuse for central planning will be with us until it is unavoidably tied to serious political costs, like its forerunner the 1993 BTU energy tax, which according to Al Gore in a 2006 interview with the Financial Times led to the Democrat’s loss of Congress. Instructively, that experience originally prompted the re-branding to cap-and-trade.

Now, about  the relatively fading Japan, it is important to note that although it has been a persistent economic basket case, it nonetheless serves as one of President Obama’s models for stimulating an economy with “renewable energy” mandates (as we’ve documented in this space on numerous occasions, he’s not always the best-informed about these matters).

China’s relevance to our current policy debate is in part due to the ritual “but, China’s doing it…” line of — for lack of a better word — “argument” for why the US should impose all manner of global warming policies on itself. That deserves scrutiny.

(more…)

Certainly the philosophy of the Triple Bottom Line (“3BL” or “TBL”) is unconventional when compared with accepted business practices which are based upon the typical single bottom line of profit. We know that profit is essential to business survival, but we should ask how this expanded 3BL business model gained traction. For an answer, we need to look at the history of 3BL, and that history shows us that environmental and social idealism have been closely linked since the modern global environmental movement began in 1972.

In 1972, Maurice Strong, a patriarch of the global environmental movement who now sits on the board of directors for the Chicago Climate Exchange, led the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, which met in Stockholm and released a declaration linking the human exerience to nature. It acknowledged that “man is both creature and moulder of his environment” and has advanced to the point where he has the power to significantly affect nature and, by extension, his own intellectual, moral, social and spiritual growth. The global social ramifications of man’s environmental stewardship are thus clearly stated in the Stockholm declaration:

The protection and improvement of the human environment is a major issue which affects the wellbeing of peoples and economic development throughout the world; it is the urgent desire of the peoples of the whole world and the duty of all Governments.

The UN felt the environment and social well being were so linked that the declaration’s first Principle focused on it:

Man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being, and he bears a solemn responsibility to protect and improve the environment for present and future generations. In this respect, policies promoting or perpetuating apartheid, racial segregation, discrimination, colonial and other forms of oppression and foreign domination stand condemned and must be eliminated.

Without question, the UN has made a particular commitment to social and environmental ideology since the very beginning of the green movement, and in the Stockholm declaration we can see much of the framework for global socio-environmental ideology already in place.

(more…)

Widely reviled by the left, Bush’s faith-based initiatives were claimed to be evidence that Bush was a “religious zealot” trying to destroy America with evil Christianity. Now, two years into the Obama administration, we are seeing what Obama intends to do with his continuation of Bush’s faith-based offices: he wants to use them to push the religion of Greenicanism on America’s churches.

This month Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships issued its final report of recommendations and the result is nothing short of astonishing. (download .pdf file)

The question that immediately comes to mind, of course, is if the left will explode in excoriation of Obama’s faith-based policies as it did with Bush’s?

The left was out of its mind over Bush’s ideas. In 2004, for instance, the website TheocracyWatch.org hyperbolically said, “Under the Bush administration, our country is experiencing a major transformation from a secular to a religious government. The President’s faith-based initiative is central to this transformation and raises serious questions about church-state separation.” This was the left-wing talking points du jour on Bush’s faith-based programs.

It wasn’t just the left, but even from the libertarian side Bush’s ideas were attacked. Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute said that the faith-based initiative was a “direct violation” of the Constitution.

(more…)

After the divisive debate over health care “reform” and the problems that are already emerging from it (see young people, the states, AT&T, Verizon, John Deere, Caterpillar, etc.) you would think The One and Congress would take a breather. Wrongo! Here comes another hard left. A new “bipartisan” Cap and Tax bill is on the way.

Three senior US lawmakers are piecing together a sweeping bipartisan energy and climate bill, which looks set to include sweeteners to galvanize support among Republicans and industry groups…

The senators have hosted meetings with industry groups over the past two weeks, revealing details about their plan that would cap carbon emissions while expanding offshore oil drilling and nuclear power generation.

We definitely need to expand offshore drilling and remove some of the regulations that make it so hard to build a nuclear power plant, but it’s not worth the unnecessary increase in cost every American will pay for our energy (and everything that uses energy) that will come with the rest of this bill.

Will these “sweeteners” to get industry to go along include corporate welfare?

(more…)

Global warming alarmists are now alarmed because they cannot account for the cooling trend that has been evident since the late 1990s in contradiction to their climate models. In fact, there is a growing body of evidence that suggests the planet has entered a cooling cycle that could persist for decades. Dr. Don Easterbook, for instance, a geologist and professor emeritus at Western Washington University, has concluded that sea surface temperatures will experience a drop that could last for the next 25 to 30 years based on his observations of the Pacific Decadal Oscilliation or PDO, a weather phenomenon that reverts between warm and cool modes.

Researchers who have long questioned the premise of man-made global warming theories point out that alarmist claims are driven more by computer models that omit key variables than they are by actual observations. The growing “climategate” scandal goes a long way toward vindicating the scientific skeptics who have been ostracized in the media and the academic community. Emails that have been leaked to the Internet from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia show that researchers have deliberately fudged and manipulated data in an effort to account for predicted catastrophic warming that has not materialized.

In his testimony before the British Parliament, Phil Jones, the CRU director, suggested that he would be cleared of any wrongdoing once a fuller body of evidence is presented. The emails that have been made public were only a “tenth of one percent” of his correspondence, Jones said.

If anything, the more recent email revelations serve to invalidate the use of climate models that figure prominently into the reports issued through the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

(more…)

Wednesday evening, I had the honor of attending a presentation given by noted ‘climate change’ skeptic Lord Christopher Monckton, sponsored by the Bull Run Republican Women’s Club in Manassas, Virginia.

As I didn’t think it appropriate to ask a long-winded Chris Matthews-type question, I essentially wanted to know (with all the revelations of deliberate fudging of climate data to “prove” global warming is happening) what the legal ramifications on the players could be, considering how many billions of dollars cities, states, businesses, corporations, as well as whole nations have spent going “green”, not to mention the adverse effects on developing nations?

Lord Monckton’s response was direct and to the point: “Jail the lot!”

(more…)

The U.S. Chamber strongly supports efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, but we believe there’s a right way and a wrong way to achieve that goal.

The wrong way is through the EPA’s endangerment finding, which triggers Clean Air Act regulation. Because of the huge potential impact on jobs and local economies, this is an issue that requires careful analysis of all available data and options. Unfortunately, the agency failed to do that and instead overreached. The result is a flawed administrative finding that will lead to other poorly conceived regulations further downstream.

Today the Chamber is filing a formal petition indicating it will challenge EPA’s decision to trigger Clean Air Act regulation, based on lapses in EPA’s process in making that decision. The Chamber’s legal challenge will focus specifically on the inadequacies of the process that EPA followed in triggering Clean Air Act regulation, and not on scientific issues related to climate change or endangerment.

We continue to call for Congress to address climate change policy through the legislative process, rather than having EPA misapply environmental statutes like the Clean Air Act or Endangered Species Act that were not created to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Emphasis mine.

In addition to ignoring its own internal rules and working outside the legislative branch, the EPA is acting on a 2007 Supreme Court Ruling, which, based on new developments in the Climategate scandal, should be revisited. The ruling states the EPA was found to have the authority to regulate emissions that contribute to global warming and climate change. In addition, the Court stated:

(more…)

The global warming scandal keeps getting worse. Revelations over the last few weeks show that many important assertions in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were based on misquotes and false claims from environmental groups, not on published academic research as originally claimed. This is on top of the recent mess regarding data, where the three most relied-on data series used by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 assessment report still not been released. Other information indicates that data have been systematically biased to produce a rise in measured temperatures when actual temperatures were falling or flat.

Take some of the false claims in the 2007 IPCC report.

– The IPCC claims that the Himalayan glaciers could melt away as soon as 2035. The forecast was based on a media interview with a single Indian glaciologist in 1999, and the Indian glaciologist who was interviewed, Syed Hasnain, says that he was misquoted, indeed he had provide no date. Professor Hasnain discovered the mistake in 2008 when he read the IPCC’s published report, but he said: “There are many mistakes in it. It is a very poorly made report. . . . My job is not to point out mistakes. And you know the might of the IPCC. What about all the other glaciologists around the world who did not speak out?”

Even more disturbingly, Rajendra Pachauri, the U.N.’s climate chief, first denied that he knew about the error before the Copenhagen global warming conference. He only admitted that he knew about it before the conference when a writer for the journal Science, Pallava Bagla, pointed to email correspondence that he had with Pachauri last fall.

(more…)